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November 2002
Sleeping in is a good thing. When we did finally get up, we went to the Cafe so Russ could get his morning espresso and then caught a trolley to the Garden District so that Ginny could get the latest Anne Rice book (preferably a signed copy) and so we could have a quick wander around Lafeyette cemetary. I had a snack at the coffee shop and then we all headed back to the quarter.
I was in the mood for a rest, so I headed back to the B&B while the others went to do some more shopping.
Elizabeth from Chicago gave me a call and Amy and I met her and her boyfriend for dinner at Coop's Place. I always like to stop in there and get the rabbit and sausage jamabalaya. From there we wandered back the cafe. Elizabth's boyfriend wasn't feeling too well, so they went back to their hotel.
I was having sneezing and runny nose plroblems, so I also went back to the B&B, took some drugs, and promptly passed out.
More sleeping. Russ, Amy and I went to the Clover Grill for breakfast and then wandered over to Jackson Square to check out the Louisiana Museum. As we wandered down xxxx St, we noted that the street had been nbloacked off and soon found out why: Ferraris. Lots of them. 342s, 348s, Testarossa's, old racing Ferraris. It was heaven. There were also a couple of Maserratis, too. I took several photographs.
The museum had an exhibition all about Mardi Gras. This was very fascinating, and I learned an awful lot. I like learning things. I also took several photos. I like taking photos, too.
After the museum we stopped in at the Cafe, where Ginny later joined us.
We had dinner at a place recommended to Russ by Blu. The quantity of food was great, the quality less so. The sight of a mouse running around may have turned Amy's stomach a little.
Other entertainment of the evening - watching crap TV, going to TBFKACrystal.
We got up and were in the car before midday, on the long road back to Atlanta.
Yucky back to work.
After work I came home and continued to work on Samba, but without much luck. I also ran out of paper while printing off documentation. Ho hum. I went over to Amy's for food and Scrabble (I won, but was cruelly unable to use up all of my letters spelling SQUATTED on a double word score because Amy got to the existing T before I could) and also watched a recent remake of Carrie. Then I came home for The Daily Show and bed.
In other exciting news of the day, I received an email from my aunt, who is working in Antarctica. It sounds like a pretty amazing existence down there - and the sun now won't set until sometime next year. Very cool.
This morning I had a meeting at Deloitte Consulting which went very well. I can see some possibilities here. Afterwards, Brad and I met up with Don at OK Cafe for lunch and a debrief. Brad dropped me home after that and then went off to vote (today is mid-term election day in the US). I decided that since all had on my to do list for the day was conference calls, I could do them from home. Especially since it is absolutely miserable outside. I do need to go out at some point and buy a few things, though (eyeball juice, paper, coaxial cable so I can move the TV).
I bought the aforementioned things and did some organisation type business in the computer room. In the living room, John gave me some assistance in lifting the TV and so forth, and now we have a well-placed TV. I like the way things are falling into place.
Today was also election day in the US. Here in the US, the first Tuesday of November is election day. This year, the elections were for congress (two year terms), 34 senate seats (six year terms), and various state offices (such as governer). Voter turn-out in these elections is incredibly low. It's unbelievable how few Americans participate in their own democratic processes.
Work = apathy.
Home early and moved my CD shelves to the other side of the newly positioned TV. Now I just need to get a set of shelves for the DVDs and everything will be nice and tidy.
Went to trivia and, by crikey, we won. Unbelievable. A nice little change.
Tonight was also the Sigur Rós show. I received an email from Brent (one of my readers) on Monday to say that tickets were available again for this show, but I didn't get round to getting any and I had forgotten that the show was tonight. Yes, I am somewhat bummed at missing them.
Work = blah.
I left work at 12:20 to meet Lauren for lunch and then to go have my pupils dilated. Lunch was Mexican. It was tasty, but I made a big mess all over myself with chips and salsa
Happy birthday dad.
I worked from home today. This also meant I could get a bunch of chores done. The place looks pretty tidy now (although I still need to get a new set of shelves for my DVDs.
For dinner I pan-fried salmon filets in olive oil and lemon juice, and served this with rice pilaf and asparagus, also pan fried, in butter and lemon juice it was very yummy.
During dinner, Amy and I watched Killing Zoe, which I had never seen before. I missed the start as I was cooking at the time, but the rest of the movie was great. I wouldn't mind seeing the whole thing some time. After dinner, we watched Jean Cocteau's pre-surrealism surreal picture, The Blood of the Poet. This was amazing. And some very interesting shots for the 1930's.
John had a date tonight, with Holly from the courthouse. I met her at the Decatur Beer festival. They went out for dinner and then came home for a bit before heading over to Dad's Garage.
This morning there is a big rugby international - New Zealand against England at Twickenham. It is not being shown on TV (not even Fox Sports Net). I called the Brewhouse, and they aren't showing it. I called Fado, and they aren't showing it. It is being shown at the Rose and Crown, but by the time I shower and get up there (it's currently half time), it'll be practically over. Damn damn damn. There is no internet broadcast that I can find, so I have to settle for reading play by play commentary. This sucks.
