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As part of the new ownership of the company, we now have an information security policy. Part of this policy pretty much states that you have absolutely no privacy at the office. Also, we have a policy that essentially says, "If you're on the clock with us, you work for only us. Save your other work for when you're not here."

As such, I am going to request that anyone who has contacted me about business-related items while I am at the office - such as your hosting account with me or a website I helped you out with - not do so unless it's an absolute emergency. This includes e-mail, phone calls, or instant messages. This also means I have decided to remove my personal e-mail account from my Thunderbird configuration at the office, so anything sent to my personal e-mail will have to wait until I'm home from work.

I think this is going to work out for the better on my part though, as I'll hopefully be able to separate work and personal time.

I feel like a complete idiot. I have always preached to the world, "Use an anti-virus solution, even if you don't do much on the computer." Well, now I can pridefully call myself a hypocrite.

I rarely use my laptop, and it just sits there on the charger for days. About the only time I'll fire it up is when I want to sit on the porch and work, or I am traveling and need to be able to work while I'm away. One such example was this weekend; I came to my parents' and needed to be able to follow up on a few things.

My Dad had told me about something weird he's been seeing on his computer. He said that it would be working just fine, then reboot for no reason. I told him it was probably a virus, and that I would take a look at it while I was here. When it happened to him last night, he told me, so I fired up VNC and logged into his computer from upstairs. Almost as soon as I did, my laptop started getting all kinds of popups, fake blue screens, the task manager was disabled, and all kinds of other stupid crap. Why? Because I didn't install an anti-virus on it.

I set it aside for a couple hours, because I was so frustrated, but I got it back out after that and tried to clean it up. The first thing I ran into was resource consumption. Since the task manager was disabled though, I had to do all my work at the shell, using the tasklist and taskkill commands. After I finally got all the rogue processes killed off, I was able to get AVG installed, but then the resources were sapped up again. I gave the computer a hard power cycle, and AVG fired up when Windows came back up. It found several DLL files that it identified as "threats", so I told it just to nuke 'em.

Finally I was able to start a full system scan, but it was taking so long that I just went to bed. When I woke up this morning though, the power was off and the charging indicator was flashing orange. According to the owner's manual for the laptop, this means that the batter was low. It makes no sense though, because it's not even trying to charge. That aside, I was able to get back into Windows, but everything is still a wreck. Luckily I have nothing of major importance on here, so I'll be doing a full OS reload tonight. I may give up and put Ubuntu back on, but we shall see...

I was up until about 2:30AM this morning, trying to get some stuff done for work so I could sleep in until 11:00AM and go to the office at noon. This plan went well, until about 9:00AM.

For some reason or another, the city decided to send out a large, articulated payloader with forks instead of a bucket, to push back the k-rails at the end of 18th street. There are 5 or 6 of these rails, and they happen to be right outside my bedroom window.

Now, this wouldn't be such a bad thing, because I do live in a bit of a loud neighborhood - what with the Arni's distribution center and the freight rail - but this had an incredibly irritating twist to it: The payloader's back-up siren sounded just like an alarm clock, and it would sound for 3 "beeps" about every 2 minutes.

Why can I never get more than 8 hours of sleep, even when I try?!

Even though I'll be moving to a different area before long, I'm in the market for a new kite. I've been trying to decide between getting a larger and lower wind speed dual line kite, but at the same time I would love to step it up and get a heavy pull quad line kite. The dual line I'm thinking about getting is the Alpha+, which should be a nice little upgrade from the dual line I have. The quad line I'm considering though is the Beamer III 2.0 - a rather powerful kite with an 8 foot wingspan and 65 foot lines rated at 485lbs. tensile strength.



I'm really looking forward to actually making this purchase. It'll be interesting trying to locate a good place to practice and play down in the Houston area without having to drive very far.

The papers are in, the t's crossed, the i's dotted: I'm officially an employee of The Planet Internet Services, and I will officially be relocating to the Houston, Texas area.

I still don't know what I think about it. I have been in a state of "bwha?" for the last couple of years, and nothing has really sunk in yet. I figure it will be just like living here in Lafayette, only hotter and farther away from friends and family. The good news is that a plane ticket should be within my budget every other month, and I will continue to stop in and see people around here. As for the heat, I'm just glad it's not snow.

I spent the last couple of days hanging out with friends. It's been fun, but has left me rather worn out. I will be crawling out of bed tomorrow morning around 9:30 to head up north and spend the day with the family, then I'll be back down here for bowling at 6:00 in the evening. What fun a busy weekend creates!

