Talking to Myself Again

Work Doesn't Suck

mood: relieved

After 2 weeks of working to improve the database access of the Frankenstein Project, it finally works properly again. I'm happy!

Two Weekends, Two Birthdays, Two Firsts, Two Sickies

mood: tired
music: silence

It's been awhile since I've had time to do a real update here. Posting the results of a pointless online quiz and embedding a nifty video from Youtube don't really count. What you've really been wondering is, "Wally, what's going on in your life?" Well, since you asked....

Work Sucks

I've been working on this stupid project forever. Well, okay, since June 2006. Still. I just want it to be done with! I think I'm doing some good work, but I've got a deadline looming and I'm worried about showstopper bugs and I'm worried about the system running too slow and I'm worried about it taking forever to jump through all of the hoops needed to actually get the thing into production and.... Well, you get the picture. Anyway, as a result of all of this, I don't know when my next vacation will be. Everyone and their brother will be gone for the holidays, but I expect I'll be plunking away on the keyboard, trying to get everything ready. *sigh* Let's just call it the Frankenstein Project. It was never meant to be and it will not die! (Maybe it's just misunderstood? Nah.)

Happy Birthday, Rose!

Two weekends ago we went to a birthday party for Rose, who is now 2 years old. What's that? You want pictures? Okay!

Here's one of the birthday girl:

Here's Lando and Sarah (Rose's sister) watching the unwrapping of the presents:

And here's Rose blowing out the candles on the cake (with a little bit of help from her mom):

So that was Rose's birthday. It went better than mine! Yes, that's right. (Next topic, please!)

Happy Belated Birthday to Me!

Yes, November 9 was my birthday, so this weekend was my birthday weekend. Plus, I had Monday off (Veterans' Day -- thanks, guys!), so I had a 3-day weekend. However....

Well, let's see. The good part was that Dawn got me Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) Funny stuff! I've never actually watched The Colbert Report, however. I watch The Daily Show -- one of Lando's earliest phrases was "Daily Show Jon Stewart" -- so I see the little promo bit that they do at the end of that. However, I just don't have time to watch much TV these days, so no Stephen Colbert for me.

Even if I did have time to watch it, I would have to do so when Dawn wasn't in the room because Stephen Colbert makes her squirm. :-) That makes it particularly nice that she bought me his book. In return, I promised her that I wouldn't read her passages from the book every 5 minutes.

The bad part was that both Lando and Dawn were (and are) sick, so my 3-day weekend was spent tending to the needs of a sick 2-year-old while my sick wife rested. Unfortunately, when Lando is sick, rather than being listless like a normal person (e.g. me), he usually becomes even more energetic than normal.

If the whole household gets sick, we're in trouble.

Two Firsts for Lando

Last night, Lando did two things that he hadn't done before, one worrying, the other heartwarming.

The worrying one: He opened the refrigerator by himself. Doh! He had to grip the handle with both hands and yank hard, but he got it opened. Now we'll have to pay attention to what things we put within his reach in there.

The heartwarming one: As I was rocking him to sleep last night, he asked me, "What did you do today?" Nice! Normally that's what I ask him, to give him a chance to tell me anything that he might be thinking about (in part in the hope that, by telling me, he can stop thinking about it and fall the heck asleep already). It was a nice surprise for him to turn the question around and ask me. So I told him that I woke up, took a shower, got dressed, got in the car, drove to work (which he's been to a few times), worked on the computer, ate lunch, worked on the computer some more, then drove to the grocery store to buy him some milk and juice and bananas, then came home.

He then wanted to know why I couldn't work on the computer at home. I'd like to know the same thing!

The Family that Vomits Together ... is Sick

This morning before I left for work I asked Dawn whether she was feeling well enough to handle Lando on her own. She said she felt better than yesterday, but I had a feeling that she might feel worse after she got out of bed, so I told her to call me later and let me know how she felt. About 10:30 or so I decided to call her instead, and she reported that she was feeling better than yesterday and that there was no need for me to come home.

About 2:00 she called me to report that Lando had thrown up, that she had thrown up while trying to clean up the mess, that she felt much worse than this morning, and could I please come home. So I did.

The good news is that Lando apparently threw up just as a result of coughing alot, rather than as the result of an upset stomach, and Dawn threw up because she is easily grossed out. In other words, nobody seems to have anything like a stomach flu. Hooray! And then shortly after I got Lando to go down for his nap the cat threw up. *sigh*

So that's what's been going on these days. I think it's time for me to go to Pasta House and get us some comfort food.

Six Months in One Post! How Efficient!

