It’s time to start planning my weekend. I’m going to go out Friday night, but I don’t know what I’m going to be doing yet. Maybe a show if there are any good ones going on. Any suggestions?

We got a dog this weekend. Sort of. I found him on my doorstep as I was leaving for the Maserati show. I wasn’t going to keep him. In fact, I panicked a bit and called my friend Brent to come get him. He’s already got a dog, I figured one more wouldn’t hurt. But in the end, the cuteness got to me. He was just a puppy, not even two months old by my guess. Meg wanted to keep him so I just caved.

We went and got all kind of stuff, a leash, flea stuff, toys, food. The neighborhood kids said they went door to door looking for the owner and didn’t find anyone. We figured we’d put up some flyers and if we didn’t get any bites, he was ours. Meghan even named him. George (I thought it was dumb, but it fit).

Well, anyway, the owner showed up on Saturday. He lived just around the corner. He built some kind of a pen for him but he managed to escape. He was happy to have him back. I was sad to see him go. But it’s for the best. Meg and I work way too much for a dog.

Other than that, it was a good weekend. Saw a kick ass show. Maserati is good, very tight and rocked hard. I highly recommend them. Ate some good food too. Big City on Sunday and the Grit Sunday night. good stuff.

Also got to hang with Steve and LB on Friday night, which was fun. I’m glad Steve is back in town. He seems to be doing very well, and I’m glad.

Gotta find out what’s going on tonight. I’m guessing that Sonia and crew will be at the Caledonia for the Nutria show. That’s definetly a good choice for fun. However, it looks like Maserati is playing at the 40 watt and I haven’t seen them play in 3 years or so.

Decisions decisions. Either way I’m doing SOMETHING tonight.

Shooter Jennings is playing tonight at the 40 watt.

I listen to Outlaw Country on Sirius satellite radio and they play a lot of his songs. He’s pretty good. It’d be a rockin show. And I’m missing it. I’m a little perturbed about this, so I’ll just have to make up for it tomorrow night.

Velonews has a great in depth editorial about the recent announcement by Jittery Joe’s Coffee to extend their sponsorship of the Jittery Joe’s Cycling Team for an unprecedented 10 years. This is fantastic news for United States cycling, where the Bean Team is universally popular. It’s also great news for Athens, since the publicity for our town is always positive where Jittery Joe’s is concerned.

Also, Jittery Joe’s is now offering franchise opportunities. They’ve envisioned a way to open new coffee shops and immediately integrate them into the local cycling culture, which is marketing genius. I would love to be able to open one.

This is coming to you from the window corner seat at ERC, where I’ve spent the last two hours trying to learn how to use Microsoft Money 2006. Most of you who know me personally know that I’m not fiscally minded in the day-to-day sense. I couldn’t balance a checkbook to save my life. In fact, I’ve never used a checkbook register. My method, in my former non married life, was to get my paycheck direct deposited, and use my ATM card until I ran out of money, usually a couple days before my next paycheck.

Well those days are long over. I’m taking a more active role in the day to day management of our household finances. It’s not easy.

So that’s what I’ve been doing all night. Fun shit.

Found this link to a guy calling himself Mini Microsoft. I did a quick look through and it’s all about inside stuff going on at Microsoft from an inside look. This guy has some good things to say about his company, but also has some criticisms about the direction they are going.

I have a friend who works at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, so this sort of thing is cool to read about.

Link via Slashdot.

CNN has a post on their website about Athens GA. A little thing about the music history of our town. Check it out: Athens Rock History

They mention the usual suspects: REM and the steeple, Weaver D’s Automatic for the People, the B 52’s and the tin roof, rusted. There’s some talk about the old landmarks and what is being done to protect them. It’s a good quick recap.

OK, lots of good shit to report. First, I successfully passed my CCNA exam. For those who are not technogeeks, thats Cisco Certified Network Associate, a hard exam on the fundamentals of setting up a Cisco based network. So that’s done. I’ve been screwing around with that for two months.

Talked to my mom tonight and found out that she’s retiring (finally!) from her job with the Houston County Sheriff’s Dept in Dothan Alabama. This means she’ll be able to take a fucking break for a change. She’s been working at least 2 jobs for about 15 years now.

My brother moved away from NYC this weekend. He was planning on coming to Athens right away, but he decided to stay with my Mom in Dothan for about 6 months, to help her get situated in retirement. I applaud this decision. He’ll be a great help to her, and he can get his shit squared away before he moves back to Athens.

Also, Steve Capps is back in Athens! WooHoo! Guess we’ll be going out to celebrate all this sometime this weekend.

So, good shit all around.

I’ve been up to my ears in Cisco this week. Talk about getting baptised by fire. Last week I didn’t know jack about frame-relay and dynamic routing (other than the shit they have in the CCNA books) and now, after spending about 60 hours working on it over the past week and a half, I’m well versed in it. I’m no expert, but I can get around it.

Good stuff. I feel a lot better about my test on monday.

So I’ve been busting my ass this week, but I’m going to take it easy this weekend. Usually I go out at least one night and have a few beers, but after last weekend, forget it. I can still taste that Patron coffee flavored tequila shit. God that was awful. So I’m going to live healthy this weekend. I think I’ll get out the old bike. I haven’t ridden since I started my new job, which was a month and a half ago.

I am going to treat myself to brunch one day though. The cooler the weather, the better Big City Bread is for breakfast. I love sitting outside there. They server this peach flavored iced tea that rocks.

Had to drive to Liberty SC on Sunday for some Combest work. I helped Tom and Kenny rack some servers and do some troubleshooting. It was a good day, we got a lot done. Plus, it was some nice overtime

Today I cut the grass, chopped down some ridiculously tall weeds on the side and back of our house, and raked away all the dead pine straw the builders put by our front porch. Meghan and I replaced all that with some cypress mulch and generally prettied up the yard. I even figured out how to use my weed whacker and did some edging. So our shit looks pretty good right now.

Tomorrow is another day. Probably going to Woodruff Arts to set up some routers and do a point-to-point between two buildings, so should be fun.

So I’m driving home from work yesterday. I’m stopped under an overpass on 316 when some asshole kid up on the bridge decides to drop a fucking brick on the hood of my jeep. Call me crazy, but in seconds I had pulled into the median was running across the oncoming lane of 316. I was running at top speed up the embankment. I don’t think the kid was expecting that but he took off. I had no realistic way to catch him, it was too far. But I would have loved to get my hands on that mother fucker.

The good news is that jeeps are made of heavy steel and all the damage that was done was a little ding. But that shit could have broken my windshield or fucked up my hard top.

God that pisses me off. What a shitty way to start the weekend.

The Interdictor

Check out this blog. These guys work at a NOC in New Orleans and have been riding out the madness while trying to get their network back online. They have camera feeds and some amazing pictures. These are some of the most dedicated employees I’ve ever heard of.