Steven E. Crider Homepage

07.08.02	09.18.02	11.08.02
07.11.02	10.10.02	11.14.02
07.25.02	10.30.02	11.15.02
08.25.02	10.31.02	11.19.02
08.27.02	11.01.02

(11.19.02)

Da Bears... Suck!! God... I can't believe just how much the Chicago Bears suck. They are so freaking pitiful, it's not even funny. Pretty much all the sports teams in this town are pathetic. The Blackhawks might be okay this year, but who gives a shit about hockey. Stoopid fucking Bears. At least the Packers lost on Sunday.

I didn't have to work this past weekend for the Wisconsin laptop config. I sent Andy up to work with John, and the two of them banged it out. Poor Andy got sicker than a dog. Lost his voice. The user training went well Monday, though traffic was a nightmare and I had to drive like a madman to get up there ontime. You'd think two hours would be enough time, but nooooooo....
We have a bit of a break until the next laptop config weekend in early December. Two more to go and we're done. Just in time for the Christmas holiday. Wonderful. It'll be nice to have a little bit of time at work where every moment doesn't revolve around this damned laptop roll-out. Man, is it getting tiresome. The users love the new hardware, but going through this process is such a pain in the arse.

So, I went ahead and upgraded my home PC this past weekend. Would you believe that it went well? Seriously. If you read earlier rants about how I tried to upgrade my box from Win98 to Win2K, and how horribly, horribly wrong it went, you would understand my complete surprise on how well this upgrade went.
This time, I was not only upgrading the OS (from Win98SE --> WinXP Pro), but also installing a new motherboard, CPU, heatsink/fan and RAM. Basically, there was plenty of room for things to go very wrong. To my complete and utter amazement, nothing really did.
Actually, that's not entirely true. Like a moron, I installed the heatsink/fan incorrectly on top of the CPU. I didn't notice that the surface of the CPU socket is shaped a particular way, and that the bottom of the HSF is shaped accordingly so that it fits snugly together. Well, the shape is so subtle, that I installed the HSF backwards and when I booted up (and got the OS installed), the machine was running waaaaay hot. After doing some not-so-quick research on the Internet, I found out about the shape issue, reinstalled the HSF and all is well. Lucky I didn't fry the damn CPU.
All said and done, it took me about an hour to install all the hardware upgrades (I took it slow), and maybe another hour to wipe the hard drive and install Win XP Pro from scratch. Hell, even the OS install went well. You know... that's the way it is with Windows. Either it goes very well, or it goes so very wrong that all you want to do is chase a bottle of sleeping pills with a fifth of gin. In this case, it was the former. Go figure.
I spent some time off and on over the weekend getting the rest of my applications installed and files restored. So far, so good. This box is wicked fast, lemme tell you. I was playing a game last night that, prior to the upgrade, would stutter here and there when there was a great deal of stuff happening on-screen. After the upgrade, however, it was smooth as silk. Applications load in the blink of an eye, and the OS itself is pretty damned fast.
So, all in all, I'm happy with the upgrade. The process itself went well, and the result is killer. I'd better keep knocking on wood, though. Windows, and computers in general, has a nasty habit of taking a dump on you when you least expect it.

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(11.15.02)

Good Riddance To This Week! The Bensenville laptop config last weekend was pretty rough. Let's see... Worked all day Saturday from 9:00am to, uhm, I think I left around 10:00pm. Back in on Sunday, from 10:00am to 5:00pm. I went home on Sunday to finish up the training documentation, but unfortunately had to come back into the office because my printer at home wasn't available and I needed to be able to print. So, back at the office around 7:00pm Sunday evening, and I left to go home around 2:00am. How many hours is that? I dunno. You do the math. It hurts my head when I try.
The real joy of it all was, I had to be up at 6:00am Monday morning, to be back at the office by 7:00am to prepare for user training starting at 8:00am and going pretty much all day. I think we finished up around 4:00pm. I left early and got home around 4:30pm and was asleep in bed by 4:31pm. Ain't life just grand?!