Hey, you! Wake up! Yes, shocking though it may be, I am actually writing a new entry. My last entry was way back on November 24, but I really haven't written very consistently since June of last year! Yeesh! A lot of that has to do with the fact that, in July, I launched The Skeptic News, which I update almost daily. Well, I finally decided to start posting again, so earlier this month I sat down and "cleaned house," as it were, moving old entries to the archive and getting things ready. I also began reading the journals of others again for the first time in quite a while. (What happened to Squirrel Bait's journal? It seems to be gone. Wah!) Today I read that The Mighty Kymm has begun working her way through the Open Pages webring in search of dead journals to remove. Looks like I've begun reviving this thing just in the nick of time!

So, what has happened since November?

December: Visited Dad and my brother Ross down in Texas over Christmas. When I did this two years ago, it was cold and rainy the entire time I was there. This time was better -- it wasn't rainy. Actually it did warm up a bit the last day that I was there, but nothing like the 85 degrees it had been before I arrived.

January: Nothing memorable.

February: In the November 17, I mentioned putting together a plan to completely change what I do at work. We held meetings, we modified the plan, etc., and finally submitted it to the Agency Information Management Steering (AIMS) committee. They examined it, held meetings, modified it, etc., and finally submitted it to the senior managers. They examined it, etc., and in February they approved it. Bravo! Success! Or so I thought. In actuality, they sent it back to the AIMS committee, saying, in effect, "sounds good, but give us more details." My section's manager, the chairman of the AIMS committee, then went on vacation, which takes us to....

March: The section manager returns and announces that he's taken a position elsewhere and will be gone in a week. All work in the AIMS committee grinds to a halt, due the the lack of a chairman. As for today, June 26, that's where things still are.

April: Nothing particularly memorable. I did attend the Illinois Geographic Information Systems Association (ILGISA) "GIS in Illinois" conference on April 20-22, but there's not much of interest to say about it. Oh, and Dain had a 5th birthday party on the 26th. I abandoned my traditional strategy of "buy a toy that's noisy" in favor of "buy a toy that will scare Mary out of her wits." Specifically, I got him a nature kit (for collecting bugs and stuff) and a bunch of plastic bugs.

May: REALL held its annual elections. I had been the secretary-treasurer for the last year, but the newsletter editor was getting too busy, so we swapped jobs this year. I had resigned as newsletter editor of the local SCA group earlier, luckily! Also, on May 15 I went to Springfield Highland Games and Celtic Festival. It was fun, but I left early because it began to rain. There was also a little movie called Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I went to see it about a week after it opened, with the idea that I could avoid the massive crush of people and still see it before I learned the entire story. The movie was about what I expected -- not as good as the first two, but not a total bomb. The special effects were fabulous, of course, but there was virtually no character development and I had some problems with several plot points. I'd probably give it 3 stars.

Somewhere in there, Dad came up and visited for a couple of days. He finally bought a modern computer! He had an old Commodore Amiga 500 for years and years -- 1 meg of memory, no hard drive. One of the things he had to take into account when buying a new system is that he travels a lot, spending months at a time in a trailer Texas and Colorado. That means not a lot of room, and the system needs to be able to handle getting bumped around a bit. I recommended getting a laptop, and showed him some stuff from Gateway's web site. He finally got very nice one, which I think is probably about perfect for what he wants. Of course, there's a huge learning curve to get over! Plus, finding an Internet Service Provider that would have a local access number in Texas, Colorado, and a tiny town in southern Illinois was another challenge! After some false starts, however, it turned out that the solution was simple -- AOL! That has the added bonus of being about as "user friendly" as you can get. He's already been in contact with former neighbors, relatives, etc. As best as I can tell he likes it.

I also talked to Dawn this month, in our typical "once every 6 months" manner. We're still planning on taking a trip to Canada this summer, and I still haven't made any firm plans! Actually, we did settle on one thing -- the dates August 21-29. Now we just need to pick an itinerary and a mode of travel, preferably sometime before August 20.

Work Changes, New Computer, Moved -- and Mom Died

Yes, I'm back -- yet again! I suppose it's ironic that, pretty much by definition, when nothing is going on in my life, I have plenty of time to tell you about it, but when I have plenty going on in my life, I have little time to tell you about it. Judging by the long gap since my last update, you can infer that my life has been busy.

Four major events have occurred in the last couple of months. In increasing order of importance: I proposed completely changing my responsibilities at work; I bought a new computer; I moved; and my mother passed away.

The first one isn't particularly interesting to talk about. For the last couple of years, I've been responsible for the web site at the Illinois EPA. In recent months it has become increasingly apparent to me that our web development process just isn't working very well. Basically, if anyone wants something put on our web site, they send it to me. This means, first of all, that I'm an extremely busy fellow, particularly since the web site is only one of my job duties. Secondly, it means that our web site has a random hodge-podge of information, pretty much unconnected and disorganized. There might be the most extremely detailed information about one program area, but not even the most basic information about another program area. This makes it difficult to find information, to say the least.

