The Empirical Manifesto

I have to be at my secondary work location at 0600. I have NO IDEA what I am still doing up.

I have too many programs open on my mac mini. It is sluggish.

I need to build galinda822 a computer for her home office. I am still short a CPU, mobo & case.

I need to rebuild my father's computer, and replace my mother-in-law's.

I'm anticipating an ass-chewing from my boss sometime tomorrow.

I haven't written a haiku in a long, long time.

I have not provided a Higgleosaurous update in many months.

I've been listening to some great music.

I am on the second disc of the second season of The Sopranos.

I need to do a little soft-shoe in the office tomorrow.

I may walk to my office tomorrow morning doing Christopher Walken's choreography from his Weapon of Choice video.

Then again, I may not.

I am so very thankful that I have exciting days filled with lots of various activities, and that my wonderful wife and fantastic children are there when I arrive home. My son had me read him, "The Grinch That Stole Christmas" as his bedtime book this evening. I tried to do my best Boris Karloff impression. I don't know if he noticed or cared. Then little girl fell asleep in my arms as I layed with her after mommy read her book to her. My wife is reading in bed, and I will join her shortly. Life is good.

Goodnight.

Crawled in bed last night after my shower and the wife was laying in bed reading. I just, watched her. Thinking of how lucky I was to have her, and then of all the women that just weren't right in the months leading up to our getting together. I started grinning a stupid grin, not being able to imagine myself with anyone else, and wondering what I had done right to get her. She drops her book in a huff, turns to me and says, "How long are you going to fucking stare at me?"

What a sweetheart...

Saw a Season Two commercial for Battlestar Galactica yesterday at the movies. I was quite excited. Apparently, they're going to show all of Season One back-to-back tomorrow on Sci-Fi, and NBC is going to broadcast three episodes in High-Definition this month. Season Two starts the 15th.

Drove to Wichita Friday after work, the beginning of the holiday weekend. Had I been able to come up with anything to do whatsoever, I would have used that as an excuse to not drive to Wichita, as traffic was horrendous! It took me two and a half hours to get to the Oklahoma State Line, traveling I-35 the entire way. My normally 5-hour trip took seven. Well, at least I didn't feel rushed. I just put some good tunes on, sucked on some moist smokeless tobacco, and set the cruise at 69. (Usually I set it at 74, but Oklahoma State Troopers were out in force!)

Mostly rode three wheelers as DETAILED HERE.



The absolute best part of a three-day weekend is usually the 4-day work week which follows. Alas, in IT we usually end up working 5-days worth of work in 4-days, which doesn't make it any more pleasant.

Wife wanted to see Episode III again while it was still in theaters, so took her to see it yesterday while folks enjoyed the children. Dinner at Zio's (I had the cheese ravioli on a bed of linguine, half covered in alfredo, half in marinara), followed by a clandestine meeting with MADDOG. You see, I have acquired a mac mini in a game of chance. This mac mini has already had a memory upgrade more impressive than even you could imagine! And David Roberston at work has overclocked his CPU to 1.5GHz (his research turned up that both the 1.25 and 1.42 model use the 1.5 CPU, which is disabled by a single solder-point). The only thing lacking is a decent harddrive. As neither myself, nor my friends deal in IDE, this has been an arduous task. My minimum requirements were 8MB cache and 7200rpm. Well, MADDDOG found a brand new 80GB Maxtor, out the door at Office Depot, for $40. What a pal! Now I'm tracking down an external firewire-400 enclosure. Sure a Hitachi Travelstar laptop drive would have been easier, but at $185, my implementation will work equally well at one-third the cost!

Just got off the phone with a client. "My laptop went into hibernation, AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!"
"Push the power button." I offered.
"I did - nothing happened!"
"Is it plugged in?" I ask.
"I think so."
"Can you check it?"
"Sure."
"Oh, that's it, it's working now!"
"Fantastic."

*sigh*

The Higgliosaurus Corner:
HIGGS! Has returned from vacation this week!

BlackLadyInPhilly: I have a job interview in MO.
EricHowton: Where in Missouri?
BlackLadyInPhilly: Kansas City.
EricHowton: Sweet! You can drive to Wichita on the weekends and we can visit.
BlackLadyInPhilly: Are there even black people in Kansas?
EricHowton: I think I saw one once.
BlackLadyInPhilly: Oh, you got jokes!
EricHowton: Seriously, it's a metropolitan area, of course there are!
BlackLadyInPhilly: I don't want to move into KKK land or something.
EricHowton: Geez!