Traveling Thoughts

After far too much downtime last week, traveling thoughts has moved again. Servers of course, the thoughts are always moving ;)

We’ve moved to the greatest name in web hosting Media Temple with our good buddy Markus.

This time we know that a 100% uptime guarantee means just that, we’ll be up 100% of the time, and if we’re not, we’ve got assurance that someone will be there to help us get our sites back online. It’s there number one reason as to why you should host with them:

We never close. We never leave, and the lights are never off. We are a true 24/7 365 company.>

They didn’t really say that they have 100% uptime, but they made it clear that they do and if they don’t, the problem is being taken care of:

The Grid system is designed for continuous operation 24/7/365. The distributed nature of the Grid server nodes allows this system to be maintained without ever being taken offline. Should a maintenance issue arise that would require a disruption of service all efforts will be made to open a maintenance window during off peak hours and provide all effected customers with ample advanced notice.

With that, and with this post, I’ll be able to blog whenever I want to wherever I want to.  No if’s and’s or but’s.  Thank you Media Temple :)

Well, after waiting all week (since monday because that’s when it was mailed) and eagerly checking the mail each day, I got my video from skydiving.  It’s great stuff.  I can’t show the entire video because there’s people in it from whom I don’t have permission to put them on my website.  And because my videographer did such a good job and there was enough footage to make me a 21 minute vid, I cropped out the plane ride and all the training.  It’s really good stuff, and Matt did a good job of putting it together.  Unfortuately, I can’t show that quality online.  I made the quality low, and the size pathetically small just to get the vid to 20 megs. But it will steam as you watch it because I uploaded it to google video :)

If you ever go skydiving in NM and want a videographer, ask for Matt.  He does an awesome job.  Of both filming and putting the vid together, and he even picked out some good music for me :)

And now, I present you with the video of my first skydive.

I’d never heard of it before, but today in the name of ‘Make a Difference Day’ a group of us from work went out and did manual labor for Habitat for Humanity.

I thought that I was going to get to help build a house, apparently I have a bit to learn about what exactly Habitat for Humanity is.  I didn’t get to help build a house but I did get to help move a garage.

Apparently, a single car garage was built in the wrong place and it needed to be moved something like 10 feet in one direction.  So all the guys got to nail 2×4’s into it so that we could lift it up and carry it to it’s new location and the girls got to go pick up dibris and clean the houses that were put together already.  (Which kindof miffed me, I know how to use a hammer, better than some of those guys at that, hello! you’re supposed to hold it at the end opposite of the head, it’s got more power that way)  I should’ve just picked up a hammer and went to work.

Anyhow, when it was time to move it, I got right in there, next to the board I was going to use to lift the garage, (there was probably 20 of us).  It was off to my left side and I had grabbed it with both hands, which was completely unlike the way the guys had grabbed it, whom all of which had their backs to their board and their hands under it.  It was funny to me when the guy said that they couldn’t carry the garage like that because they’d hurt themselves and needed to do it like ‘Courtney’.  What can I say, I am an unofficial saftey rep at work.  That, and I did pay attention to my dad when I was little, he was always telling us about how to do this and that, properly lifting was one of those things.

So, we all picked up the garage and carried it it’s 10 ft.  That was really cool to be able to do that.  It was by far the highlight of my day.

After we moved the garage we went to a church where we shoveled rock.  (which I’d rather be doing anyday over house keeping, which I would have had to do if I had stayed at the original site)  But I do love to landscape yards, shoveling rock being one of my favorites of that particular activity.

But, like I said, moving the garage was the coolest.

I bought my altimeter last night.  I got the Alti-Track at the recommendation of my Jumpmaster.  The price was a little killer but with all that it has to offer I think that it’ll be well worth it. 

I’m a detailed oriented kind of girl. When my jump was finished, besides me thinking I knew how high we were when we jumped, I needed to know how fast I was going, how long I freefalled, when I opened canopy (because I may not have opened it when I was suppose to open it).  And this altimeter can tell me all that good stuff.

Another plus is that it doesn’t have to strap onto my wrist, it has an ergonomically correct fit that puts it on the top of my hand, which I think is better because I felt that I had to twist my head to far to see the one that was on my wrist.

I just had to have it.  And now I will.  Really, all I’m doing is preparing for my up and coming future in skydiving.  Who can blame me for wanting the proper gear?

It’s like Christmas, but not.  Running to the mailbox everyday, hoping that a package has come, my skydiving footage, my SIM (skydiving information manual), my skydiving logbook and cover, my goggles, my atimeter.  So far, none of it’s come.  It’s depressing.  I run to the mailbox as quick as I can as soon as I get home from school/work knowing that soon a package is going to come.  And then when I get there and there’s nothing exciting in the mailbox, I close it, turn around, hang my head and mope back home, wondering when it will come…

It’s the same things kids do every holdiay and birthday.  And even at the age of 25 it’s still exciting to be expecting something in the mail, and the reaction hasn’t changed…

Not the reaction when it’s not in the mailbox, and I can guarantee not the reaction when it arrive…I think the only different thing is, that I’m guaranteed that by the time I get home from school/work the mailman will have come, where as when I was younger I was usually home before he came and so everyday I’d ask my mom ‘has the mail come yet?’