I wrote up an 8-page memo discussing the problems with our current procedures and proposing, basically, that I turn over 90% of web development responsibilities to a team of a dozen people, drawn from the rest of the agency. That would free me up to do things like Java programming and writing database queries, rather than what has evolved into basically glorified word processing.

The second event was buying a new computer. What a story that makes! Way back on July 29, I ordered a new computer from Gateway -- a 400MHz Pentium II with 128MB RAM, Voodoo2 3D video card, DVD drive, ZIP, tape backup, theater sound system, etc. It was scheduled to ship on August 5. Well, on August 7 I received a postcard from Gateway, saying that "due to circumstances beyond our control," my order was delayed and would ship by August 21. Oh, bother. Time passed. On August 21, I received a postcard from Gateway saying that "due to circumstances beyond our control," my order was delayed and would ship by September 22. Ack! Should I cancel my order, or keep it? Decisions, decisions.

Then I learned that Intel would be releasing the 450MHz Pentium II on August 30. That would mean I could change my order to the faster chip. Sure, why not. So, after Gateway announces that they are selling 450MHz systems, I call them and change my order. There is plenty of confusion with getting the order changed, and eventually the sales critter just starts over from scratch and gives me a new order number. Time passes. September 22 comes and goes. Finally, on October 5, my new computer arrives -- twice!

Yes, sure enough, when I was given a new order number, the sales critter somehow managed to not cancel the previous order, so when the UPS truck rolled up, out hopped two computers. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Gateway also charged my credit card for two computers.

Well, eventually I got all of that straightened out, so I am now the proud owner of a brand spanking new screaming demon of a computer -- that can't receive e-mail! Yes, somehow or other I managed to totally hose the e-mail software on this machine. It came with Microsoft Home Essentials preinstalled. I owned Microsoft Office 97, which I loaded. I then downloaded the Office service release patch and installed it.

Unbeknownst to me, although Office 97 and Home Essentials both include Word 97, they install in separate directories. This means two copies of Word 97 are on the machine. My suspicion is that the service release patch saw the two copies, got confused, and patched the wrong one. Microsoft Outlook uses Word as its text editor, so when I went to start Outlook, it complained about a wrong DLL version when attempting to start Word. When I received the error message, I decided to uninstall Outlook and start over. Somewhere in that process I uninstalled something that I shouldn't have, and now my Internet e-mail is totally hosed. Since then I've been using my old computer to read e-mail, which isn't the most convenient thing in the world, but it works. I'm sure I'll eventually get e-mail working on this machine, but I've been too busy (naturally) to work on it!

Next, after getting my new computer in early October, I moved at the end of October! This meant that the middle of October was spent packing pretty much every waking moment when I was home. Actually, it began with me rather calmly going through everything, carefully sorting things, discarding junk, and generally being quite organized. As time passed, however, there was less sorting, less discarding, and more frantically tossing into boxes! I moved roughly 150 boxes of stuff, and I'll guess that probably a third of that is stuff that I'll just wind up throwing out -- or else just shoving into the back of closets like I did at the old place!

Anyway, I really like my new place -- I'm renting a house! Here are the specs: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2-car garage, great room, large kitchen, breakfast nook, fireplace, and deck! It's at the end of a very short cul de sac on the extreme west end of Springfield, so there is virtually no traffic. Although it's in the city limits, it's almost in the country. You can go three blocks to a cornfield and not much farther will bring you to horses!

My favorite room, however, is the great room. It's very large (naturally), with a cathedral ceiling, a fireplace, and sliding glass doors leading out onto a deck in the back yard. I love it! The back yard itself is filled with plenty of trees, particularly pine trees, and I love that, too. In short, I like my new place!

Unfortunately, two days after I moved, I received a phone call from Dad saying that Mom was in the hospital and that she had decided that she would refuse any further treatment. She had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma 12 years ago. She underwent chemo and fought it off, but a few years ago it returned. She had more treatments, but it was a downhill struggle.

For the last year or so she had been going into the hospital quite a bit. She was never bedridden for months at a time or anything like that, but she would have to go back to the hospital numerous times every month for yet another treatment or another test. Then she began having problems with an extremely low blood count. She kept going back to the hospital and getting blood transfusions, but they can't give you white blood cells, because they would simply fight against your body. As a result she was extremely susceptible to infection, and eventually got pneumonia. At that point she decided that she was tired of the fight, so she told the doctors that she didn't want any more antibiotics to fight off the infection.

I received Dad's call on Monday, November 2, which was the day my phone service was connected at the new place. Dad said that it would just be a matter of days. After I hung up the phone I cried my eyes out for several minutes. It wasn't just because I was losing my mother, which was bad enough. It was also simply stress. For weeks I had been going nonstop, getting ready for the move, and just went it seemed like things were about to get better, they very abruptly had gotten much worse. And, oddly enough, it was also because I would never been able to show her my new home. I wanted to show her the great room, the fireplace, the deck out back, the pine trees -- but now I never could. The day before I had used my camcorder to videotape a very brief tour of the place. I decided to bring the camcorder and tape with me to the hospital. If she seemed up to it, I could play back the tape in the camcorder and she could watch it in the viewfinder.

