Wow, sometimes it's amazing how bad a movie can be made out of a decent book. I'm reading Starship Troopers by Heinlein. Total and complete anti-communism/pro-war elitist 1950's rhetoric, but it's a good story and a quick read. For contrast I rented the movie last night and watched. I thought it was campy and funny before, now I'm just disgusted. Not that I agree with the views of Heinlein in the book, but at the complete and utter disrespect of the book by the filmmakers. I was laughing for a different reason last night..

Well, I put the thing down on layaway in February and I've finally paid it off. Never had a real, non-used, non-delapidated couch before, so this is truly a treat. Now I can give my recliner a rest and layout while watching TV or playing Playstation.

Every year there's a jazz festival in Norman, Jazz in June. It starts up Thursday and ends Saturday night. The lead band is the Max Gise Band. Max Gise and I were students of Larry Hammet at OU when I was a guitar major.

Interesting to see the different paths in life that people take.

Anyways, now that I live on the northwest side of Norman, I may actually go this time; it's only about 2 minutes drive from my apartment.

I got a letter on the clip outside my door. It was a neighbor who introduced himself earlier. He seemed like a real nice guy. In the letter he and his wife invited me to a cookout at the nearby park tomorrow night. I was elated, as this is the first time anyone who's lived next to me (that was a stranger) has paid attention that I live in the same complex as them. Pretty cool.

to the end of my name! I've been studying for the Veritas Data Protection Specialist certificaiton since March. It requires that you take three exams, FSE-035, or Veritas Foundation Suite Exam. Foundation Suite consists of Volume Manager and File System, both are enterprise level applications that help you manage data and keep it available.

Then there's two exams: DP001x and DP002x. Both have to do with Veritas Netbackup and is the focus for the certification. DP1 covers the consulting side of a Netbackup install engagement, such as which business procedures to consider, and how to size the capacity and speed of tapes, drives and network to meet the need of the organinzation. DP2 is all about Netbackup and it's commands, processes, installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.

Both are grueling; the first exam for its subjectivity, the second for its annoying specificity. I took and passed the FSE exam mid April, went to training for a week in Dallas mid May, and took and passed both DP exams this month.

You'd think I'd take a break from studying, but I'm not. I've got to do something with all this free time I have. I'm supposed to hear soon from the office which track to go on next, Veritas Cluster, Sun Cluster or Hitachi 9900 storage. Either will be fun and useful. Soon I'll be able to go on the road to do short term engagements. The more training and certifications I get the more travel and gigs... Fun fun fun!

I got invited to get a Gmail account. I guess it's been such a geek cult phenomenon because 1) it's 1 gigabyte of email storage. That's insane. 2) it's in Beta stage and you can only get in by invite from a current gmail user. I suppose what's really appealing is that it's seen that Gmail is going to take off as THE free email service, kinda like hotmail was. As geeks who have been online back in the BBS and early AOL days, we picked out a handle that we identified with and liked. Mine was orpheus, or quicksilver. Whatever one's handle was, though, as the web grew, other people with the same handle start getting in the way... sooner or later, you'll never be able to pick out the name you really want. So if it can be seen that Gmail is going to take off, geeks with their beloved handle can have handle@gmail.com and forever have that cool, succinct, short name that no one else can have.

Me, I chose 'robertcantu'. I guess I'm growing past the need for kitchy names that may or may not identify me. Oh well.

Ok, I swear, this time I'll keep writing!

So my friend Adrianne came back from Russia after being there for a year. It was good to see her, and it brought back good memories. Can't help feel that I'm a little different now.

It's been about 5 months since I moved into my apartment. In some ways, this is exactly what I've wanted; my own space with my own personality. It's got a music study and a little computer where the dining room is. I guess it's a message I send to people of what I deem important; I eat kneeling in front of the coffee table in the living room. In front of the TV, just like when I was a kid. It's the same coffee table, too.

It's lonely sometimes, but this is what I asked for right?