Thursday, July 25
We are leaving for Michigan early tomorrow morning. As usual, I am about a day behind in everything, so I just now (11 PM) set my out of office e-mail and voice mail messages. I know I forgot a lot of things. I guess I can catch up this week, though!
Tuesday, July 24
Erica is skipping camp this week since we are leaving for Michigan Friday morning. Yesterday she had lunch with Ed, then did some errands, then hung out in his office for the rest of the day. Today I went and picked her up after I finished with Sales Boot Camp (I think I explained that before, didn't I?). We went back to the Galleria to get her a dress for the weekend, then had lunch. And guess who wasn't skating for a change? I was actually sorry that Erica didn't get to see Tara skate, but I guess she does other things occasionally. After lunch, Erica came up to my office for the afternoon. She proclaimed my office more fun than Ed's (we throw koosh balls around for one thing, and she had her own computer to surf on). On the way home we stopped to get our hair cut. Mine is short -- I think you'll be surprised. Really, if I had a smaller face I'd get a buzz cut, but I don't, so I didn't. It is short, though.
Sunday, July 22
Yesterday we went to the Astro World Series of Dog Shows. As seen on TV (well, Animal Planet anyway), this is a combination dog show / dog olympics. We saw the agility competition, frisbee exhibition, flyball and obedience competition.
Agility competion is like a doggie steeplechase. The owners direct their pups through a series of jumps, tunnels, teeter-totters, steep ramps and the "weave" which is a very tight slalom course. It's just amazing to watch a dog go through the weave. They have to go through each gate - if they miss one, they have to start over. We even saw one dog miss a gate, and without his owner prompting him, he turned around and started over. My favorite part was the dog/owner team who leapt across the finish line, and continued to leap, so excited, until the owner fell full force on top of the dog. Both were okay. Oh, and the young dog who got up on the high A frame and realized that he could see lots of other dogs, then got distracted, then decided to go do something else. Border collies did best in this competion, but there was a Great Dane entered, too. He had trouble getting through the tunnels, but was a good sport.
We saw the Texas state championship frisbee dog, as well as the 1998 and 2001 world champions, father and son. The latter was really amazing to watch. He did back flips five feet in the air to catch frisbees.
What is flyball? I'm still not sure. It's kind of a doggie relay race with hurdles. The teams have a mix of breeds, small and large, and they seem to know what to do....
Finally, the obedience competition. Literally, this was watching ten dogs lie still until their owners told them to stop. Jeez.
The dogs all seemed to love the games, and didn't care at all whether they won or loss, so it was fun to watch.
Afterwards, I stopped in to work for a couple of hours, then we went out for sushi.
Today I was at work from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. Things went fairly smoothly, but I think we'll have issues tomorrow as people from all over the country log in across the WAN, on dial-up, and via VPN. But we couldn't test every conceivable connection type today.
Friday, July 20
Today was almost as hectic as yesterday, but not quite. Our hacker problem turned out to be the Code Red worm. The timing couldn't have been worse, since in about 20 minutes we disconnect our network from the Williams Communications network. Today we had a couple of sites that wouldn't load, but couldn't tell if it was because of changes due to the disconnect or lockdowns made for security reasons last night. We had one external site that we couldn't see from our network, but I asked an external tester to try it (thanks, Mom - it was suggested we add you to our support list), and it was okay to the rest of the world. I don't think that was the worm, but if things break this weekend it will be hard to troubleshoot. We went to all the trouble of beginning a production freeze last weekend, and then had to break that freeze last night to tighten up security.
I will be working all day Sunday, and have one conference call tomorrow about the separation. Nothing I am responsible for should break if the network stays up, so I'm not too worried.
Thursday, July 19
Happy Birthday, Linda!
Today was the most hectic workday I've ever had. I had an 8 o'clock presentation to a group in Connecticut, where it was 9 o'clock. They were well rested. I was not, because I couldn't sleep, and I wanted to get in long enough before that to prepare, and I had to take Erica to camp first, and I had to wake Erica up in time to get ready, which takes about twice as long as last year and twice as long as me (she brought a hair dryer this year!). The presentation was 2 hours and 45 minutes long (I had a cohort do part of it). I had a dentist appointment at noon, so figured that in the hour and 15 minutes between the two, I could answer e-mails and voice mails and have lunch. But instead, I dealt with an irate user who couldn't tell the difference between a technical problem and a business problem (in other words, couldn't understand why a required field had to be filled in, and didn't know what it should be filled with, which I didn't know either, since I'm not her boss), then tried to calm down the developer who she called next. In the middle of that, the reminder for my dentist appointment popped up, so I called the woman (who thankfully did not answer the phone) back, then fled to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. I was late, but so were they. That made me late for my 1 o'clock meeting. That one dragged out for an hour and 45 minutes after I got there. So by three, I was starving, since I didn't eat breakfast. I begged to skip my next meeting, which had already started, and the other attendees took pity on me. Oh, and I should mention that they took my blood pressure at the dentist and it was 148 over 90. It's never been more that 120/80 before, even when I'm stressed. I'm not worried, though, since I just had it taken a few months ago and it was 108/70. It was just a bad morning. Anyway, a few more things blew up in the afternoon, I did manage to eat at 3:45, and then a hacker started attacking our external websites, bringing them down every 10 minutes. Actually, that was not stressful for me, since the internal sites were fine, and I'm seeing an opportunity to blame all problems with our applications on hackers.
