I’ve managed to stave off my t-shirt urges for a while now, but I finally gave in yesterday and bought this:
Seriously, how sweet is that? Plus, it’s designed by Cory Doctorow. You know, my wife thinks I’d marry Wil Wheaton if given the chance but it’s not really true. My only man crush is on Cory Doctorow. Heh. Actually, that’s not true. I just want to be him when I grow up. Or at least as cool as he is.
Waradwen is at level 35 as of this morning, and Emma yelled at me for playing for the first time this weekend. Well, she was frustrated after sitting for an hour at Walgreen’s, only to find out they didn’t have one of the meds (and didn’t bother to tell her until *after* they had filled the other), and snapped a little.
My goal for this week is 40 and a mount. We’ll see how that goes. Four levels and 100 gold in a week? Hmmm…good thing Emma’s going to her conference this week…
As I may or may not have blogged previously, my in-laws have essentially moved out of town for the next few months. My father-in-law is working for the next three months in Akron, OH and my mother-in-law, who has just retired, is taking a long vacation. We’re not sure when she’ll be back, other than it’ll be before Thanksgiving. They’re planning to be away so much that they’ve moved the cat up to Akron to live with Vince.
Since they’re going to be gone for so long, they allegedly had hired a housesitter, someone from Abby’s work, to stay in the house and to keep Emma and I from having to get the mail, etc. daily. Actually, I think the mail is being forwarded, but that’s beside the point. I say allegedly because neither Emma nor I have seen any evidence of this housesitter actually being at the house. Neither of us have seen a strange car in the driveway and I never saw anybody at the house in all the hours I’ve spent working on the computer systems. I was even there after 9 one night, with no sign of anybody else being there.
Emma and I stopped by the house on Saturday morning after breakfast, because the router was acting flakey and Vince asked us (me) to reset it, when we had a chance. We stop in about noon and there’s still nobody there. This time, however, we notice that the house is freezing (the A/C was set really low) and Emma notices a bunch of odd food in the fridge. “My crazy mother,” she exclaims, “has left a loaf of bread on the counter and some really odd things in the fridge. Like lettuce. There’s no way that this isn’t going bad before she comes home. How crazy.” I may be paraphrasing a little there, but that’s the gist. And the bread isn’t even a kind that Abby would buy, which makes it exceptionally odd, given that we don’t think anybody’s living in the house. So we fix the router, make sure the computer is back online, and take the bread and a few Diet Cokes with us when we leave. The bread was going to go bad! At least it could go feed the chickens, right?
Yesterday morning, after breakfast and errands, we drove by the house again. This time an outside light was on. One that was distinctly not on when we left. Whoops. So now we’ve stolen someone’s bread (and eaten some, by that point in time) and Diet Cokes. More than just one or two…I had a couple when I was working late on the computer and we took a couple with us when we left and I think we split another one when we were resetting the router… At any rate, we’ve now stolen a bunch of this poor stranger’s food. What should we do?
I think that we’re going to replace the food, but be funny about it. We’re going to replace the loaf of bread with another, different kind. Something similar, but not the same. It was white bread, so I thought we’d leave some multigrain. Or maybe a box of crackers. And we’ll leave a two-liter of soda in the fridge. That’d be funny, right? Sheesh. We feel pretty bad.
My father-in-law is a computer engineer (embedded systems design) and runs his corporate servers (web, email, etc.) from his house, using a static IP address and a DSL connection. For the next three months, however, he is living and working in Akron, OH, so isn’t around to maintain the system. Because he’s sure that the system will go down at some point in the next three months — power outage, hurricane, whatever — and because he doesn’t want to burden anyone (namely me) with having to maintain the system — it’s an older Sun and I’m certainly not that good at Solaris…I can boot it up and check simple things, but that’s about it — he decided to buy colo service from his ISP, atlantic.net. (I’m not going to link them out of frustration, which will be explained in a few moments) It costs more than renting a dedicated server, but it’s far easier to set up. All someone has to do is to physically move the machine from his house to their data center, less than two miles north. Enter me.
