There were emails waiting for me when I woke up this morning so work began early for me. A bit before 6:30 actually. I worked solidly until after 8:00 when I finally made an attempt to get into the shower and really start the day.
This morning ended up being completely crazy and I didn’t get a chance to leave the house until after 1:30 in the afternoon! I hadn’t gotten a chance to have breakfast or lunch so I stopped at the Omega Diner on my way to work and grabbed a very late lunch. They had a crab cakes with baked mac and cheese lunch special so I got that. It came with seafood bisque and was quite the meal. It was so much of a meal that I was able to take half of it home with me. It came with rice pudding too. Quite the meal. That should suffice for my dinner as well.
I thought that traffic was going to be great by the time that I actually got on the road to go into the office. But what do I know? The weekend traffic had started and it was crazy trying to get to work. I can’t believe how many people travel on holiday weekends. What is wrong with people? Anytime is better to travel than a holiday weekend.
It was after three when I finally got into the office in Warren. I had done so much work this morning that there really wasn’t that much to do once I got there. But I have projects that are going on after hours and I didn’t want to try to do them from home so that is why I still came in after having worked from home all morning.
I talked to Dominica tonight and she said that she and Francesca decided to leave tonight instead of tomorrow. She thought that they might be on the road as early as 8:00 but would probably not be leaving until closer to 10:00. That will make for a really long drive. At least there are two of them.
I am in a “want to play a video game” mood. And I mean really play a realy good game. The kind of game that you can really get engrossed in. I haven’t found one of those in a really long time. Since I don’t have any games with me I am not very likely to take that course of action but it is what I want to do. I might convince myself to swing into Walmart and see if they have a cheap copy of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. It is the only good looking RPG to come out over the last few years that interested me in the least. Jeremy had it and played it and liked it. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is out now and I have heard nothing but rave reviews about it but it is is still $50 and I am sure not going to be paying that. I am hoping that Morrowind might be closer to $10 or maybe $15. That wouldn’t be so bad. I know that I won’t play it all that much. I have learned that lesson. But sometimes I just need a game to play.
Maybe I will just play something free. Free is always good. I like free. In fact, I think that I may love free. Can anyone tell that I am exhausted? It is all I can do to stay awake. The whole day was just so busy then I had a big lunch and now I sit in a warm office with nothing going on. Ugh.
Speaking of free games: Anyone interested in a completely off the wall old-school style graphical adventure game should check out Five Days A Stranger by Ben Croshaw. I played that one a year or two ago and was very happy with it. It isn’t so big of a game that you get overwhelmed by it and it has some really good puzzles and stuff too. Very well done for a single person game team. Ben made several other games as well but I have not played any of them yet. Maybe that will be a project for this weekend. There is a sequel to Five Days called Seven Days A Skeptic and I want to play through that one some day.
PCWorld has compiled their list of the twenty five worst tech products of all time (also known as The Apple Store catalogue!) It is always fun to go through and reminisce about horrible products. Especially when you know so many people who bought them and didn’t buy any yourself. I checked the entire list and I have never purchased any item in the entire list including the (dis)honorable mentions. I have owned Internet Explorer 6 but only because it came with other products that I bought but has always been immediatly replaced with Firefox or Opera or something safer. But I know a lot of people who have bought a lot of these products. If you pay close attention I think that you will find that it is generally the same people who guy most of these products.
At 7:00 most of the lights turned off in the office and it became a lot more pleasant place to work. I have my new assignment now. Starting on Tuesday of next week (which is the next bank working day) I am starting work at 4:00 am for the indefinite future. Now sure, you may think that starting at 4:00 in the morning is awfully early, but I will be driving with practically no traffic at all and I will be able to have lunch with Dominica almost every day. Of course, she isn’t going to be here all next week so I will be doing the early shift alone. But I think that I am going to enjoy the early shift a lot more than my current shift. I will get out of work and still have a day to look forward to. And the office will be dark and quiet for half of my day. I am looking forward to the change.
I had hoped that I just might manage to get wrapped up at the office before it got too late but that didn’t end up panning out. (Has anyone ever thought about the etymology of “panning out”? It obviously refers to the process of panning for gold and when you didn’t get any the gold didn’t “pan out”.) I did a quick search on pan out and the first thing that I found supported my theory. The online etymology dictionary backed me up as well. And you all think I am crazy when I say where words come from.
Speaking of me being crazy – everyone made fun of me for reading books like “The Professor and the Madman” and “The Meaning of Everything” both of which are histories of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Well Dominica got hooked on them and borrowed them both from me. So there. She also borrowed my “Brave New World”. Who would have guessed?
I managed to read all of the magazines that I had with me while I was stranded at work this evening. Did you know that the modern verb “to strand” was not used in English until 1837? It comes from the German meaning shore or occassionaly river bank. So the Strand in London is the road on the river bank.
I treated myself to some chips to keep my going. I ended up being at work very late. At 10:00, I discovered, still more lights turn off. It is by no means dark; you would never walk into anything on accident. But it is definitely not bright by any means. Just a little before 10:00 we got a thunderstorm out here in Northern Jersey. Dad said that it was raining in Pavilion several hours ago so this must be that storm moved on.
I was the last systems admin left in the building as far as I could tell. I think the last person besides me left around 8:30 or maybe 9:00. This place gets pretty lonely after that. There is still security and housekeeping but they aren’t very lively.
It was 10:15 when I finally got the chance to call for the check out of my work. Once everything gets checked out then I can go home. That is sixteen hours from when I first started working this morning. That is what we used to call a “double”. Now it is just the way it is.
I called Dominica while I was waiting for my check out at almost 10:30 and they were still busy packing the truck! So much for leaving nice and early. Boy are they going to be tired. Packing really takes the energy right out of you. I had packing just before having to drive. So much better to be packed ahead of time so that you can leave whenever you have the energy to be on the road.
For those who didn’t catch the news today: after years of Andy and I telling everyone that Norton’s Systemworks tools were as bad as a virus we were finally proved right. It has been reveiled that Systemworks itself has been installing rootkits (one of the most severe and unetherical forms of malicious software) in order to get control of the computer beyond the level that it would normally be allowed. Systemworks has been listed by a number of security agencies finally. None of this would have happened if anyone would have just listened to us!
It was midnight by the time we wrapped up at the office and I still have to work on this more tomorrow. Not likely much tomorrow but some. I am going to go ahead and post to SGL before I leave the office so that I don’t have to keep editing when I get home and so I don’t forget to do it tomorrow morning because I know that I will. Thus begins my three day lonely weekend.