When it's Spring Time

The commute this week has been quite nice, for the main part... during spring break, there's so much less traffic - we can actually drive at freeway speeds during rush hour.

The exception was our spring blizzard. The office shut down early, and the commute home was SLOW. I'm glad that I had swapped cars with Scooter for the week (so that I could fix the radio and the window crank). The Festiva handles so much better in the snow than the Insight, which is so close to the ground that it gets high centered and/or scrapes the bottom on whatever snow is on the roads.

This mornings drive was on snowpacked freeways. It's exciting to be driving on freeways without lane markings. The car right in front of me about 2 miles from the office was moving too fast and he started fish tailing, then slid off the road. Always good for a bit of excitement. Tonight the roads were all clear. I wouldn't be surprised if by tomorrow night all the snow has melted.

And Scooter's car is "fixed", the necessary spare parts were donated by the spare parts Festiva, "Steve".

The Wizard Needs

Top 10 list from google:

1. The wizard needs food badly


2. The Wizard Needs No Bailout


3. The wizard needs to be pluggable


4. The Wizard needs to load the new Wizard image


5. The wizard's node name needs to be confirmed


6. The wizard needs Previous and Next buttons


7. The wizard needs information from users


8. The Wizard needs your teens


9. The wizard needs your help


10. The wizard needs at least 1024 x 768

We're moving...

We used to be 3.2 miles away from the Church. Then there was a ward division and we were moved into the Stake Center, which is 4.3 miles from the house. But as the church keeps growing (we have 12 units in our Stake, 4 in each building), we have the need for a new building, which will be done in June. So, we get to move again. This new building is just down the road from the house.... 5 miles down the road!

You'd think we were in Utah, where it's likely that you drive by at least one other building on the way to yours.

On a sad note, the new building is not wired for internet access, so we'll have to go back to the old way of getting/sending information - - - modem.

Mileage 2009 (Jan - Mar): Jan 1: Skate the Lake (41 mi); Crew meetings: 8 meetings that I've been to so far this year (36*8 = 272 mi); Trips to the Stake Center: 20 trips to date that I can count (170 mi); one round trip to the "close" building (6.4 mi); one round trip to the neighboring Stake Center for Regional Training: (15 mi). Numerous other trips that I can't recall, but ya gotta start somewhere: 504 mi YTD.

Ashes to Ashes

The sequel to Life on Mars is now airing on BBC/America. This time, instead of dropping in on the 70's, the cop in question drops in on the 80's... with knowledge of Sam Tyler's escapades in the 70's... also she visits the same crew that Sam was with in the original episode.

It's quirky enough that you have to pay attention and it's got enough twists to keep it from getting boring.

I made Chaelomen watch it with me... don't know if I got him hooked yet. I'll look for the second opinion.

Across The Universe

I'm home sick today (and hopefully not tomorrow) and I haven't had a chance to watch Across the Universe yet, even though MJ loaned me the DVD as soon as I showed interest. I enjoyed the music, but I don't think I've seen a movie quite this weird for a long time. I kept trying to read too much into the plot; took awhile to pick out the main characters and relations (did I mention that my ability to focus is a bit off too).

Some fun choreography, and some interesting interpretations of the Beatles music, but it didn't quite flow as smoothly as I'd have wanted.

I am NOT the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz

This afternoon I got a call from our mid level corporate wizard that one of the hard drives in our Dell file server had gone bad and needed to be replaced. Dell was on the line and could I take a few minutes to help him check things out.

Two hours later, I determined that the software that the Dell techie needed to have installed on our server (which we'd downloaded at 67 MBps on our T1 - and to think I get 500+ MBps transfer speeds at home), that this software could not be installed by me - - - I no longer have admin rights on our local server. I managed to get one of the national corporate tech guys to page a specialist in the Net Admin group, to remote into the network and to open a "runas" command box, so that I could become a temporary wizard and install the updated software. We'll see in the morning whether the updated software can rebuild the missing volume, or if the replacement that Dell is sending as a precaution needs to be installed.

The CMD box and command line interface was a bit foreign to the specialist in our Net Admin group, but having spent a few years with a DOS prompt, I was able to navigate and get the job moving.

Dental Convention Season

I got to come to town, play, and get paid for it! It's dental convention season.

In exchange for working in the booth and eating out in restaurants that I normally would not go to (not the usual $ and $$ type restaurants I frequent, but more of $$$ type restaurants) I get a weekend to play and a chance to visit family, friends, and friends of family who just "happen" to also be working the convention.

After closing down the show, I got a chance to catch up with Mom, and spent some time with my granddaughter (and the rest of the family).... and best of all, this time there were no emergency calls from the Ward.

Grandma was wanting some pictures of family, so I had Frik burn a CD with a good number of family pictures along with a number of historical pictures of family members.