Well, I’m sitting here in our Robstown location, on the second half of my lunch hour. I’ve already been over to Denny’s for some lunch, after spending a couple of hours here setting up a couple of terminals and getting ready to do an inventory. All in all, it wasn’t a bad drive; fortunately, Misty called me sometime around 7:30 AM and talking to her helped make the drive seem like it was going by quicker. I’ll be getting out of here at around 5 PM, and anticipate being back in Houston around 9-10 PM (seeing as I plan on stopping for dinner and gas).

Actually, before I continue, our marketing director sent me an email last night. To my amusement, it contained pictures of me she took while I was working at our booth at the Offshore Technology Conference last weekend. I figured some people might get a kick out of seeing them, so…

I’ll refrain from posting the third pic. Suffice to say she caught me at a point on the fourth day when I was dead tired.

Anyway, I still need to figure out what I’m doing for dinner tonight. Normally when I come to Robstown I have dinner at the Denny’s here. However, on my way in, I saw that they had built what appears to be a brand-new Chili’s. So, I went ahead and had Denny’s for lunch hoping for some Chili’s for dinner. That’s when an employee here told me the Chili’s wasn’t open yet… damn. I’ll double-check on the way out to make sure, though. In addition, they completed all of the highway construction that had been bugging me the past few times I’d been out here, so that was good. Unfortunately, they also closed the gas station I usually use when out here. That sucks, considering it usually had pretty reasonable pricing…

As for the rest of this weekend, I really don’t have much planned now other than helping with these upgrades at work, trying to get MK Online back up and working, and spending time talking to Misty. The only thing that comes to mind is Mother’s Day dinner for Mom, and we’ve got a reservation at PF Chang’s at Willowbrook tomorrow evening. That should be interesting, as Mom and Dad have never had it before…

Ah, well. It’s time I got back to work. Fun fun…

Well… damn. Heh. I knew yesterday when I put up that post about MK Online’s downtime that it would add to the amount of bandwidth the site uses. What I WASN’T prepared for was the sheer volume I got, not to mention the fact that I got more comments in that one post in less than 24 hours than the site got in the past six months. :-) (No, that doesn’t count the comments on the LiveJournal mirror.) I admit I’m kind of surprised I haven’t really been Slashdotted, but all in all things are going well on that front. I’m just hoping MK Online’s hosting provider has the new server ready sooner rather than later…

I’m just spending my lunch break relaxing and mentally preparing for the trip tomorrow. Day trips to Corpus Christi are rarely any fun, as it entails a three to four hour drive through mostly boring countryside, with a couple of slow spots through small towns. The plan is for me to leave Houston at 6 AM (which is when I usually leave for work anyway) and hopefully be back on the road to Houston by 6 PM. (I need to get dinner and gas before I drive back, after all.) About the only thing that makes the drive bearable is the fact that I always take the iPod with me… heh. Ah, well. It should be an uneventful trip.

As far as this weekend goes, though, it’ll be anything but uneventful. I have two massive upgrades at the office to help with, and if the new MK Online server is up by then I’ll be working on that. Throw in the fact that I have to take Mom to dinner for Mother’s Day on Saturday, and I’m looking at a very busy weekend. My one hope is that maybe Louie will be up to going out and getting drinks somewhere Sunday night. God knows I’ll definitely be ready for a couple by then.

Otherwise, other than dealing with a couple of work issues, it’s been a relatively peaceful day… other than dealing with a few trolls on the downtime post. I replied to one twice, before deciding said troll wasn’t really worth the space and deleting all of his posts (and my replies to him). I’ve taken to firewalling off those people. *sigh* Believe me, it gets old. Ah, well… they’re not really worth worrying about. :-)

Anyway, gotta do a couple of things now during lunch to prep for tomorrow, so I should get that done. Fun fun…

Bleh. Right now I’m sitting in the kitchen, working on my work laptop. I’ve been doing maintenance on a couple of company databases for most of the evening; unfortunately, it’s mostly consisted of sitting here and watching an import command run in a terminal window. Fortunately I’ve got most of my personal communications programs like Thunderbird and Gaim installed onto a USB flash drive, so I’ve more or less kept myself occupied. Still, it’s slow work and I’ve come close to falling asleep more than once.

