We went to the annual Call Christmas party last night and simply had a blast. We had dinner, had a family testimony meeting and then, as we do every single year, we played spoons. Spoons rocks. We had a great time. My cousin Holly’s husband, Nick, brought a “fart machine” to the party. Of course, nobody knew about this. The fart machine slips nicely in your pocket and has a remote control, that someone else operates. It was ironic that Nick let me put the fart machine in my pocket because earlier yesterday I had promised Corinne to keep my manners about me. Nick’s son, Anthony, was the remote controller and the deal was that every time I scratched my nose, he’d make me fart. The funny thing was that he was watching me really closely and I was scratching my nose without realizing it. Needless to say, everyone at the party was simply disgusted by the fact that I was SO gassy. Nick and Holly were sitting next to me and were both playing into the game by telling me that I stunk and to knock it off. Finally, the baby came over and I slipped the fart machine out of my pocket and into the back of her pants. We then put her up and the table and she started walking across it – in front of everybody – while making all of these fart noises. Everyone at the table was astonished, but nobody had picked up on the gag yet. It wasn’t until Corinne pulled the thing out of her pants that everyone figured it out. After the laughter died down we resumed play, but nobody could believe how real the fart machine sounded. It was the perfect gag.
This morning we woke up at about 9:30 (though Corinne had been awake, ready, and waiting since 7:00) and started unwrapping presents. The baby was ecstatic and we filmed the whole thing. She unwrapped all of her presents by herself and she had a blast. She got some big Lego blocks in a wagon, a bubble vacuum, a Playskool box that you put different shapes into, and a bunch of clothes. After that, we went to IHOP for breakfast and now we’re just getting ready to lay down for a nap. It’s been a great day so far, but it’s not over. We’re going to see my parents in a while and maybe to pick up our new car from Grandma and Grandpa Ferguson. Although we didn’t have a lot of money to spend this year, we’ve had a great Christmas and we’re all happy. Hopefully you are too.
I spent 15+ hours at work yesterday because we had a server that got hacked. The server belongs the company that we’ve had so many problems with over the past few months. Particularly, because Dave (the one that was fired last week) doesn’t really know how to secure a server.
I spent the day yesterday rebuilding the actual server and getting the necessary files copied back to it. I left last night at 11:30 and the server was at least dishing up webpages. Today, I spent the day fixing a database with over 13 million (yes million) records in it. As you can imagine, something this size takes a serious processor to complete. I decided to move the database to the company’s www2 server, which has a dual processor. After I transfered the file and left it running for nearly six hours, I decided that it had taken too long. I did a little research and found out why. www2 is “supposed” to be a dual processor, but you see Dave screwed up the DNS records so that www2 was actually pointing to a single-processor unit. Just for kicks, I moved it again to the correct server and started the fix again. After only 40 minutes, the thing was nearly half way done and as I write this, it’s just finishing. I’m going to move the database back and it will be fixed. Do the math and you’ll see that because of Dave’s mistake, I wasted nearly six hours today. I could strangle him.
Apparently Dave is trying to collect unemployment from my boss and I know he’s working hard to make sure he doesn’t have to pay anything out to a guy that has cost his company over $1,000,000 over the last year. Frankly, I’m glad Dave is gone. The servers are being "de-Daved" very quickly and we’ll have things running very well in the next month. Things are looking better for Webpipe.net
We attended the Ferguson family Christmas party on Sunday. We had a great time, and a great surprise. All night long, Grandpa Ferguson kept saying to me, "you’ve got to come see me this week." I told him I would come on Friday, but he said that was too late. Grandma Ferguson kept telling us that we needed to have a pow-wow. I was naturally confused. Shortly thereafter, Grandma pulled us aside and clued us in to the big secret: they’re giving us their second car! We’re stoked; obviously.
the car is a 1991 Buick Regal with 50k miles on it. It is dark blue with a dark blue interior and has a 3.8 liter V6. I know that the car is in excellent shape because Grandpa always takes excellent care of all of his automobiles. I think we’ll go pick it up sometime next week. I can’t believe it though.
I’ve been really stressed about how we were going to get through next semester because my schedule is going to be HECTIC. This is certainly going to ease the pain.
Corinne and I spend the evening with our landlords. We lit a fire outside and had a wonderful time talking to everyone. Our neighbor (with whom we had serious disagreements with last night) came over and we all had great conversation though. I’m glad we then contention has melted and everyone is on good terms. I’ve got a website to do tonight, so I’m off…
My co-worker was fired today. I’ve known about this for some time, but nonetheless, it was still a rough day. I had to go to work last night and change all of the passwords on all of our servers; yes, it was a long and nasty night. I got home at about 2:30 and had to be back up at 6:30 to be back at work for "the event." Things actually went well and there wasn’t too much gnashing of teeth. I feel bad for Dave, being just about a week before Christmas, but many of his decissions have cost the company a LOT of money.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for some time, but at the risk of him reading my blog, I decided against it. I met with the new administrator on Saturday a couple of weeks ago. His name is Kevin, he seems very nice. I spent they day playing clean up after the remnants of our password changes last night. Some unexpected things were affected, but I’m glad to say it’s ALL done.
I’m not quite sure what to do with myself since I don’t have homework tonight. It feels a little strange and no matter how many times I go through it, I still always have a hard time adjusting to the change. I’m not excited to go back to school…yet.
People always talk of how they love this time of year. I guess I love it too, but only cause I get HUGE bags of pistachios. I generally go through about a pound a week and my fingers become unusually raw from pulling the salty shells apart. I don’t know if pistachios are good for you or not, but I don’t care; I love them too much. Anyone willing can send a dollar to my PayPal account (e-mail me for the address) for the "support Jared’s holiday pistachio craving" fund.
