Call me Mr. MCDST

Well, I finally took the tests for Microsoft Certified Desktop Service Technician and passed them both, so now I am a Microsoft Certified Professional. It doesn't do much for me in my current job, except that studying for it was responsible for me getting the part time IT job with CM/IT.

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I'm in!

I got the CM/IT job I was interviewing for. I had to go to a couple of orientation sessions and take some certification tests but I passed everything and am ready to start working. Probably next week. I am also still working on the MS certification. I will take the first test next Tuesday. I postponed it once and have been using some self test software I purchased access to. This is helping me a lot so I hope the first test will go well. I do not want to have to take the tests more than once. One thing for sure, doing this studying made the certification tests for CM/IT a snap.

Serenity Rocks!

I have seen the new movie "Serenity" twice now and it is great! Gotta see it some more, not only because it is a great movie but because I have to support it so they can get the sequel. They are saying that to get a sequel, they will have to have $80M in US ticket sales. However, if they can make a sequel to "Deuce Bigelow", they can sure make a Serenity sequel. The numbers so far are here.

Just back from class

So I just spent a week taking a couple of MS classes to get my MCDST (Microsoft Certified Desktop Service Technician) cerification. The classes were interesting and now I have a little studying to do so I can take the tests, hopefully sometime next month. I would also like to take a look at the requirements for an A+ certification and see if I can also get that.

The fun part of doing these classes was they were given close to Brian's apartment so I went and stayed at this place for the week. We went bowling one evening and bought him a new mattress. Otherwise it was a pretty quiet week. I also got to see "House" and "CSI" in HD on his big TV.

These classes were paid for by the retraining money IBM gave me after I was "down sized" last year. I am also interviewing for a job with CMIT. I had a call today with them and will have a face-to-face interview on Wednesday. This is for a part-time job doing deskside support in Eastern Fairfield County, CT.

Summer's last gasp?

So today is one of the last (official) days of Summer '05. I wish it weren't so but at least we are having some of the most beautiful weather you could imagine for the holiday weekend. Today we took our kayaks out on Lake Lillinonah. It was ok but we don't like doing the big lakes and rivers like we do the small ones, where there are no speed boats and smoother waters. We did about 5 1/2 miles but had planned to go 9 miles down to Lake Zoar. However, we did not anticipate the dam between them (oops, who knew). So we went about 2/3 of the way to the dam and then came back.

Where the hell did the summer go?

Oh no, it is the end of August. I hate this time of year because I know that soon it will be too cool out to have our windows open at night and we will have to start putting the blankets back on the bed. Also, the leaves will start falling again and I will have to clean the yard.

One of the things I found at the Bridgewater Fair that should help with the leaf cleanup this year is the LG-BAGZ-IT leaf hauler. I am hoping it will be easier than using a blanket and wheelbarrow.

Today I spent a couple hours cleaning the gutters. Of course, they will be full of leaves again soon but at least I got the plants that were growing in them out. Actually, they probably contained a lot of good top soil. I was looking at gutter guard solutions this morning and came upon the truth about gutter systems. Seems gutter guards work better at keeping you from clean out clogs than at keeping out the stuff that clogs them.

I also spent most of the day listening to my favorite podcasts. TWIT (This Week In Tech) and The Signal (Firefly info) are among them.

Speaking of Firefly and Serenity, I am getting really excited about the movie coming on 9/30. I also need to get my DVDs back so I can watch the series and get Ellyn to watch it too, so she will be up to speed on it when the movie comes out.

Kayak Instructions

You can find my instructions for putting the kayaks on top of the van here.

Comics Reader for Windows

So I finally found Comics Reader, a Windows based comics collector which collects and displays daily comics in one page. His website says Windows 3.1 but it has been more recently updated. After installing, I ran the updater and it sucked in the latest fixes. I had to configure a few of my favorites and I sent the author links to the daily pages for some of the King Features comics, which only have archives for a few comics. However, most of them are available at the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer websites. You still have to follow links to see them, as KF won't let you display the image directly without a "referer" (whatever that is) but I still have the links on the page. An improvement over the bookmark list I was using before.

I put in links to the comics I usually read in the paper so I don't have to bother with finding the comics page in the News-Times each day any more.

