Jeff Billimek’s Journal

After being out for the whole week, Carole came back to work today. We caught up on some things and she seemed to be in pretty good spirits. I think the vacation did her well.

For lunch today, Brian, Susan, Bob, James, Alex, and I went to Schlotzsky’s. We were originally going to a pizza place down the street, but there was no parking and no seating. I sure do like the Schlotzsky’s pink lemonade!

At the last minute Carole invited Jegan and I to a two-hour long meeting this afternoon across the street. It was a high level strategy planning meeting for some future processes that we are going to try to change. I didn’t contribute much but it was informative and interesting to see where things are going. It also helps get me pointing in the right direction for some new things to come.

After the meeting I met with Carole in her office to help set up her m500 PDA. We’ve been putting this off for so long but now we both had time and I spent about thirty minutes getting everything connected and set up. She seemed pretty happy that she now has all of her calendar and contacts synchronized with Outlook.

I left work around 5:30pm. Traffic on I-285 was horrible. It was pretty frustrating slugging my way through traffic. I feel like I’ve been driving around a lot this past week.

Around 8pm I left my apartment and went to Jen’s house. Again traffic was pretty bad going up I-75, but I eventually made it there. I brought with me two new magazines to read. One is called ‘Backpacker’ that Mom got for me (a subscription) and the other is a skiing magazine that I got a free subscription for thanks to Scott.

Lisa had come by earlier and left a present for me: A slightly frozen dreamsickle (vanilla vodka and orange juice). It was delicious.

Jen and I went to the Mexican restaurant across the street for dinner. We ordered a half-pitcher of frozen margaritas. They brought us the special ‘texas margaritas’ which are more potent. They were indeed potent and we were both feeling it.

Dinner was actually quite nice. The food was good and we talked about lots of stuff.

As we were leaving we saw Jen’s neighbor, Tara. She was there with her friend Craig.

Shortly after we got back to Jen’s house, Lynne came home and baked the rest of the slice & bake cookies. She also liked the backpacker magazine that I brought over.

I was so tired that I don’t remember much beyond this but I think I somehow helped Jen fold laundry and make the bed. I went to bed shortly after that. I think the margaritas were stronger than I thought they would be.

We slept in pretty late today which was nice because there was nothing pressing to do today.

We cooked a homemade breakfast this morning. I sliced the strawberries while Jen fixed French toast and an omelet with cheese and ham. The breakfast together was splendid and relaxing. So far Sunday has turned out to be a great day.

I took a shower and then we left for our day in midtown. On the way there I stopped at my place to change.

We parked in the metropolis parking deck and walked a few blocks to Piedmont Park. There were a lot of other people walking towards the park too, it was pretty cool.

When we entered the park, we saw a sea of people clogging all of the walkways. There were a lot of booths set up in which people peddled various junky items like crafts and paintings and other arts.

I wanted to first go to the frisbee throwing event because when I went last year it was really cool. It was a beautiful cool spring day with a deep blue cloudless sky. It felt great to be outside.

It took us a while to push our way through all of the crowded walkways until we got to the baseball field area where the frisbee competition was being held. Jen and I staked out a small area facing the roped-off area and watched a few competitors. It was pretty windy today so the frisbees weren’t flying too steady.

We didn’t stick around there too long but instead walked around some more. We noticed a lot of people carrying potted plants - they looked like dogwood tree saplings. I asked someone where they come from and was given directions to a large tent on the other side of the park.

It took a while to navigate through the sea of people to the large tent. We got a bit lost and I asked someone else how to reach the elusive tent. They pointed it out to us and told me that the plants are $5 each. We found the tent, but they were all sold out of the trees.

By this time we were both pretty hungry and decided to make an exit from the park and get some late lunch/early dinner. We exited on the south-entrance of the park and made our way up 10th street towards Nikimotos.

We stopped at a fun-looking café called Santino’s and requested a table outside. It was still such a nice & sunny day and we were both in great spirits. As the name would suggest, Santino’s is an Italian restaurant but we ordered sandwiches and salads. I had the chicken parmesan sandwich with a Caesar salad.

