Still Alive...

Yes I'm still here outside of the random picture message to this rather dried up and crusty part of the internet.

Yes I'm Still Alive

That said... what the hell have I been doing?

Well the things that stand out in my mind are several marathon sessions of Rock Band in Colorado and even more marathon sessions of Grand Theft Auto in Arizona.

Speaking of Colorado I went to "Beer Mecca" aka "The Fat Tire Brewery" so there is that.

But yeah alot of Rock Band and Grand Theft Auto.

Rock Band has a strange effect on how I listen to music, no longer do I listen to a song I start to think about how the various pieces parts will interact in Rock Band... Like the drum opening to "Jambi" by TOOL... or the Guitar Solo's in just about any Led Zepplin or Pink Floyd song. I have questions about Pearl Jam too specifcally "Lukin" At one point there was supposed to be the capablity to import your iTunes library into Rock Band and be able to play those songs. I'm sure that got nixed because some record label exec was mad that they weren't making a sufficent amount of money from anything.

I do have say, any time I hear a Disturbed song on the radio I cringe when I think about the guitars/drums/vocals that would be required in Rock Band.

Up in smoke?

I don't often take a activist type stand on the old blog but I thought that this particular story merited some additional time and analysis above and beyond the usual mass of not caring that I usually imbue on to a article in the East Valley Tribune.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/109768

The cruxt of the article is this. In 2006 the voters of the state of Arizona passed a law that made it illegal for people to smoke in public places you know bars, restaurants, theaters, museums, libraries, and doctors offices. You know all the places it was already illegal to smoke, but now it was just actually put down into law.

The original intent of the law was good and I will admit I've enjoyed going out much more now that there isn't a cloud of tobacco smoke hanging over every nook and cranny of every place that I go to. However we as a society need to question the actions the of the Arizona Department of Health in going after these particular establishments. They don't serve food and only have a liquors lisc so that they can provide a full variety of drinks to the customers. I think it would be safe to say that Mr. and Mrs. along w/ Peanut will not be going to one of these establishments.

So why then is the Arizona Department of Health on what amounts to a crusade against these places? That I cannot answer since I'm not a investigative blogger I'm just a guy who's been to Stogie Cutters down the street a few and have grown to know Rich and Jen (the owners). Do I smoke cigars? Not a regular basis, I've given it a couple of shots, but the results are never positive. I do however like the clientele that shows up there and sometimes you just have to watch the Suns play with other people who care.

I've never been one who agrees with the state taxing "sin" items (alcohol/tobacco) but I put up with it since it's about the only way that any taxes get paid in Arizona it seems. Hey I live in a urban area I want my police department to armed to the teeth and well trained. As it stands today the Mesa Police Department is well trained and doing a stand up job, but if things keep going like they have been that won't be the case for long.

So basically what I'm saying is we all need to call the Arizona Department of Health Services on this and tell them to knock it off. They may be trying to help, but at this point they are doing more harm then good.

Where I begin to question...

My sanity or the sanity of my coworkers....

This was the first email I opened at work this morning.....

----------------------------
From: Nathan
To: Andrea; Brad; Sherpa; Greg; Jim; John; Scott; Tom
CC: Victoria
Subject: I got elfed
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 23:35:42 -0700

Hey, I just made a total elf of myself. Check it out by clicking the link below.
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1157868405
---------------------------------------------

Some days it just doesn't pay to get a second cup of coffee...

Chuck waits... You wait...

A week into the whole Mac transition and it's been way more painless then I thought. I've had more consternation about what to do with my music and photo's more then anything else. (two copies at the moment). It has not been all smooth sailing I have run into issues getting some web apps work. Don't worry it's all related to my work and that is why Steve Jobs gave us BootCamp.

Of course what Steve giveth Bill really fouls up....

I of course loaded boot camp and windows on to the Mac. And Windows runs great, I just have to boot into the Windows side to use it. I'm going to be honest I've never been big on booting between operating systems. So I've been checking out virtualization for OS X. The good news is there are some really excellent options out there. The bad news is that Microsoft has some really fucked up licensing.

This one has me a little ticked off so if you don't want to read about Microsoft and Apple for the rest of this post I would just go some place else if I were you.

