ITIL Foundations Day Two

I spent Tuesdsay in the second day of a two and half day training class. We brought a trainer in house to give a ITIL Foundation for Service Management Class. Over the second day, we covered sections on Change Management, Release Management, Capacity Management, Financial Management, Availability Management, Service Level Management and IT Service Continuity Management.

Words of the Year 2004

'Blog' Tops Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2004

Art Docent

Sharon spent the afternoon serving as the Art Docent for Jack's first grade class. She covered two lessons. The first lesson covered the use of shapes in art. She reviewed lives of three artists: Wassily Kandinsky; Paul Klee; and Salvador Dali. The featured work for each artist included Kandinsky's Lines of Marks, Klee's Viaducts and Dali's Peristence of Memory [shown below].

Sharon pointed out to the class that She and Jack had been to the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Peterburg which boasts the most comprehensive collection of Dali's work in the world.



The second lesson plan was titled "Artists Paint Gatherings." It focused on pictures of people gathering and learning the difference between warm and cool colors. The lesson talked briefly about Eugene Louis Boudin, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot. It highlighted a painting by each Artist: Fair in Brittany by Boudin; Village Market by Pissarro [shown below] and Skating in the Park by Morisot. As part of the lesson, the kids colored pictures of Pilgrims and Indians at the first Thanksgiving gathering using only their warm color crayons.

ITIL Foundations Day 0ne

I spent all day in the first day of a two and half day training class. Yvonne and I and our managers are taking the ITIL Foundation for Service Management Class. Over the first day, we covered sections on the Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management and part of Configuration Management. Homework for the class included an hour of reading.

Drew's 20th Birthday

Drew's 20th Birthday!

More Xmas Decorations

Sharon, Jack and I went to Mass at Good Shepherd and Sharon served as eucharistic minister.

We spent most of the rest of the day putting up Christmas decoration inside and cleaning up the house.

Spongebob Squarepants

We spent part of the day working on the Christmas decorations.

Saturday night, Sharon, Jack and I went to see The Spongebob Squarepants Movie.

Xmas Lights

Traditionally, Sharon and I have started to decorate the house for Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving. I dragged all of the Christmas boxes out of storage and spent most of the rest of the day putting up the lights outside.

Morgan came over for dinner. We barbecued some steaks. Afterwards, Morgan, Jack, Sharon and I played a brusing game of basketball on the hoop in Jack's room. It was Sharon and Jack against Morgan and I.

Thanksgiving 2004

For a change, we went out for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Sharon's brother Tom made reservations at a small place called The Family Room. The group included Sharon's parents, Sharon's oldest brother's family and Sharon, Jack and I.

Run to Feed the Hungry

Sharon rousted us out of bed early and we went to the Run to Feed the Hungry. We planned to run the 10k and took the jogger for Jack to ride in. At some point while we were at the starting line, Jack decided he did not want to ride in the jogger. He ended up essentially running and walking the whole distance. Jack set a pretty good pace early; we covered one mile at a 12:00 pace. By about 4.75 miles, he started to wear down, but still refused to get in the jogger. It took us 10 minutes to cross the starting line at the start so we covered the 10k in about 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Angela's Ashes

Over the last twelve plus years, I have kept a database of the books that I have read including observations and plot information. Looking back on this list, there have been books that I have struggled to finish, but I never wanted to stop reading a book in the first 70 pages as many times as I wanted to stop reading Angela's Ashes. The urge to set the book aside was driven by a recurring event in the early years of the author's life.

Ultimately, I am glad I struggled through this section and finished the book. McCourt's description of the abject poverty of his childhood is stunning. Winner of the 1997 Pultizer Prize for a biography, I have never read anything that personalized poverty as this book did.

Bar-coding drugs

There is a story titled Bar-coding drugs helps, Sutter finds in today's Sacramento Bee about our project to put bar codes on patients and their pills. This has been a very successful project to use technology to improve patient safety!

Kings versus Rockets

I bought one ticket in Row B of Section 123 off the web for tonight's Kings versus Rockets game. The seat ended up being right behind Doug Christie's wife. Sharon took Mary Maloney and met her brother Tim at the game.

The Kings beat the Rockets in a very close game. The final score was Kings 102 and the Rockets 96. Jack and I watched the game on Comcast Sportsnet West on DIRECTV.

End of season Soccer Party

Sharon, Mary, Jack and I went to his end of season Soccer party at Laguna Pizza. As part of the trophy presentation, the coach made up an award category for each of the kids. He gave Jack the award for the best overall offensive and defensive player on the team.

Back from Tahoe

Sharon got back from her girl's weekend in Tahoe about 5:00 p.m.

Wireless Set-up

With Sharon gone most of the last week, I have been banging around the house after I get the kids to bed working on a couple of projects. Over three years ago, I bought a Linksys Wireless B Broadband Router. I have always struggled to get VPN to run over this router. After spending more hours than I care to admit fussing with the router's configuration over the last couple months, I gave up and bought a new Linksys router/wireless A-G-B access point. I spent one late night reconfiguring the home network. My home wireless network now includes:

• Linksys Dual-Band Wireless A+G Broadband Router
• Linksys Wireless-G PrintServer - This is attached to the printer in Sharon's office so she can print to the printer from anywhere in the house.
• Airport Express with a pair of Altec Lansing speakers and a small subwoofer attached. I can wirelessly stream music from my den PC running iTunes to anywhere in the house. I was not getting very good results with the Airport Express on the old wireless-B access point. I am very happy with the performance with the new router.
• Tivo Series2 DVR with a Linksys Wireless-G USB Network Adapter - Tivo uses the internet to update the program guide. Additionally, from any browser, you can select programs to record and send the command to our DVR.
• Sharon's Dell Laptop in her ofice has a Linksys Dual-Band Wireless A+G Notebook Adapter.

My work Tablet PC is configured so that it automatically attaches to either my home wireless network or the work wireless network depending on where I am. VPN runs great wirelessly over the new router; this means that I can sit anywhere in the house with my work PC and it is just like sitting at my desk at work!

One of the things that I have struggled with is back-ups for Sharon's business. I am looking at adding a Linksys Network Storage Link with a USB hard drive to the network to support back-ups.

Mass at Good Shepherd

Jack and I went to Mass at Good Shepherd Church.

Throw Down in Motown

Here is a link to a video of the last six minutes of ESPN's coverage of the Detroit Pistons versus Indiana Pacers game:

The Daily Recycler: Throw Down in Motown

Off to Tahoe

After Jack's soccer game, Sharon and Mary took off to meet Janie and Jeana. The four of them have a house rented in South Lake Tahoe for the weekend.

Last Soccer Game

Jack played in his last soccer game of the season. He scored two goals on five shots. Jack played goalie for the first time this season in the last quarter of the game. His team won 5 to 4 and finished the season with a record of 4 wins, 4 losses and 1 tie. Jack scored 14 goals in the 8 games that he played.

I kept Jack out too late last night; it was almost 11:00 p.m. by the time we got from the Kings Game. While it did not seem to effect him physically, he was very emotional.