July 1, 2008 by kerststephen.

Puppies are hard work, not as difficult as children I would imagine but a good step in that direction. You have to feed them, play with them, clean up after them, etc, etc. So Erin and I got a new puppy. She is rather adorable. Her name is Kallie and she is a sheltie. I ended up taking pictures with my phone. The images came out fairly well.

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April 18, 2008 by kerststephen.

So here at work you are supposed to lock you computers at all times. Which I do all the time… if I walk from my corner to the desk in front of my I lock my computer… and I am only two feet away. At the same there is this one…person… here that likes to send emails from these machines. So I left my machine unlocked… once, and he saw it. I have never done anything to this guy and instead of any sort of professional courtesy, the bastard sends his email out. I know I should just put this behind me, but I feel the need for retribution. Right now, I really hate this particular person… whom I never had a problem with before. Any ideas for retribution?

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December 26, 2007 by kerststephen.

Alright…don’t be too shocked. There is another post here. I have no idea what is inspiring me to write another, but it may be that there will not be a follow up for months. I actually do not even have anything to say… I am just avoiding ASP.NET coding. Christmas was good…very good. My DW got me an iPod. I had resisted for so long, but oh well. It’s just too quiet at work. No one talks, we are not allowed to play music through our computers, or listen to anything streaming through the web. Apparently it takes up too much bandwidth…explain this to me when there is more dark space bandwidth in the world than there is light? Actually I don’t know that is true or not… I just heard it from a reputable source and like to believe its true. Is that the way things go normally? We like to believe something is true and therefore we do? Hmm…I have seen a number of articles lately saying “Medical myths even doctors believe debunked”… like eating turkey makes you sleepy…according to these articles it is true that tryptophan can make you sleepy. However, the amount of this amino acid in turkey is minute and equivalent to other poultry(ie chicken). It is really the blood moving from your head to your stomache to aid in digestion of the large meal just consumed that really makes one sleepy. So back to the iPod… I realized I have too many songs that I will never listen to. The DW was going through my library and giving me odd looks as she came across hardcore rap songs. Not that there is anything wrong specifically with these songs its just not my style. I am constantly removing these songs that somehow get collected in my library. Though as a sidenote… when on shuffle and the iPod goes from Acoustic Worship(soft christian) to korn to Bloodhound Gang to spice girls is rather amusing. Oh well… time to get back to ASP controls.

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December 20, 2007 by kerststephen.

So…yeah… its been a while. I had thought of retiring this. I mean no one really reads it, and I never have time to update it. Which is really the reason why no one reads it. Especially since I am not supposed to make updates or changes at work. I suppose I could always do it at home, but I never think of blogging or anything when I am home. Its really time to just unwind from the day, and massacre some horde on WoW. Alright, I don’t always end up massacring them… sometimes I am on the receiving end of the massacre but as long as its balanced its fun. It is NO fun when your in a battle ground and see 4 guys continually running against a wall….just so they can get the token and don’t afk out. This is especially bad when your already outnumbered. In that case, it seems as though its 1 versus the whole team. Another really annoying thing about WoW is when your waiting for a party on an escort quest, and some punk ‘lock comes and takes the quest right out from under you. My typical response is to grab every mob I can and train them to the offending lock. If his AOE spells don’t take agro then his escort ‘comes to my rescue’ while I vanish or fly away…. hate ‘locks….

So anyway… I didn’t mean for this to become all about WoW…truly. This was just a little update to get the blog away from “depressed”, and I must say that some people were harping on me about my last post…my mood has changed for the better. This is due to many reasons that need not be delved into here. Thats about all I wanted to say.

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June 28, 2007 by kerststephen.

I wrote this and then inserted this edit. Don’t read this post.

I suppose I should get used to it. People either understand and like me or they don’t. There are not many half way, or the person is half-way until they realize that they are not going to get to know me any better… then they don’t like me(one could also argue they go the other way, but I have never seen it so). I know I do not come across well. I am quiet, shy, reserved, and would rather listen than talk. I (most of the time) prefer to be alone than crowds. So I guess if someone just dislikes me for no particular reason other than I am who I am it really hurts and frustrates. Especially when one is nice..well there are times…I don’t know. There are a ton of things I want to say here but know that someone will read this and I do not want those things known. Do you, my few and far between readers(provided there are any left…which would lead to reason that I could say anything I want bc it will never be read, on the other hand there could be someone who stumbles across this so therefore I will remain silent)…ever want to scream for no reason? Curse the world? Run away? Start anew? or just simply stop. Stop everything.
Stop…

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March 23, 2007 by kerststephen.

Mmm… lunch.  Lunch is a wonderful thing.  Primarily my only meal of the day.. I don’t know why I just am not hungry any other time.  Today’s lunch was P.F. Chang’s ‘Chang’s Spicy Chicken’.  The chicken was rather tasty.  See, we went to a new PF Changs in downtown Baltimore.  So we get there and originally there were 10 of us… me..Erin(my wife)…(Heather)my boss… the marketing department(Whitney, Nicole, Regina, Ashley,Neeha),Alexis(development), and Tony(volunteer coordinator).  But four of our party decided to bail on us.  So I went(wifeless) and the only guy.  We get to the place and are seated right away…much to the angst of other waiting parties but we made a reservation.  So we place our drinks, 1 sprite, 3 cokes, and waters.  Well the sprite and waters came right away, but apparently the coke was ‘broken’ so after 10 minutes 2 cokes came….and then after another 5 another coke came.  Wow.  This was just drinks.  So we ordered food, and it came slowly but came.  Well most of it.  Apparently one order of Chicken Lo Mein was forgotten.  And then for the next 30-45 minutes it was ‘on the way out’.  Eventually it did come.  We paid for our meal, tipping minimally because even with poor service we still feel bad about not doing a tip.  So before we left we ordered some garlic noodles to go for a co-worker who bailed.  The food was brought out fairly quickly but the person who brought it wouldnt take the money because it was done under our waiter.   So we waited, and waited, and waited some more.  No waiter..finally this hour lunch was approaching two hours, and we just left.  So the next time someone asks ‘Hey want to go to PF Changs in Baltimore’ my answer will be ‘No.’

