Well, I had an interesting day yesterday. Note that I didn’t say fun-filled. I had planned for some fun and meeting with Louie yesterday, but it didn’t QUITE turn out that way. The original plan was to meet Louie at his apartment at 11 AM so that I could talk to him about making his old Gateway PC a file/printer server. Then, in the evening, we’d go somewhere for dinner and drinks.

Instead, I got a call at about 7:30 AM waking me up. Apparently something had happened to the network at the company datacenter, and I needed to go down there and figure out what was up. The datacenter is less than a mile from Louie’s apartment, so I asked if I could go a TAD later. Unfortunately, with it being the end of the month, the answer was no, so off I went. I finally got everything fixed and was out of there by 9:15 AM. With an hour and forty-five minutes to kill, I drove to a nearby IHOP, and had breakfast consisting of a “Vive le French Toast” and three cups of coffee. I was done by 10 AM, so with another hour to kill, I went to the Starbucks at the intersection by his apartment complex and ordered a venti coffee while browsing the net on my phone. At 10:45 I made my way over to Louie’s.

If you’ve been paying close attention, you can probably guess what the horrendous mistake I made was.

Shortly after lunch, my heart started feeling tingly. It came and went, and I figured I could just ignore it… until we had gotten finished and Louie’s and were heading to my place. As I drove down Louetta, it started feeling worse, to the point where I realized I really needed to have it looked at. So, as soon as I got home, Dad drove me over to the hospital emergency room (with a stop at the emergency clinic that turned out to be closed).

It turned out that my guess was right: the equivalent of five to six cups of coffee in less than two hours had lead to an overdose, making me think I was having heart issues. They did an EKG on me, hooked me up to monitoring equipment, and did blood work on me; the end result was that my heart was fine. After that, Louie headed home and Dad took me back home.

So, I’ve learned my lesson: moderate my damn caffeine intake!

Ah, well… today will be spent catching up on my recorded TV viewing, as well as finally sitting down and watching The Chronicles of Riddick. Then, tonight, I’ll meet Louie for dinner and drinks (seeing as I didn’t get to do so yesterday). A nice quiet day is just what I need after yesterday… heh.

Bleh. I wish I could say this was a productive weekend, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

About the only thing that I can say I did that was constructive (other than meeting a friend for lunch Friday) was that I took a number of steps towards a personal tech project that I had been planning and working on. I’ll reveal more about that later, as I don’t really want to say anything publicly until I actually get it working. Also, it might sound a bit pathetically geeky… heh. Otherwise, most of my weekend was spent working on my PC and getting it back up to about how I had it before the wipe and reload in terms of functionality. It’s not been easy, as Vista tends to be really annoying in terms of program installation and compatibility. Still, I’ve been working around it.

The next couple of days should be interesting at work. Two of my IT coworkers (specifically, the network and system administrators) are leaving for a couple of days to go to New Orleans and see Monday Night Football at the Superdome. As a result, I’ll be more or less on my own doing support work. That’ll be fun, let me tell you. Ah, well… I’m sure I can handle it. It’s a good thing I’ll be at the office an hour early tomorrow, though, as it’ll give me a chance to catch up on some of my own work before the deluge starts.

Ah, well… guess I should finish up on this work I’m doing right now, and make sure everything else is running smoothly, and then consider sleep. Fun fun…

Nemesis316 just showed us this comic he made over on #mortalkombat, and I personally thought it was hysterical. Those of you not familiar with the goings-on over at Mortal Kombat Online might not understand some of it, but like I said, I was highly amused… :-)

I’ve been home from Mexico for 32 hours now. Do I feel like I want to go back? … eh, not really.

I arrived at Intercontinental Airport at around 4 PM or so, just in time to see my coworker Anderson come down a courseway. You know you’re working for a company that requires a lot of travel when you encounter coworkers at the airport who are on different business trips than you. After having dinner at Chili’s Too (the airport terminal’s small Chili’s), I met my coworker and fellow traveller Brent at the gate, and off we went to Villahermosa.

