I finished paramedic school several weeks back and have been enjoying the relative calm afforded by no longer going to classes / clinicals / ride times 7 days a week.

I’ve almost finished filling out the 700 page 18 pound packet that the EMS authority of California has decided that is vitally important for every paramedic of the state to know how to fill out.

Gwyn is very pregnant and ready to pop. Any second now… wait… now! Seriously, I believe this is week 39. There is just not that much room left in there.

I also haven’t been updating a lot, because I’ve been catching up on other computer stuff that I’ve had to put off for the last few years because of school.

For one, this site design is worn. So it’s up for an overhaul, but I’m moving to ASP.NET with SQL Server 2005 as the back end.

One thing I’ve learned is that my first impression of the new Visual Studio 2005 is relatively positive. It’s overall IDE integration with remote SQL and IIS servers is snappy and it’s got some great built-in coding tools to make development easier.

One big con is that VS2k5 automatically installs a local copy of SQL 2005 Express Edition and VS is setup by default to use it. Which is great for new developers wanting to quickly develop database applications, but getting it to run off of a remote SQL server is like extracting a blood clot from the left anterior descending coronary artery with a wire from the femoral artery…

Well, bad analogy, it’s just a pain in the arse.

But it’s up and running now and I’m converting all of my ASP functions over to ASP.NET functions.

There is a lot of stuff that is broken on the current site too. Like the super duper file indexer that I use for photos, music and files. It’s mainly how I’ve had to reorganize my directory structure and it breaks the indexer. I think for the new site I’ll revisit how this is handled but for now, it’s mostly broken and outdated data.

I’ve also registered a web site for our soon to be child and I’ll try to have something up soon with all sorts of cute and cuddly and snugable pictures. I may throw in some charts and graphs and polynomial equations as well, just for the fun of it.

So while I’ve been filling out paperwork on my days off, I’ve also been building a new wooden fireplace mantle for my grandmother. Turns out her old one had been eaten hollow by termites awhile back. So she gets the termites terminated. One thing I’ve come to realize is that these “small” home projects never stay small.

When I pulled down the mantle (which was mostly hollowed out) the sheet rock behind it was damaged as well (probably due to earlier water damage as well as termites). The sheet rock was damaged almost up to the ceiling. Of course when you remove the sheet rock you see the damaged support studs behind it.

So after gutting out a roughly 8 foot by 4 foot section of wall, we replaced the 2×4 studs and re-drywalled and re-mudded. Yesterday I finally got started on the mantle and got the base of it done. Hopefully tomorrow I can do the cap and crown molding for it and stain the whole thing. I’ve never done this before so I’m pretty much making it up as I go along.