6:30  - Get in to work.  Make myself comfortable at my desk.

6:35  - Check email.

6:45  - Read about asbestos abatement and other construction activity going on in the other building.

6:47  - Reminded to enter time cards for this week and next week before close tomorrow.

6:50  - Check out Google News. Read about Gas prices, New Orleans, and Zotob.

7:10  - Plug in iPod and start listening to music.

7:12  - Check email again.

7:15  - Leave Outlook open in hopes of getting email.

7:20  - Sit around and do nothing because email still hasn’t arrived.  Need responses to queries made regarding database cleanup.

7:30  - Decide to type this little log up.

7:44  - Outlook announces that I have a new email.  Don’t get excited it’s the same auto generated email I recieve EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Outlook promptly deletes it based on my filters.

7:45  - Mention that Outlook doesn’t call them filters but instead “Rules”.

7:46  - Look around desk for something to do.  Trying to look busy.

7:56  - Ooh another email.  Promptly filtered by not deleted.  Happy Birthday to Huzefa!

8:00  - Head downstairs to get food.  Stop to chat with Tim for a bit.

8:05  - Purchase two cinnamon rolls.  Yummy!

8:11  - Return to desk.  Email Count = 1.  After two weeks my data has been loaded!  I can now run my module I made long ago.

8:20  - Or not!  Some of the logic given to me earlier isn’t quite right.  Must fix.

8:38  - Old man Neill get’s in to work complaining of his old knees and how he doesn’t want to walk downstairs for water.

9:07  - Almost half a million rows are now in my hands.  It’s assumed that I know how to delete the proper ones.  Luckily he didn’t make an ass out of himself this time.

9:16  - Apparently cleaning up old data is a good idea.  Who knew!

9:53  - Someone else volunteers to manually do the work that I want to do automatically.  If you insist!

10:35 - After sending out a ton of email to people I’ve never met I’m finally getting useful information back.

10:47 - Begin working on a little bit of everything.  Java and SQL mostly.

10:57 - Consult with Neill on a bit of Java.

10:58 - Show Neill my problem code and wait while the SQL executes before stepping into NullPointerException territory.

11:00 - Just as SQL finishes I realize that you cannot compare a string to a NULL value.  Duh!

11:15 - Consult who I will now refer to as “Eggs in One Basket” about my comparison problem and figure out how to properly compare my values.

11:43 - Realize that everyone and their mothers seconds uncle is out to lunch.  Who’s going to answer all my questions?

12:15 - Neill returns from 279.  We chat about the class and how fun it is.  Yeah, sarcasm.

1:08  - Email some folks about deleting another few hundred thousand rows.  

1:10  - Receive email back informing me that I can “Whack away” at the afformentioned rows.  Muahaha!

1:19  - Receive email about previous information.  Apparently no one really thought it existed.

1:20  - Find out it existed many moons ago but was only used for two months and is still safe to whack.

2:00  - Team meeting to discuss our progress for the week. Keep in mind all of the stuff we are working on was assigned Monday, couldn’t be started until Tuesday, and must be done by Friday.

2:20  - Get out of meeting.  Eggs in One Basket was missing from the meeting.  Begin mad dash to track him down.

2:30  - Over hear phone call from Eggs in One Basket.  He will not be returning for the rest of the afternoon.  Is supposed to be on vacation Thursday and Friday but will be coming in for a short time tomorrow morning to answer our questions.

2:40  - Request DB recovery point before executing all of my deletes.  

2:47  - DB recovery point request acknowledged.  It’s not safe to whack away!

2:50  - Realize that it’s almost time to go and that I had stopped updating way back at 8:11.  Continue to document the rest of the day based on email time stamps and print outs.

3:01  - Run SQL with SELECT instead of delete just to test.

3:05  - Run SQL with DELETE.  My first official DELETE executed on a real live server!  I was excited.

3:10  - Run secons delete.  Not nearly as exciting as the first.  

3:22  - Total rows deleted by me to day: 467,303.

3:25  - Begin shut down and clean up.

3:30  - Head home!

John

I never thought I would win
I never thought much about that
(It’s been a long time coming)
I never stopped to begin
Thinking about the process
(It’s been a long time coming)

“All good things must come to an end. ”

    - English Proverb

-EDIT-

My head hurts.  Not even a few miles of rollerblading can cure that tonight.  Just another one of those nights that I wish I could get out of town.  Unfortunately it’s dark and I can only go so far on my wheels.  Plus there really is no where else for me to go at the moment.  So I’ll just sit here in my room.  Fun!