In a way, I wish I had thought to start taking pictures with my cell phone’s camera as we arrived in Villahermosa. We had quite a light show as we made our final approach into the airport, with storms coming into the area. When I was last in Villahermosa, the airport was undergoing renovations; they apparently finished them since then, as the airport looked a lot nicer and there was no construction to be seen. We grabbed a taxi to the Camino Real hotel, checked in, dropped off our bags… went to the bar for a few drinks, and then retired to our rooms.

The next morning, we were picked up from the hotel by our Mexican coworkers, and taken down to the plant. I won’t get into details of what was discussed there (my bosses won’t appreciate that), but the facility was quite out of the way in Cardenas. It’s always fun to enter a facility with guard towers… heh. (I didn’t dare ask if they were manned.) Anyway, after a long day at the facility we returned to Villahermosa. On the way back… I wish I had thought to use my camera AGAIN, as we passed a movie theater, and one of the movies being advertised was “Serpientes a Bordo”. :-) Anyway, after being dropped off at the hotel so we could put away our equipment, we were picked up after an hour or so to go to Rodizio’s, which is a Brazilian steakhouse similar to Fogo du Chao. Although, I WAS surprised… when we arrived at Rodizio’s, I saw that in the year since I had last been there, a Bennigan’s had been built and opened next to it. It’s the first time I’ve heard of a Bennigan’s outside of the United States. We had a good meal there, and then retired to the hotel for drinks.

The next morning was rather uneventful, as we made our way to the airport early and then returned to the United States. The only thing that really puzzled me, though, was the fact that I had my bags searched twice. The first time was when going through security, which is to be expected. The second time was when I was boarding the flight itself. *sigh* Was it because they thought I’d be bringing liquids from the secure part of the terminal onto the flight or something?

I think I’m going to start putting my suitcase in checked baggage. Having to throw out both my shaving cream and my deodorant was not something I really wanted to do, and quite frankly buying replacements I’d only use for a couple of days was a waste of money. As long as I don’t have to put my laptop in checked baggage, I’ll grin and bear it. If that happens, I’m going to look into shipping my damn equipment. I don’t trust the airlines with my electronics.

Ah, well… at least I’m back home, and getting caught up with work. Now I can just relax and enjoy a drink, and hope I don’t have to go back anytime soon. :-)

It’s the start of another week, and in a few hours I’ll be on my way to Mexico on a business trip. I can’t say I’m entirely looking forward to it, but there’s no point getting bothered. At least it’s just for two nights.

I do have to admit the morning didn’t start out too well. I’ve taken a vow: next time I’m at a remote location, I’ll ask someone else to make the coffee if I’ve never used the coffeemaker before. I was jonesing for some brew, and went ahead and tried to make a pot. I put the filter together and poured water into the appropriate spot. I then pressed brew.

… only to find that the coffeemaker had its own dedicated water line running into it, and that pressing “BREW” caused it to get water from there as well. Oops.

Fortunately the overflow of weak coffee was mopped up, and the only real casualty (other than two rolls of paper towels) was my dignity. Still, I think from now on I’ll keep from brewing coffee without familiarising myself with the coffeemaker first.

As for this weekend, it was pretty uneventful other than three things. One was the upgrade to Windows Vista, and the other was the router replacement (both of which I already talked about). The other was an outdoor barbecue that Meredith and Jonathan threw at their house. I must say, the food was damn good, and it was fun seeing the gang again, so to speak. Otherwise, one could argue it was the calm before the storm of this week.

In any event, support tickets have just arrived, and I must attend to them. I’ll post from Villahermosa once I get there.

A little bit ago, I was doing my daily lunchtime web browsing, when I came across this VG Cats comic.

