I woke up early this morning. At a quarter after five I woke up and found myself not to be sleepy at all. I tried going back to sleep but had to luck. So I got up at five thirty and got started on the day. I did a little reading and a little writing. I hopped onto the office network since I had work coming up at eight in the morning. One of the advantages of working my weekends with people in Bahrain is that we are often able to start early as long as I am awake. Today we were able to start at just a quarter after seven which worked out perfectly.

Dominica got up at eight thirty which was very surprising for a weekend day. This is a good sign that she won’t be exhausted all week. Her shifting weekend sleep hours are really tough for her to make up for in a week of sleep. She watched License to Wed while I was working. Oreo was sleepy and didn’t want to get out of bed so they just snuggled in for a while.

I finished reading Simon Winchester’s “Outposts”. It is a fascinating look at the remaining British Crown Colonies as visited by Winchester in the 1980s. It seldom that we, as Americans, think about far flung British possessions such as Saint Helena, Pit Cairn Island, Ascension or others. And yet there are populations there, cultures and history.

Breakfast for me this morning was coffee and pop tarts. Doesn’t get much better than that. After her movie Dominica went on to watch the television show Dexter that she picked up for herself on DVD. I have seen one episode of it and it was okay but I am not into murder, serial killer, gross-out shows. Even light hearted ones, if such a thing exists. I am really tired of entertainment involving unhappy subjects. That really is not entertaining. I have no idea why people enjoy that. It isn’t like a thriller. At least a thriller is suspenseful and “scary”.

It was a busy morning for work with Bahrain. I was expecting the usual one hour of work but we started early and they ended up needing me for support into late in the afternoon. I ended up working more than eight hours!

I took the ASP.NET 2.0 Brainbench exam today scoring a Masters and ranking at number five in New Jersey and tying for thirty-fifth in the nation. I then took the older ASP.NET exam based on version 1.0 and also scored a Masters tying for ninth in New Jersey.  My final test for the day was the ASP.NET Fundamentals exam.  I know have all of the ASP.NET tests done and out of the way.

Dominica decided that it was a lazy day and she spent the entire day in bed with Oreo watching DVDs.  Oreo loved it.  It is often that he gets to spend the entire day actually in bed.

I listened to some IT Conversations tonight – Bill Buxton from Microsoft and Jon Udell talking about “Sketching User Experience“.

My evening project was working on an OpenSUSE 10.3 32bit AMD workstation (HP d325) for Castile Christian Academy.  While I worked on that I started listening to Garrison Keillor’s latest book “Pontoon“.

I ended up working until after one in the morning.  Dominica watched almost the entire first season of Dexter in, more or less, a single sitting.  Only two more episodes to go to save for tomorrow.

The weather was nice this morning for the walk into the office. Cool but not cold which is nice because you don’t tend to overheat during the long stretches of walking.

I had lunch with a colleague over at Chevy’s on the west side of the island near the World Financial Center which was a bit of a hike for lunch time but the exercise is always a good idea for me anyway as was the grilled fish and beans that I had for lunch. So no complaints. We mostly just hung out and were “geeky” talking about IT issues both technical and within the field at large.

Microsoft and Seagate have a cute “Heroes Happen Here” comic series out now. Good stuff.

I am consulting for Previsor / Brainbench again. It has been about a year, I think, since the last time that I consulted for them. This time I get to work on a Web Design certification which should be fun. My work starts on Monday.

This weekend should be pretty slow. My work isn’t scheduled late tonight. I have one small project for eight o’clock tomorrow morning but that isn’t bad. No Dungeons and Dragons this weekend as everyone else is too busy. We might have a New Orleans benefit dinner on Sunday afternoon but we don’t know yet if there is anything for us to eat there as neither Dominica nor I can handle eating much seafood anymore. Strangely scallops seem to be an exception for me which is funny since most of my adult life I haven’t particularly cared for them. Shrimp, lobster and crayfish – the mainstays of Creole cuisine – are definitely out though. I am still okay with lobster bisque, crab cakes and shrimp cakes and once in a great while, possibly but not likely, fried shrimp.

