That Was The Week That Was

As far as weeks go, this one has been pretty good, both personally and professionally.

- After some considerable thought, I have decided to make the story I wrote in June, The Demons Inside, the last JLU story I will write. I have a couple of unfinished stories on my computer and they will remain on the machine until the end of the year when I will delete them. I simply don’t have the time to write anymore the way I want to and I am not motivated by anything on TV or elsewhere to drop everything I’m doing and pen something. However, I reserve the right to exercise the Brett Favre clause and come out of retirement to write a drabble or two should the urge hits me as it might do on October 22.

- A home in my neighborhood was recently foreclosed and resold for $150K under current market value. The noise you hear is the screams of hundreds of home owners in the area who suddenly find themselves upside down in their mortgages because of this. Fortunately, I am not one of them, but a couple more sales like that and I could find myself joining that chorus.

- Added 2GB of ram and 500 GB of hard drive storage to my Mediasmart Server on Tuesday. The upgrades were easily done (I was a nervous wreck while doing them) and now the darn machine just zips effortlessly through everything. Have gutted the machine the Mediasmart replaced and took it to the recycling center.

- Hope the economy (and the stock market in particular) has a good week. I have vowed not to look at my 401K until after Thanksgiving. And on that note, I’ll done for the day.

King of the I.T Department (Part I)

I am one of those guys who knows just enough about computers to get himself into serious trouble every time he is around one.  You can search this journal and you will find essays on my love/hate relationship with Michael Dell and his company (at the moment it’s love), but I digress.

Somehow, I assumed the mantle of computer expert for my household. This was not any honor that I sought and in hindsight, in my house, it’s no honor. I think I was appointed the expert so that my Most Significant Other would have someone to yell at when she can’t connect to the internet because she selected File /Work Offline instead of File /Exit the last time she use Internet Explorer.  There is nothing in the world like being awaken at mid-night with a “Wake up. I can’t get on the internet to get my grades posted.” 

Not wanting to respond with a “Why is this my problem?” because I know that it would then be my problem if it didn’t get fixed, I asked, “Did you pull up Internet Explorer and make sure it’s not set to work offline. Because every time you couldn’t get on-line the last one hundred times, that’s been the problem, remember?”

Then this woman, who is the mother of my children, who has two masters and is working on a PhD looks at me like I just stole her underwear while she was still in it, said, “What? Get up and show me.”  

Get up? That’s what I was trying to avoid. With as much grousing as I can muster, and at mid-night I can muster quite a bit, I go to her computer remove the check mark from “work offline” (I knew it) and grumble something about how she can be so smart and be so dumb. She sits down at her machine and says, “I’ve asked myself that same question every day since I married you.” She then smiles and says “Thanks.”  I smile back and say “You’re welcome.” I now go to bed knowing that my extremely limited IT skills are supreme in her eyes. I just wish I could prove it at a more decent hour of the day.

Happy Birthday to the U. S. Navy

This week, 233 years ago, the Continental Congress authorized the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatching of two armed vessels to cruise the seas in search of munitions ships supplying the British Army in America. Thus, on October 13, 1775 the Continental Navy was born.

From these humble beginnings arose the most powerful sea force the world has ever seen. To my U.S. Navy friends and colleagues serving wherever they are required, on shore and at sea, I say: Happy Birthday. Bravo Zulu.