Shawn D. King

Well, I have a contact form back up. Thanks to Mike Challis! So far, it looks good. As long as it keeps out the spammers. Ugh.

Hopefully, it will generate some job leads. I tried a basic webform a few years ago, but was buried in spam–still getting it in that account, too. Mike’s contact form has built-in spam traps, and I’m using .htaccess to block other undesirables.

Well, we’ve been busy with the move out of New Mexico. We managed to depart on time in September of 2010. We left early enough to spend a few days in Arkansas with my parents. It was a nice visit and good to stop an rest before the final push to Georgia. Cassie, Tami’s horse, was quite upset at having to leave her nice, green, 40 acre pasture. She would prefer we stayed in Arkansas.

After arriving in Georgia, we had to live in hotels for over a month until we closed on the house. Now we have Cassie and her boyfriend (Arabian gelding) in the backyard–along with four of the neighbor’s ducks on the pond (duckies!).

So now I”m back to the job search business. Difficult to get motivated to do anything after several months of moving, unpacking, and generally getting settled to the new place. The ice storm last week didn’t help. I don’t think I’ve moved the Jeep in over a week.

Several amateur radio clubs are active in the area. We’re planning on going to a meeting tomorrow night of the Columbia County Amateur Radio Club. We both want to become more active. I want to get a larger base station for the house so I can install my current rig in the Jeep, and I want to get a small 2m rig for Tami’s truck. That project will have to wait until after I find a job.

So my goals for next week are to be more aggressive in finding employment and to study for the ITIL exam. Need to get back into studying Chinese, but one thing at a time. ITIL cert is more likely to result in income.

I forgot I had most of the code insertion stuff turned off. So I have to insert my paragraph tags manually. Oops.

What an exciting summer! Tami was offered a job at Ft. Gordon, GA, so we’ll be moving there sometime in the next few weeks. It’s been rather hectic trying to prepare for the move. We’re having to tackle challenges on several fronts.

First, we’re going through boxes (boxes!) and sorting what the movers will take and what we will haul ourselves. Next, we’re trying to find out why we still don’t have orders. Ugh! And finally there’s our concern over the logistics of the animals: How to move three cats and a horse in and around doing all of the out-processing for our current location. So we’ve been busy cleaning, packing, and having a garage sale.

Of course, Tami was offered the job, not me. So I’ll be back in the "looking for work" business. But we’re still excited to be making the move, and we’re both looking forward to returning to the east coast area.

I’m still tweaking the site (need to do a backup and upgrade to WPv3.0). I want to do several more things with the whole web dept; however, those items will have to wait: They’re lower priorities at the moment.

Wow, where does the time go? I’m still around. Been busy with a variety of other activities, but I’ve spent the last couple of days tweaking the site. Hopefully more later, as I have several improvements in mind.

My resume has been updated to reflect both my current and previous job. I’ve installed a couple of plugins, one to prevent WP from “fixing” my HTML and another to hide pages–I will want to hide my contact page, and even when it is presented, I will need to find ways to keep spammers and recruiters at bay. Still working on that one.

My mouth is sore. Went to the dentist today for the prep work for a crown. Did I mention my mouth is sore?

Let’s see, where to begin…

I start my government civil-service job at 0001 tonight! Employment, yay! Took a while, but quite quickly by government standards. A couple of hiccups (which always happens), but I’m looking forward to starting my new position.

We’re going to Sunday brunch at the Double Eagle restaurant in Las Cruces tomorrow to celebrate the start of my new position. Food (that I don’t have to cook). Yay! XD

Tami is doing better–hurt her back a few weeks ago on a pilates ball (anybody want one?). So I’ve been busy taking her to the doctor and trying to keep her from doing too much. She’s doing better, but not perfect.

Tami was looking at my website in via the bedroom computer and asked me why she couldn’t see my picture. Turns out, I the code for the URL to the picture was wrong. Works fine on the development box, but then, that’s were the original setup was developed. I just forgot to change the image URL. Ugh. So for several months people have been seeing a red ‘x’ instead of me. How unflattering.

Laters,
~Shawn

Well, I suppose I should add another post. Almost a month since my last one. Someday I hope to have a full-time job (or return to school) so that I will have more time to devote to the site (and IT, and s/w design, and tinkering with electronics, and so on). I opt for the job, as that would help fund the computer habit.

Not too much else in the way of excitement. Just working the data collector summer job. Long hours and it’s very boring (I have a difficult time seeing the importance of what we’re doing–so do the other people who’d rather we not be around), but the pay is decent. More money for cat stuff, I suppose.

Ugh. I keep finding new ways of tweaking this thing. I have the development box more or less setup the way I want, now I just have to remember everything so I can get the live site setup the same way.

Haven’t had much time for web development. I’ve been busy doing in-processing for my summer job. Long hours doesn’t allow much time for playing on compy, either. Meh, pays some bills. I would say that spending all day in the middle of the desert keeps me from spending any money I make… but since I’ve acquired the Blackberry, all bets are off. lol

Okay, so I have something other than just a generic picture and resume in place. Still having issues with this thing, so it may take a while to establish.