Been a long time since the last diary entry. Haven't really been busy, just haven't had anything interesting to say, or didn't feel like writing one. But I'm still alive.
The Good News: I did a lot better this session of school. A- in English, B in Astronomy lab. Still waiting to hear on my grade for Astronomy lecture, but I just took the exam yesterday. My GPA doesn't look quite as bad now...once the lecture grade comes in I should be off academic warning, which is good...
The Bad News: I have the payoff amounts for all my school loans now. All told it ends up around $18k . Add up the loan for my truck and my credit card bill, turns out I'm over 45k in debt. Whee =) And I'm looking at buying a townhouse...heh heh.
Been very productive at work so far this week. Whacked out a lot of perl for the interface to the company LDAP directory. Net::LDAP's sorting routines are broken, so I wrote some code to do it for me. Slightly slower, but oh well. The day flies by when I am coding. I didn't realize how much I missed it - I have not done any serious long-term code projects for some time. Set up mod_perl on the webserver the interface is running, so it isn't dog-slow loading up anymore. LDAP is pretty nifty once you start to get the hang of it...of course, having one of the OpenLDAP developers as your coworker helps immensely :-)
My boss has given me the additional job title of "Keeper of the Munchies". Depending on the day, you can find mass quantities of Twizzlers, peanuts, various candies, Triscuits, and more. It keeps people coming to my cube and prevents me from getting too lonely. Right now I am down to just triscuits (I think I am the only one who eats those.) I bought a big bag of M&Ms at Price Club (Costco Warehouse to those of you who didn't know of it before the name change) and a ton of Gatorade. I have about 40 20oz bottles in my little fridge right now, I think the poor thing is going to have a coronary. I didn't see any twizzlers in obvious sight, so I guess I'll stop by Giant tomorrow morning and pick some up.
I was getting ready to leave work the other day when my boss came by and asked if I had a half hour. I said I was planning on leaving in about 5 minutes, then he asked me 'Do you want a raise?'. I made the half hour. :) Don't know how much yet, but very cool. Hopefully I will know when I get paid this Friday, but probably not. My mother has taken to calling me the 'little shit'. But she's happy for me. :)
Tomorrow I have an appointment for my new doctor. I haven't been to a doctor in over a year. I've had this guy appointed as my PCP (HMO, no PPO in this area for Cigna) since January, but I kept forgetting to make an initial appointment for a checkup. I fear what dire news he will give me. I'm horribly overweight and my blood chemistry must be aweful. Maybe he'll actually offer some decent advice. I hope I like the guy.
Went to the eye doctor's for a checkup today. I went two weeks ago for the annual exam. Cool thing is, with my new Vision insurance, I was able to get the two-week throwaway contacts instead of the 4 pairs a year deal, for about the same price. Today went in to make sure the new contacts were working ok. There was a new person there who was being trained. I don't know why, but every single employee in this office (other than the doctors) is an attractive looking woman. This one was no exception. My mother and the neighbor joke about how guys go there wanting to get their vision corrected so they can see them better.
Got my copy of Terminus over the weekend. I was one of the first 100 to pre-order so I should be getting a nifty poster soon. It was delivered Priority Mail and the box was mashed up quite a bit (they used one of those flimsy envelopes). The Terminus people are looking into what they can do (this is not an isolated problem). Installed fine under linux, when I went to run it, it crashed X. Turns out I need XF4 and DRI. I have it compiled, just need to install it and set up a new XF86Config. Installed it under Windows, too...looks pretty nice. Haven't had a chance to play it yet, though.
mazeone: :P