Weekend Intelligence: The Mikado

After spending a week doing some pretty heavy lifting at work, what better way to reward myself than to stay up until all hours of the morning dancing and having fun? Work hard, play hard, right? >.>; Between clubbing and the opera, I barely noticed the weekend go by. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House and Home

The work week was pretty brutal. The client site that I was at needed about 50 workstations torn down, reimaged, packed up, stacked up and shipped out. When I was almost done, they let me know that they'd forgotten to ask me to pull serial and part numbers from each of the workstations, so I had to unstack, unpack and record all the workstations I'd already done, and repack them and prep them for delivery. Very tiring!

It was a wonder I was able to go out that evening. D and I have been trying to get out a little more. We've spent the last two years living like hermits: who knew its almost impossible to get out with kids? >.>; We went out to a club that we'd tried out before, but had a bad first impression. The first time we went was on a Saturday night about a month ago, and they were having a radio remote night. That means they pandered to the crowd that listens to that station, and as much as I love "the best mix of the 80's, 90's and today," when I go to these kind of places, I'm looking for something I can hit the dance floor with right away. It was much better this time around, so first impressions aren't always best. Just don't go on radio night. :P

The next day was spend recouperating from the previous evening before our opera night. Since our show was The Mikado, a victorian satirical musical set in feudal Japan, we decided to go out to eat at Samurai Sushi for the complete experience. Speaking of complete experience, it wouldn't be a real weekend night in downtown San Antonio if there wasn't an absolute sea of humanity filling the streets. I mean, I know it's tourism that keeps this town afloat, but in one night there was a celebrity roast, a Mary Kay convention, Air Force graduation, Spring Break weekend and the opera. Downtown was NUTS. The streets were bumper-to-bumper, and just about every parking garage was filled to capacity. We got into the 3rd one we passed by just under the wire before it closed.

So we were a little late. By a good half hour. Which wasn't a big deal, as they always start on time by having the current president of the opera talk for a few minutes before they even start the overture. We might have missed the first 5-10mins or so. There were few problems we had with this performance... The first being that they accoustics, being what they are in an opera house, are optimized for operatic and orchestral performances.

The Mikado was neither of these: it was more of a musical than anything. Much of it was spoken, and the singing was not of the style that carried over the orchestra. Furthermore, they did not have any of the lines displayed in supertitles, as they had been in past performances. The end result was something of a murmur that was half drowned out by the orchestra. Imagine an unholy union between a cheap knockoff of work by William Thackeray meets the adult characters from the Peanuts cartoons, set to music that was constantly too loud. Yeah, it was like that. We left early simply because we couldn't understand what exactly was happening, and didn't feel like fighting the opera crowd to get out.

Sunday morning, we got up bright and early to meet with the wife of one of D's coworkers who was recently deployed to Iraq. She has a little one too, so it was good to exchange toddler stories over a good breakfast. After WalMart, we really didn't do much else for the day. It was one crazy weekend, and I was good to just chill out and relax for what little I had of it left.

In Game

Was kinda a shame that I didn't have much time to blog last weekend. So much happened in game. To quickly recap:

• Soulfire ground out several KS99 dragons, and one of them dropped a Wyrm Beard with my name on it! 1/3 Black Belt items, baby! Not to mention all the gil and such that goes with getting in on those runs.
• We also camped Fafnir several nights, and actually claimed him 3 of the 5 nights we camped. and 2 of those claims was me. >:D My computer has no lag, even when the zone is completely packed, so the dragon popped each time as clear as day. My issue the third time was I was too far away to cast Flash, but I saw him pop unclaimed.
• Finally, we leveled our "marriage mules" to 15. Only 5 more levels to go until they're legal. LOL!

This weekend was significantly lighter in game. We really didn't do much until Sunday, when we leveled BST. We started out in the tree, but it was simply too crowded. Seriously, that place has become THE place where everyone goes to skill up. So I decided to start scoping out a new camp. The mobs there were starting to get a little too easy, anyway. One guide suggested that a duo does really well just outside the eastern gate of Nashmau, so we decided to give it a go. Glad we did. Our rings wore in 10mins there, and we were getting chain 4-5 with little effort. After about an hour, we were over halfway done with the level, and decided to logout in Nashmau and call it a night.

