July 2001 Archives

Things are getting weird. I got an IM from one of the guys from Anim-X, the company that created Majestic and he said that they'd been getting threats about putting the game out. Then he sent me this recording of this conversation, along with some other notes. I actually had to call Anim-X and go into someone's voice mail to get the name of their new web site.

They also seem to be intermingling real news in with stuff to do with the game. At least. I think that is what they are doing.

(I just wish this also ran on the mac. I wouldn't think it would be too difficult)

Majestic Day 2:
So I got a bulletin that the game has been shut down. But that's what the strange call I got yesterday said would happen. So I'm not sure what to think at this point. Are they playing with me? The weird guy who called me yesterday said he'd get in touch with me this morning, but I haven't heard from him yet.

So I just started trying out the first episode of Majestic and so far I have to say that it's a little bit boring. Though the game is only just starting. I'd kind of hoped it would start off with more of a bang. The one thing the game is very good at though is community building. It sets you up with other players that you can IM with from the start and I've had other people IMing me from out of the blue. That part is quite cool. So we'll see. I'll post updates on how it goes as time goes on.

I also ordered Dance Dance Revolution from Amazon yesterday. I'm also going to order a third party pad for it. While I can't necessarily use it that well right now I'm sure my friends can :).

I seem to have this knack for getting up really early and yet never being able to make it out of the house until about 8:30. Of course now I've started using that time to do work stuff. Mostly reading documentation and getting the stuff done that I can never seem to get done when I'm in the office.

I found out that an aquaintence of mine was diagnosed with cancer. Things like this seem to affect me differently now. It freaks me out a little bit more because I seem to see it all over the place now. This has been quite an eventful year or so as far as friends with medical conditions. There's me and my lung, Jay with his brain, and now this. I asked my friend Rachel to send my best to her, since she knows her better. I just wish I could help more.

In some ways it makes me appreciate how some of my friends must feel. I have this odd lung condition and they know it is serious, but all they can really do is offer support. And they really do an amazing job of it. People are continuously offering to help me out. I just need to be much less stubborn and prideful and accept it more often.

On another completely random note. I ran into my old high school friend Julie, who lives one building over, and found out that our other good friend Tamson is moving back soon. I'm actually fairly psyched. I've fallen out of touch with Tamson since she moved back out to San Diego and I miss hanging out and chatting with her.

I just found out that Utena isn't all out on DVD yet. So I've started watching something that I can't see all of. AUGH.

On another note. My friend colleen is cycling across the US on her way to Burning Man. Folks should check out the site tracking her: Intrepid Heroines. It sounds like it has definitely been quite a trip, but she is cranking along. I am really impressed. It is one of those things I've always wanted to try to do. Who knows, maybe someday I'll be able to.

So everyone I know has been taking the Find Your Spot test. I just took it and got the following results:

1. New Haven, CT
2. Providence, RI
3. Boston, MA
4. Hartford, CT
5. Albuquerque, NM
6. Worcester, MA
7. Danbury, CT
8. Stamford/Norwalk, CT
9. Newport, RI
10. Santa Fe, NM
11. Cambridge, MA (<-- home!)
12. Baltimore, MD
13. Reno, NV
14. Los Cruces, NM
15. Washington, DC
16. Las Vegas
17. Portland, OR
18. Eugene, OR
19. Cape Cod, MA
20. Corvallis, OR
21.Little Rock, AR
22. Annapolis, MD
23. Amherst, MA
24. Northampton, MA

I thought it was pretty interesting the places it came up with. More of a few have been places that I have lived or have wanted to live.

Utena is strange, but quite cool.

So I added my second review to Boston Brunch. I'm enjoying playing around with the site. It has definitely refined my web skills from a programming standpoint. There's definitely something nice about seeing a project through to completion. Especially something like this. I personally think that small little sites like this are what makes the Internet so cool. I remember when I'd be browsing around and find that someone had just done something like this, I'd just be so impressed. A big part of it was because they were doing it for no reason other than "it would be neat".

LOTD: Mr T. vs Everything
A guide to everything Mr. T
(yeah, I've been bad with updating this lately)

So I feel like an idiot.
I finally fixed the DNS information for my web box, and suddenly I wasn't able to post any blogs. Took me forever to figure out that the old hostname wasn't working!