(Jen and I enjoying our excelent lunch outside)

It was a lot of food and we took a leisurely time eating. Sitting at a table next to us were two girls who were later joined by two other girls. One of those two girls looked really drunk. When they were all leaving, the drunk girl couldn’t even stand and made quite a commotion because she nearly passed out on the sidewalk. Her friend didn’t seem too concerned though.

When we left the restaurant back to the parking garage I tried to call James to see if he was around to let us out without paying. His phone was off. It cost $6 for parking which wasn’t so great considering the lot across the street from where we parked was $2.

On the way back north, we stopped at Town Center mall so Jen could look for backpacks. We didn’t find anything at all but we did notice the small game shop was going out of business and everything was on sale 60-70% off. Jen bought some stuff from there for herself as well as for future gifts.

As it as getting late we left the mall and drove back to Jen’s place. It had been a long day.

We spent several hours up in Jen’s study doing work. Jen worked on a paper for school while I caught up on my journal writing. I sipped on cranberry juice while I worked on my notebook. Jen told me that cranberry juice can help prevent kidney stones. After hearing about Brian’s experience with kidney stones, I certainly hope that I never get any!

I’m considering buying the Bluetake BT500 portable Bluetooth mouse. I’m still not too hot about using the touchpad for extended mousing activities. I’m constantly accidentally ‘double tapping’ the surface whenever I try to re-adjust my finger so it gets very annoying.

We took a break and went downstairs for a snack. We fixed some cheese nachos as well as black beans and salsa. It was pretty good!

I also helped Jen iron some of her clothes. I brought over a button-down shirt to wear to work tomorrow but it’s wrinkled. Jen helped me iron it and now it looks great.

I got into work a little later than usually today. I was pretty busy this morning but went to the 9am staff meeting. It was just a DT employee staff meeting so there weren’t as many of us. Carole went around the table and asked us all what we are working on. I had to list a lot of things.

We had a 10am lead meeting scheduled but Carole canceled it because of all the work that needs to be completed in the very short amount of time that we have left.

I ended up working pretty closely with Casey and some of the other developers today to coordinate getting the last-minute code changes done in an orderly manner so I could start building the changes as soon as possible.

I labeled, merged and built code in four different components. I had to work late in order to get all of this done and activate in system test. Some of the testers worked late today in order to validate some of these changes.

Time is certainly starting to run out and we all have to scramble to get everything done in time to meet the 1.3 production date.

During the day we had some issues with the filesystem filling up on the development box for the tuxedo domains. We tried to clean up some of the space issues but there was still a large amount of space being taken up but no files to account for it.

Dave M. and Chris A. worked together and figured out (using lsof) that some running processes still had file handles open on some large files that had already been deleted. Because the process was still alive, it didn’t release the file handle. They solved the problem by identifying the offending PID from the lsof output and killing the process.

I also spent a great deal of time (while waiting for builds to complete) working in the 1.4 branch and getting everything ready to be tested in a development domain. I managed to get to the point where everything will boot in tuxedo except for the dataservices group due to an unresolved symbol problem. I forwarded it over to Alex and Sameer to look at.

We also had some issues with three of our production servers broadcasting on an integration multicast network segment when they should be on production. It was a problem that had a lot of visibility so I dropped what I was doing to work on it. It actually didn’t take me very long to track down the problem and everyone involved were pretty impressed. I think Jegan was also just as close to tracking down the problem too. Carole was happy with the results. This put me in a pretty upbeat mood for the rest of the day.

I left work around 6:30pm. As I got on I85 north I saw traffic starting to back up. The billboard info message sign said that ALL lanes of the highway were closed four miles ahead. This wasn’t so good. I attempted to take the first exit. I saw some other people getting onto the shoulder to drive ahead towards the exit so I did the same since I figured that everyone else in the right lane were going straight. As I was cruising down the shoulder, a white mini-van swerved out in front of me and stopped. I nearly collided with him. It became pretty apparent that he didn’t want me to ‘get head’? As he didn’t move very fast and also proceeded to the exit. I guess he felt that it was his duty to block me from exiting too fast? It was quite bizarre.

