Posts

Thursday: Got a gift for M at Shane Co (earrings) and stashed it in the trunk for later. The initial idea was to hide it somewhere in the house and give her an innocent-looking box of chocolates with a clue at the bottom, but something else came up (see below). I arrived home and we left again to go look at futons for the spare room. After choosing a decent futon of the “loveseat” variety (not as wide as a normal couch, it folds out and extends and you bring out the extra piece of futon to stick on the end to make a double bed). The guy took forever to write up the invoice, but we were in no particular hurry. Set up delivery for Saturday. ...

M’s parents were here most of the weekend. It’s great to see them! We didn’t really do anything special, just watched TV and hung around the house. That was fun and relaxing. We left the house to go to Fry’s once (with a stop at Cost Plus) and a couple times for grocery shopping. We had salisbury steak Friday, Chinese Saturday, and gnocchi Sunday. They left early Monday morning. Covad guy came today and was actually successful in hooking up DSL. That is cool. Now I can change the new server over to Megapath and start migrating users over.

Wednesday: Crazy day before leaving, trying to wrap up all kinds of loose ends both at work and at home. I decided to work from home so I could run a couple of errands without losing too much time. I had one conference call meeting and one irc virtual meeting. I managed to get a large amount of crap done, both work and home, though I was up until like 1 am.

Last Saturday: Thought about going out observing, but my back was bothering me a bit, so we decided to stay home and watch a movie instead. See Stupid Neighbor Tricks for summary of the remainder of the evening. Last Sunday: Didn’t really feel like going out of the house, due to my back still bugging me, and not wanting to see the neighbor outside. Stayed inside pretty much all day. Monday: Went to work. buncha meetings. ...

Dear Neighbor, I’m writing to apologize for the noise earlier tonight. Our roommate is moving out, and she rented a steam cleaning machine, so we used the machine to clean other parts of the carpet as well. Unfortunately the only time we had available to work on this was 7:30 to 8:30 and the machine was due back the following day. This is a one-time event and I don’t expect to have any future needs to clean carpets in the evening. ...

Had some problems with the neigbor making loud noises again. Since this was disturbing our movie, I decided to do something. Since he reacted rudely when I complained before and basically told me not to call him next time, I decided to call the police instead. If you want the whole story, check out my letter to the management company: Harriet, I am a resident/owner at Vista Del Lago. I have been having problems with a neighbor making excessive noise. I’m not exactly sure what to do… can you please let me know what can be done, and/or forward the complaint to the VDL Board members? ...

Received telegram from abroad: “By wire from The Empire of Terafina. Stop. We have founded the terroriry of Hy Brasil, and invite your government to depart your territory and join us. Stop.” Conferred with Majesty during twice-daily “lap conference”. Replied to The Empire of Terafina: “Message from His Majesty: We care little about “region” affiliations, but since your country exports some fine Treats, we will forward the request on to our minions for their consideration.” ...

Not wanting to be left out, I decided to go to nationstates.net and created The Dictatorship of Bunland. This land differs from other nation states because it is governed by a non-human: a near-domesticated British shorthair mackerel tabby cat named Bunny. Since Bunny doesn’t speak English (and by most accounts understands very little of it as well) the business of the nation is carried out by his Minions. Those Minions in favor with Bunny may make policy decisions from time to time. Those Minions who fall out of favor are scratched and bitten, though they may be given a chance to earn favor again by lobbying him with treats. (Yes the currency is the “treat”. We use paper money here… we’re not savages… the name “treat” is of mostly archaic/historical significance but the paper currency still bears caricatures of little fishies, chickens, etc. – a remnant of the days when we were still on the Savory Treat Standard.) Some of the more liberal-minded Minions have collected themselves into a Parliament, but this is more to make their nation appear legitimate and less about making policy decisions fairly than one might at first suspect. ...

Things I wanted to do this year Write more Roleplay Go out with friends Exercise How it really turned out Exercise: Exercised regularly during the end of May and most of June, most of August, and pretty much blew it off the rest of the time. Writing: This has been inconsistent, just don’t seem to have the excess energy or enthusiasm for it. Roleplaying: There was Merlin’s game that has wrapped up, but nothing really other than that. I probably need to get involved with a Mush in order to get more roleplaying and I am afraid of getting wrapped up in something that takes too much time. Go out with friends- I am doing better on this but we are still a bit constrained because M prefers to stay home a lot. ...

I am starting to slowly switch services over from charon to neko-base (two servers here at home). The first step has been started, which is to duplicate all DNS information to both and start switching over domains to point to the new servers. If you’re a charon user, you may have already received mail from me about that. The idea behind a slow migration rather than a quick one is so that each service will be impacted for a minimal amount of time – hopefully no more than an hour of inconvenience to the owners, and no Web/Mail outage observed by their clients. For Mush clients there will be an interruption, either the users will not be able to play during the switchover, or if the owner prefers, the users can stay logged in to the old server while the new one is being set up (and they should not do any building or send/change their +mail). The slower migration of services to the new host also allows me to double-check the services we are providing, to drop any services that are no longer required, and change the setup on the new machine if needed. ...