March 27, 2011: Telephony Day

Today is my dedicated “lock myself away in the office and work like a madman” day.  There are no plans today except for working at home.  So I am hoping to be able to get just tons and tons done.

It ended up being a very good day and I actually managed to get the work done that I needed to do.    Still no electricians today.  And no response from them either.  No one can find them.  It seems odd that they would avoid us when there is so little work left to be done.  It’s not like there is any significant amount of work to “get out of” but we do need them to wrap up a few final things.

March 26, 2011: No Electricians

This is one busy weekend for me.  I am continuing to work on a combination of storage and telephony projects that are sucking every waking minute out of the day.  At least now I am working from the new office.  It is far from being done but just being in here is a huge step.  Today is my first real day able to really take advantage of it.  I now have my good Snom deskphone to replace that awful Cisco excuse for a phone that I have been stuck with for a while.

My desk sits in the middle of the room still which is a bit of a pain but there is wall work to be done yet so that will remain for a while.

I had to work doing a SAN migration this morning so I was up pretty early, we started at eight.  I worked until eleven then Dominica, Liesl and I drove down to Mansfield to hang out with the family for a birthday party.  Brian is continuing to feel better today after his ER trip yesterday and is staying at the house to await the electricians who are scheduled to be wrapping up today.

We hung out with the family for about six hours.  Once Dominica gets into party mode it is hard to get her motivated to go back home but I have tons and tons of work needing my attention and don’t have the flexibility to take the day off, unfortunately.

So it was early evening when we got back home and discovered that the electricians never showed up.  What a pain.  They never, ever respond to email, phone, text…. nothing.  They never proactively tell us that they aren’t coming or when they might be coming.  I called and emailed over and over trying to find out why they weren’t there.  Even our general contractor could not find them.

So yet another week of work on the office skipped.  This will never get completed.

I spent the evening working and was decently productive.  There is a lot of work for me to do tomorrow, though.

March 25, 2011: Watson’s Birthday Party

Tonight is Watson’s birthday party at La Cima so the plan is that we will be going there this evening.  Dominica and I have not been at La Cima in a while.  We have just been so busy with the baby coming and all of the house stuff.  Plus not being paid for a while made us attempt to pull back on the finances as much as possible.

I worked a normal day.  Quite busy.  After work I managed to get done early enough that I was able to run home, pick up Dominica, Liesl and Souder and then drive them back down to Irving to go to La Cima.  It is a bit of a pain doing that but it doesn’t actually take any extra driving and it lets us park more easily and get to and from the club easier since Dominica is not in any condition to really take care of rambunctious Liesl at this point.

Souder spent the afternoon in the emergency room again.  He was really in rough shape today but after an afternoon in the ER he is in much better shape this evening and was even able to go out to the club with us.

It worked out well for Dominica and I who had our monthly meals to use at La Cima.  It is nearly the end of the month and we had no other plans for how we were going to squeeze in our meals before it became April so that worked out rather well.

It was Souder, Dominica, Liesl, Watson and I along with Mo and Chris, two of Watson’s friends that we had not met previously.  They were waiting for us in the lounge but we went in to dinner pretty much right away.

For a Friday night it seemed rather slow at the club.  We had a great dinner.  As I am apt to do these days, I ordered off menu which threw our newcomers for a loop.  Chris even commented “I don’t even know how to order like that!”  The club lifestyle is beginning to show after a year of membership, I think.  Although it could be all of our “foodie” vacations to Disney World where we, as vegetarians, really learned how to eat outside of the bounds of the menu as well.  Eating at the club is not really unlike being in Disney World in many ways.

My dinner was excellent, probably the best meal that I have yet had at La Cima.  Pan fried striped bass with crab topping and an almond cream sauce or something like that.  It was excellent.  Everyone was quite jealous.

We had a really nice time out tonight.  It was a lot of fun.

March 23, 2011: Desktop Haul

Today is Dominica doctor’s appointment.  I went in to the office in the morning and then went down to the doctor’s to take care of Liesl while Dominica had her appointment.    It actually turned out to be a really fast appointment so we were out of there in no time.

For lunch we went over to Einstein Brother Bagel Cafe which we like down on MacArthur.  They do a good lox bagel, mostly like what I used to get back in Westchester.  Not too much good salmon down here in Texas.

Brian met us there and he and I went to check out a bulk desktop supplier that I recently discovered in the DFW.  That ended up being a great trip.  We got a chance to meet with the owner of the supply house and dealt with him directly.  We picked up ten dc5850 desktops all of which are as good as my own current desktop.  A very impressive haul indeed.  And a great price.  We are very happy.

Dominica continued with the painting today.  She got most of another coat of primer on.  The room is looking pretty good even though it is just primer and no real paint yet.  You can really see the house getting brighter.  Now I am excited about the idea of getting the rest of the house painted.  It will feel a lot bigger, brighter and more modern.

Nothing much doing tonight except for being at home and trying to get as much work done while hanging out with the family.