journaling: enabled

Thank goodness it’s Friday. Work was really getting to me this week. Big projects galore and I don’t feel I have enough time to work on them. LDAP … new website … computer lab updates. … oh yeah, and I’m supposed to supervise technicians doing a campus-wide computer inventory. Yay! (attempts to pull remainder of hair on head out).
I mowed lawn again tonight. This was after I actually figured out how to change the oil in the mower. This is the first time I’ve had to deal with an oil plug that you needed to insert something square into to get it to turn (most plugs have squares that stick out rather than in). I discovered that a 3/8″ (or was it 1/2?) socket extension fit into it rather nicely. My lawnmower is now happy ‘cuz it has new oil and I cleaned all the crap off the bottom of it (it was growing spores!)
I had a chat with my neighbor Greg. He’s a nice fellow. I might borrow his truck tomorrow afternoon and take care of some branches and grass clippings from a few weeks ago. Apparently it’s “Good Neighbor Days” in Roberts this weekend. I had forgotten about that. We got on the subject of tractor pulls … seems he enjoys them. He mentioned that Grantsburg has lawnmower drag races. Personally, I think someone who drives a lawnmower (stock steering and tires) at 87 miles per hour is just a bit off their rocker. Greg said alcohol is generally a contributing factor in having the balls th drive something like that. It’s tempting to go to the NTPA Grand National pull in Tomah June 21-23. Anybody interested in going? More info at the website.
I think I might actually be in bed by 10:30 tonight. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it just means that I have no life since my angel (Liz love, that’s you) is not here.

Argh! I can never make it to bed before 10:30 lately. Tonight I guess this is due to dishes needing to be done (other household members didn’t do them). I guess that wouldn’t have been *too* bad ‘cept I drove to Memonomie this evening and bought a grill. Will fire that up next week (don’t have reason to this weekend since I’m the only one here).
I got my license plates for my truck today … DGTLSLK. I also gave up removing the broken off screw for the rear plate. I had the Vise-Grips clamped on it hard enough to flatten the end of the screw, but all I accomplished when I tried to turn was breaking off a chunk of the screw! If less was sticking out, I’d drill it out, but I don’t thinks that’s an option at the moment.
Work was okay today. I ran my last Computer Support Services team meeting for a while (passed team leadership to someone else after having had it for 2 yrs). We also had a meeting to start planning our campus-wide computer inventory. Suffice it to say we’re going to visit and boot up a lot of computers this summer. Hopefully we won’t have to do it again for a while though. I’m not real sure what happened to the remainder of the afternoon. I think a lot of it was spent trying to get a 20MB hard drive from a Mac SE to work with a newer computer so I can burn the content onto CD. The inside of the SE was FILTHY! The owner must have been a smoker because the inside of the case and the motherboard and video tube was coated with at least 1/8th of an inch of tobacco dust. Ugh it stunk.
Not sure what I’m going to do this weekend. It will probably include a fair amount of sleeping, though I’d like to do something outside on Saturday since it’s supposed to be nice. Maybe I’ll work on my flower garden, even though I hate yard work. I need to get a tan though ‘cuz feel too pale.
My good friend William is supposed to be up in the area this weekend. He’s working on his doctorate in nuclear physics at Kent State University. I am pretty sure that I’ll never have a doctorate in anything … but who knows.
It’s past my bedtime … time to reaquaint myself with my pillow.

iJournal kicks butt. This new version has spell-checking … I think that would come in handy for beldurnik. Not that his spelling doesn’t add a little something to his posts. This version also keeps track of who I have on my friends list … which reminded me that galatea still has my internal Zip drive.
I’m going to try and get my Sun Indy workstation up and running with Debian Linux. It has Irix (5.3?) on it right now … which kinda sucks because I can’t do much with it. It would be different if I actually had install disks for Irix, but I don’t. Hmm … guess I didn’t search eBay for those. I guess I could try that too. I need to get a new floptical drive for the darn thing so I can boot off the Linux install floppy. I took the existing drive out and cleaned it, but it appears to have a mechanical failure and won’t accept disks.
I took my truck into the Ford dealership in Hudson this afternoon to get an estimate on repairs (a deer tried to run me off the road about 2 weeks ago) and it looks like it’ll be in the shop 6/16 – 6/21. I felt really stupid ‘cuz one of the things that was wrong was my right front turn signal didn’t work. It turned out to be the bulb. I had replaced the parking light instead of the turn-signal. Grumble. I don’t feel too terrible though, since we couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the old bulb (it looks perfectly intact).
Time for bed … I had been aiming for being in bed by 10:00 … guess that didn’t happen so I will try to make up for it.

Yay … it’s summer. Okay, most people don’t realize that means a butt-load of work for me ‘cuz of large project at work that would disrupt normal academic year operations. Things like a campus-wide computer inventory … new email system … new computer lab hardware … ugh. Maybe some problems will actually be fixed. And some problems are definitely going away (modem pool on July 1).
I’m not sure what sort of house projects I’ll be doing this summer (if any). A deer decided to try to run me off the road a bit over a week ago. It ultimately succeeded ‘cuz I had to check and see what the hell it did to the side of my truck. I haven’t gotten any estimates but suffice it to say I’m glad I have full-coverage auto insurance on it. Even so it’s going to put a dent in my financial situation for a while.
My dear, loving Elizabeth has left for the summer. I’ll see her next on the 28th … we’re going to see Stars on Ice at the Target Center. Not sure if I’m willing to drive down to Madison on the 29th for Rhythm & Boom (fireworks & music), but it’s definitely an idea. We spent the weekend together … mostly with her family down by Easton, WI (they have a 40 acre camp down there). It was cool … being lazy and doing not much of anything, though I do wish I had brought my copy of the Silmarillion along to read and occupy time. I did decide it’s a fun place to go biking … they have ATV trails that are also fun on bike (though the hills are basically un-navigable on two wheels with all the rocks and sand).
I have a confession to make … I killed a baby bunny rabbit last night. It was hiding in the grass next to the light pole in my yard with a sibling. Unfortunately it didn’t move out of the way when I came by with the lawn mower … and got be-headed. It was horrible. I can still see it twitching. I hope I don’t have nightmares about this. The sibling ran across the street after I chased it away, but it sat under a truck tire so we chased it back into my yard. I feel horrible.
Well, it’s bedtime. I didn’t sleep well this past weekend ‘cuz Liz’s relatives snore rather loudly (we all slept in the same room). Hopefully I’ll get around to posting more often now.
– rjr … the bunny slayer

