I lost my job yesterday. Not because of anything I did, but because one of the largest customers cut $20k/month of services and the company decided they didn't need 2 Oracle dbas anymore. Never mind that I'd been there 4 years, that I've done every job there except sales and development, that I really hadn't been doing Oracle stuff for months...

So now it's on to the next thing. Not exactly sure what that is yet, but I've already put some resumes out, I'll be talking to some recruiters today and Monday, and all that jazz. I'm not particularly worried, I know I can find a job, but it is a bit disconcerting now that I'm on my own and have two house loans and a car lease payment to worry about, not to mention alimony payments...

Still, I've always managed to find what I need when I need it, I don't see any reason why it would be different now. Yesterday afternoon was a little panicky and what, but sleep helped some.

So yeah...

I'll admit, I'm not the best at keeping up with people. If I don's see or talk to someone on at least a semi-regular basis, I tend to drift. I've known this about myself for a very long time now, but it doesn't make it any easier to either change or accept. Especially when it comes time to bid a friend farewell in this life.

For the second time in as many months, a friend of mine is losing the battle with cancer. In December, it was my friend Marilyn who passed away from a brain tumor. About the same time I heard about her being sick I also heard that my friend Jerry had been diagnosed with liver cancer. His sister set up a blog for the updates, and lousy friend that I am, I read it once and never managed to get back. Too busy thinking about my own stuff, minor problems, things that don't really amount to much in the grand scheme of things. My ex-wife also knew and adored Jerry, so when I first heard I made sure to send her the info as well. It was her that told me today that his disease had progressed and re-forwarded me the link to the blog...

Jerry is an incredible person. Funny, friendly, caring, an all around great guy. He did a lot f good in this world, was a big supporter and organizer for the city's annual AIDS walk. He's a good man, a great friend, someone you knew you could trust when the chips were down. This cold and dreary world is most assuredly a better place because of him.

He's being taken off the respirators on Friday. Doctors don't give him more than a couple of hours after that...

Goodbye, my friend. I'll see you again soon enough.

So I've been kicking this idea around for a while now, I've just put the first installment up on my main blog. Feel free to comment on it either here or on the blog, I've enabled OpenID, so your livejournal url (roan21.livejournal.com, in my case) will let you log in and post comments there if you feel so inclined.

http://roan21.net/2009/01/22/the-old-prospector

So, in an ongoing quest to actually get a decent nights sleep, I purchased a 3" memory foam mattress topper today. Not a bad price, came with two pillows, we'll see how it works. I wake up a lot, usually gasping for air like I've stopped breathing. (my ex has told me in the past that I stop breathing, but I did a sleep study and it came back that I didn't have apnea.) but the problems I have actually *falling* asleep are more due to an older mattress and feeling the springs digging into me.

I've actually tried one of those sleep number bed things. It was a nice enough mattress, pretty comfortable, but not $2000 comfy. I had a waterbed when I was younger, loved it as long as I was the only one sleeping in it. And being able to crank the thermostat up or down depending on the weather was kinda nice too... A friend of mine has what I think is a feather bed mattress, big and floofy. I laid down on it for a few minutes one day, I gotta say it was comfy, although it might be a shade too soft for my tastes. Dunno. Not like I can afford a new mattress at the moment anyway.

Thought we were going to get an offer on the house, had someone that seemed really interested, even did a second showing today, but they've apparently decided to "pursue a similar house with more upgrades". Bah.

Weather was great today, since I had to be out of the house for the showing I got a fair amount done and even had time to take a ride on my motorcycle. I'm hoping that I can get off of this stupid 4-11pm shift soon so I can at least have a *chance* of riding the bike to work on the rare days we get that are nice. I mean, my sis and brother-in-law even got me some insulated coveralls for cold weather riding for xmas, I've had no chance to really use it.

Work... Yeah. It's still there. 'Nuff said about that...

That's about it.

That's kinda how I've felt over the last few days. Not stellar, not horrible, just kinda here. Had several things annoy me (mostly my reaction to things), and been thinking a lot about the future.

