My wife and I have a date scheduled for Friday night. At 10:00 PM we will be at the Fort Worth Science Museum to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in IMAX. Afterward, we will probably go to the bookstore, which should still be open, and pick up our copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We both enjoy the books, and will be going out of town for the following week to Lake Murray for SWUUSI.
In preparation for the movie on Friday, we have been watching the previous movies, one a night. In some ways, I love the anticipation it is building. In other ways, it is just making me want the week to be over so I can "get on with the good stuff".
Update July, 22 2007 12:19 AM: Well, in the last 26 hours, I have seen the movie and read the book. All I can say is Wow, what a way to start my vacation. I'm sure I'll reread the last book in a few months, and undoubtedly read it slower that time, but I really enjoyed it. As to the movie, I can only say that my standard complaint regarding turning books into movies stands. With only 2-3 hours to capture 700 pages of vivid imagination, of course the movie is going to suffer by comparison. I did like it better then the Goblet of Fire.
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?"
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Friday the 13th
Last Friday, the day starts out with the VP walking around asking all of the men on my side of the building if we are the one who is tossing paper towels on the floor.
I get to lunch and pages start immediately coming in to tell me that apps from our parent company are not making it into our system. This turns out to be due to a DNS issue which takes 4 hours to completely get the issue resolved.
When that issue is resolved, the Citrix Environment web server goes down. This prevents access to a key piece of business functionality. A workaround is instituted about an hour afterward.
And this afternoon, I find out that the old building, the one with about 8 more critical servers, has been running on generator since Friday, the 13th, at 9:00 AM. This is because the power company followed the original shutoff date instead of the revised one.
I get to lunch and pages start immediately coming in to tell me that apps from our parent company are not making it into our system. This turns out to be due to a DNS issue which takes 4 hours to completely get the issue resolved.
When that issue is resolved, the Citrix Environment web server goes down. This prevents access to a key piece of business functionality. A workaround is instituted about an hour afterward.
And this afternoon, I find out that the old building, the one with about 8 more critical servers, has been running on generator since Friday, the 13th, at 9:00 AM. This is because the power company followed the original shutoff date instead of the revised one.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Road Not Taken
I recently got an iPod. One of my favorite uses of it is to download podcasts for listening to on the drive to and from work. One of the many subscriptions that I set up is for the 2007 National Poetry Month Selections. For the month of April, one poem was read every day. Today on the way home, I heard Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". It really resonated today, and so I thought I would quote it here.
Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.
1. The Road Not Taken
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
New Cell Phone
My new work cell phone arrived last week. Just in time, too, because my old one wouldn't charge from the USB connection. I had to remove the battery to charge. I could power it via USB, but the battery wouldn't charge.
The new phone is a Blackberry 8830. It does the standard PDA job well enough. I even get notified of email on this before I see it in Outlook. Unfortunately, they took the USB cable because they don't want ne syncing this to my computer directly. I like the over the air sync, but I would still like to use the phone as a modem, which requires the cable. I turned in my old cable with my old phone, and the spare that I had broke, so it will probably be a while before I test it.
Of course, I am already doing something I had not done with the old one, and that is posting to Blogger.
The new phone is a Blackberry 8830. It does the standard PDA job well enough. I even get notified of email on this before I see it in Outlook. Unfortunately, they took the USB cable because they don't want ne syncing this to my computer directly. I like the over the air sync, but I would still like to use the phone as a modem, which requires the cable. I turned in my old cable with my old phone, and the spare that I had broke, so it will probably be a while before I test it.
Of course, I am already doing something I had not done with the old one, and that is posting to Blogger.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
New Flooring
Well, I know that a few of my friends have dome this recently, but I will be getting laminate installed in my daughters bedroom and my study soon. These are the last two rooms upstairs to be done, and this time, we are hiring someone to do the job. The other three rooms and the hallway took six months to get dome. Hopefully paying someone else to do this will make it get done in a more timely manner.
The bad part about paying someone else to do it is that i am going to have to clear the rooms out. My daughter's room won't be so bad. It's currently fairly sparse, so we will move most of the furniture into my wife's study and move the rest into the hall or my son's room. Then, she can sleep in the top bunk of my son's room for a couple of nights. No, the bad room will be my study. I have a rather large desk, which is stacked high with electronics or computer software, a three foot tall refrigerator, two large stuffed bookcases, more computer equipment stuffed under the desk, and a closet so full of computer/power/phone cables and old PC cases, action figures, stored computer software, etc that you can't go in. All of this needs to be moved out. Unfortunately, I don't know if I have time to find new places for these things throughout the house and sort through the rest and actually get rid of it, or if I should just shove it all in the shed/attic/garage and worry about it later.
Anyone know of a 12 step program for packrats?
The bad part about paying someone else to do it is that i am going to have to clear the rooms out. My daughter's room won't be so bad. It's currently fairly sparse, so we will move most of the furniture into my wife's study and move the rest into the hall or my son's room. Then, she can sleep in the top bunk of my son's room for a couple of nights. No, the bad room will be my study. I have a rather large desk, which is stacked high with electronics or computer software, a three foot tall refrigerator, two large stuffed bookcases, more computer equipment stuffed under the desk, and a closet so full of computer/power/phone cables and old PC cases, action figures, stored computer software, etc that you can't go in. All of this needs to be moved out. Unfortunately, I don't know if I have time to find new places for these things throughout the house and sort through the rest and actually get rid of it, or if I should just shove it all in the shed/attic/garage and worry about it later.
