March 15, 2006: Shadyside

I woke up at 5:30 this morning but knowing that I had so little to do in the hotel I decided that it would be best if I just rested for a little while. So I stayed in bed until 6:30. Then I got up and showered and got ready for the day. Including posting SGL for yesterday. So I am completely up to date again.

Last night when we went to bed the heater in the room was going completely overboard and it was terribly hot in the room. In attempting to turn it down aparently we broke it. So when we woke up this morning it was completely freezing in the room. We have a corner room (516) with a broken balcony door so there is some air coming in from the outside. So this room is really, really cold. And the bathroom walls are so cold that even a hot shower will begin to warm them up.

Andy slept until almost 8:00 this morning. Over thirteen hours of total sleep. He should be well rested for the day. Over-rested, in fact. He will probably be tired all day from sleep so much. I got about nine and a half hours of sleep which isn’t too bad considering how little I have been getting. I am feeling pretty good at the moment.

I found out this morning when I went to do some remote server work that this hotel, apparently, does not allow anything but web surfing and email. My VPN does not work from here nor does my SSH connections. And I have plenty of them to try so it isn’t like just a single one isn’t responding. And I know that the servers are up because, for example, I am working on this one. So I didn’t get the chance to do the work that I had hoped to get done this morning. Instead I listened to some podcasts like the Daily Breakfast with Father Vonhogen.

For breakfast Andy and I went down to the Panera Bread that is located in the hotel. Breakfast was awesome. I got a cinnamon crunch bagel and it was the best bagel that I have ever had. We both had spinach artichoke souffles that were awesome as well. I am definitely going to be trying Panera for breakfast more often.

We timed our breakfast just perfectly so that we were able to get up to the hotel room, get our suits on (we are the matching Men in Black today although Andy didn’t wear his matching glasses this morning) and we headed out the door to drive over to Shadyside. For Andy, who hasn’t been back in Pittsburgh since 2001, it was a trip down memory lane to drive into Shadyside and to see the route that we used to walk or shuttle between the hospitals and to see the apartment building where we used to live and the places that we used to eat. I can’t believe that he hasn’t been back here for all of this time. It is crazy to have lived someplace and to not have really returned ever. I have been in Pittsburgh every few months ever since 1999 so it is hard for me to imagine what it must be like not being back for so long.

Our meeting today went pretty well and we are very happy with the current results of it. We were pretty apprehentious about our meeting today and what it would mean for the long term financial stability of the company but, at the moment, things are looking very good. Everyone at the meeting was quite excited to get to see Andy. Last time they saw him he was a young, struggling programmer. A lot has changed since then. Andy and I were just 22 and 23 when we started the project in Pittsburgh. I came down with John Nicklin at the end of 1999 and the project got the green light on January 13th of 2000. Andy didn’t sign on until mid March of that year.

We were anxious to get out of Dodge as soon as the meeting was over. All of the traveling has really been wearing on me and I wanted to me home ASAP. So we hit the road and were out of the city right at noon. The trip went really fast. At least it felt like it did. We made good time and the weather wasn’t nearly as bad today as it was yesterday. Still really windy but not as bad as it was and at least the sun was out today and there was barely any snow.

As we came through Buffalo Andy and I decided to get some dinner. We had been planning on going on for Boy’s Night tonight but Craig is on the road to Boston so no Boy’s Night tonight. We got dinner at Cracker Barrel. It was good. Buttermilk Fried Shrimp. Yum.

We went to dad’s house on the way home and picked up Oreo. We stayed for about half an hour or so visiting. Then it was back to Geneseo. I spent the evening continuing to work on the new server which is now working and you are currently reading the site on the new server. What a relief that is. One major bit of work that I can check off now. Pheww.

Dominica got home from work and pretty much we went straight to bed. I am really tired and I have another busy day tomorrow. Symantec show in the morning and the Microsoft show in the afternoon. Dad is going to watch Oreo until I get back.

For anyone who gets stuck seeing SGL with all of the dates set to 2005… there was a glitch on the server and the web accelerator cached something bad. Everything is and has been fine. I have no simple means of flushing the cache so you saw the glitch for a little while. Oh well. Off to bed.

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