End of Another Year...

It is nearly time to bid adieu to 2010, and greetings and salutations to 2011.

I hope to find more time to read, and perhaps to begin writing. There is a pent up novel buried inside of me, and I need to find a way of extracting it.

I hope for a good 2011 for my close and extended family and friends.

Minions!

I want a huge crew of my own minions! Only if they are the 1 and 2 eyed variants as seen on the movie "Despicable Me" which opened in theaters last weekend. What a good movie! It had plenty of good stuff in it for the kids and the not so kids who paid for the tickets, popcorn, drinks, games and the gas to get to the theater.

Go see it!!

Time flies...

Well, I guess maybe it's true, time flies when you're having fun. I've been having fun, and looked and haven't posted in a LONG time.

Let's see, what to talk about, I guess a status update is in order:

• Family: wonderful! Awesome! Great!
• Job: uh, I'm getting redundant. Job is fine. I like what I do. I'm the CISO - and have 5 great people working with me.
• Little League board: I either quit or was fired. Not sure which one. Doesn't matter, as I switched Trav to another league that was AWESOME. He played on an 8 & under team - the Rice Owls, who won 1 tournament, placed 2nd in another, and placed second in their division.
• Cat: Cookie is still doing well. We also have 2 semi-feral cats outside that we feed and try to take care of.

I have a nutty friend named Tricia that started blogging yesterday, so I thought that maybe I should flex my writing muscles a bit and post to my blog. Once or twice a year isn't too much to ask I don't think. I still need to clear out the cobwebs and write my novel. No idea what to write about, but I want to write. I like to write. I do it a lot for work, mostly security policy or guidance, but I need to write some prose.

Perhaps I'll get a pseudonym and spend some time flowing words onto a virtual page. I think it might do my mind a bunch of good.

Signing off for now,

K

Long time no post.

Much has been afoot recently.

Let's run it down since July of 2008.

• My boss retired
• I was made acting
• I took a very stressful class
• My common law wife and I separated
• I hired a lawyer
  
• I filed for divorce
  
• I met the love of my life
• I was made the boss of my unit
• Fired my first lawyer
• My brother moved to Austin
• Hired a good lawyer
• My mom moved to Pflugerville

Just a few things going on. Nothing too much.

Looking forward to the divorce being finalized, then everything else will begin falling into place.

I really need to get things in order in my life. I look forward to the future for the first time in years!

Big Kahuna

Well, it's only been 4 months since I posted, but I *JUST* got my desktop PC back up and running, and what was the first thing I do? Post in my blog? No. Start applying Microsoft patches. Sheesh. SP3 is downloading right now.

My big kahuna reference is to the fact that I was elected to the board of the little league that my son plays on. Yay me!

I get to go next week and find out what my needed skillset will be - but I think it's going to be keeping the website updated. OOOPS. Hope they don't see my blog. :)

Holy Crap

It's been a LONG time since I've posted in here. I guess I should remedy that sometime.

Have a Good Jump Mr. Knievel!

It's a sad day for a boy who grew up watching Evel Knievel jump over buses, fountains, and and an attempt at a gorge in the 70's and 80's.

Mr. Knievel was 69, and was as much a rock star as a superhero to me. He was a true bad ass, and my eyes are a bit misty just remembering the old days. Godspeed Evel!

I'm certifiable

I spent the bigger part of the week in a class learning about security methodologies. I'm now NSA IAM/IEM certified, which means that I've learned a good methodology for undertaking INFOSEC assessments and evaluations.

It was one of the better classes that I've taken for the INFOSEC part of my career.

On another tact, wii got a Wii recently. My arm is sore from playing baseball with the little guy, and it's a lot of fun. Can't wait for some new games for Christmas.

RSVP, Dumbass

Planning a party is sometimes fun. (Even for a 5 year old's birthday.)

Presents are picked, a location is (finally) settled on, and invitations are sent. An email address and an omni-present cell phone number are included - with a request to RSVP.

What's the etymology of the acronym R.S.V.P.? Well, Wiktionary has this to say:

From French, Répondez s'il vous plaît In France.

Simply translated to English, even Texan, it means "Hey dumbass, tell me if you're bringing your spawn to the freaking party or not, or I might not give them or your gimlet ass anything to eat or drink if you show up without letting me know. Oh yeah, don't call me 30 minutes before the party, asking if you can bring three siblings of your little darling - as their father can't watch them because the big game is on and you know, he likes him some beers."