I'll admit, I'm not really one for planning. I've always been a "live in the moment" kind of guy and that's been both good and bad. It's led to some hellaciously good times and even more spectacular crash-and-burns. So when I start thinking about the future, well, me and everyone around me tends to get a little nervous.
( Ranting about legal and home stuff )
I guess I'm just getting impatient now, and I know it's all my fault that things aren't moving as fast as I'd like them. There's that whole "Now, now now!" thing that I'm trying to work on. I'm getting better at that, slowly but surely. This time, I've got some pretty good motivation to learn patience.

As usual with these things, I blame Zephie. ;)

( Hmm, let's add a cut here... )

I've just gotten home from my lunch date. Yes, it is in fact after 2am. I've just spent 13 hours with a very beautiful, smart and fun lady. We talked a lot, laughed a lot more, and it was the best evening I've had in, well, ages. It was a completely unplanned lunch "not really a date" that turned into a real date somewhere along the line. It won't be the last one, either...

I'm still smiling...

So, according to the post page thingy it's been 15 weeks since I've updated this thing. Not surprising, while there's been plenty of things going on in my life that most people would blog about I've had neither the time nor the inclination to do so.

And besides, pretty much anyone who knows this thing exists is also in contact with me via email so most of the stuff that's happened is already semi-common knowledge to those that need to know. Uber short summary. Life go boom, head got messed up, head is now straight and life is better than it ever has been. There.

The fun things that I *want* to talk about are my new toys. I got a motorcycle and an iphone lately. The bike is a 1982 Honda Nighthawk, who knows how many miles on it. It's old, a little beat up, not the prettiest thing in the world but it does it's job and keeps trucking along. Kinda like me, maybe that's why I like it so much. I finally got it registered under my name last week, all that's left is to get my motorcycle license which will happen in a couple of weeks after I take the safety course. As it is, I'm still riding it to work as much as possible, gotta learn somehow, right? ;)

The iphone is just damned cool. It was incredibly handy this last weekend at my 20 year high school reunion, thanks to the Facebook app I was able to pull up my best friend's photo gallery so she could show everyone her pictures. I was surprised how well it worked even when it wasn't on the 3G network. Of course since then I've gotten at least one phone call from Verizon wanting to win my business back. You want my business? Start selling iphones. Plain and simple.

This past Sunday was my Grandad's birthday. He would have been 108 this year, it's been about 5 and a half years since he died. I miss him still, but I talk to him a lot so it's not so bad.

Well, that's all I can think of right now. Fascinating that it is...

You know, I don't think I like home improvement projects anymore...

We're getting new flooring in the whole house (well, except the bathroom), and bloody hell has it been a pain. Both literally and figuratively, I might add. See, to save a little money we opted to do the demolition ourselves. How hard could it be, right? Rip up the carpet in 2 rooms and the laminate flooring in the kitchen and what passes for a hallway. Oh, and move essentially *everything* in the house out so that the flooring guys can work, obviously. We've got a small house, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal, right?

As with everything else I've done with this house, I've had so many WTF moments that it isn't funny. You may (or may not) recall that a few years ago I took the carpet up in the spare bedroom and refinished the original hardwood floors in there. It was a bit of a pain, but it turned out pretty good I think. But as any DIY refinishing project, I didn't have access to some of the industrial materials so the clear coat had started to flake off. Add in the fact that my wife wants to try to sell the house soon and that the existing carpet was really cheap and nasty and you get a decision to redo all the floors.

At first we were going to just rip everything out and refinish the floors, but that would have entailed us packing all of our stuff up and essentially moving out of the house for 3 days. If I'm going to go that far with packing I'd rather just go ahead and move. So instead we decided to carpet the two bedrooms (yes, covering up my pretty floors, but we're talking resale here) and then a vinyl product in the rest of the house that looks like red oak flooring. We still had to move the majority of our stuff out of the house, so we rented one of those PODS containers to store out stuff in. Pretty damned handy now that I don't have a truck and we can't really haul stuff to storage...