I decided to load XP, you know since it's stable been out for forever and a day, and way cheaper then Vista. See now you can get two versions of XP full... OEM and Retail. The difference is OEM instantly gets tied to your hardware set. Meanwhile retail has some flexibility built in to help with those pesky hardware upgrades. Turns out that you can virtualize a retail version of XP but not a OEM copy unless you install the OEM copy directly into the VM. (This is really good info for anyone thinking about doing this).

So where does this leave me? Well for the time being I don't know I haven't landed on a virtualization setup that I really like. I would like to just do it and move on. At the same time though I still have my work laptop that I bring home and my desktop that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Honestly for me the best solution would be a VM type appliance that contained I.E. and access to Java in the VM. After that I could really care less about Windows.

So other then the whole I need I.E. to do some legacy web stuff for work that I can do on another computer just as easily I think I could recommend a Mac as your next computer.

Unless you Curtis or Clint... there is just no talking any sense into those two.

Wind w/ Fire!

So I've been dicking around with my Linux server this weekend...

It's pissing me off.

That is all I will write about Linux... needless to say the thought of lighting several DVD's on fire to exercise my Linux frustrations is really appealing to me right now.

While dicking around with said Linux box I wandered back to the ole website of long ago (rollingskull.com) which really didn't come into existence until I moved down to Phoenix but for all intents and purposes it's the same damn sight I had when I was in Kingman and doing this with Frontpage and Geo-cities.

I got to reading the old posts and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed opening up the old semi-journal to random emails from readers (all 3.2 of you). I got to thinking that I should do something like that again... then I thought if Curtis AND my brother both have a blog then there really is no point.

So while my install of CentOS 5 died for the 5th time in a row I was thinking...

Maybe what I should is something along the lines of that post card site where people mail their post cards in anonymously... it's sometimes a riot other times really sad and typically it's both on the same day.

So maybe I should open this thing up to a anonymous emails of whatever? (Thanks to Eve who reminded me it's postsecret.com is what I was thinking of)

I like the idea... and it gives you (all 3.2 of you) a little bit of interactive opportunity.

So here are the rules (I know always rules)

1. Send the email anonymously.... ideally from a one time use site it's up to you how you want to do it. If your to lazy to do that and send me an email from your regular address that kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it?

2. Send the email to cignus20 at hotmail dot com use the subject line "Wind w/ Fire!"

3. I will post received emails (if I get any at all) up here...

If you don't like the rules you don't have to email.

The musings of a back porch....

You know I think I can really get used to this whole back porch thing... It's February and I'm sitting on my back porch with a beer, laptop, and iPod. Just taking in the whole serenity of the evening.

I find that having a bit of alone time is good every now and again. I'm talking serious alone time 24 to 36 hours of the stuff. It's good for finding a center of your being, it's almost zen like. Well as zen as one can be with out being either a Buddhist monk or a Novel Netware Admin.

I live in the East valley... now I'm not that far out in the East valley, but it's only 10 minutes in 2 diffrent directions to hit open deseret. (south and south east by freeway). I never noticed before but the clouds at night absorb the light of the city and glow reddish. It's kind of strange but at the same time cool.

The album of choice is "Mezzanine" by Massive Attack. Everyone should check it out.

So with the brief winter that Phoenix experinces now over we are into the part of year that I like to call "Why we live here weather". Let's face it folks no one in their right mind lives in a place where it gets 120 in the summer and has 100+ days of 100+ degree heat. No I don't count I moved here willingly and love it. I'm also a PACS administrator. If you ever meet another PACS administrator they will tell you anybody who does that job willingly is either stupid or crazy. I'm going to have to go with crazy people for $100 Alex.

I've come to the realization that everyone is beautiful on myspace. Which is why I use a comic for my picture (and here too). It's not what the author looks like it's what they have to say. Now I'm fine with the fact that this is page is a cesspool of incessant rambling and talking about things only I care about (for the record I haven't talked about Linux in like 3 months). Myspace just feels like the sewer system of internet. Everyone goes there, but no one I know freely admits to going there on a regular basis. Actually let me rephrase that... people I call my friends admit they go there, they however have mostly moved to becoming flickr and blogger whores (welcome my brothers and sisters). So why have the myspace? I don't know... part of me wants to be able to reconnect with my past... the other part of me doesn't want to look back. I keep the myspace to keep the part of me that wants to look back happy. I keep this to keep the part of me that wants to look forward happy.

