Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Yet again last night I had a bizarre dream. This time I was sitting on a plane as it was taxiing down the runway. All of a sudden, a lot of passengers began to scream and cry out. Outside the window I could see downtown burning and on fire as if in great destruction.

I guess the fear level: orange is affecting my dreams too.

I woke up later today, around 8am. The good thing is that I got a lot of sleep, but I still wasn’t feeling too hot. I made a command decision not to go to San Antonio. It’ll be an exciting new years even for me sitting at home all alone!

I made it into work around 9:15am. As soon as I got in, I started working on resuming the RET builds that RAM initiated yesterday afternoon.

It quickly became apparent that something was wrong so I investigated and realized that the initial code merge yesterday was done incorrectly. This frustrated me because it meant a lot more time-consuming, tedious work.

I called upon Sameer to see if we can try out his secret Java project code-named Buretoh (Build Using RET Over Http). He was more than happy to help and we sat down together and tweaked some XML files with the updated components and dependencies. Once we got all of that worked out, we kicked off a top-down build using Sameer’s tool.

At 11:20am a large group of us left for lunch. Today we took Bob Jones out to Longhorn steakhouse to bid him farewell. Today is his last day with the company. He got a job with Home Depot and will be starting next week. Bob was a great guy to work with and I’ll miss him.

After lunch I gave Casey a lift to the airport for his Memphis trip.

When I got back to the office, we had an email letting us know that we can leave today at 1pm if we want since its new years eve. I’ve actually started to feel better too. I changed my mind about San Antonio and called Craig. He seemed happy that I could make it after all. Of course I didn’t plan on going so I didn’t bring a change of clothes or any toiletries. I did have a spare toothbrush and toothpaste in my desk which I stuffed into my backpack.

I checked the status of the San Antonio flight and it didn’t look s good. There were three or four people ahead of me on the standby list and only one seat left on the small 50-seat CRJ. I didn’t have anything to lose so I tried anyway.

The flight was scheduled to leave at 5:30pm so I didn’t leave work until around 4:20pm. Jegan gave me a lift to the airport.

Fortunately I made it on the flight. In fact, there were several empty seats, I don’t know what happened. I sat in the very first row up against the bulkhead so I couldn’t stretch my legs. Those tiny CRJ’s sure are uncomfortable to fly in! The flight attendant was nice to me though, she gave me extra bags of peanuts and refills on my ginger ale.

(We took off right around sunset)

As we made our final approach into the San Antonio airport I couldn’t see anything but clouds. It was a little eerie not being able to see the runway until we almost touched down.

It was a lot warmer in San Antonio than Atlanta. I’m glad I didn’t bring my coat along. Craig picked me up a few minutes after I got outside. With him was his new girl, Julie.

(Julie)

Julie lives in Pennsylvania and is in San Antonio for about a week to visit Craig. She’s a really great girl and I’m proud of Craig. I hope this one works out.

When we got to Craig’s place Alex was in the study browsing Ebay. We talked at great length about speakers and receiver and amps and such.

A couple of hours later more people arrived. I’ve never met any of the new people before, but they were all friends of Craig. We had a great time making merry.

Craig prepared a special drink which tasted much like orange Kool-Aid. The only difference is that it also had everclear in it, but it was quite tasty. Julie wanted to get some pictures with her camera so I decided to bust out mine too and snap some photos.

(Me, Craig, and Alex)

(Craig & Julie)

(Craig’s Dog, Splyph)

(Alex and Laura having a private conversation)

(Kyla)

(Kyla was playing with my camera and snapped this photo of me)

I spent most of my time talking to Julie and then later Kyla.

Around 4:30am the party died down and people either left or were going to sleep. I also went to bed. But before I went to bed, one of the effeminate guys (who was probably a bit wasted) made an indecent proposal to me. I refused.