While I was spending most of the time cooped up in the cab of my Dad’s Ford this evening, others were busy finding errors in my handiwork here

Correction

Professor Ray Hansen, who I can now entitle as one of my former supervisors, pointed out that towards the end of The Change We Need I mentioned that this was the first time we’d had a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress AND a Democrat in the White House. I seem to have been very wrong there. It has, in fact, happened several times in the past. I don’t remember seeing *that* many Democratic presidents on the roster, but the answers lie here, and clearly show that in the last 60 years almost 20 of them have been spent with the Democrats in majority rule. But I will point out that its only been once in the last 30 years, twice if you count the incoming administration and Congress among them. Kudos to Ray for pointing out such fallacies

Hell on Ice

For those not following me on Twitter or Facebook, Dad and I went to do our yearly last-minute christmas shopping today. Unfortunately, we were struck by a mis-predicted ice storm, brought on but a sudden drop in temps and off-and-on showers all day onto an already frozen ground. We ended up finding no fewer than 5 detours home, which turned what should have been a 1 hour trip into almost 7.5 hours of Hell on Ice and consumed almost 3/4 of a tank of diesel fuel.

We had one more stop to make around 4:30 and afterwards were heading home. On the way into the Honey Baked store i noticed the parking lot was getting slick but didn’t really think much of it other than “Damn its cold!”  So we’d just picked up the honey baked hams for Christmas dinner (and leftovers!) and had to stop at a shop in Hebron, KY for some gifts.  The trip between those two locations should have taken 10 minutes but took almost an hour.  Fender benders on the somewhat slick roads were slowing everything down.  Leaving our last stop, we noticed the roads were starting to ice over and there were warnings being issued on the radio to stay off the roads if it at all possible.  I-275 was already backed up from accidents, so we decided to take a detour and hopefully get back on the interstate ahead of at least some of the mess.  The road looked more-or-less straight on the GPS.  This was where things got fun!

There’s nothing quite as scary as the feeling of being at the helm of your dad’s 11-month-old Ford F250 (lariat, crew cab, diesel, 4×4) on what could be graciously called a highway in middle-of-nowhere, Kentucky, only to discover a hill, covered in ice from top to bottom, full of twists and turns, with 6 cars already stopped or in the guard rail at various points. Well we made it across at least 3 of those, before coming to the Grand Finale.  I made it about 1/3 of the way to the top before coming up on a Pontiac, broadside in the roadway, at which point i gave up and we parked the truck (we later made a failed attempt to get back down the hill without ending up in the hillside or the guardrail.

We were there close to 2.5 hours until finally a highway department truck finally made it through and heavily salted the hill, melting what ended up being around 1/2″ of accumulated ice on the road.  And allowing us and several of the others who had collected there to make it to the top.  To give you an idea of how slick and steep it was: you couldn’t stand up straight without sliding down the hill, it was impossible. Keep in mind I’ve spent 7 years dealing with Purdue’s Ice Polishers™ (That’s where they affix power brooms to the front of small tractors to do “snow removal” on the sidewalks, which works ok on the snow, but as a side effect it smoothes and polishes the ice that is always underneath, making it impossible to USE the newly cleared sidewalk without the risk of personal injury), I have experience with slippery ice, and this stuff was WORSE.

Once we got off of that hill, we discovered that the bridge across the Ohio River on I-275, aka our only quick way home, was closed down completely and traffic waiting to cross was backed up almost 15 miles. There’s more than one way home, however, and between the truck’s GPS and both mine and dad’s knowledge of the back roads we figured we could find a faster way home that didn’t involve sitting for 3-4 hours while awaiting our turn to get back on the interstate.  So we headed back to Florence to head down I-75/71, the plan being to circle around and come across Markland Dam, just a few miles south of home.  Within 20 minutes we were back to a dead stop, this time because of an unknown issue.  No icy bridges on that road, and we were so far back in teh line of cars we couldn’t begin to see the front.  So we sat and tried to wait it out.  For another 90 minutes.  Both of us were about to go stir crazy i think.  Then we decided our time was better spent trying to find another way around, which resulted in us driving all the way to Dry Ridge, KY and circling around, getting back on the interstate near Glencoe, KY, where traffic was moving slowly but otherwise normally.

So Dad and I have already agreed, next year, the day after Thanksgiving, he and I are sitting down with laptops and credit cards, and doing all of our shopping from home.

Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to those 3 loyals readers I have!

