This article lists some very good ideas for improving your life. To sum it up, here is the list.

1. Start a business
2. Organize a group
3. Volunteer
4. Take an active role in your children’s’ activities
5. Start a family
6. Write a book
7. Learn an art
8. Run for office
9. Take up a sport
10. Set an outrageous goal — and achieve it!

I have done a few of these… Learn an art, Take up a sport, Start a business, but what I really want to do is write a book and start a family.

First is that the site is back online. About 2 months ago I stopped updating the blog and during that the version of Wordpress I was running had a exploit and the pages (not posts) were deleted and I decided I should just take it down until another major version came out. There are a couple things that are out of place and pages will slowly start coming back after I update the contents of them so they are accurate.

I passed my Offensive Security Certified Professional test, so now I have that certification and in a few weeks I will be preparing for LPIC and Linux+ exams. I would also like to start working towards my CCNA. I know nothing about routing and I need to work on my subnetting so it will be good for me.

I will try to post some pictures of the apartment, my digital camera took a crap so it will have to wait until I get a new one. I recently bought an LG42LB5D 42″ 1080p LCD TV and a Playstation 3… boy does 1080p look good.

I haven’t mentioned this until now, but I have been hired as a contractor for Google. I can’t discuss the stuff I do, but I freaking love the job… even if I could discuss it, I don’t know that I could put it into words. I am looking forward to the possibility of converting to a permanent employee down the road. Really the only differences are that I don’t get all the perks, but the experience is good enough for me.

I just moved to Atlanta, and I have stuff everywhere. This is one of those moves where your parents give you everything of yours that is in their house so it was a beast of a move. I had a couple people able to help me, but I had to load and unload a good bit of the 26′ truck. I also had some trouble with the auto transport so I have to get some money back from Uhaul for being a lame company and giving me crap.

Tommorrow is the 1st of August, which happens to be the month I was born. I don’t share a lot of personal stuff on the blog, but I was wondering if anyone else finds that people really don’t remember birthdays. Maybe it is just me, I don’t really know, because I remember most of my friend’s birthdays. There is one person I would like to hear from, I doubt they read the blog or even remember my birthday, but considering how long we were friends it’d be good to an IM or an email.

I personally don’t care about birthdays much, but the 22nd of the month is always kinda nice. I quit smoking on the 22nd of March, so every year on my birthday I guess I get to celebrate having that extra time not being a smoker. This birthday I will be 25, and 3 years and 5 months away from the last cigarette I smoked. I am considering going for a vacation this birthday, maybe I will head out to Yuma to visit friends or just drive somewhere I havn’t been. I would hit up Vegas, but my savings is going into my car.

Thats right I am finally going to get my car back on the road and after that I move to Lexington and every morning at 6 you will find me working out in the gym. I am redoing the suspension, brakes, wheels are getting refinished, and whatever has to be done to the rear axle after my memorable road trip.

It is a couple days short of 1 year and 2 months since I made that drive and that is 1 year and 2 month too long that I have been in this county (not country). I live in this very back country county, there is no broadband for my city, and the people are still stuck in the 50’s in many ways. If you ran over your dog, the entire county would know before you did, that is how bad the rumor mill is. It is however a beautiful area and great if you are older and do not need a social scene.

Anyway there’s my personal post for the month, next one will probably be after my birthday. haha!

This past 7 days has been very unproductive for me partially because of beCamp going on and the research I did following it. My goals for the next 7 days are not a big deal, but I somehow find a way to keep from doing them.

• Write a Ruby on Rails app that has a purpose.
• Complete the OSC Wordpress template.
• Organize all my papers on my desk and put them in the file cabinet.
• Reinstall everything on my Dev server just for the experience.
• Move things around so I have an area in my room for my bike
• Pray that I get a second and possibly third interview for the San Fran job
• Other small things I am forgetting

On a side note I FINALLY got my damn money from Dell. Now I need to make it into Best Buy to look at their HP 22″.

I have heard of how it can be a hard thing to come up with the name of your soon to be born child and with my desire to be a father I started a little early. I am actually single, so this is more than just planning ahead, but here is a list of names I have noted over the years for both boy and girl. If you can think of a good one, comment, I would love to hear it.