It’s been an uneventful week so far. I’ve found that I’ll need to go to Corpus on Friday for a full equipment inventory and to replace a couple of workstations at our location there, so that’s something I’m not exactly looking forward to. Tomorrow will be spent at the Cypress location to do some work on the timeclocks; I’ll use that as an opportunity to take Mom and Dad out to lunch at Red Robin. I had taken Dad to dinner at Denny’s this evening; originally I had asked Mom if she wanted to go to Red Robin as a kind of balance, but then Dad wanted to go so I agreed to take them both. By a lucky bit of timing, we got a $3 off coupon for Red Robin in the mail today, so it won’t cost as much…

The Offshore Technology Conference was also rather uneventful for me for the most part, other than the fact that if I ever got out of IT, I found I can get a job as a bartender. ;-) Our booth had a bar stocked with coffee, soda, water, fruit juice, and beer, and I was acting as the unofficial bartender the entire time. The only requirement for getting a drink from us was that you had to get it in a koozie with our company logo. I referred to it as “ad-supported drinking”. :-) When the show was over, we had enough leftover beer that I managed to get a 24 pack of Miller Lite to bring home. (Hey, it’s one of the few American mass-market beers I’ll drink.) I also got my hands on a new travel mug and a REALLY nice Leatherman tool with our company logo on it. I’ll just have to remember to remove the Leatherman tool from my laptop bag when I travel…

Ah, well. For now, I’m just going to go back to watching this terminal window. Hopefully it’ll end within the hour, so I can have the second bit of maintenance run while I’m sleeping. If not, it can wait until tomorrow. Fun fun…

Okay, I just had to share this pic. I know Jenn and a few others would get a kick out of this…

Thanks, George!

Well, today was a slight bit interesting. Before I continue, though, here’s another desktop for those who care. :-)

Yes, that’s the Laughing Man’s logo from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I picked the wallpaper up from here.

We actually had some massive storms come through the area this morning. I got woken up early (and by early, I mean 4 AM or thereabouts) by the storm passing through. That’s usually my favorite time for storms to come through, as I’m half-awake and it seems much more impressive. :-) Interestingly enough, on my drive to work, I encountered very little rain. It wasn’t until after I got to work that the heavens opened once more. I got in at 6:50 AM as usual; my coworkers who came in at around 8 AM got drenched by the storm.

Once I got to work, though, I found that I had made a bit of a mistake when leaving the house. I opened the laptop case I had brought with me, only to realize that it was my PowerBook. The Dell had been left at home. :-/ I ended up taking an unused laptop out of storage and using it in the interim. Of course, not having my music library available made the work day drag on…

One could argue that that was my punishment for having a shortish day at work yesterday. Mr. Halas took a bunch of us to Ibiza for lunch yesterday to celebrate Administrative Assistant’s Week, and we were out for over two hours. The food was excellent as always (I had stuffed chicken breast), and we had fun. The amusing part, though, was later on in the day when I pointed out to Jesse that it was 5 PM and he was shocked…

Anyway, all in all, it’s been a good week. I’ve got plenty of stuff to do tomorrow and the next day, and this weekend will probably be busy with OTC preparations. I guess it’s just as well that Louie and Dave are headed off to Austin to do their own thing. :-) Still, I’m not complaining. Keeping busy is a good thing. :-)

Misty was given a bit of bad news yesterday. Actually, “bad” doesn’t quite cover it. She hasn’t exactly been handling it well, and I daren’t say I blame her. However, before I tell about it, let me give a bit of background on us…

Misty and I met on IRC something like twelve years ago. While we became close friends back then, we became involved with other people. Misty ended up having something of a relationship with this Australian named Craig, and I ended up having something of a relationship with Missy. Over time, both Misty and I ended up breaking off our relationships with Craig and Missy respectively, but we both remained good friends with them. Misty and I both accept that they have special places in our hearts and we have absolutely no problem with that.

Anyway, Misty had been on edge recently because Craig had been out-of-pocket due to eye surgery he had a month or so ago. She finally got in touch with him yesterday or the day before, and he apologized for not answering her, as his PC had been auto-signing on to his IM services. So, of course, Misty asked how he was doing… and he dropped the bombshell on her.

“Dying, actually,” he replied.

Apparently he was diabetic and had not been taking care of himself. As a result, his vital organs were beginning to fail on him. The doctors are unable to tell how long he has, though, but he’s making peace with himself. Misty’s not been handling it well, but I’ve been trying to comfort her as best I can.

It’s tough losing a close friend like that. I know I probably wouldn’t handle it well if something were to happen to Missy (which is a reason she never tells me when she goes in hospital or gets very sick). Still… at least we get the time we had with them, and such friends affect our lives profoundly, whether for good or bad. And losing such a friend can be an especially lonely experience; the best I can do is hope to be there for her, to comfort her as best I can.

I hope I’m up to the task of comforting her, and I hope Craig’s time left is as comfortable and free of pain as possible.

Well, this has been a pretty slow weekend, all told. I’m not saying it’s been a bad weekend; as a matter of fact, Saturday night was a great deal of fun. Still, it’s been more or less slow, which is a good thing considering the week or two that will be coming up.

Friday night was rather quiet. I got to play some Gears of War online with the #mortalkombat folks, and also played a bit of the demo of Command & Conquer 3. Of course, I didn’t get to play too much of the C&C3 demo because Misty called. :-) I’ll probably end up playing it a bit more later this week to get more impressions on it. Meanwhile, Dad went ahead and watched Casino Royale, which I went ahead and got for him off my Netflix queue. I had offered to let him watch it on my HDTV, but he declined. It turned out he loved the film, and is planning on getting it on DVD. He’s also asked about watching a film on my TV now… heh.

