Geek

Over the past week or two, I’ve been thinking about my career and what certifications I’d like to get in my field so that I can be a better employee to anyone that will have me. I’ve determined that I am going to get my Cisco certification, as a CCNA to start out (that’s sort of the entry level certification) and then go on from there in an operating system.

I had been thinking about becoming Microsoft certified.

My workplace is becoming all Microsoft centric, slowly losing all connections to its original Unix and Linux roots, and since I’m a good little worker bee (when I’m not rebelling), I’ve been trying to keep my computer within corporate limits and play the Microsoft way.

It’s a lot of work.

While I definitely can see why Microsoft does the things it does, I just find myself enjoying my computer much more when I come home and play with our Macs.

Thank the Universe for Mac OS X.

Last night Earl and I, along with our friends Tim and Steve, stopped at the Apple store here in Rochester (it’s a new one!) to take a look at the new Intel Macs and such. I was REALLY tempted to by something, especially during tax return season, but we did not. And that’s o.k.

I didn’t really need to buy anything for me to know deep down in my heart that once I went Mac, I’d never go back.

So bye bye to any thoughts of Microsoft certification after I do my Cisco stuff, I’m moving on to something else.

O.k. I admit that I’ve O.D.’d on technology over the past couple of days. I’m at the point where I want to throw out all the non-Mac computers I have in the basement. (I’ll probably just give them out to family members as presents though.) I’m selling off unwanted clocks in my collection. I haven’t turned on my cell phone in quite a few days.

Pretty sad when your job is technology based, isn’t it?

I think I’m going to read a book instead of surfing the internet tonight. Perhaps Earl and I will play a board game. If we watch the State of the Union we could call it a Bored Game. I won’t watch the State of the Union though because I can’t stand Bush Lite’s “I can’t believe I’m President!” look whenever he speaks in public. I read his expression as “These dumb asses voted me in!” I’ve seen more intellectual expressions on roadkill.

What was I saying? Oh yes, technology. I’m in the mood where I don’t want to touch tone my way to a phone call. I want to DIAL the phone. There’s too much in the way of beeping and flashing lights going on around me today. “Thank you for calling Diggem Funeral Home. If a family member has died, press 1. If you’re still breathing, press 2. If someone close to you is ready to flat line, press 3.” Why can’t people answer the friggin’ phone anymore? Don’t screen me, I’m important.

Now I’m babbling. On a computer. Maybe I’ll shut the Powerbook for a while.

Serious Geek.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

As I whittle the day away playing on the computer, taking care of work stuff and catching up on laundry, I’m finding that my eyes were getting a little tired.

So here I am in my Clark Kent persona. Savor the picture, it’s rare that I wear my glasses.

The geek in me is shining through this week as I jump back into “Sim City 4”. For those not familiar with the game, you basically build your own city, your own little country actually, with residents called Sims and money called Simoleons. Being the “road geek” that I am, I have the “Traffic Jam” add-on pack which allows you to build more complex highway networks in your city.

I can never get the budget to balance correctly (small surprise there), so I unashamedly use cheat codes to give myself free money. Sort of like the current administration at the White House. I figure if Bush Lite can do it than so can I.

Anyways, in the past when I’ve played Sim City until all hours of the night I’ve had odd dreams afterwards in that I would dream that I was actually living in the city that I had built. I’d hear the music in the background. I’d wander aimlessly around the streets that I had built to nowhere or to the airport that was bigger than the city itself.

Even though I thoroughly enjoy the game, I do have a problem with my “Sims”. For example, I put two male Sims in the same house and I can’t get them to hook up with each other. There never seems to be an interest, despite the flowers and candy. It’s not as bad in Sim City 4 as it is in the game “The Sims” where attention is paid mostly to the residents (Sim City focuses on the city itself); I never remember to give my Sims in that game a toilet and then they bounce around and eventually poop on the living room table. Then I feel bad.

Nevertheless, as winter has finally arrived and I deal with trouble calls this week, I’ll probably pass some time playing “Sim City 4”. It’s a good way to exercise my inner geek.

I think Earl wants to kill me tonight. I was home for maybe 15 minutes and I started trying to apply all the knowledge I learned in my computer network seminar. Click, click, apply. “The internet is going down for 2 minutes.” Click, click, apply. “The internet is going down for three minutes.” (Audible sigh from his area).

I gave him a glass of Bailey’s to ease him through the rough spots. I took a shot myself to ease me through the rough spots.

Things are working faster though. 🙂

Earl and I have been talking about my cell phone for the past couple of weeks. It hasn’t been the primary focus of all our conversations or anything like that, but the contract with Cingular is finally coming to an end in a month or two (after a seemingly eternity of the ‘basic’ plan that costs more than our high speed internet connection) and we’re trying to decide if I should continue to have a cell phone or not.

I’m not a big talking on the phone type of person, even though I work for a telephone company. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? I’d rather gab over e-mail or instant messenger than talk on the telephone. I’ve always been that way. I remember my sister urging me to call a school friend during summer break between 4th and 5th grades and I didn’t know where to start or end the conversation so I think I just hung up after asking for the boy and then saying hello. I had broken out in a sweat and everything. Nevertheless, he stayed my friend all the way up through graduation.

