Wednesday was a bit different. Drove in to work, spent a few hours there, then drove out to the secondary datacenter 20 miles away. All of us went, mostly because several of us had never seen the place. We got lunch, then went on a tour of the whole facility. That was sort of interesting. I took a few pictures, which will be posted later.

We had Rock Band 3 at the usual time after that. Stephanie just stayed for dinner, since she’d had a very long meeting that day and wasn’t up for singing along with Warren Zevon and Lady Gaga. Steve and I rocked out without her. Steve’s probably closing on a house soon, which should be exciting for him.

Thursday was a lot more normal in most ways. There were relatively ordinary work things, and no trips offsite. Some tests appear to be working out well, and we’ve fixed a set of niggling annoying problems for at least a month or two. Of course, they then said that somebody would have to do maintenance this weekend at about 4am. Well, you can’t win them all. I don’t have to work tomorrow, which is always nice. Not sure what I’m going to do, since I have at least four hours where I don’t have to be taking care of various obligations. Maybe I’ll take a nap on the couch.

Whatever this is supposed to represent has probably been lost in the cultural divide. Or something.

Tuesday wasn’t really that memorable, though I was sneezing a lot while outside. Stephanie was sneezing too. I think it’s because of the big fire in eastern Arizona that’s putting out a whole lot of smoke and crud.

Trivia didn’t happen, mostly because of the NBA Finals (let’s hope Miami loses; they’ve displayed far too much hubris) and because several of the core trivia group are still in Maine. As usual, Moira’s making a whole lot of noise.

Monday! And, as usual, Americans are angry about pretty much everything. Not sure why. While it’s certainly tempting to blame everything that’s going badly on the political party or tendency that you don’t like, I’m pretty sure the problems go much deeper than any political party. Self-interest and being a complete @#%^ for the sake of power over others appear to be emergent properties of being human.

Monday was relatively ordinary, though. Some security software had a dang cow on Sunday, for no real reason, but once I got a good look at the log files, it was easy to figure out and fix. And it’s apparently possible to store garlic bread in a sealed plastic container for at least 48 hours before it starts going stale.

And on Kari’s suggestion, I’m going to try posting the links to these entries on Facebook for a while. Hey, Patty does it, and it appears to work. . . .

Sunday. Not a whole lot at first. I guess my parents had all kinds of storms and flight hassles while coming back from Hawaii.

And then went with Stephanie to a meeting of the Tempe Scrabble Club. This is a whole bunch of people who get together every month or so and play competitive Scrabble on a much higher level than most people. They’ve got clocks, official dictionaries, score sheets, and everything. I didn’t play—people who are serious about games hate playing games with rank amateurs, even if they’re too polite to say that. But I watched others play, and was bored for a while.

Then we went to Cornish Pasty Co. for dinner. I didn’t know that you could put bangers and mash inside a pasty, but it was pretty good.

Friday was originally supposed to be a field trip at work, where a bunch of us were going to go out to the secondary datacenter and look at everything and do some OS installs on a few machines. This didn’t work, because not all of us could make it. (Trying to get six people in a modern company to all have a free 4-hour block of time at once is like herding cats.) So that’s been rescheduled for next Wednesday. Maybe that’ll work, though it could conflict with the usual Rock Band thing.

Saturday had no work. Instead, I did laundry, got groceries, and went to have lunch with Nacho and Luly and Stephanie. That was kind of fun. Got to hear about all the horrible stupid hassles at Nacho’s job, which sound a bit silly. Also got to hear Nacho’s truck. He recently put a glasspack muffler in it, and really likes how it makes his truck sound louder. And he’s got plans to spend a ton of time and money putting a bunch of aftermarket parts on the truck. Whatever. Not my thing, but if it makes him happy. . . .

Wednesday had relatively ordinary work things, followed by Rock Band 3 with spicy pork chops, rolls, and hearty peasant fare. There was a fairly new Lady Gaga song pack available for download, and Stephanie wanted that, so we got that. We also got to hear all about Steve’s adventures at Comicon. There was no Rock Band with Wil Wheaton, though, because Wil had been recording audiobooks for days before the con started, and couldn’t sing at all. Steve also had some family drama, but that wasn’t all that important. But it was a good night and a relatively relaxing one.

Thursday, I spent a lot of time fiddling around with some stuff that should enhance security. While I was in the middle of this:

Stephanie (via SMS): Hi. What are you up to?
Me (via SMS): Testing security-enhamced stuff right now.

. . .I’m not sure how you could enhance security with hamsters, or ham, but one thing is clear: Typos are bad and silly. I need to eliminate them in my Copious Free Tiem.

I got something in my science cite-tracker that said some biologists have figured out how to make working AND, OR, NOT, NAND, and NOR gates using DNA. (Paper 1, and Paper 2.) This is (almost) useless right now, since it’s in a very early state. I don’t know what this’ll mean in the far future. Possibly “running FreeBSD on your dog”.