Small pieces of news today –

Issue one of o3 should be released later today provided nothing bad happens on John’s end. I really do have to thank him for being understanding about my dropping the ball on the FreeRADIUS article because I was sick.

I’ve been feeling quite a bit better today. Still a little cruddy sinus-wise, but I can live with that. Since I wasn’t attached to my bed (or the bathroom), I decided to go out for a while.

For those of you who don’t know me (or don’t know me well), I’m something of a clothes whore and I also like finding nice housewares type stuff. Yes, I admit it. I’m a strange man. I’ve also developed this knack for finding nice stuff on the cheap while I’m out wandering around.

Why bring this up? While I was out, I found a nice set of coasters. I know, I know, you’re thinking “coasters? Who cares?” The fact that these are a set of 6 solid marble coasters with a matching case is what makes it noteworthy. It cost me a whopping $8.

I admit it. I’m pretty easy to please and sometimes I just have to make little sanity purchases. Hopefully, in a few months I’ll be able to make insanity purchases (furniture, kitchen stuff, etc) if the magazine really takes off.

One final thing: happy anniversary.

Current mood: calm
Current music: Delirium - Silence

The weird shit that comes out in conversation with my friends and girlfriend would amaze most people. Tonight we were talking about her graduating this year and the possibility of having to move back with her family for a while so she could look for a job. This lead to “ways to freak out your parents”.

Some of the things below came from that conversation, and some of them came to mind later.

Bondage gear? What bondage gear? This is formal wear. It’s just for *really* special occasions…

The mask? That’s a new style of fencing gear. What’s a “gimp” anyway?

Two words: neck massager

Why were you looking at my credit card statements? Lube Sheep is the name of a company that sells things like bento boxes (they are, actually. And the G rated kind… You just can’t make this shit up)

Girls Gone Wild is about aboriginal people.

And to think when I met her that she was this meek, prudish little thing. What have I done?

Current mood: feeling a bit better
Current music: Chad Kroger and Josey Scott - Hero

Of illness, deadlines, and freeradius

First off, I’ve been sick all week. I don’t mean a little sick. I mean curled up in a ball trying simply to breathe and not be completely overwhelmed by the pain in my stomach sick. That is, when I wasn’t running down the hall to the bathroom because of said pain in the stomach.

This is not a happy thing. The fact that we’re supposed to release issue 1 of the magazine in a couple of days kind of adds to this not being a happy thing.

Why, you ask?

I still have an article to write on freeradius.

Normally, I’m not one to leave things to the last minute. In fact, I tend to like to get stuff out of the way as soon as I can. However, I realize that I have trouble forming cogent sentences when I am in that much pain, let alone being able to write an informative article on something I haven’t done previously so I decided to try and wait until I felt a bit better. (The cleaning in the previous post was really just kind of “put clothes away” sort of stuff).

Okay, so I have to install, config, and write about freeradius. Shouldn’t be a big deal.

Wrong…

Murphy, his friend Macheivelli, and his favored tool, the cosmic sledgehammer pay me a visit.

Freeradius has a package in yum. Great. Yum install blahblahblah

So far so good.

Time to test it.

Oops.

Okay, time to look at the config files to make sure they’re right.

They look okay as far as I can tell.

Let’s try this from source then.

Uninstall freeradius.

Get the source package and try to install it that way.

What do you mean you don’t want to install?

*sigh* okay, back to yum.

Several hours (and many googles) later, I’m still basically where I started. Well, that’s not entirely true. I know several things that don’t seem to be the problem now. I also feel like crap again (I was starting to feel better today).

I’ve never had this much trouble setting *anything* up before (and this is coming from someone who has not only spanked linux on occasion but also been involved in the migration of several windows servers, one of which was running exchange), so it makes me think that it must be because of the fact that I’m still sick so I’m missing something.

So, I send my boss a HELLLLLP email (and probably the longest one he’s ever seen from me) because I believe he’s set up freeradius before and can tell me what the heck I’m doing wrong since my head is still a bit cloudy due to illness.