Once I finally reached the exit (it took like ten minutes to the blocking mini-van in front of me), I went back towards work and got on I85 south and got on I285 from there. I later found out that the entire highway through downtown was completely shut down for FOUR hours this afternoon all because a guy was on a bridge threatening to jump. Four hours. Why did it take the police so long to get the guy down? I got home around 7:30pm.

I watched some television, getting caught up on some TiVo programming, including the latest episode of 24. After that I played a lot of Counter Strike: Condition Zero. It was actually pretty fun playing the single player version. The bots are actually quite good and for the most part work together in a team. I made it pretty far.

Around 9:45pm I left for Willy’s to get a burrito for dinner. Jen came over around 10:15pm. She watched me play some counter strike (I attempted to demonstrate the game for her).

Afterwards she helped me pack some but was pretty tired from work and school and went to bed. I stayed up for a little while longer getting the rest of my stuff packed and went to bed around 1am.

We woke up pretty early this morning around 4:15 or 4:30am. Fortunately our bodies are still feeling like they are three hours ahead so the time change isn’t that bad.

I called up Sameer who was at his desk (It was around 7:30am in Atlanta). Everything went fine the night before. I was on the phone with him about an hour yesterday after I got into San Diego so I could walk him through the steps necessary to label, merge, build, and deploy code.

We each took a quick shower, got dressed, and packed up again. We met up with Larry around 5:10am and departed the hotel.

It took us about thirty minutes to drive from the hotel in Twentynine Palms to the part of the park that we wanted to start at. It was still pretty dark but the moon was 3/4 full so a pale light was cast on everything making the landscape look like something out of a science fiction movie. The pale white light was canvassing the tall Joshua trees, shrubbery, and gigantic boulders that littered the land. It actually reminded me of the ‘Dune‘ computer game.

As we drove further into the park we could see a faint glow emanating from the eastern horizon as it got closer to sunrise. We finally decided to stop at the ‘Ryan Mountain‘ area to watch the sunrise.

The area surrounding Ryan Mountain is pretty cool because of the interesting rock formations and gigantic boulders piled on top of each other. This combined with the forest of Joshua trees and cacti is really cool.

It was a bit cold outside this morning before sunrise so I borrowed Larry’s red sweatshirt. We all had a smoothie using the milk that we bought last night.

Larry had his massive tripod which he used with his 17-40mm L lens. I forgot to bring along my tripod (I didn’t have room anyway). While Larry was off taking some long exposures, Jen and I made our way over to some rocks and sat down. I propped my camera (with the Sigma 15mm fisheye lens) on top of a large boulder to take some long exposures (some as much at 8 seconds). It worked out pretty well. I shot the whole day in RAW mode.

As the sun started to rise, Jen found a way to climb up very high on a set of large boulders. I climbed up after her and we both enjoyed the awesome views. By this time it was bright enough to shoot handheld with my 15mm fisheye lens as well as my fast 50mm ‘plastic fantastic’ Canon lens. I think I managed to get some great landscape shots from up high.

Eventually Larry climbed up as well and we all had fun exploring the top of the large boulder area. The sunrise side-lighting was so ideal that it made picture-taking quite enjoyable. I love sunrise light.

While I was wrapped up in photographing stuff, Jen wandered off. I later found her sitting in a yoga-style pose on top of a boulder looking out across the horizon. She looked pretty centered and serene with the sun shining behind her.

After about an hour, we all hooked up and headed out. Next we drove down to the ‘Wall Street Mill’ trail area. We started off the trail along the mountainside and photographed the beautiful flower and cactus blooms that we came across.

We followed the valley area for quite a while but never found the mill or the dam. We did come across two suspicious-acting girls who told us that we were way off course. We turned around and headed back towards the beginning of the trail.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the temperature was only around 82 degrees. The sky was a deep blue and we didn’t see a single cloud in the sky.

From the beginning we took another part of the trail to the old car. Here Larry took his time taking lots of macro shots of the rusty old car with his 100mm macro lens. Most of his photos came out looking really great. He made effective use of his tripod. I really want to get that 100mm macro lens as it does such an incredible job.

