Jeremy Wall - Diary

Greets and an update

Heya folks had a spare moment at work here so I thought I'd take the time to update you all.

Today is my 8 year anniversary of marriage to the cutest little pixie you ever did see. Thanks for a great 8 years, Hon. I pray we have many more. Work keeps sailing along and I enjoy it very much. They all like to tease me about open source here but I take it all in stride. I will get them to see the light eventually. :-)

Well it's time for me to get some more work done so I'll have to update some more later on. see ya!

the poor motherboard

It seems my motherboard has gone the way of the dodo. It is in a work kaput. It sings in the choir celestial. It has gone into that great network in the sky. It is in point of fact dead. So until such time as I get my system working again you may be seeing less of me for a while. I don't have a whole lot of time at work to post on here. :-)

ok the promised new entry on the job

I haven't worked a day which wasn't at least ten hours. the avreage is about 11 to 12 hours in a day. 15 hours aren't at all uncommon. The work is fun if a bit frustrating at times.

I will have potential to excercise my unix networking skills, my programming skills, and learn more about each as I continue in the job. I am mostly doing computer maintenance and backups on machines at the moment. We go to each school and clean up and repair the machines there. Basically just get them ready to go for the school year. A lot of spyware andware and viruses are the norm. The average user really has no idea what they put their poor machine through as they go about their daily online lives. I've seen machines so infested they take an hour to finish booting. Some machines are unfixable and have to be wiped and reloaded. The data in those situations is usually not recovered. Luckily the company is taking steps to cut down on what the users are allowed to do in an attempt cut down on some of it.

So there you have it. The current lowdown on my job. not its time to go vegetate and let my brain recover from the past three weeks.

just checking in...

don't want to let ya think I'm ignoring the place. **jeremy starts tidying up a bit**

Been workin a LOT so haven't had time to post **jeremy hides the dirty clothes under the mattress**

Just wanted to let ya know I've been busy relearning a lot of windows networking stuff. **jeremy sweeps the dust under the rug**

hmmmm that should hold er for a while **jeremy dusts off his hands and goes back to his email**

** julie comes behind jeremy and pulls out clothes, does the laundery and sweeps up the dust**

Julie - MEN!!!!!!

I just want to say.....

That if any of my family or friends EVER installs or downloads HotBar or any of its cousins I will personally FDISK their hard drive and leave it that way.

LOL I just spent my whole day digging through the windows registry on multiple computers uninstalling that insidiouse little peice of hellspawn and I'm thoroughly disgusted with the experience.

P.S. I bet ya thought I was kidding about the fdisk didn't ya? .............

WELL I WASN'T So let that be a warning to you.

More about the job

Yesterday was a 20 hour day. Today promising to be a little more normal. Summer is the busy season around here since most of the clients are schools. I'm enjoying the work right now despite the fact that it is really just a glorified janitor job for computer harddrives. You do still find the challenging user who somehow managed to mangle their OS beyond all recognition. It looks like I will be seeing some opportunities for coding too. They are looking for updates to there help\trouble ticket site and also for new utilities to help automate some of the more routine maintenance tasks, not to mention the need for a unified way of keeping hardware and software inventory lists for each school in a central and easily accessible location.

Once I have settled in enough I also plan to start pushing the use of alternative browsers and email clients such as firefox and thunderbird. Some of these computers have been heavily infested with spyware and viruses. The winner of the week so far? a computer from office number 38 with a grand total of 450+ viruses at final count.

Well so long for now I'll keep you folks updated as I can.

The Job Details

So, I'm sitting here at work. Its only 7pm and I have a long day ahead of me still. I've already been working for over 12 hrs.

We are cleaning up and setting up on the network all the computers for this particular school. Viruses are abundant, adware is everywhere, and everyone of the computers had this insidious app called GoBack. It is suppose to take your computer back to a previouse state when things go wrong. WE DON'T WANT it to do that. The solution? get rid of it. That's when things get messy. It just so happens that GoBack doesn't like to be gotten rid of. Some of the people tried to do it manually without the uninstall. BIG MISTAKE. It seems that this program maintains itself in the MBR and keeps a mini partition with all its data. If you didn't uninstall it just right then you have to fdisk to get rid of it. Luckily we managed to solve the problem and get a method to remove it safely. So that a day in my Work Life. Now I have to start a windows update so I'll catch ya later.