I placed a small Amazon order this afternoon. The free shipping option takes a little while but I figure if I place overlapping orders on a regular basis I get to have a continuous stream of books on their way to me which I can look forward to receiving. I am hoping that one book that I ordered not long ago will arrive today but I don’t think that it did even though it left Jersey City yesterday.

I didn’t have to work that late tonight which was nice for a change. I was able to escape the office at six thirty and hit the road for home. (Or hit the rails, more appropriately.)

I got home just minutes after Dominica and Oreo.  We ordered in some Italian from Nino’s for dinner and watched The Hudsucker Proxy on DVD that Dominica had just gotten last night from Netflix.  The Hudsucker Proxy is one of those truly great films that came out of the cinema renaissance of the early 1990s.  It is one of, if not indeed the, best performance ever given by Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Leigh who are the stars.  Other notable actors include Paul Newman, Charles Durning, John Mahoney, Bruce Campbell, Bill Cobbs, Peter Gallagher, Anna Nicole Smith, Steve Buscemi, Sam Raimi and John Goodman.  It was quite a Who’s Who of 1994 Hollywood.  Dominica had never seen the film and for some bizarre reason we only own in on LaserDisc.  I have seen it so many times on LD that it is hard to imagine that we didn’t own in on DVD but it has been one of those movies that I have told her about so much but haven’t seen myself since we unhooked the last LD player in regular use around 2002, not long after Nate and I bought the first DVD player in our group.

After the movie we pretty much went straight off to bed.  Dominica was really exhausted and was asleep before eleven.  I did a little work but went to bed not long afterwards.  I wasn’t very tired though.  But didn’t feel like staying up late either.  I do have to work first thing in the morning tomorrow so sleeping in late isn’t an option.  Never is these days.  It’s tough getting older and having responsibilities.

Dominica and I didn’t get off to sleep until around one in the morning. Somehow I managed to still get up at twenty after five this morning but I was pretty tired. Dominica was in incredibly rough shape when she got up at six thirty. But somehow she managed to get to work on time anyway. Two people called in sick to her team though so she is going to have a very busy day.

My walk into the office this morning had a little bit of snow starting to fall. The weather has been crazy down here. Snow today and the forecast is for sixty degrees tomorrow.

My morning wasn’t too bad but there was work to keep me going all morning. I actually had to do some sed editing this morning which is quite the rarity for me. Text processing isn’t one of my daily duties these days. Or ever, come to think of it.

I managed to get some more Brainbench testing out of the way today. Today I took Disaster Recovery and Planning which, again, I rushed through not paying very close attention and ranked fifth in the world with a Masters. I also took Web Design Concepts coming in at fourth in New Jersey but that is a far less popular exam.  My final exam for the day was TCP/IP Administration which I thought that I did really well on compared to all of the others today but when I got my grade it was very mediocre.  But, at least it is one more test out of the way.

Today was bill paying day as well. Oh the joys of paying the bills. But you can’t deny that there is a certain fun that comes just from being able to pay them even if it isn’t exactly fun to have to.

Oreo probably got to have quite a party at daycare today as the NJ Giants won the Super Bowl yesterday and many of the Giants’ dogs go to daycare with him. Although most dogs aren’t really into American Football.

Do any of you remember, way back when, when Andy used to run the website MyMiranda.net? I found a like to that on the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine today. That was a long time ago. The Internet is the new elephant. (I will let you ponder that for a minute.)

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. After tomorrow we should have a pretty good idea of what our next presidential election is going to look like.

I found the classic song Star Trekkin’ that I know from junior high school when Eric and I used to listen to the Doctor Demento show on 102.5FM out of Hornell, New York. Now this is some classic stuff.

We were hoping to see the price on large screen LCD displays coming down today but the unit that we have been watching hasn’t budged at all.  This is probably best, though, because I started researching the units a bit more carefully and discovered that the one that we were looking at while listed as 1080p is only a display of 1080p and like some others that we have seen is not true 1080p.  It is rather like selling a car with eight cylinders but actually having a four cylinder engine under the hood that drives the car and four cylinders in the trunk that aren’t connected to anything.  So now we are attempting to decide what model that we want.