Somehow, I doubt that my definition will make into any "Miss Manners" type books.

The main reason for the RSVP request is so I can forecast the amount of pizza to buy. I don't want to have 6 pies standing by, getting cold to have 3 kids and 3 adults show up. I loves me some pizza, but the fridge won't hold 5 pies.

I'm sure it's going to either be feast or famine. 4 kids will show, or 17. I'm booked for 10. So probably more will show up and I'll end up coughing up $10 per head additional to get them admitted to the place, and will run out of food in 5 minutes.

I just hope the little guy has fun.

Tis the season

Allergy season, that is. Ragweed is rampant in the Central Texas area, and everybody in the family is feeling it one way or another except for the cat.

I spent the day getting ready for tomorrow. What's happening tomorrow you might ask? Go ahead... ask.

Not much. Taking kidlet to a birthday party and an expo put on by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. I had to do a lot in prep however. About 2 weeks ago, crossing a railroad track on Duval street near Mopac, I somehow destroyed the right front tire on my Batmobile. Knowing that those tires are as hard to come by as a virgin at UT, I was expecting to have to shell out about a buck fifty each for new front shoes. Ended up that Tire Rack had them online, for $79 each. I got 2. Had one mounted last week, for $28 at a place that a friend guaranteed me wouldn't charge more than $7.

NTB does it for anybody for $11.50. *Shrug*

I got my tires done, oil changed, car aligned - after NTB said that my car wasn't "alignable" I drove a block to Sears who did it.

I'm going to be getting up now in 7 hours to go out in the sun, wearing my Austin Bass Fishing T-shirt, to see what kind of outdoorsy mischief I can find... Then take mini-me to the bday party at the mini-golf place. Yay. I hope they serve beer there.

Mmmmmm... beeeeeeer.

More Old Skool

I remember when Doom came out -- wow. I got the demo - that allowed a user to play one level, and was hooked. My buddy Ed and I would both play almost all night long, then talk about the game after classes at Del Mar College.

I'd been playing it for about a month - mostly all late nights, when I realized that the game was affecting my brain. I was walking down the hallway at the Del Mar Business Building - where 90% of my classes were taught. I came to a corner, and rather than just casually negotiating the turn, and continuing on to whatever mundane location I was going to, I stopped, leaned my head out and checked for monsters. I was shocked. It's like the sort of realization one might have if they found themselves on a blustery afternoon, and realize they are standing in the bedroom wearing women's underwear. (Unless you are actually of the womanly persuasion. That's probably not as funny as it seemed in my head a second ago.)

Finally, Ed and I were eating lunch one day and I came clean. (Not about transvestitism!) I told him about checking for monsters around the corners and he was shocked! He was doing the same thing!!! Ah, symbiosis. I didn't feel quite so bad or abnormal any more. (Not like either one of us was or is so normal.)

I don't play many games these days. The rigors of work, home life and a nearly 5 year old make it impractical. I don't really miss it - hell, I'm sleepy at 9pm. The pressure of getting up and going to work are a bit different from the choice I made of never having a class before 10am. When I do play, it's usually a benign strategy game, like something from the Command and Conquer genre, or my latest, jigsaw puzzles online. How boring. Nothing like a giant monster coming screaming at you through the CRT, blood dripping from its fangs, making a sound through the headphones that makes you want to scream and run and causes you to pee a little.

Ah, good times.

Old School Nerds

I was reminiscing the other day - the way that old men do... (I turned 40 in July) My nostalgia trip took me to computers. Remembering my first computer - a Franklin PC compatible thing with dual 360K floppy drives and a CGA "color" monitor. No mouse, no modem, no Ethernet NIC... No Internet. How boring. It was an 8088, with 512K of RAM. I learned to use DOS 3.3, and could make that OS sing.

Eventually, I BOUGHT a new computer -- a 386sx with a VGA monitor, and the upgrading began.

I used to read a magazine called Computer Shopper, which I don't think exists any more. It was the ultimate computer magazine for hobbyists. It was about 2" thick, and was about 40 pages of articles and about 400 pages of ads from computer companies that sold either complete systems or parts. Oh, what parts!

It was like being a kid with the Sears Wish Book - I recall poring over the newsprint pages, dog-earing the pages of companies where I could get something for $4 less than some other place. It was crazy - ordering parts from 7 different companies and then (before being able to track shipments online) trying to be patient whilst waiting for the packages to arrive.

You could tell what was going on if I was walking down the hall with "Shopper" tucked under my arm. Somebody'd better light a match.