The New Berlin laptop config is this weekend. Since we learned quite a bit from last weekend's efforts, I think this one will go much smoother. There's more training Monday, starting at 8:00am, so I have to haul my fat ass up to Wisconsin and be there by 7:30am. Guess I have to leave around 6:00am at the latest. Wonderful.

I guess Neddy is feeling better. He was pretty damned sick there for a while. Think he had The Plague, or something. Maybe rickets, too.

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(11.14.02)

Glutton For Pain. Yes... that's me, alright... I'm a glutton for pain. "Why", do you ask? Well, because I'm about to embark on yet another Windows OS upgrade. Oh, but this time, it's not merely about upgrading the OS. No, that would be way too simple - nevermind the fact that the last one I attempted on my home machine caused much grief. This time I'm going with a new motherboard, CPU, heatsink/fan and RAM. One word: Ugh.
It's all Kevin's fault, really. See, the dickhead called me up the other day and started waxing all poetic about the new ASUS A7V8X motherboard, and how cheap the RAM and AMD processors are, blah, blah, blah. Needless to say, I jumped on pricewatch.com and basically lost my freakin' mind. So, to Kevin, I say: You suck!
Several hours and a phone call later, and I'd ordered all the components I needed in order to upgrade my existing 900MHz Thunderbird Athalon box, with Win98SE and 640MB RAM, to an AMD XP 2400, WinXP Pro and 1GB RAM. Yes, you read that correctly: 1 gigabyte of RAM. ::shaking head:: What in the hell do I need that much RAM for? I have no clue at this point, though I'm sure I'll find a use for it somewhere. Maybe Carrara will appreciate that much RAM.
The other components of my PC are just fine, so there was no need to buy a completely new box or upgrade anything else. I'm good with my GeForce4 Ti4200/128, CD-RW, DVD and SoundBlaster Live 5.1 Platinum with the Live! Drive (IR remote, front panel connections, etc). The good news is, the new motherboard adds FireWire (okay, IEEE 1394), which will be sweet, along with on-board 5.1 audio and 10/100 ethernet. I'm happy with the audio card and NIC that I have, but it'll be nice to know I have backups. Hmmm... bet I could use that second ethernet interface for something...
Anyway, long story long, I'm diving back in. All the components are in and I'm about to go pick them up. I'd originally intended to wait until the week of Thanksgiving to do the upgrade, but frankly, I can't wait. I'm thinking I might start this weekend. We'll see.
Stay tuned for more on this subject, most likely entitled, "The Diary of a Madman!"

We play the Wiseguys tonite in the volleyball playoffs. They're the first place team and we're second (I think). We lost all three games to them last time we played. Hope we can do better tonite.

Got my Attack of the Clones DVD Tuesday. Hoping to sit down and watch it this weekend. Then again, if I'm dorking around with that upgrade, that may not happen.

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(11.08.02)

Me So Tired... Me Sleep Long Time. I am so freakin' tired right now. Too many nights this week I've been up way too late, and it's not going to get any better for the next ten days, either. This weekend is a config weekend for the laptop rollout, so I'm working all weekend. Then I have to be in the office early all next week, with Monday being the full day of user training -- the agenda for which I have yet to complete (which means I'll be busting my arse this weekend to get it ready, on top of the laptop configs). Then next weekend is the Wisconsin laptop config, so I'm working all that weekend as well, followed by a full day of user training that Monday, for which I have to be in New Berlin by 7:30am. Ugh.

