Diary of a Network Geek

Well, I just got back from getting my hair cut and my wife told me that the MySQL server on which The Diary of a Network Geek, The BLOG Version depends is back up. So, finally, I'll be able to make an entry that I should have made Friday.

I got the job.

I got the call very late on Friday from my headhunter telling me that they'd made the decision in my favor. It was welcome news and made my weekend a whole lot more fun. Well, fun except for when I had to shave my beard.
I don't like not having a beard, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be. I don't look like I'm 12, but I do look a lot different. My wife must be getting used to it to because she's stopped crying. Actually, as I took the beard down to nought in stages, she commented that she thought I looked "cute" with a goatee. And, I have to admit, I didn't look bad that way. I've always secretly wondered what I'd look like with a goatee, but practicality won out over curiosity. A full beard is a lot less work.
In any case, it's gone now and my pink, shining face is exposed to the world. I made my wife take pictures at each stage of the reduction, so eventually, I'll get that done into an animated GIF or a Flash "thingee", or something. I had to do something to make if fun or I would have started crying myself!
Sunday, we went to a store in Rice Village called "The British Isles" which carries products from, you guessed it, the British Isles. I picked up some great after-shave by a company called Geo F. Trumper. I figured, if I have to shave every day, by God, I'm going to get my favorite after-shave to pamper myself!! And, my wife is a bit of a Scot-o-phile (is that a word?), so she can get her fix there, too. She also used to be involved with a Canadian who corrupted her with the evils of English candy, including Smartees, which, to me, are really just big M&M's. But, it makes her happy.

So, now, I'm just waiting for the headhunter to get the details wrapped up on the contract end of things. After they do, I'll schedule a time to head into their office to get things signed and take the drug test. Then, I'll start the new job on Thursday, barring any tragic accidents. So, you can bet there will be updates by the end of the week. It's going to be strange going into an office and working after a year of looking for a job.

Oh, and the title of this entry? Headhunter, think headhunters. More about them in another entry.

I got the call last night that I'm geing asked back for a second interview at the Place of No Beards. I suppose, considering the economy and the job market, I should be really, really happy to shave my beard. But, I'm not. I'm okay with it, because it's their rules and all, but I'm not actually happy about it.
So, last night, I went and found my old Braun electric razor. If I'm going to have to keep my face clean, I might as well try to minimize the pain. I figure my face is going to be pale and tender. I'll be indulging in some tender-loving care for my skin for a little bit, too. Thank God my wife is an escaped make-up artist. She knows all the tricks. To be honest, I expect to bleed a lot the first time I shave. Probably the first week, too.
In any case, I don't have the job yet, so I haven't shaved yet. When they give me a start date, I'll take it off. And, I had been thinking I could take it down to a goatee during the contract, but they need me to take the whole beard off before I start. So, off it will go. Of course, I think I'll take it down to a goatee along the way, just to see what I look like. And, if I can convince my wife to help me, I'll make an animated GIF of the beard going, going, gone. That would make it at least a little fun!

I talked to my Mom and Dad last night. Dad, who has a full beard, was telling me how grateful I should be to have a job at all. I reminded him that I didn't have it yet, but I got his point. He said that he'd been to the barber shop and got an earful from my old barber about how tough things are. Apparently, things are tough enough that regular customers are a lot less regular. Guys, like me, are going longer between haircuts, because they just can't afford it. That's when you know times are tough. When regular guys can't afford to get haircuts. Suddenly, that theoretical $13,000 drop in pay doesn't seem like so much. After all, I'll be able to pay the bills. We won't be able to live extravagantly, but we won't have to worry about buying steak that costs too much. But, I have to admit, it was nice getting that positive reinforcement from my Dad. I'm glad he thinks of me as a man doing what he has to do for his family. Thanks, Dad.

Well, it seems the "sure thing" contract I thought I had lined up is far from it. I've been chasing after a contract upgrading a local school district for almost four months now. A little over a week ago, I was told that schools "in the area" were getting their money. Apparently, the person I was talking to thought that New Mexico and Houston, Texas are in the same area, because the government money was flowing there, not here. Behold, the joys of nation-wide recruiting firms!