We ordered in dinner from Nino’s.  Just sandwiches and cannoli.   We watched the rest of the fifth season of The Cosby Show.  Andy called and he and I talked for an hour and a half or so.  Then Min and I went to bed early.  She has been exhausted for days – probably a result of staying up until the wee hours of the morning all weekend and then attempting to shift back to work hours on Monday morning.

Tomorrow night we think that we have a Dungeons and Dragons session although that is not completely confirmed yet.

I wanted to get up decently early this morning, probably around nine, but when I started to get up Oreo snuggled close and said in his puppy way “don’t get up yet, I want more snuggles” and I just couldn’t resist so I stayed in bed, awake, until almost eleven. Oreo finally, at that point, discovered the sunlight and decided that he would be happy moving out to the living room and laying in a sunspot on the loveseat.

I couldn’t decide what I wanted to work on this morning so I logged into my workstation and got to work on some Brainbench stuff since so much of that is now out of date. Dominica got up shortly after me and decided that she needed to do her homework so it worked out well for both of us. My first project this morning is taking the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 Beta exam from Brainbench. I don’t get any credit for this exam because it is only in beta but because I am a senior admin specifically on RHEL 3, RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 running it both at the office and at home I felt that I really should put in the effort to do the beta because I can provide important feedback to improve these tests for everyone.

The one nice thing about doing the beta exams is that you do get feedback even if it doesn’t officially go on your transcript. You have to take the exam twice so that they get a better idea of how the questions stack up in different configurations. On my first pass through I scored a high masters and ranked in the top percentile of all test takers. The test doesn’t have a means to report any higher than that. So that was encouraging.

One of the best things about doing lots of certifications like the Brainbench is that it really forces you to spend a lot of time researching things that you do not use everyday or possible ever. It basically forces you into a one to two hour crammed study session.

The beta tests took a little over two hours but I feel that it was time well spent. From there I continued on and renewed my Linux (General) certification even though the test is horribly out of date. Even with the test being terribly old and out of date and covering nothing that I do I still pulled off eighth in New Jersey.

I took a bit of a break and hung out with Dominica and Oreo for a little while before going on to the next test. I find that once I get into the testing groove I really like to stick with it. I am the same way about homework, believe it or not.

When we took Oreo outside for his afternoon walk we managed to time our reentry into the building just perfectly to coincide with a fifteen week old Boston Terrier puppy named Barney coming into Eleven80 to visit some people. He was black and white just like our Oreo and so adorable. We took Oreo over to meet him and they were pretty friendly. Oreo is generally good with puppies. He just doesn’t like Bull Terriers that are his size or larger for some reason. Then, while the two Bostons were saying hello, two black and white French Bulldogs came down to the lobby with the exact same markings are the two Bostons. It was like a weird Boston Terrier Convention but with French Bulldogs masquerading as Bostons.

I did a quick image seach on Yahoo! today for: “boston terrier” oreo. And would you believe that our Oreo is not only the first hit but is the only dog who shows up on the first seven plus pages and is almost exclusively the only dog for the first nine pages! Our Oreo is the most famous Boston Terrier named Oreo ever.

I took the Linux (SUSE) exam after that and without even bothering to try, as the test was ridiculously outdated and worthless, I managed to tie for ninth place in the world. What a bad exam. I decided to go on with the Server Administration exam which is a general exam covering the basics of server administration without going into an operating system specific details. I rushed through the test as the day was getting shorter by the minute and Oreo is more and more likely to need lots of attention as the day wears on. But I still ranked fifteenth in the United States and pulled off a Masters so it was fine.

We ordered in dinner from Mi Pequeño Mexico.  I did some more reading in my Prototype book.  We watched two episodes of The Cosby Show while we ate our dinner.  Then Dominica had to go back and work on her homework since she has a paper plus numerous other homework assignments due by midnight tonight.

Later in the evening Dominica sent me down to the Market City Deli to find her some cookies.  I went down and ran into Pam on a mission to find a candy bar.  She was out during halftime of the American football match that is going on today.  When we went back to Eleven80 we ran into Ryan who had been watching the game but was relatively bored as American football is not exactly an exciting sport to watch.  So he decided that he would grab some beer or something and stop up to our apartment sometime soon to hang out.

