I like snow. A lot. But I have to confess that I’m not that enthusiastic about shoveling it. It took me an hour to shovel my driveway tonight. Not fun. I think my sinuses drained though. (touch wood). I can hear the wind howling outside. It’s not warm at all. Time to crawl into my toasty warm bed. 
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Today was a good day. I spent a good chunk of it hanging out with beldurnik and czar_sonja. It was fun to see them again and catch up with them on life. We went camera shopping and I did a bit of shopping for a small TV for my computer room (that I can use as a video editing monitor). I’d like something that’s 9 or 13 inches … ideally with S-video, but that’s not really likely … so hoping for something that even just has stereo audio to go with the composite video. Might have to live with mono though.
After that we ate at Green Mill. I must confess that I don’t really care for garlic a lot. I will certainly eat it, but I don’t like it in quantity. We had a pineapple and garlic deep-dish pizza. I don’t think I’ll be having it again. It wasn’t as bad as the chicken and garlic pizza from Papa Murphy’s… that stuff is seriously strong. I had a fun drive home in the snow. Surprisingly I didn’t see too many people in the ditch, though I saw two that had hit guard rails. I hope we get lots of snow tonight and tomorrow. They’re forecasting possibly as much as 10 inches … which would really rock, though I confess that shovelling it would probably suck. I shovelled my driveway and sidewalk on Friday and I’m still sore … of course cutting wood on Saturday didn’t help that much either. My arms and legs are sore from that.
I hope to actually start making progress on problems at work this week. I kinda stalled out at the end of last week between meetings and showing Joshua (new hire) the ropes of computer lab management.
Off to bed for me now before I fall off my chair … I’m having trouble typing anyway.
Seventeen years ago … January 28th, 1986 to be exact, I was just getting into the lunch line in grade school when I heard that the space shuttle Challenger had blown up. I’m not sure if I really believed it until I got home and got to see the replays over and over again on television. It is an event that has stuck with me throughout the years … I even did my first speech for my college public speaking course on the subject. I wonder if I will remember today’s Columbia explosion the same way. I hope people are thinking about those people today. Adventurers who believe so deeply in science that they risked (and gave) their lives in its pursuit.
The following quote is from Ronald Reagan’s address to the nation that was given when the Challenger disaster occurred. I feel it is worth thinking about again today:
“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
One interesting thing I learned this week was the existence of an Internet Explorer toolbar program called Xupiter, which basically takes over your web browser and to some extent, your entire computer. I found an article on it on wired.com tonight and found the following quote amusing:
“When I find the bastards who programmed this thing I’d be happy to castrate them with a pair of dull pinking shears,” fumed one of Xupiter’s many unhappy victims in a newsgroup posting.
Remind me not to piss that guy off … I’d like to father children someday.
I get to cut wood tomorrow. Should be interesting … weather is supposed to be warm enough for things to get messy. I’ll probably have to wash my truck when I get back. Hopefully there’s enough traction I can pull a trailer full of wood out of the fields. If not, then I guess I’ll likely have fun trying!
Another evening… yes… I watched a show on UFOs. Apparently nearly all fire departments have a copy of a fireman’s guide that includes instructions on dealing with UFO encounters. I also watched a show about trucking across the ice in Canada. Quite interesting.
Today I didn’t get much done at work, mostly because of a longish meeting. This afternoon I took off so I could get my 3rd brake light replaced on my truck. I also had the dealer investigate the cause of a rattle and they determined that the driver’s side of my front bumper is in fact loose. That’s actually re-assuring … I was worried somoething was going to break in my steering or front suspension.
Tomorrow is more of same-old, same-old. Nothing special (‘cept wood-cutting) planned for this weekend. It’d be nice to get together with somebody.
Well, this one is going to be real short. I didn’t get a lot actually accomplished at work. Most of the morning was meetings. The entire afternoon was showing our new guy the ropes and setting up his computer. Fun. Consequently I don’t have much to say. I guess I will be going home and playing lumberjack this weekend so my parents don’t run out of wood. It sounds like most of the family is not feeling so hot right now (dad has pneumonia among other things), so hopefully I can avoid catching something nasty.
now to go to bed while I can still walk….
Well, this is probably one of the latest posts I’ve made. I just got back a little while ago from seeing Jesus Christ Superstar at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis starring Sebastian Bach (former front man for Skid Row). I am not sure I found the show entertaining. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. I spent some time pondering life and faith. I also analyzed the production itself a bit … I thought the set they used was amazingly versatile. By changing the lighting and adding a few props they could dramatically change the scene. Sebastian Bach has quite the set of pipes … not that I’m really surprised considering his background … but it was still impressive to hear live.