As soon as we pulled up the carpet in the living room we were glad we decided not to refinish the floors. The kitchen held no better news. The master bedroom only had one small area of damage to the floors, but it was painfully obvious that somehow I had managed to pick the only room in the house that had perfect floors to refinish. There's a huge patch in the living room, the kitchen doesn't even seem to have hardwoods but has some nasty linoleum that they gave up on tearing up and covered with Pergo. But I think the best surprise we found was the 220 outlet set in the floor *under* the carpet. No plate, just a bare outlet. Surprisingly enough the circuit was actually dead. Miracles do happen.

To make matters even better, the flooring guys that were supposed to show up at 9am ended up getting here at 1pm. The up side is that they finished carpeting the two rooms that they were supposed to and all of the vinyl flooring is here and acclimating to the house. They're supposed to be here tomorrow morning at 8am to finish up the job. I guess the original plan of carpen Monday, Tuesday to move everything around and Wednesday for the vinyl. Guess I took 3 days off for no reason... Ah well. I might just take Wednesday off anyway. :)

And somehow, miracle of miracles, Kansas just won the championship.

And I'm sure it's because it's a 12 question quiz that uses Myers-Briggs terminology. But if this quiz is correct, my M-B personality type has changed. I used to be an INTP...

Your Personality is Very Rare (INFP)

Your personality type is dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive. Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 6% of all women and 4% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.

And in other news, I found out that my favorite grocery store is closing down this week. Phooey.

For some reason tonight I've been thinking about past lives. I've always believed that this life hasn't been my first time around the block, so to speak. Now, I don't have any specific memories of any previous existence nor do I believe (as some "skeptics" like to generalize) that I was ever anyone famous or of any importance. The things that makes me think we at least have the opportunity to live more than once are those times that you meet someone new and have an instant and unshakable opinion / impression of them. These are the friends that you met a month ago but feel like you've known them forever, or the people that for no good reason instantly hate you and everything you seem to stand for within moments of saying hello.

I've been fortunate enough in this life to have some of the best friends a person could ever ask for, far better than I ever deserved. Most of these friendships developed "normally", over the course of weeks, months, and years. But a precious few have been people that I'm convinced I've known and loved before. People that I would willingly lay down my life for despite the fact that we don't really seem to have that much in common.

I suppose some would call these soul mates, although that phrase has been watered down and horribly corrupted by the people that write romance novels. Whatever you want to call it, I'm pretty sure we've all had at least one friend that we've connected to in such a way that a single lifetime simply can't explain. That also fits in nicely with my belief that there isn't a "one true love", but that there are any number of appropriate options for each of us if we're willing to try. I don't believe that every life plays out the same, with the same person as your spouse and the same children. Again, that's something the romance novels and Hollywood like to shove off on us. (These same groups have in my opinion completely obliterated the true meaning of the word "love" as well, but that's a rant for another day)

Now, I know that "skeptics" won't believe any of this. They'll say that those connections are hormones or psychological projections or some other quasi-scientific mumbo jumbo. And if that's what you need to believe to get you through the night, more power to you. I may not have a particularly specific idea of the afterlife or who/what might control it, but I do believe that there is something more than just these physical husks that we animate on this planet. To believe that there is nothing after this, nothing that continues on after we shuffle off this mortal coil just seems... sad. Doesn't seem to be much incentive to get up in the morning if you ask me.

If you know me you know that religion just isn't my thing. Far too many people equate "not religious" to "atheist", and I've never understood why. I don't understand why my personal beliefs that I go out of my way not to force onto other people can be seen as any kind of threat to them and their way of life, yet the "religious right" seems to like to demonize people like me. I'm not some new-age bandwagon rider, I don't claim to have any answers or even to be better than anyone else. I'm just a simple country boy that has spent the last 37 years trying to get a handle on who and what I am. Believe what you will, that's your right, but don't dare tell my that my beliefs are wrong. That most definitely is *not* your right.