He arranged all of the details of the move with someone at atlantic.net and my job last night was to shut down the machine, drive it to their data center, and bring it back up. Not a big deal. In fact, he even shut it down remotely, so that part of the job was taken care of. I go over to the house about 7:40 last night and make sure the system is down, then call the 800-number for atlantic.net to let them know I’m coming over. The data center is open 24/7, but it’s after normal business hours so I figured I’d just make sure someone was there and available. No problem. The engineer I talked to was very friendly and helpful, knew about the transfer, and all was well. “Do you know where we’re located,” he asked me as we were concluding our conversation. “I sure do,” I overconfidently replied, since we had done this move at least once before, after all of the hurricanes a few years ago. I lug the box out to the car, grab a keyboard, and hit the road.
Five minutes later, I’m at the building. Sure enough, the atlantic.net logo is still on the building sign, so all systems are go. The engineer said that there’d be a call box I’d have to use to call them, and they’d come down and escort me in. No problem. Well, no problem until I can’t find a call box. As the primary part of the building is a bank, I don’t want to act too suspicious by rattling all of the exterior doors so I call the engineer back. “No problem. I’ll come down and let you in. Are you at the main entrance?”
“I guess so. I’m by the drive-through.”
“Be right down.”
Five minutes later, nobody has shown up. My phone rings. “I just went downstairs and didn’t see you. Where are you again?”
“By the entrance,” I reply, getting rather concerned at this point. “You’re still in the bank building, right?”
“The what? Bank building? What street are you on?”
“13th street.”
“13th? No, we’re out on Kennedy Boulevard.” Kennedy Boulevard? There’s no Kennedy Boulevard in Gainesville. “You must be somewhere downtown.”
“Not really,” I reply, warily. “Where are you again?”
“13th street? You must be in downtown Orlando…”
“Um, no. I’m in Gainesville.” D’oh.
So, you see, it turns out that they had closed the Gainesville data center “years ago,” and apparently the salesman my father-in-law talked to neglected to mention that detail, and either didn’t hear or ignored him when he said that he’d like to colo in Gainesville. How terrible! How amusing now, after the fact, but how frustrating!
I call my father-in-law back and explain to him the problem, then drive the machine back to their house. He’s frustrated, I’m frustrated. Not terribly fun. I manage to get the box back to the house and running — not before a fsck had to be run, naturally — and we were eventually back online. He got concerned while I was running the check that he couldn’t ping the router, so he was convinced that the whole system was shot. Somehow, magically, it repaired itself once Timucuan, the server, came back online, but the end of the story is that he’s frustrated with and angry at atlantic.net and I’ve wasted the evening shlepping the Sun box around town. Which is not light, I might add. Oh well. It seemed like a good plan, but I really should have learned that nothing goes easily when it comes to his computer system. Nothing is quite as straightforward as it ever seems it should be.
Emma thought the story was very funny, incidentally, when I finally got home. “Why,” I asked her, “do I ever think that working on his computer is going to be as easy as it sounds?”
“Because you’re gullible?” 
I wonder if I’m coming down with a cold or something. I slept like ten hours last night and think I could go sleep for another ten. Well, two, at the very least. I woke up in the middle of the night last night with a headache and sore throat, too, which is what got me starting thinking along this line, but I feel fine today, other than wanting to sleep. Maybe I need more caffeine.
Emma and I had breakfast this morning at our favorite place, the 43rd Street Deli on 13th Street. We love going out to breakfast and are really smitten with the Deli. We’ve been going regularly for a few years now so we know most of the staff and they know who we are. Like actually know our names, not just that I’m “Diet-Coke-no-ice guy.” It’s sort of an odd set of relationships, though. I mean, we’re friendly with all of the people there but isn’t that a slightly weird wall to breach? I like the people there, I really do, and think I’d like to hang out with them *outside* of either of our work environments, but it still makes me feel a little hinky. Ah, it probably doesn’t matter. I’m too much of an antisocial bum (but not an antisocialist, which is what I first thought to type…that’s not quite the same thing; maybe I’m an antisocialite?) to ever do anything about it.
