Year: 2003

I got my “new toys” today: four brand new Shuttle SK41G small-form-factor computers, and all the little trinkets that go inside. These puppies are awesome little silver boxes, less than half the size of a standard desktop system, and they really pack a wallop.

So I spent a couple of hours putting everything together, and basked in the soft blue glow of the power-on LED and the translucent front panel. Tomorrow I’ll actually set everything up, and then (sadly) they’ll be shipped off to Boulder to act as my new faster-better-stronger web and database servers.

Now if I can just think of an excuse to get one for the house…

The kids’ current favorite song (which means it’s what they listen to over and over and over):

Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”

Go figure.

Wow, I must really be a geek.

Today I installed the latest version of the KDE window manager, and it’s really really sweet. It has a whole new look, lots of nifty features (the kind that make you say, “now why didn’t they think of that a year ago?”), and a bucketload of functionality. But only a geek would really get excited about a new window manager, right?

Now that I have ten (count ’em, ten) desktops running, and I switch between them every few minutes, I can’t imagine why I’d ever want to run boring old crummy crashy Windows again…

It’s 2:09 in the morning. I’m still working.

Yeesh.

Continuing our five- or six-year tradition, Laralee and I watched “Groundhog Day” once again to celebrate the momentous holiday. What a great movie… very funny, and despite the obvious humorous slant of the plot it has a good message at heart.

One wonders, though, how in the world Groundhog Day got started. Is it purely an American holiday? Who came up with the notion that a large rodent seeing its shadow would indicate another month of winter? It boggles the mind.

Holy cow, after about two years of procrastination (coupled with guilt) I finally got around to updating my web site. The content is largely the same, but now it’s linked to my online journal and if things go well I’ll be updating photos and other stuff to keep it “fresh”.

It’s about time.

… So I’m helping a client (well, actually a client of a client) set up a web site on a new server. I talked directly with the service provider so I could get the technical lowdown about what the server supports and so on. My favorite answer was when I asked him about the type of server:

Me: “So this is a Unix server, right?”
Him: “Yes sir.”
Me: “What kind, exactly? Sun, Linux, SGI?”
Him: “It’s Unix.”
Me: “I know; what operating system?”
Him: “One moment.”
(long pause while he consults with the IT gurus)
Him: “Sir, it’s a Unix system. We support all your Unix software.”

Uhh…

It would be funny if it wasn’t so painful.

This afternoon I was hacking away, furiously trying to write some code to help a client import database files into his web system. Smoke flew from the keys as I slapped out PHP– I was in a hurry because he was waiting to upload his data.

The phone rang, and it was another client who said she needed me to make some changes to the reports her web app generates. She was running financial reports, trying to plan next year’s budget, and she needed those numbers by the close of the day so she could submit the budget.

As I was talking to her, I got an e-mail from a third client who had just learned that an e-mail was going to be sent to 20,000 people this evening, inviting them to go to her web site. I needed to put some new stuff on a certain page so they could access it, and (you guessed it) it had to be done right away before 20,000 people got sent to the wrong place.

Man, I wanted to scream…

Tonight, just before dinner, Alex peeked in the oven to see what we were having. We’d been at parent-teacher conferences, which went a little long, so Laralee had commented that maybe the dinner would be burned.

Alex looked inside and yelled out, “Whoa, those potatoes are really burned all right! One of them is so burned that it changed shape and looks all yucky!”

It was a sweet potato.

I’m about to head out to play some volleyball. I haven’t played for over a year (couldn’t find a league team that needed an extra player) so I’m excited to be back in the game.

A couple friends of mine invited me along, but I’m a little hesitant because they invited me after telling me how disappointed they are in the team and how the captain is a bit strange. Whee– that’s inspirational!

Hopefully it’ll be fun nonetheless, and I’ll be able to meet up with some people who might provide me a way to get back into the scene…