The Empirical Manifesto

Mostly walked around visiting with former co-workers, attending meetings, and getting a feel for things this week. A very comfortable pace, one I haven't experienced in 18 months. Disclosed publicly that I was only interested in eating Mexican food for the first 30-days, and I did that in spades. So much so, that I think I'll just stop eating altogether for a couple of days and process all this already in my system. Monday however, will prove to be quite different, as I'll be racking new servers and running fiber for the new Data Center. Toward the end of the week, I realized that I hadn't quite un-SOE'd (Standard Operating Environment) my laptop, and with the amount of proxy security, etcetera, at this defense contractor...I was in dire straights. Fortunately, we're a unix shop, so my decision to run kubuntu 7.0.4 desktop on my laptop won't impede me in the slightest. Feisty Fawn installed flawlessly, though apparently by disabling my modem in the BIOS, I lost my sound support. Odd, to be sure, but I quickly corrected that then installed VMware Workstation for linux and loaded Windows XP on a 9GB partition with 768MB of RAM just in case. Good times. This also allows me to run Amarok at work and maintain the iPod across two platforms. How very wonderful.

After work each day was a different story altogether. It went from leisurely to frantic, as we've been looking for a place to live between the sale of the house in Saint Louis, and the building of our new home in Princeton, Texas. drax0r and jesskd26 have found a 2100/square foot rent house eight miles North of work in Anna until they conclude (and/or build) their new house. I'm having my P.O.D.S. redirected there to fully unload as opposed to having two entire units in storage. Furthermore, he's already received confirmation of his cable modem installation, and I'll be having our DirecTV set up there as well. We've also made a couple of trips to the subdivision my family will eventually be living in to actually walk-through the houses we've been coveting now for several months. Very nice indeed.

I've been doing a hell of a lot of walking in this job - no longer tied to my desk. Toward the end of the week, however, I began to miss my wife something fierce. And my neighbors. And of course, galinda822. Being with drax0r again though, is incomparable. We're already starting to turn heads at work. Just the way we like it.



Eight hours moving drax0r's crap from his old house to the storage shed. Starting this Friday, we move all contents from the storage shed to the new rent house. I don't know how long that's going to take, but I hope we're done before the P.O.D.S. arrives to unload. We had Chipotle for lunch and later was presented with a half bottle of Glenmorangie 12 'Madeira Wood Finish' for my troubles. Thanks drax0r! We start work at 1000 hours tomorrow. I'm quite sure it will be another full day.