Well, bedtime for me … ta-ta
Wow … today was rather productive. I’m not sure what I accomplished at work, but I’m sure it was something. I did get some more work done on my database for tracking progress of new computer installations (i.e. ordering, papework, etc). I also dealt with some rather odd printing problems … printers that disappeared off the network and basically just needed a poke in the butt to come out of hiding again.
Tonight I got busy and did laundry, some tidying up in the kitchen (I can actually see my kitchen table!!) and I did the dishes as well. Shock of shocks … my clean laundry is even folded and put away. I hope those who know me well were sitting down when they read that. I did learn something about my hot water tonight … if I’m going to use straight-hot water for washing dishes, I should probably run it before starting laundry rather than after. It was a good 45 minutes or so before I could stand to keep my hands in the water long enough to wash something.
I’m not sure if I’ll do an entry tomorrow night … I hate to break my streak but given that I’m going to see Jesus Christ Superstar (woohoo!) I might be too bushed to type. Speaking of typing. I had a nasty fight with NFS again tonight … it won. I have 5 different directories I’m mounting but for some reason, one of them is coming up as I don’t have permission to view the contents on the client machine. GRRR!
I’m very much enjoying the company of liz4jc4ever when I get to see her at work. She seems to think that she’s bugging me, but it’s a welcome break. It’s not that I don’t like my coworkers … some of them just get on my nerves at time. It doesn’t help that things haven’t been functioning all that well at work of late since we’ve converted to a new network account management system.
I think beldurnik is rather mellow right now. At least he seemed that way when I talked to him earlier this evening. He was working on his FreeBSD project and was commenting on how he hoped people weren’t mis-interpreting his latest posting. I am glad things are well with him and czar_sonja. Off to dreamland!
Well, another weekend down. I intended to get more done this weekend, but I generally felt like crap for most of it. Today I managed to NFS mount some shares from my fileserver to my G4 workstation. I tried accomplishing the same to my laptop tonight, but couldn’t get it to work … didn’t try real hard though. I’ll compare configurations tomorrow night I guess. It will come in handy more on the laptop I think since I’m always putting it to sleep and NFS mounts don’t drop when you do that.
I was thinking tonight at the end of the Super Bowl that it’d be nice to see Bon Jovi in concert. Unfortunately while they’re going to be in St. Paul next month, it’s already too late for tickets (unless I want to spend $160). Oh well. I’ll have to live with my BJ CDs.
I’ve been thinking I should try doing a movie night again one of these weekends.. of the variety where I borrow a projector from work and show a movie on the wall. Not sure what movies would be good to show though. Not sure who I’d have for company either. One thing is for sure … I need to get some serious house cleaning done this week.. probably tomorrow night being as I’m going to Minneapolis on Tuesday night. Wow that’s coming up fast. I think I’d like to try and do my taxes this week and get them out of the way now that I have all the forms I need. Novel thought … they actually have my current address on them this time! This means I can probably e-File or phone-file or whatever.
If it’s warm enough, I should finish the sofa for Liz and QT. I’m converting a sofa-sleeper into a regular sofa for their residence hall room. I find this a little amusing because it’s the same sofa sleeper I had in my reshall room when I went to school there and has moved around with me. I took the sleeper frame out a few weeks ago so we could stick some 2x4s and some plywood in to support the cushions. I was thinking today that I could probably put hinges on the plywood so they could lift it and store things on it … but not sure if the hinges would even be necessary for that.
I think I ought to get together with beldurnik this week. He and I need to catch up on stuff. He seems quite disheartened about work lately. I can identify with this … work hasn’t been all that pleasant for me lately, though last week wasn’t too bad, as we were able to complete our hire of a position I’ll be working closely with. Anyway … bedtime for me. My cozy bed is calling me.
Well, my weekend is off to a slow start. I don’t anticipate it getting much faster though. Suits me fine. I did some grocery shopping tonight and bought some more dishes so when I have friends over we have something to eat on. Seems like a good idea, right?
I intended to get some web work done today. I didn’t get much done. I played a bit with some website synchronization software so I can do development at home more easily, but I couldn’t convince it to ignore some files that I didn’t want uploaded. It didn’t seem to be working right anyway. I got the Dance Theatre video archive linked up properly though. Tomorrow I should start work on the photos for that concert. For anybody interested, this year’s concert will be running April 1-5th.
I hope we get some real snow this week. This piddly dusting crap is ticking me off. There isn’t even enough for me to have fun with the truck! It’s supposed to warm up with the warm front that’s moving in our direction, so hopefully it brings some decent snow with it.
I bought tickets to the Elton John & Billy Joel concert at the Xcel Energy Center in April. I’m looking forward to going with liz4jc4ever. They’re definitely not the best seats in the house as they’re in the upper deck, but I didn’t want to pay $100 to see the concert. The $45 tickets are already all sold out.
On this day 20 yrs ago … personal computing was changed forever … the Apple Macintosh 128K was released.
