Elbie at Trig dot Net

Sun, 28 Nov 2004

We now resume our regularly scheduled blogging

Okay. So I was having a bit of a bad time there. Things are mostly normal now. The downshot of going to Atlanta for a week, is that I haven't actually done anything but work for the past three weeks straight. Both weekends were pretty much travelling and dealing with conference things, so I hadn't had any time off.

I took Thursday off just to get away from everything, and take a break, but one of the leftover things from Wednesday still had a bunch of things that needed to get done, so I spent half the day checking e-mail and making calls to people. Bleh.

Saturday, I finally got out climbing with friends from Q, and I think it was just what I needed. After that, suddenly, the world seemed much more normal and less out of control. I think it's been over two weeks since I've had any kind of excercise to speak of. Yes, I still hate my job. Or at least aspects of it. But it's not so thoroughly disheartening. Yay!

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Wed, 24 Nov 2004

Cold and wet and yucky

Bleh. So today was a pretty miserable day. My whole work day got turned upside down because of two different critical problems. Plus, there were two meetings that I couldn't really get out of, one of which I was supposed to chair, but wasn't really prepared for.

I got through everything okay, but by the end of the day, I was little more than a bundle of nervous energy. Bleh. It snowed briefly, which cheered me up some, but by the time I left to walk home, it was all slushy, and it was more rain coming down on me than anything else. Very cold rain.

These are the days when I really hate coming home to an empty house.

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Fri, 19 Nov 2004

What I learned from my November vacation.

Okay, so I've been here a week. I'm going home tomorrow, finally. Yay! In the meantime:

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Thu, 18 Nov 2004

The end approaches

It's Thursday here. The only day where I'm not in Training Sessions at the LISA conference. I went to a Tech Session, about scripting which was vaguely interesting instead, then had to buy my own lunch.

So far, things have been good. The talks have by and large been well presented, and the material useful to me. Socially, things have been very good as well: I've made a bunch of acquaintances; got in on the CA Certs Web of Trust signing thing; played some DDR. Largely, just had a good time. I even, perhaps not for the best, got suckered in to resubscribing to Puzzle Pirates, a social based MMORPG where all the combat and other skills are puzzle based.

Tomorrow is the last day of courses, after which I will be quite glad to go home, have a nap, pet my kitties, and finally have a weekend. I'll talk to y'all after that.

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Mon, 15 Nov 2004

Sunny Atlanta

Alright. I'm nicely entrenched in the Conference Level of the Hotel where I'll be spending the next week of my life: The Usenix LISA conference. I'm sitting at a table with seven people, and four laptops, at 9:15ish in the evening. We're chatting away happily about various topics; some geeky, and some not.

The trip here was relatively painless for me. Despite having to get up ungodly early. Flights for me have typically been fraught with peril. Or at the very least, extensive delays. This time, however, despite the increases in security, I whisked through customs and security with a minimum of fuss.

I miss home already. I've been to an all day talk, and had a yummy southwest-style lunch. It's all good and fun, but I'm tired. I didn't really say goodbye to my kitties.

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Thu, 11 Nov 2004

Getting deflowered.

It's been a crazy week. Cold, then warm, then now just starting to get cold again. We actually had some really pretty flurries on Monday. I sat in my office watching them for a bit. Yesterday was really warm again. And today it's been windy windy, and getting colder.

It's been so windy, in fact, that a friend of mine lost her Remembrance Day poppy this morning. I thought that was amusing, but I didn't think about making some crack about her being deflowered until much much later. I was kicking myself that I hadn't actually been able to casually make the comment right then and there. I must be slipping in my old age.

I'll admit though, that this morning was really nice. It really smelled like autumn. It's a nice earthy, composty smell. Yesterday, the whole town smelled literally of shit. I think one of the nearby farms was taking advantage of the warm weather to till and fertilise the land or something.

A the while, I've been rushing around trying to get ready for going to the LISA conference next week. I've borrowed a laptop from work, and I'll be stopping in to get my passport from the Passport Office tomorrow morning. Plus I've found someone to drop in and feed my cats and hopefully give them a wee bit of love.

See you all in a week! I'll probably be able to update from Atlanta, but you never know. I might even have pictures if you ask nicely. I'm looking at buying a large CF card for my camera.

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Sat, 06 Nov 2004

Today, I:

Not a bad day all in all. Still have to finish cleaning the bathroom tonight or tomorrow.

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Fri, 05 Nov 2004

A random November weekend

Not that there's much Earth shattering going on these days, but it's been a while since I last updated, and time has marched on.

Work is okay. I now have four separate boxes of some sort that have fans in them in my office. Right now, they're all running. Three computers and one UPS. It's not too bad, but I think in general, I'm not going to have all of them running.

I'm more than a little sore at the moment. In addition to the usual climbing, where I pushed myself pretty hard this week, my not-so-regular squash partner, Dr. Thingo and I played squash twice. And this morning, I was quite please to win two games out of five against him. Usually I win one, or sometimes none.

At this exact instant, 5:17pm, Eastern Standard Time, the sky is a beautiful mix of faded blues and pinks and purples. The fir trees outside my window silhouette nicely against the colourful backdrop. It's probably the nicest view I'm going to see for a while. The weather this weekend looks mostly wet, and there's a possibility of flurries to boot.

In the meantime, I'm most likely going to be spending the brunt of my time sitting in front of my computer playing the GuildWars beta. Whee!

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