Holy crow, it’s been a while since I’ve updated. Things have been busy. Let’s recap:
The wife and I went down to her parents’ house over the 4th of July weekend. Dallas was nice and friendly, as always. We saw Shakespeare in the Park, ate fried chicken and fried okra, saw Spiderman 2 (loved it. Better than the first), and of course went to Sonic for a Blue Ocean Water.
Speaking of Sonic, why must they torment me so? They run ads on Philly stations, yet there is no Sonic for at least one hundred miles. Arrrgh!
We flew American down on the 3rd and back up on the 6th. On the way down, we were bearing graduation gifts for my wife’s cousin, one of which was a nice Cross pen/mini-Swiss Army knife set (the gift was a nice pen set, not the cousin, of course. And the knife was mini, not the Swiss Army. *grin*), which we of course forgot to put in our checked baggage. Those lovely TSA fellows pulled us aside after the X-ray machine and unceremoniously stripped the 1 inch (1 stinkin’ inch!) S.A. knife out of the package and handed us the now-half-empty “gift”. I know it’s their job to be careful and all, but sheesh.
The flight back offered an interesting contrast. On the way down, the plane had been filled with Texans, who were, almost to a one, happy to be headed South. It almost made the flight pleasant. On the way back, the plane was filled with Philly area residents – it was immediately obvious from their accents. As I sat in the terminal in Dallas, it almost made me dread coming back up this way. I’m growing increasingly impatient with this Northeastern ethos and the seemingly endless supply of jerks it creates. I’m getting more and more tempted to follow up on my wife’s desire to head down yonder.
Once “safely” home, we were well-nigh immediately beset by a nasty mutant summer cold strain that seems to be going around these parts. I’m still fighting it, myself, and my generally poor sleeping habits aren’t helping me kick it any sooner.
Brad and his fiancee joined us on the Wednesday after we got back and we took them into Philly, ostensibly to see the Liberty Bell. They were up from S.C. for a series of weddings and stopped by for a bit. We went to lunch at Vietnam, a (you guessed it!) Vietnamese restaurant in Center City, then, instead of going down to Independence Mall, we headed over to the Reading Terminal Market. We returned to our car to find a $100 ticket, courtesy of the Philly Parking Bureau for an expired inspection sticker. Joy!
Oh, don’t you worry, there’s a Bad Customer Service Story I’ve got cooking for you on how a particular series of events conspired to deprive me of a Benjamin.
Then, we proceeded to hit a nasty pothole and knock off one of our hubcaps. Double joy! But at least we got to see Brad.
Things have been busy at work. Last Thursday, our main UPS unit went offline and, as luck would have it, we had a series of three brownouts in five minutes hit our building that afternoon. Then we found out that our tape backup system hadn’t been functioning correctly for at least two weeks, meaning that if we lost any data, there was no way to get it back and we’d have some fairly peeved engineers attempting to batter down our door and run us through with whatever pointy objects were near at hand. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an Engineering Mob, but it’s not a pretty sight. Fortunately, they usually devolve into an argument on how best to wreak havoc. TI calculators are drawn, voices are raised and, by the time they’ve figured out how to construct a combined trebuchet/battering ram, they’ve largely forgotten what they were angry about in the first place.
We lost a few hard disks on our big disk arrays and so my team lead and I have been fighting IT “fires” over the past few days, with various fileshares and servers suddenly going offline of their own accord. Isn’t IT fun? Wheeee!
The bright side of the past week and a half has been that my wife and I are dog-sitting my parents’ dog while they’re on vacation. She’s a Welsh Terrier and is just about the nicest dog and can be a very affectionate, at least with humans. She has a tendency to try to stand on other dogs’ heads, and, as so we tend to avoid other dogs whenever possible.
Anyways, the hour grows late and that darn dog demands to be walked at 6:15 every morning, so I’d best get some shuteye while I can.
