The Time Sink

Well, well, well... We might actually see some rain today. That'll be a switch; I don't recall any measurable rainfall since last May or June. Usually we get something around the start of school or around "fair time" (early October) that put helps put the white hairs on the heads of the raisin and cotton farmers, but not so this year. As a matter of fact, we've been hard pressed to get the temperature below 80F lately. So, we'll see...

...and to let you know how well our off-site anti-spam and anti-virus e-mail filter works (details available if anyone would like a review): as I was weeding through the trash the other day to check for legit things caught in the sieve, I found a piece sent by one of the elders of my church. ...with the "XXX" symbol next to it. WT? I really don't think so... Then I realized it was a notice about an men's Bible study. ...with the title "Authentic Manhood". Yeah, that filter is tweaked just about right!

Hmm... Maybe a geekish week. ...if I can carve any time out of the evenings. I started on Wolfenstein (Wolf's new incarnation) Sunday evening. It turned out only one of the HDDs was dead; the other seems to be okay. I have another night or two of hardware change out before I start play with the OS and such...

...and I may be distracted from that for a time; I downloaded the express version of VMware today. I figure I may as well see how well a 'personal' version works before I go for the full version (Version 3 is due out shortly) on my office machine. Yeah, it looks as though IT is going to allow me to handle my own machine rollover; that's way cool... Erik probably thinks that's one less user to support<g>...

Well, we got our rain. ...and I lost a UPS. Nah, unrelated: I shut everything down Tuesday night in anticipation of power outages in the early morning; but when I brought the lead UPS back on line, it gave me that "I'm not happy" beep and lit the red light. <Sigh...> Off to the parts house for a replacement battery. ...might as well pick up two; that other APC unit dates from the same era.

I stuck my nose into some of IT's business at work last week; that's one reason the posts and the blogging have been so sparse: I ended up with two research projects dumped back in my sandbox. ...only thing: my sandbox is empty and it's been that way since I rolled the non-MIS department over a few years back. So... It's been 'borrow space from the tech chief', and 'a little bit at home', and 'try to fit that additional twenty pounds of potatoes into the existing and very full sack'...

...but I made some progress yesterday on one project, at least enough of a proof-of-concept to pass it back to IT for the next phase. Now to hit the other one...

Vigenettes from Halloween:

The lady shopping at Office Depot... The one I almost complimented on her costume (Western wear). ...until I got to thinking that it may be her regular wear. ...and the more I thought about it, the more I couldn't tell.

Please, costumes for characters such as Snow White should only be made in children's and Disney cast member's sizes. Trust me...

The IT chief and his wife... Who decided they didn't want to give out candy this year. ...and decided to get something from the Oriental Trading catalog. ...and ended up with whistles. I predict someone in his neighborhood will take up a collection and give his son a trumpet for Christmas...

The music minister's wife dressed up like Andy Capp's wife. ...complete with huge curlers, a bathrobe and slippers, and a face pack. All that was missing was the rolling pin... Man, that was scary.

Happy Friday! ...or Saturday:0, if you'll allow me tomorrow as Saturday:1<g>. Yep, I took the day off. More or less a mental health/family/whatever day precipitated by the boys being out of school, Shelley having two parent-teacher conferences, and the logistics engendered by those events... So hey, I'll sleep in; the guys will play quietly; and we'll all go out to breakfast when Shelley gets back from the conferences. Yeah, maybe Plan B...

Hey, it could work. But any way you cut it, I should do okay today. Either geek work (Wolfenstein's hardware went together last night), outside work (I need to replace my X-10 dusk/dawn/motion sensor), catching up on the papers, or just plain hanging out... I should be able to get one of those to happen.

A very full day off yesterday! Man, I'll need the weekend just to relax. ...and two meals away from home; I'll need to skate from here to Sunnyvale to get rid of the weight gain.

Wolfenstein is up, kinda... I'll change the name back to Wolf when I get things integrated; right now, I'm trying several hardware combos just for the fun of it. ...and I have some interesting event going on where NT doesn't like either of the video cards I've tried: it insists that I have a plain VGA card. Ummm, no; a Voodoo 3 and a Riva TNT; yeah, they're old tech, but so is NT...

...and I never made to over to the alternate site yesterday; that's going to be a time sink in its own right: the "Favorites" feature is gone from the Userland servers, so I'm either going to have to evolve a static links page or figure out how to grab the XML feed and parse it. ...or see if one of the gurus over there has something I can dump into my links page (there are one or two candidates).

...and a great time was had by all. Yep, another year bites the dust. ...and another starts.

I don't blade as far as I used to, but I still get out and rack up several miles every other night. ...and the aches come easier and don't go away as quickly. What does go away more quickly is the memory of what I was doing a few moments ago. ...but then again, that could be a lack of caffeine or perhaps a little fuller life than I used to have. Either way, I'm having fun.