It is a rather somber and depressing comic, when you get right down to it. The thing is, it also reminds me of one of my favorite Doctor Who novels called “The Crooked World”. In it, the Doctor and his companions arrive on a world almost exactly like that of old Saturday morning cartoons. The world itself is also rather malleable and subject to outside influences, so thanks to the Doctor and friends, more “real” concepts start popping up. One of them appears when Jasper the cat finally loses his temper after losing so much to Squeak the mouse, and kills him. Jasper ends up being charged with murder, and wants nothing more than to be punished for killing his friend. The Doctor, however, defends him in court, helping him and everyone else understand the changes they’re going through.

The story itself (especially Jasper’s story) ends on a happy ending, with everyone becoming more somber and wiser. Still, it’s something to think about… at one point, would the toons grow up? Would they learn responsibility? What would they choose?

*sigh* It’s times like this where you wish you could see those toons through a kid’s eyes again.

Well, we’ll see how well this works out; this is an email post sent from my cell phone. Maybe, if I’m lucky, the new LJ plugin will let this post without my having to edit it later on. Of course, I won’t know until I get home.
On the not so bright side, I was able to arrange it where I can get my passport on Friday. Now I can on the Mexico trip Monday without any real problem. Of course, I’d just as soon not go, but that’s not really a choice.
Ah,well. At least my work here is done; I can go home now, with a stop at Hunam Garden to pick up some Chinese. Fun fun…

All right, so, I left the house at around 6 AM in order to get to the office early. An hour later, I FINALLY got past this major accident at Richey Road (two or three miles south of Louetta on I-45, which is where I had entered the freeway) where some guy had run into the wall in his SUV and gotten killed. If I had known it would take THAT long to get around the wreck, I would have exited at FM 1960.

Unfortunately, the Transtar electronic sign between Cypresswood and FM 1960 was not operating, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Has anyone else noticed this? It seems to me that the only time the Transtar signs show accident information, it’s for a location far enough away where it won’t directly affect you. Either that, or it gives travel time information only when traffic is good. When there’s a major accident up ahead that directly affects you or traffic is really backed up, it always looks like the signs are either offline or show a useless message like “Drink, drive, go to jail”. *sigh*

I dunno… I realize I’m still a tad frustrated from having to sit in traffic for so long, but really, if you’re going to have those signs, keep them updated! That’s what they’re there for, after all…

Well, if you’ve noticed the lack of “Current Mood” and “Current Music” fields on the site, it’s because I’m trying out a different LJ crosspost plugin for WordPress. I’m actually hoping this one handles cuts and whatnot better than the old one did. We’ll see.

Right now, I admit to some annoyance. This morning I received an email from a coworker telling me to get an airline ticket and hotel reserved, as he and I are now going to Villahermosa, Mexico on Monday. I’ve already booked the hotel and the flight; the main stumbling block is going to be my passport. My passport expired last month, and I have an appointment at the regional passport office downtown tomorrow to see if I can get a rush on my passport. Here’s hoping, as I don’t really relish the thought of trying to get out and in the country without a passport.

Ah, well. Hopefully this trip won’t end up like the last one did, with me having to rush home because of a hurricane. :-)

EDIT: Okay, it looks fine except the LJ side got a bigass header with the post. Ah, well… they can live with it, I hope. This plugin does more of what I need anyway, so it gets to stay for the time being.

First off, yet again, my latest desktop… :-)

I figure you Mortal Kombat fans might appreciate it. Now if only I could get a higher-resolution version of the image…

It’s 7:05 AM and I’m already at the office. I’ve started getting up an hour earlier so I can avoid traffic; it used to be that instead of taking I-45 to downtown and then TX-288 to my office, I would take the Hardy Toll Road to 610/US 59, and then take 59 to 288 (which would be a LOT faster). Unfortunately, construction on the Hardy Toll Road has started meaning that I’m paying for the privilege of sitting in traffic, and as a result I’ve started arriving at work later and later. So, beginning today, I’m leaving for work around 6 AM; even with taking I-45 I’m arriving at work faster than I did leaving at 7 AM and taking Hardy. This also gives me a bit of extra time in the morning to get my morning coffee and take care of a few things before the majority of employees arrive. I’m just not liking having to go to bed earlier…

Speaking of which, I should go get a refill on my coffee. Fun fun…