So on Monday I drove down to St. Louis to see Mom at the hospital. All of her sisters and her brother were there. She was still in pretty good shape at that point and was in good spirits. She actually looked significantly better than she had when I had seen her in the hospital a couple of weeks before that. It was hard to believe that she would be dead in a few days. I eventually showed her the videotape of the new house, which she seemed to enjoy. It didn't really show things very well, because I hadn't expected this to be my only opportunity, but it was all I had.

After a few hours I drove back to Springfield. My brother flew into St. Louis from Austin later that night. The next day (Tuesday) after visiting with her, he drive up to Springfield to stay overnight with me. On Wednesday we drove back down to St. Louis to see Mom again. When we arrived there was a sign on her door telling visitors to go to the nurse's station. She had passed away about an hour before we had arrived.

I took it well, but I was quite surprised that she had gone so quickly. On Monday she was doing quite well, so I had guess she would last until Friday. It just really hadn't occurred to me when I left her on Monday that it would be the last time I would see her.

I suspected that Dad would prefer to have some time alone, just to wander about the house and cry without worrying about who saw, so Ross and I spent Wednesday night back in Springfield, then drove down to Dad's place on Thursday. He later thanked us for that, so I guess my suspicion was correct.

The visitation was on Friday night (November 6). I was amazed, first of all, at the amount of food that neighbors brought over -- meat trays, loaves of bread, fried chicken, lasagna, even cartons of soda. Keep in mind that this is out in the country, so when I say "neighbors", I mean "people who might live 5 miles away."

Secondly, I was amazed at the number of people who showed up at the visitation. Mom had taught kindergarten in the area for 30 years, so she and Dad knew plenty of people. Plus there were people like two of my high school teachers, our neighbors from when I was in first grade, and the parents of a pseudo-girlfriend of mine from high school. I was also very impressed by the number of my brother's friends who showed up. (Six of them served as pall bearers, actually.)

Thirdly, I was amazed at how quickly all of that food was consumed by everyone who came by after the visitation and after the funeral on Saturday.

I guess Mom went about as well as she could. We all got to see her one last time when she was still in pretty good shape, and I think it's better to go that way than to spend years in bed, the way her grandparents spent the end of their lives. She had talked for quite some time about not wanting to drag things out, so I was about as prepared as one can expect to be for it.

As for me, I'm doing fine, although I still find myself periodically remembering, "Oh yeah -- Mom's dead." There's a part of me that keeps expecting this to be temporary. Ah well. Life goes on.

Dad seems to be doing fine. He came up to visit on Sunday. After showing him the new place, we took his pickup truck down to Oak Express and picked up some nice bookshelves for the great room. They're six feet tall, four feet wide -- and already completely filled with books, mainly hardbacks.

He'll eventually head down to south Texas, like every year. They've been there several times before, so he'll know plenty of people and will have plenty of things to keep him occupied, like playing shuffleboard, golfing, and generally enjoying warm weather in the middle of winter.

Bad Web Assignments, Monica Lewinsky, Gore v. Quayle

On Tuesday I received my second least-favorite type of web assignment -- a diskette of random files with an accompanying note saying that so-and-so wants this stuff on the web site. What is this stuff? Who is going to be reading it? To what other documents is it related? A little bit of direction, please!

My least-favorite type of web assignment is receiving a diskette filled with detailed, precisely formatted web pages -- all of which look like crap and don't in any way, shape, or form fit in with the rest of the stuff on our web site. I'd much rather deal with someone who doesn't know what they want than with someone who has already made up their mind without any consultation.

So let's talk about this whole Monica Lewinsky thing. First off, I'm pretty much liberal on social issues, moderate on fiscal issues. Bill Clinton wasn't my favorite among the Democrats (I preferred Paul Tsongas. I can hear the chorus saying "Who?"), but I find it unlikely that I'll ever vote for a Republican for president. So, in short, I'm biased in favor of Clinton, but not to the point of zealotry.

When I first heard that Bill Clinton was being accused of having an affair with a White House intern, my feeling was "so what?" It may well be of interest to his wife, but it certainly wasn't any of my concern. If the owner of the local grocery store cheated on his wife, I certainly wouldn't feel that it was my place to poke my nose into his business, particularly not if his wife was staying with him.

Then when I heard that Clinton was being accused of lying about the affair under oath, my feeling was "who wouldn't?" I really can't imagine myself cheating on my (non-existent) wife, but if I did, I doubt very seriously that I would feel like talking about it in public. In any case, while lying under oath might be of interest to a prosecutor, it made very little difference to me.

In short, even if what was said was true, I didn't much care.

