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a not-so-small update
So its been a while since I did a life update. I do these from time to time for both the benefit of my friends that I don’t get to see face-to-face often, my acquaintances that like to keep track of me for some bizarre reason and for myself as a way to evaluate how my life has changed over time. I actually post quite a bit but that is in “diary” mode and are private just to me. After all, to me a journal is usually private. Livejournal is nice in that it allows me to do that very well and have it accessible almost anywhere I have a network connection. The “live” part of it is an interesting aspect that i’m still trying to get a better handle on for my own purposes.
I was officially hired into a permanent position at the Rollin School of Public Health at Emory University. My title is “Lead Applications Developer/Analyst” for what that is worth. I’m under the Information Services department and I am currently assigned to the BioStatistics group concentrating on building them a computational cluster. The job isn’t too bad and I have flex time so if I need to run an errand or two I can do that. And I get a copule of weeks of vacation (not that I have clue what to do with them). And I get sick leave which I *do* need on occasion. I also managed to a 3% pay increase over my existing salary. This puts it on par with the job offer at AMI that I turned down. I’m not ready for management positoin and I definitely think that if I’m going back to industry that they should pay me much more than academia.
Finally getting the apartment to the point where I’m happy with it. I moved alll my comics into the 3rd bedroo that the roommate used to occupy. I need to put a spare bed back there though since having guests always sleep on the futons isn’t always practical and definitely not very private.
I desparately need to go through all the crap that was in my offices at Clayton and GA TEch and throw away stuff that I’m not going to use anymore. Tons of PhD papers that just aren’t relevant anymore to say the least. And receipts for stuff that is either long gone or out of warranty anyway. I think I’m going to purchase a fileing cabinet since a lot of the stuff that I have really belongs in one of those. Emory has a surplus store that sells them rather cheap so that is a good thing.
I need to take my kitty to the vet. I’m sure I missed the last year’s checkup and I don’t want to miss it again. She’s getting a bit heavy so I’ve put her on a diet. However, I want a vet’s opinion as I’m not qualified to say anything other than “she’s gotten heavier”. Also, she’s now having more issues with hairballs. But she seems to have a lot more fur than she used to so I’m hoping that its directly proportional. She eats a cat food that helps reduce hairballs but I’ll want to still hear the vet’s opinoin. And speaking of the Vet, I need one in the Tucker Area. I used to go to the Cat Care hospital over in Smyrna/Marietta area but that is a long haul from Tucker and my kitty doesn’t really like cat carriers. And I need to get a new cat carrier. The old one is way too small for Lieutenant so I donated it to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zorathenne for her kitty, Ivy. And I suspect a new one of the right size is going to cost about $50 at the minimum. Pets can be so expensive.
I managed to go to IKEA for the second time and escaped with a bill < $150. I picked up three pine side tables for my living room area. At $20 a piece, they make great places for folks to roll dice during a role playing session. I'll probably go back and pick up a fourt so that both my sofa and my love seat have flanking tables. I also picked up 12 plates with matching bowls and glasses at $0.50 each. Add to that a set of 8 red wine glasses as well as some highball glasses for the serious drinks. I still need to get some shot glasses though as the assorted collection just ain't cutting it when I have guests over for parties. And probably a few more flutes for the nice champagne and maybe even a few brandy sniffers for single malt scotch which I admire so well.
I have slowly ditched most of the CRTs that I used in favor of LCD panels. Great deals of LCDs from Dell has given me a 19" and a 20.1" widescreen for my primary home machines. I got 17" or 15 LCDs on the rest. I'm gonna sell a few 21" CRTs that I have to try to recoup some of the money spent on the LCDs. They are great monitors, Dell P1110 capable of very high crisp resolutions but I just dont't have the desk space to handle them. They sell for $150 plus shipping on ebay so I'll try to sell them locally for $150. I figure not paying shipping costs will make a lot of the local folks happy. I've also managed to ditch all computers < 500Mhz. Although I 2 500Mhz BookPCs that need new powersupplies or I'll hae to ditch them too. I planned on using them for servers but the non-standard parts are a royal pain when parts die down. So I'll probably end up ditching them or maybe finding a standard sized case to put them in if the motherboards will fit the mounts of a standard microATX/ATX case.
