Diary of a Network Geek

No, not relationships with professionals.

At least, not exactlly. I’ve been thinking about this lately for a couple of reasons.
First, I read too many blogs. A lot of those blogs are written by people of the female persuasion, and I’ve noticed a trend. In all the cases that the blogger bemoans their problems with relationships, the problem seems to be a simple lack of courtesy on the part of the paramour.
Second, I was thinking about a couple of relationships I had up North, before I moved down here to Houston. In two of those, I was involved with someone from work. The one that went horribly awry did so because of a simple lack of response by my coworker.
And, finally, Match.com. Is it so hard to send one of the pre-scripted, “No Thanks” e-mails? I mean, you don’t even have to write anything, just point and click, but, instead, people seem to think that it’s okay to just ignore the whole thing. To me, that seems unimaginably rude. Someone’s gone out of their way to make contact and all they in response is… Nothing? I just can’t do that.

All of these things lead me to a simple conclusion. I expect as much courtesy as you would give a coworker. Does that seem like so much to ask? All I want in a relationship is to be treated with the same respect and attention that one would accord a collegue. If I call, you should call back or at least respond in some way telling me why that was impossible. E-mails should be returned in a reasonable amount of time, even if just to say that a more detailed response is forthcoming. I mean, look, if I’ve bought you dinner the least you can do is show a little appreciation and respect. (And, no, McDonalds does NOT count as dinner. Think Cavatore or Back Door Sushi, at least.)

Is that asking too much? That a date or potential partner respond with a minimum of professional courtesy? I certainly don’t think that’s too much to ask. Or, too much to give, frankly. Apparently, though, that is more than some people are willing to give. Ms. NewGal is always apologizing to me for talking about her hopes and fears and, well, for being “needy”. Mind, I don’t think she’s any needier than anyone else in the world, but she seems to think that she is and, therefore, must somehow make up for it. And, I have to admit, I really don’t do anything very special for her, just listen. Oh, I tell her stuff that I hope will help, but I think she mainly knows that I’m talking through my hat. So, in the end, all I can do is listen and be respectful. And, really, isn’t that all any of us really want? Someone who listens and respects us?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties."
   --Reginald B. Mansell

Oh, the joys of home-ownership!
So, Saturday night Ms. NewGal and I get home after being out to church, dinner and my favorite bookstore to find water running from somewhere under Doc’s car. Now, I don’t mean a little trickle, but rather a fairly steady stream of water, as if the hose had been left on. And, in fact, that’s what I figured had happened. I walk over to turn off the hose, figuring that Doc had watered up front and just not quite turned the handle quite all the way closed. That’s when I saw the water shooting out of the wall. Yes, gushing right out of the brick around the pipe where it goes into the house. Keep in mind this is about 11:00PM, I’m tired and have no idea how much of this water is gushing into the space between the exterior brick and the interior wall. In short, I was not very happy.

Luckily, my girl was able to talk sense to me and remind me that there’s a reason I escrow home-owner’s insurance. So, we filled some buckets of water to use for flushing over night, just in case, and turned the water off at a handy valve that was in the line just before the leak. The next morning, I searched the Internet and she searched the Yellow Pages to find a plumber with “cheap” emergency rates who would come out on a weekend. She found Mr. Rooter, who I would have assumed was a tree-root specialist. Luckily, not only are they a full-service plumber, but they have multiple locations in Houston and don’t charge special rates for the weekend! I was absolutely shocked! I can’t remember the last time I heard about a plumber, electrician or anyone else like that who didn’t charge extra for weekend work.
The dispatcher got me on the list for that same day between 11:00am and 2:00pm, which was another miracle to me. Just before 2:00pm, Melvin, the plumbing “technician” showed up at my house to give me my estimate. Tall, thin and polite, Melvin was neatly dressed in a Mr. Rooter uniform and was quick with his slightly gap-toothed smile. He took a quick look and warned me that they didn’t replace brick, which he’d have to remove to get the work done. He did promise, however, to remove only as much brick as absolutely necessary to do the repair. His initial estimate was just under $500. I was so relieved, I almost cried. That’s less than my deductible on my home-owner’s insurance and about a third of what I was afraid it would cost to have someone out on a Sunday to get this fixed.