I'm definitely getting better at this

I did that in 1.5 days. It would have taken me a few weeks before and still not have looked as good.

Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.

I have an interview

I have a job interview on monday. General Data Systems called regarding my Monster resume. Who knows this may pan out. Keep it in your prayers.

My creative outlet II

Here is the next iteration in the WIP I presented earlier. I am almost ready to start posing him and put him in a setting that does him justice. Click on the image for a slightly larger version.

The Little Old Man

I have started a story tradition in my family. It was somewhat inadvertantly. It all started when we had a power outage at the house several months ago. I told the kids a story before bedtime. It was a story about the little old man. His name is unspellable (I'll explain later). I had no idea the story would be so popular though. The next night they demanded another story. Specifically they demanded a little old man story. The Little Old Man, it seemed, was a hit. The plots are simple ones. Most of them are about everyday things but with a twist. Things like washing the car, going grocery shopping, or getting a haircut (last nights plot) form the kernel of the story. I don't tell them every night anymore. Mostly because I can't come up with enough ideas for an everynight occurence. The stories are one of the most sought after rewards for our kids. Oh yeah, I promised an explanation about his name. His Name is the musical note middle C. His whole family has musical notes for names. Don't ask me why. It just came to me when I started the story.

Last night they demanded another Little Old Man Story. The kids have a cousin visiting and they wanted the cousin to hear one of the stories. So I set them all down in the living room.

"What are the rules for the Little Old Man Story", I asked. My children know the Rules by Heart and follow them faithfully. If they don't then they wont hear the whole story. Like a chorus. My Two oldest shout out. "Be Still and Be Quiet during the story unless you ask us a question, or helping you make sound effects." My stories are interactive. Lots of sound effects and I ask the kids questions all through the story. Their answers can even affect the story in some pretty strange ways.

Then the story began. For roughly 20 minutes I had a rapt audience. The end result of the night? I have a new fan of the Little Old Man Stories.

So I've been busy this last week...

In the last week, I have written a cross platform pure perl HTTP server framework. I also integrated my cgi module into the framework. This allows me to run minimalist cgi applications off of the local loopback network of a pc. All of which means I can now use html to design GUI's for simple desktop applications in perl.

The only problem now is... my brain hurts.

The Perl Secretary Part Deux

Earlier I posted on my desire for a truly useful personal management application. Well as I pondered the subject further I came up with a mechanism for such an application. Exactly how do we accomplish that forbidding wishlist anyway? Scripts (no not programming scripts, theatre scripts, with a twist). What we need are dynamic Theatre scripts. THink of your life as a series of stories or Plays, Each area of our life is for the most part governed by unwritten scripts. A single event usually triggers a script and subsequent events may alter the scripts but our actions and expectations are still governed by these scripts. The scripts are learned as we grow up and live. For instance one of the scripts we learn as a child is the daily routine script. Get up, eat breakfast, brush teeth, play, eat lunch.... and so on till bedtime. This script is triggered by the wake up event in our lives. Daily routines are scripts for our life. There are larger scripts too though. For instance there is the Vacation Script, or the "I just got fired" script. Each event starts a script which we follow making minor or major adjustments to the script as we go.

Now we come to the result of my epiphany. What if there were an app that knew our scripts? And not only knew them but also learned as it participated in the play that is our life. What about a Personal Organizer that could be just like that personal secretary. Personal Secretaries are indespensible because they can learn our scripts for how we do things and then automate some of those tasks in order to assist us. They also adapt when we change the script. In short I want a Personal Manager app that knows and learns my scripts.

I'm feeling antsy

I want to code something really interesting that's not related to my current business project . Anyone got a suggestion?

Moi? on PAUSE?

I am now a "registered perl developer" as they say. I am registered on the Perl Author Upload Server (PAUSE for short) . Admittedly it wasn't that difficult to get in. Still it is somewhat fun to be in there. :-)

The Great Clog War

It all started with a family dinner. The turkey was was cooking downstairs, the Ham glaze was boiling on the stove, and the potatoes were being peeled at the sink. But down below lurking in the pipes a phantom menace awaited. Suddenly shrieks came from the kitchen! The sink wasn't draining. The clog had struck!

