August 26, 2002

I got up at 3:45 this morning and hit the road to DC. Today was the planned big server move. I arrived in DC around 10am and we immediately began work on being able to move the servers to our new office at Washington Hospital Center. It took some doing but we were actually able to do it today. Some of you might have noticed some downtime with this or one of our other sites. We were down for a couple of hours during the move. The move will help move us into a position where we will be able to expand our performance in the future. For example, we are now considering a much faster communications line there and a new web server for SGL. As soon as the move was completed, I headed back to Ithaca. I was driving for twelve hours today. I am really tired.

Min is very excited because she finished knitting her first sock yesterday. She made me wear it around. She is working on a matching one now. She also wanted me to let everyone who got “the email” from me that they shouldn’t feel bad for their reactions because she was at work when she read it and she screamed so loud that like fifty people were like “Are you okay?” She managed to scare some of the people in her office.

For some odd reason, I wrote the update yesterday but forgot to post it. Sorry for the delay, here it is.

August 25, 2002

Two new movies added to the collection… The Majestic with Jim Carrey and Behind Enemy Lines with Owen Wilson and Gene Hackman. I have been wanting The Majestic for quite a while. We (Loopy, Dominica, Zach, Heather and I) sat down and watched Behind Enemy Lines in our new theatre last night. Loopy pointed out that it was the first time that we ever watched a movie in there that we had never seen before so it was really like trying out a movie theatre to see if the effect was the same. I am pretty sure that everyone thought that it was much better at our place. The movie was much better than we had thought that it was probably going to be. The picture and the sound were awesome and the movie was very entertaining. You will likely see us showing off the system with this movie in the near future.

Loopy has become the eBay Master recently as he has managed to move quite a bit of his old stereo system at some pretty good prices. In fact, he has managed to get almost as much for his old Paradigm Monitor 7’s as you would spend on a new pair of the newer model. Since he is having such good luck, I am planning on having him attempt to sell my old SSi-720 Dolby Pro-Logic Decoder. Maybe I can get $50 for it. That would be really nice.

Min is spending the day today watching movies. The new theatre has turned the old unused den into the centre of the house. Today she has watched Dungeons and Dragons and If Lucy Fell, which is one of my weird, unheard of movies on Laserdisc.

I picked up some new movies again today. I got Drop Dead Gorgeous, Pulp Fiction:Collector’s Edition and The Accidental Spy, which is the new Jackie Chan movie that he made in Hong Kong between Shanghai Noon, Rush Hour 2 and Shanghai Knights that is due out later this year. I also got the CD of Avril Lavigne at Best Buy because I wanted to get the song “Sk8er Boi” that I had heard on the radio one day. The CD isn’t too bad. That is 502 movies now! I am actually listening to a CD on my Windows 2000 Pro machine in my office. I think this may be only the second time I have ever done that. It actually sounds pretty decent on the headphones. I have a nice SoundBlaster Live! X-Gamer card in there. My Linux Box has an Audigy. I placed an order with Microsoft to get the Customer Preview copy of .Net Server that is due out next year. I should have it in just a few days. I figure that that will be a little bit of fun to play with.

Tonight we all (Loopy, Zach, Min and I) watched the newest Jackie Chan movie, The Accidental Spy, it isn’t one of his most classic but it is ok. Definitely entertaining. It does have a really funny fight seen in it. Min was dying.

Min picked up the book “Lamb” at Borders that she has been looking for for quite a while now. She is reading that while I am working in the office and I can hear her laughing and laughing.

In computer news that is important to many of our readers… Microsoft has released SP3 for Windows 2000. We have already updated a number of computers here so go check it out. The new movie maker is available for Windows XP.

Dominica spent yesterday with her family celebrating her and Joe’s brithday’s in Frankfort. Min got some money for her birthday and today she is going shopping for a new, shiny Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 to play with (she wants to be cool like Loopy and I.) It is extra cool to have a PDA here because we have wireless support in the house. While she was in Herkimer yesterday, Min also bought a Spongebob Squarepants Snow Cone Maker! We are all very excited about that.

In case anyone thinks I have a virus, I don’t. I really did send out a mass forward today. Go ahead and open it. It is safe.

Only a few more days before we decide on the official name of the Llama. Names have been pooring in so get your in now if you want to be considered.

August 24, 2002

Another day working in Endicott. Loopy and I finished up (along with the other three techs who were working with us) early this afternoon. We decided to grab some lunch at the IHOP on the Vestal Parkway for old times sake. Back when Loop and I worked at IBM in Endicott, we used to eat at IHOP two or three times per week. It got so that the manager, Lisa, knew us really well. She was always happy to see us. Well, after the layoffs, obviously, we didn’t eat there anymore. When we worked at Gentiva a year ago, we stopped in there and talked to her and she was all excited to see us. And we stopped in again in February before heading down to Washington when SGL went offline because our service provider messed up. Anyway, we stopped in today for old times sake and Lisa was there. It turns out that today was supposed to be her last day because she was leaving to become a federal aviation official at the airport in Binghamton. She ended up getting pushed off from her start date but she will be gone very soon. So, it was really nice that we were able to stop in and say goodbye before she left. What a weird coincidence.

Zach is home today and Bob is expected to be home tomorrow. I haven’t seen anyone in so long it is hard to believe that anyone actually lives here but us. How weird. I have now topped a month without seeing Nate and he lives right across the hall from me. And I will most likely go to DC tomorrow and return on Wednesday and return to DC on Thursday or Friday and still not have seen him for all that time.

John said that the cats have gotten really bad down in Maryland and that they are outdoors cats now. Which really doesn’t work either. So he is looking for good homes for them. He might only have to get rid of Mickey. All the girls love Mickey. If anyone out there really wants a long haired, skinny, orange Mickey, let me know. He will probably be yours for the asking. He has all his shots and everything and we just want him to be cared for. Nila might be ok without him. We don’t know yet.

The Renaissance Festival is on in Maryland and that is a good time. John is going tomorrow in his full body armour (yes, real full body armour.) I think that the entire gang in Maryland will be going the the Festival next weekend since Dominica is going to be coming down to visit us over Labour Day weekend.

I ended up napping all afternoon and it is now evening so the news is short today as was the day. I have much work to get done tonight and tomorrow so I will be getting to that shortly. Have a good weekend.

August 22, 2002

Loopy and I took a contract with TEKsystems out of Rochester and Hewlett-Packard to do a Windows XP migration at Gentiva in Endicott about an hour from Ithaca. If you look through the archives, I am sure that you can find when Loopy and I did the Windows 2000 migration at the same facility. We did every computer last time and we did everyone again. Since no new machines were put in this time, that means that we have pretty muched touched every computer there twice. That is kind of a weird feeling – coming back to a job site a year later and knowing that many of those machines probably haven’t moved an inch since you had set them there. I went into Gentiva to get ready for the migration today. I worked mid-afternoon and all evening. I am the Team Lead on the migration so I have to be in before anyone else is to make sure that everything is all set for everyone.