It was a fun weekend, if ever too short as always. I wasn’t feeling all that great on Friday at work and even after going home, but I took some advil, drank some water, and felt a lot better after watching a movie [Without a Paddle]. So much better, in fact, that I met up with Brad out at the pub where his brother works in Providence. I’ve been there a few times now, and it’s always a good time. A couple of Brad’s friends also came along, so we sat around talking and played a bit of pool. I ended up not getting to bed until around 3 AM, but that wasn’t such a big deal knowing I didn’t have to get up for anything in the morning.

So I didn’t. I slept in until 12:30, when I finally decided that any more sleeping would make me feel like I had wasted the day. Watched another movie that afternoon [Napoleon Dynamite], watched a tribute concert to Michael Jackson with a bunch of cool performances by a bunch of cool people, and then headed over to the Morelli’s house for a couple hours. After having been up so late the night before, I decided to get a bed a bit earlier Saturday night - around 11:30 PM. Seeing as I didn’t have to get up until 9 the next morning, I still managed a comfortable 9+ hours of sleep. Ah…. SO nice.

Church Sunday morning was good, as usual. Peter spoke about how we pray “…in Jesus’ name, Amen,” and yet how often we aren’t really praying in Jesus’ name. It was meant to get us back on focus with God. He also spoke about how we are to be a “glorious” body, and that instead of focusing on how often we fail to be holy, God said that he would glorify us so that we in turn could glorify him. Peter said that it’s an insult to God when we sit around obsessed with the fact that, “Yup, I messed up again today!” - because it’s in essence saying that what God did for us by dying on the cross was not enough to bring us back to him. I know, my summary’s not all that great, but it was a good message.

A bunch of us went out to New York Chinese Buffet for lunch, then headed back to my house for some fun in the snow and an afternoon movie. When we finally all went our separate ways the weekend was pretty much over. I watched yet *another* movie [Enough] on TV Sunday night with Abby, then conceded to my closing eyes.

This morning on my drive to work the sun was shining brightly, and though it’s yet another Monday life’s not so bad. Now it’s time to earn my keep!

…but I haven’t posted much on here in a while, so I better put at least *something*.

As much as I hate the cold weather, I love the snow! I would love to get another blizzard and get another couple of feet on the ground. I don’t mind the shovelling, I don’t mind driving in the snow, and it makes me laugh to hear that other places get shut down when they get an inch! So bring it on.

Work goes from busy to slow, slow to busy. It’s been a bit slow lately, but it’s also picking up again. I just got handed another part of the project to work on, so I’ll be working on the detailed design for that today. I got it started yesterday, but I still have quite a bit to do.

Here’s a cool site you should check out. Woot.com. I’m not going to explain how it works, so when you go there just click around and read about it. It’s much more enjoyable when they’re having a “woot-off”, but they just had one a few days ago so it probably won’t happen again for a few weeks. It’s a pretty crazy idea for selling things.

Oh, and here are some more blizzard pictures that Jake & Maggie put up.

Why is there never enough time?

I posted some pictures of the snow from the blizzard we got this past weekend.

Today was another “stay at home” day. Well, not really. I went to work - it took me an hour, and as soon as I got there my boss told me to pack up some work and go home. See, it was snowing again, and it was just supposed to get worse throughout the day. It didn’t really end up being all that bad, but I’m glad I got to work from home anyhow.

I should see if I can get permission to work from home once a week. I think that would be nice…

I’ll work on getting some pictures up later today. I took some last night and I’ll take some more today, let you all see the fun we’ve been having.

And yes, I have the day off today. The Governor of RI asked that people not go to work today so that the road crews can do their jobs without interference!

Woohoo!

Update: See my comment for an update on the snow!!

I’m *so* excited!

… Blizzard Warning remains in effect from 5 PM this afternoon to 6
PM EST Sunday…

Snow will begin across western Rhode Island and southern Worcester
County between 2 and 4 PM this afternoon… and will quickly
overspread the remainder of Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts by
nightfall.

The height of the storm will occur tonight and much of Sunday
morning. Snow will likely fall at the rate of 3 inches per hour for
several hours overnight. Strong northeast winds will increase to over
35 mph for a time tonight and Sunday morning. Along the coast… wind
gusts between 60 and 70 mph are expected late tonight and Sunday
morning. Even hurricane force gusts to 75 mph are possible along the
Outer Cape and Nantucket coast during Sunday morning. Gusts close to
50 mph are likely over exposed interior terrain.

The strong winds will cause severe blowing and drifting snow with
whiteout conditions at times. The winds likely will also trigger
scattered power outages near the coast… and to a lesser extent
inland. Over Cape Cod… Nantucket and Marthas Vineyard… the snow
will likely be of a somewhat wetter consistency… and thus create the
risk for even more widespread power outages.

