Month: July 2005

Yay!
Thanks to some fun-loving criminals, the second podcast is up.
Point your podcatcher to http://feeds.feedburner.com/miketheman or go to this cast’s blog feed here.
Feel free to comment, email, or phone in.

It’s been a while since my last serious post.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working myself harder than I should be, either it be working 11- or 12-hour days, stressing out about stuff way beyond my control, or just being under pressure from many different directions.
For those of you geekily inclined, here’s a quick rundown of the systems literally dumped into my hands upon arrival:

1. Web Server (Including email via POP3, SMTP) is a shared hosted server on Solaris 5.8 (ancient!) and is limited to 2GB of space, and 80 concurrent processes.
   Marketing uses it for their email blasts – using sendmail, which operates one process/thread at a time – try sending 10k emails with that. The traffic that comes to the site kills it every day, sometimes more than once.
2. Internal server – Domain controller is a crappy, souped up desktop, running Win2K along with the fileserver, Visual SourceSafe and general dumping ground.
3. Internet line – the entire office is running off a 1.5MB ADSL line – precisely the same as what I have at home.

Now, for the past couple of months, I’ve been working up proposals to get all of this straightened out, i.e replacing the Web server with a dedicated RedHat machine, and replacing the internal server with 3 IBM monsters.

I’ve put a lot of time, and many meetings into each of these proposals, and we’ve gone round and round with suggestions, recommendations and whatnot to try to come to some sort of general structure of how a proposal should be presented. I’ve never done this, dammit. So, back to the MS Word, I go, again and again, calling suppliers, driving them nuts, and getting back data for my proposals.
So I’ve been putting in the time, and trying to maximize everything into a short period of time, which doesn’t work, along with the day-to-day problems of “my computer doesn’t work” and “can you get me this software?” and other PEBCAK issues.
It’s a struggle. On Monday, I came home earlier than I have in about a month, because I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Nobody said it would be easy. I like a good challenge. But they’re making it really challenging for me.

On a personal side, I am still trying to get over Shannon. I realized this at some point a couple of weeks ago, and have no clue as to when and how that’ll take place.
To all single women out there I’m on the market! (Maybe this’ll have some interesting effect.)

On the whole, life could be better, but I’m not exactly sure how to make that happen.

It also seems that I’ve been found by . Do I know you?

Good night everyone, I hope you can find happiness. I’m still looking.

Feel free to point your podcatcher (or iTunes 4.9!) to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/miketheman for a glimpse into the real life. If you don’t have a podcatcher, you can click the link and download the MP3 manually.
Comments, suggestions and even voicemaill (+1-206-888-MIKE) are welcome, so feel free to drop me anything.

So it’s late at night again, and I’ve just spent some time catching up on some fellow LJ’ers lives and dropping my own comments.

One person in particular had written something that drove me to a little self reflection and inner thought.

Did I think I’d be where I am today ten years ago?
Did I have any clue of the events of my life that unfolded in the wacky, haphazard manner that they did?
Did I know anything about what the future is capable of developing into?

I say nay.

Life can change so much in such a rapid time, that sometimes I feel the need to tell myself, “Slow down. It’ll all be OK.” And it usually does turn out OK. I may not see it so soon, I might not know it until much later, but for some strange reason, I know that regardless if there is fate or not, regardless if there is a God, regardless of the imbalance of the universe from the point of view of a slice of fairy cake, things have a good chance of turning out pretty well.

Some would call me an optimist. Others – clueless. Yet more would classify me as a “true believer” – belief in what, who’s to say – but I don’t really think so.
I guess I see myself as a realist most of the time, with both optimistic and pessimistic tendencies. Does that balance out? I don’t know, and I’ve yet to find a shrink that will admit to having met a “balanced” person. Some see me as gruff, coarse, hell, I call myself a redneck some of the time. Others have called me “sweet” (ugh) and “a nice person”. Yet there are those who will forever remember me as “that bastard” and “evil”, and one guy knows me as “the guy who broke my ribs”, and even one guy as “the guy who nearly killed me”. Ask me sometime over a beer or tequila.
How people see is me not my concern – that’s theirs. How I see myself is more important, and even more than that – what I do about it, and how does it affect me.

The fact remains that I, and only I, live my life. Nobody ever handed me a manual or even a decent guidebook, so I’m doing what I can. Living other people’s lives doesn’t work, and I don’t care who you ask – you end up living your own life. Deal with it. Accept it. Make it your own.

Thank you for the inspiration.

So this is techie weekend for me, where I explored the depths of podcasts, and podcasting and all that is involved.
Let me tell you, it’s not easy getting everything for free, but if you work at it long enough, and have a knack for the tech, you too can have a totally free podcast.
I’ve set up all the internet-related links and subscriptions, so now all I have to do is really record a podcast.
The only thing holding me back is that I managed to royally screw up my system, as I had configured it to use about 3 primary inputs and about 30-40 secondaries and killed something along the way.
Needless to say, I feel a mite foolish. So after evaluating the situation, a full systems reconstruction will take place soon, hopefully sometime this week (if I can free up enough space by burning tons of CD’s).
Once I’m back up, beware!
The floor is open to ideas, suggestions, volunteers to come talk on the show about something they know a lot about. Drop me an email at miketheman [at] gmail [dot] com.

Oh, for those who still don’t know what I’m talking about, get educated.

Ok, it’s been a bit, and I’m over due, yet again, for an update.

The aftermath of my skid is still apparent, and hurts a lot. Ugh. It will pass, and the only thing it’s really preventing me from doing is dancing – and I don’t have any of that scheduled right now.
Last night, I went to see a farewell show for the director/producer of many theatrical endeavors at the Merkaz, and it was a lot of fun seeing a bunch of friend stand up and perform different bits of past performances, sometimes in slightly different ways.
It was also fun seeing the crowd again, and I feel that an era has passed.

At work, I have thrown myself deep in to getting things done, insofar that I have retaught myself what little SQL I knew, learned more, wrote some code in Visual Basic (which I also don’t know) and managed to build a working macro to make life a little easier. A great sense of accomplishment, especially since I am not a programmer! Take that, Computer Science junkies!

I’ve discovered the world of podcasts, and have some on the new version of iTunes, and they are a nice addition to the background noise at work. The concept is pretty cool, and I think I’d like to talk to a friend of mine into recording a show once a week and having my own podcast sometime. Who knows, it might even interest someone.

Other than that stuff, not a lot is new, trying to keep my head above the proverbial water, and to try to have a good time now and then.

Enjoy life while you have it.