I warned you people. I warned you that this blog would start out strong and quickly fade into nothing. This post is perhaps one the few last dying breaths that make up the friscalations. Be that as it may, there is a lot of action that you missed out on. The main bit being Winter Storm 09 in Louisville. It started innocently enough with a bit of snow. The snow turned to rain, the temperature fell, but somehow the rain remained liquidy and kept falling - which copmpletely blows my mind. I mean seriously, it's below freezing, why the rain not ice? Regardless, this rain froze on contact and created a beautiful winter wonderland of death and destruction. Our power left us early Wednesday morning and remained absent until Friday night, when it returned briefly, but left again early Saturday morning like a cheap whore. We stayed warm by keeping a fire going and a kerosene heater. The temps outside remained below freezing until Friday afternoon, so warmth was of top concern; as was oxygen for the fish. I'm happy to say, we stayed warm and suffered little physical anquish, the fish however, were not so lucky. Try as we might to make bubbles for the little guys, the drop in temerature and low oxygen was too much for some. We lost 15 fish during that time, but only 8 bodies were recovered. Amanda dredged the tank in search of them for nearly 15 minutes, but hope was eventually abandoned.

Seriously though, St. Matthews was a disaster. Trees were down everywhere. It was very impressive laying in bed hearing them crack and thunder to ground all around us. We didn't have any damage, but 2 neighbors had trees on their vans and one shed was destroyed completely, for the 3rd time since we've lived here.

Not all is bad news though. I got some nice pictures. Chickity-check them out below:

Naturally the Big Horn loves the snow. I got to first-hand experience the pure joys of a locking front differential. Life don't get any better.

Being sick, sucks, and sick is what I am. The bathroom project taunts me each time I wander in.

It says, "Too bad you have so little energy. If only you had eaten more broccoli you might be able to work on me."

I don't let it bother me. I've gone 2 years with a half finished bathroom and it didn't bother me.

"What makes you think I all the sudden care now, bathroom? You are a fool."

Tomorrow is payday and I'm regaining my health, so work will resume shortly.

Free time is sparse and the project continues, though more slowly than anyone would like. Below are a few pics of the transformation and Paul. Once the window comes in at Lowes we should be in good shape.

Still left to finish are the window and surrounding drywall, trim, the other mirror door, shower door, fan eventually, and put a new layer of grout over the shower tile. A lot to do, but everything is functioning perfectly right now, so I can take some time with the rest. It is much warmer and looks a lot better, I think.

Quick post-vacation update. . .

So I was way wrong - I got over 250 emails, 6 voice mails, and a few text messages and I'm proud to say I ignored almost all of them. I worked for maybe a total of 4 hours. My computer remained powered on for most of the time though due to the fact that I was playing some Command and Conquer on it. It is faster than my home PC sadly enough.

The bathroom project seems to be a success. It has gone thorough a dramatic face-lift with pictures to follow in a subsequent post. Now that I think it about it, it was more like a head transplant than a face-lift. The shattered remains now lie in a pile in the basement - still haunting me.

More later this week.

Vacation starts today at 4:30. Let's make a few bets shall we?

1. I will get no less than 53 emails from work over the course of my vacation.
2. I will get no less than 5 separate phone calls from work.
3. My computer will be on and connected to VPN for roughly 1/3 of the time I'm off. I won't be working the whole time, but I imagine it will be something like that.

I have to stop here, I'm getting depressed.

Before I go on, let me pause to explain what exactly I do for 40 -60 hours a week.
My official job title is SAP BASIS Administrator. Let's break this down. SAP is an ERP. BASIS, is a general term for anything related to the technical functioning of SAP. Basically I setup, install, and maintain the SAP system from an infrastructure standpoint. First I help design the infrastructure - servers, disk, sizing, etc. I order a server, I install Windows Server, I patch it, I install SQL server, I patch it, I install SAP, I patch it, and then I configure the basic necessities of an SAP system. I also perform maintenance such as monitoring processes, errors, and buffer statistics, managing batch jobs, configuring communication routes to other systems both SAP and non-SAP. I setup and manage all the printers and export folders. I manage the patching of SAP though support packages and kernel updates long with the patching of the servers on the Microsoft layer. There are many more very specific tasks I'm responsible for. Basically I maintain the availability of SAP for the business. If I don't keep SAP running at its peak, then the users who keep the business shipping steel can't enter data and the business loses money - or so I've been told.

