Time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve been busy, as always, but we’re starting to get the ball rolling on going to college…

I’ve discovered I need to get a GED in order to get into college, so I’m working on studying for that. I’ll be leaving my current job and going into my new one at Target in a week or so. Maura’s now working at her work-at-home job. We’re starting to pack as we have until January 24th to be out of our current apartment.

The BBS has been keeping me busy too. I’m working on porting all of my BBS doors to my current development platform. It’s been going slowly, but it’s been going at least. I haven’t been doing much else with the BBS except maintaining it. I do need to finish fixing the menus n’ such.

Other than that, it’s the same old thing. Hopefully I’ll have something interesting to post here soon.

That rough week turned into an even rougher month.

I won’t go into too much detail, but suffice to say that there has been a lot of termoil at work for not having been paid for nearly a month now, so I’m working on obtaining other employment until January, which is when the lease runs out on my apartment and we can move so we can go to school. That’s all I’m going to say publicly about it and if you want more, feel free to email me and ask.

I went to the doctor last Friday and things seem to be okay except for my being out of my medicine and my blood sugar getting out of control. I talked to the doctor about my possibly having sleep apnea. She had me fill out a questionnaire and from that, she’s scheduling an appointment for me to have a sleep test. I think I do have it and if I can get it corrected, I’ll feel a lot better. I’m also being sent to a clinical pharmacist and having some tests done on my heart to see if it’s working okay.

Not much else I wish to discuss publicly, but ask me and I’ll fill in the details.

It’s been a rough week.

Dealing with problems at work and at home have just gotten me down as well as my tooth socket has swollen up more than I expected. I’m just really had enough of my life as it is now and it’s time for a change. What to change is still unknown, but it’s time to change.

On a happier note, we discovered a great butcher shop (Douglasville Retail Meat) today. We picked up some delicious kabanos, Bohemian garlic sausage and venison sausage all for $21. A good price, if you ask me. Now, the ridiculous situation with gas hoarding because of Hurricane Ike irritates me. Gas is up to $5.29 in some places around here and for what? It’s just price gouging and opportunistic oil companies if you ask me. Governor Perdue, our governor, has enacted anti-price gouging laws due to this current situation. Hopefully the prices will go down soon.

I’m quite happy-I did something today I never thought I’d accomplish.

I wrote my first working (read: functional) PHP script today. It is a simple PHP script to insert a name, the current time/date and a value into a MySQL table. I know some of you may be thinking “Who cares-that’s trivial!” but to me, that’s a big deal. I never really wanted to learn PHP but I need it for doing my work at work, so I’m a little happy at that. Perhaps I can put that same determination to work for me at home and finally learn REXX beyond the rudimentary level. Maximus has REXX “hooks” so I could use REXX to do some utilitarian work for me.

On another note, my oral surgery went well yesterday. I had my third-to-last molar left in my mouth pulled. It went south and wasn’t worth saving. At the same time, I was discussion my options with my dentist on being able to eat again with a full mouth of teeth. We decided that I will get a full upper denture and a partial lower denture since I have very good lower teeth up front. He’ll have to do 11 extractions (all seven remaining teeth in my upper jaw are decayed and the rest are removing root tips from teeth that have simply broken off in my mouth under the gum), then a temporary denture while I wait to get my new one put in. It won’t be cheap but what price can you put on being able to eat?

Other than that, it’s quiet – I’ve been working on some more of my BBS doors in my spare time and fixing up the BBS. I’ve assembled four people for my Cheepware beta team and I’m quite happy with them. All good friends and able to help me out.

I had another tooth extracted today.  My dentist and I discussed my options about what’s going to happen to my mouth since I’ve so many teeth missing. We decided that I’ll be getting a full upper denture and a partial lower denture.  Since all of my upper teeth are bad, they’ll all be removed as well as all of the root tips left over from teeth that have broken and/or decayed and are no longer there.  For all the work and associated items, it’ll run about $4200 for the upper denture (we didn’t discuss the lower partial).

I had the forethought to use a sick day from work, so the Percoset (narcotic) is settling in.  I think I’m going to go lay down now and relax, perhaps sleep.  The extraction itself was short and painless thanks to Novicane, but man, all the pressure and swelling from the pushing and pulling is setting in.

How damn hard is it for people to follow simple instructions?

I got a BBS caller this morning who filled out part of the requested info and when I looked at the new user message (I have them send me one so they can tell me more about themselves), all I get was “Greetings!”

Needless to say, I killed the guy’s account.

If you can’t follow instructions, then don’t call my BBS, you damn idiots.

I’ve done quite a bit of work on the BBS today, but not much else. I was planning on cleaning, but that didn’t get done…

I was going to some serious cleaning today, but we wound up getting up late, then running errands, and that just shot the rest of the day. Since I only have one night off for two days, I tend not to do anything much in the evenings.