I got my new B&W G3 last night. My friend Jeff was selling it since he's going more portable these days. It's quite sweet. Within about 3 hours of setting it up I had OS X installed. I've already got X, fink, screen, and tf installed. My next step is to set up fetchmail so that I can use this box as my own mail server. I think it should end up being pretty cool.

I still can't believe how much of a mac person I've become. Jeff was saying last night that he was still stunned by it. But the jump really wasn't that big, since OS X is still basicly unix on the inside.

So the site is up. I think I'm comfortable with people banging on it some.
To reach it, go here. You should be able to do everything except searching, though that will be working a bit later today.

Ugs.
I'm just up for a few minutes. I went out to a show at Club Passim last night and when I got home the power was off. I have to say this must have been the crappiest night for such a thing to happen. It was so humid. I kind of crawled into bed and slept quite uncomfortably. But, the light in my room just came on. So I'm up to turn on my a/c (gotta put that drain back on the electrical system as soon as I can). Of course, now that I can sleep I'll probably end up oversleeping.

My new web project is getting closer and closer to opening up.
Did I say new? Well, new in the sense that it isn't live yet and should be soon. I've actually been working on it for a few months. The site is called Boston Brunch. Over a year ago friends of mine and I were at sunday brunch and decided that we needed to find a way to find new brunch spots. So I opened up my big mouth and said, "We should have a web site!" Nothing really ever came of it at that time.
Fast forwrad to about two months ago. I rebuild my linux box and decided that this is as good a time as any to look into it and start coding it. I'm about 3/4s of the way done with it and hope to be able to show at least a tiny bit of it off soon.

CD Review: Global Underground 20 - Darren Emerson - Singapore (Disc1)
So I picked this up about a week ago and just got a chance to listen to it on the way home from the party on Saturday night. I'd gotten the last Darren Emerson Global Underground CD and thought it was okay, but it never really amazed me much. So far, disc 1 is quite enjoyable. There are one or two tracks that just don't do much for me (specificly "Do you like the way you feel when you shake?" and "Thee Rush"). But some of the tracks just make me groove, like "Universal Personal" and "Boom!". I also have a weak spot for this CD because it's got the Thomas Heckman mix of "Join in the Chant". I think I'd recommend this CD to folks, moreso then his last mix, but I found it a bit mediocre.

So I'm taking the plunge. On Thursday I'm buying my friend Jeff's G3 Tower. It's a pretty nice machine. I'm planning on using it for a server for home (running OS X). It'll be a nice way to learn more about a bunch of unix things I've put off learning about.

I see a sleepless night ahead of me.

Site update.

Just last night I added a new section to my site that I'd been meaning to for a bit. A links page. I'll be updating this, along with my friends page, slowly but surely. So be sure to check it out now and then to see what's new.

*YAWNS*

Well, it was quite a long weekend. Changmian threw a small gathering up in the woods in New Hampshire. I had a pretty good time, and got to spin. Though things didn't really go quite the way I had hoped. I ended up having to spin a quiet daybreak set. I'd really been looking forward to playing some of my darker stuff. That part was quite disappointing.

I also think this may have been my last event in a while. I am feeling the need to pull back a bit from going out to clubs as much. When it comes down to it, the whole thing always takes a lot out of me. I was exhausted after my gig at the Phoenix Landing and the party this weekend just took a lot out of me. I'm still feeling quite drained from it all.

So last night I was a complete geek.

I built up Xfree86 and once I got that working I got The Gimp. For those who don't know it's a graphics program for X Windows. But up until yesterday I hadn't known how to get it set up on my new mac. The biggest problem was getting XFree86 built correctly. But last night I got that done and now everything is happy. I just need to learn how to use it. Hopefully I can spice up my page a bit now.

LOTD: StillHere
A curious site I found off of narilka's site. Check it out!

So I put this little imood thingy on my page. Which is kind of cool. But I think I'm going to take off the mood of the internet because it is always tired! That's no fun.

I'd love to see the internet being homicidal one of these days.

So I just got the coolest little new thing.
As many of you know I got on of those Titanium Powerbook G4s. My friend Jeff recommended this cool product from J.R. Hill & Co. It's this nice little pad that you put on your laptop keyboard, so that when you close it you don't leave marks on your screen. I just got it in the mail and it's great!

So last night I played my 'dream gig'.

Ever since I moved to Boston I've been going to a place called The Phoenix Landing. It's this cool pub that has DJs playing techno and house on Wednesday nights. It's been going on quite a few years at this point. About 2 and a half years ago I started spinning myself. I'd always wanted to do the DJ thing. There's just always seemed like there was something magical about what they do.