I’ve never been a fan of cell phone use in public. I believe that if you’re having a phone conversation, you should be doing it in private. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve tripped people up that were not paying attention to anything except their phone conversation while they’re walking through the mall. I’ve stood in the middle of Miller Court at the New York State Fair and have loudly proclaimed, “Oh my GOD I’m at the State Fair and I must make a cell phone call RIGHT NOW!” just to irk those yakking on their phones around me. I’ve held my ground and not yielded to drivers trying to change lanes while talking on the phone, forcing them down an exit ramp.

You get my drift.

I had been waffling on the idea of going cell phoneless because of the worry of how would I get in touch with Earl in the event of an emergency. But then I think that millions of people survived for the past couple of milleniums without cell phones and I probably can as well. Plus, I’ve been inspired by fellow blogger Jimbo who has recently shunned his cell phone and he hasn’t lost any geek points for doing so.

Next time I see someone walking around with one of those flashing headset things in their ear (because they are very important you know), I now won’t feel a bit of remorse for slapping them for looking like a fool.

There are times when I just an idea into my head and I’m not going to let it go until I realize the dream. Poor Earl steps aside because he knows that when I get in these geek-intense moods, there’s no stopping me, except perhaps a debit or credit card with no juice left.

The project of the day is a media center computer for our great room. Or is it Great Room. Whatever it is, it’s starting to look like Yucca Flats after the blast as I throw cables about, swap network cards and give the subwoofer cable one more tug to make it reach just to accomplish this vision I have.

I want to be able to sit down and show pictures from our iPhoto collection, watch a movie or surf the internet right from the comfort of our Great Room using the big-screen TV as a monitor. Think of it, with a monitor that big we should get amazing detail on even the tinest of items! (Get your mind out of the gutter, we don’t do porn in the living room, not unless we want the neighbors to watch us. Now that I think about it, that could be fun.). Is this too much to ask?

Granted, with the Christmas bills getting ready to make their ’06 debut in the mailbox this week, my budget is quite limited. Looking at the pile of junked computers in the basement, I found that if I mixed and matched enough parts, I could come up with something that should work fairly well, provided we go to Circuit City and buy a power supply and a firewire card. So we did. Earl sighed, I spent and all was right with the world.

Now I’m trying to install my perfectly legal copy of Windows XP on this computer I’ve scrapped together so I can say I have something up and running until we can afford to buy another Mac Mini. (Sweetheart, if you’re reading this, consider yourself hinted.)

Now I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft Windows. I’ve been using various incarnations of the operating system since Windows/286 came out in the mid 1980s. So I pride myself on the fact that I kind of know how Microsoft thinks and how they like to do things. It’s this knowledge that has made me very popular with my family as I play system administrator to various aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, mothers, fathers, neighbors, et al. I don’t mind doing it at all, it keeps my system admin skills in check and gives me an excuse to get a free meal for payment.

But when I’m home trying install Windows XP Professional on a home-built computer, a computer that I built myself, I shouldn’t have to jump through ten hours of hoops just to get the blasted thing going! “Your username does not exist.” Funny, I feel like I’m right here.

So Earl sighs again and knows that when I’m in the geek zone, you just gotta ride it out. At best I’ll get the thing running and we’ll have small items with amazing detail in glorious technicolor in the Great Room.

At worst, I’ll eventually fall asleep.

Where would we be without technology? Here it is Christmas day and for the first time in my life, I’m not going to see my sister in person to celebrate the holidays, since she’s currently living in Moscow (the one in Russia) with her boyfriend the hockey player.

I miss her very much. We never fought much as kids and she usually went along with any scheme I had, whether it was to host a huge parade at my grandparents utilizing all my cousins, a few wagons and a smattering of batons or the time I was driving her to town to pick up contact lens solution with dad’s truck, even though I couldn’t drive a stick at the time. (I slowed down to a crawl so she could hop out in front of Ames, then I did laps around the parking lot until she hopped back into the moving truck). My sister has been at my side through thick and thin.

Thank the Universe for technology. I’ve forgiven her for using MSN Messenger (instead of the iChatAV compatible AOL instant messenger), but it’s nice to be able to show Christmas presents and chat on the webcam, even though we are literally thousands of miles apart.

I’ve received a couple of e-mails from people that have stopped by that they aren’t happy that I instituted “registration required” rules on my comments form. The reason I did it a month or two ago was because my early blog entries were being flooded with spam. Oy.

I’ve changed back the comment system back to the old way of doing things. If you have something to say, feel free to say it without having the register first.

The latest version of Mozilla Firefox was released yesterday. The version number is 1.5. An alternative to Internet Explorer for Windows users, Firefox is the perfect web browser for Windows, OS X or Linux. This latest version seems much snappier on my work computer running Windows XP SP2, I’m eager to test it on my PowerBook running OS X (Tiget) tonight.

I highly recommend it.