Home Sweet Home

So it all started two weeks ago. When my sister left on that Thursday, I started packing. Fortunately I don't have too much stuff. I was quite able to pack it all at a leisurely pace, while allowing for some social diversions. My dad arrived on that Saturday in the afternoon. We picked up the U-Haul and some supplies, and then went to get dinner. My mom arrived that evening. They relaxed while I continued to pack. On Sunday we loaded up the U-Haul. I did leave some stuff at the apartment for you guys. Bert, your copy of Catch-22 was there. Rob, I had 4 books of yours I left there. And I left the good poker chips--Justin's hard plastic ones. We even went by the office to get all the crap I left there. The whole thing was so quick. My mom flew out that evening, and after we dropped her at the airport we began our journey.

We drove for a few hours that night before stopping in Bloomington. The Bloomington-Normal "metroplex" is a college town. Illinois State (go Redbirds!) calls it home, as well as a few smaller local schools. We arrived at 10 p.m. and went looking for food. We didn't have much choice. Denny's it was! It's popular with the school kids, too. Then we called it a night. On that Monday morning, we woke up to dogs barking. Our hotel was providing accommodations for the Heart of Illinois Dog Show!

We set out from Bloomington pretty early. We went south to St. Louis and hung a right to go through Missouri. The truck was suspect from the very beginning, but it really had problems with the hills. After filling up in St. Robert, the truck gave up. It wouldn't go in D; other gears worked. And the check engine light came on. We got a room and called U-Haul. They had to find a local mechanic. They said they'd keep calling us every 30 minutes to let us know how it was going. After an hour or so, they gave up on that. Hours later they found a mechanic, and with some more phone tag, he found us. By the time he arrived, the truck seemed to work. That is, it still had a misfire, the odometer didn't work, the temperature gauge didn't work, and the gear shift display was almost completely off the steering wheel, but the truck did move with a little noticeable strain.

We left Tuesday early and drove the rest of the way. As it turns out, the truck had no further issues. We made it home Tuesday night with time to see the Mavs.

On Wednesday I spent almost the whole day unloading and unpacking. I was quite set up by the day's end.

It's been a week since then, and I've been a bit busy. I'll write more about that soon.

Off with her head

Sis stayed until today. I put her on the bus to the airport a few hours ago.

As it turned out, pool didn't start until next week. It's not even clear it's going to happen--there aren't many teams interested.

People want to do things tomorrow. Q and N want to have dinner. Then Rob and everyone else want to go out.

The ties that bind

My parents are unhappy.

Whereabouts unknown

I'm in the usual place. Some people freak out a little bit too easily. (And Rob, I was no more than a foot away from you at 7 p.m. I don't think you noticed.)

Christmas post mortem

Where are the snowdens of yesteryear? Or for that matter, the good movies? The ones with ensemble casts, or at least developed supporting characters; the ones that brashly surpass the 170 minute running time, and that despite following so many others are based on some World War II story; the ones where almost all of the lead characters die? I just watched The Great Escape.

My sister's car was recovered Thursday after a high speed chase. they used it to steal from construction sites, dented in the top of the car with heavy stuff, probably totalled

Friday morning marked my return. I absolutely love flying in the morning. My flight departed at 7 a.m., so I was up two hours earlier. Unsurprisingly, the plane was only about half full. I had an empty seat beside me. The cabin lights were off the entire flight. Everyone was silent but for one oblivious infant in the back. It felt surreal.

It was 30 or so when I got here. Rather than 70 or so in Texas.

La la la

Cacoethes scribendi

I will be in Texas later today.

Another day

Ok, so a little backstory... My friend WS has an excellent job as network architect/engineer for some web hosting company. He set himself up a little private box on their network, and that was hosting jgarrett.org. The purpose of my little vanity address itself is questionable, but I'd like to think of it at least as giving itself to a stable e-mail and web server. Turns out that the e-mail went down on that machine about a month ago, and I was completely unaware. I'm not so fond of e-mail. :-)

The reason for the failure was a rather questionable apt-get upgrade, shortly after Debian 3.1 was released. Anyways, this gave me the incentive to relocate. This way, (a) I'm not mooching off of WS' bandwidth, (b) he was going to need to move that machine sometime anyways, leading to trouble, and (c) I can task the machine exactly right. :-)

Linode.com was what I settled on. Seems like a great little UML based virtual hosting place. Anyways, right now I'm in the process of getting everything set up the way I like, and batting down the hatches as it were.

In more personal news, you may or may not know that my brother intends to become a fireman. He is taking some classes to this effect. Anyways a week ago, his equipment worth nearly $1500 was stolen out of his truck. The real downside more than anything else it seemed, was that this would put him very far behind in his class. See, he originally ordered the coat specially, to get the sleeve length right, and it took 2 weeks to get the coat in. Fortunately though, this time he had no problems at all. He has already got his equipment replaced and only had to make up about 30 minutes worth of instruction.

Yay for that!