Car shopping: Toyota Matrix is the most intelligent choice for us right now. Pontiac Vibe is a Matrix, we may want to have a look at it. Car Canada is useless, never go there again. I'm glad we checked it out, but it was not even close to what I expected, and the customers we saw there scared us. Mazda is marketing the Protoge to the Ginos who buy Civics, Kia makes a nice car, but it doesen't seem as solidly built as the Matrix, also noticed quite a bit of wind noise while driving (Rio wagon). Ford Focus wagon would be our second choice to the Matrix, but felt more like a boat than a car, was noisier than the matrix, and I don't like the look of the headlights. Sorry Ford, but I just don't like them.
Spare room: Trim unpained, touchup not done, masking tape still on the walls.
Wood: Yeah, right. (Therefore we have unpained doors)
MCSE: How do you spell that?
What I did do: Filing in the office, car shopping all day Saturday, and Sunday we went for breakfast and watched the Canadian Men's Hockey Team clean the ice with the Americans. Side note: Bret Hull could have been on the winning team, but he's a wanker and we don't need him anyway.

I love those days at work when nothing works right, nothing is easily repaired, and no one is greatful for the shit you go through to help them with their problems. Tonight wasn't without thanks, a user caught me upgrading their printer (5+ years old) with a brand new one, and was quite happy about it, but the rest of the evening was just evil-stupid. One of those days it's not worth getting out of bed.

Mission for the weekend (for my reference later):
- Complete the painting of the spare room, including touching up the walls, touching up the ceiling, and painting the trim.
- Car shopping incl. Car Canada, Toyota, Kia and possibly Mazda
- Get the wood and put together the sawhorses
- Assuming sawhorses are put together, paint the bedroom door and closet door
- MCSE in spare time
- If there's any time left, start filling holes in master bedroom and otherwise prepare it for painting

Haven't really touched the MS stuff since Wed.

I'm cabable of making an unbelievable mess around the house, just due to my uncanny laziness. I've got little piles of paper all over the place, a computer (and case (removed), keyboard, various CDs and floppies) all over the living room, I leave movies out after I watch them until there's nowhere to put the next one. My wife is much more neat and tidy than I am and I'm sure my bad habbits irritate her from time to time. I'll try to do something about that honey, I promise.

Shit. Next chapter: Administering Network Printers. You'd think this would be an easy read for me, but I'm too busy correcting MS on every point. Damn.

Being "The Printer Guy" at work allows me to play with all kinds of printers and deal with all kinds of problems relating to printers, printing, and printer administration. I just read the chapter on printers for MCSE (2k Pro) and found their troubleshooting lesson to be ENTIRELY misleading. Most of their proposed solutions and even causes of problems, in my experience are WAY off. Unbelievably so. Maybe this is why I failed the TCP/IP exam a few years ago? I have to think like Microsoft for the test, something I don't think I'm as cabable of as I need to be. Can I brainwash myself enough to pass the test and then reverse the damage after writing the test? I do hope so.

I wish I had gone to see Crosby Stills Nash and Young last night. Instead, we went to see Mothman Prophecies. It was pretty much a 2-hour episode of X-files. It was slow (but it was meant to be) and I think the original story was twisted significantly in a few areas. I'd guess 50% of the story was twisted or added to make the movie more interesting. This is why I don't go to movies regularly.

Home computers. Why do not-so-computer-literate co-workers insist on asking me about their home computers?

I've updated most of the links this morning, if you run across any mistakes, let me know.

We have had power problems here all week. I finally had gotten to a few things I'd been putting off since Christmas, and we had a power failure. Not just a flicker, but the place was dark for a good 30 minutes. When your main job focus is computers, it's difficult to work without power.

I guess I didn't mention that I had an interview at a previous employer about 2 weeks ago. It went very well, they called me to offer the job an hour later, I turned them down for many of my own reasons. When I left there for my current job, it was on good terms, everyone there liked me and were happy with the work I did, but the work I did was totally unrelated to my chosen career path, the job I interviewed for was exactly in my chosen career path. 4 years ago. When I was waiting for the interview, I bumped into a couple of former co-workers, one of them happy to see me and assumed that I'd be offered and be accepting the job, because, and I quote "You won't have a heart attack around here." Anyone that knows me well knows that my dad worked for the employer in question when he had a fatal heart attack. The guy that said that knows this too. It totally caught me off guard and genuinely offended me. Since my dad's heart attack, at least 2 other employees there have died of heart attacks. Him saying that sort of put things into perspective, and brought enough memories of the environment there to convince myself that I was justified in leaving, and justified in the feeling I had of the place when I realized that leaving there would be the best thing for me mentally. It's such a put-yourself-first kind of attitude there that you have to watch that someone you're talking to face-to-face doesn't stab you in the back mid-conversation.

I declined the job offer for myself, and my own selfish reasons. But there is NO reason I should feel obligated to that company, I worked there for 7 years doing shit work. I'm quite happy with the decision I made, one of the hardest, most soul-searching decisions I've had to make ever.

Oh so tired. Hard to function at work. Hard to concentrate. Managed to drag myself through the rest of chapter 4 and all of 5 last night, It's good that the material was familiar to me already (Control Panel Applications and the Registry) or it'd have been going in one eye and out the other.

Now that I've got my Palm Pilot back, I'm horribly worried about cracking the screen everywhere I go with it. It's totally irrational considering I abused it for 3 years before it did crack. I actually got used to not having it with me all the time, if I could take the time to enter all the address book records into one of many phone book apps we use at work, I could leave the Palm at home and not feel like I'd lost a limb. Also: Since loosing the Palm, I've realized how I've relied way too heavily on the calculator, I can't even calculate a tip in my head anymore. What I should be using it for is comparison shopping as follows:
1. Log all regular purchases and the prices we normally pay
2. Compare logged prices with other stores
3. Buy where product is cheaper

Yes, it's simple, but I'm lazy.

Read through chapters 2 and 3 last night, and managed to get part way through chapter 4. If I apply myself tonight, I should have chapter 5 behind me too.

Trying to read some MCSE, but finding myself distracting myself. Blogging to get it out of my mind. I installed the new and painted closet doors downstairs yesterday and also painted the spare room. The spare room needs another coat of paint, but I'm not worrying about that right now. My brother has gotten back with his old girlfriend, they had been broken up for over a year(?) I think. His life, I'm not going to pass judgement, he's an adult. It was like his present to me on his birthday. Or something. Happy Birthday, dear brother. My mother took us (Me, my wife, my two brothers, my mother and my brothers old/new girlfriend) out for brunch this morning for his birthday which was really yesterday. Alright, back to MCSE, must finish Chapter 2 and 3 today. Must force myself to apply myself to this MCSE stuff, at least before a certain co-worker gets certification, because then I'll hear about it every day over lunch. Grumble.

The roads were better today, once we got the car out of the ice coccoon it made for itself over night. It's the weekend, which means painting, hanging doors, and hopefully 3 or 4 chapters of MCSE studying. I want to write Intalling Windows 2000 Professional by the beginning of March, I'm hoping to do a chapter a day (roughly), and that means I'm already 3 days behind. I read chapter 1 on Wednesday, and haven't looked at the book since.