October 2002

1 October

2 October

Awoke tired and grumpy due to being tired. Tried to sleep more but failed. Went to work.

Spent the day debugging other people's SQL and VBScript (ASP) code. Icky icky icky. The only possible plus is that I've learned a fair bit in the last few days about how Microsoft SQL Server 2000 works. I guess the other positive thing is that the system now appears to be working correctly.

Tonight was trivia night, and, for the first time in too long, Power Puff Drunks were in the money: a a solid third place. We were very pleased with ourselves (consisting of me, Amy, John, Jenny and George). At trivia I decided that I would go to Louisville with John on Sunday. Since I was originally going to be taking Friday off for my (postponed) trip to the UK, I'll instead take Monday off and travel to Kentucky. Not quite the same, but you takes what you can gets.

After trivia, John, Amy and I went up to the Armory to check out the new goth night there. I like the Armory - it's four blocks from my home. And it was nice inside. And the music was rather good, including genres other than goth and industrial, like Britpop. Woohoo. I always like to be greeted by a Pulp song as I enter a club.

Link of the day: International Criminal Court.

3 October

John failed to get up and go to the gym this morning. I wasn't at all surprised. Maybe if I had put money on it he would have made it. Oh well. I'm meeting Coke friends for lunch, so I'm working from home this morning. It's a little difficult without my laptop, but I can manage.

Picked up Brad and Steve (from Coke) and had lunch at a taco/burrito/quesadilla place on 12th St. We were planning on going to Vickery's, but this place was right next to where I got to park, so we tried that instead. It had a nice little gimmick: all of the menu items were named after western films. Very cool. And the food was very tasty. Definitely worth checking out again, even though I can't remember the name.

After lunch I went into work and finished up some bug fixes on the VBScript and SQL for the tobacco project. Then went looking for jobs on the web. I've found a few that I like, but I'm not sure that I have all the requisite experience. It's definitely difficult, even though there are a good number of openings out there. There are a lot of jobs at Lockheed Martin, but I lack the required security clearances and nationality requirements for some of the more interesting ones.

Links of the day: ONLamp, Langenberg, CareerBuilder.

4 October

The power roof on my car is not working right. So I took the car in to Ford to get it checked out. They said to come back at 8am on Tuesday.

Matt made me up a Solaris box from junk parts. Clair said he'd help me configure it and get it running. I want to use this as the PDC for my home network.

The night's festivities consisted of the Local.

Link of the day: Top 500 Supercomputers

5 October

Happy Birthday Stacy!

Today's main task was to pick up some computery bits (keyboard, video switch, network cable, power strip) and fire up the new Solaris box, and then go the hockey (Thrashers vs Hurricanes) with Clair. This was all achieved, except for the getting Solaris running - the boot sequence kept on trying to load Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Oops.

The hockey was a whole lot of fun. We were in a suite and had an awesome view of the play. Unfortunately, my camera battery was low, so I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted. Damn. But, like I said, I had a whole heap of fun. I definitely want to go to more games this year. The Thrashers won 4-1. Rockin'!

After the hockey, we came home and watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles on HBO. That was a pretty good film. Other sports results for the day: Braves beat Giants, Anaheim beat Yankees. Both are my desired results - the Yankees are now out of the playoffs. Go Braves!

We went to the Local to celebrate Stacy's birthday. The pictures are now up.

6 October

Got up at a relatively sane hour, packed, and then John and I headed north to Louisville, Kentucky. Yep, a new state for Damon. John had some personal stuff to attend to up there and I had asked if I could join him for the drive. He accepted and a road trip happened.

It was a good drive. We stopped for a late breakfast at Waffle House somewhere along I-75 and still made it to his friend Karen's place about an hour ahead of schedule. Karen wasn't ready for us (she was cleaning and all sorts), so we went over to another friend of John's, (Christy) place to hang out for a while. That was pretty cool - she had a cute little boy, Simon, who proved very entertaining. From there, the three of us went round to the house of yet another friend (Eric), and got the party started. We sat around watching TV (the movie RatRace) and chatting. Karen arrived with beer and we spent more time talking and TV watching (The Man Show).