Ever since I started spinning the Wednesdays at the Phoenix Landing has been a goal of mine. I just think it's one of the best nights out there in Boston. So when I was asked to spin there I accepted in a second. Last night was the night.

It was wonderful. I really had no idea what to expect. I've actually played at the Landing on a Sunday night, but while that was good, it wasn't what I was shooting for. There's something really great about looking out across a crowded room and watching everyone dance and knowing you're the one doing it. It was also amazing because it was, so far, my biggest goal in DJing. Now I need to figure out what my next milestone will be!

Not much posting for me today. I'll write about my trip to the transplant clinic tomorrow.

Right now it is 3 hours from my gig and I've got those pre-gig jitters. I'm sure I'll smooth them out once I get a bite of food in me. More on that later too.

Wish me luck!

Today is bound to be a kind of busy day for posts.

Right now I'm watching they keynote from Macworld Expo. I'm quite excited about this. They announced OS X 10.1 today. It's due to be released in September. The demo of it they were showing was definitely slick. I want it now. :)

Wow, busy posting day today for me.

I was looking back at what I posted earlier and wanted to add one piece to this. Towards the end I posted something about not being able to do all this on my own. This has actually been one of the hardest parts of this whole lung ordeal for me. I am a very independant person and one thing that all this has forced me to do is ask for help from people a lot more. Also, once I get my transplant I'm going to need a lot of support from my family and friends. I think that was my biggest lesson learned from back in May.

So, I just wanted to say a big Thank You to all my friends out there who read this. Because, while I'm a stubborn ass most of the time, when I have asked for help they have always been there.

Quick question for you other web folks out there. I've been looking at my logs this:
194.198.134.180 - - [17/Jul/2001:02:23:27 -0400] "GET /default.ida?NNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NN%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u685
8%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00%u531b%u53ff%
u0078%u0000%u00=a HTTP/1.0" 400 323 "-" "-"

So my guess is someone is trying to poke holes in my web machine. Anyone else see these? I tried searching around the web some, but couldn't find anything that fit.

Just another quick random though.
The other day a friend of mine was saying she couldn't see how I could post things like the post I just did in such a public place.

I think for me it's a way for me to just vent about things to do with my life. In a lot of cases its stuff that I'd be telling my friends anyways. And if other people out there decide to read it, who cares.

In the case of my lung stuff, I figure that if someone else in a similar situation happens to find this stuff all the better. I know that i've benefitted from sites on the net that have to do with people's experiences from transplants. One site that is a great example of this is: New Lungs -- A Complete Guide To Lung Transplantation. In a lot of ways, this was about 1/4 of my inspiration for writing about this stuff more.

I'm starting to get a bit nervous about tomorrow. Besides being my gig at the Phoenix Landing I have an appointment at the Transplant Clinic. This is the first appointment I've had their since I got called as a backup (and turned it down). I feel like I've made really great strides since then in dealing with this all. I think at the time I was called back then I really wasn't quite ready. I don't know that you can ever fully be ready for it to happen, but that situation really did force me to face my fears about the whole issue.

It's a very daunting thing for me. Just two years ago I was diagnosed with this 'condition' that has really ruled my life for at least that long. Now I'm facing a fix to the problem. The thing is, when you get a transplant you aren't getting a cure for whatever you have. Instead you are replacing one medical condition (one where in many cases your chances for long term survival aren't that great) with another medical condition (one that is also serious, but much more managable). It's also going to mean some fairly substatial chagnes in my life. No more drinking (though I understand that after a while I can have a beer now and then). I have to be much more aware of my health. At the same time. I'll be able to walk places and not feel like I'm going to pass out after walking half a block.

So, after that night in May, I had myself inactivated on the list for a little bit. My understanding of this is that while inactive, if my name were to come up, they'd just go to the next person on the list who matches. As of the end of this month I am hoping to activate myself again. I'm just really nervous because I feel bad about saying 'no' when they asked me to come in back in May. One of the things they ask you again and again when you are there is "Are you sure this is what you want to do?" And I'd said over and over again, "Yes". I just don't know that I'd really thought about all the issues to do with it. My biggest lesson learned was that I can't do this all by myself.

LOTD: My Cat Hates You
Someone just pointed me at this one today. I love it!

