Various subjects

I think we may have turned the corner with Spook.  Her ear has looked less disgusting after a week of treatment.  She ate some food last night and again this morning when I put down plain old wet cat food.  Since the ear problem kicked into high gear Spook has not been on her favorite place in the house, her window shelf.  It is a small padded pet shelf we have in the office.  I figured because of her shaky balance she has not ventured up there.  Well this morning she was actually back on the shelf.  All I know is Ali and I will welcome the day we don’t need to give the cat medicine.  We both have had our fill of getting coated in ear and mouth excrement during the process.

We have yet another race to time Saturday morning.  Thankfully it is a small one and should not be a real big deal.  We then have an unconventional race to time Thursday evening, a “corporate run”.  In this event businesses create teams of runners.  Instead of individual scoring, the teams compete against each other.  I take the the three fastest runner times from each time and add them together, the lowest total time wins.  It is a format I never did before so I am a bit nervous about it but the race software supports the format so hopefully it will all go smoothly.

So yesterday I finally decided to get around to selling Ali’s old Treo 750.  I took a picture and updated my version of Turbo Lister to put the phone on Ebay, I had not listed something for sale on Ebay in quite awhile.  So I make my auction and attempt to upload it to their site.  I receive an error saying something about  having money orders selected as a payment option and evidently it is no longer viable when using turbo lister.  Ebay in general is trying to avoid doing money order transactions because it means they don’t get their Paypal cut of the pie.

So anyway I went back into my auction and verified it did not have money orders selected and saved it.  I resubmit the ad and get the same error.  I make a brand new ad and make SURE that money order is not selected, still get the error.  I spent at least a half hour trying to send this ad to ebay with no success. 

Finally my patience ran out and I said f it, I will just throw it on Craigslist for now and see if I get any bites.  I listed the phone on CL around 1pm, by 3pm the phone was sold and I had cash in hand. Wow.  I saved myself the three rounds of fees that Ebay would have charged me for that transaction.  I didn’t have to ship anything and was paid in cash.  It was in a word, sweet.

I think I have mentally committed to get my MCITP for Windows Server 2008.  MCITP is the new acronym and replaces the MCSE designation that was so coveted for a long time.  I have my MCSE for NT4, Windows 2000 and 2003. Realistically, additional certification in my job is really unnecessary, however I think I would like to pursue the new certification anyway.

  In the IT field if you are content with letting your skills and knowledge base stagnate you are setting yourself up for failure.  Even though my job security is almost iron clad solid, if for some unknown reason I found myself out on the job market the updated certification would look good under the nose of someone that is not familiar with my 17 years in the field.  Yea it’s a pain in the ass studying for the exams but most worthwhile things are a pain in the ass so I will “just do it” as Nike endorses.