I remember buying used a 1200 baud modem to get online on BBS's. Paid probably $100 for it. Nothing like the screech of the modem as you connected up at a blazing 12oo baud. Eventually, I ended up running a BBS called "The Circuit Board" in Corpus Christi, Tx. Max speed 14.4kbps, running on a Practical Peripherals modem. Ah, good times. I learned to program a bit in C, got the source code and modded the board to meet my needs. I had fun with it for a few years, until it turned into a job, at which point, I stopped doing it. Most of my users ended up being little 15 year old anarchists and people looking to leech porn pics, which I didn't offer up on the BBS.

The hobbyist in me began to die out, and I wanted to actually use my computer without having to wait for a BBS user to hang up. There was that wonderful F9 key that simulated line noise and dropped the connection.

Eventually, when I was attending classes at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, (or it may have been Corpus Christi State University at the time) I was given a shell account on a DEC Alpha, and the ability to get on the internet. Oh. My. God. What a cornucopia of access that presented to me. I learned to use Lynx to "surf" the web. All in Text. I thought that was so ultimately cool.

I would someday like to present Lynx to a "power" user here at work and see what they can do with it. I was really intrigued by this new "net" thingy. I guess this is before I knew it was the intarwebs.

Not sure what the first time I encountered a true graphical web browser was, but it was at work - using Netscape, and Chameleon TCP/IP on probably a Windows For Workgroups machine. How fun. It took 2 of us to get it to work. We didn't know ANYTHING about TCP/IP - being a Novell shop. If it were IPX or SPX, it would have taken me 4 minutes. We had a fractional T-1 running at 56K. It was SO FAST. When I left we had a 10 meg pipe.

-more later-

Me from Springfield.

Sad / Happy

One of my nephews, Brian is moving with his wife, Taylor to Chicago. Home of da Cubs and da Bears.

Even though I only see them a couple of times a year, it has always been comforting that they lived here in town. I'm going to miss them. They are a very bohemian pair, and I really respect that they are their own people. They had a very cool wedding - the first one that I ever took photos of - at the French Legation in Austin. I've enjoyed seeing them at various venues where Brian's band played.

I wish upon them maximum happiness, and hope that they can find the place they need to be. It's with sadness that they are going, but I admire their spirit, and it makes me happy that they are willing to embark on an adventure.

So to Brian and Taylor - I salute you and wish you a great adventure!

Yay

I finally got to go fishing yesterday. I got maybe 10 minutes of fishing between 2 different lakes. Frapping rain.

Weather woes

DAMN. More rain.

The day after my 40th birthday, a day scheduled off for a day of fishing, and I get up to find that the rain is coming down again. Shit. A low pressure system is stalled over Central Texas AGAIN. What the hell? Is this what it's like to live in Seattle? The only "rain gear" I have is a battered golf umbrella stashed in my trunk.

As soon as Academy opens, I'm going up to buy a rain poncho, and I'm going fishing. I don't give a crap if it rains, I don't give a good shit if I get wet. I have put aside fishing for about 2 months now for this shit, and I'm TIRED of it. Most of the lakes around here are closed because of the high water levels and debris in the water.

Nothing funny to write. I'm just trying to keep the cussing to a minimum. On a fun note, yesterday being my birthday and all, we went shooting which was muchly fun. I started getting back in the groove a bit, compensating for some "off" sights on my pistol, and putting together some decent groupings for not having shot in about 3 years. Next time, I'm going to rent an M-4 (M-16) for 8 bucks plus the cost of ammo. I can't wait.

The Classics

I've taken a keen interest in making sure my 4.75 year old clone is exposed to the classics. I think that it's very critical in any child's life to make sure they have a good education and that includes watching cartoons that were my favorites when I was growin' up in South Texas.

I was in the kitchen cooking, and 2.0 was in the living room watching Boom - a cartoon channel that shows oldies but goodies. Tom & Jerry was on, all pretty innocuous, right? Cartoon on cartoon animal violence never hurt anybody, right?

I am not paying micromanagement level attention, and then I hear the song "How Dry I Am." 2.0 is in the other room, laughing at the way the cat was walking after drinking out of the jug marked "XXX." So what MGM presented to my young-un is a cat getting shit-faced, then being chased by a VERY stereotypical black woman. We're talking "Mammy" from Gone With the Wind.

I seriously doubt that anybody outside of Trey Parker and Matt Stone could create such a cartoon these days. People would be shocked. I guess it all comes down to being from a different time and place.

