Good Things Comin' My Way This Time Around

When last I blogged at any length, I told you there were some things happening that I could not share with you. Well, now I can.

If you will notice the time stamp at the bottom of this entry, you will notice that I am blogging during work hours. Normally this is discouraged but I won't be working here much longer. A couple of weeks ago, I was offered a position at Oklahoma State University... I'm going home.

The job means more responsibility in line with my career goals, no more hour-long commutes, and more money (although, I could rake it in with bonuses and overtime where I am now). It also means I will probably be blogging more often - but I'm still going to stay away from the subject of work for the most part. I finish up here tomorrow and start there on Monday. I am excited about being back "where everybody knows [my] name." There are some details about the job that I neglected to ask about but what's the fun of going in with your eyes wide open?

There is an aspect I am nervous about. There is an area that I will have access to that requires an FBI background check and certification. I doubt there will be any problems but not knowing their process I have no idea what they will be scrutinizing and how closely they will be scrutinizing it.

In other news...

About eight weeks ago, I took a certification exam for Symantec Backup Exec 12. If you follow that sort of thing, you know that there wasn't a certification exam available for Backup Exec 12 eight weeks ago. What I took was the beta exam.

What is a beta exam? Normally, when you take a certification exam, you are presented with a fixed number of questions (say, 50 or 60) randomly selected from a larger pool of questions (say, 100-200). If you answer a large enough percentage of the 50 or 60 questions correctly, you pass the test. In a beta exam, the pool of questions is much larger than the pool that will actually be used for the certification exam - in this case, I think it was 250. Instead of answering a limited number of randomly chosen question, you have to answer all of the questions (it took me 3 hours and 14 minutes). Once they have a large enough sample of completed exams, they perform an analysis on the questions, decide which ones they want to keep and which ones they want to throw out, then score you based on how you answered the questions they kept.

This whole process apparently takes about eight weeks because I found out this morning that I passed the exam. I am certified in Symantec Backup Exec 12 for Windows Servers Administration. I am VERY proud of this accomplishment because I also learned that one of our analysts (who was responsible for a large part of my training) and another technician did not pass.

It also looks like our financial burden will be eased a bit. In addition to my new position and lower fuel costs as a result, we also learned about an additional income stream that should start in the next 2-3 weeks. It isn't much but it's enough to be helpful.

So, good things are happening in the Fusco household. Here is to them lasting and more good things to come.

Are You of the Body?

I am now. I have finally joined the ranks of those who listen to podcasts. I figured with all the driving I'm going to have to do for the new job, I might as well keep current on tech news or at least get some entertainment out of it.

I downloaded a free podcast aggregator called Juice. There are a couple of features I wish it had but overall it's not too difficult to work with. One feature I'd like to see (and I don't know if any aggregators do this) is to create a rolling set of files for a podcast. For instance, I could tell it to keep three episodes of Distorted View Daily and it would delete the oldest file as it downloaded the newest file. My DVR does this and it would make it easier to manage the files on my MP3 player (a Lyra 2780).

I've already found some pretty decent Tech podcasts such as the Mike Tech Show, This Week in Tech (TWIT) and Geek News Central.

It's amazing what you hear when the companie's propaganda is filtered out. For instance, I learned that the virus scanner in Windows Live OneCare (a subscription service) has been recently found to be deleting Outlook .pst files (email archive files). The fix is to turn off the virus scanner until the patch can be released (it may already be out). You know, when you pay someone to provide a service like that, you don't expect that their service will delete one of their own critical files. Trustworthy computing.

I also learned of a handy little program. It's called Evernote. Evernote is very similar to OneNote by Microsoft. They have a free version which is pretty feature-rich already and a paid version (that's about 60% cheaper than OneNote) that includes Synchronization, Handwriting Recognition, Shape Correction, Advanced Note Recognition (ANR) and Ink-Note Search.

First it was blogging, now I'm listening to Podcasts. Next thing you know, I'll be producing a podcasts.

p.s. If you recognize where the title came from, you are a true Trekkie/er

I Could, But I Won't...

I learned over the Weekend that OSU President (I refuse to give him the honor of calling him C.E.O., I firmly believe that was a title he bestowed upon himself) David J. Schmidly was chosen as President of the University of New Mexico.  When I saw the headline I literally, involuntarily laughed out loud with joy in my heart.

It's no secret to anyone who has read this blog over the past three or four years that I have little respect for the man, his good-ol-boys or the politics he forced upon the institution.

I have written and re-written this post in my head several times over the past 36 hours trying to be as scathing as possible.  I wanted him to feel the same emotional sting that many many faculty and staff have felt during his tenure and will continue to feel for years to come.  I even thought about gathering quotes about him and his new position from around the web and throwing his own words and "vision" back in his face, pointing out the shorcomings of his administration.

I could have done either of those... but I won't.  I am healing, I have healed and it's just not worth the effort. 

So many times during his time at OSU, I took a view of "cautious optimism" only to have it come back and bite me in the ass.  Looking at the summaries of his interviews and meetings while campaigning to be UNM's President, I feel UNM has been a goal of his for a long time.  Maybe he was bitter that he got stuck at Texas Tech and Oklahoma State when he really wanted to be at UNM and took it out on the institutions... I don't know.

I'll just say that I, like many others, will not be sorry to see him leave.

Flashback to 1977

One of my Christmas gifts this year was the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD.  I got the Limited Edition, which includes the versions Mr. Lucas ruined and the original theatrical releases.  Last night, I finally had the opportunity to watch the first one and was instantly transported back to 1977.  This is a movie, and a version of a movie, that I haven't seen in many, many years.  My face was suffused with a semi-permanent grin.

The disc is only encoded with two-channel stereo, there are color shifts throughout the film, the Darth vs. Obi Wan light saber battle has these mysterious yellow flashes throughout, and many of the flight effects during the Death Star battle are far from transparent but I remember.  I remember being a wide-eyed ten-year-old watching robots, and stormtroopers, and laser guns, and light sabers and... light speed!  I also remember the hick in the row behind us, near the end of the Death Star battle, loudly remarking in an Oklahoma drawl, "Oh no, R2 got shot," and I remember our whole family laughing about it.

As I watched, I took note of how three specific items were handled:

1) The opening crawl does not state that it is "Episode IV"
2) HAN SHOOTS FIRST!!!
3) During the chase on board the Death Star, there is no call of, "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!"  My wife and I both remember it so, unfortunately, this is not the original original theatrical release but based on one of the later, edited prints.  No matter, it's close enough.

It was quite interesting to watch both reminiscing with my inner ten-year-old and as I am now, having seen the rest of the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy.  There is a lot of foreshadowing and some interesting subtleties to the dialogue - some they worked into the backstory well, some they did not. (i.e. "Obi Wan? That's a name I haven't heard since before you were born.")  It's GREAT stuff... even 30 years later.