If one posts on here…is one a “blogger”?

Or, would one be considered a “bloggist”?

Is “blogging” a verb? Or, is it an adjective…as in…I worked on a blogging post this this afternoon?

Or, perhaps…it’s a noun…in the “thing” category of nouns.

Larry the blogger, in attempt to be a world class bloggist, practiced his blogging posts so that he could create his first blog.

Maybe it’s all of the above.

Larry

Yep. It is.

I’m referring, of course, to the feeling that you get when a number of plans that have been physically, mentally, and emotionally draining you for the last 12-18 months suddenly fall into place and you can actually see yourself getting things done that you were beginning to think would never get done.

About 20 minutes ago, I took a server offline that was tying up four IP addresses that I desperately need in order to bring up other servers. This project (that of getting rid of that server) actually began over two years ago, when the server was “loaned” to us by an application vendor. Several months ago, I moved all the users of that server onto a load balancer spread across 4 other servers, and we immediately ran into problems. Baby steps. Over the last 4-5 weeks, I’ve addressed all of those problems and I was able to finally turn off the server today.

This morning, I shut down three other servers which had been holding up my domain migration for the last 30 months. I had planned to do it last Friday – after fighting with a very stubborn application for close to a year – but I had to put it off because on WEDNESDAY, one more problem popped up, which took me three days to figure out.

But that puppy’s shut down now. And as soon as I was able to shut IT down, I could also shut down the final two servers in the domain, which were doing nothing other than supporting the problem child.

I realize that this all probably means next to nothing to any of you, so I’ll just put it this way: I FINISHED SOME MAJOR PROJECTS TODAY.

Other than that, life is pretty much the same. I rearranged my living room yesterday. Spent the weekend watching a number of movies with a friend (saw “The Man”, ” Madagascar” and “Elizabethtown” and liked all of them).

Last night I at a frisco melt at Steak and Shake. Helpful hint: don’t waste your time. They look really good on paper, but they’re pretty bland.

On Saturday, I had a steak sandwich at Waffle House. See above.

I’m trying – and getting close – to run my website on a machine at my house, thereby getting rid of the need for a webhost (I currently use GoDaddy.com, and my site is currently in the throes of death. GoDaddy.com apparently puts about 10,000 websites on each of their shared servers and mine needs more resources than that. Unfortunately, putting it on a dedicated server is expensive, which is why I’m trying to run it out of the house).

I was hopeful that Mom and Dad were going to visit ye olde Duluthe this weekend, but I’m told that their grandkids did something amazing musically and I came in second. Eh bien. It’s probably a good thing because my house is a disgusting mess. You know the scene: dishes in the sink from a meal that I had sometime around Thanksgiving. Small trees and something resembling living velour growing on my rugs. Cat vomit on the ceiling. Unrecognizable stuff in the refrigerator that could probably be used as insulation in a nuclear submarine. A string of dirty clothes beginning in my bedroom, running down the stairs, through the dining room, out the kitchen window, and culminating somewhere east of Orlando.

I’m talking messy.

But, I may have it cleaned up by this weekend. Thinking about having a friend over for either movies (if it’s cold) or grilling stuff on the deck (if it’s warm). That should induce me to clean up a bit. Or at least buy blindfolds.

So. You’re all caught up now. I believe I’ll go pee.

TWD

I, Greg, do hereby reject the notion that I am a thinking kind of guy. Having that kind of title brings on undue stress and expectations that I am not ready to have a part of my life.

However, I hope everyone will figure this out, and it might be fun to be able to look at and enjoy as a big group!

By the way, isn’t my wife just incredible looking!?

I rock and stuff.

Hey ya’ll.

Greg, being a thinking kind of guy, came up with the idea that we should have an All-Day blog. One that everybody can add to, comment on, post pictures in, and various other phrases that all end with prepositions.

Being the helpful lad that I am, I set one up.

Have fun.

No really.

I am.

They’re on about every 12 seconds. On every channel.

At any rate, my experiment with the electric heaters was a qualified success. I relented and turned on the gas after a week – mainly to keep my pipes from freezing. Set it at 55 degrees and let the heaters go crazy whenever I was in the house.

My gas bill dropped to $180. My electric went up $11. So I’ll call it a savings. Not ENOUGH, mind you, but a savings nonetheless.

On the job front, it appears that I’ve dodged the bullet again. My affiliate’s IT department was declared exempt from the layoffs – at least for now – because of a major project that we’ve been working on for the last 18 months. In truth, I don’t have a great deal to do with it, but I’m not going to tell anyone.

Watched the Superbowl the other day. Decent game. Then I played football on my PS2 and won yet another national championship. My current winning streak is 119 games or something. I really need to get out more.