Saturday was quiet during the day. About the most eventful thing that happened was the fact that I got a letter addressed to me; or, rather, me as an employee of Mortal Kombat Online. I opened it, and to my surprise, it was an official invitation to E3. Considering E3 is a much smaller show this year and is strictly invite-only, I was shocked to receive one. None of us from MK Online were even expecting to be able to go. Now I just need to find out whether or not it would be worth my time attending. We’ll see… heh.

After Mom and Dad went to the Cheesecake Factory up at the Woodlands with our next door neighbors, I got some Chinese takeout from Hunam Garden. After eating, I went to Brian’s and Becky’s house (with a stop at Joe Blows to pick up some Shiner Bock and a couple of bottles of Monty Python’s Holy Ale) for their movie night. Once everyone had more or less arrived, we got regaled with a double feature. :-) The first movie we watched was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After that movie finished, though, a bunch of us got together and caught up… and then left. By the time the second film had started, we were down to a third of the original audience. The second film was Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy. It wasn’t a film I would have gone out of my way to see otherwise, but truthfully it was a pretty funny film. After the movie was finished, I caught up with the others again, and then made my way home at the same time as everyone else.

Today was again more or less uneventful. After getting up and talking to Misty for a bit (and after breakfast and lunch), I went ahead and watched disc 6 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Otherwise, I haven’t been doing too much other than browsing the web, chatting with Misty, and having dinner with the folks. Right now I have Cops playing on the TV, and am just relaxing for the most part.

This week should be pretty busy. The Offshore Technology Conference is next week, and I’m one of the people responsible for getting our booth there ready, especially as far as our electronic displays go. In addition to other projects, it should be a pretty interesting week.

Ah, well. I might as well just enjoy the quiet as long as I can. :-)

Well, it’s the end of another weekend. I can’t say it was too productive, but it was rather fun.

I can’t say I did much Friday night, other than talk to Misty and play a lot of Gears of War single-player. I’ve been playing the game through single-player again, this time in Hardcore mode so I can get some practice for online play. It’s been fun, really, and it’s definitely one of my favorite current games. Mostly I play with folks from #mortalkombat, but at some point I might jump in some ranked matches and see what happens.

However, Saturday was more or less the big day. A few months ago, Mom picked us up tickets for the touring Cirque du Soleil show Corteo that was showing at Sam Houston Race Park. This would be the sixth Cirque du Soleil show we’ve seen; for the record we’ve also seen O, Zumanity, Varekai, Kà, and Delirium. We went ahead and got dinner at TGI Friday’s at Willowbrook. After dinner, we went to Sam Houston Race Park, parked, and made our way to the tents… only to find that what Mom got were tickets with “Tapis Rouge” access. In other words, we got access to the VIP area, where they served champagne, appetizers, coffee, and the like. During the intermission, they had servers serving cups of chocolate from a chocolate fountain; they also provided marshmallows to dip into the chocolate. Also, they had their own bathroom area, which proved useful later on. :-)

So, how was the show itself? I REALLY enjoyed it, and I consider it right behind O and Kà in quality. I highly recommend it. :-) The ONLY complaint I have has nothing to do with the show itself, per se. There was a family behind us of two guys with Vietnamese wives. Throughout the show, neither woman could shut up. I probably wouldn’t have minded so much had they kept their voices down. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and both my dad and I were getting really annoyed. We would have said something had their husbands not been twice our size, though. That aside, we really did enjoy ourselves. On the way out, we got a final parting gift: a CD by someone named Alain Vinet called Mouvement Day by Day Vol. 1.

As for today, well… it’s been quiet. I spent most of the afternoon watching discs four and five of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Afterwards, I brought the PowerBook down to the kitchen, where I imported the Vinet CD into my iTunes library and bought the soundtrack to Corteo from the iTunes Store. I’ve also taken the time to replicate the library back to my main PC and my work laptop. However, I’ve also realized that I still need to take the PowerBook in for repair; that spacebar is still being a pain. I might do that later this week.

Speaking of later this week, I don’t have that much planned. I’ll have to take my car in for an oil change on Tuesday morning. The lack of internet service at the Saturn dealership makes me glad I requested Cingular 3G broadband on my laptop. Then, on Thursday evening, we may be playing poker over at Anderson’s house. I could use the extra spending money. ;-) Then, on Saturday, there could be a movie night… provided I didn’t send in my RSVP too late. (Edit – 10:30 PM – Turns out Brian set me straight; I will be going to the movie night Saturday evening.)

Ah, well. It should be a decent week all told. At least it was a good weekend. We’ll see how things go. :-)