Then I began learning a bit about Monica Lewinsky, and the more I heard, the more I began to wonder if perhaps Clinton was, in fact, falsely accused. The more I heard, the more it sounded as if perhaps she might be a little bit... odd.

Apparently she had been infatuated with Clinton for quite some time. It sounded quite possible that she had manufactured an imaginary affair, which she related to her friends to impress them with the wild, exciting time she was having at the White House. Eventually she was called to testify in the Paula Jones case, where she told the court that no affair had occurred, while still telling her friend Linda Tripp that it had.

So if all of this was made up, why doesn't Clinton just come out and say, "Monica Lewinsky manufactured an imaginary affair in her head"? Well, she hasn't testified before Kenneth Starr yet. If Clinton says something to make her angry, all she has to do is tell Starr a version of the story that fits what he wants to hear, in exchange for immunity.

Of course, it may well turn out that Clinton is guilty as charged. But, as I said, what business is that of mine?

In other news, it seems likely that the election held in the year 2000 will feature Vice-President Al Gore running against former Vice-President Dan Quayle. Oh boy. Can you feel the excitement? I'm feeling it.

Centralia Visit, Satellite TV, Software for Work, 4 Movies

Good heavens, how easily we fall out of habits -- when they're habits we didn't want to fall out of! I've missed a lot of days (as Mary has reminded me), so there is no way I'm going to be able to remember what happened over the last 11 days. Well, I'll just post what I remember and then try to get back on schedule.

Last Friday (June 6), right after I posted my previous entry, I hopped in the car to travel down south to visit my parents in Centralia, Illinois. They had called a few days earlier to ask about a computer problem they were having. It turned out that the monitor for they old Commodore Amiga 500 had died on them. Well, I've got 4 old Amigas scattered around my place, so I told them I'd grab a spare monitor and deliver it to them over the weekend.

While I was driving down Interstate 55, I saw a flatbed truck in front of me. On the back were some large containers labeled, in bold letters, "LIVE FISH." Three thoughts passed through my mind. The first thought was remembering that old joke. ("If you heard about a new movie coming out called 'Attack of the Killer Goldfish,' would you think it was about one great big goldfish or a whole bunch of little ones?" I love that joke.) The second thought was to wonder why they felt the need to label this thing. Did they think that people would drive more carefully if they knew that there were live fish traveling down the interstate? Did they think that emergency response personnel should be warned, in case of an accident? The third thought I had was to note that it is easy to obsess over trivia during a long car trip.

Saturday (June 7) they showed me their new camping trailer, a 37-foot 5th-wheel. Talk about massive! It just barely fits in the pole barn that Dad had built for his 32-foot trailer. There's probably about six inches to spare! In addition to being 37-feet long, it has three slide-outs, so it's nice and wide. It has the usual stuff, of course (kitchen, bathroom with shower, living room, bedroom, etc), but it also has some things I hadn't seen in a trailer before, such as a full-size couch that folds out into a bed, two full-size easy chairs, and even a computer desk!

While I was there, I also spent some time experimenting with Mom & Dad's new satellite TV setup. They went from something like 6 channels to 40 or so. We watched Monica Seles lose to Aranxa Sanchez Vacario (sp?) in the finals of the French Open, then just seconds after the match was over, we switched channels and watched the Triple Crown not get won.

Sunday afternoon I bid the folks goodbye and returned to Springfield.

Monday and Tuesday are a blur.

Remember a few weeks ago when I complained that I apparently wasn't going to get any of the stuff I asked for at work during our annual end-of-fiscal-year mad rush to buy things? Well, on Wednesday I actually received some stuff! Microsoft FrontPage 98 and Adobe PhotoShop arrived! I already had Frontpage at home, so that wasn't particularly exciting, but PhotoShop was something new for me. I quickly went out and bought a few books to learn how to use it. So far, I am extremely impressed! This is an incredibly powerful program and I have been amazed at how easily I am able to create some nifty looking graphics. Well, nifty looking for someone who has absolutely no artistic ability, that is. In addition, in reading through the license agreement, I was pleased to learn that I am allowed to install it on my computer at home as well! Considering that the program sells for something like $600, that's a very nice bonus! I spent most of the rest of the week and part of the weekend learning how to use it.

Wednesday night was gaming night, of course. We had pretty much a full house, so we had a massive, 8-player game going. If I remember correctly, my deck basically sucked the entire night. I really need to put together something new!

Friday, on the way home from work, I stopped off at Blockbuster to rent some videos. Ever since I got my DVD player, I've been buying DVDs instead of renting movies, so this was the first time I had rented any in quite awhile. Since virtually all DVDs are in wide-screen format, I even found myself being momentarily surprised to see that message about "this movie has been formatted to fit your television"!