My blood pressure has reached its highest levels ever, prompting my doctor to give me stern looks and make me keep a diary of what it is for the next 6 weeks. Yay.

My website continues to run terribly slowly, and I’ve pretty much decided that I’ll have to change hosts again in the near future. Waiting for my bonus to come through before I do that.

Jenny did my taxes last week (she LIKES doing them!), and it looks like I’ll get enough of a refund to take a decent chunk out of what’s remaining on my car (I know, Mom. I didn’t do it last year. I paid credit cards instead).

Started playing around with ASP.NET last week. Pretty cool little coding engine. I might try to put it to some use at some point.

I’m hungry.

And that’s that. I guess I should go buy something for Valentine’s Day now.

I got my natural gas bill a few days ago. The previous one was $70. This one was $240.

I paid it. Then I turned my heat off. Not down. OFF. Then I bought three electric heaters. Ran one in my bedroom last night and was relatively comfortable. When I came downstairs this morning, it was 51 degrees in my living room.

I spent the week after Christmas with Cy and T in their Vermont home. It was 65 in their house with the heat turned off. What’s up with that?

But hey. “Rudy” is on television this morning, so I’m happy. I really need to buy that DVD. It’s a good football fix during the offseason. So is my Playstation. I’m currently the head coach of the LSU Tigers in my third season of “Dynasty” play. During season 1, I coached Furman University, had an 11-1 record, beat LSU in the Sugar Bowl, and my QB won the Heisman. I was immediately offered a job with Washington, which I took.

In season two, my Huskies won the mythical national championship, beating Georgia in the Rose Bowl by a score of 246-6. My halfback won the Heisman.

This season, I’m undefeated with an average win margin of over 100 points. My wide receiver is in the driver’s seat for the Heisman.

I said “mythical” national championship because the I-A division of college football doesn’t really have one. They just get voted in. In I-AA, it’s different. There’s a 16-team playoff, which – if you’ve read any of my previous posts – should be somewhat familiar to you. My last entry here was written the week prior to Furman’s game at Appalachian State.

True to all of the games between those teams over the last several years, this one was a nail-biter. It ended somewhat controversially when Furman’s QB fumbled the ball in the last minute of the game while driving for what would have been the winning score. Replays showed pretty clearly that the fumble was a forward pass. Them’s the breaks. Appalachian State went on to win the championship the following week. Furman went home to start planning for next year. Between then and now, I’ve got 9 months of watching football movies and playing playstation.

And, of course, going to a bowl-a-thon (to raise money for the athletics programs) next month.

BellSouth announced just before Christmas (in their best Grinch voice) that they’ll be laying off 1,500 more management employees between February and April. For those of you unfamiliar with my job history over the last 15 years, it goes something like this:

1990: Quit job in Greenville, moved to Atlanta, started temping.
1991: Hired on full-time with NYNEX.
1992: NYNEX acquired by ComputerLand, massive layoffs follow. I survived.
1993: ComputerLand sells off most franchises, becomes Vanstar. Massive layoffs follow. I survivied.
1994: Quit Vanstar. Began contracting. First job with BellSouth. Hated it so much, I swore I’d never work for them again.
1997: Convinced by my boss to take “a very short-term” gig with BellSouth (1 week). After that, I went on to Coca-Cola for 6 months. During that time, BellSouth twice called me to offer me my current job. I turned them down. The third time the job was offered – at a substantial pay raise – I took it.
2000 – BellSouth puts emphasis on DSL, cutting my affiliate (cable TV) with every conceivable cutting tool. In 3 months, we went from 1800 employees to 250. I survived.
2002 – BellSouth reacts like every other company after 9/11, beginning several rounds of massive layoffs. I survived.
2003 – More layoffs. I survived.

I think the target’s on my back this time around. I’ll be holding my breath for the next few months. I’m not overly concerned. I’ve made tentative plans for how to handle things should the axe fall, and my boss keeps insisting that I’m safe – although I may end up working for a different affiliate. But if I *am* shown the door, I’m ready to start over again. This time at 40 years old instead of 25. Maybe I can do it again when I’m 55!

So now everyone should be fairly caught up on my life. Hope you all have a great 2006!

TWD

Okay, so it’s been a month. I have a slow life.

You know that team I was talking about last month? The one that beat us when we were ranked #1? Well, they made it to the playoffs and lost their first-round game after leading by 19 points in the third quarter.

Three days later, the entire coaching staff was fired. This staff had a .714 winning record over the last four years, made the playoffs three of those years, and won the conference championship twice.

Apparently, “Great” doesn’t cut it at Georgia Southern.

So anyway, they’re out of the playoffs. My team continues to play. We won a squeaker against Nicholls State in the first round, and last week we travelled to Richmond and held them off (24-20), so in week three we get to travel to Appalachian State – a team that some would consider our #2 rival, and a team that we squeaked by (at our place) earlier this year. Beating them at their house is a different matter, and I’m afraid we’re a decided underdog.

