I had a gig this morning. It ended up only billing two hours, but it was better than nothing. I had forgotten how customers think.

“You haven’t made any changes to the network or the server in the last few weeks? No software installed, no configuration changes, nothing like that?”
“No, nothing. We never mess with that stuff.”
“And the problem just started for no reason on Friday? You can’t connect that to anything that anyone did that changed the environment at all?”
“Yeah, it just started out of nowhere, it hasn’t worked since Friday morning.”
“It looks like Windows Firewall is enabled and is blocking the ports to your database server. Has that always been installed?”
“No, we did that last week. Installed the firewall, I mean.”
“When, exactly?”
“Thursday night.”

I see. Well, it’s fixed.

• Still getting lots of nibbles and no bites.
• I’m brushing up some certs right now. I’m concentrating on the ones that I can knock out with a single test, to get the most resume bang for the buck. I’ll be taking Comptia Server+ tomorrow, to be followed by Security+, Network+, and renewing my CCNA. The metalworking door is closed here in JAX, I’m retooling back to IT.
• I’ve been running again. I can lug my carcass 2 miles around the neighborhood without stopping. I’m on the road to becoming a svelte sexy beast, if I can just keep Kathryn from baking brownies again. I wiped out the pan in 2 days. I am weak.
• Driving to Atlanta for a funeral tomorrow. My boss from Rubbernetwork died from cancer complications. Great guy, left a wife and 2 young sons. Total suck.
• December 2008. Still not king.

We got our drivers’ licenses yesterday in the best DMV experience I’ve ever had. We were in and out in thirty minutes.

Today we used them to get shiny new library cards. And the local library has the whole series of Buffy and Angel on DVD. So we don’t need to join netflix as soon as we thought!

Okay, here’s the cut. Ignore the shadow across the back of the room from my huge melon of a head.

I’m getting shorn tomorrow at two. No more ponytail; I’m going yuppie.

Who's a handsome man?

Kathryn and I were driving to the bank this morning to make a deposit. Typical boring errand. To get to the bank, we cross the Hart Bridge, named for Jacksonville’s founder, Isaiah Hart. Here is a picture of the bridge, which is 141 feet in the air at the center. Literature majors have by this point realized that I am using a technique called foreshadowing, and have begun to hear the scary music in the background…

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• wife is back from seattle
• Uncle Bud asks me every morning when I’m headed back to Atlanta, and fails to conceal his disappointment when I tell him again that I live here now
• I have found the local homebrew shop and the local game shop. My geek-fu remains strong.
• Still not king.

Kathryn has mentioned before that George the mailman stops in each day for a chat and a slice of cake. He’s got to come up the driveway anyway, since Joe has lived here for so long that the mailbox by the house is still grandfathered in, and we don’t have a box out by the street. Since they bribe him with cake and friendliness, he drops Joe’s mail in the kitchen and Bud’s mail in Bud’s office.

Anyway, the mailman has figured out that Kathryn and I live here now, and separates our mail from Joe’s and leaves it on the stairs.

This is pretty cool.

Cold is worse. I am headed to an early bed with what my friend Trace calls the “Little Green Fairy”, a bottle of Nyquil. See you on the other side of some strange dreams.

Update: Feeling better after 14 hours sleep. Don’t remember the dreams - I never do.