Soon enough we were hungry and went off to get food. The place we went to (I have forgotten the name) had food from all sorts of cultures and places. Very cool. We ate very well. And from there it was off to the Magnolia Bar (Magbar). This place rocked. The jukebox had an awesome selection of music (yes, better than the Local), and the beer was cheap ($8 for a pitcher of Paulaner Octoberfest), and everyone was really friendly.

John had to go home early, due to his commitments in the morning, so he and Christy left about 12:30. Eric, Karen and I stayed on. To say we were lit up is quite an understatement. I must say that John's Louisville friends are a riot. At some late stage, Karen, Eric and I went back to Eric's and continued the revelry. I'm not sure what time we crashed out, but I'm thinking it must have been close to (if not after) four.

7 October

Around nine (I think), I woke up and Karen and I went back to her place. I slept until about 1:30 and then just lazed around talking with Karen until John got finished. Then the three of us went for a drive around Louisville, checking out the parks and the old houses and the riverfront. Louisville is a really nice town; I can see why John likes it so much.

For dinner, we crossed the river into Indiana and ate at an Italian place on the river, looking back over at Louisville. It was very cool. After that we dropped Karen off at a friend's place and then we were on the road back to Atlanta. We had been in Louisville for just over 24 hours.

The drive back was long, especially as I was rather tired. We got in around 1:30am.

Pictures from the trip are now up.

8 October

9 October

Happy Birthday Michele!

After work I came home long enough to pick up my trousers that I need to drop into the drycleaners so I will be all pretty at Stacy and Dill's wedding on Saturday. Then it was up to the Local for trivia. Amber was without a team so she joined us. Amber is now married. This was not the wisest move of hers, but at least for now she's happy.

We didn't do so well at trivia, but tonight I had a mission. So we stayed at the Local for some more drinks and then went over to MJQ for more beers and dancing. I had a great time. I love MJQ on Wednesday nights. I should really be going more often. Maybe I will. It's too much fun. I did leave kind of early though, but I did see Michele and Sherrod on my way back to the car. Woohoo!!

10 October

Work sucked really badly. Correction: work sucks really badly.

A small group of us went to Happy Sumo for lunch as today was John's last day. Tomorrow is the last day for a lot of other people, including the lead engineer on one of our key projects. He has offered to stay on, but the contract he was offerred was really fucked up. Since he has visa issues, if the contract doesn't come through to his liking, he will have to leave the country. Thirty months ago I was really happy and excited by being taken over by Marconi. The last twelve months have really destroyed that feeling. Apathy is a daily occurence, and it gets worse each day. The whole thing is fucked up.

So I didn't really get a lot of work done today. Some stuff, yes, but not a whole lot. Afterwards I came home and played Scrabble (lost) and then went to Market One to pick up some dinner. Watched Jeopardy while eating. Entertaining enough, I guess. While at Market One I also picked up some onions and some carrots. I may cook something soon. Maybe not this weekend, as John is going to a wedding on Sunday night.

Links of the day: some site.

11 October

Today was potentially Ben's last day at work. At the time that I had left, there was still no agreement on the terms of his contract. Some of the terms were pretty dodgy, and he was not comfortable with them. I don't want him to leave, because he really is the subject matter expert on the project.

A bunch of us went to the Old Peculiar for lunch today for Ben's last day. That was good and entertaining. Afterwards, I returned to work long enough to get a couple of things sorted and to feel waves of apathy. I wasn't going to get any work done so I left to go pick up Sigur Ros tickets from the Variety Playhouse. When I got there, the girl siad that they had run out. WTF? I can't believe it. When I got home I checked online and TicketBastard couldn't find any tickets for me. I am so bummed.

Played two games of Scrabble against Amy, winning the second. I've been on a streak of bad luck just recently, so it was good to get a win in. Tonight we're getting Thai for dinner and then going to get drinks with Stacy and Dill and whoever else after their rehersal dinner. The cam is currently on (8pm EST). I need to shave my head in the morning. And maybe see if I can get some contact lenses.

