(Posted from my Blackberry - deal with the typos)

After another 7 hours on the road, we got back to Houston today. Even though I have no electricity or hot water, I am ver happy to be back. Hotel life from an unfamiliar city is not a very fun thing.

They're saying 2 to 3 weeks before power is restored here, and that's being optimistic. Because of that, I am going to try to get the company to (at a minimum) help cover the cost of a hotel room here in town. If that doesn't happen, I will be trying to find someone else from the office -- preferably in my department -- who has hot water, and will allow me to make use of their shower.

I am sleeping in my living room tonight, with the light switches in the "on" position, with the hope that I will be awaken by the return of power.

The first thing I did when I got home was empty my fridge. Either the smell of the already decaying food or the thought of filling 4 garbage bags with food to dispose caused my stomach to churn. I think the odor from the kitchen is gone now that my windows have been open for a couple hours, but I am not looking forward to the day whn I have to clean and re-stock the fridge.

For now, I am going to probably just go to sleep until the daylight or return of electricity wakes me. Rest assured though, I faired the storm well, as did my car and apartment.

Now that Ike has ripped through Houston, lots of people are asking me what the future - both short term and long term - holds.

Right now there's a 9:00PM to 6:00AM curfew in place in Houston. This has caused us to work up a new schedule. We've split the 24 hour span into 3 shifts, allowing the third shift to begin prior to the curfew and end just after it.

I received word from a couple of the guys back there that my car is just fine, as is my apartment.

At this point, I have 2 concerns:

1. What am I going to do about all the food that is now rotting in my fridge and freezer? If I were there, I could have removed it early in the game, but now it's just sitting there.
2. Is anyone going to try to screw with my car, since it has a full tank of gas and is parked downtown?

I'm going to call the leasing office back at the apartment to see if someone can go empty my fridge for me. It makes me very sick to think about, because I stocked my freezer with meat over the last few weeks, and now it all has to be thrown out. It's going to be pretty expensive to replace too, but I guess I'll just have to take it a little at a time. :-/

The word on how long we'll be here is sketchy. The one group that is here will be heading back Wednesday. I imagine if we don't go back then, we will sometime between then and Friday.

After 7 hours on the road from Houston to Dallas, we finally arrived around 7:30PM. The company took care of travel - via a Ford Explorer, rented from Avis - and lodging - The Hilton Garden Inn. Food is being taken care of by way of me paying with my credit card, for which I will be reimbursed after presenting receipts upon return to Houston.

The current guess is that we will be here thorough Sunday, working our normal schedule until the point where Houston is knocked offline. By that, I mean the office has been closed due to evacuations and such, and those who remain are working from home. If and when the power and/or internet goes out, we will be thrown into the schedule to help relieve where necessary.

I am in the process of powering down my equipment at home, remotely, simply because I don't want flickering lights to ruin my hard drives. Aside from that, my car was left under the office at Bayou Place in Houston, and it's just a waiting game from here-out.

I'm not stressing because of the storm. I'm stressing because everyone else is stressing, and is therefore acting like a complete and total idiot.

RELAX, PEOPLE! It's not the end of the freakin' world!

I'm worried about flooding and power loss and all that, but jeez. I'm far enough inland that the storm surge won't be that big of a deal. I'm also right on a major highway, so if I had to evacuate, I could relatively easily.

As for work, I may have to take a trip up to the Dallas office to work for a few days, depending on the orders from higher up the line. If I do, I have clothes and stuff packed already. I'm not worried about it; I'm prepared!

Everyone just needs to keep updated on the situation and otherwise chill the heck out. Just because "it's gonna rain" doesn't mean you have to go acting like an idiot.

It's been since mid-January since the last one, and I had hoped they were behind me for a long while. I found out otherwise last night around 1:00AM.

I had fallen asleep on the couch after a decent dinner and a moderate day at the office. I decided to head on to bed and call it a night sometime around 11:00. When 1:00AM rolled around though, I was wide awake and in the most panic-stricken state I've been for no reason.

I decided to try and walk it off, but kept inside the apartment. I was pacing for about 20 minutes, then I sat down here at the computer to try and rationalize my mental state with research. My efforts were pointless though; all my findings were familiar from the last incident.

I guess I need to take advantage of the better insurance I have now and the large medical community around here. Panic attacks suck, especially when they drag you out of bed in the middle of the night.

If you're very familiar with me or my projects, you'll know that I've been maintaining a behemoth of a project server for the last few years. This project server started out as a very low end system, was built up to a dual Pentium 3 450MHz with a 4 disk SCSI RAID setup, then was given another kickstart on life with a dual Athlon MP 1800, using the same RAID setup.

This server has been in use by several people, as a place to get started with web hosting and development. Now though, it's rarely used and could be facing an end.

The server has run into some stability issues over the last few days, due to hardware failures. While we may be replacing this hardware, I'm starting to wonder if the need remains for this server.