We won all three games at volleyball last night. Man, I hurt. My ankle is killing me, my knees are on fire and I feel like I've been rode hard and put away wet. About halfway through the second game last night, I decided that I'm too fat and too out of shape to be doing any physical exercise other than speed-walking at the mall. And, let's face it, that's probably a little out of my league right now.
The team we played last night was in second place and we were in third. By virtue of winning all three games, we reversed that order and are now in second place by one game. Problem is, we play the number one team next week, and the last time we played them, they spanked us pretty rotten and we lost all three games. There's two more weeks in the season (2 matches, 6 games). It's a safe bet we'll lose at least one game next week and, quite honestly, could easily lose two or all three. If we stink up the place, then that will open the door for the third place team to sneak back into second. If that happens, we'll still have one more week turn it around.
Still, I'm encouraged by how we played last night. Everyone stayed up and focused, and didn't give up on seemingly dead balls. That was a big problem before... the moment it looked like a ball was going to die, we'd give up. Now, we're making that extra effort to keep it alive and it's paying off. I'd like to make a good showing next week and I think we will.

I hate going to movies. Seriously. I focking hate it. It's not so bad when it's like the last week the movie is in theaters, because the punk-to-person ration is much lower, but going while the movie is still hot is like root canal without the drugs.
Case in point: Kim and I went to see The Ring last Sunday. It was an okay movie, but the experience sucked monkey balls. The moment we walked into the theater, I knew it was going to be bad. In fact, I even said to Kim as we were sitting down, "This was a mistake." She asked why, and I replied, "Look at all the punks."
The entire back few rows were nothing but teens. And they were loud. And they were obnoxious. And they were grating on my very last nerve... all before the previews even started.
So, the movie starts and they're all being a bunch of monkeys, making all kinds of noise, being jaggoffs when people shush them... you know the drill. Movie cops even came in at one point, but of course, the monkeys quieted down and no action was taken. Once the movie cops left, the monkeys started back up.
Now, if you know me, you know I don't have much patience for stupid shit. I kept quiet for about the first third of the movie, hoping others would take action or the monkeys would quiet down or perhaps end their own lives in a murder/suicide kinda thing. I mean, come on... it's a freakin' horror movie, for cryin' out loud. You need the ambiance the film is trying to create in order to enjoy the experience. And these monkeys were ruining that.
Needless to say the monkeys didn't quiet down and I finally snapped. No, I didn't jump out of my seat and pummel them all to death with a Twizzler, but that's mostly because I didn't have any. Instead, I simply turned around and said in a booming voice, "You need to be quiet now!", kept looking at them for a few long moments, and then turned back to face front.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not getting off on the fact that I chastised a group of monkeys, but it did feel good, I got a few "thanks" from around the theater and the monkeys quieted down. So, I won. Poor Kim said to me after the show, "Next time, warn me before you do that... you scared the shit outta me!" Sorry hun, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Know what I'm sayin?

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(11.01.02)

Happy Friday!! Made a few minor design changes to the first and third columns of the website. Nothing major, but it makes things look a bit more uniform. Now I just need to figure out what to do with all that white space at the top of each page.

The Spiderman DVD is shipping! Yeah, baby! Amazon has it for a pretty great price. You can get it here.

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(10.31.02)