So... The next two weeks looks like this: I'm onsite Monday and Tuesday and in the office Wednesday and Thursday. Then I'm traveling to Yuma, AZ on Friday to work Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and returning to San Antonio on Tuesday. I haven't worked an April Fools' Day in years, and am not about to start now, so I have PTO in for Wednesday. Then I work somewhere (I think...) Thursday and Friday before I get a taste of the weekend again. It might be a little while before I get to write to you all again, but I promise to keep you posted when I can! ^_^/

The Fine Art of Diplomacy...

...is the ability to tell someone to "Go to Hell" without them being offended. If you're realy good, they may even ask for directions. This past week, on top of being horrifically short-staffed, I was also lagged as all get-out from the time shift.

/workrant on, and be warned, some links may be a little NSFW...

Monday was particularly bad: we were the most short-handed that day, I was the most lagged that day, and Monday's are bad anyway. There seemed to be no end to the calls from very self-important people that only thought to call in at that very moment for a problem that they needed fixed an hour ago. Or the sectretary who places a top-level ticket because their screen resolution is too small. And don't forget the person who knew they needed to check a laptop out last week, but decided to let IT know about it an hour before the big presentation...

Seriously, a lack of planning and common sense on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. But in my line of work, there are certain things you can say or do to effectively deny an asshat request and alert the requestor to their own asshattery without making them angry at you for being the bearer of either bits of bad news. Usually, things that are requested for checkout need to be asked for several days in advance, so one always has policy to fall back on. It's also part of any good IT specialist's troubleshooting repertoire to have the end user reboot their computer. If they protest, saying they have already done that, tell them that some issues require three reboots to resolve. The Mute Button is a good friend of mine, as is its older brother, the Hold Button. I tend to save the Hold Button for particularly vicious people, as our hold music is nausiating - 2mins on hold, and if they're still there, they're significantly mellowed out.

Don't get me wrong: I'm one of the most people-persons I know in IT... Stop laughing. >.>; I generally want to help decent human beings, and I don't think I'm asking for much in asking for that. But I can NOT stand rude, thoughtless and self-important people.

/workrant off

Work aside, we've been busy trying to unpack things we need to do basic cooking and cleaning, while trying to keep the resulting mess down to a small explosion. Clara is absolutely insane lately. Happy, angry or random: it makes no difference anymore. She shrieks for any reason or no reason. One day this week I had to put her to bed nearly an hour early, simply because she was giving me a migraine with her incessant screams. I know she doesn't mean it: she's such a sweetheart and is learning new words and phrases everyday, but sometimes (read: WAY too often) she just gets so excited that words completely escape her, and she goes off on a shriekfest.

To top it off, she's finally learned how to open doors... She's walked out the front door, walked in on people in the bathroom and gotten herself stuck in the garage, unable to reach the doorknob to get back in the house. Recently, in the middle of the night, she's climbed out of her crib, left her room to go downstairs, ate the cat's food and knocked over a water bowl, opened the door to our room to come over to my side of the bed and start talking to me. o.O? I rolled over to see a crystal blue pair of eyes staring at me. I asked her what she was doing here, to which she simply said "Pi? Pi-pi?" That's Clara-speak for "Pick me up?" I carried her back to her room, but we're seriously going to have to look into doorknob covers.

Weekend Intelligence: The Green Fairy

Our first full-fledged weekend back in the house, and we decided that adage "Work Hard, Play Hard" was in order. So we decided to get adventurous and buy a drink that D had never had before, and I hadn't had in years. If we're gonna lose an hour, might as well lose it in style. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Earlier in the week, I had been by our friendly neighborhood liquor store for some of the usual poison. The owner and I are on relatively friendly terms, and in asking what was new, he showed me that he had come across a new entry in his already pretty varied collection - an imported French Absinthe. He told me he would have 6 bottles in by the weekend, and would hold one for me if I wanted to buy in on the case. >:D It had been ages since I had absinthe: last time was on my trip to Austria when I was a Sophomore in college. So when the opportunity came up, I told him to hold one for me.

