Mar
9
A day in the life: [03-08-2010]
March 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment
So, not a lot to report today. Had a wisdom tooth out, so i’m a bit drugged up. I had forgotten how much I hate oral surgery. OMG. Anyway. Other than that and the aftermath that goes along with it, I’ve managed to muddle through my WordPress installation. I’m going to have to work on the template at some point, because I really don’t like the majority of what I can find for free. Why the conversion to WordPress? It’s mostly do to the fact that Blogger has decided to stop supporting FTP. Kind of annoying really.
anyway, i can’t really concentrate, so i’m going to cut this short.
Mar
8
Daily Tweets…
March 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Daily dose of insanity consisted partially of:
Mar
3
Daily Tweets…
March 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Daily dose of insanity consisted partially of:
Feb
27
A day in the life: [02-27-2010]
February 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Man, what a week huh?
So, this week was crazy busy at work, and I feel like I have too much to try and recall. I’m getting a cold and feel kind of crappy, but am on a bunch of antibiotics, so hopefully it’ll help head it off at the pass.
Lets see. Monday I went to the dentist to see about this wisdom tooth that decided to go south. Says I’m going to have to get it pulled and have root canals done on 2 others as well. Not going to be fun.
Tuesday through Thursday were busy, but blissfully uneventful.
Friday, I got a new computer for M. Hopefully this one will fare better than the last few. Bought it from a smaller shop here in town, from a guy that looked like Robert Downey Jr. in IronMan. It was pretty funny. Today it’s hang at the house and clean for a while, until we go get M. from school. Then, happy fun times as we goof off and play for a while.
Woo. Yeah, I feel like there is a whole lot more to add, but can’t think of any of it right now.
So until later. Caio!
Feb
21
A day in the life: [02-21-2010]
February 21, 2010 | Comments Off
So, a weekend in review:
Friday, helped M close up the shop. Live music going on there that night, so it was pretty busy right until close. After closing we went to Perkins for dinner/breakfast food. Afterward we came home and put the guys to bed.
Saturday, hung out with the guys most of the day while M was in classes. Played driver most of the time we were out. Took J to work, took M to school, hung out at home for a bit, went to Costco, went to pick M up from school and take her to the shop, then proceeded to go pick up J from work and get her to the shop.
After all the rabid driving, we ran to the grocery store for a few things that i was unable to get while at Costco. Came back home to get the kids fed and get ready to go out.
M and I went out for the evening. We went and caught a movie and dinner at a pretty swanky place, at least as far as Denver is concerned. In the process, we heard a lot of really odd music and overheard a slew of bizarre conversations.
After dinner we went and caught ‘Shutter Island,’ which in all was an okay film, though I think that the ending was exceptionally lame. It was fairly disturbing, in some places suspenseful, and in other places just downright predictable. The score was overwrought with exceptionally poor timing and clicks and whistles that only someone in the asylum might love.
After the movie we just came home and slept. That is, after some giggling and detoxing from the crazy.
Which brings us to today. Sunday the 21st.
In all today was remarkably uneventful.
I cleaned house this morning while everyone was chill and hanging out doing their various things (i.e. sleeping, watching a movie, etc.) After that we all had lunch and talked a bit. Following that, the guys went to play and be boys.
M and J went off to the weekly belly-dance class and afterwords are heading up to the shop to clean and meet and things related to work. The kids and I had a friend of A’s come over and play video games and talk books and the like with A.
After that we ate and soon are going to get the kids into a shower and off to bed, at which point I’ll probably call it a night on the cleaning and the working on other peoples machines and the like and just veg.
Anyway, enough rambling on recaps.
G’night.
Feb
16
[DEV] Introduction to Windows PowerShell 2.0
February 16, 2010 | Comments Off
So, at my last gig, I had a manager who sang the praises of PowerShell from the rooftops. I didn’t get it. I really tried, but I just didn’t get it.
Until just this week. I get it now. It’s really honking powerful!
You see, I guess I was never in a situation where I could really take advantage of it before, and never really had the time to devote to looking into it with any sort of vigor. Recently however I’ve had a lot of need for automation and repeatability with some processes I have in place.
That being said, I looked at PowerShell again. I’ve come to love that which I did not understand.
So in the spirit of sharing and getting people involved, I give you a few links. These have been a boon in getting set up with the latest and greatest version of PowerShell, and getting the understanding needed to really harness it for what it can be used for.
First and foremost, the bits
You’ll need to download and install the appropriate version of the Windows Management Framework Core.
The next thing you’ll want to get installed is the PowerShell Community Extensions
These are a “useful set of additional cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for Windows PowerShell” So sayeth the website. 