A couple of people have asked me what I'm going to do with my car when I move to Texas. I'm still not certain, but I think I will probably end up hanging on to it until it's paid off. The other option I considered was to sell it here, then pick up something new(er) in Texas. I feel as though that would be a bit of a difficult situation, as I will need to cover the final payments on the car and still make some sort of profit from it. Consider it's about to roll over to 100,000 miles, I don't know how much of a profit I will be able to gather.

Some of you may have seen this picture of me on Facebook. I don't think I'll be doing much with the khaki pants, but I'm most definitely going to start wearing the button-up shirts every day. I just need to build my selection such that I have enough for a couple of weeks; I'm lazy and laundry gets done infrequently. Right now I have probably 5 short-sleeved button-up shirts and 2 or 3 long-sleeved. Does anyone want to donate to my "get-some-short-sleeved-nice-shirts" fund? :P Also, I have been keeping on top of trimming the facial hair. The beard that most everyone knows me for is just the product of laziness, and that's going to stop.

I think it's time for me to click the "Submit" button and go throw out the 3-week-old meat that's in my fridge. I'll be keeping a knife or something handy, just in case it has become sentient.

This post is being made for a couple of reasons:

1. I need to share my decision about the previous post
2. I need to make a post
3. I should be sleeping instead of sitting at the computer

Let me explain...

I need to share my decision about the previous post

After much deliberation and discussing it with others, I have decided that I will indeed be moving to Houston. This is a rather exciting but scary event for me, since I'll be moving 1,000 miles away, taking on much more responsibility in a new position, and immersing myself in an environment completely new to my life. There are portions of this that I have done before, such as being in a management position, moving to a new town, and spending a summer a long way from home. If I look at it in that light though, this is just the next level of my life, so I must progress.

I have a couple of places I will be looking at for housing, but I still need to pound out some of the finer details about the next few months before I can commit to anything.

I need to make a post

I've decided that I should stick to a somewhat consistent schedule with my blog. I'm not doing this for others, but so that I can accurately express myself, further refine my writing style, and just release after a busy day at work.

I should be sleeping instead of sitting at the computer

Speaking of busy days at work, today was a whopper. We were able to get caught up by the end of the day, but it was a great challenge. I do feel like I accomplished something after working today, but I'm definitely exhausted from it. What kinda sucked though is a minor issue came up that I had to go back to the office to deal with, which broke my relaxation. While I was there, I grabbed a can of soda from the cooler to drink while I was working. I should have known better though; The caffeine in the soda is what is keeping me awake now, and I'm a bit upset about it.


As I said, I'll try to write on a somewhat regular basis now. If you're interested in updates, just wait a couple of days. And for the love of all that is good, feel free to share your thoughts by way of comments!

I'm sure you're dying to know what happened over the trip to Houston. It was a pretty exciting time, so I'll just start at the beginning.

Thursday morning, I arrived at the office and started my pre-flight check-in and printing my boarding pass. Shortly after that, we all headed outside to load the limo (yep, a real limo) and head for the airport.

We got to the airport at Indy with plenty of time to work through security and grab something to eat or drink before we left. After that, it was all aboard the CRJ200 (link) for the 2 hour, 45 minute flight to Houston International. This was my first time in the air ever, and I have to say that even though it was entertaining, it was rather dull. The plane was a little cramped, just by design, so I was ready to land and stretch my legs.

We got to Houston International right on schedule. It was rather windy when we got there, so the landing was a little rough, but still wasn't bad. From there we climbed into the limo for a ride to the H1 datacenter (the one that had the explosion and fire last week), just to see the fury of workers trying to return normal service. They had several emergency generators running outside, but aside from that we could see no damage or other signs thereof.

Next, it was off to the H2 datacenter just a few miles away, where we met with Doug Irwin, the company CEO. He took us on a tour of the H2 datacenter, which was pretty much the same as what you would see on The Planet's website at this link . After that was over, we were off to our Hotel to relax a little before dinner.

We stayed at the Magnolia Hotel, right in downtown Houston (link). It was a rather clean and nice hotel, but we didn't really spend much time there. After we checked in and sat for a little bit, we headed out for Dinner at El Tiempo (link). Doug took care of ordering for us, as we didn't know what was worth ordering. He ordered some sort of appetizer he called "Heart attack rolls", which I had 1 of, chips and salsa, and a mixed grill as our entree. The grill had a little bit of everything on it: Lobster tail (rather large), Shrimp (again, rather large), Quail, Chicken, and various other things. I only had enough room for a fajita constructed from the chicken and grilled vegetables, but I was able to eat one of the enormous shrimp. By the time they brought dessert around, I had no room for anything, not even a glass of water.

