Baby Update

Gwen's started reaching for and playing with things in the last couple of days. She's done it semi-randomly for about a week or so, but started showing real progress in it on Tuesday. today, she was unerring and had a blast playing with the "hanging toys" while on a mat on the floor for a couple of hours today. She's also started to laugh a little bit in the past week or so also, but the odd thing about it is she only does it for a second or so, and only Teri can get her to do it.

In other news, job search continues apace. I went to the DWS office the other day and they blatantly stated they're trying to make it so everything is done online anymore and the physical locations be phased out. They showed me a few ways to more effectively use their site, but that's about it. I also talked to a certification school about looking into working toward an MCSE cert, since I'm thinking that might help me break the barrier into Netadmin/Sysadmin-type jobs, which is where I've always been looking to take my career path. I'm a darn good desktop support guy, but my work experience beyond that is pretty limited, so methinks a cert would help to show potential employers that I do possess at least the fundamental knowledge and I can build on it quickly.

Sadly, I know the test will have a lot of questions that are trivia, and not well suited to an actual working environment. One place I interviewed at had a test to take before the interview that asked things like "How many pins on a DIMM memory chip?" Who cares? You just match the ram with the slot, and who cares how many actual pins are in the thing? It also asked the hertz speed of PC2700 ram. Again, who cares? I'd just put PC2700 ram in about 400 machines in the prior 2 months at my old job and never once did I care what its hertz speed was.

But you know that you still have to be able to regurgitate that kind of trivia for the tests, so....

Cert house programs look to be quite expensive, so I'm thinking I'll be needing to simply buy books on the subject and self-teach. Frankly, I can't see that as being any less effective than having someone else read the book to me in a classroom and having me pay them for the privilege.

And in completely trivial news, I got my Shadowknight to level 90 in EQ2 a couple of days ago. Yay me, and all of that. . . .

Blogs are like journals, right?

And this is what Gwen looks like now.

A lot has happened in the past 3 months, but I've not really felt the "inspiration" to write about it. Here's a quick recap:

• Gwen was born 12/12/09, but had some breathing and eating issues, so we didn't get to bring her home until 12/17/09.
• My other 3 kids came out for the Christmas break on the 21st. I took 2 weeks off work so I could be with them the whole time. They loved their new little sister and a grand time was had by all.
• On 01/06/10 I was let go from my job, completely unexpectedly. I am still unemployed as of this writing, but actively looking and interviewing.
• On Feb 21 we named and blessed Gwynneth Fey Camp at my sister's ward in Lehi. We did that because she and her husband were blessing their adopted baby girl Eliana Caitlin Spencer the same day and we had a lot of family in from out of town and it was easiest to have the blessings in the same place. My sister wrote about it here, if you're interested in reading it.
  
• I got a CPAP machine and began using it and I feel a lot less tired now than I used to. I don't snore anymore either. Downside is that now that I'm sleeping with my mouth closed I've started grinding my teeth, but I went and found a mask that mounts on a mouth guard, so that's been nice the past few days. This one's awfully delicate though... I found this morning I've somehow managed to break the small tubes that connect from the big air hose. Fortunately it came with replacements, but if it broke in only 4 days.... not looking promising.
• Teri and I finally got our house in NM sold. We had to put a lot of money into it last year in order to get it "sale ready" and after paying the broker's commission and also the full cost of the place for the past 4 months without a renter in it while we were selling it.... we lost quite a lot of money on the sale, in spite of theoretically having a decent chunk of equity in it. Ah well... at least we don't have the monthly cost anymore and can simply work from a "local" budget now.
• Teri's maternity leave ended today and so I'm being "Mr. Mom" while doing my job searches. Gwen's actually sitting in my lap right now as I'm typing this. Teri's not really happy about needing to return to work, but.... life is. Once I get a new job we'll see how it all goes.

On the gaming front, I'm doing EVE still and playing just enough to get enough ISK to buy game time, so it's effectively free for me anymore. I re-subbed to EQ2 when the expansion came out, but no longer on the "Station Pass" -- just a regular sub this time. I've been focusing on my shadowknight and trying to work up her AA points. Got her up to 150 now (from 132) with 90% of my xp going to AA on the slider. I've gotten about 60% of a level also, so theoretically I'd be level 86 now if I hadn't been working so hard on the AA's. I've actually not set foot in the new zones at all yet, but am working on finishing all the old quests from RoK and TSO that I never did. The TSO quests are something of a pain with a lot of running around, but I can't say I really expected any differently.

I'm playing DDO under its "free model" also. There's another blogger out there who's organized a "static group" that I've joined up with and we're gonna see how far we can go with it. I've also checked out Allod's Online - a new F2P title - and while I think it's ok, it's nothing special either. It's free, so I've not uninstalled it and may log in from time to time when I'm not doing anything else, but I doubt I'll ever really do much with it.

And you can't tell, but Gwen's had her diaper changed, been fed, and is fighting not to fall asleep now so I'm gonna go focus on her until she is napping.