Oh Heather … Boston 7, Washington 2.

MUHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!

Eight games, no losses. Yeeehaw.

Go B’s!

I’ve been sick for the last couple of days. [Sinus infection. Nothing new.] I’ve fought the infection off, but I’m very tired.

I have class in about 20 minutes.

In engineering school, with nothing but a lecture to sit through, I would be headed home and skipping class.

In graduate school, I’m just trying to figure out how much caffeine I have to get hopped up on in order to make it all the way through class.

This is so … refreshing. I actually want to learn again.

Jonah Keri of Baseball Prospectus nailed it right on the head.

Amy sent me Reilly’s article today, asking me to give her an opinion on it. Amy does this from time to time, probably because she respects my opinion on such things, as I respect hers on many things I only viscerally follow.

I mentioned that Reilly seems to have a burr under his saddle for a select few athletes; Bonds is one of them, as is Mike Tyson. I’m certainly not one to proselytize for Bonds’s acts of kindness and charity, because by all accounts, he seems to be a bit dour and gruff. But was Joe DiMaggio any better? Teddy Ballgame?

I won’t go into the race game here. It’s old, it’s tired, and I’m sick of it. Frankly, it doesn’t apply to Reilly, either–he just decides that he doesn’t like certain people, for various reasons, and dogs them to death.

But it’s this kind of hacktivism that really, really irks me, and keeps me a part of the amateur press. [No, Jayson, Adam, or Brian, I'm not calling us amateurs. But if this is professionalism, I'll be an amateur.]

Well, Brian, that would have been funny, except for the fact that John’s never had a beard. But hey, neither do I, now.

On one of the planes yesterday, I got to thinking: “Man, I’m superstitious about sports. UAH has never won a game where I’ve been scruffy like this. The beard comes off.” I walked in the door last night, sat down a bag, walked into the bathroom, and shaved off my three-week-old beard. I left the sideburns, though, but I’ve had those for over a year now.

I kinda miss having the beard, but I’m more superstitious about sports than I’d care to think that I am. After I shaved off the beard, I threw my nasty UAH Hockey cap into the washer. You know the things that athletes do … lucky socks, rally caps, the like. Well, I’m as bad, even though I’m just the announcer.

I mean, I’m going to go get another tie this week.

But anyway, back to the John Popper thing. Met up with Brian and Suzan last night at Hartsfield. Last week, I realized, “Hey, you know? I’ve never sat down and talked with Brian and Suzan just by myself. Anytime I’ve seen them, they’ve been at the other end of the table at Rosie’s, monopolized by my friends.” And you know who you are, by the way!

So we talked of houses and hosers and all things fun; of airplanes and bosses and “Midnight Acquisition Departments”. Brian even gave me an idea or two for a couple of fun pranks to pull …

You know, Brian and I are easy to spot in public. With him, you look for David Spade. With me, you look for John Popper. Maybe we should start a band of celebrity look-alikes. Lord knows that we can find enough Elvis wannabes, no?

Thanks, Mike. Now I feel like I have to do the same.

Well, this wasn’t a fun weekend. Not only did the team lose 7-2 and 7-0–good football scores, bad hockey scores–but we had problems with the broadcast:

1) Friday night, some @%%hole in Sweden was running a denial-of-service attack on Mike’s computer, which was broadcasting on port 8080 so the nice folks at SportsJuice could pick up the feed and rebroadcast it.

2) Friday night, in the midst of the frustration with said @%%hole, I flung my headphones off and ran to call SportsJuice to tell them to reconnect. [They never knew that they'd lost connection.] As I did so, I apparently let my headphones smack down on the nice cable that Mike had repaired, and my microphone went out in my headset. Thankfully, Mike had brought the backup microphone, although it ends up making me sound worse than I already do.

3) Saturday night, SportsJuice gets DoS’d themselves, and we don’t broadcast at all in the first period. We’re running the broadcast as normal, just in case we run it on tape delay, and “Slim Jim” Chaloupka, our Huntsville producer, tells us that we have a connection again. Unfortunately, the first period was the only time that the boys looked good on the ice.