These extensions add things like the ability to call into ADO for various things, add items into your MSMQ stacks, get and set environment variables, and many other useful things, not provided in the base set of PowerShell cmdlets.
Okay, great, so now you have the toolset installed. Now what?
Right, Never thought you’d ask. Okay, maybe I did. So here is the skinny. What do you want to do? Chances are, it can be done using PowerShell.
Here are a few things to get you going.
Microsoft’s Scripting with PowerShell
Windows PowerShell Blog [MSDN]
PowerShell.com – The community for PowerShell people
Now that you have your feet wet, here are a few more links to keep you going.
Controlling Variable scope in PowerShell
Variables and the PowerShell Pipeline object
For those of you who are playing along at home and are ready for more advanced topics, here is something that you all might find interesting. I know these helped me out a lot!
Fundamental Web Testing with Request/Response Testing using PowerShell
Using PowerShell to Post images to TwitPic
This one has some really great examples of how to deal with posting form data to web applications via PowerShell!
Anyway, I’ll be posting more later on how to do some basic scripting with PowerShell soon. In the meantime, read up and later we can discuss.
See ya then.
Feb
16
a day in the life: [02-16-2010]
February 16, 2010 | Comments Off
2-16-2010
Oh wow. Today. Let me tell you it.
So after oversleeping and missing my train, I guess I didn’t get off to too bad a start. Had a nice uneventful train ride into the station near the office and a relaxing walk from the station to the office. I realized this morning that the way I’d been walking previously added about 10 minutes to my total time to walk, so I modified my route a little and still managed to squeak into the office at a fairly reasonable hour (for people at my office) and got started with the breakfast of champs, a twix and a mt. dew. Yeah, so totally can’t run late anymore. That’s a horrible breakfast. I’m not in college anymore!
Anyway, after my lovely breakfast and catching up with my various emails, I got my morning work squared away and started looking at a few higher priority items that got tossed over the wall to me. Nothing too big, just needed attention right then. So, I knocked them out and then went back to looking at the special project that I’m helping out with. I’m assisting another group with testing an application they are trying to roll out and getting up and running for everyone’s use. Unfortunately, time has been a little more limited than I’d like, ad I’m sure the other team would like.
So I mostly bounced between things a lot today, and as I was getting ready to bounce to go home, my boss calls and says we have a meeting. Note, it’s 5 PM. The meeting wasn’t on the schedule. So I stick around and get trained on something, takes about 30 minutes for the “quick” overview and we’re cut loose for the day.
It’s interesting stuff, but I wish they’d have given us a little more notice.
Anyway, headed home, dropped J off at the house and went up to the coffee shop to get the guys and to talk to M for a bit. Apparently the guys were total nutballs all day today. I don’t know what I’m going to do about them. Some days are perfect, but then there are days like today, where nothing gets done and everything apparently stops making sense in their minds. So we split them up for a while and left the oldest to help close up the shop while I took the youngest with me to buy groceries.
While we were at the store T and I decided to get flowers for around the house. Brighten the place up a little bit. It’s always so stark and cold in the winter time. I thought we needed a little bit of something to spruce the place up and it would make the girls happy. So I grabbed three bouquets of flowers and brought them home and placed them around the house and it does, it makes the place feel more alive.
After dropping off the groceries and putting flowers up, T and I went back to the shop to pick up A and M and head home for the night. M still had a paper to finish and I needed to get diner cooked. It’s spaghetti night!
So home we came. M fixed the red sauce, while I got the rest of the stuff for dinner prepared. Noodles, Salads, Garlic Bread. All of the yummy things that make you come back for seconds or more.
While I was fixing dinner, A was working hard at his school work that he hadn’t finished earlier in the day. T had been scrubbing things around the house for use, being really useful as he did. At some point, however, he appears to have wandered off to bed. So once dinner was all ready and I had plates out and was calling people to dinner, we noticed 2 people we not here. Both J and T had curled up and gone to bed. We managed to rouse T, but J just kept sleeping…
After dinner, I tossed the kidslets through various showers and got them shuffled of to sleep. Where I should probably think about heading myself sometime shortly.
So that was my day, in a nutshell.
Feb
15
a day in the life: [02-15-2010] The Birthday Edition
February 15, 2010 | Comments Off
Monday, I could never really get behind Monday’s. It’s not that the are particularly bad, I just have a hard time getting going.
This morning was especially hard. it’s my birthday and all I really wanted to do was sleep. Hard. I slept a little later than I usually would and got moving a little slower than I usually try to. I took it slow and enjoyed just being this morning. It was a very Zen type of morning. Until I hit traffic. Then my Zen was gone.
Oh well. I’ll get there eventually.
So I got to work a little late, nothing too bad, but a little later than normal. Got started on getting the project that had to be out the door today finished up and out. Worked on a few things to try and help simplify a few processes that I have to do regularly.