See Shit... See Fan... *splat!* Ugh. Things are about to get really crazy at work. Turns out this is a pretty long diatribe about my Hell at work. If you don't have ten minutes to read through this, you might as well click away now. Hell, I wouldn't blame you. It's not like any of this is really interesting, or anything. I just needed to rant.
We're waist deep into a 55-user new laptop rollout and the water is about to rise quickly. This is the fourth such rollout in the 7.5 years I've been with the company, so it's not like I don't know what I'm doing. This rollout, however, is far more complicated as we're migrating our existing Macintosh-based sales force over to Windows. There are so many migration issues involved, it's not even funny.
The basic config of the laptops is nearly complete. That's gone pretty well using Norton Ghost, though it took several tries to get the image just the way we wanted it. Just as I'd get the image done, Andy or John would come up with something else to add or an adjustment to make, so I'd have to make the change and re-create the image. This happened five or six times. Then, John hit me with the fact that we needed two images: one NTFS and one FAT32. Why? Because the engineers and installers need to run old DOS-based apps and that can't be done under Windows2000 with NTFS -- needs FAT32 file system.
Luckily, at that time, there was still a small number of units that had yet been touched, so their file systems were still FAT32. *whew* Dodged that bullet. But I still had to spend two days manually installing all the software that's on the NTFS image onto the FAT32 machine, and then tweaking that FAT32 machine so that all the little details matched as closely as possible the NTFS image. That was a total pain in the arse, lemme tell you, but I got it done and we were finally ready to start Ghosting down the images for the final time.
So, as I said, the basic config of the laptops is almost done. That includes the Ghosting down of the appropriate image to the laptops (engineering/install=FAT32, sales=NTFS), running through a post-Ghost and User Personalization procedure I put together, and then setting them aside until it's time to start transferring data from the old laptops over to the new. Once we got the Ghost images done, this little corner of Hell actually went pretty fast. The real bitch of it all is the upcoming data transfer and associated conversion issues. Oh, and user training.
I have to say at this point that the timing of this rolled out is not entirely my fault. The original plan was to have all these things rollout out by Thanksgiving, but that plan went straight in the crapper when several massive personnel changes were made at corporate and the geniuses on that end who were responsible for helping me place the $150,000 hardware/software order for this rollout dropped the ball. Dropped the ball... right. They didn't just drop the ball, they fumbled it, kicked it out of bounds, shot it with a bazooka, then tracked down the guy who made the ball, shot him with the bazooka, and - just for good measure - shot his cat as well. I guess you could say it turned into one major clusterfuck (I love it when I get to use that word, which seems to be more and more often these days with my company).
As I was saying, the timing of this rollout was delayed because of all this crap just trying to get everything ordered. In the three previous rollouts, which were of equal or higher cost, I never had anything near the problems I've had with this rollout. This one, however, has been a complete nightmare. The toll it's taken on my personal life - in particular my relationship with Kim - has been pretty high thus far. But, I digress. That's a ramble for another time.
Because of the delay, I was hoping to get the whole thing pushed back to January, but The Powers That Be would have none of that. So, I went back to the drawing board and came up with a plan that would get half out by mid-December and the other half out mid-January. TPTB laughed in my face, kicked me in the balls and told me to try again. I think it was during a videoconference with John and Andy where we came up with a way to get all the units into production by mid-December. The thing of it was, it was a very aggressive schedule. Hell, it'd have to be as it was September 26th, which gave us three months to not only deal with the laptops themselves, but also schedule the users for data migration, training (which I'm still not done developing), etc. To make matters worse, the next day we got a bomb dropped on us from corporate IT that mandated we drop everything and perform yet another emergency audit. That took us a week and a half to complete, during which time we were unable to do anything with the rollout.
Fast forward to October 14th and I'm finally making phone calls to all the regional offices, trying to see what we can get scheduled with all the users. I had finally picked four training dates - two in mid-November and two in mid-December. It took a week of arm-twisting, and a slight nod from the IT Gawds, but I got all of the offices confirmed and onboard with the plan. At this point, we had just started working on the laptop images and had yet to actually begin configuring any laptops. It was October 22nd and we had just under three weeks to get the first batch of laptops ready for the Bensenville rollout.