Now it’s Sunday, and the “Giant Team Nachos” that we had at the hotel’s sports bar are wreaking havoc on my system. Thank goodness for happy drugs, which have solved that and my sinus headache hell. Soon I shall complete packing, return the Explorer to the rental company, and start winging my way home.

Soon I’ll be in the air. Thank the good Lord we aren’t trying to drive to Denver!

As with last week, check out our SportsJuice rebroadcasting service to make sure that you get a handle on the feed.

Also, if you get the Fox Sports networks on cable or satellite, and you can get Fox Sports Rocky Mountain, we’ll be on FSRM around 7:30 Mountain time. I’m geeked about the alma mater being on TV!

Okay, back to last-minute packing.

As promised in the last lecture, I’ve got photos of this weekend’s game online.

I even have a Website solely dedicated to this.

[Please, don't act surprised.]

Check out the pics: http://chahockeypics.org/gallery/uah/

All photos are © George W. Olden, except for the fact that he used my digital camera.

[NOTE: Photos no longer extant on the Web. --GFM, 30-Aug-2004]

Okay, sure, so the boys lost both games. They still played well. The rough spots will get smoothed over in the next few weeks.

George took some damn good photos. I’ll have them posted soon.

For now, I just want to … sleeeeeeeep. I drove from Champaign, IL until we pulled in the driveway. I need a nap.

So anyhow, this “new” computer is a PIII. It runs … Windows 95.

This means little in the way of USB support.

From time to time, I have to use digital cameras for work. [Such as yesterday, when I had to take photos of cracked grommets and send them to the customer to get an okay to use as-is.] That means USB access. No can do on my machine. I hate to bother other people and borrow their machines while they’re working.

So, I asked for Windows 98 on this machine. [And hey, maybe it would stop requiring a reboot every two or three hours.]

I get a phone call, “So, you can’t get USB to work? Have you tried everything?” Yeah. USB no likey Win95, dumbass. “Well, we can’t give you Windows 98. We don’t support that anymore.” And you support Windows 95, which is even worse? “And your machine won’t run Windows 2000 optimally.” Well, yes. I already tried to get you to let me install that on here, but you said no, because I wouldn’t like it.

Well, let me tell you … I’ve run Win2K Pro Server on a P166MMX with only 32MB of RAM–in other words, the absolute bare minimum that Microsoft’s CD’s will let the thing install on. [Don't ask why, it's a convoluted story involving ... USB support.] Anyhow, Win2K isn’t optimal on this machine, sure, but anything is better than twice-daily reboots and file lossage. A slow machine? I can deal with that. A machine that won’t do what I need? I really can’t deal with that.

Meanwhile, the guys upstairs, who really don’t use their machines much at all, have brand new Gateways, the ones with the pretty LCD’s. My boss and I saw some of them the other day, and I asked him, “So Ed, when are we going to stop using hand-me-downs?” He just laughed.

Nothing like being in the redheaded stepchild group.

Anthony would so fit in.

So, anyway, my job is to mess with Project schedules. [When not in New Jersey, that is.] So I spend about two hours yesterday cleaning up schedules.

I print schedules this morning and take them into the meeting. I don’t check the schedule.

All my changes … aren’t there. Well, at least most of them. It looks like I was a slackass yesterday. [Well, I was, in a way, but not that much of one!]

I get back to my machine and plunder … and find out that not only is Project saving in Project 2000 format [and no one else at TBE has 2000, so I've been saving in 98 all the time], it’s saving them all over the hard drive … doggone! No wonder … I uploaded an old version, because I thought I’d overwritten that one in the saving process, but no … my computer wanted to make me look like a fool.

Dadgum. Jesus saves, and computers do, too; you gotta ask both of them to do it for you, but apparently, you have to ask a computer much more nicely.

I find myself not writing on this site lately, mainly because a lot of it is intensely personal … and I just end up saying it to friends old and new anyway, mainly via IM or on the phone or in person.

I do feel guilty, though, for not sharing with all of you, and, well, myself. These sites are really for me … I just let you read and laugh right along there with me.

Drove home, saw the folks. That was great. Drove back. I’ve put an insane amount of miles on the truck in the past week. I’m really, really glad that we’re taking Mike’s car to Wisco.