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November 28, 2006 by kerststephen.

So today at work we had a user call us up and say “my computer is moving on its own!” It’s amusing when I do it, because normally I am fixing their computer but this was not me nor my counterpart. So I went down to the users computer, and watched.  When I first sat down I was like hmm… interesting.  The intruder(s) were not using VNC or RDP. Then curiosity turned to “BRING IT!” It was virtual me versus virtual them. Windows were flying open and shut. The mouse and keyboard commands were racing across the screen. Open, close, open, close, open, close. We were at a virtual stalemate, except I had the coup de grace. I disabled the network connection. Suddenly, all activity stopped, one could say all was quiet on the guest services front. The intruders were not necessarily defeated yet, but were unable to act while I “massacred” their “troops.”  I decided to grind them into virtual dust and prevent them from rising again….I disabled the remote services that they were using to log in, ran spyware check, and virus check.  I didn’t shut them down completely, as I still want to know who this is, but that particular computer was saved.  Cleaned, updated, and restarted, the computer resumes its normal tasks. Now I just wait…the field of battle is empty waiting for a new opponent or this one to strike again.  However, next time they might want to watch their home front for chance of retaliation.

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October 31, 2006 by kerststephen.

Forwarn, this is simply a rant with no real bearing or message.
I am tired of being sick.  I wasn’t sick when growing up, so it must have all been being stored up and now I get to pay the price.  I am tired of being achy, and in pain.  This sucks.  It’s not as though I am doing anything wrong, I am taking my drugs, staying away from certain foods, and generally taking it easy when not feeling well.

Sigh… enough of that.  Since it is Halloween I suppose I should say something about that.  So since we moved to our new neighborhood, there are tons of little kids around.  Which means there will be tons of little trick or treaters…I wanted to be absent from our house but apparently that is not a viable option.  Erin is worried about what will happen if we are not there.  She was traumatized as a young child when “hoodlums” decided to massacre her pumpkin.  I told her I have a completely viable solution.  I will go to our second story window, play on my computer and whenever a “hoodlum” decides to egg our house or kick in a pumpkin (not that we have any out there) I would shoot him (cuz its an unfortunate trait of the male gender, you know its a him) with a paintball gun.  I even started day dreaming about setting up an active defense matrix.  It wouldnt be that difficult.  I have the video camera and the video capture board on my computer.  I know how to build a motor controlled by serial cable, then just attach the gun to it.  The difficult part would be finding the software to do it automatically(to track targets and analyze the difference between “hostile” and the little bumblebee costumes), but in a day dream thats just a technicality and easily over looked.  Oh well, I guess the kids get off free…at least for this year.

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October 18, 2006 by kerststephen.

Notice the one word title again :).

So school… ahh… yes.  The thing that nearly everyone else my age has finished and gone through.  Yet, here I am in my… well lets see St. Leo University, Carroll Community College, UMBC, and UMUC… fourth college and still no degree. But I am getting closer.  I just received my official transfer/audit/degree progress/whatever report from UMUC.  I have 86 credits that qualify towards my degree… and who knows how many other credits that just like to float out there in the degreeless nothingness.  In addition, I also have plan for my remaining credits… UMUC actually said these are the courses that you need to take.  Not that other colleges didn’t have this information available but the didn’t seem to want to make it available to me and thereby increasing my lostness and length of time in college.  So, I am somewhat impressed and at least happy with UMUC.  I suppose  I should get back to work now.

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October 11, 2006 by kerststephen.

Hmm…just noticed that all my blogs have one word titles.  Meh, guess I am just not creative in that aspect.  So my wife was bugging me about not blogging, like she doesn’t know whats going on.  I made a deal with everyone if they read the blog, I would post, if not then no one would know if I was posting or not so it didn’t matter.  Honestly, its like the quote if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound, or rather does it really matter if it made a sound or not?  Anyway, yesterday at work we built robots.  Unfortuneatly not the kind that will stomp around causing mass mayhem and havoc (well that is unless you are our fourth floor resident dog named Peaches) but little robots that did various things like avoiding obstacles, follow lines, hop, walk, punch, etc.  I really wanted to stay home yesterday cuz of not feeling well, but the darling wife made me go to work.  In the end I built like 5-6 (I lost count somewhere amongst the “mayhem”) of the robots while everyone else built 1 or 2.  I even had others bringing their robots to me to fix.  All in all it was a rather fun day.  I was rather disappointed when I had built the last robot… literally there were no more to build.  Now I would never actually want to go out and purchase these robots to build at home, because there is no real point to them.  Except the obvious..you really want to torment pets.  Oh well.. I guess today its back to the grind of looking up netflix movies, perusing news stories, and taking over anyones computer who has a problem to fix it.

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