So this morning I stumble into work a bit late due to being hungover to find that one of our Network Appliances seems to have crashed.

This has to be one of the coolest moments in my life. Why? Because when we bought this device I fought so hard to get it in a clustered configuration. What this means is that it if the first Filer (the name of the device) goes, the second will just take over for it. It worked *perfectly*. In fact it worked so perfectly that if I hadn't gotten the email I never would have known. If we'd only had the single unit I would have been paged at some godawful hour this morning because things weren't working. I would have had to crawl into work (hungover) and futz with this until it is fixed. Instead. I got to sleep, recover a bit, make it to my weekly team leaders meeting and in a few minutes will be driving over to Exodus to fix it. It's still a high priority item, but it's no longer an emergency.

I missed seeing Dino spin last night. I'm quite grumpy about that, but I was just feeling so hosed after hanging out at Dunwells listening to the Growroom guys spin yesterday. I think it was that huge Cosmopoliton that I had in a plastic cup that did me in.

Just a quick interlude into the life of someone with IPF.
I woke up about 20 minutes ago and started coughing. I'm never quite sure if I started coughing and it woke me or I just happened to start after waking up. This isn't any ordinary coughing. Imagine coughing where it seems to come from deep in your lungs and you feel it all the way up to your neck. And you just cough hard, again and again, enough that you almost can't breath. It feels like you might be trying to cough up some phlegm, but usually there is none. It's hard to tell what makes it stop. I usually end up on the couch, not moving much, sipping water. I take a bit of Robitussin-DM and that always seems to help out some. After about 15-20 minutes it seems to calm down and I can go crawl back into bed. One of my actual thoughts is that I've coughed so much I don't have the energy to cough more.

In some ways the cough is the worst part of this for me. From what I understand, people with IPF seem to be go the whole range on this issue. Some are heavy coughers like me, while some don't seem to have quite as much an issue with it. In some ways, I think the second of the two would be worse. It was the coughing that let me to the Doctor's office to have it investigated. If it wasn't for that I would have just thought I was really out of shape.

I seem to be calmed now for the most part, so I'm going to head back to sleep.

So lately I've taken to just have a copy of my web server's log file streaming in a window in the corner of my screen. Usually there just isn't much happening there. But every once in a while I get a spurt of traffic and I wonder just who might be looking at my site. Like today I saw someone hit my dj page and download just about every set, or at least attempt to. It's kinda weird. So often I forget that anyone but me ever looks at my web site.

I added a little mood indicator thing to my page. I'm not sure if I'll keep it. I'm not quite sure what I think of it. But for now it'll stay.

LOTD: People Cards
Who said that only celebs and sports starts can be on trading cards. These cards have everyday ordinary people on them. You can even apply to be on one of them yourself!

Just a quick plug to promote myself here. For those of you in the Boston area, I'm spinning at the Phoenix Landing next Wed night (the 18th). It should be a fun night. The Phoenix Landing has been a big goal of mine since I started DJing. So this is a very symbolic event for me (and I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself because of it).

LOTD: Launchcast
This site's here because it was done for a while, and I'd almost assumed for good, but has been back now for some length of time I guess. I dig this site because I have my own 'radio station' and they are actually quite good at playing just what I like. There's a link to the left to listen to my station specificly. (Now, if they'd just have more good electronic music it would have the full range of stuff I like).

So I saw the Final Fantasy movie last night.
While I wasn't sure what I thought of it at first, after a bit of thought I've decided that I really did like it. I thought the movie definitely rocked for the kind of movie it was. The animation was stunning. I definitely knew I was watching something animated the whole time. I don't think we're at the point yet where we can have animated actors take the roles of real people, but it was still amazing. The level of detail in the animation was stunning, I can't even imagine how long it took them to do all that work. The one area I felt it was lacking is something I'm not sure if I can describe well. I felt that the voice actors and the animation didn't always quite fit with each other. It was like the levels of expression weren't quite the same.

Anyways, I definitely recommend this movie. (Though I have a feeling it's the kind of movie that won't necessarily have a wide appeal to people.)

There are too many things in my life that beep, chirp, whatever. This morning in the space of about 5 minutes, the on-call pager went off, I got a page on my phone, and my alarm clock went off, followed by another page on the pager. I almost threw it out the window. I hate the sounds these things make. I think I'm going to put as many things on vibrate as I can.