So that Friday, I stopped by after getting sugar cubes and picked up a bottle of the Green Fairy. D had never tried it before, so I cautioned her that it was an Anise-flavored liquor, since she's not a big fan of black licorice. Apparently, 'Anise-flavored' didn't register as 'licorice-flavored,' so she had a time getting it down. And just like the last time I had the drink, it was a very fast-coming, heady buzz that overwhelmed and left you rather carefree and prone to smiling. :) We had a great time that evening in game, leveling and generally catching up with friends we haven't seen in a month.

The next morning was my therapy session with Denise, and I got a chance to talk through some of the things that have been on my mind the past few weeks. It's really a relief to have someone completely unbiased and objective to bounce thoughts, feelings and experiences off of. At any rate, by the time I got home, the AT&T service had dropped yet again. D called in to start the trouble ticket and got our account upgraded to automatic tier 2 support for any further support calls we have to make. They sent out two engineers to look at the lines and punchdowns, refitted some of the jacks and were on their way again. Honestly, I'm pretty unhappy with the product, and if we have one more outage this month, we're probably going to switch back to TWC, as much of a pain in the ass as that would be.

We lost an hour of sleep that night, and felt every minute of it the next day. We just had an impossible time keeping up with the day. We got up late, ate late, did our WalMart run late... I hate Daylight Savings time, whether I'm gaining an hour or losing an hour, it always leaves me zombied for a week. -.-;

More Bars, More Places...

Colin decided to get sick on the school breakfast on Monday, so I was called to come pick him up from school. I've lost so much work between the kids getting sick and the stupid flooding that it's a wonder I'm still financially afloat. What really got me burned was that he wasn't really sick. As soon as he was home, he was bouncing off the walls. Almost doubt he was actually sick at all at school. At least it bought me some time to unpack more things and check the connection. As it turned out, the connection was dropping yet again. Another call into AT&T...

Starting to really regret switching over to AT&T. In the past week, I've had to place 10 service calls, have had 4 technicians and an engineer make house calls, went through a DVR, 2 cable boxes, 3 residential gateways and had all the telecommunication wires and fittings replaced in the house, and my connection is still is not always solid up. TWC was definitely more expensive, but at least their uptime was near perfect.

This time the connection seems to be holding a little better. It's only dropped twice that I know of since the engineer came out and rewired the data lines leading upstairs. He also changed the fittings outside and made a call to get the cable line from the neighborhood box buried. Apparently they neglected to do that during install like they were supposed to. We'll see how it holds up after they bury the line.

Weekend Intelligence: Life Spice

Had an accidentally long weekend, but that's OK. I needed it to iron out all the final details of our exodus from the hotel back into our own house, unpack stuff and fix some residual issues. D and I also decided to get some 'us' time in on our last night in the hotel. ^_^/ So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Clara had been very boogery all week, and on Friday, she decided to run a fever. Since D is already in the negative from all this flood shenanigans, I took off work to stay with her. She slept all day long, poor thing - she really wasn't feeling well. Only woke up once for a few hours to get some food and something to drink, then let me know she wanted to go back to sleep. This worked out rather well, since the movers had all but finished moving our stuff in. I got most of the stuff out of the hotel room and into the house. Everything but the food... Apparently in the course of moving our fridge out, they forgot to defrost it and leave it open. For a month. I swear, when I opened the freezer, the sentient life that had developed in the fridge started cursing me out to turn off the light and shut the damned door 'cause they didn't want to heat the outdoors. They sent the service people over to do a decontamination on the fridge - hope we don't get sick.

Also noted that the upstairs cable box was freezing up. We JUST got AT&T U-Verse installed in our home last month, and this was really the first real test it was getting, and already it was screwing up... I called their technical support, and after navigating the treacherous waters of the phone tree, I got a representative that put me on hold half a dozen time for no shorter than 2 minutes a hold. Honestly, that's inept. -.- After a good hour of this shenanigans, they scheduled a technician for Saturday afternoon.