Update

So Brian and I had a great time at the concert. The Johns put on great shows and Fogerty came out during Mellencamp's set to do a couple of songs with him. We left about 2/3 of the way through Mellencamp's show because Brian had to get to work the next morning and he had more than an hour drive. My ears are still ringing.

Ellyn and I just got back from spending the weekend in Boston with Brian. We went up Friday and came back last night. We went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Imax. The Imax theater was in the back of a furniture store. Very bizzare. We slept in the second bedroom of Brian's apartment. Very bizarre.

On the way home, we got stuck in bad traffic in CT approaching Danbury. Apparently there had been a bus fire on the higway and they had closed it for a while and then opened just one lane. Traffic was backed up about 12 miles. We took about an extra hour to get home.

Where was I?

Looks like I have not posted here for a few weeks. Let's see what has happened.

Brian got a new car after he totaled ours. Now he is on his own insurance and car payments. We are saving a bunch. Here is his new car.


Ellyn and I recently had a couple trips; one to Las Vegas for the second annual Tivo Community Forum Convention (TC-Con'05). A lot of fun and we did not lose too much money at the craps table. The second was a driving trip to Huntsville, Alabama for the wedding of Ellyn's cousin Marge's step-son Isaac. It was a lot of fun with stops to see Ellyn's brother Howard and his wife, Liz and our neice, Sarah, and stopped to see old friends Barbara and Joe Davidson and Art and Barbara Geen.

In the next couple weeks, Brian and I are going to see John Fogerty and John Mellincamp in concert and then Brian, Logan, and I are going to Stafford Springs to see the races.

Oh crap

We got a call from Brian while on vacation in San Diego that he got into an accident with his car. Although we had signed the paperwork over to him, it was still on our insurance and still registered to us. So he contacted the insurance co. and got an adjuster to look at it (with some confusion, since they could not figure out if the car was in CT or MA). Finally, the news...it was totaled.

So now it is gone and Brian has a new car (photos to follow). We spent a couple of days frantically looking and buying (he bought with our help and the insurance money from the other car) a "new" 1999 Nissan Maxima. They were frantic because he was heading out to LA with his brother and friends to attend the E3 gaming conference. Now the car is in our garage waiting for me to finish the paperwork and get it registered for him before he gets back. Then he can drive it back to Boston.

Next one is all his own responsibility.

Catch up

Ok, so we got Brian moved in ok and there are some photos of the move and his new apartment here. He has now been working for 3 weeks and got his first paycheck. I'll bet that felt good.

Ellyn and I have been on vacation in San Diego visiting my brother Wes and his family. Then we went to Houston, TX to visit with some of Ellyn's cousins.

Moving day

We have been packing Brian for a few days now and today we got the moving van. Some friends had some old furniture to get rid of so we went and picked that up this afternoon. Now we are loading up the rest of Brian's stuff and tomorrow we will tow the van and Brian will drive his car. Then I will have the van to drive back on Friday. A lot of work left to do.

Apartment hunting in MA

Yesterday Ellyn, Brian, and I went to Boston for the day to do some apartment hunting for Brian. It was a lot of work, and Ellyn and Brian did most of it, between searching the internet and the classified ads. I did all the driving. It paid off. He found a nice two bedroom apartment near the Charles River in Waltham. It was a little more than he wanted to pay but he gets the extra room for visitors and there is lots of visitor parking as well, something with some apartment complexs are sadly lacking. He did see a few one bedroom places for less but he liked this place the best.

Finally!

Brian got the call he has been waiting two months for today. TV Guide wants him to come do firmware programming for him up in Boston $50K/year to start. Not too shabby!

Maybe at a crossroads

Brian may be getting a job offer from TV Guide afterall. He got a call the other day from Eric saying he should be hearing more from TV Guide any day now. He got a rejection letter last week but Ellyn also initially got a rejection letter from IBM before finally being hired by them...29 years ago.

Back to some visible construction changes.

So I have been doing electrical work for a while and the daily changes were small. Today, I got the electrical in the bathroom inspected so now I can close up some of the walls in there. However, before I can close up the vanity wall, I needed to work on the wall behind it in the hallway, which will contain a new bookcase. So today I opened up that wall, cut out the studs, and put in a new header over the opening to support a beam which holds up some of the ceiling joists. New pictures have been added to the remodeling photos on the WebShots website.

