Ugg, not a good day. Got texted by my credit card company, my primary card
was used to rent $50 of Redbox stuff. Did I want to dispute the charge? I
said something rude in a barbarous tongue and sent back yes. Then tried
to get back to sleep. Got up. ate some breakfast, decided to wait on calling
them back and got out of the house for a book raid. Got a couple of random
books, mostly was an excuse to get out of Château Innsmouth, and to enjoy
the fact it's not sunny out. Came home, called the fraud department, dealt
with a nice, if terrifyingly perky rep. Card is cancelled, new one will be
here in 3-5 business days. Went ahead and moved all the upcoming autopays
to a different card. *sigh* Hope this is the end of a stressful week,
not the foreshadowing of a worse one.
Monthly Archives: June 2019
Merry Shortest Night of the Year (Northern Hemisphere edition)
It's finally going to start to get darker again. Thank Cthulhu. Sadly,
it won't get any cooler for 3 months. Darn it. Been a mixed week.
Some good stuff at work, some soso stuff. After a lot of thinking, and a
discussion with my fellow admin, I decided that I'll be in the office 3 out
of 5 days most weeks, vs the single day. I'm pretty non-social as it is,
and not leaving the house on that regular a basis would probably be a bit
much. Of course I regret it every night coming home, between the heat and
the traffic it runs me over.
On a happier note, I have a plan for a 2020 trip. Thinking about visiting LA for a long weekend. The HP Lovecraft Historical Society (which I'm a card carrying member of) is based in LA, and I'd like to see the HQ building and see the gang in their native habitat. Plus there are a few bookstores I'm told I need to visit, some Jack Parsons related places to visit (JPL tops the list, I know Dad would have wanted to go as well). I'm also thinking of staying a night onboard The Queen Mary not to be a wannabe ghost hunter, but for the history (ok, a little for the ghosts). Plus there's plenty of historical foo out there. I'm not going to do the big tourist things, no Empire of the Mouse or Hollywood blvd or such for me, even if I want a lightsaber on occasion *wink*. No real plans for when the trip will happen. I was thinking after the new year at some point, but with moving around that time we'll see, with PTO and fundage. But should be fun.
So, that's about it for right now. I'll catch you all later.
On a happier note, I have a plan for a 2020 trip. Thinking about visiting LA for a long weekend. The HP Lovecraft Historical Society (which I'm a card carrying member of) is based in LA, and I'd like to see the HQ building and see the gang in their native habitat. Plus there are a few bookstores I'm told I need to visit, some Jack Parsons related places to visit (JPL tops the list, I know Dad would have wanted to go as well). I'm also thinking of staying a night onboard The Queen Mary not to be a wannabe ghost hunter, but for the history (ok, a little for the ghosts). Plus there's plenty of historical foo out there. I'm not going to do the big tourist things, no Empire of the Mouse or Hollywood blvd or such for me, even if I want a lightsaber on occasion *wink*. No real plans for when the trip will happen. I was thinking after the new year at some point, but with moving around that time we'll see, with PTO and fundage. But should be fun.
So, that's about it for right now. I'll catch you all later.
Late night rambles.
Staying up later than I usually manage. I'm tired, but I'm jittery. So I'm futzing around, realized there was a work server that alerted last night due to low space during a backup, then recovered...but I didn't want to get texted in the night, so I threw a bunch of space at it. (New backup routine, and I haven't quite figured out how much space it will need, darn needy databases). I'm also upgrading a home VM to the latest Ubuntu server available, because I am a nerd.
To be honest, I don't want to go to sleep. Last night's anxiety dreams were very unpleasant, even though I don't remember details. So I'm avoiding sleep. Eventually I'll crash, but not for a while. I have plans for tomorrow (finally going to see the new Godzilla flick), but there's no time frame...so hopefully I can just sleep in once I crash. We'll see.
But for now, more comfort soup, some silly TV, and geekery. Then book and bed and hopefully dreams of tentacles and Caroline Munro ;)
To be honest, I don't want to go to sleep. Last night's anxiety dreams were very unpleasant, even though I don't remember details. So I'm avoiding sleep. Eventually I'll crash, but not for a while. I have plans for tomorrow (finally going to see the new Godzilla flick), but there's no time frame...so hopefully I can just sleep in once I crash. We'll see.
But for now, more comfort soup, some silly TV, and geekery. Then book and bed and hopefully dreams of tentacles and Caroline Munro ;)
Carcosa Corp 2.0
Been at the new office a week. And I am of mixed opinions. It's a nice
building, nice office space. My cube is fairly big, and while it doesn't
have full height walls, it's still fairly private. Sadly, voices carry,
so I hear the neighbors (a bunch of devs I don't know) more than I'd like.
It's also overly warm IMHO, I guess the powers that be that control the
thermostat are lizard people. My fellow IT folks are nearby, fellow admin
is across the row, and the desktop guy is one row over and further back.
I'm at the front of my row, so people walk by me all day, which is
distracting as I see movement, and look up. Guess I need to slouch a
bit more so I don't see them. There's a bunch of restaurants near by,
and a good Half Price Books. I also got to meet one of the execs I've
dealt with a lot the last few months, got some chitchat in. The people
I know are on the other side of the big office area I'm in, but between
walkups and IM clients we're still in constant contact. Which is mostly
good. We'll see how it works over time.