But if we should win, it’s onward to Chattanooga, where we’ll be playing for the I-AA National Championship.

I didn’t get to go to the Richmond game, and I won’t be able to make the App State game, either, so I’m desperately hoping for a win this weekend so that I can attend our last game of the season.

The new server that was running my new site finally gave up the ghost and I had to migrate everything back to the old one. Still haven’t decided how I’m going to fund a dedicated server so I can get the new code back up, but I’ll figure it out sometime after the season. Anybody want to lend me a couple grand?

Work is still work, although it’s been more exciting over the last couple of weeks due to the fact that I’ve picked up a massive cold and can’t shake it. Been inhaling Theraflu for the last several days and trying not to breathe on anyone.

This weekend, I’ve got my annual Christmas gigs at Northbrook UMC (thank God – I need the money), which is the reason I won’t be able to make the game at ASU. It happens every year – I’ve got a rehearsal on the morning of a playoff game. For the last couple of years, those games have been at home, so I’ve been able to make them – late. This year, with the game starting at noon in Boone, NC, there’s just no way I can make it. I was hoping for a 6:00 PM start or something.

Got a couple more orders for the high school game pictures last night, which is nice. Brings my total so somewhere around $800. Not bad for an amateur who was just having some fun at a football game.

It’s rather chilly in Atlanta this morning (got down below freezing last night), but my thermonuclear plastic siding and kryptonite-filled windows are doing an excellent job of insulating my house. I put the stuff on last year (at a cost of nearly $25K), and was pretty concerned that it wouldn’t work as advertised (natural gas prices went through the roof this winter), but I’m pretty pleased.

I’m certain that it’s not as cold here as it probably is in Vermont, which is where a friend and I will be spending about a week at Christmas. Really looking forward to the trip. I need to freeze my ass off every now and then.

Mom and Dad returned from a trip to Israel and Egypt yesterday, so I’m also looking forward to seeing their pictures and hearing their stories about that trip. I’m assuming, since they arrived back in one piece (two pieces, actually), that they didn’t waste a lot of time at malls or discos while they visited the land of peace and harmony.

I need to rake my lawn in a very bad way. Unfortunately, it’s dark when I get home from work, and it’s dark when I get out of bed. I work from home tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do it then.

Later, all.

Problem is, there’s really not much to type about.

That’s never actually stopped me before, but I thought I’d go ahead and throw it out there in advance, thereby making the drivel something that isn’t my fault.

My college team played our biggest rival this last weekend. We were ranked #1 going into the game, and they were #14 – but in this game, the records really don’t matter. I know it’s an old cliche, but it’s true. The first time we ever played them was in 1985 – in the National Championship Game (capitalized because it’s sacred, I guess). They won by 2 points.

The second time we played them was in 1988 – in the National Championship Game. We won by 5 points.

About two years after that, they joined our conference and they had our number, building up a pretty impressive winning percentage against us. The tide started to turn around the year 2000 (and if there are some of you who aren’t family reading this – and you know who you are – don’t correct my history. I don’t claim to remember it), when – for the first time EVER – one of our running backs rushed for over 300 yards in a game, and we beat them by a score of 45-10.

They came back the next year and nipped us during the regular season, but in the playoffs we beat them at their place – the first time EVER that they’d lost a home playoff game.

The following year, they crushed us at home.

Last year, we beat them with a goal-line stand.

And this year, they beat us with a last-minute interception. But take heart…we’re not in the playoffs yet, and there’s a good possibility that we’ll get to play them again before the year is out.

On the high school front, I’m actually rather pleased with the number of parents who’ve ordered prints from me for a game I shot a few weeks ago. I mailed out orders totaling $200 yesterday, and I’ve received requests for about $200 more today. Did I spell “received” right? I think I mentioned somewhere in the history of this thing that I run my computer on my television and I can barely see what I’m typing. At any rate, I’m hoping to make between $700 and $1000 off of that game before all is said and done.

And I ran into an old placekicker friend of mine last weekend who has invited me to come shoot his old high school team….a team from a pretty expensive private school here in Atlanta….a team that generally does very well on the football field.

I admit it: I’m smelling green, baby.

Work is still work, although my boss and HER boss finally got together yesterday and told a person who was ALMOST my boss (but, thank God, is not) that I don’t have time to do everything she wants me to do everytime she wants me to do it. A project scheduled for completion before the end of the year, therefore, has been pushed back to sometime next year. We had a long conference call today and I basically said, “I’ll do what I can do. I’m going insane. Please understand.”

Amazingly, she did.

