I voted today.

imageI’m glad that NC decided to let people vote early. I won’t have to face any crowds on Nov. 2nd. It took me less than 20 minutes today at the NC Board of Elections headquarters, one of the benefits of working downtown in the state capital. I’m not going to post who I voted for (big mystery huh?) so all I’ll say is it would be great if NC turned blue this year.

NC State Fair 2004

imageMy prediction was correct. There were a lot of people in Raleigh yesterday. The fair was packed. Sometimes the crowd got so large all movement would just stop in a human traffic jam. Amy and I rode the Zambala (or something like that), the large Farris Wheel, the Orbiter, and the best ride I’ve ever been on – The Fire Ball. Some young girl told Amy she could just close her eyes if she got too scared. I want to go back and ride it again. The best part was that I got to go do something with fun with Amy by ourselves. I”m glad we didn’t do a group outing.

There must have been 3000 pair of overalls in attendance. Amy had a good point: if you’re not feeling good about yourself, go to the fair. In general the American public scares me. Most people claim to go for the food – and it shows.

Not so terrible 2’s.

imageMy niece Skylar turned 2 yesterday and today we went to her birthday party at 2:00 in a park way out in Zebulon, NC. It was nice outside and the kids all had fun but it was cut short when another group showed up at exactly 4:00 with reservations for another birthday party in the same place. It was a quick packing job, we didn’t actually get out of there until 4:30.

imageAmy and I had planned to go to the fair after the party. My mom and dad were going to take Connor home with them for the evening. But then Connor got quite upset when mommy left him held by a “stranger” (Tim’s Uncle Junior). After that we didn’t have the heart to separate from him for the rest of the day. We’re going tomorrow instead. My prediction is that it’s going to be crowded, crowded, crowded.

My “Taxpayer Advocate”

imageA few weeks ago the IRS assigned a “Taxpayer Advocate” to my case opened to investigate why I haven’t received the copies of my 1999-2000 returns I paid $78.00 for over two months ago. I was told to provide copies of the processed checks and the “original form 4506 sent at the time of the request”…. Uh, exactly how do you send the “original” form they claim they can’t find.

Anyway, much to my surprise I was able to easily find the checks in my August bank statement – go TD Waterhouse – So today I called to tell my “Advocate” that I had the stuff he requested. That’s when he told me “there’s been a change in policy recently and we don’t need proof of the payment to provide full copies of the returns to you. They’re free now.”

Well, do I get my money back? Hell no. Organized crime.

Thunderbird and Exchange

imageAfter work I have to pick Connor up from my sister-in-laws church. Amy’s had a headache for two days, so tonight I’m on full blown daddy duty. That’s no problem because my little guy is way cool enough to keep me entertained all night. Besides, I need to stay away from all computers for a while.

Tech sector: Suse loaded okay on the old Inspiron 2500 but I couldn’t find the display files to save my life. Apparently Suse doesn’t have them pre-installed for xFree86 and I can’t find the monitor model to use anywhere. I might work on it later or try another flavor of Linux (like Mandrake) but only when time allows.

Instead I settled for configuring IMAP on the Dillon Exchange server and put Thunderbird on an Inspiron 2600 running XP Pro. It’s a pretty cool old laptop running nothing but open source apps. Everyone was screaming that I’d lose my Exchange functionality without a MAPI client. What functionality? The personal folders and calendar I don’t use? Any time I can relieve myself of a stale ol’ MS Office app I’m gonna do it.

Summer’s gone for good.

imageI can feel it in the air…literally. It’s gettin’ cold, we’ve had our last trip to the beach and the State Fair starts this weekend. Amy already got our tickets at a good discount otherwise I probably wouldn’t be going. It’s $9.00 a person to get in this year. And the state has the power to label someone a criminal?

In the technology sector: Today I put Suse Linux 9.1 on an old Dell Latitude 2500. We’ll see how that finishes up tomorrow. Hopefully I can find the video and network drivers easy enough. There’s no real point to the project, just something to do with a spare PC. I think Mike’s going to take it home from work when it’s done. To my knowledge he has zero experience with any OS outside of AS400 and Windoze.

I’ve got some major stuff coming up at work including the deployment of an SMS 2003 server and the design of an SQL cluster environment. I’m also looking into SQL transaction replication but I’ve heard real time replication is not advised for MS SQL. I can see that. Microsoft products couldn’t suck up more resources if they made vacuum cleaners.

I’m not a geek after all.

For all of those who’ve made this assertion simply because I work on computers all day – you’ve been scientifically refuted. I took the Thudfactor Geek Quiz.

Here’s the results table:

You are 12% geek
OK, so maybe you ain’t a geek. You do, at least, show a bit of interest in the world around you. Either that, or you have enough of a sense of humor to pick some of the sillier answers on the test. Regardless, you’re probably a pretty nifty, well-rounded person who gets along fine with people and can chat with just about anyone without fear of looking stupid or foolish or overly concerned with minutiae. God, I hate you.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Connor’s 1st

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Connor had his 1st birthday last month and since I’m not importing any of the contents of my old blog’s right away I felt like he needed to be included in one of the first posts. What else can I say, him and his mother are my life.