This whole ordeal has left D and I rather on edge, and in After what we've been through, we decided that we were long overdue for some adult fun time, contracted the help of Noni's daughters to watch the kiddos and went out for some fun. Not going into details here, but let's just say we got some pretty decent mileage out of our last night in the room. -.^

Saturday morning was a bit of a run. We needed to get the kids by 10, be out of the hotel by 11 and be done with our running around for the day by noon, since the AT&T guy and the new furniture were scheduled for the 12-4 window. Somehow we were able to bend space and got completely checked out by 11. From there, it was a quick run to pick up the things we absolutely needed before noon. The furniture guys came and left quickly, and D and I broke the new love seat in with a wonderful nap until the AT&T guy arrived. ^_^ He changed out the upstairs box, checked the house wiring and determined that the main gateway needed to be replaced as well.

And it all worked great again until later that evening, when the wireless decided to go out. So I strung a line to my old Linksys wireless router, which made the connection drop every 2 mins. Hooray for 24-7-365 tech support. -.- After another half hour call, we got another tech scheduled for Sunday to change out the gateway. Good thing we didn't have much going on for Sunday, just some light shopping to get us through the week.

In Game:

Finally, we were able to play our own game on our own computers in our own home. :D Once the kids were put away for the night, we were able to level our BST a little. D found something else to do online while I decided to brush the dust off my campaign medals. I'd lost interest in upkeep on them since the winter update didn't include the Cobra mage body piece like everyone was hoping. Over the course of the weekend, I picked up 2 merits and burned off all my ops credits that had been sitting around for months. Keri and I also leveled our mules that we're building to marry our main characters. She'll get a dress and ring that has my mule's name on it, Shrades, while I'll get the same from her mule, Keriths. Original, huh? :P

There's No Place Like Home...

Wow. Just, wow.

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've updated you all on the continuing house flooding saga. Between doing a financial tap dance, increased commuting, coordinating subcontractors (read: herding cats) and an increasingly busy work schedule, I have lost a good 3-4 hours a day of free time, and make it all up on the weekends. Been running on emotional empty for a good week or two now.

But the time to move back into the house is finally here. The walls and insulation are back where they belong, the paint is dried, the flooring installed and the movers are scheduled to move our stuff back into the house. And we only needed to buy two 1.75L bottles of Black Cask to do it... So I thought I'd give a quick recap of life in a hotel, and why I think I know why I'd want my own home more.

Let me start by saying this hotel is awesome. I'll be recommending it to any friends and family that want to come visit us over the accommodations that they normally get. The rooms are a fair share larger than their competitors for the same price, the amenities are simply amazing and it's very close to where we live. And the weekday socials, and subsequent free beer, have been a real lifesaver at times. But it is still a hotel, and living here has removed a good 2-4 hours from my day, everyday.

We have to wake up at 5-5:30am every day (in part because D can't just get out of bed, she needs to snooze for 15mins or more :P ) in order to get ourselves ready. Here is where the time starts slipping away from us. We have to factor in the time of taking the dog on a full walk instead of just letting her out in the back yard. We have to factor in the time it takes to have everyone to get ready and eat breakfast at the same time instead of staggering it, and we have to factor in the time that it takes to get both Clara and Colin out the door in time for him to make the bus, which still makes its stop at our house. What I used to be able to get up and handle easily at 6:30 now takes at least an extra hour or more if I'm lucky and don't miss Colin's bus.

After work, I have to pick Colin up from home and bring him to the hotel. His bus is still dropping him off in our neighborhood. So while I get to the house at 5:15-5:30, he doesn't show until 6, leaving me to waste 30-45mins sitting around in my car listening to the radio. There's nothing to do in the house unless I had the foresight to bring laundry with me in the morning. Then I have to fight rush hour traffic AGAIN to get back to the hotel, again walk the dog instead of just letting her out, and finally start making dinner, usually around 7. This amounts to about an hour and a half lag from where I'd be if I was in my house.