LOTD: newsblogger
For those folks who are want to keep updated on the news, or who want to have a way to send news posts to their blog (works specificly with blogger). It's pretty slick I must say.

On the nethack note. Literally 15 minutes after posting the message this morning I died. I'm sure my posting about it caused it. I had one of those great nethack deaths though. I stepped on a square, got polymorphed into a paper golem, grabbed by an eel, was dragged underwater, and drowned in the space of about 3 turns. Bah.

POCK!
Well, I haven't died stupidly (yet) in my lastest game of nethack. But I'm quite psyched because I think it is so far the best game of nethack I've played in the FOURTEEN years I've played this game. I'm already up to 22nd level and have completed the first quest. (god I'm such a geek).

LOTD for today: Headline Haikus
A little bit of silly for your Tuesday (It is Tuesday isn't it?)

No real news today. I'm all groggy for some reason. I think I need a serious vacation. I'm considering taking a week off at the end of the month to just get out of MA and RELAX. A roadtrip around the northeast is sounding about my speed. Hopefully I'll get to stop in and visit friends I haven't seen in ages.

So I'm working on making my blog show 7 days worth of posts. I'd thought it was set to that and discovered that it was actually set to only show the last 5 posts. I may end up tweaking it a bit. I have a feeling that seven days may be a bit two long and that five days may end up being much better.

I finished the first part of my redesign of the help desk system I'm writing. I'm about to put it into beta at work. So far it at least looks much nicer then the old one.

So I woke up early this morning and found I'd gone to sleep leaving the TV on. But to my suprise, there was a Clifford (The Big Red Dog!) cartoon on! Wow, talk about memories from my childhood. The Clifford books were some of the first I ever read. I always thought they ruled. And, I just think it's pretty damn cool that there's a cartoon of it.

Watching TV with no sound is kind of interesting. I muted my TV about an hour ago when I got a phone call and never got around to turning the volume on again. I'm watching some weird thing on the SciFi channel. I think it's some short movie. It's got this odd fuzzy alien thing and it looks REALLY weird. Now some guys in suits are running around shooting everyone.

I'm going to post tomorrow's LOTD tonight, because I was given this URL today and don't want to forget it. It's a Personality Disorder Test. The URL is http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv. My results were:

Paranoid: Low
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Moderate
Antisocial: Moderate
Borderline: Low
Histronic: Low
Narcissistic: High
Avoidant: Low
Dependant: Low
Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate

Interesting to say the least.
I think on that note I'll head to bed now.

LOTW(Weekend): The Official Nethack Web Site
So why did I choose this site? Because I've been playing much too much nethack lately. Maybe someday soon I'll actually finish the game, but I doubt it.

My friend Bree says: "Teddy Rocks!"
We just got in from seeing Teddy Goldstein. As usual he was quite enjoyable. He played some of my favorite tunes of his, specificly "Will you be my Widow", "Lucky in Love", and "Peobody". (I'm guessing at the names of the songs, since I don't know them exactly). It was interesting seeing him someplace different then Passim, especially since it was someplace where I could drink some. I'm not sure which I like better. Each place has its own special feel to it.

HELP. BORED.

Today's LOTD:
/usr/bin/girl - I found this site (and the related ones) while looking at other people's blogs yesterday. As I looked around I started to feel more and more like my web site sucked. This site was one of the ones that really inspired me the most, so it deserves to be today's Link of The Day.

On another (more serious) note. Impending transplant things are getting to me a little bit. As I deal with all of this more and more I start to admit to myself more and more that my life is probably going to change a lot once I get my new lung. Though I don't know for sure, my guess is that my clubbing days will be basicly over. The issue is that when you get an organ transplant you have to take lots of drugs to basicly mask the foreign object (the organ) from your body. These drugs do this by reducing the effectiveness of your immune system. So the trick at that point is watching your health, being aware of when you might be getting sick, being very aware of your health. The thing is, going out into a room full of sweaty people is just the perfect way to catch something. The part of it I am having a hard time thinking about is the DJing aspect of it. While I want and need this transplant, the thought of not being able to spin out again is very painful to me. I just hope that I'll be able to do it once in a while.

So I've been reviewing my site lately and have decided a few things:
(1) I need to do a redesign, I'm just not sure what I want to do. (In other words, that won't happen for a year).

(2) My DVD list is severely out of date. There are gobs of anime DVDs that I don't have listed.

(3) I really need to finish up my brunch site.

(4) There is no four.

