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One of the great songs in music history is U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”.

I was listening to it and thinking how funny it is that although I’m nearly 31 (yikes!) I indeed haven’t found my path in life. While I don’t necessarily believe in fate or predestination, I think everyone has a mission, a goal, to fulfill. I also believe that at some point– maybe when you’re 12, maybe when you’re 88– you know what that goal is.

I still haven’t found it. But I’m having a good time looking.

Wow. My BitRelay servers have survived their trial by fire… over the past five days, one of my clients’ web sites was hit 3.4 million times by more than half a million distinct users. I have no idea what the guy did to get that kind of traffic (neither does he), but it brought my network connection to its knees and slowed down all the other sites (obviously, since there was quite a line to get in!).

Still, I can’t help but be a little proud that the server handled 3.4M page requests– along with all my other client web and e-mail traffic– without even a burp.

Linux rocks.

Tonight I received another sign that I shouldn’t even attempt to do projects around the house.

For reasons unknown to mortal men, the electricians who wired our house put several light switches in places you’d never expect to find them. The worst is the dining room, which actually has TWO switches: one in the kitchen and one in the stairwell (?).

Almost as annoying as their placement is the fact that since they’re double switches, either one can be used to turn on and off the lights. But the way they were installed, if the lights are off one switch is up and one is down. So you might have to flip the switch up to turn on the lights– or, you might have to flip it down.

A minor thing? Sure it is. But it sure gets annoying after a while. So I decided I’d be a manly man and fix the problem. It’s a simple concept: remove the faceplate from the light switch, flip the switch itself and screw it back in, and put the faceplate back. Surely someone with a college degree can handle this…

As I was mucking around with the switch (keep in mind there were TWO switches in this particular wall box; one controlled the stairway lighting) I must have bumped the wrong wire into the wrong other wire. There was a crack, hiss, and (no kidding) a shower of brilliant orange sparks flying out of the receptacle. Not surprisingly, the lights went out with it.

Okay, lesson learned: I should’ve gone to the breaker box and turned off the power. But– and this is the icing on the cake– the electricians labeled the breaker switch “kitchen lights”. I would’ve never even known which breaker to shut off!

Yeesh. I should stick to web programming.

Wow, this is awesome! It’s a letter from none other than Christ, and apparently he got my “contact” from the Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry! I’m really glad I registered with them.

Now I assume all I have to do is give Christ my bank account number and I’ll be rich…

———- Forwarded Message ———-

Subject: BUSINESS PROPOSAL
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 02:08:56 +0100
From: “DR.CHRIST ADUBACA”
To: jeff@neobox.net

ATTN:PRESIDENT/CEO,

TRANSFER OF $28,600,000:00 (TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND U.S. DOLLARS) ONLY.

I got your contact from the Nigerian Chamber of Commerce & Industry. Following this and other investigations resulting in a good recommendation. We have decided to contact you to help us with the legal Transfer of US$28,600,000.00 (Twenty-Eight Million Six hundred Thousand United States Dollars).

Wow, today’s been one of “those days”. After a great lunch with my friends Scott and Derek (I haven’t seen Scott in nearly a year; he was literally touring the globe) I came back to several client disasters. People needed emergency fixes; people’s networks didn’t work right; people’s web sites weren’t doing what they should.

None of it was actually my fault or anything, but it’s always hard to be slammed into a wall of requests that all have to be answered immediately. So I plowed through them one at a time, trying to multi-task as other friends sent e-mail and instant messages, and finally finished.

All the fires are out, and now it’s 4:15 on a Friday. Too bad I haven’t even started the work I had planned on spending the day doing!

I saw a posting for a web development job that was right up my alley. It was the same kind of stuff I’ve been doing for years, and mentioned several small, ongoing projects… perfect for my situation.

So I applied, and received a response that was unexpected but hilarious:

“Please send the URL for your content managed site, if you think that will knock my socks off, as that is almost primarily what we are after. And (polite cough), some of it is, er…a little naughty in a naked sense, but nothing at all very naughty. So let’s cross that hurdle and let me know if your hat is still in the ring. I have a mainstream business too, but right now my naughty stuff (all from the UK, by the way) is taking over.”

I had to respectfully decline, explaining that I don’t really want my company’s portfolio to include content management for (polite cough) porn sites.

Tonight we went to Applebee’s for dinner, to celebrate Alex’s kindergarten Christmas party. The kids and I had lemonade to drink, as usual, and our refills had some kind of fizzy stuff in them (Sprite?).

Kyra took her first gulp and then looked over at me.

“Dad, this doesn’t have alcohol in it, right?”

Today it’s 53 degrees outside. And our driveway is coated in a thick layer of ice.

Nice how the house completely shades the driveway from the sun. I suspect by the end of winter we’ll have a serious glacier out there, and it’ll melt sometime in July…

Part of the fun of working at home is being able to jam to music while I work. No headphones, no low volume… just big speakers in a small room, and throbbing bass.

… And who could ever complain about some Weird Al Yankovic tunes blasting?

Woo hoo!

Today was the day to hang Christmas lights. It was pretty chilly– about 45 degrees– but you can’t hope for much more this time of year. I dug out the ol’ box from the basement and went through all the existing sets of lights to see which ones worked. Surprisingly, only two sets were dead. Still, the others are in pretty sad shape (some of them date back almost a decade, from my college days). I took the kids on a trip to Wal-Mart so they could see all the glitz and glamour of the Christmas section. (Aieeee!)

Picked up some sets of 100 lights– very nice. After some excitement with the wiring, trying to get everything to run off two plugs, I think I’ve got it all in place. We’ll see how it looks when the sun sets tonight…