Alicia Cermak

Back in April, Yahoo! announced they’d be shutting down GeoCities on October 26th, 2009. When I heard, I was immediately filled with sadness, mixed with an odd feeling of nostalgia. I spent much of my day reminiscing about the hours I spent working on my various GeoCities websites, (the most popular being http://www.geocities.com/area51/shire/5641/ -  Leesher’s Star Trek Page launched in 1996, later known as Leesher’s Sci-Fi site, and finally as Leesher’s Page O’ Stuff) dipping my toe in the HTML waters and learning how to optimize graphics for the web, changing my layout monthly (if not weekly). During the days following the big announcement, I spammed my friends and tweeples with links to embarrassing graphics and old content. I shared memories of being a Notepad purist, and staying up til 6am creating buttons for my site in Microsoft Paint after my Fireworks trial had expired. After a week or so, thoughts about my old sites went dormant again, but I put that last day of GeoCities on my calendar so that I could pay proper tribute to the service partially responsible for where I am today.

Fast forward to yesterday. I will hesitantly admit it was a tough one for me. I spent much of the day distracted by twitter - checking for status updates, looking for old Area51 neighbors, reading tributes, laughing at xkcd’s spot-on GeoCities style layout, confusing my Facebook friends with status updates about some ancient MySpace thing they called “GeoCities”, and following the progress of the incredible archive projects. By the time 5pm hit, I spent several hours looking for the scrap of paper I wrote all of my old GeoCities URLs on in 1999, a race against the clock to get to my old data before 12am PST. Once I had resigned to the fact that the paper must have gotten lost in the move, I moved on to mourning the loss of the GeoCities community as a whole, and joined the archive project IRC channel. The chatter continued through morning, as the sites didn’t go down as planned, allowing the harvesting to continue long past the 12am deadline.

I guess what upsets me most is that (like it or not) GeoCities is part of our internet heritage, and we’re crapping all over it. As embarrassing, and silly, and just plain BAD as some of these sites are, they’re part of our history, and without the GeoCities community, the internet wouldn’t be the same today. Due to the nature of our digital communication methods, we’re losing a little bit of our history every second, but this one could have been avoided. Yahoo! isn’t a charity, and I understand the economics of the decision, but you have to stop to wonder if they realize they’re destroying an internet time capsule, and whether they care. They didn’t try to sell GeoCities, they didn’t give their users the ability to easily save their old files, hell, they wouldn’t even tell archivists just how much data they were trying to save. It’s as if Yahoo! just assumed they could pull everything down and no one would notice or care.

As I write this, GeoCities is still alive and kickin’, giving the archive projects more precious hours to complete their work. Godspeed archivists, godspeed.

My first dog, Mr. Wrinkles the pug, died in August, and my mum always said she’d never get another dog. However, unbeknown to her, my dad had been monitoring the Star Tribune classfied ads for pug puppies, and last week, he showed her the ad for an adorable litter of pugs, born on a farm in Clarissa, MN. My family looked at the ad for a few days, and on Tuesday night, after hours of family discussion, we finally decided to take the plunge. I was elected the family spokesperson, so I was the one to call the breeder and make arrangements. By the time we spoke, the breeder only had one left - a spunky little female who was the runt of the litter, but she was already spoken for. Heartbroken, I told my family she wasn’t available, and we agreed that maybe it wasn’t the right time yet.

Fast forward to Thursday morning, I’m sitting in the data center nursing a degraded RAID array, and I get a call from a number that I don’t recognize - it’s the breeder, and the woman was going to pick up the pug flaked! I made a call to her veterinarian, who said the pup was in good health, and after consulting Matt over IM and a quick talk with my dad, I called the breeder back to make arrangements. We agreed to meet around 3:30pm at the Holiday station in Sauk Centre, MN, which is about 30 minutes south of their farm in Clarissa, and about 1.5 hours from my home.

Matt and I drove out to Sauk Centre to pick her up this afternoon, and she greeted me by peeing on me. The drive home was pretty uneventful, and she basically just sat on Matt’s lap the entire time. We spent the entire evening playing with her - she’s a hoot.

This morning in Minneapolis it is -17°F with a -36°F windchill.

In related news, my mum’s car wouldn’t start this morning. We have a single driveway, so we all line up our cars LIFO. Since she was next to leave for work, my mum’s car was on the end with my cars blocked in behind it. After trying to start her car several times, my brother and I sprung into action and started pushing it down the driveway, thinking we could just move it into the street, pull my car out, and then push hers up into the driveway, but we quickly realized we just wouldn’t have the traction to push it back up the incline. Before pushing down to the point of no return, we decided to see if we could get the Mini around her car. It was really tight, but eventually we made it with inches to spare.

