I've got an ear infection. My home-remedy treatment is washing it out with Listerine (aural? oral? who cares?) combined with once daily ear drops (6.5% hydrogen peroxide). On Monday the pain was bad enough to motivate my lazy arse enough to call the doctor to make an appointment. By tonight, the pain has subsided enough for me to consider calling the doctor to cancel the appointment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

Next week I'll be completing my first quarter at the local tech school. The last three weeks of both classes, they started to get interesting. I don't know the instructors waited until the last three classes to make things interesting. Next quarter, I go all artsy fartsy with Design 1 and Photoshop classes.

The Internet Marketing class started to become fun once I realized that I could use my own failed half-assed attempt at making a business as a case study. Having done the research, I can probably turn 400 daily hits into a net profit of about 1/10 of my currently salary. The problem, I would surmise, is putting a site of high enough quality to get the traffic. I've got the requisite skills. I've got the time. What I don't have is the motivation. Such is the curse of being me.

To make my new educational goals more interesting, a position opened up at the tech school I've been attending. I trundle-tossed my resume over. I need to get transcripts sent in before I can be considered. I'm trying to decide if it's worth the hassle for that. I don't imagine that I would end up liking any IT job any better that my present position. While I'm not very satisfied, every place I've worked at to date has been far worse. On the other hand, if I can get a few years of experience in academia I might be able to work my way into an IT position at a real university. If I can make that plan hatch by 2012, my oldest daughter could get free tuition.  That would be worth the sacrifice.

Speaking of work, I solved a really hard problem at work today. That was fun. It was kind of sort of like a problem I failed to solve last September, so I looked up my notes on the old problem. I had remembered correctly, the symptoms were exactly the same. Identical symptoms aside, the causes must be different. What fixed the more recent problem didn't change the old problem at all. The good thing is that I figured out two more things to try to force Crystal to submit to my will. I know one thing for certain about her, her report card from grade school says, ``does not play well with others.''

Recruiters are also starting to call me again. I've probably mentioned this before, but I haven't seen this level of activity vis a vis tech recruiters since 1999 when everyone thought that everything electronic was going to drop core at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Even. (I have to admit that I was more than a bit disappointed that nothing of the sort happened.) Two parts of this are funny to me. The first is that some of the same recruiters are calling me unsolicited this year that interviewed me last year when I was actively looking for a job and don't remember me at all. While I'm not surprised that they don't remember me, I would think that they are at least capable of looking through their files. Secondly, many more of them are incredibly incompetent. As one example, I set up a phone interview with one for 8:30 in the morning a few weeks ago. I called. The receptionist answered and told me the recruiter in question wouldn't be in until 10:00 that day. I left my name and number and laughed. Well, maybe not quite in that order which may be the reason I never received a call back.

And that will be all. 'Tis time for my ear drops and it's hard to type when holding one's head sideways so that the drops don't drip out and leave bleached spots on one's black wardrobe.

Peace.