Yep, Friday I leave town again. And then again the next two Fridays.

What a fun life I lead. At least it keeps me honest and employed.

The lucky are in DC.

The unlucky are in Huntsville and Victoria.

So, do the Huntsvillians plan on gathering together? Is Rick going to be in town or over in Oxford, where the “WE BEAT FLORIDA!” party is probably still underway?

I don’t know yet if I’ll be here this weekend. I’m hoping to go home and visit my folks, but that’s entirely work-dependent, unfortunately. I’m going to fight hard not to be here, though. I like you all, but I haven’t seen my parents for three months, and they’d kinda like to see their newly-24-year-old son.

You know, after a week in the mid-Atlantic, Huntsville traffic is nothing. I swear, I’ve turned into a New Jersey driver.

I have decided that the Virginia Welcome Centers on I-81 need to sell “I Know I’m Going to Heaven, Because I’ve Driven Through Hell: Certified I-81 Road Warrior” T-shirts. They should give them out for free to truckers. Gah.

I have all sorts of things to say, but for now, I’ll just say: I’m home, life is good.

Well, after niggling details to death, I finally got on the road.

The New Jersey Turnpike is nuts. I now understand Jersey drivers. I can even do a good impersonation, considering that I cut a guy off after passing him at … mumble … miles per hour. I mean, wow. When in Rome, eh?

Got to the bunker around 7:00. This is a neat place. I like what Andy and Heather have done with the place. Just too cool.

Must consider sleep. Heather is kicking me off the couch [I'm down here and too tired to hike up to the guest bedroom, plus it seems silly to muss it for me, considering that I'll sleep for only five or six hours] when she gets ready to leave in the morning, so I should leave around 6:00 a.m. I’ll get to visit my friend Sarah in the morning, and that’ll be cool.

For now, I should think about flipping the lights off and hitting the couch … but my computer is loving having a broadband connection again …

Have I mentioned that lately? Microsoft Streets & Trips 2002 says I can make it to the bunker in a little over three hours. It even checked construction info since I was connected to the Web.

Technology is wonderful. That, and 300 W power inverters kick sooooooo much butt.

Enough rambling … just killing time while I’m waiting for photos of the inspection we just did. So much waiting on this job …

Oh, man. Where do I start?

Saturday. I get to the rental counter. “We need a major credit card.” That is a major credit card. “This is a debit card.” So nice of you to notice. “We can’t take this.” I left all my major credit cards at home, not wanting them to be stolen in NYC. I’m not going to spend that much money on this trip, and if I leave the credit home, I’ll be quite alright. I am going to Manhattan, after all, and Stuff Gets Stolen There. [Keep that in mind later.]

Screw it. Get in truck, drive truck. Drive truck. DRIVE TRUCK. It’s a long way to Tipperary, and it’s a long way to Jersey, too. I got started two hours later than I wanted, and by the time I’m southwest of Roanoke, VA, I realize this: I’m certainly not going to make it to DC and the bunker before the calendar flips to the next day. Call Heather, kvetch about rental car companies not telling me that they needed a credit and not a debit card when they took my reservation, apologize, keep driving up I-81.

Drive up I-81. Drive up I-81. DRIVE UP I-81.

I-81 is a road to hell, paved with good intentions. Mine? “Hey, let’s save the company a few bucks and get some perspective.”

No, really, the trip was good for me. But if I never see another I-81 sign, I’ll be just fine.

[Oh, damn. I have to drive I-81 home, unless I take a five-hour detour. Almost worth it, but not quite.]

Get to Harrisonburg, VA, decide to visit my friend Sarah on Saturday rather than Wednesday. Try to find hotel. No hotel. “You’ll have a hard time finding a hotel in Harrisonburg tonight, sir,” they tell me at Days Inn. I shrug, figuring the next city up the road won’t have that problem. Two hotels, two strikes.

Pull out trusty laptop, look at map. I must plug Microsoft here … Streets and Trips 2002 saved my ass. I call hotels up I-81 until I find a place to stay. I find a vacancy … Hagerstown, MD. I give them my debit card number, which they take. I make the reservation, and I say, “Ma’am, see you about 11:15.” I pull up my current location, pin that as the starting point, pick out the Days Inn of Hagerstown, pin that as the end, and tell S&T2k2 to plot the route. 92 minutes. Huzzah.