Oh well, back to watching cartoons with him while dinner cooks. I keep saying "Oh, I love this one!"

PS: nothing like explaining to him why Droopy's fleas were smoking cigarettes.

Wii are not amused

I'm not a gamer. Or a gomer as my keyboard wants me to type.

Yesterday, I thought "hey, on the way home, I'll swing by Worst Purchase and pick up a Nintendo Wii." Yeah, a likely thought. The young gentleman who is barely shaving scoffed at me like I was a naive schoolgirl asking for tickets to see the Beatles on their first invasion tour of America. "Uh, they sell out in like, minutes." Ok dude. Sorry to harsh on your buzz.

I said "Ok, well that doesn't make any sense - the hype should be over -- the Wii has been out for months." And was told that they only get 4 or 5 units a week. Ok, I began wondering, just how hard is this quest going to be? I thought it would be simple to just get online and order one, and that would be that. Sheah, right, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

I might have better luck getting an Iphone. Yes, I spelled it incorrectly, as a direct slap in the face of any jerk-off who put his life on hold for X days to stand in a queue (yeah, said like a Brit) to get one of these shiny, pretty little things. Are we monkeys? Are we so dazzled by shiny bits of technology that we are willing to stand in line for DAYS to get one? Excuse me, waiter, I'd like a break.

Maybe instead of getting my son a Wii to play with, I'll start him off with a .22 caliber rifle. I bet it'd be a WHOLE LOT more fun... (Maybe not for his mom) and he'd get street cred at the daycare. By the time he's 10, he'd have a whole arsenal at his disposal. Instead of going to WallyWorld to buy the latest game, he and I could try out hand-loading of armor piercing ammunition.

I bet if he ever went postal -- nobody in the media could ever claim that it was because he was addicted to video games.

"Unthinkable"

I heard this term the other day in a teaser for a news story on the radio. "And in a few minutes, a story that involves the unthinkable."

Ok, I have a very vivid imagination. I can conceptualize nearly anything. Don't taunt me with an absolute like "unthinkable." Of course, it got the creative gears turning. What could the story be about? Cannibalism? Nah. Something to do with a kid being hurt by a loved one? Probably. It's unconscionable, but not unthinkable. I don't choose to think about it because it makes me so angry and sad. Of course, I never heard the story, but the term stuck in my mind.

Fast forward about 2 days. Some muscle head "professional" wrestler kills his wife, son, and then himself somewhere around Atlanta. I simply can't fathom what could make a father kill his own son. I'm saddened by this. If he would have killed himself, and left the others alone, it would be sad, but by a factor of 10 less than the situation as it stands.

This is the sort of thing - that just thinking about it makes me want to leave the office, go to my son's daycare and pick him up, hug him, and come back to work.

Maybe it is unthinkable. Simply because I won't let myself.

Oooohhh... HDTV

I recently bought a device called the Pinnacle PCTV-HD Pro. It's a USB stick that you attach to your computer, and an antenna or cable to the other side of the stick and you can watch TV on your laptop. Not just any TV, HIGH DEFINITION TV.

I've been avoiding HDTV for a few years. It was too expensive. WAY too expensive. Well, last night I watched the last game of the NBA finals on a laptop - in high def. First, I'm not a basketball fan. You could go so far as saying that I dislike basketball. The ONLY reason I watched was not that San Antonio was playing and they are a semi-home-team for Austin, but because it was the only feed on that was HD at the time. (Doctor Who was on PBS, but in standard def. Yech.) I mean, why watch something that is cerebral, that I love, nicely acted by Christopher Eccleston, when I could watch a bunch of sweaty mans run back and forth a wooden floor chasing an orange ball.

I am now totally engrossed in HDTV. As Mike Myers as Wayne Campbell in the movie Wayne's World said, "It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine." I'm only afraid that now HD will become my Moby Dick, my holy grail, my obsession.

First off, I have to build a mental justification model for the upgrade. My experience over the last 20 years in the IT industry gives me great comparison models to use. "It's like EGA versus VGA" and "It's going to reduce eye strain" (That one is used to justify the purchase of LCD monitors to replace CRTs.)

I suppose that since my truck will be paid off next month that I cannot allow myself to spend the $481 per month that I'm not paying for it on things like, oh I don't know, paying off credit card debt, and instead will go into debt for a new TV and an upgrade to DISH network.

Well, I gotta save this post now and go check the Circuit City and Best Buy webpages.