An hour later, Melvin was giving me an update on the status of my problem. He’d removed a single brick to get a better look at where the break had occurred. Again, luckily, it didn’t look like there was any water damage inside the house. The leak had happened inside the mortar and been forced out from that point. In fact, when I put my hand inside the small hole, it was bone dry. Someone “upstairs” was watching out for me again! (No, I don’t mean Doc, but the Big Guy.) So, at this point, Melvin had to go get some additional parts to make the connection like it was, only not leaking, which means a trip to Home Depot since the plumbing supply houses are all closed. It also meant an additional $240, which bumped my total to $700. Ouch! Still, it had to be done, so I sent him off to get what he needs. While I waited, though, Melvin bypassed the shut-off by the house to give me water so I could run the dishwasher, take a shower or just enjoy how civilized flush toilets really make me feel.

When he got back, I asked him what he thought caused the leak. He showed me the short piece of galvanized pipe he’d had to cut out and pointed out the crack in the threads. It was his opinion that something had to hit that pipe pretty hard to have made the crack. So, I’m not sure when it happened, but, most likely, someone tagged that valve earlier in the week and it just got worse over time until it finally popped out through the mortar. Sadly, at this point, there’s not really any way to know for sure who did it, so, I just have to eat the cost of all this.
Now, here’s where Melvin got to try out his salesmanship on me. He offered me a deal. I could take the $240 hit for the extra parts, or I could get the Mr. Rooter “Membership”, which gives me 15% off all work they do and annual sewer drain inspections and annual hot water heater drainage for the next five years. In exchange, he would apply the extra fees for the plumbing fixtures to the price of the membership, which was a wash. So, in essence, I got a five year 15% discount on plumbing work, which was already reasonable, and annual service and inspection for nothing. Not a bad deal, was it?
Melvin was done by about 5:00pm and getting my Amex number. He wore little booties into the house, so as not to track imaginary brick dust on my filthy, dog-hair-covered carpet. But, what amazed me was that his uniform hardly had a spot on it. Not even much dust on his navy work pants. The guy was good. Pretty damn fast, too, all things considered.

So, in short, I’ve never been happier to pay $700 I didn’t have to do a plumbing repair. After all, I could have had an entire wall come down or part of the ceiling or any of a number of terrible things. A guy I talked to later said that he had a plumbing problem in his attic once that had he and his wife out of the house for three months while they gutted it. So, yeah, it could have been a whole lot worse.
Oh, and I patched the brick myself. That was about another $20, or so, to get the trowel and the mortar patch from Home Depot. Not the most professional job, but quite sturdy this morning when I left for work. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, or read this blog, but I’ve actually done some of that kind of work before at my parent’s house. Oddly, this was something I learned from my father who repaired a front porch step. But, at the time, he’d never done it before. We figured it out together, he and I. And, I never thought it’d be a favorite childhood memory, but, well, as I was working that trowel last night, I thought of him and that day and smiled. I actually finished the job on the phone with him and my mother.
I’m pretty sure that was pride I heard in his voice when I reminded him of that day and told him that I’d learned enough to do this repair myself. And, that I’d had this potentially giant problem and had handled it without calling for help, or advice, or money.
I guess I’m growing up.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, employ someone, or forbid your children to do it."
   --Monta Crane

Well, I survived my trip to the sweaty, stinky armpit of the South.

The flight over was fairly uneventful, though it did start out with an ill omen. At the airport there was a helicopter that had a collapsed landing strut that had caused some fairly severe damage to the whirlybird, including bending the blades on the main rotor. Very bad and very expensive. Little turbulence on the flight over in spite of warnings about bad weather. Though, I have to admit, I’d have been more comfortable if my pilot hadn’t been taking short naps along the way. I know we were on autopilot and all, but the idea of crashing over those swamps in East Texas and Louisiana just are not my idea of a good time.

The thing that hit me when we got to New Orleans was the damage still from Katrina. We drove for almost three miles from the little airport where we landed before we started to get to intersections that had working stop lights. Most of the houses that I saw were either empty, or had blue tarps over the roof as an attempt at some temporary repair. I did see some FEMA trailers, but most of them were in a big parking lot where they were totally useless. Apparently, that’s the latest outward sign of a bureaucracy gone terribly wrong. The thing that really got me though was the messages spray painted on the abandoned homes and buildings. Most of it was in some sort of rescue-worker code, but on one house the message was clear: 1 pony DOA, 1 dog DOA.