-END EDIT-

John

You say you’re looking for happiness
But when it comes, you runaway from it
You tell yourself  you don’t deserve it
There’s not much more that I can do
Now the rest is up to you
Until you love yourself, you’ll never change
You’ll keep on running
Until you deal with today

Here we go!

1. Today was the first ITSA meeting of the semester.  It went pretty well and the gang all showed up and we all goofed around.  I’m really looking forward to the semester and things that will be going on with the club.  I guess it helps when they start passing out keys to our office and you manage to get yourself one.  I may only be the secretary, but I still feel important.  Even if our office really is only a teeny tiny little closet barely big enough for a desk, a file cabinet and our beautiful Dell Dimension running our ITSA server.  Hopefully this year will be more positive and more productive than last.  I have a good feeling about it all!
2. At work today the quiet woman that I have never ever seen before made my day.  First she came buy and picked up the phone in the empty cube across from me. She listened for a few seconds and then put it back and left.  Odd.  She then returned and logged into the computer placing a burned CD into the drive.  I’m pretty sure she was just running Norton Ghost on it because it had never been cleaned up after the last guy quit.  She leaves again.  After class when I returned to work is where it gets exciting.  The cube was all nice and tidy and there was a nice stack of welcoming office supplies anxiously awaiting a new tenant.  Who was that person to be you ask?  Well at first I figured it would be some boring contractor that just keeps to himself.  Not to say that all contractors are like this but a lot of them are.  Well shortly thereafter she came back with a sign.  Bah!  It was going to be another intern!  I’m really just kidding.  A one Mr. Kyle Sheldon, also from ITSA will be joining our distinguished intern ranks in my wonderful aisle.  This puts us at just under 50% saturation of interns for that aisle.  Very exciting indeed!
3. Classes went off without a hitch this week.  It’s going to be fun bouncing back and forth with work and school but at least school breaks up two of my work days which really isn’t too bad.  Here’s a run down of the classes…
1. Anthropology 185: Teacher starts off the semester walking out on to the stage in Capen to the Indiana Jones theme music, fully dressed as Jones with his two dogs.  Everytime I mention this guy people say, “Oh yeah, Stanwell.  That class was cool!”  A good sign indeed.  Will be interesting and easy!
2. Data Communications and Networking 375: Teacher seems like a nice guy that is easy to understand and seems like a decent teacher.  Shouldn’t be too hard a class.  Side notes about this class include the fact that its the first class Karen M. Grimes and I have ever had together AND it’s an IS class.  Weird for me to get to class and no only 2 people.  For the past 3 years I’ve been hanging out with the same survivors of 168/169/279 and now I’m taking an IS elective and all the people are new.  Weird!
3. Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues in IT 214:  The ONLY gen. ed. class at ISU that is an ITK class as well.  Taught by my advisor this class has potential to be easy but at the same time boring as many of the issue brought up will be new and fun and exciting to the non ITK people but for me it’s mostly old news.  All in all and easy class for sure!

4. Now a short list of things that MUST happen before graduating from ISU.  At least from my point of view spanning the last three years.
1. You will have a class in Turner.  Or insert any other building that’s on the exact opposite side of campus in there instead.
2. You will have a class in Capen.  Didn’t think this one was gonna happen but here I am!
3. Chances are your pocket book will get beat down at least once by the Alamo II or Barnes and Noble.  After that you’ll learn that there really are cheap books out there.
4. Even if you are never towed you will realize that Joe’s Towing is the most despised company in all the land.  Well at least the Bloomington/Normal land.
5. Hmm…I had a whole bunch of these before but now I’m out.  Oh well, this thing is already getting long!
5. Sami has finally started fixing our shit.  So far we have all new blinds, the holes in the bathroom have been plastered, we have a nice new faucet in the bathroom, and the handle on the oven isn’t about to fall off.  There is still much to do but we’re making progress!
6. Yesterday I did something dumb.  It’s not the first time either and that scares me a bit!  Here’s the story.  I was washing my laundry upstairs and was on my way down.  I got down the stairs and stood there staring at the door next to ours.  I wondered if it had always been white and thought I was just crazy and never noticed.  I grab the handle to our door, swing it open, step in and promptly realized that this is not my apartment.  There were 15-20 or so people standing around staring at me.  I informed them that I did not live there and was going to actually go to my own apartment and left.  Ooops!
7. Finally to the cheese balls.  Last weekend Clubb decided to get a huge barrel of cheese balls.  Mind you this was on Saturday.  It hasn’t even been a week and we can see the bottom.  How many cheese balls is a lot you ask?  Using the serving size and estimated number of servings the answer to that question is almost 1200 cheese balls.  Yummy!

