Started a new page, halfway through the year and all… So, tonight’s ramblings are not only brought to you by the ubiquitous Maxwell House but also tonight by Tylenol Allergy Sinus 🙂 I was sneezing so much I looked like Rudolph so now I’m not sneezing but I am floating. It does that to me, so usually I just try to put up with sinus issues…
Ah, what topic to ramble on tonight? Coffee and its wonderfulness? I drink mud, thick, toxic, spoon-melting mud… no decaf here please! Amazingly enough, I sleep like a rock. I can drain half a cup at 11 and be sleeping at 11:30. But, coffee and sinus medicine together makes for an interesting evening… weee 😉
Another topic… e-mailing… I am the world’s worst correspondent. I have many, many relatives’ e-mail addresses… do they get letters? Um… No. I shall seek to rectify this here soon. (HI to my relations that may be reading this at some later date!)
And to wrap up this evening’s mini-rant… Webpage updating… hmm, just see e-mail blurb above 🙂 Tonight I’m adding a few more pictures of the house and maybe do some general work on the blahness of that page… possibly not though, as I haven’t started that yet and it is 10pm and I do have to work tomorrow.
WooHoo to work… would you believe… I’m NOT on-call at the moment??? It’s a new experience, quite. No, no… relax peoples, I’m still gainfully employed 🙂 it’s just that work has instituted true rotational on-call! This is a good thing 🙂 Now… I do my first week as tier 1 starting July 15th so we’ll see if I’m still as enthused after a week of being the first touchpoint for all of our North American network issues for a week hehehe. Was tier 2/backup last week and only got 4 pages, have been off call this past week and only got 1. Coolness.
Signing off with one more cup of coffee to drink tonight. Cheers!
I took one of those quick web personality tests tonight. It’s called Colorgenics, which apparently tries to diagnose your personality based on the order you pick colors…
So, the obvious PMS of my last post is gone (yah, yah… too much information 🙂
Anyway, as a result, work is going well again… Plus, got a bunch of changes/projects coming up rapidly and it’s always a learning experience. hehehe That’s it, that’s the root of it all 🙂 I think if I weren’t in technology I’d end up being a perpetual night student. (aack, bad flashbacks there of my graduate classes in accounting… I think it was the “Governmental Accounting” course that drove me to find a totally new career!)
I’m quite the happy camper! We have a sales agreement on our old house. So, we should be closing with the buyers sometime in April… now I’m glad we signed with another realtor (we were very realtor-shy after the first horrid experience trying to sell the house! – I’ll save that story for another braindump.)
We’re getting a lot done on the addition!! We’re up to wiring and insulation in the walls… That’s the schedule for this weekend. I have to post some interior pictures on the house-stages page! Soon! We went to Home Depot and Lowe’s this week… looking at lights, flooring, etc… I don’t have a lot of patience in stores when I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for… but, got a few ideas for what Montey and I both like, and now… it’s back to online shopping!
And, I got another new (well, ok, slightly worn, new to ME) router 🙂 2500 series, dual token ring, dual serial!! Buying equipment for my study lab piece by piece as I find parts I want on the web is working well. So next I believe is a switch… :))) If you’re reading this and understand why I’m building a lab 😉 feel free to e-mail me with suggestions on what else I might want to get?
For right now, I’m trying to not let the presence of toys to play with distract me from studying all the bits of theory for the written…
Well, off to read for a bit… I have two changes scheduled for 3am so, I’ll be up for a while yet.
Have I mentioned how much I love coffee?
/me prays to the coffee gods… fill me with your caffeine essence!
— another rambling bunch of text brought to you by Maxwell House and the number 0x3e3e
I hate not knowing what is going on… So, at work, I hear rumors of another reorg in technology, but of course… it’s all hush, hush… That really bothers me…
So.. it seems something is going on and my personality can’t stand the waiting game… I’d like to think my job is not in jeopardy… but hey… nobody’s safe, ever.
To make myself feel better I updated my resume 🙂 Just in case…
So, if you know anybody looking for a network engineer, well skilled in Cisco Routers and Switches (CCNP & CCDP)… pretty good with Checkpoint Firewalls… located in Southwestern Pennsylvania (not relocating)… They can write to me here or here.
