Diary

Needing tires, we stopped at Pep-Boys on Cobb Parkway. We went in through the service entrance, and stood in line for ten minutes. When we finally got to the counter, the desk clerk said, “We can’t do tires here. You have to go into the store and go all the way to the back.” Great.

We went to the back of the store, and waited at the counter for several minutes. An employee saw us and said, “You’re here for tires? You can’t get tires here. You have to go to that counter over there.” So we walked to the next counter. And waited. A few minutes later, a guy who had been chatting with one of one of the employees noticed us standing at the counter, and nudged the employee. The employee, “Jon”, came over to the desk.

It’s my birthday, so gimme loot!

And by the way, Laura is the best girlfriend ever, because she got me an iPod Dock, a sock monkey, a Hawaiian shirt, and a Tiki Head!

Saturday, Laura told me we had mold in the hallway. Even though I wanted to keep it for a pet [“Sparky! Play dead! Now make penicillin!”], she said we had to get rid of it. My response was “I have no idea how to get rid of mold.”

This is why I have parents, I guess. And Google.

Upon the recommendation of Mom and Uncle Google, we had to do several things to remove the mold, and to keep it from coming back. First, as the mold was on the ceiling and the upper parts of the walls in the hallway, Laura had to scrubbed the area with bleach water. Next, we’re leaving a light on in the hallway.

Parenthetically, isn’t it great being a slob AND being forgetful at the same time? It’s always a pleasant surprise when you look down and find some spare food. “Hey look! A piece of pepperoni I missed! And since it’s on my man-teat and not the floor, it’s perfectly edible!!”

It’s always lovely to be interrupted from one’s afternoon net-browsing by the sounds of tornadic wind and the cracking of tree-trunks.

Once the wind had died down, I went outside to find one of my ancient oaks broken off a few feet up its trunk, sprawled across a good portion of my back yard. It’s a good thing that shed was there to break the fall.

A week later, and I’ve got insurance checks in hand, and am waiting for the Scary Tree Cutting Guy™ and the Confederate Rebel Contractor Guy™ to show up and start removing tree and shed bits.

Last week, my swimming pool had become a deep green, indistinguishable from the color of the murky waters of the Chattahoochee, so I decided to invest in some more pool chemicals. I went to the pool supply store, blew $120 on chemicals, and when I got home, I found that my ancient pool pump had finally died.

Daniel and I worked for most of the weekend on the pump, first removing it, then replacing it with a new, much more expensive, pump. The lady at the pool supply store was shocked and awed by the old pump, as it was so outdated that she could find no reference in her supply manual.

After several weeks of study [many more than it should’ve taken], I took the CompTIA Security+ Exam, and aced it with a score of 820/900.

I spent about three weeks longer to prepare for the exam than was really necessary, because I made the terrible mistake of purchasing the Wiley Security+ Prep Guide. This book is crap. It appears that the authors wrote an “Intro to Security” handbook, realized they couldn’t sell it, and slapped a “Security+ Prep Guide” moniker upon the cover. The book is very poorly organized, with large chunks of the material spread throughout the book and referenced by “See Chapter X”. It does cover about half of the information required for the exam, but that information only takes up a tenth of the book. The rest is filled with useless trivia that is only obliquely referenced in the exam.

Last night, geeks congregated at my place to eat meat.

Laura made the world’s best salsa. Finally, after much coercing, Daniel, Dori, Chris, James, and Robert showed up.

The result was to be expected: James repeatedly shot himself in the toe, Robert tried to play with James’ gun, and there was a general argument over whether IPX/SPX sucks more than TCP/IP.

The only casualty was an unfortunate [and very ugly] insect.

Today, I experienced the Interview from Hell.

I applied for a job via AJC yesterday, and an hour later an HR rep for the company called me. She said the interview would take 30 minutes, and to be there at 9 AM.

When I got there at about 8:45, they herded me and 60 other people into a very small room, and gave us an application to fill out, and a huge test.

Woohoo!

I passed the Cisco Certified Network Associate exam with a score of 913/1000.

This means I can finally stop studying for the exam.