Of Pens and Swords

Good news to all of you that may have been effected by the computer loss at the VA…an inside man has told me that the laptop has been recovered, though that’s all the information that’s come out on the incident. Here it first, before any of the News broadcasts!

It also seems that the guy that took the laptop home was fully authorized by his higher to take that computer, as well as all the information on it, home…he is currently fighting his firing because of this. It seems that management there made a mistake…that never happens. Either way, it’s going to be a mess, a fiasco, and it’s embarrassing.

Other news…The kids are here, and driving Jessica nuts. Her son, the oldest, is being very helpful in many regards. My daughter, the middle kiddo, is being relatively good, but is a bit demanding and selfish at times. The littlest one, she’s being about the same, trying to assert herself entirely too much, being demanding, and not wanting to share. She is 3 however, and I think a lot of 3 almost 4 year old girls are this way. The hardest part to get through the two older kids heads is that they’re not ‘guests’ here, but are our kids, and although we’re going to try and give them as much as we can since we don’t see them very often, the can’t demand and receive like they’re at a resort. It’s only been a few days however, and I’m sure they’ll get the hint before they have to go back home…:)

I’m gearing up to start school again, finish this degree, so I can be a Brazilian-aire one day, and afford luxuries like a full sized grill and a mortgage payment. And yeah, a bed frame too. Mostly, it’s so I can get it over with, and just work for the rest of my life, and not have to worry about getting degree’d up. Overall goal, finish my bachelors degrees (dual major) and get my masters. Then, I might be able to compete in this world, competitively. That, and I’ll be able to effectively steer the kids in that same direction, so they know they don’t have to go into the military or work a ton of dead end jobs, if they don’t want to.

On this point, I’m not sure why more parents don’t steer their kids towards furthering their education. We know what we have to go through to get ahead, struggling for years, then finally deciding to go to school, or finish school, and then trying to manage time and balance a life with that sucking up both. Why don’t more parents say to their kids, Look, see how old I am, see how far I’ve come? How we’re always having to choose between having food or electricity…do you want to be like me in 30 years? Why not be like me right after college, and work up from there. You will get an education, you will do something with yourself…because although money doesn’t buy happiness, it does afford you time to be happy. So don’t be like pop here and waste the best years of your life on frivolous activities and being fickle. Don’t plan on having a baby when you’re 17, keep it in your mind that you have to first secure your future before you can secure your child’s, or you’ll just be like me and right where I’m at now…I’ll retire penniless, worn out, and die without being able to leave you guys with anything but a headache because you have to figure out how to dispose of my body legally.

Instead, it seems, people just refuse to look to the future of their kids, and try to make them just like they are. For being the greatest country in the world, we sure do breed the most selfish people around…that’s what’s going to lead to our eventual downfall.

Anyways, time to get studying.

However, I do think that most the people I know today might not actually get half of them. It’s a little testoment to how much people who think they have the right to do whatever because they were born here actually may know less than the people who try to get here and become citizens.

I don’t want everybody’s results. It’s just something to help you pass the time to see what you do (or don’t) know.

Today, I finish up my blueprint/layout that I started last week, finished the paperwork on a purchase request, spot checked a few machines to make sure their cron’s worked this weekend, and now I’m sitting here. I’ve had two arbitrary questions asked this morning, and that’s all. Sort of nice, sort of boring though.

I had a decent fathers day yesterday. My daughter called me, and we talked for quite a while :) I get her next weekend for a month and a half, and that is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long while now. I’m glad to see the date actually getting here, and not having to tell her that it’s only 8 more weeks, only 6 more weeks….now, it’s only a few days. Grace gave me a card too :) she was definitely excited about that…she was about as giddy as I’ve seen her. She even wrote her name in it, though only one letter is legible…but at 3, having a single letter being legible is awesome. This is a very good reason to have a stay-at-home mom that actually works on teaching the kids…the drawback? Kids who are entirely too smart for their age and their britches. It’s hard to remember that she’s only 3 most days.

On other news, I’ve got Suse 10.1 up and running on my laptop. I’m not using it currently, because I have a little bug in connecting to unsecure wireless networks, like the one here at work…At home, however, I have absolutely no problems. Once I get this last little bug worked out, I’ll most likely dump Window’s off this laptop permanently.
I’ve tried out Fedora 4 and 5 on this laptop, and though they worked just fine, there seemed to be something missing. Don’t get me wrong, Redhat makes a great distro of Linux, but…I’ve always preferred Suse. It seems to be a much cleaner install, and I’d say for any novice that wants to get into trying Linux, it’s probably one of the easiest to install and get using right off the bat. Since then, I’ve put in onto another ‘borrowed’ laptop that may or may not ever be asked for back, and it again seems to work flawlessly, though I have to find drivers for the wireless card. No biggy. One last thing, I’m going to put it on the “Little laptop that could”, or the one that should have died years ago and still won’t give up…Once I know that I can run the kids disks on it (which will be tested on my machine) then it’s a go. I’ll end up writing a synopsis for my other neglected blog. Basically, if you’re a Windows user, can’t afford to buy an OEM version, or you’re running an outdated version and again can’t afford to buy a licensed copy of a new version, this may be the perfect route. It’s easy, it’s very user friendly, and it’s free.

Well, I’m tired, and might as well dedicate some of this downtime to studying…