First or Middle

• Virginia
• Elizabeth
• Megan
• Adrianne
• Haily
• Syriana
• Mercedes
• Christian
• James
• Andrew
• Peter
• Jacobs (Middle)
• Christopher
• Eve
• Laurel
• Vivian
• Casey
• Ryan
• Erik

Full Names

• Peter Jacobs Manis, Jr.
• Christian James Manis
• Christopher Jacobs Manis
• Megan Elizabeth Manis
• Virginia Elizabeth Manis
• Ryan Andrew Manis

Today, March 22, 2007 marks 3 years of not smoking. This is a big day for me and it has been very tempting to smoke, but I have made it this far and I am very proud of that.

I have been getting a few google searched coming to my page on why I have a concealed carry permit. I will not go into all of that again, but these recent searches have been in regards to California permits. When I called CA before moving I spoke with someone who deals with permits and what I learned is this. Please note that this was for the San Diego area some areas are not as hard to get a permit from what I understand, but not as easy as other states.

• You must have a valid reason for having the permit
• Background Check
• Personality Interview
• References
• Fingerprinting

Lets start at the beginning. A valid reason? please keeping my ass from getting popped by some wanna be gangster should be reason enough. If you are a business owner and have to carry cash you can get a permit. If you do security work you can get a permit and I believe there are some other reasons that you can get a permit. A background check and fingerprinting are standard in most states. The personality interview, unless it is a polygraph or you are really screwed up that is pretty easy to pass I would think. Even a polygraph an be beat if you know the tricks. “Have you ever thought about killing someone” that is probably one of the questions and how many people can truthfully answer No, that is one type of question they ask on polygraphs, something maybe 0.01% of people can answer No to. I wonder if anyone has every answered, “Well now, that depends on the outcome of this interview”. References, that isn’t bad, and it would help in case you screwed up the interview.

The carrying debate is a difficult one because I see it from both sides. There are A LOT of people I would not like to see carrying a gun, but originally I was not sure how I would conduct myself. I think that having the power in some ways sobers the experience and helps you to control yourself more. The other side of this is that if more people carried guns, I think less people would be likely to act the way they do. There are guys that think they are bad ass and think they would just walk up and punch anyone pointing a gun at them and maybe they really don’t care enough, but the likely hood that guy that beat you up as a kid will is very unlikely. Think about it, some 280 lbs. man walks towards a 120 lbs. geek pointing a gun at him, that kid is going to shit his pants and probably fire the weapon out of fear and that might keep that man from approaching him like that. It is a debate that has valid points on both sides and it will never stop.

I recommend you visit Packing.org to read more information about your state, it is a great resource and it will even tell you what states you can carry in if you have a permit in a certain state.

I am this tired…

Tuesday night I got about 5 hours of sleep and then had to drive 4 hours and come home to do some work.
Wednesday night I got about 8 I think.
Thursday night I got 4 hours and had a meeting 1.25 hours away
Friday night I think I had about 7 hours of sleep
Saturday I worked and got about 6 hours of sleep that night
Sunday I worked from noon to 6am Monday morning, took a nap till 8, took another nap until 10:30.

I have a lot of work to do today once my login issues are fixed. Then I have to learn Joomla faster than a kid learns to pick his nose and then my next post on this topic will be

3/12 - 3/23, 4 hours of sleep total.

I would be tired, but the money could buy me a lot, haha

Recently my dad asked me what I thought about moving to Israel. My dad’s side of the family is Jewish and of Russian/Polish decent. I do not really fit the “image” of what you would think about as a Jewish child. I am a blonde hair, blue-eyed Caucasian so I fear I would stick out much more than my dad would. He has a darker complexion, but even if I was tan I would stand out much more.

That aside, I don’t really want to learn Hebrew, I plan on learning Arabic because I feel it will be a useful language in my future. I have considered seeing if a family friend who has worked in the middle east for 20 years knew of a job I would be qualified for. He is located in Egypt, which would be an awesome place to visit, however I do not know enough about it to know if I would want to live there.