Good grief I hope this doesn’t push back our release date. It better not, or I’ll be even less happy than I currently am.

And that’s saying something since I have started to understand how the guy in the asylum who draws on the wall with his own poo must feel…

Current mood: sick and stressed out, or, to put it more colorfully, I’m so happy I could slit my wrists.
Current music: none.

I want to know why I have this compulsion to clean when I get sick. I should probably just stay in bed, but my mind goes “you need to do *something*… I know! We can CLEAN!”

It’s really kind of annoying…

On the upside, my bedroom does look a little neater…

Current mood: sick
Current music: Blind Melon – No Rain

Once again, for some strange reason, the eye-of-the-hurricane calm settles on me again. It's such an interesting feeling: surene and, at the same time knowing that something very large is on its way.

Current mood: look at the post? :P
Current music: Eddi Reader - Nobody Lives Without Love

Juggling Flaming Chainsaws

That’s what the past few weeks have been like. Magazine articles, research (for the articles and other projects), editing, and working on tossing around ideas for another project that may take off soon.

No, I’m not going to say what it is. That would spoil the surprise and we don’t need that.

There are just many things going on and I currently have *way* too many irons in the fire. Could be an interesting couple of weeks.

Now, someone toss me another chainsaw…

Current mood: decent
Current music: Executioners and Linkin Park – It’s going down

Happy birthday.

Though much of the pain has gone past over the years, I still miss you.

Current mood: bittersweet
Current music: Bella Morte - Whisper

I was reading an article, and at the end, where it has a small blurb about the author, some of her qualifications were Certified Interview Coach ™ (CIC) Job & Career Transition Coach (JCTC) and Nationally Certified Resume Writer (NCRW).

This, in my opinion, is total bullshit. Certified Interview Coach? Certified Resume Writer? Come on, people. Things like this are part of the problem. Companies are looking for people who will fit perfectly into what they want without having to find someone actually qualified to grow into the position and people like this help them do just exactly that.

It’s getting to the point where everything is “Certified”. Why yes, Bob, I am certified to wipe my own butt and, while I am not certified to do so, I am quiet capable of blowing my nose should I need to.

The people who came up with things like this deserve to be tortured to death with really bad pop music.

And yes, I realize that was a redundant statement.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Voltaire – The USS Make Shit Up

Ever have one of those times that re-affirmed that the divine has a sense of humor and you’re part of it? This past weekend was one of those.

I drive to Athens to meet with some people on Friday. Meeting goes as planned and is rather short, so I go and see a few of my former co-workers while I wait for my s/o to get out of class.

Everything is normal up to this point, so I get to her apartment and we get ready to go to dinner.

The car won’t start. It’s dark, cold, raining, and the car is kaput. I didn’t bring a jacket because I didn’t think I’d need it.

Boy was I wrong.

Half an hour or so out in the rain and cold trying to see if I could find the problem only got me cold, wet, and frustrated. We decided that I’m going to spend the night at her place, order pizza, and I’ll look at the problem when there’s real light again.

The next morning, I determine that the only problem seems to be that the battery has died (the door was probably ajar). The only catch is that everyone I knew in town and had a number for wasn’t in town.

A couple more hours of being damp, cold and frustrated and I get a jump start and make my way home wanting nothing more than to take a hot shower and crawl into a warm bed in order to stave off the flu that I’m afraid is going to hit me for being outside in the cold and wet for hours without a coat.

The fun doesn’t stop here.

At 5am, the smoke detector goes off, practically sending me on a trajectory toward the wall by way of the ceiling.

False alarm. The dust thrown by the furnace kicking on for the first time since last spring set off the alarm.

After swallowing my heart again, I try to get back to sleep.

So much for de-stressing with my girlfriend this weekend.