(5) I'm actually decent at this PHP stuff.

(6) OS X is lacking just a bit when it comes to a web browser. While OmniWeb for OS X is quite cool, it's still a bit lacking in the javascript area (For instance, blogger doesn't get along real well with it). There's IE, but I don't like it as much and I find myself missing the features that OmniWeb does have (the ad blocking stuff built into it rules).

(7) I forgot to take my protonix last night and woke up this morning with evil heartburn.

Well I certainly feel like a geek tonight.

After browsing around looking at a few different blogs today I noticed a lot of them have a space for comments. I was intrigued and started trying to figure out how to do it. I even emailed this one person who was doing some even more interesting things for comments. In the end I decided to just sit down and work something out. I'd say that for inspiration, the individual at http://www.stormwerks.com/linked/ had a site that provided the most inspiration. Based off the stuff there I started doing some PHP coding to see what I could come up with. I have to say I'm quite happy with what I came up with. Blogger actually works quite well when it comes to working this stuff out.

So, definitely let me know what you think. I'll be curious to see if anything shows up in the comments at all.

Time for sleep now.

New feature (I think) for my site. The LOTD (Link of the day).
Today. Hello Kitty Tetris
(I think that's all that need be said (except for crediting the cool blog that I found it at.)

Okay,
So a couple of quick changes to the page. First, I fixed the launchcast link, since it was a little bit broken. I'm also playing around with the template for the page a little bit. Look for some small changes to it as I work through how I want things to look exactly.

Well, my blog from yesterday WOULD have worked if I had put in the right password for my ftp account.

So I figure I'll do some updating today. I just started listening to a CD that I got the other day "San Francisco Sessions, Vol. 3", it's a mix CD by Garth from SF and it is really good. It's got that nice west coast SF house sound. I keep thinking I'd like to spin more of this stuff, but it would be quite a change for me. For now i'm just working on learning more about this style of house.

I've tried to shop online for records for the past three days and just have not been finding anything that I like. It is really frustrating me. I'm not sure if there's just nothing good coming out or if I'm just in one of those down times where nothing I listen to sounds right. I think I may need to go into the record store and just listen to things there for a bit. A lot of times that'll get me into a different mood musicwise.

I've started looking around more at other people's blogs to see what they are up to. I think I may have to start trying to do some more things with mine. Whatcha think?

First off. I'm trying this little BlogThis! button that was on my menubar. I'm not quite sure when I put it there, but this will be a nice test of it.

So it's the 4th of July. And I haven't done much of anything all day. I cleaned for a bit, and am doing a little bit of laundry, but I just haven't felt that social so I haven't made a huge effort to track down something to do tonight.

I've also been coughing more then usual. I think it has to do with my prednisone dose going down. My pulmonologist feels that we shouldn't raise the dose though, since I've actually been losing weight since I dropped my dose. He did give me some cough syrup with codine, which definitely helps a bit.

I've been watching Monty Python's Flying Circus for the last two hours on BBC America. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels. There are some great shows on it.

My employees rock.

Since the beginning of the year I've been moving more into the role of IT manager at work. I have about 5 people that report to me and am slowly learning how all this kind of stuff works. Today was a cool day for me because we had a problem with our firewall at work and Jim, the on call person, took care of everything with the help of our resident firewall expert (Lenny). It's just a nice feeling that I can relax some while not on call.

I think that air conditioning must be one of the greatest things mankind has ever come up with.

Yesterday I drove down to CT to see my sister, who is at my parent's place for a few days. The extra bonus is that she brought along my newphew. He's just over two and so funny. He's quite a handful. My parent's place has one problem though. No air conditioning. They have one a/c, but it was in the closet. In CT yesterday it was in the 90s and very humid. I was a bit overtired and have been coughing a little bit more then usual lately, so the humidity was just killing me. I was extremely miserable. Finally, at the end of the day, my dad put the a/c in. I have barely left the room since then :). I finally got the really good sleep that I'd needed to for the past day or so. It is really amazing what 12 hours of sleep can do.

I just got a call from work. We lost all the connectivity from our offices to the outside world. Luckily this doesn't affect our web sites, but it does affect the ability of our finance people to be working on their end of quarter reports.

It's great to see my sister too. We haven't had a chance to talk much, but I think she's glad to get up to New England, even if it is to just visit for a few days.

(This blog is going to go up to my site later on because I currently can't get to my machine at work through the net)