We went to look for Stacy but failed, so instead we went to the Local. We had to stop by home first to get changed, because We had dressed business casual. Icky. That's kind of how I dress for work and I hate those clothes. Maybe I just need to improve my wardrobe. Anyway, we went to the Local and had some beers and played some darts. I threw what was probably my best game ever. I was rather happy. From the Local we headed to Karma for more drinking and some überfun dance joy. We met up with Amber and Eric and Mary; it was Eric's birthday, so I bought him a shot. The dancing was a great work-out. The place wasn't very busy, so I had a lot of room to bounce and spin and generally be a freak. Yay.

Link of the day: America's Cup.

12 October

Slept in. I like sleeping in. Amy had a hangover. Poor Amy. We (including John) went to get food. Our first attempt was Flying Biscuit, which failed due to lots of people, and instead ended up at Radial. Hmmm...tasty food...

John was planning on going in to work for a few hours in the afternoon, but after we got back and watched some college football he decided that he would rather stay home and rest up. Fair enough; it's going to be a crazy night...

I gave my head a fresh shave - so nice and stubbly - but John has a load of washing on preventing me from having a shower. I can wait. I didn't get out to pick up contact lenses. Maybe next week.

Once dressed in all our niceties, we picked up Lauren and headed over to Susan's for a a drink and to gather all of the Localites together. Representing our favourite drinking establishment were myself, Amy, John, Lauren, Susan, Tim, Steve, Joel, Manny, Emily, Axel. Quite a crew, and all looking very refined (for a change).

Stacy's wedding was a lot of fun. The service was a short, Episcopalian service, outside in the evening. Very tasteful. The food was excellent, and the drinks were free. Congratulations Stacy and Dill.

After the reception we headed home to get changed and then went to the Local. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the TV was on Fox Sports Net, and playing the Otago-Canterbury NPC match. I was somewhat disappointed with the referee, and with the result (personally, I support Wellington, but I was backing Otago). No matter.

At 2:15 we left he Local and headed home to play some Scrabble (I lost, damnit!) and then bed.

Wedding pictures are now up.

13 October

Sleep was not kind. I was awake earlier than I should have been (8am). I probably got another hour's worth of sleep between then and 11:30 when the getting up finally happened. And I was feeling grumpy at my tiredness. And then the sneezing started. Ugh ugh ugh!.

I took today to be a chores day. I went through all my mail from the past week, tidied the living room, took out the trash, and did some work on my own room. I think I'll nip out sometime and get some monitor cables. I need to hook up with Clair and see about getting Solaris for Intel. Failing that I'll download and installed OpenBSD or Linux of some flavour.

After the cleaning was finished (although there is more I should do and may do later), I sat on the deck with a recent Harpers magazine and a coke. Very relaxing way to spend an afternoon.

The evening was also rather laid back, including watching the Angels beat the Twins to win the American League Championship Series, and me beating Amy 331 to 221 in Scrabble. Nothing like a convincing win. It was an early night to bed after that, seeing as I was very tired from the late weekend nights and earlyish mornings.

Links of the day: The Misanthropic Bitch, War Chalking, rathergood.com.

14 October

A good start to the day when it was discovered that Ben was at work. He shall stay at least until he gets an offer from anotehr company. That is a good start. The other work stuff was mixed, with some good news, some dodgy revelations. Ah well, that's work for now. I think that I'm not really keen on any of the potential resolutions. It's sad, because there are some really good projects going on that I think are going to be lost in the shakeup, and I'm leaning towards the feeling that I might not be there to see them go down.

I came home from work via Publix, but finding the parking lot jam-packed I sped over to Kroger instead. I bought a bunch of groceries and came home to cook up dinner. And dinner was successful. I made macaroni cheese, but sufficiently different to that which Amy and John had ever had before, and they liked it. Rock on. I used a different base recipe than what I had in the past, but I must say that I also liked the outcome. During dinner we watched The Jerk, which I had never seen before. I enjoyed it, lots of particularly funny parts.

