This evening I did the wiring project in the storage closet in the basement. I but into the long cat5e cable tht runs upstairs and connected two new rj45 terminators to it. I didn’t have any problem wiring the new terminators and was pretty pleased with myself. Next I installed a gigbit switch into the closet and relocated the headless linux server (turing) to the closet along with the new UPS. This gives the linux server an isolated self-contained solution and frees up some room in the study as well as making it quieter.
Monthly Archive for May, 2007
May 3rd 2007
Delta’s post-bankrupcy stock (DAL) is officially listed again on the NYSE. I got a small grant of stock (very small since it was based on my 2006 earnings - I wasn’t working for Delta for over half of 2006). So it was fun to track to see how the stock was doing throughout the day. I can’t decide if I should sell my shares or hold onto them. How will airline stocks do going forward?
May 5th 2007
Jen woke up way before I did and must have had her coffee because at one point early this morning she came running upstairs to tell me that she loved me and then ran downstairs again.
Eventually I woke up and we got ready to go to the gym. Every Saturday Jen goes to a body sculpting/strength building class at LA Fitness while I run and lift weights. Today I agreed to go to the class with Jen. It was really tough but the hour seemed to go by pretty quickly.
After the class we went to Publix and bought some groceries for our party tonight. I also had a doughnut. It was fun shopping with Jen. We got home and began to get things together for our party tonight. I helped Jen clean up around the house. I also did some housekeeping on the computer.
Jen wanted to listen to music while she did some touch-up painting but we discovered a problem with the XBMC software on the Xbox. The symptoms were that none of the thumbnails were displaying for the albums. I know that all of the music albums have album art and they did indeed display on XBMC before. After about 30 minutes of investigation I realized that the problem stemmed from the fact that there were over 160,000 files in the thumbnail directory and it must have been too large. After I cleaned that out, everything was much more responsive and I was able to re-scan everything and get the album art back.
Once that was eventually resolved Scott came over, followed by Katie and Chris. Scott brought over a bunch of food and supplies, including a big bottle of Rum and two bottles of Tequila: Petrone and Cabo Vavo. I made a pitcher of mojitos and then showed Katie the old ‘Strawberry Shortcake’ Atari 2600 game on the x26 emulator on the Xbox. She loved it.
Others arrived shortly after that and we had a wonderful party. We grilled some fajitas and onions and peppers. We had spicy black beans and jalepenos as well as salas and corn chips. Jen did an amazing job with all of the food and everything. It was a great time.
May 6th 2007
This morning we went running in our neighborhood area. It was really nice and sunny out. After running I went down to the pool. Jen followed shortly afterward and brought along some chips, salsa, and mojitos. That was really cool of her. Jen had also invited Lisa earlier who arrived and joined us too.
We laid out for quite a while. The weather was really nice. I originally thought that it would be cloudy, but instead it was sunny and nice. We got a lot of sun. While we were out there Dad called and we chatted for a long time.
Eventually it was time to go home. Jen and Lisa went out to go shopping. When she came home she came bearing two new pairs of court shoes for us. We didn’t previously have any proper tennis shoes so this was nice since we are now getting into tennis.
May 8th 2007
Today was another awesome day for weather. I had a rough day at work due to a lot of problems with DB2.
I met Jennifer at the fancy health club called Midtown at Windy Hill. She signed us up for a special class called ‘Tennis in No Time’ Katie and Chris signed up too. I was looking forward to it because Tennis is my favorite sport and I want her to get into it too. So this could end up turning out very good for us. The club is very nice. I remember thinking about how expensive and overpriced it is when I used to live nearby in the apartment.
Katie and Chris showed up a little late. The coaches gave us all a water bottle and t-shirt for participating. We just began with the basics of the tennis lessons and used foam balls today. It was a nice lesson and I’m looking forward to the rest of the lessons. Jen and I had leftovers from Stoney River for dinner tonight.
May 10th 2007
I think for the first time ever I wore shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals to work today. We had a morning conference call with the DBAs to discuss options regarding the problems we’ve been having with DB2. We recently migrated some of our application reference data form Oracle to DB2 (C++ code) and used static-SQL which meant that we had to do prep and binding steps with the code. This caused all sorts of problems.