In the past week and a half, or so, the IT Gawds have actually blessed us with a bit of a smile, and a backhand to the cheek. I'd been getting a great deal of pressure from TPTB to get the tech laptops into production immediately, rather than along with the sales units. Two words: fuck me. Look, the reason you go through the trouble of putting together a rollout plan is so you don't have to dick with exceptions that get in the way of the schedule. In order to make an exception like this, we have to take time away from working on the actual rollout plan and we get behind schedule. But TPTB didn't care. "Get the units out!" they bellowed, and kicked me in the balls again.
I finally agreed to do what they asked if they in turn agreed and accepted the fact that, yes, we could get the tech laptops configured and handed out, but there would be no official rollout for them. That means no data transfer, no user training and no after-the-fact hand-holding, which actually ends up being a huge issue after rolling out new laptops. TPTB seemed to balk at first, but when I explained that it just wasn't possible to do any more with the tech laptops and still get the rest of the rollout done, they gave in. I mean, come on... there's only so much time in a day.
Consider this: Let's say you have a project (measuring methane levels emanating from cows after feeding them asparagus) with a deadline of Friday 5pm. It's now Monday 8am and you've determined that it will take you 40 hours to complete the work. Given that there are 40 hours in a standard American work week, that means you're going to be pretty busy, and most likely working some overtime.
Now, let's say Mr. McBiteMe comes into your office and says he needs you to mow his lawn, paint his house, wash and wax his car and trim the toenails on his kick-me dog. After a few shots of whiskey, you determine it will take 30 hours to do all that work. Given that you have somewhat of a personal life and really can't work 70 hours this week, what are you to do? Your first priority is the methane project, yet Mr. McBiteMe wants all this crap done and he's not budging.
Well, something has to give. Is it the methane project or something from the list McBiteMe rattled off? That's the trick: figuring out the weak constraint and getting TPTB to understand and agree. In this case, let's say the weak constraint is the painting of the house. You tell McBiteMe that, look, it's simply not possible to do all the work he just tossed your way, plus get the methane project done as well, so how about you mow his lawn, wash and wax his car and trim the dog's toenails, but the house painting will have to wait. If McBiteMe has any logic whatsoever in his Ivory Tower, tunnel-vision mind, he'll see that you are right and give in.
That is basically what I had to do. I told TPTB that I could get the tech laptops into production, but there would be no data transfer, no user training and no hand-holding. Take it or leave it. They decided to take the deal and I left the room sobbing quietly. I had won that battle but lost the war: I now had to get all these tech laptops configured and into production right away, which meant we had to take time away from the rollout schedule. In order to make up for that delay, we'd have to bust our asses even harder and somehow find the time to still get it all done. Welcome to the wonderful world of IT.
Okay, so this is where the IT Gawds hit us with a bit of a smile. The configuring of the tech laptops actually went pretty quick. I sent the Wisconsin units up to John for him to work on, as Andy and I worked on the Bensenville, Decatur, South Bend, Kentwood and Detroit units. We got all of those done in four days. Might have been less, actually. We got them all configured and shipped out last Friday, and getting that done so quickly was huge. It allowed us to get back to the main rollout plan with only a few days to make up.
I again had the Wisconsin sales units shipped up to John so he could work on those himself, and Andy has been busting his hump getting the rest of the regional sales units configured. In fact, he should be done by the end of this week, which will actually put us ahead of schedule. I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but I'm not going to question it.
This is where we come to why I started this ramble in the first place... next weekend is when the real Hell begins. That's when Andy and I work all weekend to transfer and convert all the data from the Bensenville sales Macintosh laptops to the new PC laptops. This will either go very well or horribly bad. If it's the latter, we'll literally be working all weekend as the PC laptops have to be done and ready for the Bensenville user training that starts at 8:00am that Monday, and goes all day. The following weekend is the Wisconsin config, with training the following Monday. The remaining two config weekends are in mid-December.
There's going to be so much fallout due to this rollout, I just know it. We have longtime Mac users going to Windows who will be freaking out like nobody's business. There'll be data conversion issues up the ying-yang, people whining about some neat little shareware utility they had on their Mac that they absolutely must have on their PC, a pant-load of more virus issues, and through it all, the holidays. That's right, boys and girls, let's not forget that the week after the first two rollouts is Thanksgiving, and the week after the last two rollouts is Christmas. Oh, what a wonderful time that will be.
If you can't tell, dear reader, I'm just a wee bit annoyed by the timing of all this. I absolutely hate ending the year on such a hectic pace. I mean, the freakin' holidays are difficult enough as it is. Do we really need to be adding all this on top? No, I think not. Like my opinion matters.
Oh... if you're read all the way through this ramble, congrats! You're probably one of three people who will bother to do so. How about shooting me an email?