Furthermore, Colin's bedtime is 9. If he goes to bed much later than that, he rivals his mother in terms of difficulty prying out of bed in the morning. Normally, I'm up bopping around and doing things until about 10-11, but I can't do that with the kids in the front room trying to sleep. So this leaves usually just under 2 hours to get dinner made, exercise and the day's business complete before the kids need to get ready for bed. Once it's lights out in the front room, D and I are trapped in the back master bedroom while the kids are asleep. While it was kinda fun for the part of first week to have a built-in together time, we have come to the conclusion that we like being able to decide when and where that together time will be. LOL Another perfectly good hour or two lost every night.

Housekeeping has also been a severe pain. It started off with them taking things out, but not replacing them. They take towels, trash and linens, but then don't replace them with another set. As time went on, things started disappearing. I admit it was also dumb to leave a $20 bill sitting out on the dresser - that grew legs and walked out. It shouldn't have, but that's what I get for trusting strangers to clean my room. Jewelry and other odds and ends have gone missing, either by fleet fingers or careless cleaning. There have been days where we will put up a sign not to disturb, only to have them knocking and calling while the kids are napping. We have also put up the "Later, please." sign, only to have them not stop back at all. When we complained, the next day they checked in on us at 9am on a Sunday to find out when we'd like to have the room cleaned. Then there have been the days that, for whatever reason, the just didn't feel like cleaning the room at all. By the time we get home in the evening, all the housekeeping jokers are long gone, and the front desk can't do much about it beside give us towels and toilet paper.

Last time, they gave management the excuse that the dog was loose in the room, even though Suzie had been in her kennel all day. How do we know this? Because they're not allowed to put the dog away, or even supposed to go in the room if the pet is loose, I put Suzie away (as I always have) before I left for the day, and she was patiently waiting right where I put her when D arrived home that evening. So either someone put her away, or someone's lying.

So where do we make up all this time lost during the day? The weekend, of course! We pack as much as humanly possible into our waking hours on the weekend, skip naps and have even skipped a few meals. All this to be able to do what we normally would do on a weekend, plus paperwork, shopping for replacement items and tending two living spaces. Leaving us feeling more like we need a weekend after our weekend, and less like we're ready for the week ahead.

As far as gaming is concerned, D and I have only really had two nights in a month that we've sat down and played for any real length of time. We leveled BST one night and went out to merit in Nyzul another. I got a day off while waiting for the AT&T (<3) and Brinks guys to show up and install the new phone lines, and got some good money fishing and escorting newbies around to flag advanced job quests. One of them asked me if I wanted to make a quick 35k, and I asked doing what, to which he replied "I need an escort." I told him I don't play like that. Had a good laugh while unlocking his corsair and puppetmaster.

Planning on having a chat with the General Manager about our stay there before we move completely out sometime this week. He has a lot of good things going for that place, but his help needs help. We're not really out for any kind of compensation, but as a former manager, I know it's important to hear honest and civil perceptions from customers in order to fix problems. At this point, all I want is my own schedule and my own bed, in my own room in my own house.

In Need of Doors

EDIT: I realized I never put a picture of the hotel with the Weekend Intelligence. That's the hotel we're at. The virtual tour on that site rocks, and yes, the place really is as nice as it looks.

The construction workers started the task of ripping out drywall in the kitchen on Monday. They removed the kitchen cabinets and crown molding, and the service contractors moved everything out of the house in the affected rooms. By the time I got there in the afternoon, the place had a very eerie echo to it. Poor Suzie had been in the kennel the whole time while strangers traipsed through the house. I let her out and played with her a little bit before Colin and the gang arrived. Once everyone had arrived at the house, we gathered up a few things and went back to the room.

I feel a sense of exile. I miss my house, and the freedom I had with it. I miss my castle. D and I can't really do anything after the kids are in bed, since they sleep in the living room of the suite. That's the same room that has the XBox, Wii, our computers and the door to the outside world. Everytime I even make noise by that door, Clara startles and wakes up and gets pissed that we won't come take her out of the pack-n-play.