Tonight, I’m sitting in my underwear on my couch trying to determine when my college website is going to crash again. I moved it to a new host about 10 days ago, gave it a new look and a new domain name, and it’s crashed about 4 times since then. I am now on a first-name basis with the tech guys at my new host.

A friend of mine is flying in from Philadelphia tonight and I’m picking her up at the airport.

I intend to put on more than underwear before I do so.

Picking her up was a tough call. After all, Tuesday night is Trivia night. I’ll probably go play for an hour.

Speaking of trivia, Dad was the printer selected by the trivia guy to print up all the scoresheets and stuff. Dad, he is VERY HAPPY with your work and he plans to send me information about other trivia companies that need similar work done. Hope it won’t bother you if I send you some more busisness.

I’m serious. He’s thrilled with the stuff you did for him. Well done, old man!

And that, as they say, is that. I think I’ll make a sandwich now.

As hurricane Wilma rips across southern Florida, my little house in Duluth is reaping the rewards of not being in southern Florida. It’s a beautiful morning. The temperature is hovering around 45, the sun is just coming up, and there’s a very nice breeze kicking things around outside and fascinating my cats, who apparently like the cooler temps as much as I do.

The younger of the two (“Boo”) has been busy expressing her joy over the last few days by barfing all over the house. I’m so glad I cleaned the carpets last week. Guess I’ll get to do it again tonight.

I set out to film a high school football team last Friday night, the result of an invitation by a parent of one of the players at Brookwood HS who is also the parent of a player at Furman. She convinced the Brookwood booster club to pay me to take pictures of the seniors on the team (it was “Senior Night”), and also asked me to stick around and shoot the rest of the game with an eye towards selling “action” shots to parents of players who wanted them.

I was a bit leery of doing this – particularly if up-front money was involved – because I’ve historically had very bad luck shooting this team. This is in part due to the fact that – like most high school teams – they play at night, which makes “action” shooting pretty difficult. High school stadiums are rarely equipped with the kind of lighting that I’ve gotten used to shooting night games at colleges; and the addition of a commercial grade flash, while helpful, hasn’t done the trick for me on the few previous times I’ve shot this team. They also wear dark uniforms, which doesn’t help things at all.

So we negotiated a ridiculously low price ($100) for the “posed” senior pictures – which would take place on the 50-yard line before the game in relatively good light – and then I got a player roster with indications of which parents would be most likely to want action shots. I told my contact that I’d make the pictures available on a best-effort basis, and that I reserved the right to tell hopeful parents that I just didn’t get anything good enough to print.

Fantastically, I got to see first-hand how much I’ve improved since the last time I attempted to shoot a high school game. I actually managed to get a good number of decent shots and setup a website yesterday with thumbnails and ordering information for parents who are interested.

Now, as they say, I can sit back and watch the money roll in.

On Saturday, I drove up to Greenville and shot the Furman vs. Elon game, flushed with excitement about my chances because of the successful Friday-night game and because my pictures from last week (at The Citadel) were among the best I’ve ever taken.

On the positive side, Furman clicked on all cylinders and blew Elon off the field (45-6)…meaning that they’re good. On the negative side, Furman clicked on all cylinders and blew Elon off the field (45-6)…meaning that I was pretty much bored silly and took some absolutely terrible pictures. Early in the second half, the reserve players started coming into the game, so I spent a lot of the afternoon shooting them – I’d gotten a request from one of their parents to do so a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t spent a great deal of time seeing what I got, but I’m hoping that the parental enthusiasm over seeing little Jimmy get to play will overshadow the fact that my pictures of little Jimmy are blurred, poorly-framed, and lack any type of excitement.

I’ve almost finished painting my office (a spare bedroom), and – while it isn’t exactly what I had in mind – I think it’s going to look extremely cool. I’d intended to paint the wall around my fireplace with a deep maroon color. My furniture is black leather, my fireplace is black, and most of my throws and pillows are maroon…so I figured a maroon accent wall would work out well.

At the last minute last week, I decided to paint my office maroon instead – sort of a formal, studious color, right? So I took the gallon of paint that I’d purchased for the accent wall, got two more of the same color, and started in on the office.

It ain’t maroon. It’s bright red. At least it was after the first coat was applied. The second coat darkened it somewhat, but it’s still more red than maroon. The third coat verified the fact that I’m going to have a red office. But I think it’s going to look very nice once I paint the ceiling and trim (white). Then it’s back to the Home Depot to find some MAROON paint for the accent wall around the fireplace.

I’ll be spending a lot of time cleaning, painting, and eating beans this week. And enjoying the cool weather, of course.

Gas prices this week, incidentally, are hovering around $2.65. Too expensive. Why can’t manufacturers REALLY start to explore hybrid technology?

Later, all.

TWD