I pull into Hagerstown at 11:00. I drive through the old historical part of the city. Man, that’s one beautiful city. If I ever come back through here, I’d love to see it again, especially as it’s near Antietam. Of course, it is up the Road to Hell, so I might have to come over on I-70 to get there.

I get in the room, decide to see if I can hook up to the ‘net. Try one company … they hate my debit card. Try another company … they hate me, period. Try Juno … they only let me connect to Huntsville. Screw it, watch Tennessee pull it out in 6OT over the Hogs [sorry, Amy, but you can take that Pig Soooooey! crap back to Fayetteville ... ], decide to go to bed.

Then there was evening, then there was morning … the first day.

Sunday, I get up. BEAUTIFUL day, even better than the day before, which was quite a nice day to be driving [even if it was I-81]. Having left behind the nearly 300 miles of I-81 in Virginia, I travel the rest of the seven miles it snakes through Maryland before getting to Pennsylvania. I get to Chambersburg and realize, “Man, if I’d had Indigo’s cell phone number, I could have crashed with him last night. Of course, we’d have stayed up all night talking. Oh well.” Finally, I get to I-78 and get off of the Road to Hell. And the peasants rejoiced.

As I near New Jersey, wreck piles up traffic on I-78. Laptop on the seat next to me, I take a detour. I drive around Easton, PA for about 15 minutes, get back to the road. The cars surrounding me had passed me about Allentown, so I have saved lots of time, even though I nearly got lost. Keep driving, get to Jersey. I expect industrial stuff … but on I-78, you don’t see much other than trees. You know the cities are there, but you don’t ever see them. Quite weird. Get to Jersey, get in hotel. Call up my friend Daniel, plan to meet him and his wife in the City. Get directions to train station, drive up there.

Ride train. Train fun. Train nice and quiet. Fare not horrid ($8.50), definitely beats braving Manhattan traffic. Get to Penn Station, don’t feel like I’ll be mugged that minute. [Note: driver's license, debit card in front pocket with cash. Wallet in back pocket, but it's pretty empty.] Walk around city. WALK AROUND CITY. WALK AROUND CITY. Daniel and I estimate that we walked three-quarters the width of the island, and that doesn’t count the up-and-down.

Sure, we visited Ground Zero. It’s … a big pit. Daniel and Irina, who were both in 1WTC on that day [which they both call "the 11th"], hadn’t been there since then. I didn’t know this before then, but then again, he was the one that suggested we go. Daniel shows me where he worked, and they both show me where they fled. Now, I can understand it quite clearly, and the fear becomes a bit real.

We ride the subway some more, and finally get to 44th Street after missing one stop and having to ride back to it. We wander around, looking for a place to dinner. We wander. WE WANDER. We finally find a French bistro. We go in, they seat us. I sit amazed. You see, Daniel and Irina were reasonably well-dressed, but I was in a polo shirt and jeans. I had my UAH Hockey hat on, but I pulled it off before we went in. We’ve walked and walked and WALKED all over Manhattan, so I’m sweaty as hell. They let us eat there, though, so we did. It was very good, despite what I would expect. Daniel buys my dinner. I stare balefully at him. “Your birthday present,” he says. I smile and thank him.

We walk down to 42nd Street, and I see what it’s all about. Daniel had never been down there at night, and neither had Irina. Irina’s only lived in the City for a year, but Daniel’s been here for nine years. Programmers! We walk back down to MSG and get back to Penn Station, and we shake hands and part. Daniel and Irina are lovely people, and he is lucky that she married him!

I take the train back to Jersey, get back in my truck. My truck groans, but I pat it on the dash. Gooooood Darlene. No signs of forcible entry. This is good. Drive back to hotel, try to connect to Internet again, throw up hands in disgust after five minutes. Go to bed.

Then there was evening … then there was morning … the second day.