Obviously however… web design is not a developed talent. 😉
We are more social on IRC than generally we are IRL…
…which made it even more surreal when we actually met some of the people we chat with… (Dalnet) and ended up talking for hours (um, and, there may have been drinking going on…)
Saturday night… where are Montey and I? We are so pathetic >:}
Let’s see… I’m in the living room on my Linux box, on two IRC networks, and consoled into the sole router I have at home to “practice” on…
Montey’s in at the computer station in the kitchen… flipping between two computers… he’s just installed XP… so he’s got two keyboards… we both talk in some of the same channels…
Some people find our lives weird… Ask Montey’s sister and her husband 🙂 they stopped over tonight for a bit. I fear we are rather bad about boring our guests…
So… I’m getting back into my studying… ah yes, the steam comes out of the ears… I’d gotten rather lackadaisical about learning… I finished my CCNP in August 2000 and my CCDP in May 2001 (yes, it took me nine months to take ONE more test… did I mention I get sidetracked easily…) and haven’t really been keeping up a learning pace… and technology is NOT a field you can get lazy in!
Work has wound up again and it’s great! I love being busy again… my job constantly evolves… from the one site I took care of in ’99 when I started (incidentally back then we had one network engineer at each site) and now, I’m based out of that site but I work with our corporate network team and take care of many sites… way cool. 😉
So, lately I’ve been immersed in BGP, which, if you know what it means, you’ll understand why it’s been most fun and educational… and if you don’t know what it means (HI Dad and family!) trust me, it’s one of those topics I babble about and your eyes glaze over 🙂
Oh, and in late December I decided that I needed to learn about Linux… so now my box is RedHat 7.2, I upgraded my kernel though… to 2.4.17, my printer works, so does my USB web cam… sound card doesn’t… it did with the RedHat install but after I recompiled it didn’t and I don’t care for sound on my computer that much anyway 🙂
Last night I hooked my router up to it… and stared at the screen stupidly…
Windows… I use Tera Term, works for telnet or console, but how in the hell do you get to the serial port in Linux? Well, happy to say, I got it… installed minicom and played around with the settings… bingo. Big Smiles!
Cats make excellent substitute children and the best part is… you can leave them home alone for a weekend and that’s okay… you can’t do that with human children.
I’m Heather and my husband is Montey. We’ve been married for over six years, have two lovable cats , nine fish and NO kids! We work at the same place: [redacted] Montey is a Telecom Analyst and I’m the Regional Data Networks Supervisor. We’ve been working together now for over a year, Montey started in November of 1998 and then in September of 1999 I joined him. Joining [redacted] was a career change for us both… Montey used to be a carpenter and I was an accountant. Neither of us have looked back!
We live in Southwestern Pennsylvania, in a big old farmhouse we bought in September of ’98 and moved into in July of ’00 after extensive remodeling. It sits on 2.5 acres and is rather rural. The funny thing is, we weren’t looking for a new house when we found it… we were trying to find a house for Montey’s sister and her husband (they wanted to move from Michigan to SW PA). They came down to see it, didn’t like it and Montey and I both loved it. So here we are. 🙂
Having plants as a hobby is extremely relaxing and healthy. Plants clean the air in your house, converting the CO₂ you breathe out into pure O₂ that you can breathe in… Now that Montey and I both quit smoking, the air in our house is much improved and, with all the plants, very oxygen-rich!
I like to grow most of my plants from seed. For one, it’s a challenge… Second, when you start a plant from seed it is very adapted to the conditions in your house. After all, it has never known any other conditions to get picky about!
At current count (July 1998) I have sixty-seven houseplants. That number varies often as I start cuttings or condense two pots into one. The high number of plants is because I have multiple pots of some plants. As far as the different varieties go, I have twenty-seven different varieties (counting all the cacti as one variety).
One of the plants that I am especially proud of is the devil’s ivy in the picture below. It goes from the top of the stairway railing and cascades down the stairs… It is even fuller and longer now than it was in this picture…
Aloe vera – Aloe Plant
I currently have three pots of this. I took the pot I had, separated it into about 10 little 2-inch pots and one 4-inch pot, kept the 4-inch and two of the 2-inch, the rest I took to work and gave away. At last report most of them were doing okay. The ones that I kept didn’t look so good for a while but they’re coming along now. They are again multiplying and sending off babies.