To all Wildebeest Network members: If you have been actively using your account, please speak now. I will not make any executive decision to discontinue this server until I have received word from each one of you. However, if I have not heard from you by October 1st, 2008, I will make the decision to discontinue user accounts on this server, keeping it only as an off-site file server for my family and myself.

This server has been a very important part of my career, as it has given me the opportunity to exercise many different levels of Linux systems administration, thus giving me an edge in the market where I presently work. This project - The Wildebeest - was started by my brother-in-law and I when I knew very little about PHP or web hosting, but quickly became an environment where I would refine my skills and gain in-depth knowledge about these topics. If it were not for The Wildebeest, the chances of skudd.com existing, or me working as a systems engineer for The Planet would be very slim.

With that having been said, please understand that this is not an easy decision for me to make. That is why I need your input. If you would like to keep the server online, I need to know now. Additionally, if you would like to show your gratitude, financial contributions to help bring this server back to life are more than welcome. Heck, I'll even get crazy and do some sort of dollar-matching program if you want to see this project continue. If you're interested in that, let me know ASAP so I can get it set up.

I was just trying to clean up a little by shaving, and when I got the goatee trimmed down to a reasonable length, I noticed a mass of white hair. Frustrated, I decided to just shave it all off.

Shaven Clean

I think I look weird.

For the last 2 months, the fingernail on my right pinky finger has been acting awkward. I was clipping my nails one day and noticed that the nail was loose on the back edge, but nothing more came off other than a little line. As that started to grow out, the same thing started happening again.

I was just sitting here, nibbling on the tip of that finger because it itched, and next thing I knew the nail was off. After I spat it out, I noticed that the nail bed was a little irritated but it wasn't bleeding. Now, it does feel a little sore, but it's not bad.

I have done some searching on Google, but the only thing I can come up with is people losing nails due to recent physical trauma. Not a one can be found about the nail just falling off, though.

I should probably go see a doctor or something, because of the circulatory issues I have with my hands. It's just so weird though.

I finally got all my pictures from the whole moving process uploaded. They're on the gallery right now, in an unsorted fashion.

Enjoy!

As many of you may have known, my parents arranged a going away party of sorts for me, before I head off to Houston. This party was today, and it went really well.

I really wish a lot more people could have shown up, but I can appreciate the prior obligations. For those who were able to make it though, it was a great time.

Speaking of time, does anyone know where I can get some? I really wish I had some of it so I could spend a lot more time with all these friends and family members before I leave. I guess that just means I'll have to come back and visit, just the same as everyone else will have to come visit me! :P

At any rate, I think I have my route planned out for the trip. This route will take us to the Memphis area on the first day, then on to Houston on the second. The one thing I am a little concerned about though is that we will be leaving here on the 30th, and should arrive in Houston on the 31st. The problem lies in my apartment not being ready until the 1st, so we may end up needing to crash somewhere in Houston. I really don't want to spend money on a hotel for a second night, but if I do, I do.

Oh, speaking of hotels, does anyone have any recommendations for the "Presley Junction" area of Arkansas?

I just don't get it. I have been around long enough to think that I've seen it all, but this one has me quite confused.

People claim to be your friend. They claim to know you and want to see you happy. Then it comes down to the wire. You make a decision for your own life, and instantly you're the bad guy. As far as you're aware, you've done nothing wrong. This is where it gets confusing though: Everything you do offends the other person - this "friend" - and they hate you for all you're worth.

I've had more than a few cases of this as of late, and I just don't get it. I do understand that my friends have feelings and they will be sad to see me leave the area. I don't understand why they think I'm just tossing 'em to the curb and that I have no feelings towards the matter at all.

Am I sad to be leaving this area? A little. Will I miss my friends around here? Heck yeah I will! But am I looking forward to the new adventures? If I weren't, I wouldn't be taking them on. Okay, okay... Am I at all nervous or scared? All of the above. Then why am I doing it? Because I feel it is a necessary step in my life. I have been given the opportunity of a lifetime, and I feel I will hate myself forever if I don't at least give it a shot.

I understand that people have had suggestions to keep me around here. While I appreciate it, the suggestions that have been offered do not necessarily place me where I want to be in my career or life. It's not that I hate this area or the people here; there just isn't much more here for me.

Please, don't hate me. I've done nothing wrong.

I was just reading over the weather forecast for today, and I saw something a bit out of the ordinary:

This Afternoon: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 60. Very windy, with a east northeast wind around 80 mph, with gusts as high as 95 mph.

It went on a little further:

Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 60. Very windy, with a east wind 90 to 95 mph decreasing to between 80 and 85 mph. Winds could gust as high as 110 mph.

I have to admit, there was a split second when I thought, "Holy crap! I need to go find a bunker to hide in!" That didn't last long though. I ended up calling the NWS forecast office in Indianapolis, and I spoke with a guy named Mike. I explained the situation to him and read a bit of the forecast, to which his response was, "OH MY GOD! That's terribly wrong. I'll go fix that right now."

Within a matter of minutes, it was fixed. Not before I got a screenshot though. Enjoy!

LINK!

YouTube Video

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...