A Day In the Life of an Aspiring IT professional

7:30 am – Get home from working my “daily bread” job at the hotel.

7:31 am – Abandon thoughts of getting a quick nap at the site of both of my daughters up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

7:35 am – Make breakfast for Elder Spawn and a bottle for Wee Spawn

7:45 – Clean Elder Spawn’s breakfast off of Elder Spawn and surrounding furniture.

8:30 – Kiss wife goodbye as she heads to work. Help load kids in car.

8:31 – Take a nap and bathe simultaneously by falling asleep in the bathtub.

9:25 – Wake up freezing cold. Empty tub and refill with hot water.

9:45 – Get dressed and decide its time to go down to my internship

10:00 – Get distracted by deciding to check my email.

10:10 – Get tired of checking email and search YouTube for Music Videos.

10:30 – Locate car keys, wallet, cell phone and laptop bag.

10:35 – Order a medium coke and a double cheeseburger at McDonalds.

10:50 – Walk into the IT Coordinator’s office. Say “Good Morning” although I really mean, “I wish I was dead.” Ask “What’s broke?”

11:00 – Head over to the high school. Someone wants Outlook up and running.

11:05 – Library aide tracks me down to fix somthing wholly trivial.

11:10 – Go down to room 304 to change out a blown LCD monitor. The district saw no need in buying spares, so I replace it with a 15″ CRT. Teacher scowls. I tell him that a lot of users are going with the retro look on their desktop and that we’ll be phasing 8″ floppies and tape drives back in as well.

11:30 Go down to the middle school. Some schmuck has stolen the patch cable for computer 5D in the switch. Recommend that switch room be boobie trapped to prevent reoccurence.

11:50 – Spend about three hours putting Windows 98 on a bunch of machines that are going to be used as word processing machines. Decide to rename the system folder from WINDOWS to REDMOND, REDMONDWA, for the jollies of it.

 2:50 pm - Realize everyone else is going home, so I should too.

3:00 –  Stop at McDonalds. Another medium coke and TWO double cheeseburgers.

3:30 – Arrive home. Check email.

4:00 – Decide its time to go to bed

600 – Ignore all attempts to rouse me.

9:45 – Wake up

9:47 – Stumble into kitchen and eat dinner, which consists of cold leftovers, barbeque Grippos, or whatever I can throw together in my dazed state.

10:35 – Leave for the hotel where I work at the front desk.

11:00 – Arrive at work. Multitask between running a hotel, checking email, and browsing YouTube.

7:30 am – Repeat

I Do Not Kill Puppies or Nuns in My Spare Time

Despite what you may have heard, I am quite normal in my daily activities. Unlike leftists in the blogosphere who have declared themselves to be the expert on everything on account of having too much time to watch cable television all day(having a full time job would help with that), I *gasp* work a full time job. In addition, I work approximately fifteen hours a week for a local school district assisting the Technical Coordinator in maintaining over a thousand machines and the district network. As busy as I am, I make sure to devote time to personal interests as well:

 Reading.I enjoy reading. Whether it is an O’Reilly text on Linux, a well-written book on American history, or something written on theology (Erasmus is one of the few Catholics who seemed to “get it”), I enjoy books. I also subscribe to Linux Journal and Mac World. These I consider pleasure reading.

Travel. I enjoy travel whenever I have the opportunity. One of my favorite travel destinations is Colorado. I have also been to North Carolina and may have the chance to visit Oklahoma next March. One of my most coveted destinations is New Mexico.

Music. I love iTunes. This legal music download service is great and I have a sizable music library. I love burning CDs and making custom mixes.

My Wife.I enjoy being married. My wife is sexy, intelligent, and fun to be with. She is also loyal, honest, and hard-working. I enjoy spending time with her, whether we are just running out to Wal-Mart or having dinner together.

Things that, despite belief to the contrary I do not indulge in include:

Torturing small animals. I cannot condone this. While PETA is filled with a bunch of crusaders against fried chicken, the only harm I want to do to chickens in general is to bread them and deep fry them. Buffalo chicken tenders are great. Other than that, I have no problems with living chickens as long as they understand their time is limited and that they might end up in my stomach.

Urinating on the Koran. I have no problem with the Koran. Every church ought to have a copy to have as a reference work on the mythology that is Islam. I prefer to urinate in the toilet, or behind a bush failing the presence of said toilet.

Burning crosses/wearing white hoods. I have no desire to do any of these activities. As a Christian, burning crosses is something I consider sacrilegious. I also think the Ku Klux Klan is one of those organizations decent people should avoid. Not only are there no membership perks, but people tend to be afraid of you if you are in the Klan. Besides that, as soon as you identify yourself as belonging to “the Master race” people tend to not take anything you say seriously anymore.

Working for Haliburton. No I am not on their payroll. I wouldn’t mind it if they had an opening for an aspiring Linux/UNIX admin.

Making voodoo dolls depicting left wing nutjobs: Practicing voodoo is one of those million surefire ways of entering Hell. I’d prefer to minimize my chances of going to Hell. Besides, as far as liberals go, no pain caused by voodoo will equal the pain and grief they must endure from society mocking and scorning them and their ideas.

Throwing darts at pictures of Barak Obama, George Soros, Janeane Garafallo, etc. I wouldn’t have pictures of either of these three in my home to begin with, so this precludes this as a possibility.

 I hope I have cleared up some misconceptions. I want to be absolutely clear on this. While I would love to have a Club Gitmo shirt for Christmas (Hey Chris Currie, that’s a hint!), I do not- I repeat, do NOT have the 1845 piece Gitmo Lego  Builder Set. (I bought that strictly for my daughter to play with!)

Four More Days

My brother-in-law, -mb is coming home. This wouldn’t be very noteworthy except for the fact that he is coming home from his seven month tour of duty in Iraq.

I (and the rest of the family) are grateful to know that in four days he will be in Kuwait and shortly thereafter be flying in to Jacksonville, North Carolina. He can stop worrying about roadside bombs, RPG attacks, and suicide bombers. Every time a car drives by, he won’t have to wonder if the car is loaded with explosives and is about to take him out.

Whether he will have to go back before his time is up in the Marine Corps is over is still uncertain. With news; however, that the surge is indeed working, I take some comfort in the fact that evidently the military still cares about prevailing, liberals and naysayers be damned.

I’m looking forward to talking to him when he arrives back in Indiana. Inasmuch as he feels comfortable talking about his experiences, I’m very interested to know whether he feels palpable progress has been made. I’ve heard what the Murtha-ites have had to say on the matter, now I want to talk to someone whose opinion actually matters.