Araucaria heterophylla – Norfolk Island Pine
I bought a 4-inch pot that had five Norfolks crowded into it for $3.50 at Lowe’s in December of ’96. I put all five into a 6-inch pot and they’ve gotten quite huge. I’ll likely have to repot them this fall into something a little bigger… I know they often grow as single plants, each in a pot of their own, but I like the effect of them all in one.
Ficus elastica decora – Rubber Tree
When I moved in with my husband in April 1992 he had this rubber tree that was one straight stalk covered with leaves. I don’t know what I did to it but it lost all of its leaves except for about five at the top.
When we moved to our house in November of 1993 I put it in front of the sliding glass door for one more shot at life. It put out new branches and leaves, but the top two feet were pretty spindly so I tried air-layering it… that didn’t work as well as I had hoped, but it shocked the bottom portion into new life!
It has gotten so huge that Montey had to build it a special platform across the top of the stairwell. It used to spend its summers outside but not this year—if it grew anymore I’m not sure it would ever make it back into the house!!!
Hedera helix – English Ivy
For a while it seemed as if this was going to die… it was not looking so healthy. I got worried that the original pot was going to die so I took a cutting in March of ’97 and stuck it in the terrarium.
Since then it has grown like wildfire! I have it wound around chopsticks stuck in the pot with it and it hangs down the stairwell a few feet. If I were to completely unwind it there would likely be pieces over four to five feet long.
I bought the original plant for 25 cents off a clearance table at K-mart in 1992—best quarter I ever spent… Besides the big pot and the cutting in the terrarium, I also have a cutting growing in water.
Maranta leuconeura erythrophylla – Prayer Plant
This has been hanging on to life, barely, for over a year now… it doesn’t flourish and it doesn’t die… I’ve got one 4-inch pot of it and it just keeps on keeping on.
I have two pots of this. A small one hangs on the wall in the living room (part of a Home Interiors hanging), and a tan shallow bowl hangs in a scruffy green macramé hanger… It screams 1970s decor but I adore it.
Pilea cadierei – Aluminum Plant
My mother-in-law had a terrarium for fifteen years. When we got it, the only plants left alive in it were Pilea—it had choked out everything else.
I left two little ones in the terrarium and trim them back when they get big. I also took cuttings and planted them in potting soil, but they got tall and scraggly, so I cut them off and stuck them in water.
They’ve been growing in a jelly glass of water for over six months now. The roots are healthy and they look just as good as they did in soil.
Sansevieria trifasciata laurentii – Snake Plant
I have the yellow-striped variety in a pot I painted in 1990. I like the way they look—so simple.
I bought two pots of a different type about a year ago, separated them into six pots, and placed them in a rolling container Montey built me. One of those six bloomed this past spring, which seems fairly unusual.
Scindapsus aureus – Pothos / Devil’s Ivy
This stuff grows like a weed! It roots so easily in water it would be hard to imagine ever running out of it. If you want some, email me with your address—I’m willing to send cuttings out!
“(Originally written in 1998: I used to share cuttings by mail—this is no longer something I do.)”
Sedum morganianum – Burro’s Tail
I got some cuttings of this from my grandmother and a friend. It doesn’t grow fast but grows steadily. My grandmother’s hangs about six feet off the ground and is almost reaching it now—that’s a goal!
Mine is doing well with a few strands about 18 inches long. I also have another pot with babies and another container I’m trying to start more in.
Senecio rowleyanus – String of Beads / String of Peas
This is a really cool plant but seems rather rare. My step-grandmother gave me cuttings and they’ve grown into a nice plant. I have never seen it for sale.
I saw similar plants at Lowe’s, but the beads were slightly pointed. Mine are perfectly round.
It roots easily but grows slowly and takes a lot to look full.
Syngonium angustatum – Tri-leaf Wonder
I’ve had this for three years. It never did very well and for a while was barely hanging on.
Over a year ago I hung it in front of the sliding glass door and it took off! Two months ago it started looking ill again so I tore it apart, replaced the soil, and hung it back up. Now it’s doing well again with new baby leaves.
I also have two cuttings growing in water.
Zebrina pendula – Wandering Jew
I got cuttings of this about two years ago. I currently have one pot that is way too crowded and three jars of water with cuttings growing in them.
One of these days I’m going to repot it and make it look good again—for now it’s just surviving…
(This was the first plant I ever killed. My mother gave me one at about age thirteen and told me it was very easy to keep alive… it was dead in mere weeks! Very discouraging!)