Anyone know of a 12 step program for packrats?
I have just logged into my personal email account for the first time in nearly three weeks(1 week of vaction, and two weeks involved in the company move). Since I am between spam filter programs, I had over 1200 emails in my inbox. I estimate that there will be about 50-100 emails worth reading in the lot, but the rest will be just spam. Bleh.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
The Graduation Tour
Just got back in from my nephew's and brother-in-law's graduations. My Nephew's was in Houston, and my brother-in-law's was in Lexington, VA. I don't know that I would exactly call it a vacation. There were a couple days which were fun, but none that were relaxing by any stretch of the imagination.
The worst part, had to be the trip to Dulles on Sunday June 3rd. Our flight From Houston to Dallas was delayed, and our connecting flight from Dallas to Dulles was delayed by over three hours. This is on top of the original 3 hour layover we already had in the schedule. Needless to say the kids were out of it when we arrived, and weren't even awake to walk to baggage claim at 12:15 AM Monday morning.I got to the Dollar car rental building at Dulles at about 12:45. After waiting an hour and 15 minutes in line, they didn't have the car I had reserved, could only rent me a minivan, and that would be an additional charge, and if I wanted my wife to be able to drive, that would be an still another additional $10.00/day(For $10.00/day, I'll do all of the driving. She can sleep in a car, I can't). This was the point in which the girl went in the back, and I heard a manager in the building. He hadn't bothered to come out and help with any customers since I got there. She told me that she was taking ten dollars off that upgrade, so it would be 20 dollars, and pointed to the line on the contract. Needless to say, I am not as young as I used to be, and 2:00 AM I am no always thinking at the top of my game. Additionally, I was mad. What I didn't notice was that this was a $20.00 Upgrade fee, in addition to the fee's I was already paying. After dealing with the national HQ, they said that the only thing I could do was take it back and pay for the day. As I was doing this, the right mirror popped off, at 55 MPH. I didn't hit anything. Nothing hit me, as far as I can tell. It just popped off. Only the glass fell off, and it was tethered to the car by a piece of black string. These weren't the electrical cables top adjust it. Those were still visible behind the mount.
On the plus side, I did get a better deal over at Budget, spouses are free, they offered a free upgrade from SUV to minivan, if I wanted it (I'll pass). The deal was so much better, that I was able to pay an additional $11.00 for a Garmin StreetPilot c550 and still come out better. The StreetPilot was very nice to have since I was driving in areas that I was totally unfamiliar with, and it even had a subscription to traffic alerts to help bypass traffic in Washington DC.
Additional plusses included a day spent at Johnson Space Center/Space Center Houston and a tour along Skyline drive, with a hike down to a nice waterfall in the Blue Ridge mountains. We probably went about a thousand feet down, to get to the bottom of the falls. The bad part was that I had to go back up to get back to the car.
The worst part, had to be the trip to Dulles on Sunday June 3rd. Our flight From Houston to Dallas was delayed, and our connecting flight from Dallas to Dulles was delayed by over three hours. This is on top of the original 3 hour layover we already had in the schedule. Needless to say the kids were out of it when we arrived, and weren't even awake to walk to baggage claim at 12:15 AM Monday morning.I got to the Dollar car rental building at Dulles at about 12:45. After waiting an hour and 15 minutes in line, they didn't have the car I had reserved, could only rent me a minivan, and that would be an additional charge, and if I wanted my wife to be able to drive, that would be an still another additional $10.00/day(For $10.00/day, I'll do all of the driving. She can sleep in a car, I can't). This was the point in which the girl went in the back, and I heard a manager in the building. He hadn't bothered to come out and help with any customers since I got there. She told me that she was taking ten dollars off that upgrade, so it would be 20 dollars, and pointed to the line on the contract. Needless to say, I am not as young as I used to be, and 2:00 AM I am no always thinking at the top of my game. Additionally, I was mad. What I didn't notice was that this was a $20.00 Upgrade fee, in addition to the fee's I was already paying. After dealing with the national HQ, they said that the only thing I could do was take it back and pay for the day. As I was doing this, the right mirror popped off, at 55 MPH. I didn't hit anything. Nothing hit me, as far as I can tell. It just popped off. Only the glass fell off, and it was tethered to the car by a piece of black string. These weren't the electrical cables top adjust it. Those were still visible behind the mount.
On the plus side, I did get a better deal over at Budget, spouses are free, they offered a free upgrade from SUV to minivan, if I wanted it (I'll pass). The deal was so much better, that I was able to pay an additional $11.00 for a Garmin StreetPilot c550 and still come out better. The StreetPilot was very nice to have since I was driving in areas that I was totally unfamiliar with, and it even had a subscription to traffic alerts to help bypass traffic in Washington DC.
Additional plusses included a day spent at Johnson Space Center/Space Center Houston and a tour along Skyline drive, with a hike down to a nice waterfall in the Blue Ridge mountains. We probably went about a thousand feet down, to get to the bottom of the falls. The bad part was that I had to go back up to get back to the car.
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