Work has been going reasonably well the past few weeks. Our high school student is finishing her time in the lab this week — this is her last full day, in fact — and it’s been nice having her here. Hopefully we’ve managed to keep her both entertained and interested in science. She claims we have and she says she has had a good time, so I’ll just have to take her word for it, eh? I do regret that we haven’t been able to get her any solid, conclusive data, but that’s Science. We’re definitely continuing the project she’s been working on — it’s our primary research goal on the Imprinting side of the lab — so we should be able to flesh out what she’s started over the next month or so. We actually need to get a manuscript together pretty soon centered around her project, so we’ll have to get some conclusive data soon. Tom’s at a Prader-Willi research conference this week talking about what we’ve found so far which makes this fair game for everybody else to duplicate our work and possibly publish it before we do. Tom’s goal is to have a manuscript ready to submit by mid-August at the latest. We have an ideal manuscript in mind but I doubt that we’ll get all of the data ready by then, so we’ll just have to submit what we have and keep working on the rest. Better two smaller manuscripts than trying for one really good one and getting scooped.
Okay, enough. Lunchtime. Dare I play a little WoW while I eat lunch? I dinged 33 last night and am hoping to hit 40 before the weekend is up. I think I just might…
I never got around to posting this yesterday. I took the picture yesterday morning, though, so I hope it still counts. Isn’t the red hoodie silly? I’m not sure that the additional 33 points of armor are worth how silly it makes me look. Heh.
As of late last night, I’m about a raptor or two away from level 33. I’ve gotten passed by my friend’s toon, though, so I need to spend some serious time in-game.
Emma and I fixed our lawn mower this weekend, with the help and guidance of our friend Hank. The poor mower had been neglected over the past year or so, so Hank showed us how to open it up and where (and how) to clean it, and she’s running like a champ now. Woo! It’s very satisfying, reviving a piece of machinery. It had been a couple of months since we last mowed the lawn, which was threatening to engulf the house. The grass was so high, in fact, that it was covering Emma’s ankle tattoo completely:
The yard looks much nicer now, after we cleaned and mowed. I did most of the mowing and Emma played Destructor, Slayer of Weeds and Vines. The next project is to finish moving all of the debris to the curb before Thursday. Oy…
Overall the house is looking very nice, I think. The cucumber plants have succumbed to the heat and drought, which is a little sad, but the tomatoes are persevering. I need to remember to start germinating the plants earlier next year so it doesn’t take quite so long to start producing fruit. Oh, and transfer them out of the germinating tray at the right time, so they don’t get stunted. That’d probably be more useful.
Emma and I went and saw the new Harry Potter movie last night and loved it. We thought it was a lot of fun and very well paced with some great effects and excellent casting. Dolores Umbridge was perfect, I thought, just as I imagined her. Emma thought that the Veil was just right, too, appearing as she imagined it. My only minor quibble is that I thought it was just a little bit too short. I felt like we were — if you’ll pardon the bad analogy — skimming like a stone across the book, hitting the highlights for certain, but missing a lot of the depth. Wait…I can’t believe I just called a Harry Potter book “deep.” Next thing you know we’ll be eating dinner at Applebee’s and watching “Deal or No Deal” every night on the TV. And we did have dinner at Applebee’s the other night! Ack! I draw the line at “Deal or No Deal,” though. Sheesh.
At any rate, the pace of the movie left me thinking: If you hadn’t read the book, or known much of the plot going in, how much sense would the movie make? The girl sitting behind us had trouble following the plot, but I think that she was just stupid and not necessarily the best candidate. I probably shouldn’t pass judgment, because I know that I am not the best at following plots sometimes, but still.