On Saturday I watched "As Good as it Gets" and "Gattaca". "As Good as it Gets" was very good! Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson -- how could they go wrong! I enjoyed it alot. "Gattaca" was reasonably good, too. It's about a future society where genetic selection means that the elite are born without imperfections. Sort of a Brave New World kind of thing. It was interesting, but not great.

Sunday I watched "Boogie Nights" and "Brassed Off". "Boogie Nights" was something of a disappointment, given all of the good things the critics had said about it. It was interesting, but it seemed to lack a climax (no pun intended) or an ending. It was sort of like they just ran out of ideas and stopped shooting. I think it sort of lacked focus. "Brassed Off" was pretty good. It was about a British town where the local coal mine is being closed and the people rally around the coal miners' brass band. It wasn't exactly "Hamlet", but I enjoyed it.

Well, I think we're going to have to call that good enough for this entry. Hopefully I can get back on schedule after this! (Monica? Next time, I think.)

My Life by the Numbers

Plenty of days to catch up on. Are you really interested? No? Then skip this bit.

Last Saturday: I was visiting my parents, so I wasn't able to weigh myself.

Last Sunday: Ditto.

Last Monday: 232.5 pounds. I gained only a half-pound while visiting my parents, which is a good thing! My mom always thinks she's feeding an army when she cooks. :-) Walked 2 miles in 27:37. That's my fastest time yet!

Tuesday: 232 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 28:09. I'm rather surprised at that time, since I had decided not to try walking fast. A couple of weeks ago I would have been amazed at that time. I guess this means I'm getting into (relative) shape.

Wednesday: 232 pounds.

Thursday: 233 pounds.

Friday: 232 pounds. My weight seems to be stuck! Walked 2 miles in 27:30. That's another personal best time!

Saturday: 230.5 pounds. Coolness!

Sunday: 230.5 pounds.

Monday: 230 pounds. That's my lowest weight since October of last year. I've lost 15 pounds in 11 weeks.

Today: 231 pounds. Didn't walk, but I mowed the grass, so I figure that counts. :-)

Gaming Night, Dead Amiga, Satellite TV, Mom and Dad Camping, Training

Wednesday night was gaming night. David and Sharri have just bought a house, so they weren't there and apparently aren't going to be for awhile, due to getting ready to move and trying to sell their house. Jen and Mike were there, though, so we still had seven players.

When I got home, I received a message from my parents that their computer's monitor had died on them. They're still using an old Commodore Amiga 500 with 1 megabyte of RAM and no hard drive. I think I've got about 4 old Amiga monitors lying around here (don't ask), and I think two of them still work, so I'll have to test them out this weekend.

I called them back on Thursday. In addition to talking about the monitor, Dad said that they now have their satellite dish, with 41 channels. Welcome to the '90s! They also went camping at the lake for the week leading up to Memorial Day, using their new monster trailer. He said they really like it, although they nearly had a disaster when the water system developed a leak. If they weren't there to discover it and turn off the water, they would have had a flood on their hands! As for Mom, her radiation treatments went well. They ended a couple of weeks ago, but she'll probably have another couple of weeks of treatments soon. After that, they're hoping to head out west to do some real camping!

Thursday and Friday I was in a class at the training center, Novell Netware 4.1 for Users. It was pretty much a waste of time. I learned some things, but what I learned I think I could've picked up in about 30 minutes from a book.

That doesn't matter, though, because we're in our annual end-of-fiscal-year spending panic at work. This happens every year. Our department has a budget of zero dollars -- literally. (I'm using the word "literally" in its intended sense of "truly," not as hyperbole.) If we want anything, we have to persuade another department to pay for it. As a result, we get nothing until the other departments have run out of things to spend their money on. At that point they toss some money our way and we have to spend it almost overnight.

In addition, the money can't be spent on just anything. For example, "training" money can only be spent on training, not on hardware, software, or anything else. As a result, we can only spend this training money on whatever classes happen to be available right now. Never mind that this course is nearly useless, while one being offered in two months is just what we need -- we won't have any money two months from now, so it gets spent on the nearly useless course.

In short, our so-called purchasing system sucks.

My Life by the Numbers

Wednesday: 232.5 pounds. I'm not sure how I lost two pounds overnight; I weighed myself three times to confirm. Walked 2 miles in 28:43.

Thursday: 234 pounds. It's always like this after gaming nights. :-) Walked 2 miles in 27:59! "Why so fast?", you ask me. While I was walking, I spotted two women walking a block or two ahead of me. My competitive instincts kicked in and I walked faster to try to catch up and pass them. However, that only lasted for the first half of my walk, because they played a trick on me and took a different route. Wimps! I would've left 'em in my dust -- if one can kick up any dust while walking on a blacktop road.

Today: 234 pounds. Didn't walk. Didn't wanna.