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(10.30.02)

Happy Birthday, Barb! Today is Kim's mom's birthday.

I can't believe tomorrow is Halloween already. Sheez. Tony and I spent last Halloween in Boston with his girlfriend, Heather. I have a few photos online here.

I hooked up with two good friends over the past few weeks. Jeff and his family spent a recent weekend up in Lake Geneva. A family vacation/Karen's birthday kinda thing. Kim and I met them for lunch on their way back down to Springfield that Sunday. It was fun. Got to see the kids, Allison and Jake. Talk about little cuties.
Then, on the 22nd, I finally got hold of and talked to my old pal Steve Sturm from college. He'd been trying to reach me for like three weeks. Between work and pleasure, I just wasn't around to get his calls. It was nice to finally speak to him. I think it'd been at least three or four years since we'd talked. He and I were pretty tight back in college. In fact, I stood up in his wedding back 1994. That was a fun time. Hoooo boy!! He and his wife, Julie, have a little girl named Stephanie who just turned four at the beginning of October. Hope I get to meet her soon. Before she's off to college herself, anyway.

Darcey, our local HR Manager at work, moved on to another job two weeks ago. That really sucks. Darcey was pretty cool and acted as my main sounding board at work. I could always go to her with a work-related problem. I'll miss that, and her. The real stinker of the deal is that now we have no HR presence in the region, which really sucks because corporate HR is about as responsive as a pet rock. Joy. Still, I wish her the best. Good luck, Darcey!!

My volleyball team stunk up the joint last Thursday. Ugh. Lost all three games. First time this season we've lost more than one game in a match. In all fairness, we played the first-ranked team (we're #2) and they played well. It's not like they're fantastic players, or anything, they just didn't make many mistakes. And, therein lies the problem - we made a ton of mistakes.
We have another match tomorrow night then the playoffs begin. Unless something drastic happens, we should meet back up with these guys. If/when that happens, I hope we play better.

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(10.10.02)

Me so tired. Me sleep long time. Well, I am officially shacking up. Hee hee... yeah, I'm a sinner. The big move was this past weekend and, boy, did it suck major arse. I'm still exhausted. Ugh. I'm so glad it's over. We're about 65% unpacked at this point and hoping to finish up this weekend. We'll see about that.
I'm digging the new apartment. Very nice. The location is turning out to be even better than I anticipated. Drive-time to work has been cut in half, down to about 15 minutes, and we have most of the major conveniences within a three-minute drive of the apartment - which is a major plus given that I'm a lazy bastard. Oh, and the pizza place that has this amazing stuffed pie is literally right next door. And they deliver!!

Went to the freakin' doctor yesterday to get checked-out for my allergy to Kim's cat. They gave me a prescription for Claratin-D, which should help a great deal. I've been going to this doctor for the past eight years, so they know me. The nurse I seem to always get, Pam, asked me, "Have you considered getting rid of the cat?" I laughed for about five minutes and replied, "On a daily basis." I thought that was funny.
On the same note, when the movers showed up at my place on Saturday, before going to Kim's, I mentioned that if anything should by chance happen to the cat while they were over there, I'd double their tip. You know, maybe the entertainment center slips out of their hands and splat. Something like that. Well, the fockers told her about that! When we all gathered at the new place, as I'm standing outside watching the movers begin to unload the truck, Kim comes over and punches me in the arm. Not one of those love taps, either, but one of those 100-feet-running-start-leap-through-the-air-kung-fu types of punches. After she lands, she looks at me and says, "So, if something should happen to the cat, eh?" I was so busted.
P.S. It appears my girlfriend is a Comanche warrior.