Anyway, Erica was at the Y for 12 hours, so we got our money's worth today.
Tuesday, July 17
We saw Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on Saturday. This is an animated film done in a realistic style. It was amazing to see the animation. If you care about plot, don't bother, but if you care about digital graphics, its something to see. One character in particular looked so real that I thought he was a live actor standing in with the animated ones. The lead character wasn't that realistic, though. And to be honest, I really liked the animation of the "phantoms" better than the "real" people. But really, check out some of the trailers and clips on the site (at the highest resolution your connection allows - cable should support the highest resolution). Unfortunately, the character that fooled me isn't really featured here.
Sunday, July 15
I'll try to catch up here - because of our ISP problems and just plain busyness, I've left a few things out this week.
On Monday Ed and I attended the monthly Houston Heights Association meeting in the old fire station around the corner. The meetings are usually fairly interesting because someone puts a lot of time into putting together a program for after the business part of the meeting. This week, the topic was "One Night Stand" a one night exhibit of works by neighborhood artists. I was surprised to see that two artists I was already familiar with and liked a lot actually live just a few blocks from me. One was Dee Wolff, who I saw at Looking at Art in May. The other was Sharon Kopriva. We saw a one-person exhibit by her at the Menil Collection last year. It was so good. Creepy, creepy, creepy but good. The piece she had over at the firehall was a small child with a teddy bear. Wearing a Ku Klux Klan costume. It was called "Junior".
Yesterday we were trying to decide what to do. We thought about the space center. We though about going kitten shopping. I mentioned a sale at Sun and Ski Sports. Ed asked me what I wanted there. I said I didn't know yet. Erica said "Let's go impulse shopping!" So that's exactly what we did. Now we have barbells and bar ends for my bike and hats and clothes and hiking shoes and tennis balls and lots of stuff we didn't have until then. We're going to make "Impulse Shopping Day" an annual event.
We went to dinner last night at benjy's. Mmmm, very good. We'll take y'all there if you come and visit.
Thursday, July 12
Hey, isn't it Greg J's birthday?
We just went over and visited our new neighbors. I had talked with them several times, but Ed hadn't met them yet. They're very nice. She (Pam) has a horse she keeps in Katy. She drives out there every morning to ride. They moved here from Kentucky, but have lived all over, including New Zealand.
I got a promotion at work, with a raise. Woohoo! Guess I don't really have any excuse to not buy a new car now, seeing as how my air conditioning is not really up to Houston standards.
Oh, and this week I watched Tara Lipinsky, Olympic gold medalist, skate three times.
Tuesday, July 10
Sorry for the delay in posting - we had problems with our ISP last night, and I didn't get around to getting it fixed until tonight. And now it's late, so I'll write more tomorrow.
But don't worry, all is well.
Friday, July 6
Erica is on an overnight field trip to Dallas. She returns at about 11 tonight.
Yesterday at the mall, Tara (I can just call her by her first name from now on, can't I?) was on the escalator behind us. We were subjected to her routine yet again. And again today, for that matter. Although today we went to lunch later, so got to see the end of her practice session. The nice thing about that was that she stayed on the ice as they let the kids back on, and gave them pointers and encouraged them for at least half an hour. That must be such a thrill to the little kids.
Also at the mall, two rap groups were signing autographs. I did not recognize who they were, but the crowds were immense. And then a whole bunch of girls went running and screaming a different direction, away from the rappers and Tara, pens and paper and hand. So apparently there was another celebrity in the house as well.
Monday, July 2
Yesterday while Ed and Erica were golfing, I went antiquing. We have so many great shops in the Heights. Many of the stores specialize -- so we have a store that has lots of old stained glass windows, several with furniture, one that has a lot of books, religious artifacts and Oddfellows (!) artifacts, and one with lots of glass. I went into two shops yesterday that I'd never been in before. The first was on Heights Boulevard and specialized in old radios and fans (hundreds of them from various periods, all restored to working condition). The second was a mostly glass store on Yale. I bought two ATOMIC TM (vaseline glass) turkeys at this store. I've decided to collect Thanksgiving stuff - partly because there isn't much of it that isn't appalling, partly because of our Standish background, but mostly because these particular turkeys glowed in the dark.
But I'd almost forgotten that what I was looking for was a piece of furniture to hold all of our electronic cable and adapters, much like Mom and Dad's antique sewing cabinet. No such luck, though.
Oh, and I nearly forgot: every time I go into an antique store, I see an item from my childhood, and yesterday was no exception. Remember that metal wastebasket I had with all the college pennants on it? It's now worth $30. I can't believe I saw the same exact thing in a store! I'd completely forgotten about that. Who bought it the one that was in my room????
Sunday, July 1
Last night we went to a going away party at Brian and Laura's house for old friends of theirs and Ed's, Scott and Lynn, who are moving to Charlotte. They have all known each other for a long time.
Ed and Erica are golfing today, and I am finishing up small household projects. The weather has been unusual so far this summer. For most of today, it was in the low 70's. The high was about 83. We've also had plenty of rain. I know it can't last, but I am enjoying it.