Well, I finally got around to reloading my desktop last night. I had managed to screw it up rather spectacularly a month or so ago when I was seeing if I could load OSX on it and had never gotten around to completely fixing it. For the most part it was functional, I just couldn't plug in the USB printer or it would hard lock. Anyway, at least that's done. I was reminded of how much I dislike reloading Windows machines, though. I started around 9:30 last night and finally finished all the updates and special printer software loads around 1 am. It shouldn't take that long to load a damned operating system.

On the up side, I got a new monitor last night. I picked up a Westinghouse 22" widescreen display from Best Buy at a decent price and hooked it up in addition to my old 17" display. At least now I can work from home and not feel like I've got one hand tied behind my back. See, I've gotten so accustomed to my setup at work that trying to do anything work-related from home was painful. My work setup is 3 monitors, 1 21" in the middle with 2 17" on the sides. Most of the workstations actually have 2 22" monitors side-by-side, but I tried that and it was just too much. And yes, I'm aware that sounds silly considering what I'm running, but the two smaller monitors on the sides break up the space. I keep email up full-screen on the right monitor, a browser full-screen on the left, and do the majority of my work on the center screen. Anyway, now I can have my remote session full screen on the 17" monitor here at the house and still be able to pull up other things on the other monitor.

Anyway, while I was tinkering with computers I decided to try to get the media PC up and running again. It was mostly working the last time I messed with it, I just needed to get VNC installed so I could control it remotely without locking the main display like RDP does. Of course, I also need to track down drivers that will let it look nice on the 42" widescreen tv in the living room. The whole point of this thing was to be able to view some of the video files I've acquired over the years on the tv instead of the computer screen. It's one thing if it's something that only one of us want to watch, but if it's something that we both want to watch...

Of course, the whole thing could be moot if I ever manage to get a Macbook, since my current laptop is technically a media center pc and I have successfully used it to view shows on the tv in the past... But the Mac purchase is dependent on bonuses from work, and I doubt very seriously we'll get one this quarter. The first quarter is always a little slow, and they've been spending a metric assload of cash on construction to refurb the last part of the building that was left. So I'm sure they'll use that as an excuse to screw us out of a bonus this quarter... Ah well, at least I've gotten some decent training out of them, I just need to get off my ass and take the certification tests so that I'll have them under my belt if I end up having to go elsewhere.

Yeah, ok, that's a pretty generic topic. Specifically, I'm talking about idiots that sign up for account on "popular" social networking site using someone else's email accounts. To me even more specific, people that use *my* email addresses that I've had for years.

Yesterday I got several emails from MySpace thanking me for signing up and asking me to confirm my email address. These messages came to one of my GMail accounts, the one I use specifically for mail from a group of former co-workers and assorted other people. It's a closed, private mailing list run by one of the guys I used to work with. With the exception of my wife and maybe 2 other people, I don't believe anyone else knows of this account. So obviously this person either has an account a character or two off from mine or is just a complete idiot. Anyway, I logged into the MySpace account (since they so nicely provided me with the password) and promptly deleted it. Of course, MySpace says it'll take up to 48 hours to delete the account (what are they, bulk mailers?) but I made sure to do everything required to delete the account.

So it was really no surprise tonight when I got three more messages from MySpace, one friend request from someone I assume the idiot that registered the account knows, another "email verification" message, and another account deletion confirmation message. I ignored the first two and clicked on the link in the deletion message again to get rid of the account. I should probably have reset the password on the account when I was in there yesterday. In fact, I just did.

This isn't the first time that I've had someone do this. A couple of years ago some twit in Asia used the yahoo email address that I've had for over a decade to create a Friendster account and proceeded to add all his friends. The main difference is that at least MySpace seems to be a little stricter on verifying the email address before letting someone go hog wild with their account. With Friendster I deleted the account not once, not even twice, but 5 times before I could convince them that I wasn't a 20 something guy from some island in the east. With that one I went so far as to edit the profile to explicitly (and not very politely) state that I was not the asshat they were looking for and that they should tell the aforementioned asshat to use his own damned email address next time.

