And the plan is a go...

Late this week I was given the ok at work to pursue our move up to Tennessee. When we make the change, I will become a full time work from home employee. This could be a doulbe edged sword and my boss was telling me about it while we had an hour long meeting to discuss things yesterday. I think that the risk is worth the reward in this case. I risk putting myself in a vulnerable spot work wise, but I will have a better chance of becoming a homeowner than if we stayed in Florida. I also think going back to the mountains and having seasons, being around family and the kids having a place where they can go outside and play without fear of being run over will make our overall well being impove. This approval reinforces to me that I am doing a good job at work. I have had two managers tell me that they believe that I can continue to work at my potential and that they like what I can offer to the team overall. :-)

However, now the pressure is starting to mount. We have to make sure we know what kind of place we want to purchase that will be ours for at least the next 5 years (hopefully it will be much longer), but as first time homebuyers they say folks always trade up. I am overwealmed with the information that I have been able to obtain and I will be the first to admit that it worries me enough to keep me awake at night. The prize is reachable but it's going to take a lot of energy to pull it off...

Changing Directions and The Switch of Pain...

This past week I finally heard back on the job that I had interviewed for nearly 3 months ago and after a snafu with the communication lines, I didn't end up getting it. So now instead of moving into an engineering/development job working with Linux, I am staying with my current team and moving into a blended role of system administrator and backup network architect/design engineer and overall jack of all trades. This is a little bit of a shock to me as the feedback I had gotten from my three interviews for the other job were all very positive. I had a lot of backing from managers that I have worked with in the past which probably helped propel me into the finalist category. It means a lot to me that someone stepped up to bat for me like that and makes me feel like I have really had an impact in my current role on making things better. The new role that I am playing should pose a new set of challenges, something that I am definately ready for. As a network designer I will have to integrate a couple of very large networks on a global scale and make sure that it fits at least two different company security models. Nothing like have things stacked against you before you get going. I have a great team behind me to make sure that we are successful in getting this accomplished. It has me rethinking about going after my network certification and perhaps pursing one for network design. The two that I am thinking about are the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) and the CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate), some credentials that could help on the open market and positively affect the salary level :)

On the switch of pain, it seems that we have had some rough spots in our family attempt to switch from PC's to Apple Mac computers. Kelly has an iBook running MacOS Panther (10.3) and the kids and I share the iMac running MacOS Tiger (10.4). Things bubbled over the other day while Kel was trying to figure out iPhoto and how to change filenames for pictures she has taken. Turns out that iPhoto provides a nice interface to categorlize the pictures and let you rename the pictures while you are in iPhoto, but it is really just a database and it doesn't actually touch the names of the files. So when Kel went to send pictures to a friend, the file had the old filename and out came the flames... After a bit of calming time and talking it through, she is willing to continue working through it and I can safely report that the iBook is still in one piece ;-)

Mac or Windows???

There seems to be a lot of buzz in the geek forums lately now that Apple has finally unleashed the new Intel based Macs. Now the question a lot of people want to know is, will it run windows? My question is why would you want to? I mean Mac OS X is one of the most balanced operating systems out there today. It allows you to have the GUI interface of the windows pc, ease of doing things from Apple (along with all the awesome toys) and even cures my need for the unix command line under the covers. Windows may run some ms only software, but in the long run you get bogged down with spyware, virii, and dialy threats. It would be a big waste of a powerful machine to try and run windows on it "just because you can."

Lost in Fiction...

Tonight after having a wonderful meal from Boston Market and watching a funny movie in Elf, Morgan and I finished her library book titled Two Princesses. It was a very intense set of chapters, set in a mythical medieval setting and we just had a blast getting lost in the battles leading up to the end of the book. Being your average techno-geek, I often forget how easy it is to get lost in a good fiction book. I am more like the lady from the CDW commercials a year or two back, where she is reading technical manuals taking a bubble bath and as bedtime stories to the kids. I'm fortunate that my kidos are good at bringing me back to the stories. The stories also have a way of working themselves into imaginative play and the creativity just continues to flow :)

Boy's Night In

Tonight it was boys night in while Morgan and Kel were gone to BRAVO for theatre practice. We had a nice relaxing night as we finished up dinner and cleaned up. Next it was time for Alex to play some PS2. He played The Incredibles for a while and asked me for a bit of help while he worked his way through one of the sections of the game. I tried, but we just couldn't figure out the spot. After that we played Finding Nemo and we were having a blast.

Had a bummer realization today when talking to a good friend about the Tennessee move, the house that I thought could be the one is now off the market. We are looking for new replacements now and I have a good list growing for when we take our trip to start looking. Starting to get excited about it...

A budding Artist

Today we got to play around with a new art program on the computer called Painter Essentials. It came packaged with our new 4x5 wacom graphire tablet that attaches to the computer via USB. This will allow us to do photo touch ups, or just let our creativity open up while we create new works of art. Morgan had to try it out. She sat on my lap for about an hour tinkering with the new program. She did a great job. She calls it Rainbow Of Hope:


She is my budding artist, very creative and I can only hope that it continues.

Happy New Year

I haven't posted in a while but I'm trying to catch up. Kelly and the kids have been busy with the homeschool plan. Alex is now at home and working with Morgan as a full time homeschooler. This adjustment to our plan was a surprise but we're making the best of it. The first week went pretty well.
I am working on a new website page while I tinker around with Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 and Flash 8. The website is here .