Is it quite obvious that I’m bored this evening? That’s all for now.  Night!

John

Well let me be the first to say that I don’t have a clue
I don’t have all the answers
Ain’t gonna pretend like I do

Just trying
To find my way
Trying
To find my way the best I know how

I think this fits better…

John

I don’t even know how I feel right now.  I don’t know what I want or what I’m supposed to do to get it.  I just don’t know.  Today I’ve had a headache all day thinking about everything and I still don’t know what to do.  It would be nice to be able to convey how I feel but I’m not sure it would come out the way I want it to or be interpreted how it should. 

I guess there just comes a point where you just can’t do anymore to make yourself feel better about a situation.  It’s no better when that situation seems rather one sided. 

Im torn between just giving up on something I think could be good and sticking it out for something that may not be what I think it would be in the end.  It’s hard thinking about the fact that I feel like I’m the only one thinking about it.  Doesn’t make much sense to me and seems to further prove the one sidedness of the situation. 

It just frustrates me.

John

Broken, this fragile thing now
And I can’t, I can’t pick up the pieces
And I’ve thrown my words all around
But I can’t, I can’t give you a reason

I feel so broken up (so broken up)
And I give up (I give up)
I just want to tell you, so you know

Tomorrow begins a new semester.  As much as I hate school starting up again for the 16th consecutive year it’s a time for new experiences.  The chance to say “Oops, I could have done that better.”  There really isn’t too much I’d correct, but I’m sure I’ll be taking advantage of that new semester smell.  There comes a time when you just have to let go and try something new once in a while.  No matter how hard I try I just can’t seem to make it work.  Am I wrong?

Do I want something I can’t have, am I over thinking this whole thing, maybe I’m just not thinking at all.  I don’t have a clue.

I just can’t do this forever.

*Not as good a transition I wanted from new semester to here but whatever.  You’ll deal.

John

Write this down
Remember every word
You’re not the things they told you way back then
You’re so much more than ideas in your head
So bury them
And keep them so they can return when you’re alone
So that you can fight them in the end

Boy, you know I’m sick and tired of healing all your pain
Its time for you to know the truth and cast your fears away

The Beginning:

Robby and I don’t have any singles on us.  I run to U-Liq but the guy wouldn’t give me a dime even if I would buy something.  He suggested McDonalds.  I meet Rob in the parking lot and we head over.  He asks me to get him change for his $5 while I’m in line.  As the woman is getting to her stack of singles I ask her if I could make it a $20 instead of the $5.  She doesn’t have a problem with this but has the following question for us.  Mind you Rob was originall standing right behind me in line.  As she asks me, “Are you guys heading out to the strip club tonight?” I notice Rob begin to walk away in shame.  He called it in the parking lot but it was still funny as hell.

The Middle:

There really isn’t much I’m going to say here but I will throw out the following.  There are a few tings that I’ve done in my life that people normally wouldn’t associate me with.  I can’t think of any examples at the moment but trust me there are!  Anyway, this is most likely one of those.  And there is a very good reason for that.  I’m pretty sure it really isn’t.  It was all very weird to me really.  Mind you I didn’t get up and leave or stop watching, but the concept was interesting to me.  Add in the number of old dirty guys and a guy I work with not only going up to the stage, mingling with the ladies, and towards the end heading to the VIP room, and you have an equation that won’t soon be crossing this guy again.  Weird!

The End:

We drove home and ordered 6 double cheeseburgers.  Actually Eric ordered them about a half a car length before we even got to the mic just joking around but it actually worked.  Now I’m home and ready to go to bed. 

Night!

John

So I decided to further my dorkishness by updating the list of links that appears on this page.  In order to come up with that page I typed in each letter into Firefox.  The first link that came up in my history (the most used link starting with that letter) was used.  Keep in mind I’ve been saving my history since I first started using Firefox so there are thousands of pages stored in the history to choose from and these were the 26 best!  Enjoy!

John

straight up, what did you hope to learn about here
if I was someone else, would this all fall apart
strange, where were you, when we started this game,
I wish the real world, would just stop hassling me
and you and you and me