Anyway, I'm hoping that this will be the end of the idiotic MySpace thing. I don't understand why some sites insist on allowing people instant, full access to an account that they haven't verified the email address that is supposedly *required* to create the account in the first place.

Well, today has turned out to have a couple of really cool twists to it.

First off, the book I pre-ordered a couple of months ago finally arrived, autographed by the author and artist. I'm referring to the hardcover edition of Looking For Group, Vol 1. Now, I've been a big fan of Sohmer's work for a while now. I can't remember exactly when I started reading Least I Could Do, but I do know it has been long enough for 3 artists, well before Lar started doing the art for the script. Come to think of it, I've probably only been reading Get Fuzzy and Malakhim longer. LFG isn't that old, but since it's a humorous take on the fantasy genre it's always been right up my alley.

The second (and even bigger) surprise of the day came from an email that my wife received. All I know is that I was sitting here surfing the web when she starts freaking out looking at her computer screen. She hands me the computer and I see what has her all riled up. Eddie Izzard is coming to Kansas City in May. She's been keeping an eye on his tour schedule for quite some time now hoping that he'd come somewhere closer than either New York or LA, and now we finally get the chance to go see him. Tickets are still in a "pre-sale" state, meaning that the only reason we were able to buy them now was because she joined his fan club. :)

So yeah, happy belated birthday to her, right? ;)

Today is my wife's birthday. She was born about 9 months after me, so if you know how old I am then you know how old she is. She's not the kind of person that would get upset with me for explicitly stating her age, but I've always worked off the assumption that it's better to err on the side of caution. :)

Anyway, we don't have any plans tonight, we did dinner with some friends on Saturday to celebrate and we'll be heading down home to do the joint birthday thing with her and my Dad (his is on the 13th) this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ignoring her birthday. I'll be making some home-made chocolate chip cookies for her tonight (using her favorite Ghirideli chips), but for some reason we tend to not do presents specifically for one purpose. Usually there's a fairly expensive purchase made within a few months of some occasion or another and it becomes a "combination gift". This year, her new lappy seems to have been the combo xmas/bday gift. And I think her success with the surprise Wii qualifies it as every gift for 2008 plus xmas '07.

Anyway, here's a happy birthday wish to the one that's made the last 10 years worth living. I'm glad you were desperate and settled for me. ;)

Yesterday (2/24) marked 5 years since Grandad died.

I don't really have much to say that I haven't already said. He was (and always will be) my mentor, my hero, my idol and I miss him very much even after all this time.

Rest well, Grandad.

In addition to the total lunar eclipse (which by the way was a complete bust here thanks the the stinking clouds), Feb. 20th marks the 10th year anniversary of the night my wife and I first met. Now, we weren't exactly strangers, we'd been chatting online for a month or two after meeting on match.com, but it was 10 years ago tonight (it's still tonight since I've not gone to bed yet) that I drove from my home in NW Arkansas to meet her in Topeka.

Realistically speaking, it's a wonder I made the trip at all. I had worked half a day that day, leaving early to stop by the dentist office and get a wisdom tooth pulled. Then I hopped in my Ford Aspire and headed north, depending on Mapquest maps to get me where I was going. I didn't have a cel phone at the time, and I was driving 5 - 6 hours for what honestly was intended on both sides to be a fling, nothing serious at all.

And yet, after that weekend we took turns making the drive to the other's house until July, when I moved to Kansas. There was one weekend that we spent apart during those 5 months, and that was because she was in school and had finals coming up so she really needed to study and not have me distracting her. If she had been able to find a job down home she would have been the one to move, but nobody seemed interested in even interviewing her and she found a job in Overland Park instead. We ended up moving to Lawrence, about 30 minutes from KC, strictly because I had been interviewing with companies in both KC and Topeka. In retrospect, moving to Lawrence was a good thing, it helped me adjust since it felt a lot like the city in which I went to college.

