Category: Life News

New Look

I’ve been playing around with themes for the web site, if you can’t tell. It’s been so cold up here, I felt we needed a “cold” theme. The picture in the banner is a picture of a road near our house – yes, it’s that cold and colder. The ice won’t be going anywhere for a while, even when it gets into the 50s next week.

Very Cold Today

It’s cold today – in fact, it’s colder today here in Virginia than it is at my sister’s place in Laramie, Wyoming. It looks like the ice will not be melting any time soon. At least I was able to drive into work today. This is a good thing, I think. That means that I might be able to go to the gym in the morning. The snow won’t be melting, which is cool, but it’s not going to get any worse yet – no new ice.

So, back off to work I go – sitting in a freezing cold data center.

Piles And Piles

Today, I had to take time to shovel the piles of ice and snow out of the driveway. I still didn’t completely finish, but it is clear enough to drive out of. I still have to scrape and shovel the steps and front stoop, though, so no walking out of that door – it’s got at least a foot of ice-hardened packed snow.

That iced over snow is VERY hard to shovel. There was maybe 6 to 8 inches of ice-fall last night that has hardened into some kind of shell that can support my body weight while I walk over it. Then, I have to break it up and sling it out of the way… I thought I was going to the gym tonight, but it looks like my driveway is my gym today.

Frozen In Time

And space…

Today, we are unable to leave our house as there is much snow and ice outside. In fact, there was snow first and then freezing rain all night so there’s about 6 inches of ice on our back porch and a sheet of ice on our street. We’re not able to leave! Not that I mind, of course – especially since it’s Valentine’s Day and I get to spend it with my wife! In fact, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than iced in with my loving, beautiful, adorable wife.

The only unfortunate thing is that I am still expected to do some work from home… Well, I’ll do what I have to and take some breaks. Lots of breaks!

Back At “Work”

Laura has gone home now, and I’m stuck up here in dreary Seattle for work without her. I suppose I’ll survive.

The sessions so far have been mixed… It’s alway good to listen to Steve Balmer as he gets so excited about things and the last session I learned a few good things about the next versino of Windows server. But… there was all this business “junk” in the middle that I don’t care about. It is much less than last year, though, and that is good.

So, now I’m going to go learn more about Exchange Server 2007…

This Week In Seattle

This week, starting today, Laura and I are hanging out in Seattle with our friends Jeff & Amy. Now, begining Monday Jeff & I have a Microsoft technical training conference to attend, but we brought the wives to spend the weekend with. The girls go home on Monday morning… that’s when the fun ends… not really, but it will seem like it.

So, as we look out over the cloudy city today, we are trying to decide what to do and where to go. Tough choice, as everything is pretty cool here. I fully intend to take a lot of pictures, but who knows what circumstances will intervene.

Bike Battery Battles

Over the past couple of weeks, I have not been riding the bike as often as I normally do. Nor do I ride as far as I used to. I used to go over 40 miles each way every day to the office, but now, I’m only riding 2 to 3 miles per day – and it’s cold so I’m stealing Laura’s car more often. Due to all of that, my battery has started to fail. By “fail” I mean it doesn’t start in the mornings or evenings. I’m simply not riding it long enough or often enough to keep it charged.

So, I now have a solution. My dad had a special charger for his bike since it sat in his garage for long periods of time, so I thought I’d look into it. Sure enough, they are fairly cheap and I picked up one for $32. I installed the permanent leads and started charging it. Not even half an hour later, the bike started up clean. This morning, after an overnight charge, it started even better than it normally does. I guess I should have gotten one of these things sooner.

Snow!

[Finally…] It’s been a while since we’ve had snow, but today we now have a couple of inches on the ground and more still coming. This has been a strange winter – almost Houston-like. It hasn’t been very cold, nor has it really snowed until today.

I’m totally stoked since I love snow. But, it looks like I may not make it to the office tomorrow. The roads were slick only a couple of hours into the snow and when more is coming, the outlook for “good traction” is not so good. Oh darn.

Motorcycles!

Sunday [tomorrow], I am going downtown to DC to visit the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show. Sound like fun? I think so. My main purpose is to check out some BMW models that are not yet in the showrooms and see what other manufactures are offering. Oh – and to drop of my sweepstakes entry to win a new BMW. That would be nice, ya?

I’ll let you know if I see anything cool.