You know what made it possible? The standard electronic-dial-activated Mini Cooper folding mirrors. I’d say folding in both mirrors bought us about 6 inches on each side of the car, which in a situation like this is huge. I’ve never been too convinced of the overall usefulness of this particular feature, especially not after my saleswoman tried to tell me she used it “all the time”, but it really pulled through today.

I’m usually a little anti-new-year-resolution, as it seems foolish to select one day out of the year to set goals for yourself. Isn’t part of being successful mastering the art of setting and reaching goals… every day? In any case, I decided that it couldn’t hurt this year. 2009 should include a fresh start in a new home, so this seems like a great time to call out these changes and make them happen.

Personal Life

I’ve recently noticed that people I once considered close friends have become acquaintances. I’ve heard that this is part of “growing up” but I don’t believe that. In 2009, I want to do more to maintain and reestablish friendships.

Health

“To lose weight” is a nice resolution that just about everyone I know has done at one time or another. I’m not going that route, but I will say that in 2009 I want to eat better. I need to make sure that I’m eating balanced meals with more protein. I also need to eat fewer pre-packaged foods, and continue to cut back on eating out (having a kitchen will help!). In addition, I need to do something active every day, whether its going to the gym, the 100 pushups challenge or Wii Fit.

Work

In recent months I’ve felt as if what I’m doing at work isn’t making a dent. Without defined goals, I’m just treading water. In 2009, I need to start setting and reaching goals again.  (Is making a resolution to set goals a cop-out?)

Education

I haven’t felt like I’ve learned much (that isn’t tech related) since finishing my Bachelor’s degree, and I often find myself saying “my brain is hungry”. In 2009, I need to read more non-fiction, making a point to learn more about things that I have a deep interest in, especially those topics my formal education hasn’t delved into much, like ancient history, religion and archaeology. Additionally, I need to prepare for and take the GRE.

Happy New Year

7 years ago, I registered aliciacermak.com with the intention of creating an online portfolio of my web design and development work. During my first job search, I featured several of my projects there, but once I found a fulltime gig, the site fell by the wayside.

Instead of letting the URL go to waste, I’ve decided to return to the fabulous world of blogging. I’m sure I’ll feature some of the sites I’m working on, and I’m sure some of my old LiveJournal angst will come out here and there, but I’ll always try for a balance between life and tech.

♥ Leesha

It has been a really long time since I posted anything of substance. I think part of that was simply caused by lack of interesting stuff to post about. For the most part, I’ve been locked into the rather adult schedule of work, sleep, work, sleep, which makes blogging pretty dull. Fortunately, after over a year of saving up everything exciting, I think I have enough to share with you guys. It’ll be kind of out of order. That cool?

School
I think the biggest news of this year is that I am done with school for awhile. On December 15th, 2007 I graduated with my Bachelor of Science degree in Management and Computer Science. Per my parent’s request, I even walked in commencement, as evidenced below. The entire graduation process was actually more painful than I thought it would be. The number of hoops I had to jump through was astounding, and there were several points during the process where I wondered if I was actually going to get it all taken care of. In fact, my diploma says I graduated after Fall semester, but they didn’t finish processing my graduation requirements, transfer credits, etc. until March. I’m hoping to return to school soon to complete my Master of Science in Library and Information Science (MSLIS) at Syracuse, but financially, that one is tough to figure out. We’ll see.

Travel
On the travel front, 2007 was a busy year. 2008 has been pretty quiet, so far. In January 2007 Ryan and I went to Washington DC and participated in the United for Peace march. It was truly incredible to see soccer moms, punk rockers and old hippies all in one place talking about the same cause.

In April 2007 Nichole and I made our way to Los Angeles to fulfill one of my dreams – to attend a live taping of The Price is Right. Way back in 1989, I had PM kindergarten, so I watched the Price is Right every morning before I went to school, and even went so far as to setup my own ‘Plinko’ board. So, obviously, when word came that Bob wouldn’t be hosting anymore, I knew it was time to make it happen. The entire process is really, really long and really really torturous. The tickets are first come, first served, so you line up in the early morning (we got there at 2am) and wait for them to distribute numbers (which indicate only that you were in line, not that you are going to get into the taping), at which point you can leave the line for an hour in order to get rid of all of the stuff you’re carrying (including your purse, cell phone and camera). The entire day is spent in a queue, and there’s a brief interview process during which they figure out who in line is the most fucking batshit crazy, so they can select those people to COME ON DOWN. There was an absolutely obnoxious lady selected for the show we were on, so during the taping, when they pan over the crowd, Nichole and I are just sitting there scowling in disbelief. Good stuff. We also went to Universal Studios, attending a taping of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, ate tons of Pink Berry (I still get cravings, and seek similar yogurt experiences every time I travel. Thus far, nothing has compared.) visited the Santa Monica pier, and drove Mulholland drive.
We stayed in a crazy little Japanese hotel. Our toilet was also a bidet. Here is a photo of us waiting outside for our spot on The Price is Right