Tomorrow I will put in the rest of the framing members but I will not trim it until I tape the sheetrock on the back of the bookcase area.

Another milestone?

Well, I almost have the electrical in the bathroom ready for inspection. I should finish it up tomorrow and see if I can get it inspected on Wednesday, when the vanities are being delivered. I also got the timers for the fans today so I can order the switches and outlets for the bathroom. Perhaps I will see if i can save some money ordering them on line instead of going to F&M Electric.

What's up now?

So, what happened this week? Well, I have been doing some of the electrical work in the bathroom. I should finihs it up so I can get it inspected. Then I can convince Ellyn it is time to remove the shower. I put the lights in the ceiling of the bedroom the other day.

A great check-up

My doctor says my EKG, blood pressure, and blood work all is looking good. In the year since my last check-up, I have taken off and kept off about 35 pounds. My cholestol is down from 217 to 177 and my chol/HDL ratio has gone from 4.7 down to 3.1. My HDL has gone up and LDL has gone down. All the numbers are in the normal range and my blood pressure is well within the normal range. That is the kind of good doctor news I like to get.

Where have I been?

So no posts from me for a while. I knew it would be like this. We took an impromptu vacation to the Florida Keys. Had a great time. Very relaxing and fun too. The photos are here.

Ellyn has run off to Texas to go to her cousin's Bat Mitzvah and Brian and I spent most of yesterday afternoon buying and installing a new garage door opener after the remaining 18 year old one decided to stop working. It was fun and the new one works great. It also has a much smaller transmitter for on the visor than the old one.

We are still waiting to hear back from TV Guide about the job for Brian. They keep telling us it is going forward positively and I am praying they do not keep him holding on for this long and then dash his hopes by saying no. Also, he has been holding off looking for anything else because he wants that job so badly. Ellyn has been trying to get him to starting looking elsewhere or getting a temp job until they decide but he has not been heeding her. When it comes through, there will be a big celebration. If not, there will probably be a big depression.

My Uncle Dick has apparently upgraded the Lynch Family Gathering Place website on MyFamily.com to allow more photos and posts to be made. I have put a few out there and sent out invitations to people to come back and use it. It is going slowly so far but I am hoping intrest will be rekindled. I think the internet is a great place to communicate with others. I have had more contact with my brothers over the internet lately than in most of the last several years. I shold make sure they have access to the gathering place too. I am not sure they do.

Huh?

How could it be that within a few hours of installing a new toilet, both of the other working toilets in the house would fail? Both developed a problem with the fill valve where it would not stop filling the tank, even when the float was pulled up.

I repaired one with the valve out of the toilet we are discarding and the other with a new valve I had in the garage, which I purchased a while back but did not use, for some reason.

But the new toilet is working fine and there are no leaks I can find so the old toilet is coming out today and then we can get started with the shower work. Ellyn wants me to delay as long as possible tearing out the old shower. I guess the idea of having to share a shower with two other people is not what she wants to have happen. Perhaps she is thinking Brian will move to Boston with his new (hopefully) job and then it will be just the two of us in one shower. That she can handle.

Another plumbing success

Our new bathroom toilet is now in place. I took me about 3 days to do all of the plumbing and about 3 hours to install the toilet itself. Now it is in place and ready to use. Next I will remove the old toilet and start removing the shower.

All of the pictures from the remodeling project can be seen here.

A Quiet Week

I spent this week checking out the toilet plumbing situation. Looks like it will be somewhat complicated by the fact I have to go through several floor joists to get to the drain. Although the joists are somewhat short and are not supporting anything other than the bathroom floor, I should probably make sure every thing is properly supported when done. I have to cut through them quite a bit to get the drain pipe in without having several splices. I think I can get away with only cutting two and drilling holes in the rest. I will probably start doing that in ernest next week.

Today I plumbed in the water supply for the toilet. That is the last of the pressurized pipes until I do the shower. No leaks first time I pressurized. I am starting to get pretty confident about my ability to solder copper pipe.