Talk about procrastination … I am helping my brother (via chatroom) file his taxes online at 10:30 on April 15th! And of course it’s his first time doing it so he has little clue what he’s doing. Dude!
I have to complain about my friends page on LiveJournal. Am I the only one who gets lousy response loading a friends page? Grumble. Many times it times out before loading.
Talk about hot weather … 90 degrees! In April!!! What the hell? I sure hope it’s not 100+ this summer very often.
I had some more comments I was going to make … but I forgot them. I made brownies tonight … home-made of course. They’re for a birthday party tomorrow morning. I hope I don’t forget them here at home.
I’m going to go to bed. Ni-ni.
Oh … I forgot. I met Beldurnik’s petite amie … she’s very nice and pretty. I think Rich is in trouble.

I’m done with Dance Theatre for the year. While part of me will miss hanging out with 2 dozen gorgeous women, I definitely won’t mind having time to do stuff again. Last night was awesome. We had many alumni at the performance and they were off the wall. The were literally dancing in the aisles at intermission. I wish I had taped it, but I didn’t have anybody to supervise the camera. I taped Friday night but determined that the autofocus wasn’t real impressive, and I lost part of the first piece due to technical problems and part of the last piece ‘cuz the battery ran out (extension cord didn’t work). Rich and his girlfriend were at the performance too.
I went to the cast party afterwords, but I was rather disappointed in it. I’m not into drinking, and most of the party goers seemed focused on how much beer they could imbibe playing drinking games. I did have a nice chat with an alum (Kari G) and she was kinda bummed out by the party too.
Hmmm … time to eat breakfast ‘cuz my tummy is hungry!!!

…. not literally though. I did some situps and pushups this morning. It felt good. I’ve been pretty energetic today, though I’m definitely winding down. I had to forage for food tonight … ended up having a peanut butter & jelly sandwich with a bagel and cream cheese to follow.
Tomorrow is Friday! TGIF! I’m really glad. I need to get some stuff done around the house. I had another encounter with my loose wiring on the porch tonight. Not good. At least it’s easy to fix.
I miss seeing Emily J. I should call her sometime.

First day back after a 4-day weekend. Kinda nice to be back at work, though I felt kinda unproductive. I got to install some beta software to try out. I can’t name what products due to NDAs, but suffice it to say that I was happy to try them out.
It’s going to be interesting the next couple of months dealing with the fallout of the budget crisis. Among other things, our dialup modem pool is going away on July 1st. Ouch. That’s going to affect a lot of people. We’re probably going to get hate mail. Oh well, but it makes sense from the $$ standpoint. I can’t say as I’ll miss helping people out with that either. Some of the problems can be a real pain in the @$$. We’re also going to phase out Novell Netware. This is basically means re-working campus file and print services for faculty and staff, as well as finding a new email and calendaring (calendar = primary problem) system for a significant chunk of them as well. I can’t say as I’ll miss GroupWise either. I hate it. I don’t quite loathe it … but it’s definitely up there on my least favourite software list.
I took my 4Runner through the car wash today to clean off the road salt from my trip so it’s nice and shiny again. I really like driving a stick-shift again. Yay!
Well, I suppose I should try and find something productive to do … maybe like playing Carmageddon 2 … oh wait … that’s not productive… ;D

Ouch. I hurt. My hip joints are sore from trying to keep myself in control going down the hill. It rocks though. Skiing is fun. I didn’t even take any breaks this afternoon, which probably doesn’t mean much being as I was only out there for about 2-1/4 hrs. I didn’t fall down and I didn’t get run over, which is always a plus.

Howdy!
Pretty nice weather we’re having, eh? Yeah, I know … I’m crazy for going to Canada on Spring Break, but in order to ski, you need snow, eh? Okay … ’nuff of the eh’s.
I drove up yesterday and it was pretty uneventful. I even managed to get those MN plates off my truck before we left and put on my temp Wisc. plate. It’s only held on by one screw, but I took some chewing gum and “secured” the other corner to the remains of a screw that the previous owner had snapped off. It seems to be holding up well, not that there’s a lot of stress on it.
I think I’m going to ski at Candy Mountain today. I’m probably a little rusty being as I haven’t skied in at least a year, so I think they have the best hills for me. I’m concerned about whether the snow will be nice for skiing on and not icy crap that you skid across when trying to stop. Stopping is kinda important, ya know?
Right now I’m thinking I’m going to try and relax tomorrow. I guess it depends on how nice the hill is and how tired/sore I get.
Yikes! I just checked the forecast and the high looks like it will be about 18. I’d like it about 7 degrees warmer. I guess it could be worse. Tomorrow is supposed to be what I consider ideal. The drive home should be nice though.