Finally! 2008 is about over…what a hellacious year it has been. There have definitely been several high points, including getting engaged, getting a kitten, getting a Mac Pro, and getting a job!

Yes, you read correctly, I am now employed! On Monday I received an offer at ITaP (Purdue’s IT Conglomerate) for a full-time position within Teaching and Learning Technologies, who I worked with as an undergrad. I will be helping maintain ~2500 Lab Machines, TIC sites, and some of the infrastructure behind them, among other things. I start January 5th and am about as excited as I can be. I’ll have an office, healthcare, sane hours, the whole nine yards; why didn’t I think of doing this 11 months ago?!

Lets go over 2008′s employment history for me:

• January – December: Independent Technical Consultant — Small Consulting Jobs
• January – April: Lab Coordinator — Cyber Forensics Lab (Purdue)
• January – May: Web Application Dev — AgCommunications (Purdue)
• May – June: Web Application Dev — (ETC)
• June – December: Technical Consultant — (FindRefs)
• June – July: Technical Consultant — (InfoComm)
• June – August: Network Software Tech — (Purdue)
• August – December: Teaching Assistant — (Purdue)

Now lets look at 2009′s tentative schedule:

• January – December: Lab/Sys Administrator — ITaP/TLT
• January – December: Ind. Technical Consultant — As Needed

I, personally, can definitely see the upside to this…

So to tie in the post’s title, 2009 should be the revolution I was looking for in that last post. With a stable, long-term, and somewhat generous income, and a plan-able schedule, I’ll hopefully have time to turn my attention to things I’ve been forced to neglect: my fiancé, my Home Theater (I need a new couch, receiver and Mac Mini, the former is dying and the latter has been dead over a month now), my servers (possibly either doing away with VMWare and going back to an all-in-wonder box or getting a decent Dell PowerEdge and running ESXi (or some combination of the two)), and with any luck several other yet-to-be-defined projects.

And Lastly, a quick announcement:

• I’m now a Twitterfiend. You can catch my feed at http://www.twitter.com/peelman

For the ten people who read this, and for both of you who haven’t heard about it through other means:

I have decided to not return in January to continue my Master’s degree. The experience this semester was not as rewarding as I had hoped it to be, ending with me giving up completely on Statistics nine weeks into class, and my ability to care and focus on coursework becoming less and less as the semester went on. I have always had a drive to learn and excel in coursework, though towards the end of my undergraduate degree that was starting to wane, but Graduate School didn’t provide the same feelings I got with any other coursework to date. My ‘A’ that I was carrying in Statistics may as well been an ‘F’ (and ended up being that way), I could not have cared less. I didn’t feel any satisfaction from getting As on homework, or doing well on the first exam. I tried to be excited about doing so well in a graduate-level course, it just never happened. My forensics research class was interesting, but research isn’t really something that lights a fire under me. Perhaps under different circumstances, or with a true into-the-workforce break instead of the 8-jobs-in-12-months scramble that 2008 turned into, I would have been better prepared and more distanced from Undergrad to make the adaption easier. As it is, I was just too burned out from my extended stay in the Undergraduate program to jump feet-first into Grad school.

My uneasiness with classwork, coupled with the odd hours I was keeping (a function of how my days were scheduled) has made this the roughest semester for me in my seemingly endless time here at Purdue. That said, I have really enjoyed my TA position, it has ended up being one of my more rewarding experiences at Purdue. I will admit that parts of it have been a mixed bag: the hours and lack of sleep have contributed to much of my…well, misery is too strong of a word, but general unhappiness with my situation isn’t too much of a stretch. I have met a lot of very intelligent students, and admittedly I was surprised and pleased with the knowledge and competence many of them displayed throughout the semester. To any of those guys (and gal) reading this: I hope you will continue to flourish throughout your stay in NET and that you get out in a shorter timeframe than I was able to manage! I also encourage you guys to contact me if you have questions or need help with anything in the future. One thing you guys will come to realize as you progress through the program is that your professional contact list can never be too long. I am always happy to shed some light on a problem or offer a fresh pair of eyes or advice on something. You can look me up on Facebook or LinkedIn for contact info.

So what now?

At the moment I’m looking for jobs. I’m trying to stay in and/or around Lafayette/West Lafayette to stay close to Kelly while she finishes up her DVM. However, given the current economic climate, I might not have that luxury. Hopefully things will work out for the better and I can get out of this professional slump that 2008 seems to have been for me. Here’s hoping 2009 is more rewarding and satisfying.