A little fence work

Personal

Realized after getting the fence up, underground electric that is, that some of where I had laid it out was not going to work. The original thought of not making a complete box around the house was quickly thrown out the window after the 6 hours worth of laying the line, which would make me half done. So I chucked that idea and took the easy route and did not double back the same way I came. The only reason for doing that would have been a clean access out for the boys. That and an extra layer of correction zone as the double back would have extended the no enter zone farther.

It only took a week for me to realize it needed to change. After a trip to friends that just moved close a light bulb was turned on for an efficient fix. About half of our acre is wooded and I originally did not take the fence there but this put the wire very close to a narrow path the dogs use at the back of the house. When friends had their fence installed the guy that did it used staples cause they have newly planted grass. Staples now that is an idea when you have layers of dead leaves, branches and other ground cover all over the place. So this weekend I extended the fence through to the property line which now includes the wooded area.

I still need to extend one side closer to the property line but that can wait. Of course if I would have thought about this from the beginning it would not be as much work, but it’s only time right !!! Once I move the last side I can turn up the strength increasing the zone size to about 6 feet, it’s at about 2 to 3 now. With any luck that will be enough to stop any run through and keep the warning beep on the collar. I’d hate to turn off the warning and go straight to correction.

So far I’m please but also regular excercise and socialization is also going to help. At the old house the neighborhood and privacy fence did not allow for much of that.

Quiet is far from it

Personal

Only one post last month, kind of hard to believe I couldn’t find the time to note anything. But it wouldn’t mean nothing was going on, that would be far from the truth. Second month at the new house and we are settled in, I think. The boys, Roscoe and Copper, are enjoying themselves enough that a chance of chasing the cats next door had become to much. Not sure why it took so long for that urge to come out, they have been there all along. We knew the four foot fence wasn’t enough to keep Roscoe from jumping over, but we hoped. Between Roscoe’s roaming and Copper peaking over the top they needed something to keep them at bay…. and I didn’t think getting a cat of our own was a good choice. So an underground fence is now up and that seems to be keeping them under wraps. Now I’ve just got to finish a gate for them to get to the wide open space and hope they can use it. Kay had a trip to Chicago and some of her family came down. Friends moved to some new digs a few miles away and we found a park with some help of one of Kay’s co-workers.

Hockey for me is still twice a week and Volleyball started up again for Kay. A trip back home to IL and we are into August. In between the fun stuff work just keeps piling up and when I think I’m making a dent in the stack the design project I worked on over a year ago is now coming to Development. The Fedora system is now gone, but then again it was not going to last anyway as that system needs to be trashed before it burns up. Used the drive for another Windows setup, the wife needs to VPN into work and they use SonicWall where the company I work for uses Cisco.

I’m still muddling through the LCPI exam 1 book, as I have not convinced myself to dig in and get it done. But it is good to know much of what’s their so far is not new. In the end it’s all a personal thing anyway but not something I’m going to give up on. I learn more from FOSS in a day than I can with anything else in a week.

With any luck this month we’ll get the dogs use to the fence, I’ll get through the rest of the LCPI exam 1 book, more pics will get hung and the house will be more of a home every day. Now if only Can-Back can get the S10 camper shells into production…. that would be a good month.

Telecommuting gone to my head

Personal

I began telecomuting in 2001 after a move Nashville, TN. At the time I was prepared to find something new or continue working at the same company. I’m glad to say I’m still employed there today, but it has not been without challenges. The last couple weeks have been more difficult but when you work from home, how can you really complain. So it must be that telecommuting has gone to my head !!! Performing day to day processes without the massive resources a few steps away takes a certain amount of imagination. But you have to keep in mind others don’t work this way.

When most people have the opportunity of poping into a coworkers office or sitting in on a meeting working remote does not allow that type of interaction. Conference calls, net meetings, mail, and chat those are what we use to replace being there. None of them have that level of interaction where a personal touch can be conveyed. Oh and we know what a face to face meeting can do don’t we !!!! It is furstrating and challenging at the same time cause you get sucked in to “why can’t so and so see this”, “why do I have to wait hours for an answer to an email, if I was there it wouldn’t take that long”. But you have to remember not every body looks at it that way. Kind of like the acronym RTFM. Those that didn’t have another option, had to read it, learn from it, try it and apply it to know what happens. If the resouce is a a few feet away that’s a different story.

So I think it’s time to sit back take inventory and get back to reality, deal with the fact that the telecommuting world is different… their’s no way around it.

To much going on

Personal

Busy, busy, busy…. holy moly get me some vacation days !!!! I remember why I dislike moving, it’s now been three weeks and still boxes are all around. Some new furniture is here some is coming. Just finished staining/water proofing the deck and can now look to expanding the fence. A daily trip to Lowes seems to be the norm, picking up items you can never seem to remember to get… all at once.

Work is flat out crazy and no end in sight. You can’t complain about being busy but if you can’t work the backlog piling more on makes it that much more difficult. That goodness for hockey, a welcome release from all that’s going on. The new place is great, the boys are getting use to “nature”, peace, quite, it’s all good.

So far the latest version of Ubuntu is great and I’ve resurected the old IBM I200 (laptop) to load Fedora. When I can find some time I’ll finish the Plone setup and migrate the site from work. You never know when you need a backup !!!!

Is is Friday yet…. I need a three day weekend.

From Breezy to Dapper

Technology

A new version of Ubuntu was out on June 1st, Dapper Drake. Eager to load and check out the new bells and whisles I downloaded he iso, burned it to a CD and loaded last night. I had a little trouble getting the install to complete but that was due to X hanging. A quick check of help on the CD, prior to install, pointed me to pass vga=771 as an intall option. After that it was smooth sailing. It’s hasn’t been 24 hours yet but so far so good. I don’t have everything loaded and still have Breezy on my 60GB drive just in case.

So far only two issues and I seem to remember them from loading Breezy, no WEP on my on board wireless NIC and only a default contact list in Evolution. I can deal with those as they are not critical and I know the Evolution contacts are there as I copied the entire folder over before running. More than likely it’s the same problem I noted in a previous post just have to apply it. If all goes well the plan would be after getting everything up on the alternate drive take the 60GB and load XP then Dapper and dual boot. I have yet to do one of those as I’ve not really come across a need for it but now might be as good a time as any. Certainly would benefit my preperation for the LCP1 exam.