I spent the entire day Thursday watching data copy. Yep, about as exciting as watching paint dry or grass grow, but people keep interrupting any reading or writing you might be doing to ask what’s going on with the server. (“Uh, the same thing that’s going on when you asked the last fifteen times, you slack-jawed Luddite.”) Then, right when everyone starts to scatter near the end of the day, the data finishes and I can actually start doing real work. A whole hour’s worth of real work before, you guessed it, I copy data back to the new server from the backup drive. Woo. Yea. Oh, the exciting life of a sysadmin on the road.
But, I kept reminding people that I had no rental car and needed a ride to the hotel and/or restaurant, hoping that they wouldn’t abandon me. It went about like this:
“Um, you know, I still don’t have a rental car or anything so, I’ll need a ride to the hotel, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you’re not leaving yet, right?”
“Yeah, hold on a minute.”
“Ah, so, since I don’t have a rental car are you going to be driving me?”
“Wait, I’ve got something better than a rental car for you!”
“Better?”
“I’ve got the shop truck for you!”
“Ummm…”
“Of course, you’ll have to put gas in it. It’s on ‘E’.”
“Right. Great. Thanks?”

So, yes, I drove the shop pickup truck that they use to make deliveries and, yes, I filled it up. Thankfully, I grew up in the greater Chicagoland area and only had to stare down one guy who looked like he was going to beg for money at the ratty, little gas station I stopped at in the trashed-out neighborhood where the Holiday Inn I was booked in was sadly located. Now, keep in mind, I used to work in the hotel industry. I never worked in Housekeeping, as is evidenced by the current state my house is in, but I did learn what a hotel room is supposed to look like in great detail. This particular Holiday Inn did not meet Hyatt Hotel’s standards. In fact, it didn’t even have the faintest idea what that standard might possibly resemble. Sadly, it was still not the worst place I’d ever spent the night while on the road. After all, the sheets were clean, there was an extra roll of toilet paper, and no used band-aids on the floor. Yes, it can, in fact, get that bad. I did, however, have to plug in every electrical appliance and light. I only had to kill a single cockroach, though, so it all works out. Besides, it was the only room available anywhere close to that part of town.

The next morning, I got down to the nitty-gritty of actually moving the PCs and users to the new server. It went like clockwork. Well, after I got the first few problems worked out and everyone finally had the right security rights. But, freakishly, considering all the things that have gone wrong in the past on these little junkets, I was done by lunchtime. So, I just had to hang around until my plane left at 8:30PM. At least, I managed to slip out for my favorite Southernism, the oyster po’ boy. After that it was just killing time cleaning up little detail things like verifying the backup scheme and updating the anti-virus files, until it was time for the crawfish boil. Now, you might not think that a damn, Yankee carpet-bagger like myself knows what to do with a mess o’ mud bugs, but, surprise, I do. Though, I didn’t eat as many as locals, I did know to suck the head. By then it was getting on toward 6:00pm and I was itching to get to the airport and make sure I had a seat on the plane home. I rode back with the most back-country, redneck sounding guy you ever want to try and listen to, but he was really very bright and, in his own Southern-fried way, quite articulate. In fact, it was everything I could do to keep from imitating his swamp drawl after a bit.

So, I got to the airport, and home, early. My girl got me from the airport and we drove to the far ends of the Earth to get my car from the West Houston Airport where it was not only safe and sound, but looked like it had been washed! Apparently, those stories I’d heard about torrential downpours in Houston while I was away were not exaggerated. By the time we made it back to my house, it was about 11:30PM and Doc had gone to bed, but my Hilda was quite glad to see me. Either that, or she’s learned that Ms. NewGal always brings yummy dog treats with her when she comes.
Oh, while I was away, I also managed to get some reading in, so I finally finished A Better Way to Live and started a trashy novel called Seppuku. I suppose I’ll try to review those when I finally get caught up!
(Oh, and by the way, the boss said I could put down Ms. NewGal’s milage on my expense report, so she’ll get a little something more than the pleasure of my company, which is all she claimed she wanted when she volunteered. Gotta’ love it!)

