Twev1701.net

Time for me to get a new cell phone tomorrow. I’m 99.9% positive of which one I’m going to get, but I don’t want to post which one it is until I’m sure.

I’ll let you know tomorrow!

My site and it’s children (Growing Up Geek, Twev1701.com) have been experiencing a lot of annoying outage over the past few weeks. Normally it wouldn’t bother me too much but A) It now directly effects our podcast, more specifically, our iTunes download feed. B) I haven’t heard squat about what is causing the problems or what my hosting company is doing to fix the situation.

Imagine my surprise (and relief) today when I got an email from my hosting company.

As you may have noticed Globat.com has been having some short outages on the server named Montserrat where your website is located.

We are planning to perform maintenance work tonight, February 27, 2008 after 10 PM Pacific to replace a disk drive that we believe is causing the problem. The maintenance outage should not last more than an hour unless we run into a serious problem.

We expect this maintenance to either resolve the problem or provide us with additional isolation of the problem for full resolution.

So, it would appear that that have somewhat of a clue as to what’s going on and are at least trying to fix it. This is good. My annual hosting fee is due in 2 months and I have seriously been shopping around for a new host this past week since my sites seem to be down more then they are up. Hopefully the new drive will make everything shiny and happy again.

On the front of my failing health, my fever finally broke last evening. I have been fever free for the past 24 hours and am feeling somewhat human again. I even went out with Jess today to her foot doctor and shopping afterwards. Jess got the clear from her doctor to return to work, but when we went to Target to let them know, it’s not that simple. Target needs to send forms to the doctor to have him fill out and then send back to Target ‘officially’ letting them know she can go back to work.

I love Red Tape.

So, while she was in her HR office going over that stuff, I went and bought some new shower curtains, and headed over to Circuit City which is next door. While there, I saw that ‘Beowulf’ had come out on DVD, and Circuit was running a great sale on it. So, I picked up a copy. As I was heading to the register, Jess called me and said she was done. I told her I was next door and she came and met me — with a bag full of new shower curtains. We had said earlier that morning that we needed a new set. But apparently, we never discussed who would pick them up. I thought I would be the nice guy and pick up a set, and she thought she would do the same. We considered taking a set back, but since we typically change our shower curtains every 3-6 months, we figured we would just keep them and be good for a while. After all that, we headed to Bed Bath and Beyond and picked up a set of new burner pans for the stove. Exciting purchases, I know!

On the way home we debated dinner, and after everyone talking about pierogi on Twitter over the weekend while I as sick, I needed some. So we headed to the grocery store and picked up some, came back, cooked them up with some butter and onions, and watched ‘Beowulf’.

I have to be honest, I rather enjoyed the flick. It’s not a cheesy as I thought it was going to be.

One a totally unrelated note, I got to spend a night with my girlfriend Jess last night. Noticed I didn’t say my wife Jess, but my girlfriend Jess. What’s the difference? I got to spend a night with Jess that I used to have with her when we were still dating. It started off around 10:00pm when we were trying to decided what movie to watch. Instead of another movie, I suggested something different. I suggested she watch ‘The Big Bang Theory’ with me. I have already seen all the episodes that were released, but I thought she would enjoy the show as much as I did. After the first episode was over, I looked to her for a reaction. She immediately wanted to watch the next episode. After the 8th and final episode, she was totally bummed out that there were no more episodes. She loved the show and said those guys are just like me and my friends. I would have argued with her if she wasn’t dead on. After that, it was about 1:00am and we headed to bed — where we laid there and talked until 5:00am.

Now, I’m not making the insinuation that my wife and I don’t talk. We talk more then any other couple I know. (Okay, we talk but just not about who’s buying shower curtains!) But we laid there last night, and talked about everything. Our past, our future, our present, and wild what-if scenarios. We both discovered that we would welcome a threesome in our relationship, but both probably be too chicken shit to actually go through with it. We also discovered that we both need to be a little more selfish. We’ve both trying to make each other happy too much at times. Then we had a littler ‘marital time’ around 5:00am, got a drink afterwards, and went to sleep. I can honestly say we have not done that since we were dating.