Not that she can't get out - she's learned how to scale over the top of the playpen turned crib, and does so regularly. But when it's bedtime, she knows that if I catch her out (or if Colin tattles on her) that I'll come out, pop her on the butt and set her back in her crib. You can tell she's pretty anxious lately. There's just so much going on that's not the typical routine, and she's been very unruly and much more emotional than she usually is.

And poor Colin. He shares the living room with his sister. Several nights now, she's been up at 11 o'clock and later because she's just so wound up with all the noises and such from the room above and from the hallway. So she spends this time squealing and trying to escape her crib and generally making it hard for him to get enough rest. But sleeping arrangements aside, she's been the only other kid available for him to play with for a week now, and he's starting to get a little impatient with her.

Thankfully, some of our neighbors who have been very helpful in letting Suzie out while we were gone last weekend invited us to dinner at their house. After eating quick frozen meals or restaurant food for the past week, a home-cooked meal was so nice. Clara got to play around a different house, eat in a high chair and watch TV on a couch while Colin got to play with some of the neighborhood boys.

We're all on edge, really. Sometimes a family just needs some doors to keep the peace...

Weekend Intelligence: Suitcase Living

The continuing saga of our poor water-logged home has pretty much dominated the day-to-day. This weekend intelligence is more like a week in review as well, and since I'm finding myself working this weekend to make up for the time I missed this past week to meet with insurance reps and contractors, I actually have time to make a good go of it. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House and Home (and Hotel)

Following the drying process, it was suggested by the service contractor, as well as the construction/restoration contractor that our family get packed out of our home while they went to work. There were a few different reasons for the suggestion. The first consideration was to the fact that we have a very rambunctious, destructive and unruly toddler, and there would be lots of unfinished house lying around that she would gravitate to if left to it. Another consideration was that one of the rooms that needed the most work was the kitchen, which meant that it would be rather unusable until they were done. Lastly, they could leave the worksite in progress without worrying about its impact on any occupants - tools, construction debris and equipment could be left lying where they were needed for next time.

What this meant for us was that, yet again, we needed to pack up. Whatever we would need for the remainder of the build, estimated at about 2-3 weeks if all goes well, needed to be packed and taken to a hotel suite or extended stay arrangement. We found a nice place called Residence Inn by Marriott not too far from where we live, making it much easier than before to get Colin to school and Clara to daycare. They have pool and spa, workout room, fully appointed kitchen suites, daily maid service and a free grocery service. Yeah. They send someone out with your shopping list, buy everything, put it away for you and put the grocery bill on your hotel tab. All for $99/night. Makes me wonder what I'm doing paying a mortgage. LOL

It took us about 2 nights getting everything we would need for an extended stay. While we were moving out, the service contractor sent out a team of packing ladies and packed almost everything in the house in a day. They only left what we asked them to because we weren't ready for it to be packed yet. 559 boxes. O.O You never realize how much crap you have until you have to move it. At least I'll be able to go through things box-by-box, put things in their rightful place that we want to keep and throw/donate whatever I didn't want in my house to begin with.

It's a tight fit, but so far the hotel has been very accommodating. The General Manager took me around to see the various room layouts, and I chose one that was spacious enough for the 4 of us, yet wasn't overkill. He said that we might find ourselves leaving there a little spoiled - I could use a little spoiling. ^^

Weekend Intelligence: Chasing Waterfalls

Alternative Title: Water, Water Everythewhere. This weekend was absolutely surreal, following a pretty epic fail on the part of our plumbing. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House (or what's left of it...) and home:

I came home a little early from work on Friday to a pretty nasty smell and the awe-inspiring sight of my own personal waterfall from the kitchen ceiling. Apparently, over the course of the day, the master bathroom toilet (the one just off of our bedroom) had backed up. But instead of draining normally, it clogged on the way back down. Which wouldn't have been so bad, if it weren't for the fact that the toilet kept running and eventually ran over, creating a heel-deep lake of standing sewage. The water soaked the carpet in the closet, the master bedroom, the hallway and the loft upstairs. It also apparently got underneath the sinks in the bathroom and found the holes drilled to install the security system, creating the lovely waterfall from the inset can light fixtures in the kitchen and the ventilation duct over the living room love seat.

