Month: October 2004

Moved!

2012-01-08 23:29:07

We have completed one portion of our move: we are now out of our old house and into our new place. It took all day yesterday to actually make the move, but I think if we didn’t have Laura’s brother’s help, it would have taken even longer. By all day, I mean from 6:30am to 2:00am. I’m very, very tired but I feel a bit better now than I did this morning. I’m also sore everywhere on my body…

The site, as you can see, is back up. I’m “borrowing” a connection until the final DSL line gets installed, so right now the site really isn’t what you’d call permanently up. Soon, though. Soon. I am looking forward to when my desk is all set up and I can work with the beautiful downtown view in my window.

There will be more later about the move, but at least we only have one set of keys now – and one floor! [FYI: for those of you who don’t know, the old place was 4 stories…]

The Return

We have just arrived back from our underwater adventures in the Flower Gardens. It was difficult to sleep on board, but we got the hang of it on the second day. Of course, once we got the hang of living on board it was time to go.

I’m in the middle of downloading the pictures from the camera so soon we’ll have the pictures posted on the web.

And I’m tired now. Good night.

Flower Gardens, Here We Come!

After one abortive attempt several years ago, I had not for a long time tried to go diving in the nearest salt water diving spot from Houston: the Flower Gardens Banks National Marine Sanctuary. This place is difficult to get to since trips are usually canceled when the seas get above 5 or 6 ft. However, the weather report for today says that all is well: the water is “like glass” they said. So, Laura and I will be getting our first experience at true offshore diving. In addition to the Flower Gardens dive sites, the boat is supposed to stop at a rig on the way back for a rig dive. That will be an experience like I’ve never had before.

For Laura and I, this trip is a replacement for the usual Dive Turkey. However, this year we had to opt out with concern for our finances. Our first quarter trip to Hawaii ate the Dive Turkey budget. But, at a much lower cost per person, one can make about 8 dives in the Gulf over two days with all expenses paid. [They let you sleep on the boat…] So we don’t have to go without diving for the rest of the year.

So, off we go tonight and we’ll be back on Sunday with pictures to post.

I only hope I don’t run out of memory on my digital camera…

Moving Next Week

WARNING: For those of you who depend on me for your mission-critical web content, I am moving next week so my site will be going down sometime on Wednesday morning and not coming back up for possibly a few days. Now: don’t get angry when I don’t respond to your email – it just means I won’t have gotten it yet!

[Correction: That’s NEXT Wednesday – 10/27…]

Training In Atlanta

Funny thing: I’ve been complaining here on this site about my company not providing training for me. I’ll have to issue a retraction now since I have just gotten back from Atlanta where I participated in an MIIS training course. MIIS is Microsoft’s metadirectory product. It’s quite nice and much easier to use than the previous versions, I hear. [I wouldn’t know as I’ve never used those.] But, since I had been labeled as the metadirectory ‘expert’ and had never even used the product, now I won’t feel ashamed to claim some knowledge.

The training was very interesting, which is unusual for a MSFT training class. There are usually long stretches of lecture which are exceedingly dull. However, this was not the case with this class. Every lecture was useful and interesting and there were plenty of hands-on labs where we even got to write some code. [There’s a lot of code writing when one manages a metadirectory.]

While I was in Atlanta, I looked up my friend Ron. We hung out, had dinner, and tried to catch up on a year’s worth of history. It is very fulfilling to know that as you grow in life and experience trials that you are not alone and that someone can always be blessed to hear what God is doing in your life. I guess Atlanta’s not such a bad place after all… except for that Ted Turner guy.

Sold!

2012-01-08 23:29:06

Finally! We have negotiated an offer on the house. We will be moving soon, so things may be hectic. I’m sure I’ll have a system outage too [since I’ll be moving my “server room” as well].

Moving is stressful, but also exciting and we’ll look forward to a chance to do some decorating in the new apartment. The view is awesome and I’ll have to post some pictures from the new place soon. We haven’t moved in yet and they haven’t even finished cleaning, but we’re hoping that instead of replacing the carpet, they put down hard wood floors. We’ll even get to chose our own paint.

Of course, the actual STRESS of moving may not be nearly so fun. At least I’ve already lost two pounds…