Birthday Reflections 2012

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IMG_0424.JPG Today, January 24th, 2012 is the day I get to celebrate 32 years of life. There isn’t anything significant about the numeric value of this particular year in my life other than it is divisible by 8, but many of the previous year’s 365 days (8,760 hours) were remarkable and worth noting.

 

Global events:

  • Uprisings, riots, and occupations in England, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and all over the U.S.
  • A royal wedding for Prince William and Kate
  • Deaths of the famous: Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor, Randy Savage, Joe Paterno
  • Deaths of the infamous: Osama bin Laden, Jack Kevorkian, Anwar al-Alwaki, Kim Jong-il
  • The formal endings of the NASA shuttle program and the war in Iraq
  • Natural disasters in Brazil, Japan, Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia, Turkey, the Philippines, and the U.S.

Family Trips:

  • May 13 to 15 – Miamisburg, OH
  • A view of the capitolMay 30 to June 3 – Washington D.C.
  • July 2 & 3 – Charlottesville, VA
  • August 12 to 15 – Tybee Island, GA
  • September 9 to 11 – Carolina Beach, NC
  • September 30 to October 2 – Atlanta, GA
  • IMG_0280.JPGOctober 20 to 23 – Gatlinburg, TN
  • December 9 to 12 – Carolina Beach, NC

Musical Entertainment:

  • March 3 – Marty Stuart
  • April 29 to May 1 – Merlefest

Athletic Events:P1211153.JPG

 

Additionally, this year was full of a lot of special moments:

  • 2011-06-02_13-04-46_500 Cori and I got to celebrate an entire year of being married, which we did in Washington D.C. while she was there for work.
  • After a year-long job search I started working at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina as a web developer in July.
  • Beau02.jpg We found out that we were expecting a baby, and a little while later got to see him on an ultrasound.
  • With a new job and new baby on the way we started looking for a permanent residence to call our own. IMG_0059.JPG Now, house-hunting is not the most enjoyable process, because it seems like we saw a lot of places that we didn’t like. Eventually, our amazing realtor, Kim from Apple Realty, took us to the house that we ended up buying.
  • IMG_0503.JPG Of course, the major event that happened this past year was the birth of our son, Beau. I’ve always wanted to be a father, and his arrival on January 7th couldn’t have been more eagerly anticipated. Cori and I are both getting used to our new roles, but I think that we’re doing a pretty good job so far.

The last year seems like it flew by, but was so packed full of good times that I guess it makes sense. I am looking forward to this coming year and having a few new roles to get settled into. I have to say that life is really good right now, and for that I thank the Lord for blessing me in the many ways He has. I know that there are many, many people in the world, even some of my friends, who cannot say that life is all that great, and it is humbling to see my family being so fortunate in such trying times.

Thank you to everyone who has made this previous year of my life so great.

Web Wars: A New Host

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It seems like it wasn’t all that long ago that I was migrating my websites from my web hosting at Flockhosting.com to the grid server at MediaTemple.net, but once again I am moving my website hosting to a new vendor: WebFaction.com

I was recommended to WebFaction by the folks over at the Turbogears website as a host that actually supported hosting Turbogears applications. This is a really big selling point for me, but as if that wasn’t enough, the service that they provide will end up costing about half as much over the course of a year.

I’m currently seeing noticeable speed increases in load times, and overall am really pleased with the way they have set up their control panel. It is quite unlike most other hosts’ controls, but it is perfect for what I need to do. Time will tell how this relationship works out. At some point I will have at least one of my Turbogears applications done and hosted for all to enjoy, so keep checking in.

MediaTemple Grid Server Shared Hosting

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Update: The incident was escalated to medium, and then high, which at least makes up for one of my complaints. The speed of my sites is still somewhat questionable, but it has improved over what it was.

I am not sure whether my receiving an invitation to take a survey relates at all to recent server, database, email, and generally speaking, entire system issues I have been experiencing with my Grid Server shared hosting at MediaTemple, but here is how I responded to their request:

First, I currently cannot recommend MediaTemple Grid Server hosting as a competitive option. Due to the issues mentioned above I have recently found it necessary to research other hosting providers, and there are far better options out there that offer more features for less money. This says nothing about the speed, reliability, support, or anything else regarding these other vendors, but price and features are more important to me at this point, because I don’t require much support, my speed requirements are not unrealistic (sub 10-second page load time would be AMAZING at this point), and reliability should just be a no-brainer for a hosting company.
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30-something lists

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In honor of my 30th birthday (Roman XXX, Binary 11110, Babylonian <<<, Hexadecimal 1E) I have made three lists of ten items.

List 1 – Ten things I have enjoyed since my first experience of them:

  1. Drawing/Coloring (crayons, pencils, markers, chalk, etc.)
  2. Cartoons
  3. Fruit snacks
  4. Legos
  5. Computers/Electronics/Tinkering
  6. Italian and Mexican food
  7. Paintball
  8. Romantic comedies
  9. Music (performing and listening)
  10. Nature

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Einstein: The Military Mentality

From The American Scholar, New York, Summer, 1947

It seems to me that the decisive point in the situation lies in the fact that the problem before us cannot be viewed as an isolated one. First of all, one may pose the following question: from now on institutions for learning and research will more and more have to be supported by grants from the state, since, for various reasons, private sources will not suffice. Is it at all reasonable that the distribution of the funds raised for these purposes from the taxpayer should be entrusted to the military? To this question every prudent person will certainly answer: “No!” For it is evident that the difficult task of the most beneficent distribution should be placed in the hands of people whose training and life’s work give proof that they know something about science and scholarship.

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