I captured a discussion my father, AI4ZV, was having with KJ4KET while trying out my UStream feed (for use at the office as a way of allowing me to listen to the Ham Radio waves in a basement).

Some of you may catch some information that could prove useful. I hope the tags I add to the post helped direct you here for some useful purpose (if not your intended search).

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2204933

Yeah, I had a goal of keeping the blog posts coming, but then I got sidetracked. While I’m not entirely ready with any complete new posts, I’ll at least bring you up to date for those of you that I know don’t keep track of my twitter but read my blog in your RSS reader. I’m offering you this post as kind of an apology for not bringing you the “Regularly Scheduled Programming”. It should provide enough for you to snack on until another post follows later this week (I hope!).

P90X Workout Regimen

Monday was the first day of my P90X workout. I’m doing a different track as Molly (she’s doing the Lean Plan, I’m doing the Classic Plan) but at the same time as her for encouragement, as well as getting me a bit better in shape for the wedding and some backpacking trips I’ll be planning or am planning. I’ve been sore since I started, with emphasis on different parts of the body for the different days which is the way this program claims to work – by “muscle confusion”. I can already tell to the touch that my back, quadriceps, and triceps are toning up and I’m only 3 days into it. Today is “Yoga X”. I’m not doing the daily pictures, but I’ll probably end up doing a weekly picture digest. Right now I’m posting them privately to my Flickr account. At the end of it all I’ll share my Day Zero through Ninety improvements with a week delta, 13 in all if my math is right. If you’re interested in it, send me an email, IM, or Direct Message and I’ll try to hook you up. There’s some equipment you’ll need to procure on top of the videos, so you’re going to be financially dedicated to it from the beginning. I’m dedicated to it right now because of that “hurts so good” feeling – I guess I’m a masochist when it comes to self-improvement.

Fileserver Research

I’m brainstorming a couple of ideas for a few of my friends and I to have our own server for everything we’d use one for (Games, Streaming Media, Private Web Hosting) and the most promising option requires us to have a storage tank attached to a separate VMWare ESXi server. So when I read this article on Monday and it got me thinking about it a little more. I had been thinking about a Drobo as the solution, but wasn’t ready to make that the choice without weighing other options. Of course Mike, my supervisor at work and fellow geek, planted the bug in my ear about Sun’s ZFS which lead to me investigating Solaris/OpenSolaris as a potential solution in lieu of a Drobo.  The DataRobotics stuff is fancy, and would operate exactly as we would need it but it’s a bit pricier than we’re really wanting to get into initially. A couple of the other articles I’ve found on the topic which have helped me formulate my decision:

• Expand-O-Matic RAID-Z
• Build your own multi-terabyte file server with OpenSolaris and ZFS
• Build your own Drobo-Replacement Based on ZFS
• and a handful of others on my other computer

Anyways, this means that I’ve been geeking it up which derails the progress I was making on my other articles.

Gear Guide Research

My next article is going to be about sleeping bags what materials their made of, pros and cons, and of course – my methodology in choosing a good one. I did some here-a-little-there-a-little research regarding the materials over the weekend when I wasn’t cleaning house, doing dishes, doing laundry, watching my Netflix queue (Big Bang Theory – TV Series), or napping. I’ll probably get back on to that by the end of this weekend which should yield a post before Monday (which may have some significant sales on Camping gear). I haven’t forgotten about it, I’ve just been derailed with other things stewing in my brain!

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As far back as I can remember I could read, and I grew up reading the comics Sunday morning. When I entered the period in my life where I had my very own internet-connected computer I had a My Yahoo start page with my favorite Sunday Morning Cartoons posted for me to read as soon as there was a new strip. Then I came across the world of web comics, starting with Ctrl+Alt+Del by Tim Buckley (sometimes referred to as CAD). This series really enthralled me, being a video gamer and major geek the characters seemed like someone I could hang out with. If you read some early CAD comics, you’ll understand the appeal pretty easily. It was shortly thereafter I discovered Penny Arcade by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Again, this comic appealed to me with video gaming and geeky references that I would enjoy and joined CAD as one of my all-time favorite webcomics.

When Digg, and later StumbleUpon, helped me peek out of the little bubble of the internet I was aware of I discovered many new, interesting, and fun webcomics to add to my daily reads (or at least check for updates on a regular basis). Some of them even give me the feel that I could do it myself if I only had the talent of an original sense of humor (stick figures I can do). (more…)

Those of you that follow me closely on Twitter or Facebook are already aware of my latest news. It shouldn’t come as a surprise and for some of you you’ll probably be saying “took you long enough”. After dating for nearly 4 years and great friends for about that much longer I asked my best friend to marry me.

This is a late post that has been sitting in my drafts folder for awhile. But, we’re onto the planning and man-oh-man is it a process!

Stay tuned!

In random order:

1. Although me and my brothers grew up in the same house by the same parents, I was born in a completely different hospital from them. My mother was a nurse at Alexandria Hospital when she got pregnant with me, and delivered me there.

2. I attended Georgia Tech for a year. I was a legacy applicant, both my father and my uncle graduated as Electrical Engineers. Since leaving: two of my cousins have also attended, one of which has already graduated and is working in Chattanooga a block away from me.

3. I have a scar on my chin from when I was in first grade and tripped while chasing a kickball at recess. 7 stitches.

4. I’ve never broken a single bone in my body. Neither have either of my two brothers.

5. I am an Eagle Scout, and have been in the Scouting program since I was 6 years old as a Tiger Cub. This should come as no surprise to anyone that has known me for more than a week.

6. The thing I miss the most from living in Virginia was coming home from Elementary School and playing outside with my brothers and the other neighborhood kids until it was dark.

7. My first computer was a Commodore 64. I had one in my room and taught myself simple BASIC programming before I turned 10 years old. I haven’t had any true interest in programming since beyond troubleshooting errors.
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