I turned 35 back on 9/30. Lucky me. Like four people remembered my birthday, too. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

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(09.18.02)

Moving Update Right about two and a half weeks before Kim and I move on Saturday, October 5th. Movers arrive sometime early afternoon. Joy. God, how I hate moving. I haven't even started packing yet. Kim started three weeks ago. Ugh. I just can't do that, though. I can't stand living among boxes for any longer than absolutely necessary, so I generally don't start packing until two weeks before the move. Which is this weekend. Double joy.
Everything seems to be in order thus far. I'm taking that Friday and Monday off for the move. We have cable, Internet and all that crap being installed on that Friday and a new living room set coming that Monday. Now THAT I'm looking forward to.
One thing I'm not looking forward to is allergy medication. Yup. I'm allergic to Kim's cat. It's not like I start wheezing and fall to the floor, or anything, but I definitley have a more difficult time breathing. Gotta hit the doctor and see about getting some meds. Don't think I don't milk this one every chance I get (not the cat, Focker). ;-)

I got stung by a freakin' bee or something on the way home from work Monday night. Can you believe that crap? Might have been a wasp. Hell, I dunno. I'm pulling into Walgreens on my way home from work, stop the car and reach down to grab the gear selector to put it into 'park'. I just reach down without actually looking and there's this sting like someone stuck a white-hot needle in the palm of my hand. The little shit was literally sitting on the top of the handle! Now, I know for sure I got stung by all kinds of insects when I was a kid, and I don't recall any of them hurting as much as this sucker did. Man, it hurt bad. The nice lady pharmacist gave me an ice pack to take home. See? There are some nice people in the world.

The insect sting is bad timing because we start playing volleyball this Thursday, and my right hand is all swollen. It's getting better, and Kim will certainly want to take some of the credit for that. Why, you ask? Well, last night she disappears into the other room for like fifteen minutes, then comes back, goes into the kitchen and starts smashing up garlic cloves.
Now, I immediately begin to worry because, let's face it, Kim's a weirdo and there's no telling what she's planning to do with that garlic. Before I'm able to fully conceive and implement an exit strategy, she brings the garlic over in a napkin and tells me to hold it against the the sting. That's when it hit me: she'd been putzing around on the Internet looking for some home-remedy, witch-doctor type cure for the sting.
At this point, I had a choice: a) To be a man and say 'no', or b) To be whipped and say 'yes honey'. I tried to be a man, honestly I did. I kept saying 'no' for like ten minutes, but Kim just kept on me and kept on me and kept on me and kept on me and kept on me and kept on me and kept on me and kept on me and kept on me. See how annoying that is? Apparently, 'no' only means 'no' when a woman is saying it. I finally agreed just so I could have some peace and quiet.
In the end, all the damned garlic did was stink up the place and make me hungry. Didn't make a darned bit of difference in the sting that night, though when I woke up the next morning the swelling had gone down quite a bit. Now, whether or not that had anything to do with Madam Ju Ju's secret voodoo cure, who knows. Regardless, I'm not gonna say a word to her about it lest she start thinking she knows what she's doing. Can't have that, now can we?

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(08.27.02)

Minor Site Update. I decided the front page was getting a little full of rambles, so I archived off everything prior to 06.01.02 on a separate page. You should see a new 'archive' link above, just below the standard date links at the top of this page.
This change will hopefully make the page load faster as there's much less text, and just cleans things up a bit. I figure I'll archive every six months and just keep the current six months on the front page. We'll see how it goes.

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(08.25.02)

Changes. Boy, I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I've posted a ramble. Things have been really crazy at work and I just haven't had the time or energy to post anything.
You may or may not be able to tell, but I've made changes to the website. Last month I posted new fonts for the first and third columns and today I uploaded new files that have the font change all around. I like it better than the original. Seems easier to read.
Even though I'm a die-hard Macintosh fan, I do most of my coding on a PC these days, and sometimes I forget to fire up my Mac and take a look. So, hopefully it all looks good on the Mac as well. Also, though I touched every file and changed everything I found, there may be some things I missed. So, if you're having problems or see something that doesn't look right, feel free to send me an email.