So, in the meantime, I had told a different recruiting firm that I wouldn't shave my beautiful beard off for a contract-to-perm position that paid roughly $13K less than my last job. Guess what I did yesterday morning? Yeah, that's right, I called back telling them I'd changed my mind and if the nice, beard-shaving people with money were still interested, I'd talk to them. Frankly, I think it's too late, which is a shame because the position might have beefed up my Windows 2000 experience. Not to mention my Exchange exposure. And, I would have still been using Novell, too. Sure, they're phasing that out in favor of Windows, but there's a lot more work in the Microsoft arena these days anyway. Shoot, there might even have been the possibility of getting my MCSE! But, despite swallowing what little pride I had left and just about begging for an interview, I don't think that one's going to work out.

Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime? Or a job? I'd settle for a job.

I just got a reply from my favorite fantasy author, Lawrence Watt-Evans, today. I've read almost all of his work, except for the Lords of Dûs series which I just couldn't get into for some reason. I especially like his Ethshar series of books and stories. I really like the flow of his style of writing, what people in the writing game call an author's "voice". It's real familiar and comfortable to read. I find his work more relaxing than just about any other author I've read, including the incomparable Frank Herbert and Ernest Hemmingway. (I read those two authors for different reasons than I read Lawrence Watt-Evans.)

Anyway, I've been working at writing some fiction again (no, not my resume!) and I ran into a bit of a snag: naming. See, I've been hiding behind that for a relly long time, something in the neighborhood of ten years, to keep from writing. That bothered me enough this past week to get past it and just start writing. But, before I did, I turned to my favorite fantasy author to see how *he* made his character names.
Well, the lucky, *professional* author was off in Europe on vacation, so he didn't get a chance to respond to me for a week, or so. Lucky me. If he had, I might not have actually started writing the damn story. See, he went through a process much like I had been trying to go through, but I had some significant difficulty with it and I used that as a reason to not write. So, if he'd responded sooner, I might have gotten bogged down again.

Anyway, I wanted to encourage everyone in the world to go buy Lawrence Watt-Evans's books. I highly reccomend "The Misenchanted Sword" and "With A Single Spell", which are both great places to start in the Ethshar books. Also, I highly reccomend "Dragon Weather" and its sequel "The Dragon Society", which are not set in Ethshar, but are superior fantasy novels. Keep in mind, this isn't Tolkein-esque work here, it's much, much more accessable than all that. Nor is it a cheap copy of someone else's style. Lawrence Watt-Evans is in a class all his own.
You can find out more about Lawrence Watt-Evans, and Ethshar, at Ethshar.com or Watt-Evans.com

Well, I think I've finally gotten this blog thing down. I figured out what was making the entries look all wonky in Netscape and corrected the HTML code in the templates. Then, too, I figured out how to control some of the custom settings for the look and feel of the blog via the style sheet. In fact, I like it so much, I'm going to imitate it for the rest of my website. It's really just a matter of updating the style sheet for the main site so that it's similar to the blog. Way back when I started this poor, sad, little site, I planned it so that eventually, when I wanted to make look and feel changes, all I'd have to do is update the style sheet. Pretty clever for a Network Engineer, eh? Now, why, if I'm so clever, has no one given me a job yet? *sigh* Like they say in the Baltimore Catechism, "It's a mystery!"

I apologize to everyone that see's this entry as basically raw text. I swear, it's not my fault. I'm new to this flavor of blog and I haven't quite worked out the style sheet for it yet. So, despite the fact that I normally make sure everything on my site works in both Netscape and InternetExplorer, the Diary of a Network Geek currently looks better in IE than Netscape. I'm so ashamed.
I have my personal webdesigner looking into the problem, but I haven't given up on it either. Like so many other things, we'll get to it soon.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled web browsing.

Well, I've finally gotten a real blog set up. No more manual updates for me! Well, okay, that's not really true. I mean, it's not like I can just *think* the entries into the blog. But, at least I have a MySQL database keeping track of everything for me now. So, I guess I'll keep the old, lamer-than-lame Diary of a Network Geek entries around in some form. For historical purposes. For posterity? Eh, just because I can't bear to let them go.