And NZ lose. By 31-28. From the play by play commentary this would have been an awesome game to watch. I am really bummed.
Today I will be going out to Target to buy shelves for my DVDs.
Yep, so we went out and I bought the shelves, amongst other things. We came home and watched Iowa destroy Northwestern, 62 to 10. Then we played Scrabble and I won. Rock. Then John went to the Prince of Wales with Sarah and Alice while Amy and I, uh, watched TV. Afterwards, we all went to the movies. Sarah, Alice and Amy saw Freda amd John and I saw . Very thought provoking.
After the movie we came on home and watched a little bit of Shrek. Then Sarah and Alice went home, John went to the Local, and Amy and I watched some TV, including The Man Show and Airplane!. Amy went to bed during the movie but I stayed up, as I was still ripping CDs and also talking to Brad on IM. Hi Brad.
Bought some wood screws from Home Dept and then mounted my rear speakers. The sub woofer is not making any noise. I shall have to check the connections.
Came home. No food in the house so John and I went to the Local for dinner. We came home afterwards - it was still only 8:00pm. So we stopped by the grovery store to pick up some supplies.
Work blah.
Went to the Local. Didn't place in trivia. Amy took my car home. I played darts - did double bulls twice in one set of throws. Rock. Matt and I went to MJQ. Got really drunk. Don't know how I got home, but I think Mary gave me a lift. John had a date and didn't make it to the Local.
Worked from home.
Watched Donnie Darko. Interesting film, highly entertaining.
Work blah. The people in charge of the transaction are destroying everything I've worked for. It's definitely time to move on to other things.
Picked up dinner from Market One.
Holly came over and we all watched Dogma.
I spent much of the day playing Civ. While doing that I also was able to do other things such as doing laundry, recording CDs, and buring mix CDs. Productive work, honestly. In the late afternoon, John and I picked up Lauren and then we headed up to Scott's lakehouse for an evening of fun and games away from big city. Much needed fun and exuberance. And the steam bath was pretty damn good too. Fun was had by all present - Scott, Phaedra, Brad, and Jen, in addition to the previously mentioned three.
As expected, I was the first awake, so I read my Economist magazine while waiting for the others to arise. Eventually everyone was up and we had food and then made the trip back to Atlanta.
Once home, the rest of the evening was spent pretty much on couch, watching the TV.
Going back to work after such a fun weekend, especially considering the state of "work" is never really much fun. I think I want to go back to bed.
I took Amy to dinner at Doc Chey's House of Noodles. We went out because John was making dinner for Holly. How sweet is that ;-) I had Pad Thai, which was very tasty. While there, we encountered Clair and Jen. Yay for Clair being back from Fort Lauderdale!
After dinner we went back to Amy's and played some Scrabble. Then we went back to my place and I played some Scrabble with John and Holly (I won - woohoo).
Work was sort of busy today. I had planned on working from home but had to go in to deal with some transition issues. My predictions of yesterday may be a little excessive in their negative looking. But I would still have to say that one should be prepared for all outcomes until such time as some sort of future is suggested.
I had a desire for BBQ at lunchtime today, but I don't know of anywhere near work that has good BBQ. Sonny's does not. JR's is adequate, but overpriced. So I'm off to the Local for dinner tonight, for BBQ, beer and darts. Who could ask for more.
Went to work for a couple of hours. Did some stuff. Then went to lunch with Brad and the boys from Coke. SInce lunch was closer to my place than to work (by about 18 miles), I decided to work the afternoon from home. Writing documentation is fun.
13:47 ET - BWAS-Cam is running...
16:40 ET - BWAS-Cam is not running...
Tonight is trivia night. I wonder how we will do.
The answer is: the usual crap. We did pay with our trivia winnings from a couple of weeks ago, so the overall cost for the night was low. Yay. There were work issues, as well. Tim called. I was up until midnight dealing with that. And it turned out to be the customer being less than friendly. Bastiges.
Link of the day PublicAddress.net.
After work I went to the bank to find out how much money they would loan me to buy a house. What a load of crock that was. The person who I spoke to was totally reliant on the web site and couldn't really answer my questions. Where are the people who known and understand mortgage borrowing? The people who can sit down with you at a desk with a pen and pad and talk options and alternatives and give real information rather than be reliant on a publicly accessible web site. Ridiculous.
I did some more work on my network at home, in particular trying to get my FreeBSD box running as my PDC. I'm almost there. But I'm having problems adding my Windows machines to the domain. I think I've resolved all of the password and account issues, but I'm getting remote procedure call problems when attempting to add the machine to the domain. I couldn't find anybody reporting similar problems on the BSD or Samba newsgroups, but I'll get this sorted sooner or later.
It was very cold when I woke up this morning, but the need to urinate finally forced me from my bed. Then it was off to Norcross for another exciting day of work. The highlight was the trip to the Olde Peculiar for a beer and a burger at lunch time. Fired off some emails, captured some images for documentation, checked the career websites, and then it was time to go home.
