Still alive! (I think...)

If my life were to be expressed in BASIC it would look something like:

10 REM ***Daily Routine***
20 PRINT "Go to work."
30 IF DAY = "Wednesday" THEN GOTO 50
40 PRINT "Go to school."
50 PRINT "Go home"
60 IF TIME < "5:00" THEN PRINT "Play with kids."
70 PRINT "Do Homework"
80 PRINT "Go to sleep for 5 hours."
90 IF HEARTBEAT = 0 THEN GOTO 110
100 GOTO 20
110 END

While this doesn't cover everything, you get the idea of the endless loop that my life has become. This would be a great deal of the reason why I have not posted a blog in a long time. Add to that the computer problems I've been having, and you can see how it's been tough lately. So here's a little update on life in general:

Work:
I'm still working at the same old place making the same pocket change. While I like the work, I'm still not liking the pay or the company that I work for. I recently got some scuttlebutt from the guys at Range Control that a job will soon be posted for a job over there. It would be a civil service job that will net just about $3.00 an hour more. However, it would be a foot in the door for the GS wage grade and there is a possibility that they may add a job over there that my college work would qualify me for. If that happens, then I'd get another pay hike that would put me back to where I once was. Add to that the federal benefits and that I can apply my time in the army toward retirement an it's a win. Needless to say, I'll be watching out for that posting.

School:
I have one more class this semester, which is my final in my IT Essentials class. I'm in the process of scheduling my CompTIA A+ exam. I'm signed up for classes that start on January 21st. There was a scheduling conflict at the school, so the IT class I was supposed to have in the evening changed to afternoons. Luckily (or not depending on how you look at it) my adviser is also the instructor and was willing to let me do the class via independent study. While this means that I can still take the class, it also means that it will be more work and harder to make the grade. I'll have to see the lab schedules and do my studies during small windows of opportunity. It will be a couple of weeks before I see my final grades in the two classes I took this semester. I know that I passed, I just don't know the final grades yet.

Computers:
The Laptop.
Before classes started, I had a feeling that I was going to need a laptop for school. My feeling was strong on this, but my wife felt that it was less likely and we should wait and see. The verdict is in. I definitely did need one. Since my wife is a work from home type, she can write off a new computer. But that means she gets the new one, and I get the hand-me-down. Lucky her, but at least I have a school laptop out of it. (Since we got rid of the 7 year old one, I now have dubbed mine the "craptop.") It's not much, but I can write my papers on it separate from my gaming system and from darn near anywhere I can find quiet.

The desktop.
It's been up and down more than Pam Anderson on a pogo stick. Some of you may say, "You've still been checking email and Facebook!" This is true, but no one has seen me in Everquest II in a long time. The laptop and using my phone (to text updates to Twitter which also show in Facebook) go a long way toward keeping me connected.

First, it was a 500GB external hard drive that just stopped spinning. While this didn't take the system down as a a whole, it did take out my music and video collections. Then, I installed Windows 7. That went without a hitch, but soon afterward I started having problems. The short story is that one of my two 160GB internal drives bought the farm. Depending on time, I may blog my adventures in how I finally figured out the problem. Luckily, we were able to get a great deal on a couple of 1TB external drives. Too bad my hopes and plans of running RAID 0 are now going to have to wait.

So, as of this posting, I now have both of my computers up and running.

Let me also add that Windows 7 Home Premium is everything that the hype says it is. This really is the OS that Microsoft should have been producing from the start. Detractors say that it's geared too much toward amateur users, but they fail to see that 90% of the users out there fall into that category.


If you don't already have a 64-bit capable system, start saving now. That is where the computer market is going to very quickly. If you need evidence, look at the fact that the first 64-bit OS Microsoft offered was XP Professional (not home versions you notice.) Now, you have fully supported 64-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7. The hardware manufacturers are now up to par with device drivers as well.