Darkavich's Daily Ramblings Ramblings of a Mad Sys-Admin

December 30, 2009

8 the hard way.

Filed under: Items in the Pensieve — Darkavich @ 11:17 pm

This last year has come and gone. I celebrated my 44th birthday with Angie. We drove up to Anaheim. On the way up, we stopped at Farrell’s Ice Cream parlor. It has been MANY years since I have been there. I remember going a lot when I was younger. When I went to college their service went downhill and so did the quality of the places. I remember one evening when a cockroach ran across the window sill next to where we were sitting. That location was shorty closed down by the health department. All but one Farrell’s closed. I believe the only location left was the one at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. A new company bought them out and has gone back to the roots of the business, they have even kept in touch with the founder to make sure they get it all right. There are now four locations, two in California and two in Hawaii.

We had to wait about 30 minutes in line. Once we sat down, we ordered dessert. I had a banana split sundae. While we waited, there were several presentations for birthdays and pig troughs. If you order a pig trough (basically two large banana splits) and finish it all yourself, they embarrass you with a public presentation ending with a ribbon presentation and announcing that you “Made a Pig of yourself at Farrell’s”. As we were leaving we saw the running of “The Zoo”.

After Farrell’s we headed up the freeway to Disneyland. We checked into our hotel for the night. The next morning we got up bright and early to have breakfast and then head to the park. The line to get through security was outrageous. It is about -100% effective because they don’t search you. They just make you open your bags and they quickly peak inside. They clearly are not looking for dangerous items as they don’t check pockets or jackets, etc… Oh well… One of these days they will get it and give it up. The line went quickly even though it was really long. We went to the ticket window and picked up my free admission ticket.

The day was spent at Disneyland. The morning was not too crowded. The line waits were about 5-10 minutes. We took the Holiday Guided Tour. This was a great tour. I highly recommend it. We walked down main street. We stopped at the candy store and learned that they have vents below the kitchen that pump candy smells out to the street. MMMMMMM….

We were able to cut in front of the lines for It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion and The Disneyland Railroad. It’s nice to get the VIP treatment. To top it all off, we got front row seats to the holiday parade, with actual seats!

Dinner was at the Big Thunder Ranch. If you have not eaten here you should try it out. It’s an all-you-can eat restaurant with lots of BBQ food (Ribs, Chicken, Sausage, Beans, Slaw, and Corn Bread). They also put on a musical floor show. We relaxed and ate dinner, then we went to ride the Jungle Cruise (now that the sun was down), Buzz Lightyear and Indiana Jones and the temple of the forbidden eye. We had a fastpass for that so we got ride on the ride. We saw the castle lighting ceremony as well. That was something we had never seen.

This was the first time I have been to Disneyland on my actual Birthday. Normally, we do not go to the park at this time of year because of the crowds. It was crowded. I heard they actually were at capacity. Regardless of the crowds we had a good time, because we didn’t feel like rushing around and waiting in every line. It was a very pleasant trip.

As many of you know this has been a hard year. The end of 2008 was extremely difficult with my job and carried over into 2009. What was once a very pleasant place to work turned into a bitter unwelcome work environment. I left their employment the beginning of September. Looking back, I really needed to leave shortly after starting there, but I was convinced to stay and ride it out. This was extremely bad advice to take. When your boss quits two days after you start working for them should be a huge wake up call.

I also started my masters program at National University. This turned out to be a horrible program as well. I blogged about this previously, so I won’t bore you here.

My technical problems got worse through the year and I had to waste months of my time trouble shooting problems with low-end techs, because they would not listen to me and address the real problem unless they went through this process. I am at least happy to report, I only have two technical problems left to solve… One more day left this year to solve them. Yeah!

I received two wonderful gifts this year from my wife. The first was a fantastic new lens for my camera. I am totally in love with this lens. The second is a banjo. I have already started learning to play and will be doing a separate blog thread on my experience learning to play.

So with what I can consider my worst year of employment and technical troubles behind me I look forward to a much more exciting 2010.