I'm about to bring a music server online as well. I've got 500GB of disk that is begging to be used. It'l be hosting all my CD collection in probably mp3 format but I'm also seriously considering ogg as its a better format (although not nearly as ubiquitous). The goal is to make up a collective of folks that store their music on the server but only music that they own. That way we all get access to our music without having to care around one of those blastd ipods or thumb drives. I envision on some perl scripts that will look at a music play list and automatically keep the next 4 songs cached in the list and probably the last 3 as well. Taht way as far as you are concerned. you have about an eight song window of your current spot in your playlist available at all times. This use up much less disc space and since its doing this transparently in the background, you should be ok. If you jump around in your list alot then it won't help but if you want to skip one or two songs you are fine. Its mainly for my own personal use but if others want to get in on it then I'll give them a personal FTP/SSH account for them to move files to the location. Although I much prefer to rip the CDs my self at my location to make sure that stuff is legit. but its absurd to ask you to do that if have already done that once.
I'm still playing Everquest and I've manaed to get both of my charactres to level 66. In addition, my rogue character is almost finished with the Planar Storyline Progression. He has to complete the three trials in the Halls of Honor and then he flagged for the elemental planes of Fire, Water, and Air. The guild will be scheduling some raids on the Tower of Solusek Ro to work on Elemental Plane of Fire. I might one day try to get my cleric flagged as well but I'm quite content to have him sit around drinking ale and reminiscing about the "Good Old Days". Even though they weren't always good :-)
Still happily dating the lovely and talentedzorathenne. I’m quite happy with our relationship. Its probably the healthiest one I’ve had to date. Not that its all that hard to improve up on those considering my track record :-) But things are progressing along quite nicely and we are feeling out what would take for a marriage to work for us. The least of which is me getting out of the massive debt hole that I was in following my divorce. The permanent job with an almost decent salary is a good step in this direction. Now all I need is time.
I was officially hired into a permanent position at the Rollin School of Public Health at Emory University. My title is “Lead Applications Developer/Analyst” for what that is worth. I’m under the Information Services department and I am currently assigned to the BioStatistics group concentrating on building them a computational cluster. The job isn’t too bad and I have flex time so if I need to run an errand or two I can do that. And I get a copule of weeks of vacation (not that I have clue what to do with them). And I get sick leave which I *do* need on occasion. I also managed to a 3% pay increase over my existing salary. This puts it on par with the job offer at AMI that I turned down. I’m not ready for management positoin and I definitely think that if I’m going back to industry that they should pay me much more than academia.
Finally getting the apartment to the point where I’m happy with it. I moved alll my comics into the 3rd bedroo that the roommate used to occupy. I need to put a spare bed back there though since having guests always sleep on the futons isn’t always practical and definitely not very private.
I desparately need to go through all the crap that was in my offices at Clayton and GA TEch and throw away stuff that I’m not going to use anymore. Tons of PhD papers that just aren’t relevant anymore to say the least. And receipts for stuff that is either long gone or out of warranty anyway. I think I’m going to purchase a fileing cabinet since a lot of the stuff that I have really belongs in one of those. Emory has a surplus store that sells them rather cheap so that is a good thing.
