The AC in the office was at 81 today. It was great. Now for some reason someone is here to fix it. I did not think it was broken

I cruised my new neighborhood a bit on my way to get in I-Pass from Jewel. I am five blocks from a Dave and Busters. I am only 3/4 of a mile from I-355. Everything I could want seems to be available on Lake St in Addison. So I got and activated my I-Pass. That took longer than I hoped. I finally got out of town and drove to Champaign.

There I watched the end of cannedtomatos's basket making class for Michel Folcland and watched her interact as a teacher. The class did not work out quiet as well as she had hoped, but people learned a lot and baskets were made by most. I just hung out in the back.

We then went to folo1's house for schmoozing and pizza. I ended up buying the stuffed pizzas as I was sent to pick them up and the payment system was unorgaized. I also admired the massive graphic novel library and read some missed comics. Also discussed the Regia combat and determined that it is not for me. Touch convention, no headshots, no lower arm shots, particular armor (which makes sense), etc. and I am looking for things that give you a more realistic combat experience, not a system that looks better. There is a place for this, but not something I want to put time and money in. SCA sidesword and maybe some of the WMA is more what I would look towards.

sgtgwn and I got home about 12:30 and then I managed to fall asleep while writing this. So I am posting now.

Today was great. I spent the day as much as I could outside. First thing in the morning sgtgwn and I took the dog for a walk and wore her out. Then I spent the day organizing the garage. I am going to outfit my apartment with all the camping gear. so I cleaned it all up and set it up for easy access to load into, hopefully, the van.

It was such a nice day out. The 70s here. The weather and getting all the camping gear out made me really miss the fact that I will not be going to Gulf Wars. I thought about it a lot today.

But I also enjoyed the great weather. It looks like this will be the only day of it. :(

Went to the SCA meeting. No one wanted to take over seneschal. Of course we only had three people at it.

I talked about this filtered before, but I can now let everyone know that I will be taking a position at CTI starting March 17th. This is a big change for me after 22 years at TriLutions. I will be in the greater Chicago area for three months and then selling from home.

Today the issues with TriLutions internet just got worse. ( Technical )

So up in the burbs tonight with business. I had a 6pm meeting tonight and an 8am meeting tomorrow. So I planned to leave Macomb at 11. Only my comptuer did not co-operate. I had installed Turbo Tax last night and it did not like it. So I had to fix that. Only it was going to take more time than I had, so I brought my backup drive with me and finally left at noon.

The drive up went fine. I listened to the playoffs. The very sad playoff game first. The Colts deserved to lose it. They should have won it and they could not execute. The defense failed to stop backups. The offense failed at the worst time. But I would at least find out later that the Giants won, so the Packers are at home next week to beat them and then go on to upset the Patriots. Because while I will be rooting for San Diego, I do not give them much of a chance.

Then I got to my exit and had to wind all around in a really big circle to find my hotel. Finally found how to get into it. By the time I checked in, I grabbed a quick shower. Checked out the room and head out. I thought I would grab food before my meeting. Only I got turned around at the 55-294 interchange. Headed the wrong way. I hate it when you have to take a road marked north when you are going south because it really heads east. Finally got turned around. Then finally found the place. Google told me 38 minutes. It took me 65 and I had no traffic!

Got back to the hotel about 8:30 and finally had dinner at Harry Carry's. Pricey, but I got out for $20. I just did not have the energy to go find someplace. Then I went and spent 15 minutes in the hot tub. It was nice but they are not as much fun alone.

Now I should get to bed as I have to deal with Chicagoland traffice in the morning. I have no idea what I will be getting into.

I have a funeral to attend tomoroow. Ruth Ragsdale passed away. She was the wife of one of the founders of TriLutions. Floyd still works part time for us. He was worked for every iteration and every owner of what is now TriLutions. So we will close the store from 12-3 tomorrow so we can all go and pay our respects to Ruth, but just as much to support Floyd.

A good day here. Much useful stuff was accomplished. I solved two sets of problems for clients cleanly and completly. That is alwasy good. I got five computers setup and all the updates run on them. I have to deliver them tomorrow.

The I went to Illiton fighter practice. I went with the main purpose of helping druminmychest be ready for Crown. He told me I did well with that. I know he is reading this, but I do not care if he might be slightly embarrassed, but this man will be a Knight of the Society very soon. His combat skills need only a bit more work and I want to do my part for that. Nice to fight with birchduck, I had not expected that chance but class was cancelled so that worked. Fought some sword and shield with stargazer_jq. That was a fun change of pace. Worked over and over with druminmychest and had great fun. He found a method to take my arm three times using the same move. Bad me. Good for him. Very good time in armor.

Then I tried a few rapier fights and my head was so not in it. We fought until 8:45 as they have no time that they have to leave this site. That is dangerous for me :) But got packed up, said good byes, got a sandwhich jumped on the road and got home about 10:30.

Fun times.