Long Weekend, Age of Empires, Magic: The Gathering

Man, I've fallen behind on this thing! In part that's the result of having a 4-day and 45-minute weekend. One would think that, having time off from work, I would have found plenty of time to work on this. One would be wrong, however, because one would have totally underestimated my ability to waste time.

Basically, I had a day and 45 minutes of comp time to use up before the end of May. I had the comp time because of working overtime; specifically, it was for overtime spent traveling to and from classes and conferences. Normally I just take my overtime in cash, but at the end of every fiscal year, they run out of overtime money and then ask people to take comp time instead of overtime pay. As much as I appreciate time off from work (and I really needed it!), I also didn't really feel that I could afford to take time off, because I'm so far behind on everything. And why am I so far behind on everything? Because I've been going to classes and conferences. Catch-22, eh?

Anyway, I left work 45 minutes early on Thursday and took Friday off. Add to that the Memorial Day holiday on Monday and you have a 4-day and 45-minute weekend.

So what did I do with my time off? Wasted it, naturally. I spent way too much time playing Age of Empires, a real-time strategy game similar to Warcraft, but with a more realistic setting, more details, and without the humor.

Saturday evening I went over to Bill and Mary's to play Magic. Bill and Adam had gone to Jacksonville to play in a Star Wars tournament, David had company, Bob is without a car these days, and Jen & Mike will probably only be playing on Wednesdays, so for awhile it was just Mary and me. Eventually Bill got back from the tournament and joined in, but it a pretty quiet evening overall.

Sunday I mowed the grass. Cool beans, eh?

Monday, I vegged.

How could so little happen in five days? I guess I need to accomplish something this week to make up for it.

My Life by the Numbers

Friday: 234.5 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:35.

Saturday: 234.5 pounds. Didn't walk.

Sunday: 235.5 pounds. Didn't walk.

Monday: Didn't weigh myself. Didn't walk. Leave me alone; I'm on vacation!

Today: 234.5 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:32.

Arc/Info, Dharma & Greg, Short Story

Yesterday I installed the latest version of Arc/Info, the GIS software we use, on all of the Unix machines. An instructor will be coming in from California next week to run a class, and he needs the latest version on the machines. Installing the software is no big deal, except that the installation routine kept failing for some mysterious reason. I eventually got it to work, but not until I had blown half a day on it.

When I got home, I popped the Dharma & Greg tape in the machine to watch Wednesday night's episode. It wasn't their greatest, but I liked it anyway because Jane had lots of good bits.

After that I spent a little bit of time working on a short story, with a working title of Doorway. I think I basically know how I want it to go, but I need to make a few decisions about the viewpoint (first person? nameless narrator? bystander?) before I can really get started.

My Life by the Numbers

Friday: 236 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 28:51. That's about 3 minutes faster than the first day I went walking.

Today: 236 pounds. Didn't walk, 'cuz I'm a lazy bum. Actually, I got nearly 12 hours of sleep last night! I haven't done that in ages, and it felt good!

Mother's Day, Satellite TV, Road Trip Tape, Tornado, ILGIC ER, Star Wars RPG, Palm Pilot, Seinfeld

I called home on Sunday to wish Mom a happy Mother's Day, but instead of waiting anxiously by the phone, she was away visiting one of her sisters. Well! The very idea of her having a life! Anyway, I talked to Dad instead and learned that they had ordered a satellite dish! They live out in the country, where getting cable isn't an option. As a result, they have their choice of maybe seven TV stations. However, after a few years of spending time in RV parks with cable hookups, they began to think that perhaps getting a mini dish sounded like a good idea. They had thought about it in the past, but they live surrounded on nearly all sides by trees. Dad finally talked to a dealer and determined that they could get a clear shot at a satellite through a break in the trees, so he's placed an order. See what happens when you give your parents your old TV?

I received an e-mail broadcast from CZ recently, who said that she, Dayna, Rob, and Lou were going to be driving down to Texas to visit my brother and were in need of road trip tapes. As a result, I spent about three hours Tuesday night putting together an hour-long tape that I call:

The One With the Smothers Brothers

Side A

• Smothers Brothers - Pretoria
• Art of Noise - Peter Gunn
• Elastica - Connection
• Celastial Navigations - The Janitor
• Veruca Salt - Shutterbug
• Trio - Ja Ja Ja
• Trio - Da Da Da...
• Tim Lyons - Humours of Whiskey
• Yello - Oh Yeah

Side B

• Smothers Brothers - Laredo
• Luscious Jackson - Naked Eye
• New Order - True Faith
• Melanie - Animal Crackers
• Björk - Hyperballad
• Breeders - Divine Hammer
• Aimee Mann - Just What You Are
• 2001 - Transfiguration
• A Clockwork Orange - William Tell Overture

Frankly, I think you have to hear it to get the full effect. Actually, I would like to re-do it, with a few of the tracks in a different order, but I think three hours is plenty of time to spend on a joke. :-)

While I was working to making the tape, the storm warning sirens went off (or would that be "came on"?). I turned on the radio and learned there was a tornado warning. So what else is new? It looked mighty ominous outside, but nothing showed up in my area.