Oh, there’ll be time enough to sleep when I’m dead.
Up until 2:30AM on the phone with the fascinating woman from Match.com. She knows my part of Chicago. She loves dogs and what she does for a living. She has no time for bullshit. She’s in therapy, too. She spent seven unhappy years with an Australian she met in a bar in Chicago before she moved back to Houston a little over two years ago. Oh, and there’s more and more and more and more…
And, yes, I told her too much. She asked about the ex-wife, so I answered her truthfully and honestly. And spent half the night explaining and justifying my poor choices and why it’s okay now. The rest of the time, of course, I spent asking her the same thing. I mean, an Australian in a bar? What was she thinking?
It ended with her telling me, “It’s okay to call me again.”
“Is it? Is it okay if I call you?” I’m sure she could hear me laughing at her subtlety.
“Like tomorrow. Yeah, that would be good.”
“Would it?”
“Yeah, it would.”
“Well, I guess I’ll call tomorrow night then.”

So, you may have noticed that I haven’t written as much lately.
Well, okay, maybe you haven’t because I have a giant backlog of posts just waiting for when I feel a little off and un-writerly. Still, these are generic posts and contain virtually nothing personal or important. There’s a reason. Of course, that’s silly, isn’t it? There’s always a reason!

Saturday night, after Mercy Street, I went out to dinner with some friends. More specifically, some friends that aren’t the Prayer Team. A buddy of mine, J., his new girl/woman/whatever, L., a special lady, C., and, the reason I jumped at the chance to go with this crew, Jennifer. She’s one of the two girls I could have changed my life for at that New Year’s party that L. threw. The one from out of state, not out of the country. So, of course, I jumped at the chance. I mean, a cute, young red-head who spent time in the Peace Corps and is about to finish her MBA? Yeah, an evening spent in conversation with her would be just fine.
In any case, we get to the restaurant and everyone is talking about what they’re going to order. J. gets some queso for the entire table, because, well, because he apparently has a very special relationship with cheese. But, that leads to a discussion about weight and diet. And, I talk about how I’d like to loose a few more pounds.
“Yeah, you looked really different when I met you four years ago”, J. said.
“Oh?” asked L.
“Yeah, I was on my way to being ‘little Jim’ at the time.”
“Weren’t you already little when I met you?” asked J.
“No, but, I was by the end of that year.”
“Yeah, you lost a lot of weight that year”, added J.
“Really? How much?” asked L.
“Well, I started out at around 230 and before the year was out, I’d bounced off 175 for a week or two.”
“Whoa! That’s a huge change! How’d you do it?” asked L.
“Well, I was out of work for a year, my now ex hadn’t even made a move toward working and I was doing everything I could to take care of my little family. I had no good prospects for jobs, thanks to the Enron thing. I was quickly running out of money and the bills kept coming and I had no idea how I was going to pay them. I got so depressed that I stopped eating. So, you know, that severe depression really takes the weight off.”
Apparently, by the time I was done with that little tale of woe, poor L., who is a dear, sweet, sensitive soul, had heard a whole lot of pain, because when I was done and looked at her, I got this slightly shocked, pitiful look and a very, small, quiet, “Oh, Jim, I’m so sorry…” To which I shrugged, smiled and said, “Hey, it happens. Regardless, I made it through, didn’t I?”
But, then, I felt so old. My buddy, J., is the same age I am, but he had no idea what it was like trying to support a family and knowing that there was no way I could make it without help. Help that wasn’t coming from anyone I lived with at the time. I realized that I’d lived an entire life, then watched it crumble into bits and fly off on the wind. And, here I was, left still standing to build another life with hardly any idea where to start. And, damn, if that didn’t make me feel like the oldest person at the table. And, all I can think after I’d said that was that I’d just ruined my chances with Jennifer sitting next to me. Of course, it’s very, very, highly unlikely that she’s going to move back to Houston after she gets her MBA anyway, but, still, a guy can dream.
But, it gets “better”…
So, we’re all walking out to our cars and everyone points theirs out and so on, trying to figure where to separate and hug and whatnot. I laugh and point out my car, saying, “Well, I can always spot my car. How many retired police cars can there be in a lot?”
And, L., trying to be her usual nice self, says, “I like it. It’s got personality.”
Ugh. Personality. I told J. when I saw him Sunday night, that I’d trade all that personality for a double helping of normal. He told me that it’d be okay and I’d drive something nice and normal again one day.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I wasn’t talking about the car.

