Happenings: February 2004 Archives

I'm sometimes do some fairly unsafe things. Witness this:

That is a picture of the sunset today, taken while I was doing 65MPH on US 101 N. Two things: the picture actually turned out surprisingly well, considering it is from my phone. The second: this is the first time I actually found myself wishing for stop-and-go traffic, so that I could take more pictures. And the third thing: don't anybody try this, because it was a pretty stupid thing to do. But I was feeling like being stupid, so I did it.

It has been a busy few days. My employers decided that they wanted their money's worth -- so I spent a significant portion of last week playing the role of "crazy work guy". This culminated in a 12 hour work day on Friday, combined with a server maintenance which stretched until 6:30 AM on Sunday morning.

I will say that it felt pretty good to get that server maintenance over with -- I was fairly stressed about it, because life could have been "bad" if the maintenance had gone poorly. But luckily I work with a bunch of smart people.

In the midst of all of the weekend work, I did manage to get into S.F. to go to Stan's birthday party. He pulled off something pretty amazing -- a large group of people, a live (and bonafide) D.J., and some live music -- via a bluegrass band known as "Sugartree". Damn. I didn't actually see too much of Stan, but I socialized with the crew, and met some of Stan's co-workers.

Since I was such a good boy at work last week, I treated myself today by leaving at 3:00. This gave me some time to mess around with some stuff, and get ready to split for the City at a reasonable time (hence the picture that started off this rambling post). Mike and I both went downtown today to have dinner with a fellow UIUC alum, Adam Slagell. It was a good time.

I did the drive to Milbrae then bart thing, and on the way down there, I kindof wished that I had one of those oQo thingies that Stan was talking up a few weeks back. Then I could have written in my blog.

Oh, and I finally bought a new receiver this weekend. I went with the Yamaha RX-V2400. It is really, really, really great. I'll go into more detail in a subsequent post...

-Andy.

So, I'm going to Japan. The trip is set for March 19th - 28th, and I'll be going with Mike, Kevin, and Mike's friend, William. Will and Mike are, of course, the instigators behind the trip. Will because he has studied Japanese, his wife is from Japan, and he has been there several times. Mike because he is like some sort of travel vulture -- wherever he can get himself to, he will get.

Anyways, it's going to be a great trip. Way different from Norway, I reckon. But still, I'm pretty excited. EDS "gifted" me with an extra week of vacation this year, and I'm glad to be putting it to good use, pretty much right off the bat. The intinerary isn't 100% set in stone yet, but it looks like we're going to be seeing a lot of Japan in that one week. Man, it's gonna be great.

w00t.

-Andy.