In August 2007, Mark and I attended Penny Arcade Expo for the second time - this time, with Stovetop! That’s probably deserving of its own post. In September 2007 Claudio and I went to Chicago for the Threadless grand opening concert where Hey Mercedes played. It was incredible seeing them again. I imagine it was similar to the nostalgia our parents feel when they see [insert random band that was awesome years ago that you thought you'd never see live again] play at a casino……except Hey Mercedes was still good.

In October 2007 I went to Vegas with ‘the girls’ which was really, really fun. It was the first big trip we had taken together since the infamous Chicago road trip of Spring Break 2002. We did all of the standard Vegas stuff – lounged by the pool, drank, gambled, buffeted. My only complaint was that I spent a LOT of time doing homework. At least it was poolside

2 weeks ago, Mark and I went to Seattle! We took part in the cookie brigade, who collectively raised nearly $5500 for Child’s Play. Brief details on our trip can be found at http://globalevil.wordpress.com/

I’m hoping to get my Flickr/LJ Pics/Picasa accounts loaded up with photographs from all of this stuff relatively soon.

Nerd
On the nerd side of things, I have a confession to make. I’m using a MacBook pro at work. Don’t worry though - I still run Windows Vista at home, and I honestly don’t think I’d ever make the switch to OS X. People kept telling me I’d never go back to Windows after getting my Mac, but I’m just not seeing it. I DO love the terminal, though. It’s like I’m running Linux, but without all of the pain in the ass and with a prettier GUI. (Cygwin isn’t even comparable, so please don’t suggest it)

Work
Speaking of work, I’m still at Arc Stone, but my role has changed. In September 2007 I was promoted to “Network and Systems Manager”. Yes, that’s right, I’m working as a sysadmin. It has been a really interesting change from my developer role, but I enjoy it, and it’s great to have the stuff I was doing anyway be part of my actual job description. We have a mix of Linux (mostly RedHat/Fedora/Cent distros) and Windows systems, so I get to experience a full range of systems administration enjoyment.
I DO miss development though, so if you need help with a project, let me know.

Buying Stuff
In April 2008, I did something against my better judgment. I ordered a 2008 Mini Cooper. I spent a lot of time looking for used Minis, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t find one with automatic transmission that wasn’t completely tricked out and more expensive than a new one. So, I took the plunge. I get between 35 and 40 MPG, I have LED mood lighting, and my car is adorable. My only complaint is that it seems as if dudes in gigantic pickup trucks are jealous of my adorable little fuel efficient car, and are far more aggressive toward me than they were when I was driving my Nissan. Speaking of the Nissan, I still haven’t sold it. Anyone interested in a 1997 Nissan Altima with only 66k miles on it?

In February 2008 I was doing some research on the housing market, and realized that with my pay increases over the last few years, and the fall in pricing, I could finally afford a house! Ryan and I started working with Matt Ashworth’s team in February. I think we’ve had them take us to 300 houses at this point. It’s out of control.
Anyway, after 6 months of things falling through or just plain not working out, we just had an offer accepted! Our closing date is yet to be determined due to some…issues, but we’re still hoping for September 19th. The house itself is awesome, and our neighbors seem amazing. I’m really excited. In fact, I think this excitement is what got me to start this post in the first place.

We’re still looking for roommates. Any takers?
Moving, housewarming party and general house details to follow.

(pic courtesy of Google Street View. Better pics later, promise.)

Summary (loochypoo requires these)
I graduated
I went traveling through a few of our united states.
I use a Leopard at work and Vista at home
I now work as a sysadmin, but for the same company
I miss web development. Give me a project.
I bought a Mini Cooper
I have a Nissan Altima for sale - $4500?
I’m buying a house (!!!!!!)
Anyone wanna live with me?
Ryan is STILL hot

I’d like to say that I’m going to start posting every day like I used to, but I’m not sure there’s any point. However, that said, I’m really excited to be starting this next chapter in my life, so perhaps I’ll feel the urge to get on here more often.

♥ Leesha