Oh well. At lest I’ve made some headway with the articles and this week is looking up a bit.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Weird Al – Dare to be Stupid

I seem to have this habit of being in the strange place at the interesting time. This has lead to a lot of really bizarre, interesting, and often fun situations (though some that were not so fun, as some people who know me can tell you). Along the way, I’ve been offered some interesting opportunities.

During high school, I helped found a drama club for the school (which became profitable it’s first year of operation) with the help of a few friends, a favorite teacher, and ample community connections between the members. It’s amazing how far a few hundred dollars and all the building supplies you need can go.

I also helped resurrect an Explorers post, attended Buckeye Boy’s State, was a student Rotary member, made National Honor’s Society, Who’s Who (twice, if I remember correctly), was largely responsible for the theme, cover design, and layout of the yearbook one year, and various other things I can’t think of right now.

(I know. By this point, you’re either thinking “overachiever” or “bullshit!” Don’t worry. I wouldn’t call myself and overachiever – I just kind of take the opportunities that come to me, it’s not bullshit, and it gets weirder.)

My senior year in high school, I was offered a paid two week stint as a research assistant for a friend going for her PhD in forensic anthropology. You read that right – at the age of eighteen, I was offered a job researching forensic anthro for a friend that was giving a presentation and defending her findings at Texas A&M. I would have also had a write-up in the science journal that the paper was going to be published in.

Unfortunately, the opportunity fell through because her lab assistant left out an important set of samples and the project was set back until I would have started my freshman year of college. I don’t know who was more disappointed: my friend or me, though I was told that the lab assistant flew (almost literally) out of the building when Terry found out.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to help in starting up a microbrewery with a bunch of fellow engineers. What could be better? =]

We gave it the attempt, but it never quite got off the ground. However, the important thing is that we tried, and learned quite a few things in the process. All-in-all, I’d call it a positive experience. Besides, how can you not like a business where part of your job is sampling really good microbrews =]

And it looks like I’ve been made another offer. One of the companies I met at the tech conference Saturday is starting a magazine and they offered me the position of editor. With all of my money coming from ad revenue, I’ll have to keep working at other projects while the magazine takes off, but this could be a really interesting trip.

If it takes off, it could be more than worth my time. If not, well, it’s more experience and exposure in my field and life is about taking a chance anyway. It might actually have a decent chance considering that one of the advertisers on board already is Nortel.

Either way, I could end up with one of the weirdest resumes on the face of the planet.

Current mood: weirded out (it's a mood because I say it is. I should know. I've been experiencing it for two days now)
Current music: Nine Inch Nails - the Hand that Feeds

LinuxCon: Geeks, Resumes, and Models

That kind of sums up LinuxCon Saturday. There were a great many geeks (a frightening number who fit the stereotypes), some interesting talks, and several vendors.

Thankfully the trip up and back was relatively uneventful and no real trouble was had in finding parking. When I’m in Columbus, this is always a major sanity saver because I tend to suck at navigating there. To give you an idea, a friend of mine attending the same event got lost several times and he had on board GPS.

I decided to take a novel approach to the job-hunting game and wore a sign on my backpack that was basically a mini cover letter. This got me quite a deal of attention, several people wishing they did it, and led to my giving away my resume to several interested parties (some of which are going to pass it along to higher ups that they know, including one at IBM). On that front, I’d say things worked out pretty well.

The real fun, however, came in because there was also a talent search for models at the convention center and I ended up getting flirted with a bit by several of them.

All-in-all it was a good day. Fun was had, I met quite a few cool people that I want to keep in touch with, passed out some resumes to interested people, and even met the guys and girls who run NotACon (another con in Cleveland).

Unfortunately, I had to cut out early because I started getting sick again, so I missed the after-party that the NotACon guys were throwing. Starting to feel better again though, so it’s all good.

Other than getting sick again, there was only one bad moment at the con. I saw someone who looked almost *exactly* like Richard Stallman. I had to resist the urge to run over to him and knock him in the head with something heavy. I’m so glad that I have decent impulse control =]

Current mood: happy
Current music: Eiffel 65 - Hyperlink