reqs search term
38 stikfas
30 milwaukee skyline
27 halloween bondage
24 naked fat man
20 toe socks
19 high school bikini
18 freak on a leash
18 carved pumpkin
18 milwaukee zoo
16 gears
15 claustrophobia
14 lap sitting
13 merrill high school
12 halloween babes
12 lawn gnome
12 high school marching band
12 tickle
11 m schettl freight sales
11 under kilt
11 baked pumpkin seeds
10 tickle monster

I know how some of these came up with my site as a result but others just puzzle me. “naked fat man”?! Sheesh…

So last night I got a call at 11 pm that Rhinelander was down. I couldn’t do anything until 8 am so I set it aside. At 1 am I got a call that Tomahawk was down. I decided to wait that one out too. At 2 am Tomahawk came back up. I napped for an hour or two until 5 am when I had to switch over a circuit for a customer. Back to sleep at about 6 am. Up at 9 to check Rhinelander. It was still down and the people at the site couldn’t do anything to fix it. (Hey, they are lawyers, not system administrators. What can you expect?) So I hopped in the car and drove 100 miles north. I moved some power cables around and headed back south to my office in Wausau. I took care of various stuff that needed doing and actually got pretty much caught up.

So I should have been feeling pretty cruddy. A little sick, not much sleep… But I was actually feeling pretty good. While I was on the road I got to listen to a lot of the podcasts that were filling up my iPod. I saw my first Segway in person. (Apparently an Einstein marketing promotion of some sort? I was driving by too quickly to tell.)

More importantly, I was feeling good because I was being productive. It felt nice to be going places, fixing things, handling issues, etc. I was the only person that could handle these things and I was doing a damn good job of it. I haven’t done that in awhile and I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

When I wandered outside, there was a concert in the park next to our building. I stopped and listened for awhile. Then I drove to Barnes and Noble and read some of their books for free. I drove home listening to “Duo in E” by Jacques Offenbach. I almost never listen to classical music but when I caught that piece as I was flipping through the stations, something about it grabbed me. (The next piece of his that they played, “Les Belles Americaines”, has a more interesting backstory but wasn’t as interesting to me musically.)

I also heard Johnny Cash’s new album American V on the All Songs Considered podcast. Apparently he wrote and recorded it in the months prior to his death. He knew death was coming and he faced it in his songs.

They played part of “Like the 309″ on the podcast. When it starts out he is singling slowly and quietly with few instruments. His voice is weak and it’s hard to recognize him as Johnny Cash.

It should be a while before I see doctor Death
So, it would sure would be nice if I could get my breath
Well, I’m not the cryin’, nor the whinin’ kind
’til I hear the whistle of the 309, of the 309, of the 309
Put me in my box on the 309

Then the song picks up, more instruments come in, and it takes on a different tone.

Take me to the depot, put me to bed
Blow an electric fan on my gnarly ol’ head
Everybody take a look, see, I’m doin’ fine
Then load my box on the 309
On the 309, on the 309
Put me in my box on the 309

It’s eerie to hear a man singing about his impending death and it certainly hit me a little hard. But it’s comforting somehow, the way he sings about it. He almost sounds cheerful about it.

So I am feeling healthier, more productive, and more clearheaded than I have in almost a month. Hopefully that will continue and I can take charge of things again rather than just kind of wandering around in a daze.

Normally I hide the “groups” in my IM clients. I think they are distracting and annoying. Gaim doesn’t have a feature to hide groups and it doesn’t let you create “meta-contacts” for people with contacts in different groups. So I decided to move of my contacts into a single group to make Gaim look more to my taste.

Something didn’t work right. I think that ICQ contacts were deleted rather than moved. So some people on ICQ weren’t on my list anymore. And then to compound the problem, my home IM client is set to ignore any ICQ messages from contacts that were not on my list. I finally figured this out today when I was using Gaim and a couple of people asked why I had been ignoring them for days.

So if you have sent me some ICQ message and I haven’t responded, I am sorry. I think I have fixed the problem so go ahead and try sending again. If I am still not responding, send a email or something.

Thanks.

Dawn invited me to a show. An acoustic cover band called The Fire was playing at Graffiti’s. The band was pretty good, the company was enjoyable, and the venue was surprisingly pleasant (for a downtown bar in Stevens Point).

I did get a little bored during one of the band’s breaks though. The conversation didn’t catch my interest (it was probably about something “girly”) so I thought about what else I could do. Earlier that day I had discovered how to get into the “hidden” web browser on my new cell phone. So I pulled it out and started surfing. Where to surf… I visited a few sites and then it hit me. I should totally blog this!

So the last post was made from a RAZR cell phone from a bar during a rock show. That has to earn me some serious geek cred. Not that that’s a particularly good thing, I suppose…

I’ve also added several new categories and gone back and recategorized all of my posts. I corrected a few problems that slipped in during the conversion from iBlog too. Not a big deal but worth noting.

I replaced my blower motor resistor today. It was easier than I had thought. I could get to it from under the dash without a problem. (Well, I had to lay upside down in the seat and I got a head full of dirt from the floor mats, but it could have been much worse.) I think $26 for a working fan isn’t a bad deal. The new one should last for quite awhile. It looks like they redesigned the part. I am not sure what I am doing next with the car, although I am thinking that a tune-up would be a good idea.

I am pondering changing how I make blog entries. Those little “In which I…” blurbs at the top made sense with the way iBlog did things but they really don’t fit with the WordPress idiom. Besides, they are getting harder and harder to think of. Any opinions?

When I see news stories about people all over the world who are experiencing hardships, I worry about them, and I rack my brain wondering how I can make a difference. So I decided to start my own blog. That way I won’t have time to think about other people.

