Whoa! Grand Prairie,TX hit by earthquake

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/31/texas.earthquakes.ap/index.html

One hit Irving too, Rebecca and I were just there a few months ago, granted the quakes were under 3.0 in magnitude. Living there as a kid for over 10 years I don't remember one ever happening, I do remember lots of flash flood warnings and thunderstorms. A tornado even hit the high school, but earthquakes?! Crazy.

Boy Oh Boy

We love you, E but, I have to tell you that your days are numbered. Your mom is pregnant with a boy. We found out yesterday while you were eating a blue dum-dum. It was very exciting news and your mom just laughed and laughed. Get your bags packed because he's gonna be here just a month or so after you turn two. You're going to have to grow up quick to start taking care of your little brother and aged father.

openSUSE 11 x86_64

I have had bad experience with the x86_64 bit versions of distro's in the past, too many packages were only made for x86. Well, time has past, so I am going for it again, and putting openSUSE 11 x86_64 on my box. I had a heck of a time burning the ISO for x86_64 I downloaded using a torrent in my x86 openSUSE... eventually I had to use a command line to make it because of errors trying to burn an ISO in the graphical tool. Once burned the disc installed with one error about the source media not found or something.

I even installed it with KDE 4... used it for about 10 minutes and then reinstalled with GNome because the KDE fonts are horrible to read on my LCD and I am too dumb to figure out how to fix it. I know that KDE is beloved by many Linux power users, and I remember the outcry at Novell when it was announced that future SUSE distro's would be Gnome only. Novell had to quickly backtrack and support both in the face of flaming nerd wrath.

Having used Ubuntu and openSUSE, I prefer Ubuntu, but it just won't work with my box now for some strange reason. I really dislike RPM packages and the debian style was pretty slick almost as cool as Gentoo emerge.

openSUSE installed

I upgraded my RAM from 1.5 GB to 3 GB and Ubuntu would not boot up...
So I downloaded the latest install of Ubuntu, I could not get the upgrade to work anyway, and tried to install it over the top of the old install. Ubuntu install failed to start :-( and gave me a command prompt with isoramfs or something cryptic like that. First I thought it was the memory, I ran memtest and the RAM passed no errors.

I then made a openSUSE iso disk and tried to install it. That worked, but many sites would not come up in browsers, lost my data too which sucks. After installing openSUSE, I was getting connection timeout, network unavailable messages even with ping commands. I found a post on a SUSE forum that said to disable IPv6 and Beagle. I did disable IPv6 and now it seems to work just fine. I have not found where to disable Beagle, but I think it works well enough not to need to disable it.

To disable IPv6 in openSUSE 11.0 open YaST and click network settings, global options tab, IPv6 Protocol Settings, uncheck Enable IPv6, reboot the OS.

I am not sure why I had to disable IPv6 to get the internet connection working. I connect to a Linksys5 port network hub which is connected to a Qwest actiontec DSL modem. The other computer on the network is Windows XP Professional. Does IPv6 require special hardware or DSL settings? I would like to use the best technology but with IPv6 enabled my connections to many sites like mail.google.com , would not work. Strange.

Grape Pedialyte

Grape Pedialyte is good stuff. I figured if Eleanor won't try it, I might as well. It is like a better tasting (but more expensive) gatorade. I tried making some homemade Pedialyte and, yeah, it was a total bust, Eleanor would not take more than one sip. Maybe if I had put some food coloring in it...

Rebecca called and I don't need to get home early today to watch Eleanor. She needed me to get home early so she could take some beehives to do proxy baptisms at the temple, but Eleanor's Farmor came to the rescue.

Got plans for the weekend?

Eleanor vomiting

Thought you needed to know that. She is vomiting like every hour or so, then crying, "mamma mamma mamma" like some pathetic broken toy. She won't drink fluids and isn't hungry. It has been a long day for me. Here are some "vomit kid under 3 years old" care instructions:

• Give 1 tsp oral rehydration solution like Infalyte or Pedialyte every 1 to 2 minutes to prevent dehydration. Increase amounts and intervals as your child can tolerate it. Older children will tolerate slightly larger volumes over slightly longer intervals.

• If your child vomits, allow the stomach to rest for a half hour and start over with rehydration fluids.

• High-sugar fluids like, apple juice or full-strength Gatorade are not good replacement fluids for dehydration. High-salt broth fluids should also be avoided.

• Water should not be used as the only fluid for dehydration, but can be given in small amounts along with Infalyte and Pedialyte.

• When your child can keep liquids down, return to a regular diet.

• It's not unusual for children to have a decreased appetite after vomiting, but make sure they keep drinking adequate fluids. Avoid fruit juice, which may lead to diarrhea.

• Over-the-counter medications to stop nausea and vomiting are neither necessary nor recommended due to their negative side effects. Vomiting not associated with a serious condition will usually stop on its own within 12 - 24 hours.

Of course these instructions are a complete FAIL on an uncooperative child. Good news is she will only continue to do this for another 12 to 24 hours, oh swell! I also can't wait to find out what I get to do with over 3 year old vomiting kids.

I know I shouldn't complain. I am 100% sure others have had it way worse than this.

Layoffs, economy slowdown and conference

The client I have been working for (and flew out to Austin for four months) is laying off 10% of its workforce. They were spending money like water and offered me a job which I think I am glad I didn't take. Rough times may be ahead for everyone. Rebecca commented that this past conference did not have much said about getting out of debt, or stocking up for emergencies. It made me think, sometimes what isn't said in conference can be telling, as well. Before this crash, getting out of debt and saving for rough times required a bit of faith to do. Now it is obvious that having very little debt or no debt and some emergency savings is a very good idea. There is really no need to warn and council on what is now obvious to everyone. So I have to think, "What did the Lord warn or council me to do now?" There will probably come a day when what I was asked to do now will seem so obvious I will kick myself for not listening and acting on it when I was first told.

Get Linked In Right Now

If the economy slows down and jobs turn scarce, it may come down to who you know and the size of your professional network to obtain employment. I think the site http://www.linkedin.com/ is a great place to put your work history and keep current and former professional contact info. What is awesome about it is:

• it is free
• It can build itself, once you're in it, old acquaintances may come out of the woodwork and link up with you.
• you just have to put your information in there, if contacts you had at some company move on, they will update their profile and you won't have outdated contacts and lose the connection with that person.
• lots of people are already in it, you might be surprised who uses it. Lots of manager types, who are clued in, are already in there i.e. the people who actually do the hiring and interviewing.
• Headhunters use it as a gold mine to fill hard to hire positions, so a new job can just land in your inbox. (It happened to me twice.)
• Your able to see how interconnected the world is. I am two connections away from the State Director at the Office of Senator Bob Bennett

The sooner you organize and update your resume information and establish your network, the more prepared you become for a situation where you are looking for work. So what are you waiting for eh?