September 25, 2003: 9 Days to the Wedding!

I moved Mr. Humphreys into my bedroom last night so that he could be near me while I slept. He is a very social hamster and only seems to be happy when I am around so I figured that it would be better if during the night I was close by and that seemed to make him happier. I could hear him running in his wheel just before I fell asleep. And I figured, since Min and I sleep in shifts, it would mean that he would have a person near him for almost sixteen hours straight not including the time that I played with him before I went to bed. So maybe that will make him feel more like running around. He would appear to have become kind of lathargic over the past few days. We think that he might just be lonely.

In technology news today, OpenOffice.org went to version 1.1 RC5. One step closer to final release. I wonder what new features made their way into this release candidate. Also, Samba, the software that allows Unix machines to communicate with Windows machines by making the Windows machines think that they are Windows too, went to its official, stable 3.0 release. This is the much anticipated release including the addition of Active Directory into the feature set. So this should be pretty exciting to play with.

This morning, Dad, Eric and I have a meeting in Rochester. That is at 10:30. Then at 12:30, Danielle is coming to the city to go to the hospital and learn all there is to know about the Waste Watcher. I know, how exciting. So I will be out most of the day (read: Don’t call me today.)

I decided that I needed to know how many computers where currently in the house (or being stored at Nate’s temporarily) since I have recently been bombarded with people talking about how many computers they each had at home. Here is the breakdown (these are all working computers with all of the parts – and we threw a number out when we moved recently too): Commodores (4), Macintosh (4), Pentium MMX (2), Pentium Pro (1), Celeron (1), Pentium II (2), Pentium III (5), Athlon 4 (1) and Athlon XP (4). That is 24 currently not including my Linux handheld which is really a full computer on its own. In addition, four more Pentium III machines will be moving here in the near future.

Andy had his interview with the printer in Tonawanda today. He thought that the interview went well but they gave the job to the guy who interviewed just before him. He said that his impressive resume and experience didn’t help him since the job was totally non-technical. He went back to work at BOC and made them an offer to send him to Puerto Rico for a couple of months with a pay raise, expense account, apartment, etc. And they went for it. So he might be going down there in a couple of days (October 6.) He would be down there until the end of the year. So hopefully it will all work and he will be able to go. He is making them give him a laptop too. So that is a pretty rockin’ deal. He should know what is going on by Monday. So the big party on Saturday will be the last chance for just about everyone to see the Loopmeister until 2004!!!

Min and I booked most of our honeymoon this evening. We are going to Disney World from November 9th until November 20th. I called the Radisson in Lake Buena Vista where Eric, Mark and I stayed at when we went down there in 1997 or 1998. The hotel still had me on record after all of these years. And since Min still works in a hotel, we qualify for the same discount that I got all those years ago. So we are using that really cheap rate to extend the amount of time that we can stay down there. We are going to get to stay two extra days by staying at the Radisson for four nights and then moving to one of the expensive Disney hotels. What a great deal! After the Radisson, we are planning on going to an on property hotel in Disney. We are getting annual passes to the parks too because that saves even more money and it will let us go back down anytime we want to for practically nothing. Now that airfare is so cheap, it is easy to just go down to Florida whenever you want to. We got a great deal from Airtran, we are able to go down for just $58 and back for just $53. We compared to Jet Blue (who is currently being sued because they sold all of their customer’s private information in violation with FAA regulations) and Airtran was dramatically cheaper. We have been so happy with Airtran over the last two years. They are the best airlines ever. They are so cheap and they have the newest planes in the sky. Andy said that someone told him that they weren’t that nice but they were cheap enough to make it ok but I have flown with them more now than with any other airlines and I have to say that they are the best airlines I have ever flown with and I have flown with just about everyone except for Jet Blue.

Andy, Min and I went out to the new pizza and wings place on Main St. for some dinner. Min really wanted to go to the Omega Grill but they closed just as we got there so then we tried Pizza Hut and they were already closed so we went down to Main St. and lucky this new place is open until 3:00 am. So we tried them out and they totally rocked. Min and I got a pizza and it was amazing and Andy got a sub and it was amazing too. I don’t know the name of the place off of the top of my head but I will get it for you all so that you can go there and try it out too.

For all of you how use Trillian as you instant messaging client, there is a new Patch – .74E – that will fix the recent MSN and Yahoo! problems that we have been having. Isn’t it nice that I keep all of you up to date on all of these things?

Min has to work again tonight at the hotel. It is very lonely here when she has to go to work at night. I do manage to get a lot of work done on those nights but it is very sad. She did take off of work all next week, though, so that is good.

After I went through and did that computer inventory this morning, Eric managed to get me another computer out of the trash that I was able to pick up today. So now, in addition to the 29 computers that I listed previously, there is an additional HP Vectra PII-233. That makes 30 computers in total. And that does not include the one computer that is not mine but is currently here for maintenance. Computers, computers everywhere. I need to put in a workbench because so many machines are ripped apart so much of the time that I need a solid place just for working on them.

Nate is coming up tomorrow evening and might be crashing with us. If he does, he will be only our second house guest yet. We have been in the new house for exactly two months today and Bob has been the only person to stay with us and he only stayed one day. Of course, the place has been a disaster so that might have contributed to it. But now that the closet is done, things are starting to get better rapidly. All of the gifts from the bridal shower are still in the dining room (except for the coffee machine and the dragonfly bathroom set) because we are waiting for the wedding presents before we start trying to figure out what to do with everything. So that doesn’t help either but that isn’t for much longer. The laundry room is going to be an issue though. Right now, we are using the laundry room like another basement and it is just packed full of stuff being stored in there. In fact, there is so much stuff in there that I have no idea what is even in there! That will change tomorrow. That room needs to be emptied out because Josh is planning on bringing down his washer and dryer on Saturday (he and JoAnne just moved to a new apartment that doesn’t have washer and dryer hookups so they needed a place to store their appliances and we were happy to help out.) So that will undoubtedly create another pile of stuff that we have to deal with shortly too. So I guess that the bottom line is, wait at least another month before coming to stay with us. Maybe we will have some of this stuff put away by then. Saturday is also the Applumkin Festival in Wyoming so Nate and I might go over to that as well depending on what time allows us to do. Saturday will be a very busy day so we will see.

Ok, once again this update has gotten completely out of control. We might have a new single day update record. In addition to the daily, I have also added yet another page in the funnies section. This one isn’t as funny (I don’t think) as many of our other entries but this one gets included both because it is just a ton of stuff having to deal with marriage and because it was sent to me this morning by one of my largest customers once he discovered that I was getting married next weekend. So I just thought that it would be appropriate to include this list on the page. So there is a ton of new content today. I am very proud of myself and Emily should be very happy because she loves to read the site everyday!

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