A very short powerful storm rolled through Galesburg. It knocked out power and trees all over town. I had to drive out to our main wirless tower as it had no power. On the way I took these pictures. We were on generator power for about two hours. One of our competitors is still down as I write this. Now I have to see how many client radio connections were taken down in the storm as power is restored. Fun. Fun.

It was a real Monday today. Work was a bear. People that I needed to speak to did not return my calls. I was not well organized. I forgot things for hours. I must be more productive to keep things working there.

Then I left my AC adaptor at the office and ran the laptop out of juice. So I am at Jen's PowerMac entering this. I had written about half my Harry Potter entry on the laptop, so it is now going to wait.

I did get the front rooms cleaned and vaccumed plus the laundry and the garbage taken care of though!

And the net connection sucks tonight! I have no idea if this will ever post. I just had one comment vanish. I am off to bed.

Well, I have just completed two server upgrades. Neither went perfectly but the new software is now running. Time to go back home!

More later if I am awake enough

Nutty day at work today. Met my self coming and going. And never in a good or useful way. Stupid stuff that should be automatic failing! Argh.

Time to go home, I just wish I would have accomplished something.

Work was long today. A five hour install that did not go well and was done for free to keep a client. I am not sure it will even stay stable. The internet radio could not get a signal to the big tower, yet somehow found the little one. Even though I could see the big one with my eyes. I do not get this one at all. Voodoo. I tell you it is voodoo.

What a long day. And I am too tired and it is too late to write much. I just finished stuff for work that needed to be done before vacation. I know I am going to spend time on the phone with work at Gulf Wars. But I am 90% packed, but too tired to write any more. We leave in about 5 hours. I need sleep.

I might get a chance to post tomorrow at the hotel after that not much chance of reading or posting for most of the week.

To those in the Middle that can not go, I will be killing for you!

I hope I can leave soon. I hate spam. A real update before I leave for Gulf.

Today was bad.

But wait, let me go back to yesterday for one more thing. I was supposed to meet at the carrer center at Knox. Only the person I was supposed to meet was sick. So I would have to wait. I could not do that during work time. So no resume. I am just going to have to do one on my own.

So today. We found that the server that runs spam assassin, which is in theory supposed to weed out spam, had been hacked. I spent way too many hours reading logs. Trying to find out if there was something that we could just make a simple change to. I never did find anything. I am not that good with Linux or Unix. I am just not that good period. I felt all my lack of talent today.

I determined that if I was going to be gone for a week, I had better get things as nice as possible. So I decided to split the mail server up into two servers so neither one would be as heavily used. This would give Jace time to reset up the spam assassin. So I did that at work tonight until 8pm. Twelve hour days suck.

So now I have a ton more work to do tomorrow plus all the packing. And then plan for the amount of time I will have to spend on the phone working while I am at Gulf Wars.

First ,Sean is much better now. I just returned from picking up the work he missed at school and he is working on it. He rested for much of the morning while I got a some work done from home. Then I made him lunch and he felt much better after that. We played some Yugi-Oh for a while then I did all the dishes, finished the laundry and vaccumed the bedroom and the stairs. Chatted on line with some people as well. I managed to sell $240 worth of battery backups. So it was not a total loss. But since I was not in Galesburg, we had issues with our mail server. That never seems to fail.

I am off to visit a client and hopefully help them.

Well today was different. I tried to get several things done in Macomb to help justify not going to Galesburg. That did not work so well. The special power cord for the computer that I was to deliver was not with the computer. The home that I was to make a service call to had a drive that you could not enter and no street parking. Those did not work out. Sean went sledding with some friends though, since WIU was also closed. I went out and grabbed groceries during this time.

I spent several hours trying to find the Apache command that was keeping a new web server from showing a directory listing. I can not find anything that is causing it.

I did manage to setup a new website and sell an iMac though. So it was not a total loss. Still, I should have been more productive. Focus. I need to focus.

Macomb schools have already cancelled for tomorrow, so I took Sean out to rent a new video game. The roads were not that bad. Even if I did not think we needed to go out and get it. We also picked up and watched Open Season. It had its moments, but overall it was below average. It was nice to sit and watch a movie as a family.

Now aren't you glad you took the time to read this :)

I got up and got moving quickly as they would be able to look at my exhaust system today. Got the van to there first thing. Got a plumber to come out to look at my drain. Got gas in sgtgwn's car. Headed to Galesburg.

And had to turn around half way. Forgot to drop off Sean's pajamas for pajama day at St Paul. Great. An hour late for work. Took that back and dropped off Jen's calculator that she forgot as well.

Then I got to Galesburg and got a call that the van would be $376, but parts would have to be ordered. Great. So I have to use it loud tomorrow and take it back on Monday for the install. At least I had the money this time.

Then I was working and noticed that I forgot a tie this morning.

Huh.

The ankle is much better this morning. It is just a little sore. I had to go up on a rooftop to fix a radio with it. The radio was filled with ice! It was impressive. But only a light swelling in the ankle, so it will be fine on Saturday. Unless I fall off a roof fixing more frozen radios I still have two not working well.