People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this:

1. The world sure needs more of ME.
2. Maybe I’ll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts.
3. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy.
4. I know - I’ll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them.
5. If only there was a description for this process that doesn’t involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary.
6. What? It’s called a blog? I’m there!

The blogger’s philosophy goes something like this:

Everything that I think about is more fascinating than the crap in your head.

The beauty of blogging, as compared to writing a book, is that no editor will be interfering with my random spelling and grammar, my complete disregard for the facts, and my wandering sentences that seem to go on and on and never end so that you feel like you need to take a breath and clear your head before you can even consider making it to the end of the sentence that probably didn’t need to be written anyhoo.

If that doesn’t inspire you to read my blog, I don’t know what will. You can find the Dilbert Blog at

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/

Recently I renewed my .mac account and the free iBlog stopped working. I haven’t been able to find out if it was supposed to stop working after a year or if something strange happened when my .mac account expired. Either way, it forced my hand.

I decided to go with WordPress. Installing it was amazingly easy. I found a handy little utility called Agitprop that converts iBlog blogs to Movable Type import files. My first attempt had some major formatting problems. I ended up modifying the import file in TextWrangler with moderately complex grep-based search and replaces. The second import went almost perfectly.

With a working blog and the majority of the old blog moved over, it was time to work on details. I installed the Pool theme, added the random gallery pic and WeatherPixie to the sidebar, added Sloganizer, and tweaked the configuration.

There is a lot more that I can do with this, but now that I have all the old stuff moved over, it’s time to close down the old blog and go live with this one.

New features that I am actually already using:

• Comment system (moderated for now, so they won’t show up right away)
• Search
• I can post from anywhere rather than just from my computer
• Added Sloganizer to sidebar
• Random Gallery photo now uses the official Gallery version rather than my hacked version. It also automatically adjusts to the proper hight and automatically respects the page’s fonts and colors.
• List of links in sidebar

I want to add more soon (including entries that are less boring than this one). But right now I have to get to bed so I can be up in time to get the PCV valve replaced on my mom’s truck. Until then, here’s the Penny Arcade boys’ take on blogs. I think they probably have a point…

I traveled with Brian (my boss), Scott (Unix guy), and Gary (phone switch guy). We settled into a routine of meeting in the morning at the (rather nice) breakfast bar. Next we were off to the Cisco campus, usually arriving around 8:40 (10 minutes late). Class until about noon, quick lunch, class until 5 or 6. Head back to the hotel for an hour or so. Gary and I would always go somewhere in the evening, at least to grab some food. Brian and Scott seemed to prefer staying in their rooms about half the nights. Late evening was spent online. Sleep, wake, repeat.

Working at Cisco would be a nice gig. All the free beverages you want (I settled on Mountain Dew, Earl Grey tea, and orange/banana juice); a recreation room with free ping-pong, pool, and Stargate Defender; and a fairly upscale cafeteria.

The class was an odd mix for me. I was actually advising the instructors during the database section but that was only one afternoon. The majority of the rest of the class was above my head, but I was able to keep up with some struggling. I was completely lost on Friday and the end of Thursday, however. The break/fix sessions were fun. The WCTC employees were split into teams of two (because Scott and I hadn’t had the prerequisite course) and given a working telephone system. Then the instructors would break something and we had to diagnose it and fix it. Gary and I made a pretty good team.

At the end of it all I got my certificate that I had completed the course as well as a little Cisco cloisonné pin. Whee… (This doesn’t mean that I am actually “Cisco certified” in any way, as near as I can tell. That would involve taking some sort of test. This certificate just means that I paid my money and sat in the class.)

Oh, the Belgian student’s name is Alain, not Alan. Not that he’ll ever know I misspelled his name…

Our popular hangout was a joint called Bone Daddy’s but it certainly wasn’t because of the food. We went there a couple of times and my coworkers seemed to have a lot of fun. Personally, I preferred Uncle Julio’s or the Texas Land & Cattle Steakhouse. Heck, even my first visit to a SONIC was more interesting than the second Bone Daddy’s visit. I have to admit that I ate very well on this trip. If Texas knows anything, it’s how to cook up a cow.

My most interesting excursions were one with Gary to the Galleria Dallas and the four of us stopping by the IMAX to see Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag on the way back to the airport. I really am regretting not striking out on my own for at least one evening. It would have been nice to get a feel of Texas that didn’t involve strip malls, restaurants, classrooms, and hotels. Maybe visit a friend or two. Ah well, next time.

The flight back was fairly uneventful. I managed to leave my copy of Angels & Demons on the Dallas-Milwaukee flight but luckily I had already finished it. We had a three hour layover in Milwaukee. We spent the first hour having a good old Wisconsin dinner (Friday night perch fish fry and cheese curds). The rest of the guys went back to the gate to wait but I gave JoAnn a call. She and Rob were actually only about a mile or two away at the local Blockbuster. They were nice enough to swing by and keep me company for an hour or so. The visit really rejuvenated me for the last leg of my flight.

The 19 seat plane seemed more cramped on the way back than it had on the way down. The cloud cover made looking out the widow a completely useless endeavor so I plowed my way through a Wired magazine until we touched down.

Endo gave me a call just as we touched down at 11:30pm. He had just gotten off work from Best Buy and wanted to know if I would join him at Buffalo Wild Wings with a coworker of his. Well, sure. I finally limped home somewhere around 2am, a very tired boy.

Epilogue: I found out on Saturday that my mom had been in the hospital for viral labyrinthitis while I was gone. She is doing fine and is back at work, but it’s always a little scary to find out what can happen while you are gone.