October 4, 2007: Our Fourth Anniversary

It is hard to believe that Dominica and I have been married for four years! That is 1,461 days. It was a cool and drizzly day when we got married. Today is starting off overcast but expected to be almost twenty degrees above normal. A very different day indeed.

Last night Dominica decided that we just have too much going on this week, mostly from homework, to be able to go out to dinner tonight for our anniversary. We went out for a really nice dinner on Tuesday night and we are going out with my family to the Lumberyard in Perry, New York this weekend so we are going to have to make due with that.

My office on Wall Street isn’t ready for me yet, at least not that I am aware of, so I decided to get some human contact today and come into Warren since I am still using the desktop that is sitting on my former desk there. I figured that I am already taking up the space so I might as well get to see some people. Plus going into the office forced me to get back to my schedule of getting up at five in the morning and hopping straight into the shower instead of rolling out of bed at seven and going straight to work and showering at the end of the day.

This is actually my last real chance to drive into the Warren office. Tomorrow evening Dominica and I are delivering the car up to dad’s so that we can scale back to a single car in Newark. The cost savings will be enormous. And the stress reduction of not having to deal with the regular, everyday “car stuff” will be pretty good too. I hate dealing with oil changes, soft tires, clanging sounds, shakes, etc. I just don’t have time for this kind of stuff.

So tomorrow Dominica is hoping to be able to leave for back home straight from work and Oreo and I will leave from Newark whenever I am able to get to a point that I can leave. I have to work on Saturday morning at six so I will need to get as much sleep as possible which isn’t looking to be very much. It is going to be a crazy busy weekend.

Today is the final production release of Novell’s OpenSuse 10.3 operating system. Good luck managing to get a download on day zero. I hope to start working with it as soon as possible.

Coming next month, the One Laptop Per Child initiative is going to begin selling the OLPC to potential buyers in the United States. The cost will be $400 but what you get is a lot more than a laptop. What you get is one laptop for you and one for a child in a developing nation that was unable to afford the $200 unit for themselves. In fact, your cost covers a lot of logistics in addition to the hardware. And you get a tax credit for the donation. The laptop that you get isn’t the hottest laptop around but it is a very cool piece of hardware and I, for one, am very excited to get my hands on one. This is definitely going to be the “must have” geek toy this Christmas for hardcore hardware geeks.

And, as you know, Dominica and I are all about geek toys. I think that Dominica wants an OLPC more than I do.

I got home and went crazy trying to get an anniversary card for Dominica. There are no shops anywhere near my office in Warren that I can find that sell cards of any type. Everyone thinks that I am crazy but I have tried all three grocery stores and have driven around several plazas to no avail.

While I was out exploring the depths of Newark’s greeting card district I ran into one of SGL’s regular readers who mentioned that today is his birthday in addition to being our anniversary. Big day I guess.

So I walked all over downtown Newark before I found a drug store that was open. The Rite Aid on Market at Washington was the only store anywhere that I could find with cards. Luckily they have an actual selection. So I was able to get something nice. Unfortunately because my wanderings took me so far Dominica and Oreo got to Eleven 80 while I was out looking for the card.

We aren’t able to do anything exciting tonight for our anniversary so we just ordered in some Chinese from Golden City and ate in bed while watching two episodes of The Cosby Show. After dinner we had to get to work on our respective homework assignments. What an exciting life we lead.

We both wrapped up our homework in good time.  Then I did some work online and Dominica packed for our trip back home this weekend.  We have had to amend our plans a little bit.  I am going into the office in Warren tomorrow on my usual Friday schedule and Dominica is going to take Oreo to daycare and then they will travel together straight from work to go back home and I will leave right from Warren.  It evens out the traveling a little bit.

Dominica went to bed a little after eleven.  I stayed up getting SGL posted, among other things.  We did have a short outage this evening but everything appears to be fine.  Just a network blip for about forty minutes.

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