The mighty men of the Bromley clan sprang into action. Plungers were obtained and various implements to plug the sink put into action. One after the other tried their hand at the plunger. It was no use. All too quickly we realized that stronger measures were necessary. A snake was obtained and the drain trap removed. Down and down went the snake. 5 feet, 10 feet, 15 feet. Through clog after clog we plowed. This was no simple skirmish, It was a full blown invasion. The clog army had obviously been massing a force for some time. This called for the heavy artillery. The various heads of the Bromley clan families conferred and decided a trip to Home Depot for supplies was in order. The men all piled into the van and headed out. We needed a pipe balloon. This was the heavy equipment in the home plumbers toolbox. The balloon is attached to a garden hose and then inserted into the pipe. When the water is turned on the balloon expands against the walls of the pipe forming a watertight seal and building water pressure in the pipe.

We returned with the balloon and inserted it into the pipe. Shortly after turning on the water we heard shrieks from the basement. The pressure had blown open a loose drain access in the kitchen drain stack. Clog parts were everywhere and we declared victory. this was only the beginning though. The clog sooned regrouped farther down and resumed blocking the pipes. There was only one thing to do, use the balloon again. We inserted the balloon in the access point this time and again turned on the water. Pressure began building until water shot up through the Washing machine drain pipe. We had pushed the clog army further down. It was now cornered just past the junction of the kitchen stack and the washing machine drain pipe. The system was now useable but slow. We refused to give up. Another planning session was held and a plan of action was hammered out. Schematics examined and water flow calculations abounded. Finally another trip to Home Depot was made and an even larger version of the pipe balloon was obtained. This time we were going all out. The smaller balloon was put in the washing machine drain pipe and the larger balloon was inserted in the floor drain access. We were ready. The water was turned on and we all waited with baited breath. 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes after 5 minutes we turned off the water and examined the results. The clog had finally been forced into the main sewer outflow. however it was still slow. We had gotten as far as we could. The rest would require professional help. We had managed to make the sinks and toilets useable though.

When the Bromley clan gets together the women bond over jigsaw puzzles, card games and conversation. The men bond over plumbing, computers, and car repairs.

Melancholy

I'm feeling melancholy. No apparent reason, I just am.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas everyone. We are having a wonderful time here. Family from my Wifes side is visiting and our kids as usual have more than they needed to receive.

Other than that nothing more to report.

My wifes RSS feed

My wife is using the Blogging Code I wrote for my old site. She is also hosting the Blog on Brinkster still. Which brings me to the problem. Brinkster just recently started putting ad's on the free pages. That's acceptable since they offer free ASP hosting with MSACCESS DB's however the ad code which gets sent out with every page request now causes her RSS Feed to be invalid. I am obviously going to have to move her site sometime soon and convert it over to MT. Oh well just one more thing I have to do :-(

3Lb's 14oz's....

Please welcome to the world Noelle Arwen Wall!!! She was born today at 6:28pm. She is doing fine despite her small size. Breathing on her own with no health problems. I am sorry mom, I don't have a length for you yet. Ill post it in the comments when I do. She is very small but healthy and I don't anticipate any unexpected difficulties. She will have to stay in the NICU ward for several weeks for monitoring just to make sure no unexpected problems arrive.

And of course I have pictures:

Even a short video!!

Update:
She measured at 17 1/2 inches long.

We held on as long as we could

But that leak in my wife's water has officially gushed. Were off to the hospital again this time I'm sure we will be coming back with a Baby.

We're back

I'm back from the hospital with my wife. The amniotic sac has a small leak but it looks like it's not enough to threaten the baby at the moment. So we can last a little longer. That's good because the baby could really use some more time to grow. Anyway both of us feel much better after our nap this afternoon. Thanks much for the prayers. They worked as always.

Hospital update

Well spent all last night at the hospital. Her water is definitely leaking but not totally broken. She is under observation at the moment. According to ultrasound her amniotic fluid level is at the borderline between dangerously low and normal. The good news is according to the ultrasound The baby is farther along than we thought and weighs roughly 4lbs 10 ounces which is much closer to a safe weight than we first thought.

Time to go back to hospital now. I'll update more when I can.

Hospital visit?

Well were off to the hospital. My wife's water may just have broken. Pray for us its to early for the safest delivery for the baby.