And in this post...

My best friend at work is quitting, and I have to write a test in order to hire his replacement. 

Life kinda sucks right now.   Plus side, whether I want to admit it right now, is that I'm getting another raise.  Don't know when that is going to take place.   But it is. 

Talent begets talent.  Winners are drawn to winners.

It sucks losing a winner at work when you are surrounded by the indifferent.

Blah.  

Studying

ICND 2.

VLANs

Stands for Virtual LAN.   LAN sounds a lot like LAND.   So in my mind I see a giant open field, with LEGO people all over the place.   There are vertical stacks, set up in cookie cutter fashion above and below this world.  This stack of worlds represents one device. 

There is a person standing in the middle of the field, screaming profanities constantly.  Several LEGO people are around, all griping at the person who is screaming profanities.  The man screaming profanities is broadcasting.  One person decides they don’t like the screaming and runs towards a giant elephant trunk.  This trunk leads to different areas.   As the person walks over to jump in the trunk, a large wooden chest is thrown on the guys head.  The chest is the VLAN trunking header.   As the guy jumps into the trunk, and off to a different device, he can still hear the man screaming profanities. 

As he travels through the trunk, he can see other LEGO people flying through, but can’t hear what they are saying.  Different VLANS share the same trunk, but those packets can’t communicate with each other.  As the guy pops out onto the new device, he can still hear the man screaming profanities. 

Something I used to help me remember the entire idea of VLANs.

Thoughts and Randomness

The interesting, or not so interesting, thing about averaging 65 hours a week is that I find my focus often fleeting unless I’m tied directly into a project.  When I’m working on a project, everything runs like a well-oiled machine and I jump from point to point with focused intention.  But now, the project is done until install time and I’m sitting at my desk, writing a blog, and adjusting music playlists.  It’s never an attempt to do just one project.  It’s the attempt to do six or seven projects at once, with little correlation between the projects.

I think I’ve dropped too far off my old idea of task lists to keep me focused.  I guess the problem is that my list grew too long and out of control, so I quit putting the necessary effort into doing any of those tasks.  I started trying to eat the elephant all at once.  

So, here I am trying to regain focus.   I need to work on one project at a time, and not eighteen different projects.  See, the best method of success is intense focus on one thing at a time.   It’s just a matter of figuring out what that one thing is.  And maybe that’s what I’m doing right now.  I’m sitting back and prioritizing what I need to do with my life and work in order to have some focus.   I know much of my job is interrupt driven, but that doesn’t mean I have to bounce around subjects like a rabbit on crack.  No, I should focus intently on one subject at a time, and only one subject.  Doing that long term will result in success.  And I guess I’m not terribly happy with where my job takes me right now, so I guess I need to focus on where I want my job to take me.  Once the play lists are synced with my phone, it looks like it’s time for some house cleaning on my computer.

Video Games

I have been playing Mirror’s Edge on the iPhone recently, among other things.  Mirror’s Edge is a game about running around and dodging things “with style”.  You run over roofs, down zip lines, and across various objects.  Your only attacks are slides and kicks that disable but don’t kill.  The entire thing is based off something called parkour.  As a friend of mine said, “Leave it to the French to make a game of running away”.  

There are quite a few parkour games on the iPhone, most of them being continuous runners like Mirror’s Edge.  I find it strange that most of the parkour games are based on dystopian societies, but none of them involve ever fighting back.  The goal of the games is simply to get “away”, yet as the Nazis proved in World War 2, there isn’t much of an “away” to get to.  

Moving on…  I’ve also been getting back into Portal, Half-Life 2, and Counter-Strike.  I’ve mostly been playing Half-Life 2, as I find that game to be one of the best made and I haven’t bought many games in a long time.   I was intending to get info Fallout 3 world building, but Fallout 3 doesn’t work well on Windows 7.  And I’m not going to spend 6 hours digging through forum posts to try and get the damn thing working.  That’s just not going to happen.  So I pulled out my old Valve disks and went to town on Half-Life 2 and Portal. 

My son likes to watch me play video games, and plays Angry Birds here and there when I let him.  He’s three, so I’m not expecting a whole lot.  He’s beaten two or three levels, though I’m not sure it’s intentional or just playing around.  He doesn’t like Portal.  I think GlaDos scares him.  He’s had a noise aversion for a long time, and certain sounds just freak him out.  That’s okay.  GlaDos would freak me out if I was three, too. 

I enjoy the possibility of what Half-Life 2 offers, especially in the map building format.  I think there is a method there to create the worlds flowing through peoples’ brains and do it on the cheap, so you can explain to you significant other what you mean.  If you can get your significant other to quit playing Candy Crush.

Looks to be a busy week next week.  Should be interesting.  Or at least I think interesting.  Could be horrible.  I don’t know.  We shall see.

News flash: It's you

For some reason, I keep thinking about the Bowling for Soup song “I’m Gay”.   The song goes a bit like this.  (Emphasis added)

Well we’ve all heard about

How the guys in the band

Weren’t the most popular kids in school

And now you hate your parents

‘cause the way you turned out

But in the end the blame’s on you

And we all sympathize with your torn-apart heart

And you really artistic worldly views

It sells records when you’re sad these days

It’s super cool to be mad these days

And that covers the vast gist of why I keep thinking about the song.  I deal with far too many people who are perfectly willing to gripe about their world and how their life sucks and how some person slighted them.  But in the end, a person turns out the way they did because of what they did.  It wasn’t someone else who made you an idiot or lazy.  It was you.  You are the problem in your life, so quit blaming others for all the havoc going on in your life.  Quit hanging out with idiots, and you will quit having a crappy life. 

If your friends are losers and you don’t want to be a loser anymore, dump your friends.  Don’t hang out with drug addicts and expect to stay sober.  Don’t hang out with fat people and expect to stay skinny.  Don’t hang out with poor people and expect to have money.

I wish I could say it was more complicated than that, but it’s really not.  Not a damn bit more complicated.

And that is the worst part about my job.  I don’t have anyone to reach for or aim at.  I’ve got to drive myself, because there is no one currently employed with us that is better than I am at what I do.  I’m at the point of “no competition”.  And I need competition.  I never thought I was a competitive person, but I guess I’m wrong.   Eh well.  I guess I’m just not competitive in things that I don’t care about.  Which is logical. 

Uninstall/Reinstall

I’ve grown to hate certain applications.   Java is one of them.  Sure, it’s supposed to be a super portable framework that works “everywhere” and “just works”, but it doesn’t.  So I have to keep two installers of Java on my computer at all times.   One to install Java 6, rev 18.  And one for Java 7.  Verifone SMS doesn’t play nicely with Java 7, and 6 rev 18 is their recommended version.   But the install I have didn’t include the JRE, and that’s necessary to run the web-based remote access software.

Hooray for me. 

So, I have to use one version for certain things, and another for different things.  And I only use one laptop.   Isn’t it all just grand?

I watched The Avengers  last night.  It was awesome.  It got me to thinking this morning…  It’s probably the line of thinking that gets me in trouble, but anyways…. 

The thinking is thus…   “If I were a billionaire, what would I do with my life?”  And then the brain starts racing, going through the various possibilities of what my life would be like and what I’d spend my time doing. 

The next train of thought is “Okay, I don’t have that kind of money.   So what would I do that essentially doesn’t cost anything?”  And then I started thinking about that thought.   And it made me realize…  if that’s what I’d do if money weren’t an issue, then why aren’t I doing it now?   Secondly, what progress could I make towards that stated goal?