It is currently 7:25AM. At 11:00AM, I will be standing at the altar, watching my beautiful bride approach. By 12:00PM I will be married to the most beautiful and wonderful woman whom God has provisioned for me.

I will be out of reach from the point I click the "Submit" button to post this entry until sometime after July 19th. I will do my best to post some sort of update after that (if not sneaking it in sometime before) and share with you the joy of my new married life.

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Mr. Mosquito,

I would like to thank you for finding refuge in my eye socket. I know that the world can be a harsh place, and it gives me a sense of self-worth to know that my eye can be a secure location for you. I hope you enjoyed your stay. Come back any time.

-Me

That's right, engaged.

Emily and I have been dating since June 4, 2009, and with each day that goes by I know with greater clarity that we were meant for each other.

Sometime a couple of months ago, we got to talking about wedding stuff, and she asked me if she and her mom could start planning for a wedding. Even thought I hadn't yet bought a ring and there wasn't an official announcement, I told her they could. I did this knowing that I would soon make it official and ask her to marry me.

Even before that, I began shopping around for rings. She didn't know it, but I was using my limited free time to get around to various shops and inquire about rings, educating myself of the different cuts and grades of diamonds, and finding that one ring that was just right. She had given me some direction before, pointing out ring styles she liked, and I took these into consideration.

Finally, I was able to find the ring that I wanted for her. It wasn't extravagant by any means, but it was definitely something I knew she'd like. This just happened to transpire just before her birthday, so I used the opportunity to make it a very special birthday that she will (hopefully) never forget.

I organized a birthday party for her last night with a group of people from the church. Before we went to dinner though, I had to find a parking space. We got to one space, but I wasn't sure about the cost, so Emily jumped out to check the meter for me. While she did that, I pulled out this little box wrapped in silver paper with a large bow on it, and I gave it to her when she came back to the car.

I wanted her to open it and I would have said a few words then asked her to marry me. But with the frustration of trying to unwrap the box, I lost track of what I was going to say. So when she opened it up and marveled at it, I just asked her a question consisting of the 5 most important words of what I was going to say, "Emily, will you marry me?" Her response was confident; "Of course," she said. This set the mood for the evening and the rest of the weekend though, and she has been on cloud nine ever since.

Thus, I am proud to announce that I will be marrying my lovely girlfriend fiancée, Emily, this summer.

Well, I had the CT scan yesterday and got the call about the results today. Apparently everything is normal and looking good, so I'm supposed to take "NuLev" as I feel the "attacks" coming on.

Can anyone say "blargh"?

I have just returned from seeing a gastroenterologist for my stomach issues I've mentioned repeatedly before.

After explaining the happenings of the last 10 years to her, along with all the symptoms, she was able to get an idea of where to start looking. She said that if I didn't have the back pain that usually accompanies the mass exodus, it would probably just be IBS. But since there's more than just IBS-like symptoms, and because of where the back pain is, she's thinking it's something to do with the pancreas.

Thus, I am being scheduled for another CT scan next week, this time of my abdominal area. She said that it would involve being injected with and drinking some dye, the latter of which I'm not exactly looking forward to. However, after talking with her, I am feeling pretty good about finding a solution.

It's been 24 days since I posted anything, so here's a quick entry.

Things have been pretty crazy lately, what with trying to finish projects at the office, getting Emily hooked up with a new car, and trying to keep health on the up-and-up.

I took a day off last week to get my teeth cleaned and see about getting some treatment started. As I expected, the dentist ordered a root canal for one of the teeth that was in pretty bad shape.

I went in yesterday morning at 10:00AM for the procedure, which went pretty well. There was one point when the dentist hit a spot with the drill that wasn't entirely numb yet, so he stopped and gave me another shot, waited, then continued his work.

After sitting there with my mouth wide open for an hour, my neck and jaw started hurting pretty bad. Luckily he was done though, so I was able to leave, get some lunch and my medication, then come home and recover.

I was able to get some work done while I was still numb, but as that wore off I started feeling the ache of the work that was done in my tooth, so I decided to sleep it off.