Yeah, it’s not years that get me, but, sometimes, it sure is the milage.

The top eleven Geek Pickup lines, fourth edition, as stolen from BBSpot, for your Friday afternoon funny:

Geek Pick-Up Lines: Part 4
11. I have so much love to give you’ll have to pipe it through more.
10. Did you make a Google Bomb? Whatever I search for, it’s you I find.
9. Do you work for a TelCom? Because I bet you’d be good at pulling cable.
8. I was hoping you wouldn’t block my pop-up.
7. Would you like to play Scrabble with me? I am tired of playing with myself.
6. You compute me.
5. Girl, I wish I was your differential, because then I’d be touching all your curves.
4. But enough about me, let’s talk about mu.
3. Be my queen and mate me with your knight moves.
2. You’ve stolen the ASCII to my heart.
1. You must’ve been made by Intel to be that hot!

And, just as a side note, if you’re in Houston, female, over the age of twenty-one and any of these would work on you, drop me a line! 😉

I want to smoke.
Not just a smoke, but to smoke. I want to chain smoke clove cigarettes until the hazy cloud surrounds me like an airy, armored halo. I want to light my next smoke on the red-hot cherry of the last one and burn through the pack as fast as I can breathe. I want to sit very still in the damp fog that insulates Houston tonight from the ennui of this post Valentine’s Day euphoria that everyone feels but me and smoke until I can feel the nicotine seep through my pores like the sweat on a cold Scotch. I want to feel the burn as I suck the hot fire of my favorite Indonesian cancer sticks into my lungs. I want to see the cloud thicken as I blow the sweet, dark smoke out my flared nostrils. I want to smoke like a death row inmate wants his conjugal visit. I want to feel the tingle that starts at my hairline and cascades down my scalp as the tiny capillaries push that sweet lady nicotine through my skull into my brain and make me feel alive even as it slowly kills me. I want it as bad as I imagine a junky wants his fix after three days clean listening to his cell mate chatter. I want to start smoking and just keep on until my entire body is ash. I want to skip work, skip therapy, skip eating. I just want to smoke. I want to smoke my fear and my pain and my worry away in a sugary, spicy, clove cloud. I want my entire life to be consumed through a filtered krtek so I won’t have to be bothered with people, places or things again. I don’t want to move or even think. I just want to smoke.
Yeah, I could go for a smoke.

This post brought to you by the song “Lady Nicotine” on A Little Gun Shy, by Brian Douglas and French Kiss staring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline.

Damn, I could really use a cigarette.
So, the other day, I’m talking with my therapist and he points out an interesting “coincidence”. The women who appreciate me most are all pretty well unavailable. Damn if he’s not right. Let me break it down.
First, there are the married women. Mostly, the unhappily married women, or at least married women who seem to be missing something in their marriage that I seem to have, or so they think. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in touch with my feelings and can actually express them. Maybe it’s that I’m not obsessed with sports or some other distracting hobby, other than blogging, of course. Maybe it’s just that I pay attention to them, while their partners, who see them every day, don’t. Maybe it’s just that they don’t know me.
Damn, I could really use a cigarette.
Then, of course, there are the divorced women. Sure, they’re available, but, they either have no time for me or they fall into the next demographic group. Again, I think all the same things apply from the first. The divorced women who find me interesting, I think, must see in me everything that their ex-husbands were not. At least, I hope that’s it and, hey, it’s a working theory until one of them straightens me out, right?
Damn, I could really use a cigarette.
Next, there are all the nice, young, attractive women in distant lands. Anywhere from Oklahoma to New York to Denver to the Phillipines to Japan. Anywhere, in short, that’s too damn far to drive to from Houston. Now, really, I did not start this blog almost six years ago looking to “hook up”, okay? I started the whole thing as a marketing ploy to boost my ranking in Google. It worked, too. But, along the way, I got married, then divorced, and found myself with a largely female readership. At the time, I thought it was great. A lovely turn of events. Turns out, not so much. So many of the most interesting women were all, well, rather unreachable. Not out of my league, or anything so narrow-minded or self-limiting as all that, but out of my reach geographically. Yeah, great. So, the girls in far off places think I “look fine” and write well and have interesting hobbies or whatever. That’s great, but I don’t exactlly get to the Phillipines for coffee, you know?
Damn, I could really use a cigarette.
And, really, this is not for lack of trying here, kids. I have tried to find someone local. Really. Stepped way, way, way outside my comfort zone to ask out ladies from on-line. Tried the Bookstore Method more than once, but with similar results. Even looked around at church, but, as I told someone via e-mail, I “love the Lord” and everything, but, well, I don’t think I want to double-date with Him, you know? I’m sure that whole “water-to-wine” trick is great at parties, but, crown of thorns sort of puts people off. Anyway, it just seems to me like the more available a woman is, the less interested she is in me.
So, anyone care to tell me where I’m making my mistakes? What am I doing wrong here?