On my way home I decided that my next addition to my web site is likely to be a simple message board. It probably won't get much use, but the point is that it will be a good little programming exercise for me.

15 October

Today was a day of rain. All day. Unstopping rain. Wet wet wet.

After work I came home and got started working on my application. I have the database running on the server now, with some base data, and I have written some test scripts which can extract the data. Me oh so happy.

While I worked on the design of the display scripts, John and I watched the movie, Spy Game. This was better than I expected. Afterwards, I went to bed and read Catcher in the Rye for half an hour and then went to sleep.

16 October

My alarm went off at 8:30. My phone went off at 8:35. Ah well, must be time to get up. So I did. I had a 10am meeting with Coke today, so there was no rush to get into work. I drove up to meet Brad and Don at Caribou Coffee at 9:30 and from there we went over to Wildwood. The meeting was interesting, but I'll refrain from discussing more about it at this stage.

I left the meeting early to get to an optometrist appointment. My eyes checked out nicely, and I was given some new lenses to test drive. So far, they seem great. What's even better is that my insurance covered the whole checkup, and all I'm paying for is a year's worth of lenses. Nice.

My next stop was BellSouth.net, to pick up Lauren. Away we went for lunch, to Brio, which, conveniently, is just down the road from BellSouth.net. Rock. Lunch was tasty, and I had good quality Lauren and Damon time, which has been in short supply just recently.

After lunch I zoomed on to work, to be on a conference call about the meeting, and write up some requirements coming out of it. I was unable to work on the other project I wanted to concentrate on. That's the way it goes...

Trivia, Tim, MJQ.

17 October

Bianca's birthday! Happy birthday shorty!

Slow at work. Waffle House for dinner. Watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

18 October

Went to work for a couple of hours. Then went to Eats for lunch. Then went to the NAMA trade show. Caught up with some old faces, avoided other old faces, had some interesting conversations. Brad then dropped me home.

Did some chores, and then uploaded pictures from Stacy's birthday, Louisville and Stacy and Dill's wedding.

Dinner at Mellow Mushroom. Went to Local. Came home when Karen called to say she couldn't find our place. Made kamikazes. Crashed on couch (sorry Tim).

I had brought my laptop home to do some stuff. Tried to power up on battery and it failed. Didn't even try to start. Worked with mains power. But fuck anyway. On a positive note, my message board application has made progess. It will display messages out of the database. I now have to write the bit that allows you, the people, to write messages. And I also have to fix up some funky formatting. But I've made some progress. Maybe next weekend I'll finish the rest.

19 October

Bagels. Everyone came over. Walked to MARTA. Arrive in Decatur. Beer Fest. Met up with heaps of people. Karen and Read were late to our place and rode with Andy. Lost Tim on way home. Met up with people at Xocalo. Ate and drank. Then to Highlander. Then Amy and I went back to her place to sleep; the others partied on.

20 October

Brunch at Virginia's. Watched football and baseball. Steve came over. Went to Atkin's Park for dinner. Then came home. Karen, Tim, Steve went to Local and then Backstreet.

21 October

Woke up tired and apathetic. Work did the sucky thing. Came home. Went to Front Page News for dinner and then went bowling. I lost, Amy won, John and Tim came second and third. Then home to watch football.

22 October

Woke up tired, grumpy (because I was tired), antipathetic (for the same reason). Work did the sucky thing. Our number one (former?) customer came to see what it would take for them to run our system. Earlier in the day my contact lens had to be removed, so I had to get George to drive me home so I could collect my specs. Had one sucky conference call; the other was postponed until tomorrow. Looked for jobs on Career Builder; found several I liked.

Came home. Took Amy to Lauren's for Buffy. Came home and made dinner - Spaghetti Bolegnase a la Damon. Was very tasty. Was very tired. Watched baseball and went to bed.

