Is It Friday Yet? It Is? Thank $deity.
Sep. 28th, 2012 10:08 pmThis has been a long & brutal week on all fronts. I'm incredibly grateful that I've only been running at 100% since Sunday instead of something even more demanding.
We have a hardware refresh going on at the production data center where I work. One of my team has flown in from California to work with me on this project. We've made good progress over the past number of days, trying to make the Oct 6 deadline, but these 10-12 hour days are very draining.
Even while this mega-project is in process, I'm on-call this week so I'm getting badgered with a tonne of minor but really annoying issues which have broken my concentration and flow several times per day. And there are still various other routine tasks which have come up periodically that I need to do as part of my regular duties. Ugh.
In the middle of all of this, we were keeping up with all of our square dance gigs: teaching DC Lambda Squares mainstream class on Monday, calling a Chesapeake Squares club nights on Tuesday, calling a C2 workshop on Wednesday, calling a Chesapeake Squares open house & mainstream class on Thursday. Fortunately, the Wednesday C2 gig was cancelled at the last minute: we needed the rest.
I had a dental cleaning Thursday morning. I figure when you start your day at the dentist, things can only improve from there. My teeth are fine and shiny. I recommend sunglasses.
Last Friday, one of our C2 dancers, Jack Frickey, passed away from complications of malignant melanoma. This morning, I worked a few hours at the data center, skipped over to Herndon for Jack's memorial service, and returned to the data center again for the balance of the day. I'll miss Jack and I'm glad I was able to attend the service, but--
I'm really getting to hate Baptist ministers. Jack wasn't a Baptist but a longtime friend of the family was a Baptist minister and was asked to officiate. He went on at great length about how he was sure Jack was in heaven and how that should be a great comfort for his family, but also that he had great reservations about the rest of us at the service unless we accepted his version of $deity asap. It was less a memorial service than a fear-mongering recruitment drive, IMHO. Tasteless.
Still, it's better than the Baptist funeral service for![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kent4str's grandmother some years ago: YOU'RE ALL GOING TO HELL! TO HELL, I SAY! REPENT NOW! Oh, and by the way, we'll miss whatsername... HELL, I SAY!
I have been enjoying some audio books via my mobile phone on the drive to/from the data center, kinda. My old car has a cassette deck --remember those?-- and I use an adapter to plug my mobile phone into it so I can listen over the car speakers. The adapter is an ancient one though and the wires are breaking & fraying, yielding a frustratingly intermittent audio performance.
Looking on eBay last Saturday, I found a replacement for only $2.15 and ordered it immediately. (The joys of smartphones: I looking for the adapter, located one, purchased it and submitted payment all in three minutes while on a break at a square dance workshop. Yay, technology!) The replacement unit arrived in yesterday's mail, just in time for me to listen to my current audio book while I drove to Baltimore to call the open house.
I had to unplug my phone to take an emergency call --did I mention I'm on-call for work?-- just as I was pulling into the parking lot and the adapter cable got wound around my steering wheel. As I turned the wheel sharply one way and then another as I jockeyed my car into the last parking space, the cable torn off the cassette adapter. My shiny new toy lasted precisely 45 minutes. Dammit.
I suppose I could try soldering the wires back on but it's a pain in the ass and the adapters are dirt cheap so I've just ordered two replacement adapters. With luck, I'll have a new car at some future time that has wireless functions before I need another replacement adapter.
And our microwave died Thursday evening. Just what I needed right now.
There's been 1001 other things going on this week, but I'm too tired at this point to discuss much more. I need sleep. I also need to work out since I haven't done much since Tuesday but that's going to have to wait as well. We have some shopping to do and some domestic chores on which to catch up, among many other things. Sleep first though.
We have a hardware refresh going on at the production data center where I work. One of my team has flown in from California to work with me on this project. We've made good progress over the past number of days, trying to make the Oct 6 deadline, but these 10-12 hour days are very draining.
Even while this mega-project is in process, I'm on-call this week so I'm getting badgered with a tonne of minor but really annoying issues which have broken my concentration and flow several times per day. And there are still various other routine tasks which have come up periodically that I need to do as part of my regular duties. Ugh.
In the middle of all of this, we were keeping up with all of our square dance gigs: teaching DC Lambda Squares mainstream class on Monday, calling a Chesapeake Squares club nights on Tuesday, calling a C2 workshop on Wednesday, calling a Chesapeake Squares open house & mainstream class on Thursday. Fortunately, the Wednesday C2 gig was cancelled at the last minute: we needed the rest.
I had a dental cleaning Thursday morning. I figure when you start your day at the dentist, things can only improve from there. My teeth are fine and shiny. I recommend sunglasses.
Last Friday, one of our C2 dancers, Jack Frickey, passed away from complications of malignant melanoma. This morning, I worked a few hours at the data center, skipped over to Herndon for Jack's memorial service, and returned to the data center again for the balance of the day. I'll miss Jack and I'm glad I was able to attend the service, but--
I'm really getting to hate Baptist ministers. Jack wasn't a Baptist but a longtime friend of the family was a Baptist minister and was asked to officiate. He went on at great length about how he was sure Jack was in heaven and how that should be a great comfort for his family, but also that he had great reservations about the rest of us at the service unless we accepted his version of $deity asap. It was less a memorial service than a fear-mongering recruitment drive, IMHO. Tasteless.
Still, it's better than the Baptist funeral service for
kent4str's grandmother some years ago: YOU'RE ALL GOING TO HELL! TO HELL, I SAY! REPENT NOW! Oh, and by the way, we'll miss whatsername... HELL, I SAY!I have been enjoying some audio books via my mobile phone on the drive to/from the data center, kinda. My old car has a cassette deck --remember those?-- and I use an adapter to plug my mobile phone into it so I can listen over the car speakers. The adapter is an ancient one though and the wires are breaking & fraying, yielding a frustratingly intermittent audio performance.
Looking on eBay last Saturday, I found a replacement for only $2.15 and ordered it immediately. (The joys of smartphones: I looking for the adapter, located one, purchased it and submitted payment all in three minutes while on a break at a square dance workshop. Yay, technology!) The replacement unit arrived in yesterday's mail, just in time for me to listen to my current audio book while I drove to Baltimore to call the open house.
I had to unplug my phone to take an emergency call --did I mention I'm on-call for work?-- just as I was pulling into the parking lot and the adapter cable got wound around my steering wheel. As I turned the wheel sharply one way and then another as I jockeyed my car into the last parking space, the cable torn off the cassette adapter. My shiny new toy lasted precisely 45 minutes. Dammit.
I suppose I could try soldering the wires back on but it's a pain in the ass and the adapters are dirt cheap so I've just ordered two replacement adapters. With luck, I'll have a new car at some future time that has wireless functions before I need another replacement adapter.
And our microwave died Thursday evening. Just what I needed right now.
There's been 1001 other things going on this week, but I'm too tired at this point to discuss much more. I need sleep. I also need to work out since I haven't done much since Tuesday but that's going to have to wait as well. We have some shopping to do and some domestic chores on which to catch up, among many other things. Sleep first though.