A couple of hours later, I headed off to Chili night at the church, followed by bible study. By the time that was all over with, I was ready to hit the Vicodin that the dentist prescribed. After I took that, I was in bed at 9:30 and out like a light. I woke up a couple of times in the night, but slept fairly well otherwise.

When I woke up this morning, I was feeling feverish and nauseous, which seemed to go away for a few hours during the day. After lunch though, it came back so I ducked out of the office a little early.

So that brings me here where I sit. I need to take my next dose of the antibiotic, but the instructions say to not lay down for an hour after taking it. If I take it, I want to just take a nap until Emily gets here at about 6:00 so we can go get dinner. I don't know how much I'll be able to stomach tonight, or how much my mouth can tolerate, but I know I need to get something in me.

For the last 2 or 3 weeks I have noticed a massive rash of stupidity in the environments in which I have immersed myself. The biggest factor to this stupidity is the inability of others to use common sense and logic, but there are other issues such as selfishness that come into play.

When you're doing anything, use your brain and think. Make sure that the decisions you're making actually make sense in the realm of reality, and that they help more people than just yourself. In fact, if option A helps more people than option B, option A is clearly the better candidate.

Now, that having been said, STOP BEING STUPID!

This concludes this episode of Quick Rant(tm).

It's been a long while since I've posted any new content, and that's because I've been incredibly busy with work, church, and a wonderful girlfriend. I really wish I could take the time to post more about those, but I just wanted to take a quick moment to let everyone know that I'm finally going to see a doctor about this stomach stuff.

Last August, my doctor gave me a referral to a gastroenterologist, but I had been in a bit of a roller coaster situation with it: When it was bad, I would think "I need to call that doctor." But when it was good, I didn't even consider it.

Well, last night when I was leaving the office, I barely made it to my car before one of the "attacks" hit, and I had to make a mad dash back to the office. I was able to make it home before the next wave of it hit, but just barely.

After I had exhausted myself (in a couple different senses of the word), I found the referral that my doctor had given me and finally scheduled an appointment with the GI doctor.

I have a full blood panel coming up in a couple of weeks, which is just to mainly check on my cholesterol and such, but I opted for the full panel because I want to be able to rule out any other issues.

Beyond that, I have an appointment with the GI doctor on April 1st, at which point I hope to get a lot more answers than what I currently have, and get on the road to treatment.

If I get some time over the next few weeks, I'll post some more updates about the rest of what's going on in life. Until then, this is what you get. :P

Sometime earlier today I was alerted by a colleague that one of the servers I'm responsible for began sending a large amount of e-mails.

I logged into the server to find that the load had risen to a rather unacceptable level, so I looked to see what the source of it was. It turns out that the exim mail queue was quickly growing, and that exim was attempting to deliver all those messages at once. The number of messages in the queue when I logged in was somewhere around 60,000, but by the time I realized what was really happening and stopped all the mail services, the queue grew to 144,000 messages in size.

So off to the exim logs I went, and I found out exactly which account on the server was responsible for the resource abuse. Further investigation showed that they were sending out phishing messages though.

After I made my way to the user's now-disabled account, I found that they were using a version of Joomla dated 2006-12-18.

While I was at it, I decided to see how many of the primary accounts on the server were running old, outdated versions of Joomla or Mambo. Turns out, it was a large enough number that I am now in the process of building reports and notification systems to make sure the account holders keep their applications updated.

So why am I going to all this work just for "some stupid Joomla sites", you wonder. Joomla is actually pretty popular, and this blog entry alone will probably increase my Google page rank for searches involving the name of the product, just for the few times I've used it in this entry.

But now that I have the attention of anyone who would care, I want to make sure that each and every one knows that these old versions of Joomla and Mambo (especially Mambo) are very insecure.

The vendors update their applications for reasons greater than just adding new features. They fix holes in the code that allow a malicious user to tarnish the reputation of a server, such as what I am still cleaning up.

Do the world a favor and update your applications. I'm tired of cleaning up after you.

As I previously mentioned, here is a video of my popping foot:



I got a call from the doctor's office today, and they said that I would have to pay $312 for the foot surgery, plus 20% of the anesthesia and facility costs issued by the hospital. This means I'm probably looking at about $600-$800 for the surgery, if not more.

I don't know what's more painful, the foot, or the violent ripping of money from my wallet.