I had brought my laptop home to do some stuff. Tried to log in, and one of the keys that represents a character in my password isn't working. Rebooted, and still doesn't work. Fuck.

23 October

Woke up tired, but more rested than recently. Still strong feelings of general anitpathy, but more of apathy. Went to work, Got a bunch of stuff done; still got pissed off a lot.

Came home and logged some notes about the last week or so into this journal. If I get a moment of reason, calm, and patience, I may elaborate on the notes. Then again, that may never happen. I changed the sheets on my bed (you really wanted to know that, really you did).

Tonight is trivia night. I know that Janny and George are coming. I suspect John is. Not sure at this stage whether Amy is; I expect she'll be over in a few minutes to do yoga (6:30pm on the Wisdom channel is a yoga program). I hope we win; some good things need to happen this week.

I've been sneezing a lot lately. I don't like this. It's annoying. What is also annoying is that all of my professional society memberships are up for renewal. I could really do without that expense right now.

Link of the day: ewav.com.

24 October

Enough about work. Afterwards, I came home and got dressed up for the final opera of the year - The Flying Dutchman. I ate some of the leftovers from Tuesday night as I watched The X Files and waited for Lauren. The episode was one of my favourites - "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." It's a silly episode, but I like it.

The opera was fantastic. The sets were amazing and the performances were brilliant. I was a little disappointed with the performance of Erik in Act II (sounded too much like a whiny bitch), but in Act III the performer found his voice and was terrific. Definitely well worth the effot.

During Act II, I wient through a period of being both awake and asleep at the same time; my eyes were open but I was also dreaming over the top of what I could see on the stage. Freaky. At one point, my eyes did close and I had a minor panic as I thought, "Shit! Who turned out the lights?" Heheh, silly, tired me.

25 October

Up and off to work for half a day. Completed the report changes for the B&W project. I noticed that there are some data inconsistencies, but they exist only the queries, not in the data, so I shall handle those on Monday. Driving music today was Frank Black, Cult of Ray. Woohoo!!

We were supposed to have an Olde Peculiar lunch, but George's daughter came down with strep throat so he had to look after her, and Ben's girlfriend made him a hot lunch, so we postponed beer and doozies for a couple of weeks (next week is one of travel).

The weather is basically miserable at the moment, rainy and threatening rainy, and coldish (although not too bad cold). Dealable but unwelcome. I have a runny nose to go with the sneezing, so I guess I have a cold.

I stopped at a couple of places on the way home to see if they had male-to-male VGA cables, but I was out of luck. It looks like I might have to make a trip to Micro Center to pick them up. That is, unless I can find a local computery parts place. Must look into that. I need these so can share my monitor between my main system and the unix box I am building. Speaking of which, I'm downloading FreeBSD for this system. The Solaris option didn't work out...

When I got home, Amy was waiting for Matt to come over and take her for a drive to pick up photos from Walgreen's. She was somewhat surprised to see me. Heheh. Anyways, Matt appeared soon after and we all went over to get the photos. Then we came back and watched TV for a couple of hours. I remember we watched Casino, which was enjoyable.

This week/weekend being approximately Amy and my anniversary (I never know which day should be considered the anniversary day in such matters, so I usually just pick one at random and home for the best), I got us reservations at my favourite Italian restaurant in Atlanta, Sotto Sotto. As usual, the experience was excellent. I selected a Braid II il baciole Pinot Nero/Barbera, which had a touch of spiciness that made it very interesting to drink. Oh, it was tasty goodness. I started with a caesar salad and for my main course I had red snapper, baked whole in a wood fire and fileted at the table. That was very cool. It was served with a lemon herb butter, garlic asparagus, and roasted potatoes. It was nummy. Amy had a salad and the wild musroom risotto. That's good stuff right there, I know it! For desert we had tasty Italian goodness that I'm not sure how to spell. I'm probably way off base, but I think mine was pannacotte, and Amy's was marziconi. Mine was flan, her's was cream. Both were awesome.

