Tuesday, May 30, 2006

How did I forget...

After returning from my exam on Saturday my Powerbook G4 was making some odd noises and was completely unresponsive. After powering down and attempting to reboot a few times I knew something was amiss. My hard disk is dead. This is the one time when I hate Apple products. The laptops are notoriously hard for end-users to replace the hard drive! Of course, the new MacBook doesn't suffer from this problem, but I don't own one yet!

Since this is a holiday weekend I can't do anything until the morning when I'm going to call MacResQ to expedite a hard disk replacement/upgrade. I've been straining to fit everything on the puny 40GB disk in my laptop for a while, so I guess an upgrade to a 120GB drive is in the works. Of course, that just means that I need more space in my G4 Sawtooth tower — my old desktop which now serves as a file/backup server — to keep everything backed up.

On a good note, I did have a 3 day old backup of the /Users directory and I had just backed up my iPhoto library to 5 DVDs which now reside safely in the safe deposit box. So, if MacResQ isn't able to resurrect it for me and transfer my data to the new disk I haven't lost anything important. Considering this is the second major hard disk crash I have had this year — the first was in my desktop, which meant reinstalling everything on two brand new 120GB Seagate drives — I'm feeling pretty lucky.

Rambling...

I've been off the road for a long time now. Since returning home from a very busy and crazy Q1 my life has been pretty low-key. One short trip to NYC for work at the beginning of May, but otherwise I've been working in solitary confinement. Er, from my home office.

Don't get me wrong, I like working from home. However, when I work from home for weeks and weeks on end it gets BORING! I like seeing other people and getting out of the house. It truly sucks when you roll off the couch at night, head up to bed and realize you haven't showered, changed clothes or left the house all day long! In fact, I haven't shaved in weeks since I haven't had to see any clients recently! Of course, that will change on Wednesday when I have to drive to Alpharetta to see a client.

I am getting back on the road in a few weeks, however, my travel schedule is going to be brutal. Usually I'm in a city for at least 3 nights, usually 4. However, on this trip I will be in 4 cities a week for two weeks.

ATL - EWR
NY Penn Station - Philadelphia (Amtrak)
Philadelphia - Washington D.C. (Amtrak)
DCA - BOS
BOS - ATL
ATL - TPA
TPA - MIA
MIA - CLT
CLT - ATL

Florida, one of my least favorite places to go any time of year but especially in the summer, should be hot as balls in the latter half of June. Yay.

Last Saturday I took the CISSP exam. When I left the exam I felt like I did pretty well. As the day went on my confidence level dropped further and further. Steph and I have had a lot of stuff going on in our personal life lately which has kept me occupied mentally and cut into some of my studying time. Not to mention all of the training and travel for the Hike for Discovery... I figured I'd do a lot of reading during our travel to and from Arizona. Things didn't work out quite as I had planned though. I used the tests at cccure.org to supplement my studying, however, when I took the test I didn't feel as if the questions I studied with accurately represented what was on the test. In some cases the material online was much more difficult, in other cases it seemed like entirely different material. Hopefully I'll find out in a week or so if I passed so I can add a few more semi-random letters after my name in all of my professional correspondence.

Enough rambling for one night... time to fight the insomnia and try to sleep. Where's that bottle of Ambien anyway...?

Monday, May 22, 2006

Pink Taco?

No, it's not what you think.

When we were in Scottsdale we passed by a restaurant being built called Pink Taco. Mark and I both commented on the name, finding it out of place for the chic suburbs. I promptly forgot about it.

While watching Saturday Night Live they made mention of the Pink Taco and the problems they are having with the local community in Scottsdale. Of course this reminded me about the restaurant and prompted me to post.

Do I have anything to add to this? No. I just think its a pretty damn funny name for a restaurant. Or a strip club with a Mexican theme.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Frappr

As is usually the case, the night before a big... anything really... I can't fall asleep. Instead I found Frappr and mapped out all of the places I have been in the time I've been at Foundstone. Some was for fun, most for work, but I've been a lot of places in the past 15 months!