I’m ready, promotion! I’m ready, promotion!

:) Got the promotion. :)

Start’s Monday. Company vehicle = Neat SUV.

Categories: Work
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Thanksgiving came and went, and now Christmas lights are up everywhere around town. Kim and I spent Thanksgiving together. We were planning on having her family coming down and having dinner, then using the time off to move into the Place Across the Street. However, we postponed moving out until the 3rd of December. So Kim and I went to Golden Corral for Thanksgiving. That was a pretty terrible idea, since the place usually ranks about a 3 stars out of 10 in my non-patented, completely fictional and made up on the spot restaurant guide. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the few days off from work.

Entertainment has been found recently in my new game, Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Playing on servers with live air traffic controllers makes the simulation game even more real.

I also stumbled upon on a new [to me, anyway] series called Paranoia Agent. Besides my euphoria for Cowboy Bebop (re: this blogs nomenclature, my personalized license plate), I never could get much into anime. Paranoia Agent, however, has a suspenseful miniseries feel. The series consists of 13 episodes - half of the Cowboy Bebop series - and does a great job of not appearing too campy (something most other anime shows seem to be).





For home, I have some great new toys that will be nice to have in the Place Across the Street once we move over there. First is my Jinzora-based music server. With my music collection on one computer, I can play any song from any computer in my house or any other broadband connected PC in CD-quality sound. By typing “mediaserver” into my web browser on any of my LAN PCs, I can bring up my music collection, sort and create playlists, view and print album artwork, read lyrics, and (obviously) stream music. I’m not openly streaming my collection to the general public, but there is a demo at jinzora.org:



With Jinzora installed, I added a “Currently Listening To:” script on the right-hand side of this blog so people can see what the server is playing. It’s not perfect though. I’m thinking of extracting the artist each time a new track is displayed as being played, and then linking the “now playing” text to an Amazon search or something. Also, if I close my player, it still shows the last song I listened to as the “current song.” I can probably psuedo-fix this by creating a script to the effect of:



If song_currently_played is older than 1 hour
then display "Not currently listening to anything"





The next toy is my new TV that I got from Dell. I get discounts from Dell, and every year in November my employer will pay for my Dell purchases. I then pay back my employer over the next 12 months, interest free. My new TV is actually a Dell, DLP HD projector and 106″ HD screen. I’m waiting until I move before I set up my nearly 9ft HD TV, especially since the living room in the Place Across the Street has surround sound built into the ceiling (thanks Adam for leaving your speakers. )



Work has been going pretty slow. I had my usual 3-day weekend, worked one day, had two days off for thanksgiving, worked one more day, and now I’m back to my usual 3-day weekend. Most supervisors and managers took the entire Thanksgiving week off, so I probably won’t find anything out about getting the promotions until Wednesday.

Categories: Entertainment, Miscellaneous, Tech, Work
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One of the questions in my interview was, “What are your strengths?”

I took a half second to catch my breath, then repeated several of the strengths I identified while giving my interpretations to how that strength is beneficial in our work environment.

The interviews have been narrowed down to me and one other person. We have our final interview with the director and vice-president of our department next week. If I had to guess, I think the other guy will probably get the promotion: his many years of experience definitely make up for a lack of any formal education. However, it is a large company and - as such - they usually seek people with degrees. We’ll see how it goes.

Categories: Work
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Six days ago, President Bush said Rumsfeld will stay for another two years. I got to admit, that’s pretty funny from someone that accuses others of “flip-flops” now that Donald Rumsfeld is being replaced by nominee Bob Gates. On a side note, Gates is a native of Wichita - graduated class of ‘61 from East High.

Five days ago, Bush’s Press Secretary said that Democrat control of the House “wouldn’t happen.” Wishful thinking, I suppose.

But last, I gotta admire the news and their ability to be inconsistent on something that should be cut and dry:

Fox News:

CNN:

I’ve been watching both news agencies since last night, and never once did they show the same numbers. Amusing.

Categories: Rant
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It’s nice to see that, here in Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius was re-elected. Even better, democrat Paul Morrison beat incumbent Phill Kline. Kline has long been on a religious crusade with a pretty dirty campaign. Shortly before the election, Kline announced that his medical-record subpoena campaign was paying off. This was then followed by O’Reilly claiming to have seen the medical records.

Overall, we Dems gained the House majority. Foley and DeLay’s seat both went to Democrats. As of right now, the Senate is tied at 49 seats, with two races still too close to call. On the bright side, both races have the Democrat challenger slightly in the lead. Both seats will need to go to Dems, otherwise any votes along party lines will be broken by Cheney (or Lieberman…lol).

Back in Wichita, the expected sore losers are being seen.

“Throughout the day we have witnessed the most obscene and wanton displays of voter supression and voter intimidation of election officials in the history of Sedgwick County elections,” said Nancey Harrington of the Sedgwick County Republican Party.

“Democratic poll workers have engaged in voter intimidation by demanding the personal information of voters and intimidation of elected officials,” continued the Republicans.

Poll workers monitoring the election are allowed to ask for the name and address of those voting in a gesture targeting fairness. In the crowded and noisy election hall of a upper-middle class district, the names and addresses weren’t always heard so they would ask the election official to repeat the information for their records. Nothing else is allowed to be said or done by the monitors. But people called to the county and complained that, “someone was recording my personal information!” Instead of telling the callers that this is allowed, Republican officials in the county jumped on the chance to raise hell.

Karma can be sweet.

Categories: Rant
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I just did the online test portion of “Now, Discover Your Strengths” from the book mentioned a few posts ago. The results weren’t really all that suprising to me.

Analytical: People strong in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation.

Learner: People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

Significance: People strong in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized.

Intellection: People strong in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.

Communication: People strong in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters.

Categories: Books
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I’m used to sirens in the middle of the night. I live on a very busy street near a hospital and a fire station. But at 1:30 am, I woke up to a loud crash and several sirens. I looked out my window and saw my house surrounded by a total of 10 police cars. I went to the door and watched police run by and surround my neighbor’s garage connected to my house. Seconds later a few officers came out of the garage with a woman in handcuffs. It was no one I have ever seen before. I walked outside, where an officer jokingly said, “good morning!” I asked him what happened, and he said that someone was, “acting silly and trying to run.” A city wrecker truck showed up to repair a flat tire on the first cop cruiser parked in my driveway: the loud crash was the officer’s car bottoming out at as he pulled into the driveway, bursting one of his tires. Then another flatbed truck showed up. I looked everywhere and couldn’t figure out what it was for. Finally the officers stepped back into the garage and drove out the car the woman was driving. I overheard them talking, saying they were pursuing her for a few minutes including the wrong way down streets and blowing past many stop signs. Apparently the suspect pulled into our driveway and decided to use the open and empty garage to try and hide. Needless to say, I didn’t get to sleep for a few hours.

Categories: Miscellaneous
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