It’s really sad to say, but I have seen more of my wife I the past 4 days because I was sick then I have in the past 4 months. It’s something that we’ve both realized, and we both want to fix. So, from here on out, we’re going to try and spend 1 night a week together. Wether it’s watching a movie, playing a game, or just laying down and talking, we’ve rediscovered how much we really like spending time with each other.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go watch a late movie with my wife before we have to go to bed.

After I came home from work on Friday night, I wasn’t feeling the best. I simply attributed that to the fact that I was only getting 4-5 hours of sleep last week.

Then Saturday came.

I woke up and went to work, feeling like a piece of road kill. My body ached everywhere, I had a killer cough that made my lungs feel like they were being turned inside out. Oh yeah, my ears were so full of fluid that I thought they were going to blow off my head. By the time I got home, I had little to no voice, a fever, and could not get warm. I managed to nurse enough tea to get about 80% of my voice back for Saturday night’s ‘Growing Up Geek’ podcast.

Enter Sunday.

I wake up, and feel pretty shitty. My body is so achy that I can barely be touched, my ears are screaming, throat raw, a cough that is relentless, and a fever of 102. I manage to get up and take a shower, and down some Tylenol Cold, Motrin, and Sudafed. I then head into the computer room and start editing the podcast. I make it about 3/4 of the way through, and can’t sit up anymore. I head into the living room, and lay down on the couch. This is literally where I would remain until it was time to go to bed. This was at about 2:00pm.

I knew I was in trouble this morning when I felt just as bad. I had to go in since I had a large carpet job going out very early. To add insult to injury, I had overslept by 30 minutes. I rushed as quick as I could and made it to work by 6:30am. I hurried and went to the back and rolled the cart of 160 linear feet of carpet pad up, and then went back for the 7 rolls of carpet I had on the other cart that I pulled on Saturday. I rolled that up to the front. Once I finally got it to where it needed to go, I felt everything starting to go black. The store was spinning, and I felt like I was about to pass out. I actually had to stop, and grab onto the beams on the decking bay to keep from falling over. I put my head down on the beam and tried to catch my breath. One of the guys from lumber, Jerry, came over and asked if I was okay. I told him I was fine (lying of course) and headed right to the front registers. My mouth as dry as a desert, I quickly bought a Gatorade. After that little episode, going to the Doctor’s was no longer an option, but a must. I told the MOD that I was going to call as soon as their office opened up and I was leaving. He was cool with that and I headed back to my office.

Long story short, I called at 8:00am when the office opened, and the earliest appointment they had was for 11:00am. I took it, and ended up lasting another 30 minutes before I just needed to go home and lay down.

I did just that.

After going home, laying down, and watching 3 episodes of ‘Arrested Development’, I left and headed to the Doctor’s office. When I got there, they took me right in. They weighed me I (I lost 8 pounds from my last visit in December!) and took me into the room. They did the whole diagnostic thing, and I was still running a fever, this time though it was in the neighborhood of 100 rather that Sunday’s 102. The Doctor saw me a few minutes after that. I was diagnosed with a double ear infection, sinus infection, and a chest cold. I got 2 prescriptions and 2 days off from work.

And that’s pretty where I am at right now. I’ve got 2 days full of heav y duty antibiotics, green tea, and sleeping.

I just wish I didn’t have to feel like shit to get a few days off from work!

Just got done recording Episode 2 of ‘Growing Up Geek’. Converting the master audio to AAC now, and I’ll start editing tomorrow. Look for it being posted either tomorrow or Monday.

This has been a trying 2 days for me.

My web host, Globat, had a total meltdown about 48 hours ago, thus bringing everything down.

Everything.

Even the host’s own site was down. If you’re really curious, here’s a full explanation from CEO Ben Neumann.

The thing that really sucks about this is that I am also hosting ‘Growing Up Geek’ from my account, and literally as soon as we got onto iTunes, BAM!! Down comes the site and you can’t download the podcast.

Great timing, eh?

Today, my site has been up and down. In fact, I’ve keep a tab open with my server status page all day, and every once and a while I refresh it to see what’s up and what not. This is what I see now.

This means everything is up and running, which makes me a happy boy. When I start getting the red down arrows, I’m not such a happy boy, and start having evil thoughts.

That’s right! Our new podcast, ‘Growing Up Geek’ is finally on iTunes.

Click Here to check it out.

Look for episode #2 this coming Sunday evening.

I hate it when I’m right.

Off to work I go. I just hope I don’t get stranded there.