The Time Sink

First time in a while that I didn't flip the page on Sunday evening... Yeah, well.

...and I don't really know how I'll be able to do at work, but I'm giving it a try in the morning. Shelley is subbing, so I'll have the late morning routine; that should help get me breathing again. Today went okay, but I spent most of it just reading between bouts of coughing stuff up. Yeah, it was yucky from here also...

Well, I made it through the day, although the coughing sapped most of my energy. ...and this evening, things seem to be a little bit better, likely because I changed my pharmacology.

Gotta' slam a quick post in early tonight; there are Things To Be Done! Yeah, a little better; I'm actually making it tens of minutes without coughing by lungs up bit by bit. That's extremely good news since I'm physically and mentally tired of it all.

...and I made it through the work day. My boss was betting I wouldn't; but things kept happening and I was able to keep going, so we'll call that good. ...and I had a link or two to pass along, but evidently I didn't mail them home, so that'll have to hold until tomorrow also.

"Good thing I have this cold! ...otherwise, my allergies would be killing me <g>!" That's the greeting I gave one of my co-workers when I got to the office this morning. Yeah, we've had 20-25 mph winds for several days now with no relief in sight. Someone downwind of the Golden State is getting pounded...

...and things improved today. I'm really hoping to be feeling much better by the weekend; I have sooo many things I need my brain for. ...and while it's coming back online, there are still critical thinking centers that aren't there yet. It's kind of like watching a boot process at the hardware level: I really need to see all those flags set. ...and there are some that are slower than others!

...and why am not getting any rest, even when I try to sleep? Well, the couch is so comfortable, I don't even fold it out to the bed; I just throw a blanket over myself and hope the coughing will stop for an hour or so. Cool. ...but Thursday morning, after I finally had things under control, I managed to drift off to sleep sometime after midnight. The next thing I knew, there was a light on, a kid in a blanket in the chair and the TV was powering up. WT??? I took a quick look at the clock and it said 7:36. ...only, shouldn't it be light out if it's after seven??? (See, I told you my brain was coming back on line!). So I squinted at the clock and realized it said 1:36!!!

Excuse me, Mr. Sleepwalking Bradster; but it's the middle of the night and you need to redirect yourself to your bed. Yeah, I got up and checked on him to make sure he didn't bed down in the bathtub or something; but things like that are not allowing me to get the rest I need. I told Shelley that I plan to get up from the couch Saturday morning and hit the bed. ...and not get up until sometime Sunday evening.

Once a geek... Yeah, I know better; but heck, when IT said they were swinging all the servers at 1500 and there didn't seem to be any point for people to stay, that just whetted my appetite <g>! Well, that, and the little Drop Dead, Time Critical project HR dropped in my lap about 1452...

So, I made the calls on the project to get the pricing going and hung around to see how things would go. ...and I more or less wanted to handle the changeover on my machine myself; after all, we're talking a Win95b box I built in '97 <g>. So they swung things and I made my changes and they rebooted and I rebooted and they made another change and I made mine and they rebooted and I rebooted... Hey, things worked! Way cool! That was probably one of the slickest swings I've ever been around. Only one server reconfig and things were cool for my box and the Win98 users. ...and this is after moving to a firewall appliance and reconfiguring both the Exchange and Net servers. ...and adding in DHCP, killing the proxy client, adding WINS, and feeding the partridge.

...so it seems more or less anti-climactic to say that when I left there still wasn't a single XP-Pro box that would connect to the network. Yeah... All the "older" stuff hooked up (with the twiddly bits adjusted) to the new server and the new net connection. ...and XP was bogged to the point of no logins. I'd have loved to help on that part, but what I really wanted to do was bring ol' Tux down and see if he could log into Exchange through Evolution.

Well, sometimes you just have to take a break. ...and yesterday was one of those days. I hadn't slept well Friday night, so I got a late start on the day after sleeping in as best I could. A very late breakfast timed out perfectly with the arrival of Shelley's father and "Grandma Jean" as they dropped by to check out the new layouts for the boys' rooms.

...but that turned out to be how I relaxed instead of trying to get things done around the house: while Shelley and her dad chatted about things, Brad showed Jean his "Walk" series. That was very well received, well enough that Jean and I spent the next hour or so on the computer <g>. ...which is why I needed to go out later and take a picture of a tulip; Shelley and the gang took a walk while we were busy looking at pictures and came back trying to explain this one particular tulip to us...

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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