November 22, 2009

In search of…Quality Education

Filed under: Items in the Pensieve,OWL's — Darkavich @ 3:06 am

As some of you know I had started my Masters Program in Educational Instructional technology at National University. I had many reservations about taking an online program. Unfortunately, my reservations were justified. After two months, I have decided to withdraw from this program. Many factors influenced this decision, but the primary factor (many others can be discussed over a beer) was that after 8 weeks, there was not a single moment of real instruction. The program was designed like a correspondence course. The online/live lectures only served as a high-tech office hours. Nothing was actually taught in these classes.

I generally feel that if I am spending over $1500 a month for an education,  I should get instruction that is more than what books to read and what assignments to turn in.

I am sure there is a lot of quality online education out there, but National University is definitely not one of those schools. I am going to reset and follow up on the Masters program at SDSU. I just need to get past the GRE component of entrance requirements. I plan to check with them after the new year.

I am sad and frustrated that this didn’t work out, but better to decide now than after I had spent even more money.

pork, it’s not just for dinner.

Filed under: Items from the Quibbler — Darkavich @ 2:53 am

I have been reading and talking to a lot of people lately about the misinformation about the H1N1 outbreak. The swine flu (yes, that is what it is) had it’s name changed because the hog farmers felt it showed them in a bad light and their profits might suffer from people not wanting to buy their products. http://nationalhogfarmer.com/swine-flu/0430-swine-changes-to-H1N1/

While talking to my friends and acquaintances I was amazed that not a single person knew the source of the flu (or any flu). Flu 101: In short, the Flu comes from the close proximity of species like birds and pork. Basically, poultry that is raised too close to pigs is how flu’s propagate. The birds infect the pigs and the pigs infect people. You can read all about it at the National Institute of Health: http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/Flu/understandingFlu/definitionsOverview.htm

This latest outbreak of swine flu was advertised that it started in Mexico and that we have nothing to worry about because something like that could not happen in the USA. It’s funny how every news agency jumped on the bandwagon to point the finger at a country that could not defend itself. This strain may not have started in Mexico, but more than likely actually in North Carolina. http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/

Don’t let people use propaganda to try to convince you that it’s not the fault of the farmers. It’s amazing that on the hog farmers web site they claim there is no link between pork and the flu when even the CDC and NIH sites have proven the link. For many centuries the world had no flu. The flu 1st appeared in 1918
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
when farmers started mixing their chickens and pigs in same area. This may have been the result of military practices during WW1. This practice continues today and until world procedures change we will always have swine flu.

Will I stop eating port? Heck no! I love my BBQ. But, I recommend that people educate themselves and NOT repeat the propaganda they hear on TV or from the lobbyists.

October 15, 2009

The year of hell

Filed under: YOH — Darkavich @ 5:45 pm

It’s been a while since I have posted anything. I thought I would catch you up on the last few months. This summer was a very hot and miserable one. Not as bad as other parts of the country, but we had several (week long) runs of 90+ degrees of weather. One Saturday on a scooter ride to Julian, the temperature gauge topped out at 112 degrees! Boy was that a hot day, and Angie was riding pillion, what a trooper.

I am still working on the vacation newsletter from last April/May. I am up to day 10 of 16, so expect to see some more postings soon. Life at my last company turned quite nasty. All of the promises of work life balance quickly disappeared in the beginning of the year. We lost over 1/2 of the IT staff in the 1st quarter and it turned nasty as they hired new management that decided to force their own agendas down our throats ignoring the advice of the entire senior level staff.

Between the constant stress at work of trying to do more with (not less but) nothing and unrealistic deadlines I left at the beginning of Sept. I am going to miss working with a lot of the folks there as they had the right attitude and drive to do things right, but we just couldn’t get anything done. I dub this the Year of Hell. I won’t go into detail but those that have spoken with me, know what I mean and understand and those that don’t… well beer and sushi might be a way to get the story out of me.

I am still looking for work, but am taking my time. Last time, I made the mistake of rushing into the opportunity that seemed to good to be true. As the old saying goes “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” I have been on a few interviews as well as have quite a few lined up. They all seem to be coming at me at once. The good news is that there is plenty of work out there. I have also been trying to decide if this is the time at which I should switch my career goals. Many of you know I have been wanting to go back into teaching and do technical or corporate training. I am not sure yet if I can pay the bills doing that 😉 but if the right job comes along, I will jump at it.

