No more mountains

Well the Washington hike is off, due to circumstances beyond my control. Ok, not really but our friends bailed, one concern being weather, so we decided not to go as well. Mt. Washington can be treacherous any time of the year and I can't imagine October will be any better. So probably no more mountains this year.

We looked at three apartments tonight but didn't really like any of them.The other apartment we looked at we will probably not get, in order to save money because Joy's car needs a lot of work. We took it to firestone and just to get it on the road it would be $1300. It would be thousands more to get everything else wrong fixed, including more tires, oil leaks, dents, mirrors, etc. So in our opinion, not worth it. So along with trying to find a new apartment we will be trying to find a new car. Right now we are looking at a used Toyota RAV4 or Honda CRV, both of which are at the top of their class. This is life I guess. Instead of figuring out where to eat lunch, how many miles to hike, where to get water, and where to camp for the night, I have to figure out where to get an apartment and what car to buy. Fun, fun.

Life in the woods has dulled my network skills or Networking 101

A beautiful day today. Nice enough that I took my bike on the hour and ten minute ride into work. Route 6 is a little bumpy and 395 is pretty windy but it was still fun and always good to double your gas mileage. So I am working at work, working along, as a worker, working in IT, as if my job, the job of IT. And of course at 4ish the fax client decides it doesn't want to communicate to the server anymore. It works on the server so I easily conclude that its a server issue. But for the life of me I can't fix it. Everything appears normal, the services are all running, I tried rebooting the server, checked event logs, checked DNS and that I was able to pin the server, turned off antivirus. We have support on the fax app so I call them. Do you know what they said? Is the firewall on? I check and of course it is on. I turn it off and it starts working. Ignoring the security risk of having no firewall on (although they recommend it, its an internal server, has Symantec security suite including IPS, etc) that should have been one of the first things I checked. Networking 101! The only firewall in the woods would be a wall of fire from a forest fire...

Life...has it changed?

Plains by Ryan Pancoast - we got the card signed and a print

My first week of work is complete. Well, my first week back anyways. As I was driving home from the Innistrad Pre-release tonight I got to thinking about life. The pre-release is a chance to play with the the new Magic set a week before it comes out. It is a casual event, four rounds, and I won 2 matches. That got me 2 packs but it is more of a fun event and they had an artist there so we had him sign a bunch of cards. Joyful even got a couple of signed prints, which will look nice in our place. Speaking of which, we saw an apartment last night, 2 floors, 4 bed, 4 bath, new cabinets, dishwasher, etc, etc. Its a little expensive but it would be a great place to grow into. But then again if we are going to be spending money why don't we get a house instead?

As I was saying about life though. Work has made me think a lot about the trail. Sometimes I think that we did not accomplish much having only hiked 1015 miles, not the whole trail. I thought that this trip would change us and open doors for us. But we came back and went back to work. Work at the same job. Did anything really change? The trail may have been one of the hardest things we have ever done, both physically and mentally. Many times we just wanted to give up and quit. But we passed through everything nature could throw at us, for at least a thousand miles. So have I changed as a person? I believe so. Perhaps I thought life would be entirely different, perhaps I am impatient. My life has changed and indeed I am still a wanderer, no permanent home yet. The trail was a slow grind and perhaps life is too.

Work, work, work

Back to the corporate grind. Back to the "real" world. Back to 9-5, business attire, meetings, and being an IT guy. Went back to my old job and it was like I never left. I most certainly would rather be on the trail hiking through hail, pouring rain, thunder, lightening, hurricane force wind, freezing cold, extreme heat, aches, pains, wet clothes, and being really dirty. But that does not pay the bills. Being an IT nerd does. It is an hour commute, which sucks, so here's hoping that we can find an apartment in RI soon. The grind won't feel so bad when he have our own space again and can spread out our stuff. It looks like we will have one more hike left, if the weather holds. Next weekend we are hoping to summit Mt. Washington with another couple. I have reached the summit via foot the past 3 years and with some luck we can do it this year. It will probably be mighty cold, but we are up for the challenge, even though we have not done much hiking or exercising since we got back.

New craze...Legos?

I used to love Legos when I was a kid. I had a whole bunch of sets and I remember eagerly reading the product catalog every time it came in the mail. Every summer, after school let out, I would take apart all the sets I owned and try to create new vehicles and buildings, usually while watching the original Star Wars trilogy. I eventually gave all my blocks away minus a Technic Motorcycle and a Star Wars Jedi Starfighter but enough of my childhood. While they are a great tool for teaching creativity, following directions, architecture, etc, it seems they are becoming popular among adults as collector items. I think it is mostly the Star Wars sets because the really expensive ones are pretty authentic, meaning they look like the real thing. Or it could just be that we are all really nerdy and all the kids who liked Star Wars when they were kids are now growing up. I admit, I am a bit of a Star Wars fanboy and a geek and all that stuff, and still a kid at heart I suppose. But the Star Wars Super destroyer, the biggest lego set at 4 feet long, takes over a day to build, now that is sweet! And of course, because of my great interest in the Age of the Sail, ships of the line, etc, I have been eying the Queen Anne's Revenge from the Pirate of the Caribbean line.
 

In more serious news, back in the grown-up world, I am going back to work on Monday. Yeah, maybe it is not hiking the AT, maybe it is once again working for the man, with extra hours, office politics, bills, dress shirts, and all that stuff. It is NOT the simple life, but a man needs to eat (so does his wife). We need our own place, we need a new car, and we want babies. The man has health insurance, simple life does not. Well you can always buy health insurance but it will cost you an arm and a leg which would be hard to pay for without a job with the man. Its not ALL that bad, I need money to pay for my toys after all!