Last Saturday, NZ played France to a 20-20 draw (international rugby). Tomorrow, NZ play Wales. Once again, I don't think there is a live telecast. Fuckers. I think the England vs South Africa and Ireland vs Argentina are being played at one of the pubs.
My BSD box is now serving my web site on my local network, and I can ftp changes easily now that I have added a symbolic link from my primary user's FTP account to the web serving directory. My next steps are to add PHP and mySQL. I still haven't got the PDC issues resolved yet. I need to talk to someone who knows this a little better than I.
Amy and I went to the latest Bond flick, Die Another Day with Pete and Cindy. The movie was good Bond fun.
Links of the day: Loan assistance, SinFest.
NZ beat Wales 43-17 in this morning's rugby international. Coudn't see it anywhere, unfortunately. Oh well. Details at RugbyRugby.com.
I got up and did more work on getting PHP operative on my website. I do now have it working, with a couple of minor caveats - I have to edit a line out of each PHP file before I transfer it over to my "live" website on American Hosting. I'm sure I can live with that for now.
Amy called me from work to ask me to drive by a yard sale up the road and pick up a chair for her, but when I got there the chair was gone. Oh well. I'd quite like to do some yard sale shopping, but I really can't afford it just a the moment. So it goes.
Ugh. FTPing to my local server still needs some work. Permissions!
Happy news: my head has been shaved. It feels rather pleasant to the touch. I have a few psoriasis blotches which look kinda feh, but I guess if I wear a hat (practically a necessity on this 50F (10C) but feels like 46F (7.8C) fall (autumn) day. It is a beautiful, clear, day outside. Just a bit nipply.
I went off to Green's to pick up some whisky for tomorrow and on my way home I stopped in at the Glen Iris Lofts (aka the Chocolate City) to see what lofts they still had available and for how much. I think that they are a little overpriced (well, some more than others) - $250,000 for a one bedroom loft, up to $499,000 for a two bedroom.
The evening's activities were Christian's 30th birthday surprise party and a party at Manny's. This might have been a long night, except for Jeff's bartending prowess; or should I say ludicrously strong drinks. He managed to take down both Lauren and me. Craziness. But Christian's party was fun. I had some good conversations, including one with Lea's boyfriend, Greg, who happens to be from South Africa.
I don't really recall much from Manny's party. I do remember being in the bathroom at some point. Lauren managed to injure herself and Matt on the way back to the car. Apparently I decided that I needed to sleep on the sidewalk on the way to the car. Craziness.
Definitely feeling rough today. But this is not allowed to last, as this afternoon is a whisky tasting afternoon. Breakfast was pizza - John got a big one when he went to pick up Earl. I spent the early part of my day on the couch watching football. The Falcons absolutely slaughtered Carolina (41-0).
Tim was the first to arrive. He brought a Blackadder bottling of 10 year old Aberlour, with no chill filtration. I supplied a 14 year old Glen Scotia; John's offering was Glenkinchie 10 year old. The fourth bottle was supplied by Hans from Coke. This was his first time at one of our tastings, and I feel pretty confident that he enjoyed it. His girlfriend, Ginger, and another friend, Meredith, arrived a little later on. Steve turned up at some late point also. The whiskies were all good, if mild. The Glen Scotia had the most distinctive flavouring, but all were good. After we had completed the tasting round, I brought my favourites - Lagavulin 16 year, cask-strength Laphroaig 10 year, Talisker 10 year, Glen Livet 12 year. A tasty afternoon, rounded out with tasy pizza, and a hilarious night of Sunday Night TV. John and I ended staying up until 1:30am. Crazy.
The alarm went off and then I switched it off after the second snooze expired. I needed more rest. Much more. But I did get to work in time for the Monday burrito at Willy's. Yay for "cheese-and-salsa!"
After lunch was slow and not particularly productive. The highlight being conference calls to NZ and to Louisville. Joy. I think I'll be working from home the rest of the week. Of course, Thursday and Friday are holidays, so a restful week is on the cards. I still have stuff to do, but I can do documentation from the comfort of my home.
The evening was essentially a quiet one. Amy had brought home some food from her restaurant gig, which meant we didn't have to go out for dinner. There was plenty of TV watching and I finished ripping CDs for up to the letter L, and started on letter M.
I woke up a couple of times during the night, but seemed to sleep pretty heavily when I did sleep. I had several dreams around the periods of wakefulness, some of them quite bizarre.
I dragged myself out of bed at 9am, still feeling somewhat tired, and threw myself at the computer room, checking my work email and getting stuck into my documentation projects. I called George to discuss a conversation I had last night with Carl, very relevant for one of our customers who probably won't be one for much longer. George will be talking with Ken about the situation later this morning.
Amy and I went to the Fernbank museum of natural history. I had been there before only to see an IMAX film (with Jenny, three years ago), and I had always meant to go back and check out the actual museum.