Stay tuned for more *real* entries to the Diary of a Network Geek!

Well, I actually managed to do something technical and new this week. A friend of mine is a total Mac guy, who has worked on Windows machines, but doesn't know anything about networking them together. He's out of work and has been trying to beef up his skills on Dreamweaver for the PC, but has most of his graphics stuff on his Mac. He asked me for help and I couldn't refuse. Besides, I had a spare hub and network cards, not to mention the spare time.
So, we've actually been trying to get this to work for some time now, but finally figured out that we needed more "stuff" than the standard networking junk that comes with Windows XP and Mac OS 8. After hunting around, we settled on PC MacLan, by Mirramar Systems. Quite frankly, we were told that it wasn't the best solution, but it was what we could afford, so we made it work. Basically, what it does is install AppleTalk on Windows XP and then translates the data back and forth between Mac and Windows. We got the little eight port hub set up and the CAT5 cables snaked behind the furniture with no problems. Then, after a bit of a false start, we got it going in short order. We shared out several directories on his Mac and made shortcuts for them in My Network Places on his WindowsXP machine. But, that wasn't good enough for us. No way! We weren't satisfied until we could get the HP DeskJet 960C hooked up to the PC and were able to print from the Mac as well as Windows. So, we horsed the printer around to a place where the USB cable would reach the Windows PC and I ran the PC MacLAN print server wizard. It was really pretty easy, but there were some odd quirks. Mainly, it gives new warnings every time a new "session" is started and there's no way to set it permanently. And, the printing is pretty slow from the Mac, but it does work. Besides, there are some extra steps going on. After all, technically, it is network printing.
It might not be Netware, but at least the stuff I learned while working on my CNE came in handy! Now, I need to really buckle down and work on my CCNA Certification. There have been several jobs that I'm pretty sure I would have had, if only I'd been Cisco Certified already. *sigh* Well, back to the old grindstone.
Oh, by the way, that friend of mine is still out of work. He's a User Interface designer, but he's worked in print, too. His name is Patrick McGee and you can find him at Pmcgee.net.

Well, if you've looked at my resume, you know that I'm out of work. In fact, you know that I've been out of work since the end of October this past year. So, why, you're wondering, has it taken so long for me to update the Diary of a Network Geek? Well, mainly, because I've been trying to find a job and overcome depression. I'd like to go into details about it, but I'm not quite ready to tear into the crappy company for whom I used to work. At least, not until I find another job. ^_^ I have a funny feeling that the nice folks who might hire me wouldn't like my attitude toward my last employer, so....
In the mean time, I've been playing around with PERL and working on my CCNA certificate. (That's a Cisco Certified Network Associate, for those of you who were wondering.) And, I probably should update my CNE (Certified Novell Engineer), but I'm not quite willing to do that yet. It's not cheap and not too many people seem to be looking for CNE's right now. I guess I should start working on my MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer), but I'd rather not if I don't have to just yet. When I'm done with my CCNA, I'll probably work on getting the Linux+ certification that came out this past year. At least it would get my foot in the Unix door! Not like I was promised at Kirby.... Whoops. Almost started in on it!
Well, I'll update more later, but if you'd like to check out what I've done in PERL lately, jump to the Amazing IT Title Generator. Or, head over to my other big website, Fantasist.Net That's what I've really been working on lately. Though I have to admit that I don't have much there yet. The PERL script is under Resources, BTW. It's a creativity jump-start tool for authors. Enjoy!

Well, I was all scheduled for the 3:00pm flight back to Houston, but the flight got canceled. *sigh* I just can't win for losing. Oh, well, at least I managed to score some 256mg DRAM chips for $50 a piece, thanks to a co-worked who was in Baton Rouge, too. She asked me to pick her up a 128mg chip, because that was all she could afford, but I got her a 256mg chip anyway. For the great discount, I'll eat the difference. Here's to the servers they're going to help build! ; }