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. :-)