I have, however, done a lot of work on the BBS. I finally remembered how to make ANSI menus and found a .BBS file to make the BBS auto-detect ANSI to display an ANSI menu. However, with some terminal programs, such as HyperTerminal, you have to hit the ENTER key once to get the screen to load.

I’ve fixed the broken new user questionnaire as well as started making ANSI menus instead of the ugly stock Maximus menus. I added “It Happened Today”, a great “today in history” MEX I found as well as a “today’s callers” MEX by the same author. I fixed a bunch of other little things with the board. It felt good to spend a few hours working on it, making it better.

I also got a young new user, Thomas, from Georgia Tech, calling today. We chatted for about an hour while I explained BBSes to him. I got him to download and use Syncterm on his Linux box so he could get into the BBS correctly. He’s the reason I fixed that darn new user questionnaire. I need to write a little util that will go through all of the text-based “answer” files and extract all the information I need for records.

So far, it’s been a quiet night and I hope it stays that way. Besides my having oral surgery next week, the past few weeks have just flown by and I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything. But, I am waiting to hear on my accident settlement, and after that, we may move somewhere else. That is still under discussion.

Now to go watch some TV and relax.

Nothing really exciting going on right now…just a dentist’s appointment on next Tuesday to get a bad tooth extracted…real fun, huh?

It was a quiet night at work, but I have kept my eye on Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna all night.

Although we are not in the direct path of Gustav, due to the nature of my work, we have to keep a close eye on Gustav and what it does. Fortunately, it looks like that Gustav may not hit New Orleans directly, but west of New Orleans near Homer, LA. Gustav has been keeping Hanna from growing too large, but Hanna is expected to grow once Gustav gets over land.

Let’s hope that the levees hold in New Orleans-we don’t need more damage there. The good thing is that at least this time, people got out of there-nearly 1.9 million people evacuated in LA and parts of TX. From what I’ve seen, there’s less than 10,000 people left in New Orleans and many of those people are “mission-critical” and simply cannont leave. Please keep those people in your thoughts and prayers as they have families too.

But something good today: Micronet turns eight years old today! I started Micronet eight years ago on September 1, 2000, as an alternative to Fidonet. At the time, Fidonet was full of trash that I just didn’t like dealing with, so I started Micronet. After several stops and starts, Micronet is again alive today and is quite healthy and active. I hope it only gets better from here.

I am so looking forward to sleeping. I’m quite tired after working all night. At least I can sleep all I want, but knowing me, I’ll wake up around 5 PM whether I want to or not.

The revamping of my BBS doors are going well. The Magic Oracle is being used as the test bed for another doorkit I am using. There has been a small problem so far with Windows Server 2003, but there has been a workaround for it. I’ve gotten a few features that I added properly fixed and corrected due to the help of a couple of helpful sysop friends. That’s always good for me and I’m hoping that I can get this done right and well-tested.

Now it’s time to get some sleep and enjoy my other night off. At least this morning I earned some holiday pay…

At work, we’re preparing for Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna. Might be a busy night tonight, but at least I can look forward to a quiet Sunday…

I’d forgotten that today I switched my overnight shift to an evening (4 PM to midnight) shift. I came in to work and read an important email from the CEO outlining our emergency preperations. As a satellite communications company, this is one of the siutations in life where, while unfortunate, we excel in. As a ham radio operator and weather spotter, I’m keenly interested in the hurricane season. One of our company’s vice-presidents lives near New Orleans and they’ve already evacuated, thankfully.

So tonight, I remain on high alert for any emergencies relating to the weather. I don’t expect too many problems here, but I’ve gotten all the information I need at my fingertips.

Other than that, it’s been quiet. I’ve been working on my BBS doors and Maura went with my boss and his family to an arts and crafts show today. From what she’s told me, it was quite a neat thing to go to, but it was terribly hot and rather humid. I was going to go but since I’d realized my shift changed, instead, I took Maura to Burger King this morning with my boss and his family for breakfast and from there, they left. I then went home, tinkered with the computer a bit and fell asleep watching the noon news.

Tigger decided to curl up next to me, but when I woke up due to a phone call from Maura, he was nowhere to be found. When I left home to go to work, he was “feline non gratia”, so I said goodbye in a loud voice. He’s probably hiding under the bed, under Maura’s desk or curled up in a dark corner of the bedroom to keep cool. Can’t say I don’t blame him.

I’m now doing the worst part of the beginning of the month stuff: figuring out what bills I have to pay. I have my own bills I have to pay (credit cards and one of the doctors from my accident to keep the bill from going to the creditors) and I have to report that to my chief financial officer to get them paid or at least the go-ahead to spend the money.

So now I’m at work doing what I need to do and looking forward to sleeping a real night’s sleep tonight.