I tell ya what, if you are in tech and haven’t looked at Microsoft’s PowerShell, you need to get on that. It’s pretty darn slick. I’ve managed to take something that was taking me far too long manually and turned it into a 5 minute job using a PS script.
Liking that a lot. I owe my old boss an apology for doubting it’s usefulness.
So with that. Sorry man. you were right. 
I have a few things to post on this later. Good stuff and I have a few good things to share as I get all of it wrapped up.
After that stuff I worked on a few special projects that are going on around the office to help out, those are going a little more slowly, but hopefully will pick up some steam toward the end of the week.
After work I rolled over to the coffee shop and grabbed a chai and talked to M for a few. I met the new barista and talked briefly, but they got slammed, so I left and let them do their thing.
Came home for a little while and played some video games with the guys, cause they wanted to “hang out” with dad for a while. Which usually means, “can we play video games while you watch?” or something to those effects. Today I played too, so that we were all doing something somewhat together, as the allure of Memory apparently wore off as they came downstairs. Oh well, I was really trying to play board games first.
After playing a few games with the guys, we got ready and headed back up to the coffee shop to get M from work. We ran out to dinner, after a snafu with the keys to the shop was resolved, and ate a wonderful dinner. We talked and goofed off and generally just enjoyed being.
The kids ended up too hopped up on sugar to stand up straight and were getting a bit silly, so we came home and did the traditional singing of Happy Birthday and eating of VERY SMALL pieces of cake, as to not implode the poor little sugar ridden bodies.
The we sent them off to brush teeth and get ready for bed. Once all that was taken care of, we tucked them into bed and I’ve been surfing the internets since.
Now, time for meds and beds shortly.
Been a pretty good day overall. Here’s to a pretty good year to come.
Feb
14
a day in the life: [02-14-2010] The Valentine’s Edition
February 14, 2010 | Comments Off
So today is Valentine’s Day. No hearts and flowers here though. I stayed home today and hung out with my guys. We watched a bunch of Looney Toons cartoons from back in the day and generally burned the early part of the day away giggling madly at Bug’s and Daffy’s antics. Good times had by all. After the looney toons were done, we made Mommy Valentine’s cards. They were adorable. M woke up around 1PM and then we all had our various lunches.
During lunch preperation and after lunch, I worked on something I’ve been trying to get around to for a few weeks now. I gave M a pedicure. Not the best one I’m sure, but her feet look pretty and thats all that matters in the end. She has pretty red toenails and smooth soft skin. Yay!
After that She and J left to go do thier weekly booty shaking (bellydance lessons) and me and the guys hung out for a little while. Then they ran off to play by themselves for a while, while I proceeded to clean the house. Once the girls got home, we ate some dinner, M studied for a while, the guys played, I cleaned some more, and then we all ate dinner.
Shortly after dinner, both the ladies and A went out to see the Percey Jackson movie. They said it was okay. But I guess I’ll wait til video with that less than stellar review.
Me and T played video games and got him through a shower before tucking him into a late bedtime.
We had a good evening too. After lil man was in bed I proceeded to finish up some laundry and work on a few misc. little things around the house.
Once the girls and A got home, I pretty much tucked A in and settled in on the couch for the evening, followed by a few video games and a bowl of ice cream. I guess now it’s prolly about time for bed.
Good night world.
Tomorrow. birthdays.
Woot.
Feb
12
a Day in the life: [02-12-2010]
February 12, 2010 | Comments Off
Kind of a lazy day at the office. Had a few tickets go to production, one Emergency fix. Overall though, nothing that was too difficult. That’s what I’ve liked so far. It’s been busy, but not overly difficult or stressful.
I don’t really feel like there was much to talk about today though. I didn’t go out for lunch, I just hit the vending machine. I drank a ton of water. I mostly just stayed at my desk and hammered through stuff.
See my birthday is Monday and I don’t really want to have to focus on too much of anything, although I know I will have to, I want to try and minimize the impact that work is going to have on me that day.
Usually I dread birthdays. I see them coming and its like a car crash or a bad movie. It’s something that is going to happen and you know its bad, but you can’t look away. This year though, I am trying to look at it in a different light and see it as a positive step. I’ve made it another year and I’m aiming for many more, maybe not just like it, but many more to come.
Tonight I made plans for a babysitter for next weekend when I will hopefully go celebrate my birthday, belatedly, with my wonderful wife and friend M. I also went and had dinner out with she and our kiddos. I’m now trying to fix a friends computer and just chill for a while while M works on her Italian homework. Not the most exciting Friday night, but it’ll do.
So yeah, all in all, pretty lightweight kind of a day.
Party on.