My projects and other things have been taking up way too much of my time lately.

My bracket in the NCAA tournament (mens) has been about as bipolar as any bracket I’ve ever done. Typically I do very well in these things, but like most, picking the winner is the make-or-break decision. Pick the winner, and you’ve no doubt gained points throughout, miss the winner, and you’re sunk. This year I had only 20 hours from selection show to entry submission, and the lack of research showed through, although I was saved by a very well-seeded bracket. I did horrendously in the first two rounds, but picked 7 of the 8 Elite Eight teams and, until UNC lost, I still had all Final Four teams.

My WoW time has suffered as well, although that might not be a bad thing! My main is still level 60 and my Draenei Shaman is level 36. Yeah, I’m slow and my time/effort has dropped considerably (thankfully). If I didn’t have real life buds in game, I’d have left it long ago.

At home last night I enjoyed just how easy Linux is becoming as I continue to just be immersed into it. Much like my idling in some IRC channels or mailing lists, just hearing things for a while means I gain some understanding; or being around something. I’m not planning on taking my CCNA for a bit, yet I am already just sitting in and contributing to some local buddies doing their studying and talking, and I pick things up. Hang out with baseball fanatics for a while, and you’ll find yourself learning about baseball until, before you know it, you’re considered someone “in the know.” My Ubuntu install and SSH server took all of 15 minutes once the actual OS installer finished. Talk about easy. Next I will be playing with Squid and Snort and setting up more ubiquitous remote access, if I can (from Windows and Linux boxes without using VNC…)

At work, I’ve been busy exercising my scripting muscles by automating our installation process for web applications and servers. I’ve done all of the easy work so far, although the hard stuff I have saved may turn out really easy if I ease up on my own requirements and utilize Windows-native exe apps rather than programmtically build my own (gacutil and regsvcs). Scripting is really exciting and amazingly powerful. With Exchange 2007 on the horizon for many orgs (whose management seems to be fully PowerShell-based), I like this head-start I’m getting. Someday soon I’ll dig a bit more into Perl and/or Python to round out my scripting exposure.