The most cruel time of year....

Yes it's tax time.

I have spent the better part of the last 3 hours preparing my tax prep packet to take to my Tax Guy Who Walks On Water (TG-WOW). Every year I go through this sadistic ritual and every year I want to curl up into the fetal position and cry.

How do I know I'm not getting screwed? Easy. I also do my taxes using online versions of your favorite tax prep software (mine is TurboTax). I fill the online forms to best of my ability and it normally takes me 2.5 to 3.5 hours. Yes I'm that slow... Yes I think about it that hard... Yes I try to be that meticulous.

That has been my ritual for the last 3 or 4 years now. And every year on the first Wed in February I go to my tax appointment with TG-WOW and normally double what the TurboTax told me my refund would be, the last two years I've tripled the amount. And in one of the few areas other then computers I beat the pants off of anyone else in my family is in the size of my Tax Refund... yes some people gloat about their athletic ability... me computers and my tax refund.

OK now it's time for me to get on my "Soap Box of Doom" tm

I'm 27 years old, I can't tell you how many of my friends do not have a tax guy... much less a TG-WOW. If you don't have a tax guy and you have any thing more then house intrest and a W2 for taxes get a tax guy. Ask your friends, family, single friend who blogs about his TG-WOW. Ask everybody you know just just get a tax pro.

Now when I say Tax Pro I don't mean goto H&R Block... that is a great way to really screw up your day. I mean get a Tax Accountant or a CPA who also does income taxes. Check out your tax guy ask them if there is anything you need to do to prep. My TG-WOW sends out a packet that I fill out ahead of time with all of the info he needs.

Check your tax pro's policy on what happens when you get audited. Mine will go with me to court. I checked out others and they may not. Your tax guy could very well vary.

The first hit is sometimes free... My tax guy doesn't charge the filer who comes through his doors for the first time. Well at least he didn't used to I don't know about 2007. Follow my system if you don't do so hot with the tax guy then nothing lost if you got a fat refund from the tax guy then bonus!

In closing... get a tax pro may or may not cost you in the short term and may or may not get you great gains in the short term. You have nothing to lose... maybe.

Inertia keeps... Moving up slowly

Every now and again some of my comrades in blogging will comment "Tom, I'm decided to listen to you about not blogging about work. XYZ happened and I'm glad I didn't write about that shit". Actually it's been one person who has said it to me multiple times and it makes me feel good about my decision. Even if it does cut down on the amount of material I write about. Granted I have broken that rule from time to time some times worse then others but by and far I tend to stick to it.

The nice thing about about have the proverbial MAC(s) to my PC blog is that they have interesting links and seeing as how links to blogs came up at dinner on Saturday night. Granted the topic lasted all of 45 seconds but it was enough to send me to re-examine what I thought were previously static link tables.

Yep they are all pretty static except for one additional link. I'm trying to figure out how Cody came upon this person and decided to link to their very nicely done blog actually this is the sort of blog that gives me blog envy. Actually for the record it doesn't take much to give me blog envy these days a few nicely placed pictures and a link table or two and I'm yours.

Damn if you had a C++ gui programming manual I would so be your friend.

OK so where I was going before I decided to head to tangent-ville, this blogger the "dooce" was fired from a job for blogging about work. I present to you know a excerpt from her "FAQ" section....

"I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET. If you are the boss, however, please don’t be a bitch and talk with your hands. And when you order Prada online, please don’t talk about it out loud, you rotten whore."

So there you go kids... that is a good enough reason to not talk about work. Well that and it's not very intersting, no one cares, and it's really not that professional.

I'm feeling in between

Logging into blogger this evening I notice that it is no longer in "beta" status... I think that this is a first for a Google application. Even more importantly I think that this is the first time that a product from google has gone through a entire life cycle. What will happen next? Gmail will actually become stable and not lose 50 messages out of the 5 trillion a day it receives? Oh MY! Google products will work across multiple platforms and web browsers and it will all work exactly the same!

