March 11, 2003

Boy was I glad to have been able to get a full night’s sleep last night, I really needed it. I checked out of the hotel this morning and said my goodbyes since this is the last day that I will be staying at the hotel – I have been practically living there for over a month now. The hotel has really come to feel like my home away from home already. I went to work but we really didn’t have anything that we needed to do today so I managed to spend most of the day just surfing on the web. I managed to get a lot of research in and got to send out a ton of emails. It was nice to get to spend my last day just relaxing. I think we only installed one computer between the three of us all day.

At lunch, Eugene drove me out to Pep Boys and I got the headlight fixed on my car and inspected. So that is at least taken care of. That was a bit of a pain.

After finishing up at Schenectady Int’l, I drove over to Tony and Sharon’s and worked for an hour or two over there on the computer before hitting the road to head for home. On the ride to Ithaca I listened to most of the rest of Sue Grafton’s “P is for Peril.” I listened to “N is for Noose” last week while driving to and from Schenectady. N was okay but not one of the highlights of the series. P is really good so far. I am almost done, only about thirty minutes left to go out of six hours. So I am anxious to get it finished.

When I arrived home I had lots of stuff that had come in the mail. I got a package from my aunt that I was waiting for, I received the latest issue of Linux Magazine (my favorite rag) and I got my own copy of Windows XP Professional. I am really excited about getting a copy of XP Pro, not because I really like XP (it is ok, probably better than Windows 2000 but not really very much different,) but because this represents the last piece of illegal software that I have. As of now, all of my software is totally legal which is more than pretty much anyone I have ever met can say. I have always felt bad that I had illegal copies of software and I have been trying hard for a long time to get away from that. It is hard because you get used to having it and not having to pay for it (for those of you who think you aren’t doing this… ask yourself if you actually bought the operating system you are running or the office suite that you use or the games that you play… I bet you will think of something. Most likely it will be the music you downloaded.) The best solution is to switch to software that somebody made for free so that you don’t have to steal software from other people. That is what I did for most of everything that I had. I am running Linux or something else free on every computer except my laptop (which has Windows XP Pro pre-installed on it) and now my main desktop which dual-boots to both Linux and XP. Because of the work that I do, I just can’t totally get away from having a Windows machine around for testing and learning.

So, I will be spending a lot of time this week getting my computer running as I move from Windows 2000 Pro to Windows XP Pro and from Suse 8.0 to 8.1. I have it easier than Loopy did a few weeks ago, though, because of the hardware setup that I have.

This coming Friday, I have an interview with a company here in Ithaca. How funny that I get an interview here in Ithaca finally after all this time right when we are pretty sure that we are going to try moving back to the Rochester area. It is like there is a big huge joke going on about us trying to decide where to live. As soon as we think we know what we are going to do, something new happens pushing us towards either Rochester or Ithaca. Ha ha. I’m not laughing.

Tomorrow, Eric and I have a meeting in Binghamton with Lourdes Hospital at 1:00pm. So, Eric is headed up this way and will be here around 10am so that we can get ready for the meeting. We have to have a strategy session with John on the phone before the meeting and we have to get all dressed up again. We have been trying to have this meeting with them since something like October and just one thing or another has come up and it has been pushed off for forever. So we are really glad to finally be having it. I really need to pick up a pair of suspenders for my suit that match. I have been forgetting about doing that for forever now. I will probably run out this morning to get some. Loopy is working today in Auburn (he worked in Ithaca yesterday) and needs to borrow Min’s car because his might have bad wheel bearings. So, I am driving Min to work and Loopy is picking her up from work later and he is taking her car to Auburn.

Loopy had a rockin’ interview with IBM in Rochester just yesterday and it is looking really positive for him to be working up there very soon doing Crystal Reports development. Not the most exciting work in the world but at this point, any work is pretty exciting.

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