Tag Archives: livejournal

LJ – Vet Visit

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From 02/11/2003

Owien and I are back from the Vet, all told each cat was $90 and they got their Feline Distemper, Leukemia and a Rabies Vaccine shots. The Vet said nothing new, Diva has some dental issues but they aren’t huge and maybe switching to Iams or Purina One would be a better choice than 9 Lives, we’ll see how much vomit we have to clean up when we switch – kitties have such tender tummies. Both are healthy as horses, Owien (the BIG male) may develop a weight problem just like his daddy Andy – of course Owien got his weight problem by being a lazy pig, his owner got his by being a… uh… er… nevermind :). I think the Vet is well meaning but I beg to differ, Owien is 12 pounds of muscular feline masculinity, this is plainly evident when he comes down the stairs, -thumpa thumpa thumpa-. The minute Diva saw the cat carrier with Owien in it, she promptly made for “under the bed” and Owien promptly made for “Damn I’m a DIRTY BOY, must clean, leave me alone” yeah, still cleaning – now he’s biting his claws… just like me. 🙂

I first considered that we owned the cats, but when you get right down to it who owns who? Scott and I work to make all the money while they get to lay about day in and day out, we buy them food and prepare it for them, we see to their health and pet them making them happy… it was only then while talking it over with Scott did I realize that indeed, the cats own us, or rather we are willing slaves. This is made more insidious because the cats purring lowers blood pressure and lengthens our lives – JUST SO THAT WE MAY CONTINUE TO SERVE THEM, HAND AND FOOT. I love my cats. 🙂

LiveJournal Ho!

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I posted a note on Google Plus, but for those of you who don’t follow me there (and you really ought to) I want to share with you all that I have decided to randomly dig up pieces of my old LiveJournal and post them on my WordPress blog. They’ll all have the category of LiveJournal and Blog on them so if you want to skip them or read them, that’s likely the best way. I think I’m going to see what ten stories a day does. I won’t be including the LiveJournal Quizzes unless they are really entertaining.

Hindsight – 2/5/2004

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As I was looking over my old LiveJournal posts I found this gem from 2/5/2004, a whole 7 years ago! Gosh how time flies! Enjoy!

Busy Busy Busy… Buzz Buzz Buzz

Whew! Just got done polishing the new chrome on the new database system here at work. We had a rep from the vendor come in to deliver the first cut of the converted database and then walk us through all the errors that came up in conversion so we can take specific steps to make sure our database that goes into the second (and final) cut is as good as it’ll ever be.

Of course, the road to happiness is riddled with potholes. The rep, Yvonne, arrived, installed the new database but nobody told us that the new database was ZIP’ed using WinZip 9 beta and all we had was WinZip 8.1, so we couldn’t unzip the database. Adding insult to injury, the server we were working on was so well secured that getting WinZip 9 beta proved to be herculean in its own regard. We eventually got it, unpacked the database and installed it. >mini-fanfare< Then we fiddled around with establishing OLAP cubes for a subsystem that might only be used by at most 2 people – then once that was done we went back to Walwood and I worked on getting our replicated database on our report server to work.

The rep from our vendor came in and created a queue for us and told us that it would work. I then spent the next two days listening to all the errors present in the data and in-between times when we weren’t talking about the conversion errors I was working on getting the replicated report server to work as it should. For three days I was smacking my forehead against a brick wall, errors ranging from “can’t login” to “can’t add NULL value to table yada yada yada” and I even went so far to discover to my chagrin that a database I thought I needed wouldn’t replicate in a merge dynamic properly, only transactionally. This semi-solution would break down when you deleted or added any report criteria, since it would add a table to the primary server and then cause the replication process to panic. As it turns out, one of the settings the rep from the vendor made was wholly incorrect, instead of pointing to our report server it should have been pointing to our main database server instead. Once I fixed the setting I realized that I didn’t need to replicate the report database at all and once I fixed that – everything fell into its proper position – now you can add and edit and delete criteria willy-nilly without causing replication errors because there is no need to replicate that part of the database. Whew. After three days of being unable to make any of the replicated server work I had a little Eureka moment and did a happy dance.

What I thought would take nearly all day today was done by 9:30am. I still have a very busy day but at least now with a major part of it deflated it doesn’t seem like such an impossible task. A part of me gets all twitchy that I, an untrained yo-yo can figure out the vendors product and fix what the rep broke. A part of me is glimmering tho, when the rep was here she asked me “So, did you go to class for SQL 2000?”, “No.”, “Do you at least have a manual or a guidebook?”, “No.”, “Well, how did you figure out how to do what you are doing?”, “I just did it, didn’t seem too hard to me…” and of course she just sat there staring at me like I was growing antlers.

And people wonder why I question the value of certifications. Bah. 😉

 

Moving back to Blogging…

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I suppose it started when LiveJournal, the journal I used to use was sold to a russian company. SixApart couldn’t hack it anymore and sold out – about that same time Facebook and Twitter were starting to garner some real attention and I couldn’t justify writing on LJ anymore, few people remained. It was a lot like IRC. Once everyone left, it went by the wayside.

Oh how times have changed. Everything that is old is new again. Twitter’s limit for 140 characters is certainly perfect for their design but sometimes my thoughts and, lets face it, my ranting and raving takes more than just 140 characters. Sometimes it takes a heapload of characters for me to express myself completely. Facebook could have been a blogging platform, but there is no way AFAIK to write a “Note” and then share that with anyone you like. Perhaps they’ll work on that, in the mean time I can work with WordPress.

I’m not expecting a readership, mostly it’s a vent for me to express things that otherwise would get bottled up inside. I imagine a fair amount of this blog will pertain to my job, higher education in general, politics, weather, as well as my odd beliefs and faiths. A secular humanist-deist. If you like what you read, I invite you to continue. Be prepared however, for these things:

  • More Left and Liberal than most people
  • Critical – Both for Gadgets, Companies, My Workplace, <grin> Everything.
  • Passionate – I’m outspoken, I don’t hide my feelings and I share compulsively.
  • Purposeful – I know what my purpose is in life, I’m not guessing, I’m not fumbling.
  • Technical – I’m a Geek. I’m a Morlock. I hunt Eloi for sport. Tech is a passion.
  • Gay – Gloriously Gay. While my sex life isn’t on display usually, I am what I am.
  • Angry – I get angry a lot. I share that anger, a lot. If you don’t like it, don’t read.

So here we are, a blog again. A personal journal again. I have HTML from my old LiveJournal blog, over time I might dredge some of that back up again, we’ll see.

So be it, Jedi.