I know I don't meet the minimum age requirement as outlined by the Constitution, but who cares? The world needs more blunt diplomacy ... prancing around the issue gets you nowhere. What's my party affiliation? Who cares! Write me in on November 4th!

In other news, I didn't know the Quizno's on Elmhurst & Golf closed. I went there to get a sandwich today and was greeted by a "For Lease" sign. Looks like the one on Wolf & Oakton was too close and they were competing for customers. Oh well.

I'm not talking about the main character of The Big Lebowski this time around. I'm talking about the free network scanner, available here: http://www.mikrotik.com/thedude.php

I've installed a Dude Server (basically, the Dude client running as a service) and have given it the task of monitoring the network. Yes, there are "pay" packages that are more thorough, but it's pretty cool. The Dude notifies me when any of the servers or printers go down, which is much better than waiting for someone in the office to tell me they're down.

Busy times at work. Lots of new projects -- 91 at the moment -- so I'm behind the moment I walk through the door. Not a situation I like to be in, but I need to roll with it until a certain transition happens.

So ... busy times, but good.

Time's flying by. September is over in less than 36 hours ... crazy.

I reloaded my home computer with Windows Vista Ultimate x64. This will allow me to take full advantage of the 4GB of RAM in that machine. Interestingly enough, I can't get the Corsair RAM I bought earlier on in the DP35DP fiasco to work in my computer ... nor can I get it to work in my work computer. I guess the system's just not happy with it. Need to do some research on that. Stabilitywise, though, the Gigabyte EP43-DS3L is leaps and bounds better than the Intel DP35DP it replaced. In case you can't tell, I'm quite happy about that.

Believe it or not, it has been a slow Monday so far. Morning was a little busy, but the afternoon is pretty much dead. I'm working on a database move at the moment, which involves copying just over 3GB of data between servers in different states. Luckily the "source" side of the connection has a 2 megabit upload speed, so the transfer times are at least tolerable.

... at one point i posted that my next car would be a Lexus IS. Yeah ... that didn't happen!

Lots of stuff going on. Good stuff, not-so-good stuff ... been one of those weeks, I guess.

I spent most of the morning on GoToMeetings with customers based in the UK. That's always interesting. Some of the steps I have on my checklist can be completely skipped, as those steps are US-specific, so there's actually less work. The only problem is the time difference: sometimes it is quite difficult to find the time to actually speak to those customers because I've got American customers ringing me all the time.

The river has gone back down now, so my parents have started the cleanup process. Lots of work ... walls, floors, cabinets, everything. Major drag, because it's a lot of work, but there's always a good side -- at least the interior won't be a hodgepodge of '80s and '90s styles anymore

Today has been one of the slowest days I've seen in a while here at the office. Gives me a little time to catch up on some work I fell behind on lately. We're still waiting for a 42U Dell rack to arrive, but once that gets here we're putting it into the (currently vacant) corner office. I'm sick of having servers on peoples' desks.