The Empirical Manifesto

It's cold here. Damn cold. When I'm wearing my "Ear Grips" (which I refer to as "Ear Slips" due to poor design)...





I feel a lot like Lando Calrissian's little gay cyborg friend, Lobot...





Lots of snow today. Little girl was up last night with fever, so didn't go to school today. Lori stayed home with her, so I took the boy to school, arriving at work two hours late. Because of the snow, I left work after only two hours, to trek back across town to retrieve him. The roads were slushy and slippery. Snow was blowing like mad. By the time I got back to the office, I discovered why I couldn't turn my wheels...the ice was caked underneath the wheel wells.

I lost the thumb drive work gave me, but found the one USDA gave me before I left. A word about removable media. If using your non-work device, refrain from inserting it during a presentation to Vice Presidents on the computer controlling the 60-inch plasma display if you keep your son's "Power Rangers" folder on it. It raises eyebrows.

So, I promised this VP that we would provide 10 new Blackberry users Blackberry training today. Funny thing, we didn't receive the Blackberries. Nonplussed, I assured her the training would proceed as planned. I'm having one of my guys pantomime a handheld device for the duration. I can't wait!

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!

*single tear*