Damn, I could really use a cigarette.

So, some things went well today, and others, not so much.
Virtually all my hardware arrived yesterday and I was able to start getting things setup. Which was good, but not everything went according to plan. For instance, my giant terabyte external drive array is still on a UPS truck somewhere in the greater Houston area. Or so the UPS tracking website tells me. Then, there’s the Novell Open Enterprise Server/SuSE Linux CDs that won’t be arriving. Why? Well, both the salesman and I were surprised to discover that they don’t send the media anymore. Now, it’s a download, which is what they’re doing even as we speak.
Also, there was the left side panel on the half-height rack from Dell that wouldn’t stay on. Any guesses why? Because the underage, third-world welder was overworked that week and the welds on the hooks at the bottom of the panel were extremely substandard and popped. Of course, I could have taken it out to the guys in the shop to get them to weld it quick, but that’s not the point. Dell sold me a fully functional rack that should have had all its parts together. They didn’t send that, so, now, they’re sending a replacement door. I figure it’ll arrive about the time that missing drive array does.
Now, here’s the lemons to lemonade part…
The great, big UPS that was shown on the quote as simply being 120 volts, which should be standard wall power, turned out to have a funky, 30 amp, round, grounded plug. So, I had to con one of the electricians we have on staff to help me out. Turns out he’s going to run a completely new 30 amp circuit just for the server. Which, as you old server monkies know, is just precisely what we should have anyway. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t want to hassle with it, so I totally ignored that and, well, sometimes, God likes me and sends me just enough lemons to make a whole, yummy pitcher of lemonade. Just like today.

So, in short, I’ve had worse days. The server is almost ready to go and the boss still thinks I walk on water. All in all, not bad at all.

Well, it looks like my server finally got approved.
Yea! So, yesterday morning, our office in New Orleans is having their third or fourth server space crisis in as many weeks and they start complaining about why they can’t get a new server. Of course, I patiently explain that I’ve been going through this little drive-space two-step for about six months or so here in Houston and we need a server as bad as they do. Well, I guess I said the right things to the right people and suddenly everything is a go. So I scrambled around and ordered a Dell server with 1.5 gig of RAM and 1 TERABYTE of hard drive space. I also ordered SyncSort backup software for Linux/Novell, two 1 terabyte network attached storage devices and a 50 user copy of Novell’s Open Enterprise Server for SuSE Linux. Now, all I have to do is whip together a migration plan. *sigh*
After I get this all converted and what not, I’ll repurpose the old server for the New Orleans office. Sadly this will mean travel to the sweatiest, back-road, industrial armpit outside of New Orleans, but, well, at least it’ll get done. And, I’ll have my OES server on nice, clean, safe, bullet-proof Linux. Of course, that means more geeky/technical writing. And a lot of penguin references.

I lost a reader recently, and I think my lack of geek content is to blame. At least, I have one less subscriber on Bloglines and, while it is possible that someone else has bailed on me, I blame it on a boring, barely technical job. I spend more time hooking up cables for my boss’ KVM switch than I do maintaining anything. In many ways, it has been rather disheartening. Of course, by the time I’m done here, I’ll have some really good things to put on my resume, but, then, I’ve been spinning long, thankless jobs into impressive experience since I started in this business. That Marketing degree comes in handy sometimes. So, in short, I’m looking forward to being a very technical guy for a couple of weeks. I hope I don’t bore my new readers while I geek out, though. Frankly, I really like some of you new ones. And, yes, I really do enjoy having a more female demographic. Really.