A lot has happened over these last 10 years. I've gone through 5 jobs (not counting moving between departments), gained somewhere around 70 pounds, and generally grown up a little. There have been deaths, births, weddings and divorces back home, most of which I've missed. We've had good times and bad, been happy and not so much. We've been down to our last dime, and we've had times of a bit of comfort. We became home owners, we've dealt with unemployment and general broke-itude. We've had our "family" grow from 3 to 5 and shrink back to 3. I guess I'm saying there have been a lot of ups and downs, some really good highs and some abysmal lows. And yet we've made it through them all.

We're not perfect, we fight every now and then. Sometimes about money, sometimes about house related things, but usually when we're on a trip and we're in the car. Man, do we not drive well together. And yet we survived the trip from hell last October when we drove to Las Vegas and back... Don't ask me how, I honestly don't know how we survived that.

Even when I'm annoyed with her, in the depths of our battles, I've never once thought I made a mistake by leaving the only home I had ever known to start a new life with her. There may have been times where I wished that she had found a job down home so that I could have been closer to my family, but I have never regretted my decision to be with her. She understands me, accepts me for the bizarre and broken individual I am. And so far she's resisted the urge to smother me in my sleep when my snoring keeps her awake at night. Obviously, there's something wrong with her. ;)

So to my darling wife I say thank you for 10 great years and here's to another 10. Assuming the planet doesn't explode in 2012, that is.

Well, we got a few things done this weekend. Not as much as we probably should have, but it's the weekend dammit! We're *supposed* to goof off, right?

Anyway, Saturday afternoon we had another company come out and actually give us a quote for new siding and windows for the house. I'm not sure if I mentioned the last "estimate" we got for siding, but it was a couple of weeks ago and the guy obviously didn't want our business if we weren't going to sign on the dotted line right then and there. I suppose that's what we get for letting the "home improvement" people at Sam's Club come to the house. The guy didn't take any measurements, wouldn't give us a quote, tried the hard sell, the "prices are going up by 20% next week, so if you sign today we can lock in the current price" trick. I think he was pissed that we had done some homework and that my wife made it plain from the get go that we are looking for prices and will be comparing everything. The most he would do was say that for our house it would be around 14 grand for siding, windows would bring that closer to 20 grand. For a house that is roughly 700 sq. ft., that seemed outrageously overpriced. As he was leaving he said "Give me a call when you're serious." I think the first thing out of my mouth after he left was "What a fucktard!"

The guy from yesterday was the exact opposite. He took measurements, talked to us about the different options we had, and gave us an actual quote. And of course the price was roughly half of the other guy's "estimate". The guy was from Home Depot and he said something interesting. He said Home Depot never wants a contracted job, i.e siding, kitchen remodel, roofing, etc, to stop a customer from shopping at their stores, meaning that they commit to doing whatever it takes to satisfy the customer if something goes wrong on a job so that they don't lose their business for the everyday needs like screws, paint, etc. It makes sense, they majority of their money comes from the stores, and if they botch a $7000 siding job and don't fix it, the risk losing far more than that over the years the next time you might need a new lawnmower or a few gallons of paint.

Anyway, we're going to go with Home Depot for the job. We've just got to work out the finances first. We've got some savings, a little room on the home equity line, and a few other options that would preclude the necessity of opening a Home Depot credit card account. That's the last thing I need... Best of all, I won't have to scrape and paint the house this year. Not that I've ever scraped and painted the house, but if we didn't do siding I was going to have to do it this year. We've been here 8 years now, it's definitely due for it.

Other than that, I got my old desk broken down and my wife's old one put back up. I also finally took the automatic litter box out of the room and moved the bed around so that I've got room to move with the new desk. Don't worry, there hasn't been any cat litter in the box since the kitty died last year, I just never got around to moving it. Hell, we still had Sasha's food container in the kitchen until well after Mia died...

And I finally found a collection of Hunters & Collectors music. emridhs introduced me to them a few months ago and I've had their album "Ghost Nation" in heavy rotation on my iPod ever since. They're definitely 80's/90's rock, and yes, they occasionally sound like their countrymen INXS, but not all that often. Anyway, I'm in the process of listening to about 11 albums from them now. :)

Anyway, it's 3:30am, so I need to get to sleep...