I started my masters program, FINALLY after searching for seven years for a program and school, I landed at National University. I intended to enroll in their MS/IS program but after considerable thought I choose to not do my masters in IS/IT. National has a program called Educational Instructional Technology. This program seemed more in tune with what I wanted to do. I want to become an instructor of technology and use technology as part of my curriculum. My first class started this month and the program is one year. It’s a pretty action packed program with one class a month. It’s going to be hard, but with the proper discipline, I will be able to succeed. So far, the hardest part of the class is to re-learn how to write properly and with proper syntax and English. 😀 I have not written papers or essays since 1988 in college. I so wish we had the Internet when I was in high school and college.

Some of you have noticed I am no longer on Twitter. I got so frustrated with dealing with their issues that I gave up. I also got into a situation were I was way too connected so I decided to start cutting ties with technologies like this. I still have my blog and use Facebook on a regular basis. I have just given up on using real-time notification systems that show up on my phone. Most of the old ways still work, so please feel free to use them. Speaking of Facebook, it’s amazing how it has done what classmates.com could not do. Classmates has failed because they tried to monetize communication, instead of adding value first. With Facebook, I have been contacted or have found over two dozen schoolmates that I  thought lost to me forever! I am even going on a road trip this weekend to visit with some of those I grew up with and have not seen for 26 (wow) years. It has been a long time since a piece of technology has impacted my personal life. Most of the technology I have or use is directly related to work or research.

I am still working on my garden railway, but need to finish some sprinkler work. Because of the horrible temperatures this summer, I barely was able to do anything in the yard but plant veggies and herbs (which did fantastic for my first year). I am planning a trip to Disneyland for my birthday this year. If anyone would like to join us, your more than welcome.

All in all, I think I am in a better place and much less stressed and sleep deprived. Here’s hoping that Kes can give me a good push in the right direction.

July 22, 2009

18 years of fun and sun (part 7)

Filed under: Panama Canal,Port Keys — Darkavich @ 9:20 pm

Day 9: Scenic Cruising Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica

The calm sheltered waters of Golfo Dlce provide a panoramic view of the rugged coastline of southwestern Costa Rica.Golfo Dulce translates from the Spanish as “Sweet Gulf.” an apt name due to the abundance of rainwater and rivers flowing into the narrow inlet. Sparsely populated with small ports and villages, the area boasts only a few large towns. The largest, Golfito (population 35,000), is one of the most picturesque cities in the country. Heavy rainfall sustaining tropical rain-forest vegetation made Golfito from the 1930s until the 1980s primarily a banana port, belonging to the Banana Company of Costa Rica. Palm oil is now the major crop with the Golfito port, handling about one fifth of the Costa Rican sea borne trade. A roadway through the mountains connects this town to the great Pan American Highway. Costa Rica is one of the leading areas of conservation in Central America with more than 27% of the country protected in national parks and preserves. As we sail around the Golfo Dulce, we can view off teh east coast the Golfito National Wildlife Refuge, where a chain of mountains climb to 1,600ft (500m), then plunge abruptly into the sea, forming a jagged coastline of cliffs, tidal plains and estuaries.

Yesterday we traveled 45 nautical miles to get from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean. This saved us a voyage of 100,000 miles around Cape Horn. After we exited the Canal, we set sail for a day of scenic cruising in the Golfo Dulce. Today was a day of relaxation. We slept in, FINALLY! When we got up, we headed to an early lunch and relaxed around the pool. I finished another book on the Kindle. I really like this device and think paper books are no longer in my future.

Later in the day, they had an Indonesian BBQ on the Lido deck. The food was pretty good. We attended the team trivia as well as the afternoon tea. The evenings entertainment was a Farewell show with both Joel Mason and Rick Starr. It was a great show. Tonight’s dinner was another Formal night.

Today was basically, a low key relaxing day. Tomorrow

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