Brought my craptop over, and my triple monitor setup on a dock. Network is a little slower, especially if I'm doing things on the datacenter network, a few more hops than there was when I was a few floors overhead. Today I setup a test 'developer machine' in my cube. Our devops guy wanted a system he could test from in the new office, vs his own box back in the datacenter. Dell Optiplex, running Fedora (was 28, but I upgraded to 30 today). In theory it's going to just sit in my cube if anyone needs to see what's up with the developer network, in practice if I end up working in the office a good deal, I'll move it so it's the primary box and just not 'tell anyone'. (32 gigs of RAM and not Windows would make up for a lot of the commute.) We'll see. I did manage to name it 'hyades', our test dev boxes are named after constellations, and well, a star cluster is just a constellation mushed together. The devops guy is a Lovecraft fan (one of my converts), and I think he got the joke. At some point this weekend I'll log in from home, and push some scripts and files over to it. (Via VPN, no we're not insane). Not much in the way of decorations in the new cube, since I'm probably going to work remote more often than not, it's probably for the best.
Now, the big problem of the moment. The commute sucks. Morning isn't so bad, if I leave at 8:30, I'll be there at 9:00, assuming traffic doesn't snarl. But coming home is pretty crappy from 4pm til after 6pm. And it's the drive home that I really appreciated the 10 minute commute. But in 6 months or so, in theory we'll be done with the datacenter. And I'll be ready to move, so the pseudo-plan is to move north, assuming working from home 4 days out of 5 works for me. Which it should, unless I end up feeling too hermited. I really don't know, as is often I can see both sides. Next week I'll be about half and half, and we'll see what works from there.
So, it's more or less alright. Some things are better, some things are not. I'm just going to keep on going, adjust things and see how it goes. On that note though, it's time for this fox to head to book and bed. Night all.
Brought my craptop over, and my triple monitor setup on a dock. Network is a little slower, especially if I'm doing things on the datacenter network, a few more hops than there was when I was a few floors overhead. Today I setup a test 'developer machine' in my cube. Our devops guy wanted a system he could test from in the new office, vs his own box back in the datacenter. Dell Optiplex, running Fedora (was 28, but I upgraded to 30 today). In theory it's going to just sit in my cube if anyone needs to see what's up with the developer network, in practice if I end up working in the office a good deal, I'll move it so it's the primary box and just not 'tell anyone'. (32 gigs of RAM and not Windows would make up for a lot of the commute.) We'll see. I did manage to name it 'hyades', our test dev boxes are named after constellations, and well, a star cluster is just a constellation mushed together. The devops guy is a Lovecraft fan (one of my converts), and I think he got the joke. At some point this weekend I'll log in from home, and push some scripts and files over to it. (Via VPN, no we're not insane). Not much in the way of decorations in the new cube, since I'm probably going to work remote more often than not, it's probably for the best.
Now, the big problem of the moment. The commute sucks. Morning isn't so bad, if I leave at 8:30, I'll be there at 9:00, assuming traffic doesn't snarl. But coming home is pretty crappy from 4pm til after 6pm. And it's the drive home that I really appreciated the 10 minute commute. But in 6 months or so, in theory we'll be done with the datacenter. And I'll be ready to move, so the pseudo-plan is to move north, assuming working from home 4 days out of 5 works for me. Which it should, unless I end up feeling too hermited. I really don't know, as is often I can see both sides. Next week I'll be about half and half, and we'll see what works from there.
So, it's more or less alright. Some things are better, some things are not. I'm just going to keep on going, adjust things and see how it goes. On that note though, it's time for this fox to head to book and bed. Night all.
Health and Office Foo
Well yesterday (Thursday), I went back to the hematologist. The issue is
I have an enlarged liver, which is enlarging my gallbladder, which reduces
platelets in the blood. The basic fix is lose weight, liver gets more to
normal, things are ok. My current platelet count is right at the low end
of normal. Doc wants me back in 3 months to see how things go. So I'm
going to try getting more firm on the diet, like I did after being diagnosed
with diabetes, and trying to figure out more exercise. But since it's summer
in the hell of Texas, it's hard to make myself exercise. So we'll see what
happens.
Also, today was my last day in the local Carcosa Corp office. Finished my packing, did some other stuff. Went up to the new office, found my new cube (it's been changed a couple of times). Didn't stay, all I had was my laptop and I didn't want to argue with trying to find the work wifi. So I came home, hit traffic (at 2pm), worked from home for a bit, then kind of checked out. I have to do some work Sunday night before people go in the office Monday, and I have to be in the office way too early to help with people coming in. Hopefully going to get some rest this weekend. In fact, going to finish this post and head to bookville.
Also, today was my last day in the local Carcosa Corp office. Finished my packing, did some other stuff. Went up to the new office, found my new cube (it's been changed a couple of times). Didn't stay, all I had was my laptop and I didn't want to argue with trying to find the work wifi. So I came home, hit traffic (at 2pm), worked from home for a bit, then kind of checked out. I have to do some work Sunday night before people go in the office Monday, and I have to be in the office way too early to help with people coming in. Hopefully going to get some rest this weekend. In fact, going to finish this post and head to bookville.