Actually officially trying now

So I wrote this whole post on my blackberry the other day. I was in class and not at all interested in the lecture - I'm over halfway through my graduate degree and I've found I get As whether I try - or not. So, when I think the professor is a pompous wanker or the topic just doesn't grab me, I thank the Powers That Be (PTB) for unlimited Internet access on my blackberry smart phone provided by my employer.

Sometimes I wonder if on a per K basis, the blackberry gets more work or personal use? Sometimes I think to myself, crikey, you're a geek. At any rate, I wrote it all on the little weenie keyboard and hit submit and something went kerflooey and nothing got posted.

Effective the end of my last period, we are now officially trying to get pregnant, and I'm suddenly noticing on just about every bottle of pills it says something about how I shouldn't be taking them. Except my multivitamin of course. I have a stomach problem for which I take a pill twice a day and it actually says that I should stop taking them if I even think I might be pregnant. Who knows? An egg should be coming down the chute any day now - middle of next week according to the good folks at www.destinationmaternity.com and their ovulation calculator.

I'm obsessed though. I actually have several shopping carts full of maternity clothes and books at different sites. I get to the checkout and pause. And then I remember I think it's bad luck to do things like buy maternity clothes before you're pregnant. Not sure why. I guess I'll have enough time to buy clothes and whatnot later on.

Anyway, I haven't even bought my copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting which I really want to read. I like being prepared but then apparently I'm superstitious. So, off to write a final exam and then maybe a walk in the nice weather. Happy Saturday y'all.

Let's build a wireless network and call it...

I am a woman working in information technology and I love it. First, because my office is a whole floor of IT people, there are very few women on the floor and I usually have our restroom all to myself. This makes me happy as I have a shy bladder.

Second, I like geeks. Not necessarily in a crushing sort of way, though that works too, but in a they're generally very clever and interesting and eccentric sort of way. I guess if I were a fella working in IT, I might still like working with geeks, but I imagine it wouldn't be the same. There's an interesting tension.

Something I don't like about working in IT is the focus on technical certifications. Seems like they're for non-geeks trying to turn into geeks. I get that there aren't enough of us but still. The certified wanna be geeks don't tend to have the passion for the business that you sometimes need to get through the bad days with your sense of humour intact.

A funny thing happened at work the other day. We have a wireless network that our employees use and right now it has a long encryption key and a mixed case, case sensitive SSID (network name). I run the service desk and my staff have to read out both over the phone, over and over again, to our employees who want to connect to the network. Yes our computers are deployed preconfigured to connect to the wireless network, but sometimes the settings get corrupted and they need to be removed and re-entered, and then they magically work.

A network engineer came to me to propose removing the encryption key and allowing anyone to connect, as we have implemented another, better layer of security that users hit once they connect. I asked if we could change the SSID as well, and make it something that is all upper or lowercase, as the mixed case SSID we're using now is a real pain. He said that would be fine and maybe make it easier, so we could leave the old one in place for awhile after deploying the new one. This would give people time to move from one to the other. We agreed this would be a Good Thing (tm).

I wanted to check with our security people that this was all really ok, and they said it was fine. I mentioned that in testing the engineer had used our company name as the test SSID, which I assumed would be a problem. The security director said he wasn't worried about it, and we could even broadcast the SSID now if we wanted.

I returned to the engineer and told him we were good to go and at that point we had a brief discussion of what the SSID should be. I thought about it for a minute and then realized - the network name that would be easy (enough) to spell, and that probably most of our users who take their computers home are already set up to use would be linksys. How deliciously funny would that be?

Sadly the security guy didn't approve it, though he did appreciate the humor in it.

Still not pregnant, though still not really trying. Being off the Pill sucks though - it's wreaking havoc on my skin. I forgot that half the reason I like the Pill is the tragic adult acne I have without it. I shudder to imagine what comes next vis a vis my hormones. Whee!

Not pregnant yet. I think.

I'm glowing. At least, it seems like it. I work in a fairly cautious, politically correct office, where we are generally screening our words before we say something. And three, count them, three guys in my office have been stammering over how nice I look, not that I didn't look nice last week, of course I looked nice last week, but wow, you look great!

I've been off the pill for almost two months but we're not technically 'trying' yet. Condoms and whatnot are the order of the day until next month on order of my OB/GYN. Yeesh. I can't believe I just said that!

So, the background: I never really planned on having babies but my husband is dead set on at least one. Our compromise is one.

First Post!

Right, so a nod to our trollfriends at userfriendly.org and slashdot.org and their cries of first post. Gosh, those were the good old days.