You know that's gonna make for a rocking weekend... -.-;

After making a rather panicked call to D, I got the shampooer from the garage and started the task of picking up all the standing water. A good workout with the plunger, 5 shampooer buckets and a half dozen towels later, I finally got the stream coming through the ceiling shaved down to a trickle. The closet was a lost cause: the carpet was completely soaked through, as were most of the shoes that were laying around haphazardly. I was able to salvage my green docks, D's wedding boots, a nice pair of heels and some sandals that she just bought. Everything else on the floor was, at the lease, heavily dampened, and most things were soaked completely through.

We called the insurance office, who sent out a service contractor to start cutting holes in the walls and ceiling and tear up the carpet. After doing their best to make my house look like Swiss Cheese, they set up some massive air movers and dehumidifiers. It sounded like a jet engine was warming up in our house. Combined with the smell and the newly exposed carpet tacks, we decided that it was not very feasible to stay in the house, and so we got a suite at the Embassy for the weekend while things dried out.

We still kept our weekend plans, though. We had wanted to go out and party a little, and still were able to, but with the added bonus of having a hotel room to go back to. -.^ Ended up hitting a little rock bar for some live band action in Alamo Heights with some friends. Once the weekend was over and the service contractor was back out, it was clear that we were probably going to be packed up while they did restoration.

To give you an idea of just how hectic this has been: I started this blog entry on Monday and just barely finished it today. -.- I will try my best to keep you all updated, and we appreciate all your thoughts and prayers while we get this squared away.

Keeping Up Appearances

I apologize for the lapse, but there are many things going on in my life lately that I really just don't feel like blogging about. Not that there's anything wrong, but it's just certain things I don't feel is necessary to share with the world. This is nothing new: there's lots that I just classify as "family business" and don't write about. But lately there's been a flood of this and it's been at the forefront of my thoughts and interactions at home. And it has been making it very hard to blog.

At any rate, there are some highlights from the past week or so that are pretty noteworthy. For starters, I finally got the Dell that we ordered through D's discount program at her work. It's a Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz with 4 gigs of ram and a 500 gig drive, running 64bit Vista. It freaking flies. I turned the settings on Final Fantasy XI ALL THE WAY UP and went to Dynamis - Windurst with 40+ people. I was pulling 3000+ on the receive bar and there was absolutely no lag. At all. All characters and monsters moved completely fluid. It was a beautiful thing.

But I told you that to tell you this. When we ordered this computer, we decided to buy the upgrade for a wireless PC card to be preinstalled. One less thing to pick up at WalMart, right? -.- When I finally get the machine up and running, the network connection is dog slow when it's working and constantly drops connection. I check the drivers provided on the Dell website and note that there are only 32bit drivers for this card that was installed into a 64bit machine.

Hmm... Some system engineer needs to be slapped. I did all the hardware troubleshooting that could be done without replacement parts. It was either that the driver was bad (duh) or that the NIC was bad, or both. It was definitely possible that the NIC was bad, too, but I had a hard time believing that the only drivers available for an ASUS card were 32bit.

After a very long wait to get to Dell Tech Support, I got some poor girl who had no idea I do this kind of work for a living. I started rattling off the troubleshooting steps I had already taken and how I came to my conclusions, only to have her as me if I had taken a step that I had just explained. Complete script monkey - I would hate that job. And it's not like it was her fault; she probably had to follow that protocol before she could escalate my call. After being put on hold a few times, she was able to escalate the call to components. A new card is in the mail. If that doesn't work, then I know that my initial reaction was most accurate: their drivers suck. I'm kinda hoping I'm wrong... Until then, I have the Courier Carrie laptop sharing it's wireless connection on a wired switch that is linking the laptop and the new PC. It's ghetto, but it works for now.