After dinner we stopped by Lauren's to say hello and caught them in the middle of The Exorcist. So we didn't stay very long and headed back to Inman Park to pick up tickets for SCANDAL!, the 10:30pm improv show at Dad's Garage. Seeing as we had about half an hour to kill, we went up to The Brewhouse in Little Five Points for a drink.

SCANDAL! was a whole heap of fun. Afterwards (midnight) we came home and got an early night. John called to see if we were going to Karma, but we declined. All in all, it was a mostly pleasant evening.

Link of the day: jesus.com.

26 October

Woke up, got up, made my bed, verified that FreeBSD had downloaded successfully, started laundry, made my bed, watched a litle rugby (Currie Cup final), ripped some CDs, downloaded an ISO file CD writing tool and felt basically productive.

The CDs are burned. I'll have to go out soon and buy video cables. John and Amy are watching a college football game, Iowa vs Michigan. They both went to Iowa.

17:49EST: Webcam is running and I'm installing FreeBSD...

It's now 18:47EST. I have successfully installed FreeBSD. It is even up on the network. Unfortunately, I don't know what the video card is inside the box, so I haven't got X running yet. I think I will look into that tomorrow. Other geeky things I did today: set up a hub in the living room so I can use my laptop and watch TV, set up my new printer (HP LaserJet 1000), and set up a Compact Flash card reader. My setup really is quite bitchin'.

Earlier today I played a game of Scrabble with Amy. She had placed a word beginning with R right next to (to the right of) the middle triple word score on the top of the board. I was able to use all my letters, starting at that triple word score and also using the triple word score on the top right hand corner. The word: PRINTING. The score: 137 (the N and the G were both made using blanks). I rock so much!

John and Amy made salmon and tibouli for dinner and then we went to the Local to celebrate George's 31st birthday and for Connie's last night at the Local. To say we got drunk is an understatement. Amy left early, taking my car; Jenny also left early. John, George, and I celebrated the night in fine fashion. A lot of whisky was drunk. There were at least three shots (that I can recall), there was darts, there was $6 into the jukebox (24 songs). There are some new discs in the jukebox, the best of which being Power Corruption and Lies. We watched game six of the World Series. Anaheim won, forcing the seventh game.

At some late hour, we three stumbled across the road to the Clermont, but there was a big line so we nixed that idea.

We walked home, stopping at Togo's for a snack.

27 October

Sunday was fairly slow paced. Planned on going to Virginia's, but at Lauren's behest we went to Radial. I like the food at both places, but I think I prefer Virginia's. Jenny showed up at Radial to pick up George. I think she was a little upset with George (and probably me and John for keeping out and getting him drunk).

Afterwards we came on home and Amy and I played a game of Scrabble. Then it was Sunday Football. The main game was Atlanta versus New Orleans. It was a pretty good game. During the third quarter, Amy and I went to go check out a couple of the open homes in the neighborhood. The first was a two bedroom town home. It was kinda of small, but had a nice living room stepped down from the entrance area. The kitchen was a little small, but the place was in my price range. The next place was a huge (I mean HUGE) family home at the corner of the road. The bottom floor had a very large living room, a huge kitchen and dining area with lots of windows and outdoor dining area, a large formal dining room and a sitting room. Beautiful. The first thing that one noticed as one came up the stairs was the bathroom. Once again, huge is an understatement, with a big spa-style bath and a family-sized shower. There were five bedroom-type rooms, although one had been converted to an office and a smaller one was being used as an exercise room. The master bedroom had a dressing room and bathroom. Awesome. And at $669,000, a little out of my price range.

The next place we looked at was in a condominium community thing. It was two bedrooms, but really quite small. It was back in my price range but I didn't like it too much. Following that we saw an open house on a for sale by owner place. This place was truly amazing. From the entrance room there was a sitting room and sunroom. Through the dining room there was a corridor with a wet bar which led into the kitchen/living area. This was amazing, the perfect living environment. and it opened into a large, private back yard. There was one bedroom downstairs, which was set up as a massage/exercise room. Upstairs were three bedrooms. The master bedroom had a walk-in wardrobe and a huge bathroom with spa bath and separate shower. It was awesome. Throughout, the place was impeccably decorated. Awesome. The owner was selling via an auction; I couldn't even imagine how much the place was worth.