I wake up Monday morning. I feel like I’m dead. My legs are like lead. There’s snot in my head. I break up the rhyme and make good time getting ready for the morning grind. I meet Mr. Kurihara and Mr. Wada in the lobby. We make our way to the vendor. As we drive over, Mr. Kurihara explains that Mr. Wada’s luggage was stolen from the trunk of the rental car while they ate dinner in Chinatown the night before. I express my sympathies, and I think to myself, “Self, you were smart to leave those credit cards in Huntsvegas.” Manhattan: Stuff Gets Stolen There.

We do work stuff. I won’t talk about work stuff, mainly because it’s … privileged. The only down spot is that our vendor had one of their test techs die in a car wreck on Saturday. The mood is somber, and obviously they’re all a bit below par. Can’t blame them for that.

At the end of the day, Mr. Kurihara calls the Japanese Embassy. They tell him to call NYPD Headquarters. I put on my best Bronx accent [not really ... I just stuck to my mostly-neutral North Alabama accent] and call them. They tell me, “That the First Precinct,” then rattle off the number. I call the First. They tell me that’s the Fifth’s jurisdiction. I call the Fifth … yep, it’s really them. I get their address, and one of the vendor’s guys plots it on Microsoft Streets. I offer to go into Manhattan with Mr. Kurihara and Mr. Wada, but they decline my offer.

I go back to my hotel room, call Anthony to see if the telecon is still on, and it is. I fiddle with the Internet for a bit, still can’t connect, and then sit down on the bed to watch football.

I sleep. I sleep. I SLEEP. I wake up at midnight. Oops. I look at phone, don’t see nastygram from Anthony, get back into bed.

Then there was evening, and then there was morning … the third day.

I get up today. Mr. Wada was successful in Chinatown, and he has a police report … maybe now the airlines will issue him a new ticket. We do work stuff. Work stuff improves. We leave work, and I take them to dinner. Steak and beer, hmmmmmmm.

I come back here and finally get a connection. I send a few emails, and the connection keeps dropping. So, I sit down to type up this entry, because I can do this offline … feh. Dialup sucks.

Soon, I shall go to sleep.

Anthony is so awesome.

He’s going to have a phone in the SGA meeting Monday night. I can conference call in and jump into any conversations. I don’t have to miss Senate.

Technology is awesome.

… and I’ll be on the road to the bunker. In about 48 hours, and I should be in Jersey, or at least close. Stopping off to see Andy and Heather since I can’t come for GeekFest NxNE (pout!), then driving up to Jersey. My friend Daniel and I are trying to tag up so we can finally meet while I’m up in the NYC area.

I’m nervous about going, but hell, I don’t have time to be nervous today. I’ve got too much sitting on my desk. The bad thing is, the guy who’ll be covering for me next week is out this week, and I’m already covering for him. I have to get things in some semblance of order on all four projects before I evacuate the area.

It’s going to be good to be back to one project, but as one of our QC inspectors said, “Oh, Geof, they can make four projects’ worth of mistakes.” Thanks, Jill, like I needed that reminder.

On another note, I’m quite floored … with payday yesterday, payment for USA College Hockey articles on Tuesday, and birthday money flowing in, I’ve gone shopping the last two nights. Locations: Circuit City, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble. Total spent: $9, on a paperback copy of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which I need to read for class. I figure I’ll have free time at night to look some of this stuff over, which I usually don’t get otherwise. I wanted an audio copy of the book, since I’ll have about 30 hours in the rental car in the next week, but alas, B&N didn’t have one. I might hit the Huntsville Public Library to see if I get lucky before I head out, although I’m not sure that they’ll have it.

I so wanted today off. I worked last weekend, I’ll travel this weekend, and then I’ll work all next week. It’s been nothing but work lately, and that’s getting a bit old. Oh well, they’re paying me for it, and I chose this field. Should just go with the flow, I guess. I will go to Tennessee next weekend, or there will be hell to pay.

Oh well, enough rambling. I have dragons to slay before I leave…

Dude … I look like John Popper!

You’re going to have to scroll down. Look for the big picture of Popper, then look left to see the photo of me.

I art afeared.

You know what today is?

I’ll tell you what today is.

It’s 20021001.

Isn’t that just nifty?