June 6, 2006

When working overnights it is very difficult to decide exactly when to call it a day on SGL. So today I just went with midnight and am starting today’s entry right with midnight.

I didn’t have any projects on my plate tonight which was really good because I didn’t have to “set up shop” and work on any in particular. I managed to work most of the night from bed. My primary responsibility is to monitor the shop and basically act as a high end help desk making sure that we have an overnight presence. The reality is that there isn’t all that much call for any work on the overnight so things tend to be pretty slow when there are no projects to be done. It is great. I am really lucky that I am able to function in a half-sleeping mode that I learned about from years of work at Niagara when I would be in DC or Pittsburgh and would have to work a little here or there but would need to fit sleep in between little jobs or checkups. I suppose that, if I was to think about it, it really goes back to working at the hotels when I used to work the overnights alone with nothing going on ever.

So I managed to work my shift and stay decently rested. I didn’t get any real sleep but it was like a bunch of serious power naps. Dominica can’t believe that I am able to function for a long period of time like that. I can’t believe that I can still do it even though I am this old. I had a few times when there was actual work requests coming in and I had to move into the living room and really work. But that was only for a couple of hours total all night. Not bad at all.

I was really fortunate that the morning guy got to work nice and early and let me sign off early so that I was able to get to bed at seven instead of eight. That was a life saver. I got one whole sleep cycle in because of that. I slept solid from seven until a little after ten and felt really good when I got up. I even woke up on my own. No alarm necessary. I took a quick shower and rushed out the door to get up to the restaurant which was about forty five minutes away from the apartment even in midday traffic.

I had a really nice lunch with the consulting firm and a few of the guys from my team and one guy who does a similar job function but works for a different department so that I hadn’t met him before. The food was really good. It was a really nice restaurant, Vincent’s in Warren on King George’s Road, and I got an awesome tilapia lunch. I was quite happy with it.

Dominica and I spent the afternoon together at the apartment. Oreo was very happy that I wasn’t gone for very long. He has been loving all of the time that we have been able to spend together this week. This has been awesome – especially after having been alone for the past two weeks. I introduced Dominica to the British comedy The Piglet Files that my mom and I used to watch together long ago. It is a really short series but it is cute. We watched about half of the series this afternoon.

My main project for the day is getting VMWare Server running on SUSE 10.1. I spent a bit of time working on that but did, eventually, manage to get it installed and working. It was a bit of a pain but once it was working it really looks to be an impressive product. I am quite excited to have an opportunity to check it out. I am planning on using it extensively in the very near future. Currently VMWare Server is in a late beta phase but it is due to go stable later this month or maybe in July.

Dominica and I spent most of the evening not watching anything and just working. She has a lot of studying to do as she has not yet taken the second test in her A+ sequence and she needs to get that out of the way soon. That is her main project right now. That and the two classes that she is taking at Empire State. But those are not very demanding yet. They will probably take several weeks to ramp up. She also spent a lot of the evening making plans for this weekend’s excusrion to Manhattan with her family. We have a lot of people coming down here for the weekend: Dominica’s parents, Francesca, Madeline, Emily, Joe and Brittany are all coming down on Friday night. That means nine people plus Oreo will be camping out in our little one bedroom apartment for the weekend. We have one futon, Dominica and I sleep on a foam mattress on the floor, we have one air mattress here for someone to use and the Toccos are bringing two air mattresses with them. It is going to be tight around here.

Min ran out to Walmart to do a little shopping this evening. She was desperate for hangers so that she could get her clothing into the closet instead of all being piled in her suitcase on the floor. Moving is tough.

Dominica discovered a number of restaurants in the area that deliver to us here. Most importantly she discovered that the Tanjore vegetarian Indian restaurant that we love delivers here but isn’t open on Tuesdays so we are planning on getting dinner delivered from there tomorrow. Now that we know that they deliver we will be getting food from them all of the time. We love eating there but the biggest issue is that it takes too long for the service (they don’t ignore you but restaurants in New Jersey are very relaxed and they expect you to want to sit at the table for a long time even when you are not eating.) So we are very excited.

I worked until eleven this evening and then decided to take a nap before starting my shift. Oreo came in and slept next to me. He has been “daddy’s boy” ever since we got him back. He hasn’t left my side for a minute in the past three days. I managed to get a couple of hours in doing the same process that I did last night of keeping my eye on the email while still snoozing a bit. Having a wireless email device like a BlackBerry really helps. Otherwise I would have to move my laptop into the bedroom and have it set up in some way that I can use from bed and that would be tough. I really like small, wireless devices that I can use from bed.

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