I need to take my kitty to the vet. I’m sure I missed the last year’s checkup and I don’t want to miss it again. She’s getting a bit heavy so I’ve put her on a diet. However, I want a vet’s opinion as I’m not qualified to say anything other than “she’s gotten heavier”. Also, she’s now having more issues with hairballs. But she seems to have a lot more fur than she used to so I’m hoping that its directly proportional. She eats a cat food that helps reduce hairballs but I’ll want to still hear the vet’s opinoin. And speaking of the Vet, I need one in the Tucker Area. I used to go to the Cat Care hospital over in Smyrna/Marietta area but that is a long haul from Tucker and my kitty doesn’t really like cat carriers. And I need to get a new cat carrier. The old one is way too small for Lieutenant so I donated it to
zorathenne for her kitty, Ivy. And I suspect a new one of the right size is going to cost about $50 at the minimum. Pets can be so expensive.I managed to go to IKEA for the second time and escaped with a bill < $150. I picked up three pine side tables for my living room area. At $20 a piece, they make great places for folks to roll dice during a role playing session. I'll probably go back and pick up a fourt so that both my sofa and my love seat have flanking tables. I also picked up 12 plates with matching bowls and glasses at $0.50 each. Add to that a set of 8 red wine glasses as well as some highball glasses for the serious drinks. I still need to get some shot glasses though as the assorted collection just ain't cutting it when I have guests over for parties. And probably a few more flutes for the nice champagne and maybe even a few brandy sniffers for single malt scotch which I admire so well.
I have slowly ditched most of the CRTs that I used in favor of LCD panels. Great deals of LCDs from Dell has given me a 19" and a 20.1" widescreen for my primary home machines. I got 17" or 15 LCDs on the rest. I'm gonna sell a few 21" CRTs that I have to try to recoup some of the money spent on the LCDs. They are great monitors, Dell P1110 capable of very high crisp resolutions but I just dont't have the desk space to handle them. They sell for $150 plus shipping on ebay so I'll try to sell them locally for $150. I figure not paying shipping costs will make a lot of the local folks happy. I've also managed to ditch all computers < 500Mhz. Although I 2 500Mhz BookPCs that need new powersupplies or I'll hae to ditch them too. I planned on using them for servers but the non-standard parts are a royal pain when parts die down. So I'll probably end up ditching them or maybe finding a standard sized case to put them in if the motherboards will fit the mounts of a standard microATX/ATX case.
I'm about to bring a music server online as well. I've got 500GB of disk that is begging to be used. It'l be hosting all my CD collection in probably mp3 format but I'm also seriously considering ogg as its a better format (although not nearly as ubiquitous). The goal is to make up a collective of folks that store their music on the server but only music that they own. That way we all get access to our music without having to care around one of those blastd ipods or thumb drives. I envision on some perl scripts that will look at a music play list and automatically keep the next 4 songs cached in the list and probably the last 3 as well. Taht way as far as you are concerned. you have about an eight song window of your current spot in your playlist available at all times. This use up much less disc space and since its doing this transparently in the background, you should be ok. If you jump around in your list alot then it won't help but if you want to skip one or two songs you are fine. Its mainly for my own personal use but if others want to get in on it then I'll give them a personal FTP/SSH account for them to move files to the location. Although I much prefer to rip the CDs my self at my location to make sure that stuff is legit. but its absurd to ask you to do that if have already done that once.
I'm still playing Everquest and I've manaed to get both of my charactres to level 66. In addition, my rogue character is almost finished with the Planar Storyline Progression. He has to complete the three trials in the Halls of Honor and then he flagged for the elemental planes of Fire, Water, and Air. The guild will be scheduling some raids on the Tower of Solusek Ro to work on Elemental Plane of Fire. I might one day try to get my cleric flagged as well but I'm quite content to have him sit around drinking ale and reminiscing about the "Good Old Days". Even though they weren't always good :-)
Still happily dating the lovely and talented
zorathenne. I’m quite happy with our relationship. Its probably the healthiest one I’ve had to date. Not that its all that hard to improve up on those considering my track record :-) But things are progressing along quite nicely and we are feeling out what would take for a marriage to work for us. The least of which is me getting out of the massive debt hole that I was in following my divorce. The permanent job with an almost decent salary is a good step in this direction. Now all I need is time.
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