Kim and I celebrated our six-month anniversary back on August 7th. We had dinner at the French place (Retro Bistro) I took her to on her birthday. Really great food, though they didn't have the wine we fell in love with back in March. Apparently it's a seasonal wine and it's not available during the summer. Go figure.

In other relationship news, Kim and I are shacking up. Yup. We're gonna live in sin. I'm able to ramble about this on my website because Kim finally told her parents a few weeks ago. We've found a great place in Arlington Heights, given our move-out notices to our current landlords and are getting ready for the early-October move. We're not sure when we're actually moving, but it'll be no later than October 15th.
We're both really looking forward to living together. What's nice about it is, it's not so much about testing the relationship as it is that it just feels like the next natural step in our relationship. I only wish we could fast-forward to the end of October as 1) I'm anxious to get moved, and 2) I hate the process of moving and the 2-3 weeks of living hell it involves.

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(07.25.02)

IT Rack Reconfig. I finally got around to posting photos of my IT rack reconfig that took place back on 7.13.2002. You can check them out here or by clicking the link to the left over in "Recent Additions". There's also a link on the Who Am I? page.

I'm too tired to post anything else right now because I've been working like a dog since Sunday, thanks to a completely avoidable disaster caused by a certain member of corporate IT.

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(07.11.O2)

Cleanup Time. Well, the time has finally arrived to clean and organize the shit out of my IT room. We're coming in this Saturday to bang it out. I have my local admin and Wisconsin admin coming down to help, so it should go fairly quickly. John, the Cheesehead, is very good at this sort of thing.
It's a complete mess right now and I have some photos online here. Basically, I didn't have what I needed at the time of move-in to properly setup the room. So, we cobbled it together from the pieces we already had and now it's time to correct that. We have new color-coded cables and guides that are going to make this sweet looking. I'll get some photos up afterward for comparison. I'm expecting quite a difference.

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(07.08.02)

Happy Birthday, America! 226 years old. Amazing all of the things this wonderful country has accomplished in such a short time. Too bad it's not politically correct to use the word 'empire' any longer. The 'American Empire' has such a nice ring to it. I'm only half joking.

I realized the other day that the photos I'd posted of Halloween 2001 just prior to the redesign didn't survive the transfer. So, I dug them up and re-posted. You can check them out here, or from the Who Am I? page.

[analsteve=on]Okay, so Kim and I are at Tony's for a party on Saturday, right, and the subject of my website comes up. So, there we are, a bunch of us just sitting around, chillin': me, Kim, Tony, Heather, Marie, Grant and Erin, when Erin chimes in with this bit about how I'm "worse than a girl" (she may have said "chick", but I don't recall) because I apparently post simply gobs and gobs of emotion and sentiment in my ramblings.
So, I chuckle, play it off and redirect the conversation, but then later that day I get to thinking, "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony." o|o
Later that evening, after Kim cleaned the CO2 filters in the apartment, I got to thinking, "What in the hell was Erin talking about?" I mean, seriously, do I really post that much emotional and/or sentimental stuff in my ramblings? This is about the time where Anal Steve shows up and can't move on with life until he comes up with the answer that, yes, Normal Steve does indeed post an enormous amount of emotional and/or sentimental crap on his website, or no, he doesn't and Erin is simply starved of sentiment and emotion in her relationship with Grant that she feels the need to pick on me.
The answer is, of course, the latter. I've gone over every ramble and, yes, there are a few instances where I've spouted a bit of emotion and/or sentiment, but certainly nothing so extreme as to warrant Erin's comment. As such, it's clear to Anal Steve that Erin is simply envious of Normal Steve's ability to express himself in a manner that, to her, seems utterly alien. *cough* [analsteve=off{normalsteve=continuewithlife}]

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