This makes three good movies that we’ve seen in the theaters in the past couple of weeks. We saw Die Hard 4 (whatever) and also really enjoyed it. Again, not Great Art, but a lot of fun and certainly worth the price of admission. Lots of ’splosions, and what more do you want from a summer movie? For our anniversary, Emma and I went and saw Ratatouille, which was excellent. Just wonderful. Fun and enchanting and funny and touching and everything a good Pixar movie is. The short before the movie was great, also, one of the best I’ve seen, and I’m already excited about next year’s release after seeing a 30-second clip. We had a great time.
Now to the other half of my title. Our A/C died sometime on Sunday. Can I tell you how much it sucks not having an A/C in Florida? In July? Ugh. It started getting warm on Sunday afternoon and it was in the 80’s (at least) by the time we went to bed Sunday. Last night we got clever and slept in “Susy’s Room,” the converted garage with an independent A/C, but the rest of the house is still pretty warm. We can open the front door and the door to the breezeway and turn on the attic fan, but it only does so much. I’ve got an appointment with a repairman between 3 and 5 this afternoon. Hopefully it’ll be something minor but I doubt it. The fan outdoors is still working and the fan in the air handler seems to be working, but the air that it’s blowing isn’t cold. Maybe the condenser? Beats me. I’m not nearly as mechanical as I wish I were.
A quick post to let everyone know I’m not dead. I did almost nothing productive this weekend which was nice at the time but I’m now regretting. Too much stuff to do, not enough time to do it. I had a lot of fun playing WoW, though, of course.
I’ll write more in a few hours, after I get a couple of digestions started here at the lab. Before I leave, though, I’ll give you today’s Monday Morning Screenshot. The only toon I’ve played this week for any serious amount of time is Waradwen, so here he is standing outside of the Wailing Caverns. My plan for this evening is to run through there a time or two, ’cause I need to make some money, yo! I went a little nutty this weekend and bought some nice alchemy recipes, so the ol’ moneybag is a little light this morning. Anyway. Off to work to earn my real people-money.
Greetings, friends. I know I said I’d write a real post yesterday, but clearly it didn’t happen. Hopefully this will start to make it up to you.
Today is Emma and my fifth anniversary which amazes me every time I think about it. Five years? Really? That’s like half a decade! That’s longer than high school! How bizarre. I mean, I’m thrilled and don’t think that I could be where I am now without her support and occasional kicks in the pants, but I’m still having a little dysmorphia (dyschronia?) when I think that we’ve been married for five years already. Yay us!
We’re not doing a lot to celebrate other than going out to eat. We’ve decided that the recent purchase of a new car is our anniversary present to each other, because everybody knows that the fifth anniversary is traditionally rubber and gas. Heh. We went out to breakfast this morning at our favorite breakfast place, the 43rd Street Deli on 13th Street, and I think we’re going to go out to the Top for dinner tonight. Maybe we’ll just eat at home, though, ’cause we’re lame like that. 
On a completely different line of conversation, I’ve been getting a ton of hits to my blog the past 48 hours. So, welcome, all of you visitors. Hopefully you’ll enjoy what you find here and will come back again from time to time. By a “ton” of hits, all I mean is that my numbers have gone up about five times. I typically see about 10-ish hits per day (not including my own), but yesterday I had 70 hits and today I’m over 50 already. How odd. I wonder if I’ve recently bumped up a little in the Google search results or something. *shrug* Hopefully I’ll keep you guys entertained enough to come back.
You know what it is? I’ll bet it’s because I posted that picture of my friend’s avatar in those gaudy, hot pants. That must be it. Heh. Apparently WoW pr0n sells.
Enough typing for now. I’m off to do some more work and then we’re allegedly having lab meeting today, for the first time in a month. I’ll believe it when I see it.
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