Sheep Guarding Llama

Spent the day with the family.  Just enjoyed being home this weekend.

Tonight I took my desktop all apart, cleaned it out and swapped the SSD drives around so that I could get Linux Mint installed on my desktop.  I am excited.

The install went well and really took hardly any time.  Linux Mint 13 went on without any problem and worked great.  All of the peripherals “just worked” and all I had to do was run the general system update to get everything “just perfect.”  I only had a couple pieces of software to modify to get working as I wanted them.  Really Pidgin for my IM is about the only thing that required setting up at all. Very impressive system and so responsive, I can’t believe how nice it is to use.  I am very happy already that I made the switch.  I can’t wait until I get used to using it and really efficient with Mint.  This is going to make my life a lot easier.

Did work around the house all day and hung out with the girls.  This evening I went out to Fry’s and did some quick shopping.  My big item was an Intel SSD drive for my main desktop.  I am planning to move from Windows 7 Pro, which I have been using for about two years, to Linux Mint 13.  I’ve determined that I really do not need any Windows functionality day to day and that Windows 8 does not look promising at all so I am trying a Linux desktop again for the first time as my main desktop in what must be nearly a decade.  I am pretty excited to be giving this a try.  I’ve been using Linux Mint 13 with the Cinnamon desktop environment in a VirtualBox VM for about two weeks and that has been really good but giving up Windows entirely and going to Mint as my only real environment is a big step.

My old harddrive was a Corsair Force 60 SSD which was good but not amazing by any stretch.  60GB was way too small to be useful with Windows 7.  The new Intel is 120GB and the same price that the Corsair was not that long ago.  My hope is that the Intel SSD with vastly higher IOPS and throughput than the Corsair combined with Mint will breath new life into my “not all that new” HP dc5850 desktop.

On the way back from Fry’s where I bought the hard drive, which, coincidentally is practically next door to the new office, I stopped at Blu Ginger and picked up dinner for tonight and brought it back for us to eat in the play room while watching Melissa and Joey as a family.

I love it when my work from home day lines up with the weekend.  That makes this a three day weekend.  I might be exhausted but at least I don’t have to be physically out of the house for three days.

Today was actually pretty busy.  I worked from home all day.  We were home today and tonight as well.  That’s about all.  Slowly getting caught up on posts.

I am really exhausted today.  I’ve been running on almost no sleep for two weeks or so and it is really catching up with me.

Well we are actually moving offices today.  I am always surprised when these days actually come because we always hear that we are going to be moving but it never really happens.  There have been at least four different “moving” rumours since we first moved to this office down here in Texas and none of them have come true.  This one sounded no different than the others, but now it is actually happening.  The movers have been outside in the hallway all week tearing down cubicles and hauling stuff away.

Today was a very busy day with lots of conference calls going on all day supporting fed financial announcements.  Today they are scheduled all through my lunch-ish periods so I was unable to go to lunch early or late, or at all.  I had to work straight through.

Originally I was going to be moving over with everyone else tonight to the new campus.  But they scheduled the move right during the busiest part of the day and it is going to disrupt support.  So while everyone else is being moved tonight, after the day is “over”, I am going over to the new campus right after “lunch” to work from there and make sure that everything is supported while everyone else goes offline.  So my day became a really long one with no lunch break and not getting to go home early with everyone else.

I worked through lunch and went over to the new campus mid-afternoon.  I got over there and found my desk right away.  But there is no computer there and no hotel computers anywhere so there is nowhere for me to work at all.  That doesn’t work so well.  So I was screwed.  I went and found my boss who was already over there and we chatted for a little bit, determined that there was no way for me to work from there but no reason for me not to be working from home so I went to the house just in time to do the evening deployments and worked from home.

Since I was covering people as the office went offline, I ended up working until seven in the evening.  A very long day indeed.  I am going to work from home tomorrow so that I am available to cover things while everyone is dealing with getting set up at their new desks in the morning and because I am just really tired and need a day at home.

This evening I went over to Redneck with Chris for a bit to work on some paperwork.

It’s Wednesday.  I was in the office this morning.  At lunch Chris and I went to Redneck and decided to do karaoke tonight.

This evening, Dominica and had decided that we needed a night out together rather than always having to go out without each other.  So we had found a babysitter who is going to be watching the girls tonight.  This is our first time, ever, having someone who isn’t family watching the girls.  Our babysitter is twenty-one, a friend of a friend and from very, very close to where Dominica grew up and only moved to Texas several weeks ago and it is someone that Dominica already knows.  Still, the first time leaving the girls alone with someone!  This will be interesting.

The girls did really well tonight.  We got reports that they were little angels.  Liesl seems to have had a really good time playing with her babysitter.  Luciana was asleep before we left so was not really aware that she was with a babysitter for the evening.

Dominica has been wanting to actually go to Redneck (not just sneak in and never get service) and so we went there and had dinner before heading out for karaoke which doesn’t really get going for quite some time anyway.  She actually enjoyed it this time.  Now she knows to be seated rather than just getting a drink from the bar and grabbing a table.

At ten thirty we went to The Quarter in Addison and met up with Chris and sang karaoke for most of the evening.  We had a good time and one of his friends met up with us later on in the evening.  We all sang some, Dominica and I did a duet of Blackhawk, even.

It was a nice night out, we had a good time.  And we are very excited that we now have a babysitter!  We need to get out sometimes.

It was really late by the time that we got back, I drove the sitter home and finally got off to bed.  Going to be very tired tomorrow.