We spent the remainder of the night sitting on the patio of the pub across the street, the Velvet Melvin, chatting with various staff from The Planet. I was able to meet up with Ted, one of my online contacts who has worked at The Planet for the last several years. It was a nice group of people and we had fun. The only downside to this time was that we were there so late that the limo drivers were called off and we ended up taking a taxi ride back to the hotel. That wasn't all that bad though.

The next morning we headed to the headquarters, just 4 blocks from the hotel, for breakfast and all sorts of tours and presentations. Unfortunately though, after our first presentation and tour, the H1 datacenter ran into more problems with the power situation, so our itinerary for the day had virtually been demolished. We spent the next few hours in the recreation area, playing video games, ping pong, and pool. After a couple of hours of this, we went to sit with the emergency response team in "the tank" - one of the core conference rooms, equipped with teleconference equipment - watching and listening to how they handled the outage. They were still able to discuss the company with us, various new services they will be offering once we move down there, and ask us questions about what we do.

During this time, Dave and Todd came to take us individually to meet with Doug to discuss our relocation offers. When I went to meet with Doug, he was quite adamant about the necessity for me to move to Houston. The offer I was extended appears to be well worth it, but Doug said he needs to know my decision by next week.

The offer I was extend was well worthwhile, including a reasonable amount of relocation assistance and the title of "Systems Engineer".

Doug said that initially I will be split between Lafayette and Houston, which I interpreted as the need for me to travel frequently. Now that I've been initiated into the club of individuals who fly, I don't see that as much of an issue. However, I am a bit nervous about driving once I get down there, but I'm sure I'll figure it out quickly.

I'll be strongly thinking about this move over the next couple of days, and I would really like to know what everyone thinks about it. Please let me know what your thoughts are, if you feel at all uncomfortable about any of the offers that I have been given. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

I will be making my decision before Thursday, so get your word in before then.

I just got back from spending Thursday and Friday in Texas. I know a lot of you are just dying to know what went on, which I'll share with you after I get caught up on sleep.

Well, it's apparently "later", finally.

Part of the deal with Touch Support being acquired by The Planet is that some of the staff will be asked to relocate. I guess the reason is that they want the better talent at their core, working along side the existing staff. Having been the lead guy to maintain and further develop the systems used at Touch Support, and with my past and present experience working with PHP and MySQL, everyone has the belief that I will be among the first groups to be moved to Texas.

Am I nervous about it? Heck yeah, I am! I've only been living on my own for a little over a year now, and it's only been 30 minutes to an hour from any family. Now, I'll be 16 hours from any family, though it's only about 2½ hours from Houston to Indianapolis by airplane.

Am I excited? I really don't know for certain yet. I'm supposed to be going to see the area down there later this week, which may change my mind. One thing I am looking forward to is the storms they get down that way. We haven't had much around here since I was about 10, so it'll be a nice change.

Will I be better off, career-wise? A little to begin with, what with the better benefits package and such. There are many more open doors within the larger organization, and I think I will do better as a programmer with someone else shouting out the orders. I have never been much for a self-directed individual, as it's hard to stay focused. I think that someone else leading the projects, or at least working along side me to keep me on course, will allow me to show my skills much better.

I'll most definitely miss my friends and family around here, should the time come that I move. I'll also miss that opportunity to just run home every other weekend to see the parents, or to run to either sister's for the weekend (though I've not been to the older sister's hardly any, yet). I'm sure there will be many more chances for me to actually take a weekend off, as I'll (hopefully) not be the only one capable of working with any one product.

There are some points of our employment agreement that I'm going to have to hash out with our "district manager", or whatever his title may be. Aside from that, though, it's just going to be a matter of getting everything in line administratively and financially.

I'm quite curious what it will take to get everything moved. I'm sure I can squeeze nearly everything into rubbermaid containers, with the exception of a few things like my shelf, TV's, computers, and some furniture. I haven't quite figured out how to transport my firearms yet, but I hope to hash that out over the next few weeks, just so I know fully what to expect.

I'll try to take my camera along when I take the 2-day trip to Houston, just to share what I may be dealing with. I'll be sure to share those pictures either on my gallery or in my Facebook photo albums.