There have been a shitload of things going on lately. I think the fact that I haven't logged in and posted a blog entry is testament to that. So, here's the skinny: At work, we moved into our new building back on February 7th. Well, actually, it was the weekend of the 5th and 6th, but we officially opened the doors on the 7th. So, we've been there for almost a month now. Since the first day, we've encountered numerous problems that have resulted in me needing to be at the office a lot. Last week alone (Monday thru Sunday), I spent about 115 hours at the office. That means that over 68% of the ENTIRE week was spent there; the rest of the time was sleeping and, on Saturday, getting my haircut and running a few errands. This week looks to be very similar, as it's currently 2:24am and...
Category: IT
A Little Sore, A Lot Busy
Things have been crazy at the office this past week, preventing me (out of sheer exhaustion) from posting any entries up here. We’re still on target to begin our office move next week, but I’m starting to doubt whether it’ll really happen. There are a few factors outside of our control influencing the move, and those deadlines seem to be slipping. In any case, it seems that my body isn’t used to standing all day anymore and the lifting and bending I’m doing is beginning to take its toll on my lower back. I’m sure it’ll just be a matter of time before my muscles remember how to do all this. This weekend is going to be full of Suncoast Studios work. I plan to spend tons of time working on Eman’s project. I feel bad that I haven’t been able to spend more time on it, as I know...
Crazy Buffet
Shauna and I went out today and made our way over to Crazy Buffet, which is a really great oriental buffet not far from our place. I ate a ton of food, as did Shauna, and she’s declared that that place is the best buffet she’s ever been to. I think I’ll have to agree. I had some seaweed along with other oriental buffet stapes pepper steak, steamed vegetables, and teriyaki chicken. Since CompUSA is going out of business in the next couple of days, we headed over there and I picked up a Netgear FS116 16-port network switch. This is mainly in preparation for building the render farm. I still have three more ports open on my Netgear FVS318 firewall, so I won’t use this switch immediately, but I want to start building the farm anyway. I’m in the process of hunting down old PCs and either taking them...
Fun, Then Not So Fun
Late Thursday afternoon I was invited to go to the Lightning hockey game. The owner of my company had an extra ticket, and a bunch of the executives and administrative people were going too. They had tickets to the AFS club, which is this nice area of the Forum where you get in, sit in comfy leather chairs (think along the lines of airline first class) and have unlimited food and beer at your disposal – no shit. So, I went home and changed clothes, got ready, and jumped in the car to meet everyone at one of the executive vice-president’s house. I got there a few minutes after 6:00pm. People started to slowly show up there for the next 45 minutes, and when all were accounted for, we jumped into a couple of vehicles (we only had two parking passes, so we had to cram in), and headed off...
Easy Listening
I’ve been listening to some music lately. Over a month ago I vowed to stop listening to music because it was completely consuming my creative spark. I didn’t want to just be the recipient of others’ creative endeavors, but wanted to build on my own. Everywhere music was on and I’d hear songs in my head all day long, so I went on a sabbatical and stopped listening to it completely. This whole notion helped a lot I think and over the past couple of days, I’ve started listening to some music, mostly .977, a streaming internet radio station through iTunes. I’m going to do this in extreme moderation, as there are several projects on my plate right now the really need 110% of my attention. I came home last night after working for 36 hours straight and watched the Lightning game. I then watched a little TV and then...
Long Night
Well, it’s another one of those nights where I get (read: must) stay late at the office; an all-nighter. It all started with an update to the routing of one of our client’s VPNs. That started at 11:00pm tonight and finished up around 1:30am. I could have gone home then, but I needed to stay and work out a problem with our new Windows 2003 domain. Evidently, the two domain controllers (one in Tampa and one in Canada) decided to go out of sync. Well, their AD schema did at least. So, that means that there are going to be e-mail problems soon. I have to fix it, but it appears that the hotfix I need has to be requested from Microsoft (which I’ve done). Just lovely. So, I’m keeping busy updating the DCs with Windows Updates now. I got up around 7:00am yesterday (21 hours ago) and won’t go...
Welcome Ryan!
Early this morning my good friend, Ninel, delivered her baby boy, Ryan Matthew (excellent name) at 7 lbs. 14 oz. I’m so incredibly excited for her and her husband Alex. I talked to her around 9:00am and she and Ryan are doing fine. I’m going to go see them all tomorrow at the hospital, as I wasn’t able to get away from the office today. In a recent fit of rage, I destroyed my iPaq 6315 phone. I hope to be able to get an iPhone in the next couple of months, but right now I’m using an older BlackBerry 7290. The good part of this is that I’ll free up a USB connector on both my home PC and my laptop at the office as I won’t need the cradles anymore. My editing workstation in the studio decided to start reporting bad clusters on the hard drive last night....
May Begins
I picked up the weekly comics this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised to find that World War III was in the stack. For the uninformed, WW3 is a DC book that chronicles the crazy shit Black Adam is doing to the planet while he’s on his insane killing spree thanks to the events in 52. It was a four-issue mini-series and I enjoyed it immensely. I think this is also the very last week of 52, and I’m going to be very happy to jump into Countdown after. I also got the latest issue of Fantastic Four. All I can say is I’m so happy to see the Surfer back in action. I know Marvel is really bringing him to the forefront because of the FF movie this summer, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit. The fact that Michael Turner did the cover this month helps...
As April Winds Down…
I heard from the dealership yesterday and my car is currently getting painted. They tell me I should have it back anytime from Monday to Wednesday at the latest. That’s gonna rock. Last Saturday night I went to Target with Shauna as we needed to pick up a few things from the store. She went to look at girl-things and I headed to the electronics department to window shop. Lo and behold, sitting quietly, all nestled among its brethren, were several Nintendo Wiis. Holy shit. Wiis. A bunch of them. About 30 thoughts raced through my mind instantly: Can I afford one? Will they be here for a few days? Is this something I really want?... I summed it up, sucked in my gut and confidently marched over to the cashier who was this big-boned, six-foot five-inch high school kid that looked like he loved playing games. I told him...
Getting Fixed or Totaled?
Spring is in the air. Some rain showers have been moving through the area lately, the birds seem to be singing a little louder, and the greenery is coming back. My life has been --- guess! --- really, really hectic lately. I went to battle with my auto insurance company and the collision center over my car a couple of weeks ago. I even called Ford who sicced their collision people on them. At that point it had been three weeks and I hadn’t heard anything about the car. Was it going to be totaled? Were they going to fix it? There’s no way it should take three weeks to decide that. So, I got irritated and started making the nasty phone calls. The end result: Two days after I started making a stink, I hear from the insurance company that they’re gonna fix the car. I called the dealership...