Last month I said that very few people showed up at the ILGIC Emergency Response Subcommittee meeting, because it was held the day after a bunch of tornadoes came through. Remember that? Well, guess what. Yep, Wednesday was the ER Subcommittee meeting. I'm beginning to suspect a cause-and-effect relationship exists here.

Wednesday night was gaming night. We finally had everyone in town at the same time, so we played a session of the Star Wars RPG that Adam is running. It was a bit of an odd night, consisting primarily of all of us convinced that there was nothing we could do and then escaping because Bob decided to try something that had virtually no chance of working. We're not sure what the moral of the story is. I prefer to think that there isn't one.

At the LAN Administrators meeting today, I took notes on my PalmPilot, which attracted plenty of attention from people wanting to learn about it. Fifteen seconds of minor fame.

Tonight, of course, was the final episode of "Seinfeld." I think it kinda sucked. I think the main problem was that they stuffed 30 minutes of material into a 75-minute show.

My Life by the Numbers

Tuesday: 238 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:45.

Wednesday: 237 pounds. Didn't walk, 'cuz I was up late Tuesday night.

Today: 236 pounds. (I'm not taking that weight too seriously. I just put a new battery in the scale and I suspect that's the primary cause for the change.) Didn't walk, 'cuz I was up late Wednesday night. (See a pattern here?)

I called home on Sunday to wish Mom a happy Mother's Day, but instead of waiting anxiously by the phone, she was away visiting one of her sisters. Well! The very idea of her having a life! Anyway, I talked to Dad instead and learned that they had ordered a satellite dish! They live out in the country, where getting cable isn't an option. As a result, they have their choice of maybe seven TV stations. However, after a few years of spending time in RV parks with cable hookups, they began to think that perhaps getting a mini dish sounded like a good idea. They had thought about it in the past, but they live surrounded on nearly all sides by trees. Dad finally talked to a dealer and determined that they could get a clear shot at a satellite through a break in the trees, so he's placed an order. See what happens when you give your parents your old TV?

I received an e-mail broadcast from CZ recently, who said that she, Dayna, Rob, and Lou were going to be driving down to Texas to visit my brother and were in need of road trip tapes. As a result, I spent about three hours Tuesday night putting together an hour-long tape that I call:

The One With the Smothers Brothers

Side A

• Smothers Brothers - Pretoria
• Art of Noise - Peter Gunn
• Elastica - Connection
• Celastial Navigations - The Janitor
• Veruca Salt - Shutterbug
• Trio - Ja Ja Ja
• Trio - Da Da Da...
• Tim Lyons - Humours of Whiskey
• Yello - Oh Yeah

Side B

• Smothers Brothers - Laredo
• Luscious Jackson - Naked Eye
• New Order - True Faith
• Melanie - Animal Crackers
• Björk - Hyperballad
• Breeders - Divine Hammer
• Aimee Mann - Just What You Are
• 2001 - Transfiguration
• A Clockwork Orange - William Tell Overture

Frankly, I think you have to hear it to get the full effect. Actually, I would like to re-do it, with a few of the tracks in a different order, but I think three hours is plenty of time to spend on a joke. :-)

While I was working to making the tape, the storm warning sirens went off (or would that be "came on"?). I turned on the radio and learned there was a tornado warning. So what else is new? It looked mighty ominous outside, but nothing showed up in my area.

Last month I said that very few people showed up at the ILGIC Emergency Response Subcommittee meeting, because it was held the day after a bunch of tornadoes came through. Remember that? Well, guess what. Yep, Wednesday was the ER Subcommittee meeting. I'm beginning to suspect a cause-and-effect relationship exists here.

Wednesday night was gaming night. We finally had everyone in town at the same time, so we played a session of the Star Wars RPG that Adam is running. It was a bit of an odd night, consisting primarily of all of us convinced that there was nothing we could do and then escaping because Bob decided to try something that had virtually no chance of working. We're not sure what the moral of the story is. I prefer to think that there isn't one.

At the LAN Administrators meeting today, I took notes on my PalmPilot, which attracted plenty of attention from people wanting to learn about it. Fifteen seconds of minor fame.

Tonight, of course, was the final episode of "Seinfeld." I think it kinda sucked. I think the main problem was that they stuffed 30 minutes of material into a 75-minute show.

My Life by the Numbers

Tuesday: 238 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:45.

Wednesday: 237 pounds. Didn't walk, 'cuz I was up late Tuesday night.

Today: 236 pounds. (I'm not taking that weight too seriously. I just put a new battery in the scale and I suspect that's the primary cause for the change.) Didn't walk, 'cuz I was up late Wednesday night. (See a pattern here?)