I mean it's like someone came along and created a set of standards and then someone else came along and followed those standards and didn't try to create their own.

Of course I've been under the weather this weekend and broke from my normal no meds policy and did shot of nyQuill at midnight two nights ago... so that may be influencing this post. Then again so may the have drunk high ball of CC&7 sitting next to me.

What Tom's not drinking beer? First Google brings a product out of beta and then Tom isn't drinking a beer when he posts? The next thing I will be telling you is I found a woman!

Sadly somethings just don't change with me.

So with it being the new year I'm supposed to make a new years resolution. Why do I need to make it on January 1? Why can't I make it on April 1? Other then it being on April Fools? Yes it would still count. Anyway my point is you shouldn't use the first of the year as a excuse to make a resolution to do something. Take me for instance. I swore off soda at home in March! I resolved to leave Kingman in April!! I vowed to start going to the gym in August!!! OK two out of three aint bad... Gosh I miss coke at home.

Ok now that I've beaten that horse .

I wish all of my loyal readers, which the latest nielsen ratings have come in and it says that my readership is up to 3.4 people with a .00000000000000000000001 market share! A happy and healthy new year and may my little corner of the intertube bring some light into your day at one point or another. And who knows maybe just maybe you will be apart of some tale of mine that gets it's own movie like name.

Festivus Celebration!

The Kern household never one to mock sacred traditions of old. I present to you now a very Kern Festivus celebration!



So to the left we have your blogger extradoinare truly, kicking off Festivus with the traditional metal pole adorned with nothing. We did splurge this year and get a rusted pipe.










And here we have lil brother just before his "Airing of Grievances". It really wasn't pretty once he let loose with the golf club.

To the left here we have my father "Big" Tom airing his grievances in the form of a black t-shirt.

Some days my father and I so alike it's almost scary.



And now for the feats of strength... This was the most impressive one of the day.

And finally we have the traditional wrestling of the head of house hold. I am happy to say that I was able to pin my mother in under 30 seconds. I will say this she is very scrappy.

So there you have it folks a very very Festivus!!

This broken wheel is coming undone...

It's the middle of December and I just realized it. What's more it's just over a week to X-mas. wow...

I always use December as a time to reflect on the last year... was it good? Did I accomplish anything? What did I do set the world ablaze?

Yes it was a good year, I accomplished the things I wanted to and few extra, did I set the world ablaze? Only in my pants...

Sorry...

Ok moving on. Happy Birthday to ye-blog. On December 1, 2000 I wrote the first entry in what became the "semi-journal" my orginal intent was just catalog what was going on in my life that last semester of college and my finding my way to be a "real adult" well 6 years later. College is becoming a more distant memory and I still haven't found my way to being a real adult. But I gotta say I'm having fun :)

So what is in store for 2007? Probally more fun, and hopefully a few more stories that I can regail my friends with.

I'm trying to read your mind...

So the next time your in Missoula Montana you really need to pick up some "Moose Drool Beer" it's a brown ale so those of you who aren't into beers that aren't bud, miller, or coors keep on walking. Or if your Nancy and don't drink beer... well I can't help that your Nancy. So for those of you who are not Nancy and aren't afraid to be adventurous with your beer drinking then I highly suggest the Moose Drool. And if you don't make it back to Canada Jr. that often just do what I do... Watch C/E's cat and they bring your beer!

I'm simple really I am... beer and food and I'm a happy camper... that probally explains why certain friends can't seem to get rid of me.

So with it being less then 2 weeks to Xmas 2006 (gentlemen start your engines!!!) I'm starting to receive Xmas cards. I always enjoy them simply because I look to see who actually address them to "Tom" or "You and your family" or some such plural thing. Pretty consistently the same 3 people send me a card addressed to "Tom" the rest do the plural thing....

Right now Kristi is wondering if she addressed the card to "Tom" or to a plural of people... Kristi I'm happy to report that you addressed the card correctly.

I'm keeping my eye on the rest of you.