Gosh, i don't know if I can go on. After proof-reading the above paragraph, i'm ready to leave. I just have to counterbalance all this garbage with a healthy serving of redneckedness. That is one reason I had to get the truck. If I let myself slip into this life of geekyness and couple that with living in town, I could quickly become a causality of the industry. I don't want be become "one of them." I see these losers at SAP conferences and training sessions. They all wear their polished black shoes and expensive clothes and use buzzwords like "low hanging fruit" and similarly ridiculous phrases and acronyms. I wear jeans that are most likely dirty, a plain sweater, and my hat whenever I can and I laugh at them, not with them, because their jokes are never funny. I can't be one of them. If I ever get close, someone please tell me and I'll quickly become an electrician or plumber - something real.

Speaking of sledgehammers, I'll be using one over the vacation. The rest of the bathroom must go. I wish it were as easy as walking around the room blowing a trumpet, but a sledge and a chisel should do. We ripped out the tub and surrounding walls 2 years ago and built up a nice tile shower, but the rest of the room remains untouched. All the plaster must come down along with the concrete floor - all to be replaced with modern, lighter, materials such as concrete board and drywall. It will be a huge mess, but up through the mess will rise the most functional, if not the most beautiful bathroom in our house. It will in fact be both of those; no doubt about it. We have but one bathroom, but oh what a bathroom.

Another weekend has come and gone without much fanfare. Quick re-cap for my own edification. Friday we went to Jason's Sweaters and Sweets Too concert which was good and pretty fun. I ran sound for them and it went ok. Our friend Liz came in town Friday night and hung out until Monday morning which was fun. Saturday was pretty uneventful. I did pick up my Christmas present from Sears which was given to me by Amanda which was a 5 drawer ball-bearing Craftsman Tool Chest. It is the perfect size and I feel much more organized. Gosh, I'm going to be so efficient now I can hardly stand it. Saturday I also watched Das Boot in German with English subtitles. It was much longer than it needed to be and I'm still not sure what they were going for. I'm happy with the ending from a political and moral stance, but from a quality movie stance, the ending was horrible. The mechanicals of a WWII diesel sub are pretty interesting though.

During Das Boot I worked on a Client Copy from Prod down to our sandbox system using Datasync Manager. It didn't work for various reasons so I had to open a case with EPI-Use. Nothing is easy. This bled over to Sunday and I spent most of the day working on it. I'm getting real tied of working all the time. It is really making me a Negative Nancy or a Stiffly Stifferson - probably both. The project could have been fun and challenging, but it's really just poorly managed and severely understaffed. I'm not the only one working all the time, but I seem to be the only one to put up a fight. I'm sure it will bite me in the end by negatively affecting my bonus or something, but my family is more important to me than the money. Though money is nice.

3.5 more days until I can turn off my blackberry and relax with my little wife. I can't wait.

I was really hoping for some snow today. I heard on the weather yesterday that there was a chance but I'll admit, I'm a little let down. This morning I woke up and looked out the window expecting to see some snow, but nope. I know that snow doesn't get me out of school any longer, but it still makes me excited. I'll still have to come to work, so I'm not sure what the allure is. Honestly though it might have something to do with my truck as most things in my life do. I purposely bought the biggest baddest truck available for a couple reasons.

1. I'm not going to lie, I have a thing for diesels. From a physics standpoint they are heads and shoulders above gasoline engines in efficiency, longevity, and power output. Plus they sound and smell like an engine should. Ok, so I bought the truck for the engine. I think this is the case with most diesel Ram owners.

2. Nothing will stop me from going where I want or hauling whatever I want except for small parking spaces.

3. Real trucks have at least one stick, preferably 2.

I guess reason number 2 is where the snow comes in. Knowing I have the ultimate trucking machine is not enough. I want to prove it. I want to laugh at the snow and ask it, "Is that all you got?" It is also a lot of fun to pull Japanese cars out of ditches and snow banks. Japanese cars hate the snow.

Last year we got an 8 inch snow right before Christmas and I got to pull some ricers out of the snow in the neighborhood with the Ford. Despite being a Ford, it did alright. I attribute most of the success to the tires - 33" Trxus MT's or something. They are bad, as in really good. The Dodge has 34" Buckshot's on it. They look impressive, but have yet to prove themselves in the snow. And now we are back to me wanting snow. So I can drive around pretending that there is no snow because it will effect me about as much as hitting a lightening bug in the summer - It will look cool on the windshield, but that is about it.