I put in some time looking at rsync and other backup options tonight as I am trying to determine a solid backup strategy for myself.  Ryan came up and we talked about backups for a little while (Ryan is a UNIX system administrator.)  He likes Bacula and I will be looking into it a bit more thoroughly.  I am no backup expert so it is a hard area to make good decisions in for me.

Ryan and I hung out and enjoyed some New Orleans rum and Coke while he regaled us with tales of his week down in Louisiana helping to rebuild the city.  He took off home on the early side so that he could get some sleep and get to work tomorrow.  I decided to stay up with Dominica to keep her company while she worked on her homework.  We should be in bed at approximately midnight.

I worked for a little over an hour and then took time to go shower and get ready to face the day. I did the dishes to get the kitchen cleaned up, went over to Airlie Cafe to get breakfast for Dominica and I and made coffee. Dominica was up around ten thirty or so and spent the morning reading R. A. Salvatore’s Path of Darkness series (part of the Drizzt Cycle.)

I learned today that Amazon is in the process of buying Audible. This is interesting as we know a few of the Audible folks who are our neighbours. Audible itself is located at One Washington Square right here in downtown Newark just a few minutes walk out of our front doors. So we will be watching this closely to see how it plays out and what affect it has locally and to our favourite audio book service which we live and die by around here. Audible is a major component of my lifestyle.

Speaking of Audible, I have been waiting a long time for Scott Adams’ two classics, The Dilbert Principle and The Dilbert Future to be available from Audible. I have box on cassette from many years ago but as I have no cassette player anymore that does me very little good. So I am very happy to see them on Audible so that I can listen to them again. (These books are so good that I own them in print as well.) Scott Adams’ new book, Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! is available as well. I bought all of these today along with Louisa May Alcott’s “Jo’s Boys” which is her only major work that I have never read. I also got her lesser known book “Good Wives” which is also a part of the March Sisters Series along with “Little Women” and “Little Men” both of which I read as a child.

Dad installed the new 512MB into the SunFire V100 that only had 128MB before. That should help a lot. The memory install went fine and as soon as it was back online I kicked off a large rsync operation to see how the new memory would affect performance. It made a huge difference and my files were backed up from one location to another in no time at all. Very nice.

Our reimbursement check for Dominica’s dental work came today which was quite a bit of money. She also received her second Netflix movie, Dreamgirls.

Dominica and Oreo spent the afternoon napping in the living room. Dominica didn’t effectively get up today until around four thirty.

Many of my Brainbench certifications have expired over the past several months and I have been lax about dealing with them. So today I started “re-upping” my certifications to get them current again. When you have as many expiring certifications as I do this can be a rather significant process. It is far more certifications than I keep on my resume too since many of the certs which have expired are not IT certifications but are soft skills that are used to build up to larger cumulative certifications. I started today with renewing by Linux Administration (Red Hat) and Linux Administration (Red Hat 9). Both tests are out of date. The first one is so out of date that I have no means of even estimating the era in which is was relevant but it was definitely quite some time ago. Perhaps the popular RH 7.3 was the basis for this test which was before I did any work with Red Hat and instead used OpenLinux and SuSE. The second test was much better but still several years old – it wasn’t that new when I took it the last time more than three years ago. This time, on my first attempt, I scored a Masters and ranked number two in the United States even on a platform version that I have never worked on.

For dinner I just ran over to Food for Life and picked up dinner as take out so that we could eat at home and relax. I finished reading Johanna Rothman’s “Manage It!” while I waited for them to finish up with the food. Once I got back home we watched more of the fifth season of The Cosby Show while we ate. Oreo has decided that his new favourite thing to do while we watch television is to climb into my lap and go to sleep which makes it impossible to get up again. We we ended up watching about two hours before Dominica decided that she really wanted to watch Dreamgirls so, at that point, I was easily able to decide to go back to the living room.

I did some light work in the living room and did some reading but mostly just took time to play with and hang out with Oreo who was being very needy.  After Dominica’s movie was over we watched some more The Cosby Show and went off to bed.