Here I am

Been away for a while. Let's see. I have got much of the bathroom gutted now and have rerouted the sink plumbing to the new wall. That went very well. I only had a single leak when I pressurized the water lines and that was where two elbows butted up against each other. I did not leave enough room between them. Resoldering it worked fine. I think I will reroute some of the electircal next and I have to figure out where I am going to put the new lighting. I have to also put a header in where the bookcase will go in the hallway because I discovered there is a beam in the middle of the ceiling which runs across the hallway. The wall where the bookcase will be is supporting one end of that beam.

Today I took a misstep in the attic and stuck my foot through the hallway ceiling. Damn it! Well, I should be able to patch it pretty easily but I would rather not have to.

I also got to use the snowthrower again. We got a 7 1/2 inch snowfall last night. They were predicting more but that was al we got. The wind has been blowing hard today and drifting it a bit. I may have to shovel a bit later if it blows too much into the driveway.

New snow toy!

I finally got to use my $900 toy, a new snowthrower. It worked really well on the 4 inches of heavy, wet stuff we got. I finished our driveway and decided I needed more practice, so I went across the street and did part of the neighbor's drive. They have several cars in the drive so I could not do it all. But it was fun.

Busy day

Whew, a busy one today. I finally got started with the wall board in the bedroom. I put up the top row across one of the long walls. Well, I had some help. Brian helped be put the bigger boards in place. Those suckers are heavy. But it looks good so far. I will have to apply the "mud" liberally to get it to look good. But the goal right now is to get all the wall board up so it will add to the insulating properties of the walls. Then I will start on some of the bathroom work. I have to get to final inspection by July, when the building permit expires. The details can wait.

So I also helped out with some computer problems today at the local Jewish Federation, where Ellyn is a member of the board and several of our friends work. They just had some minor problems and questions. I also helped Peter out with getting his garage/studio ready for insulating. I think all the wiring is finally done. Next will be putting the connectors on and "ringing" all the lines out.

I finally got some more of my blood pressure medicine today, although even without it, my pressure tested good the other day. Anyway, through a series of unfortunate events, my prescription refill did not come in time so I had to get the Doctor to get me a temporary supply.

We did not get to WW tonight, as we planned, partly because Ellyn got home late and partly because of the bad weather. We are supposed to get 4-6 inches of snow. Will I finally get to try my new snowthrower?

Back to Weight Watchers

Ok, so I put on a few pounds over the holidays and have to go back to WW. I stepped on our scales this morning after getting dressed and it hit 196. My goal weight is 190 and so I can't go over 192. I had been 188 at end of November and I did not go in December so I will have to pay and go each week and continue paying until I get back down to goal weight. This is ok as I have to get Ellyn to go again anyway. My 36 inch pants are feeling too tight too. I don't like it. Hopefully getting back to some seriuos work on the house this week will help so I won't have to diet too hard to get back down to goal. At least I did not go back up over 200. No thanks.

Should I tell anyone?

I haven't told anyone about my blog yet, except my wife, who did not ask for the web address but asked if I was putting anything personal in it. Should I tell anyone? Hm. Maybe I'll wait until I decide whether or not I have anything to say in here.

2004 in regret

I am watching Sunday Morning on CBS and Bill Guist is doing his 2004 year in review. He was talking about the president and showing him unable to recall some things during the debates. "I'm sure something will pop into my head soon." Oh My God. How the hell could the American people have re-elected that idiot? How could the Democrates have NOT come up with someone who could beat him? We will all live (I hope) to regret this decision of 2004.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck. Well I have seen the president (I use the lowercase here on purpose because I have no respect for the office with this person in it) walk and talk and he must be a hick. I am no longer proud to be an American.

2005 is here

So we were out last night until 2:00 am at a party over in NY state. I woke up about 7:00 thinking about a couple projects I am working on; the remodeling and an autoswitching menorah. Finally got up about 9:00 and made us some omlets. Yum. We have another party to go to this afternoon.

Our neice sent an email ranting on the ACLU today, but I went to snopes.com and found the article she was sending to be false. I hate it when people take stuff they read on the web or in emails at face value. There is so much crap out there. I get it the most from an Aunt and Uncle in Michigan and from my former office mate at IBM. They just react to it and send it out without researching it at all. It is always some right-wing rant too. Bah.