The Digital Dad

I’m back at work this morning, which feels odd after a two week holiday break. But it was time. Cabin fever had begun to set in and it was either go back to work or keep cleaning the house. Work it is.

I’m also a week away from my first semester of Master’s courses. I’m enrolled in two classes, both with a coworker, which should really help the transition back to the classroom.

Christmas was absolutely wonderful. Liam, now three, was truly able to appreciate the holiday experience for the first time. We talked about the baby Jesus and took him to a live nativity. We read Christmas stories and sang carols. And Christmas Eve he went to bed easily, eager for the morning to see what all Santa had delivered.

It was also very nice having Christmas at our house for the first time. Until now we’ve gone off to my wife’s parents’ house for the holidays and we were grateful to them to allow Liam to experience Christmas morning at his own home.

2009 is starting off wonderfully and looks to be a banner year for the Perry household. We’ll have more news from the homefront in the coming weeks and months, but so far the new year is very, very bright.

So back to work it is. I’ll have more soon. TTFN.

I’ve just linked my website to my LinkedIn profile, meaning specially tagged posts will now display on my LinkedIn Profile. LinkedIn is a professionl social network designed to let individuals and organizations network through people they already know who may know people they want to know. If you’re confused just check out my profile for a better understanding.

Woohoo! Promotion day! No longer will I mire away in the blue-collar nomenclature of Network Technician. Nay! For today I rise up as the university’s first Wireless Network Engineer. Ta-da! Not much in the day-to-day will change, but my email sig is already teh upgraded. Plus, the salaried nature of new position vs. the wage rate of old means no more time-sheet bubbles ever! Woohoo!!!

Ooh, ooh. Bonus! Not only did my voicemail get played first on episode 792 of CNet’s Buzz Out Loud, but they named the episode after my extempore exclamation, Odin’s Beard!

Move-In Day for new freshmen at MSU is over. Locals may now exit their homes and resume normal activities.

With the rollout of a new system for ResNet registration and use, it was decided that IS staff should be on-hand Saturday during move-in to assist any folks who were having problems registering and remediating their machines. The new system requires a scan of your PC or Mac every 4 weeks to verify that you have legitimate AntiVirus and AntiSpyware software installed on your machine and that the definitions for those apps are up-to-date. Registering is not a huge deal, and we provide high-end McAfee AV/AS software to students free of charge if they don’t already have a legitimate suite installed. But any time you take 3500+ college students with numerous flavors of Operating System, manufacturer, hardware, etc., all in various states of disrepair and meltdown, you’re going to have some problems. Some machines wouldn’t fully run the scan application, many were still using the 1-year subscription of AV that came with their machine intially years after it had expired and stopped updating, several balked at the “Big Brother”-style mandate of requiring AV/AS software. But by and large, it went well. Of course, I’m certain most students hadn’t actually sat down and plugged in their PCs by 5 o’clock last evening, when we broke for the day, and I fully expect full-blown riots in the streets come Monday morning when thousands of students have been unable to triage their own setup and have been without internet access for an entire day.

And of course, by internet access I mean the one and only website they cared about getting to on Saturday. Webmail? No. Blackboard? No. Google? Are you kidding? — Facebook. — 3500 students back on campus for the first time in 3 months, many for the first time ever, and what do they want to do? Sit in their rooms and Facebook.

Ruddy kids. Get a frisbee.

I’ve been working on an iPhone- & iPod Touch-compatible version of the MSU Wi-Fi Locations map. It’s still a work in progress, but you can CLICK HERE to view the list on your iPhone.