Game life has kinda taken a backseat the past few weeks. The very few times we have been online have been for our assault/Nyzul static, leveling BST, leading a Promyvion run for DBH and the Dynamis this past weekend. The main issue had been my laptop, which had started to take a turn for the worst and overheat every 3mins. That pretty much makes it impossible to game or really do much of anything. The Courier Carrie laptop can play FFXI, but the graphics don't go any higher than lowest due to a severe lack of system resources.

Beside FFXI, we've been getting back into DDR now that the 360 is back from the shop. D and I are really determined to loose some weight this year and slim up a bit, and the WiiFit is a nice tool to use in conjunction with our other aerobic exercises.

All sorts of goals and goings-on in the new year. ^^

Weekend Intelligence: Nomage For Your Brain

I took a week off from blogging to catch-up on some life things left over from vacation and taking it easy. Contemplating whether or not I want to keep this blog, as the resolution that started this blog was to keep it for a year... Yeah, I guess I'll keep it. ^^ But then that means I have some catching up to do... So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House and Home:

First, thanks for your thoughts and prayers for DeAnn and her family's loss. I didn't blog about it, or several other major life stressors that have been going down the past month or so, but needless to say, we've been run down pretty ragged. It only gets better from here, though, and my wife and I are stronger for it.

Following the Holidays, we got the Wii set up and online on our new entertainment system. The way the extra content works on that system is you buy up blocks of points, and use those points to buy classic games, new games and added Wii content. We ended up buying Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As King. That game is crack. Absolute crack. While they make the game easily playable in 10 minute "days", they don't tell you how your previous day went until the next one, making for a very addicting play experience. We also purchased Zelda II (since D had never played it before), MegaMan 9, the Internet and Aquarium channels and a WiiFit. The WiiFit is nice for tracking our weight loss goals, but the aerobic games are somewhat light until you grind them out over and over again to unlock harder modes. Having DDR'ed for so long, the pace feels too slow, but I'm sure it's exactly what some people need. Personally, I can't wait to get back on DDR, as soon as the XBox gets back out of the shop, which should be pretty soon.

I also had one of those birthday things this past weekend... 27... >.<; I feel old. Anyway, I wanted to go to Benihana, but the wait was over an hour, and we have a two year old. >.>; Instead we went to a relatively new place called Kobe Grill. I've been wanting to try the place out for a while now, and I'm glad I did. The wait staff was very attentive, and very Japanese in their waiting style. Unlike Benihana, or really any other restaurants, the servers excused themselves or apologized each and every time they needed to interrupt our dinner to fill glasses, bring/take plates and deliver the check. They gave slight bows each time they came and left. When Clara pitched a fit while waiting for the appetizers, they gave her a little glass dog to look at and play with. I gave it a 60% chance of ending up in a billion little pieces on the floor, but I really appreciated the gesture. The chef made sure that she would be OK with the fire tricks, and was sure to cook things that the kids would eat first so he could move them to a cooler part of the grill while the other things were cooking, making them not quite so scalding hot when the meal met little mouths.

As for how the kids did... Well, Clara was Clara. She wanted her food NOW and threw a fit pretty early into the visit. At least that cooled her off for the rest of the time. She loves sushi, and even told us "Sushi, yummy, mmm." Wasn't too hot on the soup, though, which was a surprise because she usually loves soup. Colin actually tried some new things while he was there. No sushi or soup or salad, but he did eat his rice, a good portion of his meat, and even had a bottle of Japanese strawberry soda, even though he was unsure if he'd like it. A very pleasant experience, and a great birthday dinner. ^^

In Game:

We really didn't do much in game worthy of any note in the past two weeks. Seriously. I led a short and unsuccessful Promyvion - Mea run for my social shell, and we got some experience on our Beastmasters in the Boyahda Tree, but didn't even level. There's just too much going on in our lives lately to really have time to invest in game. Hoping things will cool off a little in the upcoming weeks.

So the blog lives on!