In addition… the cold temperatures and strong winds will cause wind
chills between 10 and 20 below late tonight. This will add to the
danger for any one who ventures outdoors tonight.

The snow will taper off to snow showers by late Sunday afternoon or
evening. Considerable blowing and drifting snow will persist into
Sunday evening across exposed areas.

Total accumulations will be on the order of 20 to 30 inches… with
amounts as high as 3 feet possible. Additional accumulating snowfall
may continue on the cape and islands into Sunday night.

Yeah, Wundergound does me good.

Abby and I are watching 24 (the third season, not this one) on DVD, and we went out last night and rented the 5th DVD. It had been over a week since we last watched, what with Abby going out to Wisconsin and all. It had actually gotten to the point that neither of us remembered what had happened last.

It was sooo good to get back into it! And one of the episodes we watched proved that 24 is *totally* unpredicatable. It totally blew us away. Abby and I were both staring at the TV with looks that said “Did that really just happen???” What a good show!!

Now here I am at work, and I’m taking it somewhat easy today because it’s Friday. My brain is already tired and it’s only 9:40 AM. It’s been a long week. But it’s ok, we get free lunch today! Woohoo!

As for this weekend, I don’t have any plans yet. Planning on relaxing is enough for me. Oh yeah, there is a birthday party on Saturday night, so I’ll probably go to that, but it’s still somewhat up in the air.

Mort - I’m never home during the day (weekdays) so skyping isn’t much of an option except on the weekend. M-F I leave bright and early and I get home between 6 and 7 PM my time.

Shideler - we should still be able to manage it. But we need to plan it, because I don’t spend too much time on my computer at home after being on one all day at work…

Update: The birthday party is *tonight*, not tomorrow night. Doh.

So anyway, this is just a quick post to let everyone know I’m becoming a bit more strict with comments… unless I loosen up again your comments will not appear until I approve them.

I’ve gotten a couple of comments from unknown locations that seem to be spam more than anything else, so I’m on the lookout. I mean, it appears one of the comments originated near Bahrain. The other came from Madrid. Both were posted anonymously. And what’s even more confusing, is they didn’t even seem to go to my website to post the comments - I don’t have any record in my stats of them ever being there.

So yeah, I’m going to be wary for a bit and see what happens. Just wanted to give you all a heads-up!

where most of the people I work with have the day off, but I don’t.

So I sit here at work, not doing much. I actually thought I would have a lot to do today, but I got things done a lot faster than I expected. Well, most of it. Some of it is still on the list but put off for another day - I need to add some new code to our software versioning system, but it just so happens that the server is down right now… and there’s nobody there to fix it because they all work for Uncle Sam and he gave them the day off.

So here I sit, held back by a holiday that is not mine.

Oh well, tomorrow’s another day.

So let’s see. It’s Saturday, and it’d cold outside. I *hate* cold weather. Why can’t it just stay warm year round and snow despite the temperature?

Dan is on vacation right, on break from school and taking a break from work. He drove up to Quebec on Tuesday to hang out with his parentos for the week - he’ll be back tomorrow night. Hope he’s had some good relaxing time, because between school and work he doesn’t get much time to relax.

Abby is also gone right now. She flew out yesterday afternoon to go visit a friend out in the Chicago area. She has Monday off from work (not fair, I don’t) so she’ll be flying back then.

What it comes down to though is I’ve had the house to myself since yesterday afternoon. And I must say it’s pretty boring. Yesterday afternoon I hung out by myself for a while and then went into Providence to hang out with Eric. Saw his new office, and then we went and played pool downstairs. Yeah, downstairs. His office is on the 4th floor and on the 2nd there’s a bar / pool hall place. It was a good time - I haven’t played pool in forever.

This morning I cleaned out the ferret enclosure *thoroughly*. I washed the flannel jackets and stuff that they sleep in, mopped the floor, put in a fresh new batch of litter, and even hung up a new hammock I bought for them the other day. I’ve also been cleaning up my room, going through papers for filing, and I spent a decent amount of time relaxing.

Now it’s just about 5 PM though, and I have yet to eat something today. Doh! That’s what happens when there’s no one around to tell me to eat - I just don’t. But I probably should, so I’m off…

I’m behind on the news. I’m behind on keeping in touch with friends. I’m behind on getting my car into the garage (this weekend, maybe…). I’m behind on 24 - we’re watching the third season on DVD right now. At least that part is planned. It’s much more exciting to sit down and watch 4 episodes in a row, rather than one episode a week. So rather than watch season 4 now, even though it started the other day, I’ll wait till it’s out on DVD next December…

The point is, I’m behind in a lot of things. But get this - I’m pretty much all caught up at work. Yeah, I’m still busy, and I have more to do, but at least I’m not behind. I’ve been coding all week. Now I have to go back and add some more comments, clean it up a bit, and then it will be almost ready to submit. Feels good to be getting things done.

Shideler, Mort - we need to Skype it up sometime.