I’m addicted to writing about my feelings on my website.  I can’t help it.  I was told by the psychiatrist, psychologist, counselor person that keeping our feelings pent up is an unproductive way of dealing with our feelings.  I hated going to that darn counselor, but I did listen a little, that and anyone will tell you that it’s not healthy to keep our feelings pent up.

So, yesterday, I was all excited to write about my purchase of my altimeter, and I couldn’t because my site was down, mine, Mark’s, Raelene’s, we’re all on the same server, stupid RackFirm, they were down too.  I really hate hosting companies that boast about their 100% uptime but then my site is down for 15 or so hours. 

Not a happy camper, so, what did I loose during these 15 hours, several opportunities to write about my feelings (and I was feeling a lot yesterday), at least 10 hits to my site (don’t laugh, that’s big for me right now, one day I did have 40 visitors though), oh, and the opportunity to name a new category, I had the perfect idea for my thoughts on rants category (it had a smooth sound to it), but now it’s lost, because I didn’t get an opportunity to get into my admin panel and write it down.

I’m ok now though, I can write about my feelings.

There’s never really an answer to the ‘why’ question in life.  The majority of the time we don’t know why something happened.  We can throw theories around but only the maker truely knows why, and the chances of us ever finding out are slim to none in my opinion.  I’m of the frame of mind that we’re not going to remember all the questions we wanted to ask when we meet the maker.

If you ask my mom why I got diabetes she’ll say something along the lines of “because she would have done something that would have killed her if she didn’t have this disease.”  Not that there’s not just as many things that I can do to kill myself with the disease.  The point she tries to make is that I was constantly living too close to the edge.  If it was dangerous, I wanted to do it.  There were no limits for me when I didn’t have diabetes.  Other than those placed on me by my parents of course, but I was a rebel, I didn’t much listen to them too often.  I usually got into trouble for that too.

When I was little I wanted to be in the Air Force.  I still hate the Air Force for not letting me.  Just because they deem me as not physically able doesn’t mean that I’m not mentally able.  But I wanted to be a pilot.  I thought it would be so cool.  But then I got diabetes and my dreams of piloting and being in the Air Force got thrown to the wayside.  What really pisses me off is that they continue to call.  It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them that I have diabetes and that it’s their own damn fault that I’m not in the armed forces, they continue to call.

Despite diabetes, I still continued to live on the edge of life, after all, if you’re not living on the edge you’re consuming too much space.  I just went to a different edge.  I didn’t ever take care of my diabetes in the manner that I needed to.  Not then (14 years ago) and barely now.  On several occassions there were trips to the doctors and the ER and my parents being told that they (the doctors) weren’t sure if I was going to make it.  I chose the route of ‘if i ignore it, it will go away’.  It hasn’t.  And up until now, I’ve let it control me.  But not anymore.

On my way to the dropzone on Saturday, my biggest fear was that they wouldn’t let me jump because of my diabetes.  I was even more concerned when the form listed all kinds of [health] problems that were problems for skydiving.  I asked if it was going to be a problem and Dave asked me to tell him if it was a problem.  Anyone that knows me should know that besides me thinking diabetes is a huge problem in my life, it’s not going to hinder me from doing what I want to do (whether I should be doing it or not).  I was honest though, I laid it out for him and told him I just needed to monitor my blood sugars closely and be on target before we jumped.  With that he said ‘okay’ and I got to jump.

Thanks to Dave letting me make the choice, I can now live on a different edge of life (probably the same one this disease was supposed to keep me away from).  Being able to skydive has inspired me to take Immaculate care of my diabetes so that I don’t ever jeopordize my opportunity to jump.  I for the first time in my life am in control of this damn disease.  I can go and do the things I want to do, and it’s not a problem if I do what I need to do to keep my blood sugars stable.  Which, as it turns out, is very simple if you just do what you’re told.  Check your blood 8-10 times a day.  (I hate checking it 4)  The more you check the closer control of your numbers you have.  I’m doing that now.  My averages are awesome.  And for as long as I can do the things in life that I want to do (right now, get my certification to jump on my own) I’ll take care of it.  But if it ever hinders me again, I’ll probably cope an attitude and tell it to go to hell and stop taking care of it.  I’m gonna hope that it never gets to that point again.

I’m gonna live on the edge of life, because I don’t want to be one of those people that gets pushed over because they were taking up too much room ;)