Speaking of Xmas cards... every year at about December 20th I think I should really send out cards. However 2 things stop me from this every year.
1. I can't find the card of Santa taking a shit down the chimney with a caption that says "How you know you've been really bad this year". To much happiness needs to be tempered with some smart assness every now and again.

2. Everyone I would send a card to I actually see over the holidays except for like 2 people. And honestly I don't think that they would care.

My toilet keeps filling... I just discovered two things...

1. The bleach tablet is getting in the way of the valve.

2. I have a big brick in there. (How did I not notice that beforehand?)

Now I know I live in a desert but I don't think I'm conserving water if it takes me two sometimes three flushes to to get the toilet completely cleared.

Speaking of things in the toilet...

At some point on Friday the conversation with the file room girls, or as Eve (the woman not the game) calls them "file room wenches", to my personal life and my lack of a s/o which to me is not a huge deal. When I started my tale the tall file room wench (Laura) "yes we know that you hate women and we've heard this story before". Which tells me 2 things (damn what is it with the 2 thing tonight?)

1. I need to not tell that story any more.

2. How come after three years I still bring her up?

I mean honestly it's been 3 damn years. Why she still comes up I don't know. So from here on out I will not bring what's her face up in conversation because according to Laura (the tall one) and Izzy (the hot one) of the file room wenchdom "yes we know you hate women"

I don't hate women... they just never give me a chance to show them how much I can love them ;)

And unto thee they said... let there be great fire and wookiees

Once again the whole having friends who blog thing has brought out the envious side in me. Not that it's that hard to do. I'm forever compensating for something... You flaunt your married-ness with home life and either kids / pets / or lack there of. I flaunt my single-ness and my general lack of attachments to anyone or thing.

So really it's pretty much all aspects of my life.

My latest place where I feel a need to compensate... Cody and his damn blog pictures. And it's not just his blog it's his damn myspace too!

I pick the oddest things to get worked up about... I really need to find a way to relax... Oh look a fridge full of Guinness.

OK so getting back to object of tonight's angst... Take a look at those pictures. I think the guy has talent his pictures are how I see my pictures in my head. Use of shadows almost all of them off the cuff and "natural".

Really I think that is what drives me up the wall most about photography is that so much of it is unnatural and posed.

Now I realize that alot of photographs are posed for artistic reasons or because there is a large group but I look at so many and there always things that seem a little to perfect.

And don't get me started on advertising. I may be in the coveted 18-49 male demographic but I resist 99.9% of that advertising

YES LORD JOBS I WILL NOT REVEAL THAT YOU ARE THE .00001% THAT GETS TO ME

That was weird I blacked out there for a second.

Anyway... I am envious of Cody and his pictures... Or maybe I'm envious of Cody and his mad iLife skills. And Eve's ability to do the ninja camera thing.

Ok so the married people have me on that one. In order to get my "natural" shot and be in said shot it can no longer be "natural" and must be posed in some way shape or form.

And the pictures I have posted here? Well I worked from home today which means I finished working a hour early since I didn't drive in and was already here and didn't have to drive home. So I took a couple of pictures at lunch. I even did the faux iPhoto thing to them in Picasa and well look at mine compared to Cody's "nature" shots...

I need to go compensate some more.

It's a mad world...

So after 18 months of relative stagnation in terms of overall storage capacity. You know the storage capacity that you have available to you at any given time that is not dedicated on Hard Disks that also contain a OS. I seem to have gone a bit a nuts...

In the last month I went from ~400GB of Storage to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.1TB of usable storage (The number is closer to 1.5TB of raw storage). Holy hard disk batman what are you going to do with all of that storage? Honestly I don't know. Partially I'm fairly paranoid about losing data and insist on having multiple copies of everything. You know backups of backups of backups.

Yes in my world there is fantastic data redundancy but data continuity (being able to continue to use that data for something useful) sucks.

At least I've had the good sense to get a couple of external hard drives so I can put anything I want in a off line long term storage sitting in a closet someplace. I mean really though 1.1TB of storage?

I don't care who you are there is only so much music/video/tv/porn/writing/games you can put onto a computer before it fills up.

A PSA...

Just a word of note... Don't fuck with the security guards at Maricopa County Hospital... They are packing heat and aren't afraid to use it.