Things are really hectic and busy right now. I am working on a number of projects and everyone wants their project done *right now* and the one project that I REALLY want to get out of the way is at a stand-still because of the customer. Bleh. I really want to ditch that project and wash my hands of it all.

I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon to get the results of my ultrasound and bloodwork to see what is wrong with my ovaries and/or uterus and to see if my hormone levels are normalizing or doing something strange. I also will begin my month of fasting to see if that will help my hormone regulation. It should be interesting…

Popularity: 9% [?]

I think I am over being exhausted all the time.  My nutrition is now back to normal - maybe I was eating too much wheat?  It makes my heart race and makes me feel warm and uncomfortable.  Very odd.  I am supposed to be eating a wheat free, low(er) carb, no sugar, and of course vegetarian diet.  It also seems that I will be fasting (mostly fasting - rice protein shakes and juices) under my doctor’s supervision for the entire month of December.  It will be nice to not have to think about food or what to eat at all.  I’m sure I will be sick of it by January but it will be nice until then anyway…

I need to get WINE up and working so that I can run a bunch of programs for Brian and me too.  I am already strategizing about how to do our taxes for this year.  I may have to use an online program for taxes or run TurboTax or TaxCut under WINE - but we shall see.  Anyone know of a good Linux tax program?  I am at a loss to find a project that is even in development…  This is definitely something the Linux community needs, I think…

—

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

–Bill Watterson, cartoonist, “Calvin and Hobbes”

Popularity: 6% [?]

My parents arrived here over a week ago and left late on Thursday night.  We spent some time at the Volcano and in Kona and had a lot of fun.  My mom and I flew to Honolulu and went shopping and had a good time.  I think the visit went really well and I hope my parents will want to come back soon.  We had a nice Thanksgiving here at our house…

I am exhausted and have been sleeping a great deal lately.  I have been feeling very tired and lazy and I have been napping everyday on top of getting 10+ hours of sleep.  My concentration is very poor and mentally I feel lethargic.  I am not sure why I am feeling this way…

Brian and Pa are playing chess on GameKnot and somehow I got roped into playing.  Right now I am playing a game against Brian and soon I hope to play against Pa when he has an opening.  If you want to play me sign up!  http://gameknot.com/

It is now 10:30 PM here and I am utterly exhausted…

Popularity: 6% [?]

My parents flew on America West to get here at 6:18 PM.  That has not happened.  They were grounded in Atlanta because of “maintenance issues” for about three hours and then arrived too late to catch their connection in Phoenix to get to Kona.  As it turns out, America West has discontinued service to Kona at that time so no connection existed in the first place.  Oops.  So, America West is going to put them in a hotel in Phoenix until they can get them to Kona tomorrow sometime around 3 PM.  This is so absurd.  They asked the America West people if they could just put them on the Delta to Kona flight but the America West people said it was full - which was a lie.  Brian and I flew America West when we moved to Hawaii and did not have a problem but we were also fortunate enough to be on Hawaiian Airlines from Phoenix to Honolulu then on to Hilo.
I told my parents they need to write a nasty letter and CC the BBB so that they can get some vouchers for their trouble like Brian and I did when we came back from our honeymoon on Oahu and got stranded in San Francisco.

Popularity: 6% [?]

My parents are visiting next week and they will be staying with us in our house.  I haven’t seen them in almost a year - we should have a lot of fun.  We are also going shopping in Honolulu and doing the tourist thing here on the Big Island…  Brian should be around since he doesn’t have to go to the multi-day political meeting aka shady dealings with politicians but he still has to work anyway.

I’m going to visit Georgia and my parents and grandmother in January - so that should be interesting.  I don’t have any winter clothes here in Hawaii so they will have to bring me warm clothes at the airport…

Popularity: 7% [?]

So, one of the Dells is working great and has SuSe 10.1 on it. The only bit that annoyed me is that it did not load the files needed for the DHCP server config right away - I had to do it manually after the install. Debian does it almost immediately - but I also did a net install with Debian. At any rate, I have to get 2 new motherboards for the one other Dell and the custom machine. I also want more memory. To top it off my new computer (parts) should be arriving next week or early in the week after - YAY! I think I will be deciding what distro of Linux I want on it… Any suggestions?

**Edit** I finally got SuSe going - it’s a nice distro thus far… It just did not like going through my switch to be hooked up to the internet, lame.  Now it is hooked up to the modem and it is fine.  I was planning on using OpenBSD for that purpose…

Popularity: 5% [?]

As many know I am a big fan of OpenBSD.  However, I have lately become more interested in playing around with different Linux distros - partially because Brian and I have agreed that I will be migrating him over to Linux on his laptop.  So, I want to give him the opportunity to play around with the different distros before he takes the plunge.  So, I had narrowed it down to Debian and Mandriva.  Well, Debian did not like the proprietary hardware (Dell) it was installed on so I am trying SuSe.  I had not considered SuSe originally - I am not thrilled at the prospect of using a product that is now owned by Novell.  However, Dan assures me that it is not bad and supports a lot of hardware - so I am open.  I think the laptop will probably be either Debian or Slackware - but I am open.  I am toying around with different development environments for fun and for testing, this should be good fun. 

Popularity: 4% [?]

So, I am annoyed but also really happy.  Go figure.

The Good
We went to ‘Imiloa today - that is the astronomy center here on the island.  Of course, the Big Island has the best telescopes on the planet and the best place to view them and in conjunction with the university they have set up a multi-million dollar planetarium and cultural and astronomy center.  It is amazing - we are shocked.  We spent four hours there and only left because we were starving to death.  They had a restaurant but we did not know it until we left.  That place is unbelievable - it really belongs in a huge city not in Hilo… We are going to get a membership there.  Since Brian is faculty at the sponsoring university it works out to be very cheap - so that is a plus.

Brian got me three servers and also a monitor for free (from his workplace) so now I can have more development environments - yay!  I have 2 dell servers and one custom server.  I am installing Debian 3.1, OpenBSD 4.0, and Mandriva “Mandrake” - so that will be great.  My office is a wreck but it does make me glad that I have all this free hardware which is in great shape.  I only had to replace a power supply, floppy drive, and a hard drive…

My father and I are talking about doing some business together and I’ve got some open source projects I am interested in working on and creating…  More on that later.

The Bad 

Brian is now a “high-powered” executive with peripheral involvement in local politics and he is faculty at the university.  This is great and this should have nothing to do with me, right?  Wrong.  I am doing web development for Brian’s company and issues are arising related to that which are annoying me to death.  I will just be glad to cut ties with these people.  I am still trying to figure out how to do that without hurting Brian - I may just have to suck it up in the long run.  His boss referred to me sarcastically as the “contract expert” and at home he probably calls me a contract nazi.  I work based on the contract, this is a bad thing?  I guess so in “dakine whatevers” Hawaii… Whatever.
I have a horrible rash - probably from weird hormones and blood sugar issues that are still being taken care of…

We had vog here today - it was awful and oppressive.

I feel tired but can’t sleep.

Popularity: 12% [?]