We looked at one more place before heading home, another two bedroom town home. It was small but nice, and it was in my price range. This one had a private courtyard off the living room. It was in my perceived price range as well. It seems I now have a fairly good idea of what sort of place I can get in my area for the sort of money I'm considering investing in a home. The unfortunate thing is that none of what I can afford is really big enough for me and a flatmate, which is really frustrating, as I was hoping to have a flamate to help me afford the mortgage payments. Ah well...

Afterwards, we came home and watched some more TV and I started reading the latest Economist. Later, John and I moved the TV. Unfortunately the cable for cable TV isn't long enough to put the TV right where I wanted it, so I'm going to have to buy some sort of extension type thing for it. annoying.

John, Amy and I went to Manuel's Tavern for dinner and to watch the final game of the World Series. When we got there we discovered that it was their trivia night, so we played that, too. We sucked badly. But the pork chops were good.

After the trivia game we headed home to watch the end of the game. John headed down to the Local for a drink, but Amy and I stayed home. The Anaheim Angels won, to my delight and Amy's disgust. When the game was over, I wrote up notes for the weekend and headed to bed. Tomorrow morning I'll probably work from home, as I am meeting Hans and Steve from Coke for lunch, and there's not much point in going to Norcross only to turn around and drive back to Midtown again.

28 October

Worked from home in the morning as I was meeting Coke people (no, not from Columbia) for lunch. Then it was in to work for a couple of conference calls and the usual negativity.

After work went to Sarah and Alice's to change the plug on their drier. They made dinner for me (and John and Amy). The power went out (no, not due to my wiring skills, due to the storm. Honest) and so we ate in the dark. It was fun.

The weather is crap.

29 October

Work crap work.

Came home, read the latest Playboy, did laundry, ripped and burned mix CDs, and worked on my FreeBSD box.

I got X running. Tried to get Samba running but no luck. I had installed Gnome as my desktop environment, but am compiling KDE instead, on the recommendation of Sherrod.

I posted my resume today on monster.com and careerbuilder.com.

30 October

31 October

I've gone to New Orleans. See you on Sunday night!

Up at 5:15, picked up Amy and over to Russ'. All loaded and on the way a little after 6am.

Stopped for breakfast at WaHo just outside of Montgomery. Russ toook the wheel for the stretch down I65 to I10.

I drove the remainder of the way, with a stop just inside Louisiana for a toilet break and then the required stop at the Beer Box in Slidell for liquor supplies.

We got to the B&B but there was no-one around to let us in, so we went over to the Pirate's Alley Cafe for lunch.

Then we came back and checked in. Russ and Ginny had the fodl out bed, Amy and I had the king sized.

After sortingourselves out, we went back in to the quarter to look for bootlaces (the laces on my 10s had broken while I was putting them on) and to find out what entertainment was on during our stay. After runing all over the quarter, we ended up going to Payless Shoes on Canal St. We had tried everywhere else - Gargoyles, ??, Dark Entries, Panda, Foot Locker. Craziness.

Then we had dinner at the French Market (i had snapper on ettoufee - yummy) and we watched a halloween parade. Then we headed back to the B&B to get changed for the night's festivities. After stopping at the Cafe for a drink, we decided to go to Shim Sham, but there was a ridiculous line and so we ended up just going to what was Crystal and then Crobar, and is now called something else. On the way, we stopped in at Coop's Place for a couple of drinks and then continued down Decatur St. We drank lots, and also caught up with Gabby (who, for the record, was looking fabulous).

As the club closed down, we went next door to Angeli for our fourth meal of the day. My portobello mushroom burger was absolutely divine, and the chips were pretty good, too. The placed was slammed, so it took us a while to get a seat and get our food, but I felt it was worth the wait.

We got to bed around 4am. Or maybe a little later.