Girlie Bear woke up this morning with body aches and a fever. Irish Woman had the same symptoms, and the doctor told her it was a virus going around. All that could be done was Tylenol, fluids, and sleep.

So I gave her some Tylenol, and put her back to bed. She’s feeling a bit better now, so it’ll be back to her routine tomorrow.

My boss let me work from home to take care of her, and I spent the day doing small work on my systems and some planning for next weekend.

My iPhone got updated to 3.0 this afternoon. Meh. It’s nice that I can do a couple of things that I couldn’t do before, but it’s not that big a difference. Guess you have to buy the new phone to get the full effect.

I’m going to skip this version of the iPhone hardware. My contract runs out next summer, and I’ll consider upgrading then. But if my phone still works well, it’ll be hard to part with a few hundred dollars unless there’s a really compelling reason to do so.

Took Girlie Bear to get hunter safety training this weekend. She has been asking to go for a couple of years.

She insisted on taking the test with the adults.

When she went to shoot the air gun she was a bit intimidated. But with a little help from one of the instructors she did all right.

After we got home we got Little Bears air rifle out and practiced. After a few shots she began to consistently hit the target. Today her groupings began to tighten up.

One of the instructors is an NRA youth instructor. We’re going to hook up in July for a day of training on .22s.

Girlie Bear wants to go with me when I go hunting this fall. She’ll watch this year and actvely hunt need supervision after that.

It’ll be nice to have her as a hunting buddy.

find out what it means to me.

All joking aside, I got pointed to the RESPECT Act, which seems to basically make it easier for unions to get people who up to this point have not been eligible for union membership into the unions. Sometimes it would be done through an election to see if the workers want to join the union. Sometimes the union will get its nose under the tentflap in one area, and then demand that it represent another area that does similar work within the same company. No election or choice there.

This would impact me because the company classifies me as a supervisor, even though I don’t actually manage anyone. It’s done mostly to allow the company to pay me a salary that’s comparable with what I would get if I worked in IT at another company.

I work in a heavily union company, and I’m very happy not being in the Union, thank you very much. Union employees have to punch the clock, literally. I have a lot of flexibility in my work schedule, which makes it a lot easier to schedule doctor’s appointments and the like and make up the time in the evening or weekend. Union employees have to schedule sick time or vacation hours to do these kinds of things.

I also like knowing the size of my paycheck every month. Salary is the way to go if you want a stable income to raise a family with. Sometimes hourly pays better, but usually it pays worse. Also, I don’t like the idea of having to pay union dues to get the same benefits I’m getting now, and having “fines”, read extortion money, levied against me by the union if I do something to piss them off.

Also, I like the fact that if my manager thinks I’m doing an outstanding job, then he can reward me with a larger than normal pay raise when that time of year comes around. With a union, everyone gets paid the same, whether they’re a stud or a dirtbag.

So I’m reaching out to my congresscritters and asking them to oppose this legislation. I encourage all of you to do the same.

Why is the Supreme Court of the United States getting mixed up in the Chrysler/Fiat deal? Apparently some dealers and other people effected by Chrysler’s meltdown are not happy about the deal, and are fighting it in court.

That’s all well and good. That’s what the courts are for.

But I thought the Supreme Court was only supposed to get involved in cases with some constitutional bearing. Noone has been able to tell me what constitutional controversy is contained in the sale of Chrysler to Fiat.

If anyone out there can explain it, please get back to me in the comments. If there’s no constitutional issue, then the lower courts should hash it out and leave the Supreme Court to something more important than “I invested in a company and it’s going belly up and I don’t think I’m getting enough money out of the recovery deal”.

Just finished reading “One Second After” by William Forstchen.

Basically, modern American society is destroyed by a high altitude nuclear explosion causing an EMP and frying almost all electrical and electronic equipment. The main character gets himself and his family through it, but not unscathed.

It’s a great story told by an excellent storyteller. I’ve read other things by Forstchen, mainly his civil war alternate history. I’m interested to see if he follows up with a sequel.

At least a middle aged man.

The furniture in our living room has started to look pretty bad so the Irish Woman and I spent Saturday looking at couches and chairs.

After looking at something like 10^23 living room sets we decided it made more sense for
me to pick out a comfortable chair and she would find a matching couch.

I found myself a very nice leather recliner. It’s over stuffed and comfortable as you could ask.

I’ve finally gotten a man chair to watch football in. Now I just need a beer fridge.

Saw this over at OpFor, and it brought a chuckle.

I’m not quite there yet, but I’m going to get as close as I can.

Monday morning, before I went to the doctor, I attempted to do some work from home. I was still really uncomfortable, and kinda dopey from pain medication, but I thought I could at least patch a few servers.

I was so wrong. I had to do 1 production and about 10 test systems. The prod server had issues, but not due to my condition. My condition made it a little harder to deal with the problems, but at least I didn’t cause it. Kinda like the drunk on the side of the road with a flat. Being drunk didn’t cause the flat, but it doesn’t help.

The test systems? Fuhgeddaboutit. I messed some of those systems up so badly I’m surprised they booted. Forgot to add the kernel to the patchset. Forgot to install new versions of software for the applications and databases. Did work as the wrong users. You name it.

I may write the whole experience up as a “Don’t try this at home” kind of thing. Remember kids, codeine and systems administration don’t mix.

The look in this guys face is pretty much how I must have looked at about 9:45 on Monday morning when I realized just how messed up I was and how messed up I had done.

Well, I got to spend the better part of the week in bed, which after a couple of days is literally a pain in the tuckus.

The cats, especially Koshka, were with me the entire time. Koshka always snuggles up to anyone in the house who isn’t feeling well.

Saw this as I was going through my RSS reader today, and it reminded me of why I love cats.