It turns out that the problem had to do with the development and test instance of the database living on the same MVS host. Even though the bind packages lived in separate database instances, there were naming collisions with the package names primarily because they both resided on the same physical host. What a mess! The answer to this problem is to separate the development and test instances to two separate hosts. Unfortunately we got a lot of push-back from the DBAs about doing this.
The rest of the day was much better. We spent the whole day outside to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Delta Technology. They catered in BBQ from Williams Brothers. There were a lot of people and fun activities. There was horseshoes and volleyball. I played a round of horseshoes with Casey and two other people.
In addition to the BBQ, there was also cake and ice cream. It was a nice diversion from the normal daily work schedule. Eventually we went back to work. Before I left for the day we managed to get some test tickets run through the test environment but some more issues were discovered.
I left work and went home to change before heading to the Midtown athletic club for our ‘tennis in no time’ lesson. Today we learned about backhands. After the lesson Jen and I had dinner over at Curry Curry.
May 11th 2007
It was a productive day at work today. I got a lot done and worked through many issues in the test environment. We had a long conference call this afternoon with IBM and the DBAs to talk about our recent bind problem. We finally settled on the idea that we need to have our development instance in a seperate subsystem than the one where the test instance lives. I spent the rest of the day working on various issues and got a lot done.
After leaving work around 5:30pm I got home to find Jennifer and Katie home. Katie brought over her new dog, Jackson. Actually it’s not her dog. She is a foster family for a collie rescue program and Jackson is her first foster rescue dog. Katie left to go to a wedding rehearsal thing while Jen and I watched Jackson. We watched an episode of The Office as well as Survivor. I ordered a bunch of stuff from REI. Katie and Chris later came by in the evening to collect Jackson on their way home.
May 12th 2007
We were up at 9am and dashed off to a group exercise class at LA Fitness. It wasn’t as hard as last week. Afterward we went to Publix to do some shopping. We went home and Jen made us some tuna fish sandwiches for lunch. I made a batch of mojitos and then we went down to the pool where we laid out for about two hours. It was another nice day.
After getting back and cleaning up, we ran down to the shoe store so Jen could get some shoes that would match her dress. We were running a bit late so I quickly changed into my suit and we drove over to the church for the wedding. It was at that huge cathedral-looking church called the ‘Church of the Apostles’ that some people name ‘Six Flags over Jesus’.
Clint and Erin had a very nice wedding. The inside of the church was grand and cathedral-like. They each had size people standing with them including Chris and Tremyne. After the wedding we went to the reception over at the Marietta Conference Center. It was a really fun time. I had my camera and took a lot of pictures. We got home around 11:30pm.
May 13th 2007
Katie hosted a mother’s day brunch at her house. We had mimosas, bloody marrys, fruit, hand-made cinnamon rolls, hash-browns, and a pastry egg salmon avocado thing.
May 14th 2007
The first thing I did after waking up this morning was to log into work and check email. Alex needed a build for a code change, so I worked on that. A deployment issue came up so I worked on that next. Next there was a major issue with the reference data so I worked on that. I got on a long conference call - by the time it was over, it was 11:30am. I decided to just work from home today instead of driving in since it was already so late. I worked all day and worked through lunch.
Jennifer got home at 5:30pm and we went running on the silver comet trail. Afterwards we did some grocery shopping at Publix. I had chips & queso and Jen made salsa and burritos. It was a nice evening.
May 16th 2007
Clint, Erin, Chris, Katie, two of Erin’s friends, and I went to see Spider Man 3 in the theater tonight. Jen was supposed to come but she skipped out because she was having a bad day and not feeling well. I ate way too much popcorn and felt sick afterward.
May 18th 2007
After working hard from home today I ’stopped’ a little early and went to our gym at 4pm. Jennifer rented a ball machine for us to practice with. Katie and Chris showed up a little later. All four of us used the ball machine from 4-6pm. It was great practice and the machine worked very well.
Once that was done we all went up to the Woodstock area to have drinks with Lisa and Alan. We didn’t stay long. Next we went over to Jen’s parents house and had dinner with Jen’s parent’s and her aunt Sandy. There were some problems with the grill. We had burgers with organic beef and they were pretty good!
We got home around 11pm and I stayed up a bit late getting things together for our trip to St. Maarten tomorrow.