Jen discovered a windmill off in the distance so we followed the trail to that location and came to an abandoned old windmill. We took some photos and looked around but finally made our way back to the car and left the park.

We drove about twenty minutes into the town of Joshua Tree and stopped at Crossroads Cafe for lunch. Even though we went there just last night, it was so good that we wanted to go back again today.

I actually ordered the same thing as yesterday which was the very delicious BLT with the flavoured bacon. Larry oared one too in addition to the chicken sandwich. He gave me half of his BLT. This was my third time eating at Crossroads Cafe and the food/atmosphere is still great.

Larry was pretty tired because he didn’t sleep very well last night due to it not being his own bed and because he’s been thinking a lot about his new home purchase. He asked me if I would be willing to drive back to San Diego.

I had no problem driving. We stopped just outside the town of Joshua Tree to get gas. Jen got an iced starbucks coffee and I got a rockstar energy drink. It only took us about 2.25 hours to get back. I loved the stretch of road near Palm Springs where the fields of gigantic windmills are. It was tough to enjoy looking at them because I was driving, but nonetheless it was fun to see.

Shortly after we arrived at Larry’s house, Amy came home from the preschool with Tucker and Lily. I introduced Jen & Amy and then we unpacked the car. Tucker and Lily were happy to see me. It’s pretty cool how they call me ‘Uncle Bags’.

We relaxed and went out to the backyard to play with Buster and Coco with the tennis balls in the pool. It was great fun throwing the ball into the pool for them to jump in and retrieve.

Later Larry and the babysitter (Jenny) came out with Tucker and Lily to play in the pool as well. It was nice and sunny out and we hung out in the back yard for a while and had a great time.

Eventually we went back inside to take a shower and change. We changed into nicer clothes because we went out to dinner tonight with Larry and Amy.

I used Larry’s CardBus CF CardReader to upload my photos. I was thoroughly impressed at the speed. I think I may need to get one of those for myself.

For dinner the four of us went to a great restaurant called ‘Mesquite’. The atmosphere was great and the food was even better. I had the BBQ ribs. Larry also brought along a bottle of red wine from Napa which we drank. It was a good dinner.

After dinner we went back home and went to bed pretty early (around 9:30pm Pacific Time).

Last night Jen and I talked about getting up early this morning to go for a walk and possibly take the dogs with us. Unfortunately we didn’t wake up early so that didn’t happen. It was nice, however, to sleep in.

Jen and I got up, washed our faces, and made coffee and smoothies. Today I made Jen’s smoothie with soy milk.

We sat at the kitchen table and finished up our game of chess. It was a good game but Jen proved to be a stronger player than I. I tried to fight to hold on and even tried a desperate gambit in the end, but she mated me.

Tucker, Lily, and Cal were all playing together in the family room when Jen & I helped Larry & Amy with the Easter bunny. It was fun to watch Tucker and Lily get excited about the door bell ringing and the baskets sitting for them on the porch.

We all discussed what we wanted to do today. We decided that Larry, Tucker, Lily, Jen, and I would go down to a different La Jolla beach from yesterday. Amy would stay behind with Cal. The weather forecast for today looked much better than yesterday.

After packing up the car we left the house and drove down to La Jolla. Like yesterday, I brought along Larry’s 70-200mm L IS lens. Larry didn’t bring his camera.

(This squirrel was barking at people as they climbed down the steps to the beach.)

The beach we went to was one of my favorite ones in the San Diego area. It’s next to ‘children’s pool‘ where all of the seals hang out. Today we had good timing as the tide was low.

(Larry covertly photographed Jen and I papparazi style as we walked along the beach.)

It was also an extra special treat to see some seals hanging out on some rocks at this beach. According to Larry they rarely come to this beach. I, of course, photographed them. I got a little annoyed because some people thought it would be fun to get very close to the seals, who don’t like that and move away to another location. So those people ruin the experience for everyone else.

The weather today was absolutely spectacular. It was very sunny and hot and perfect beach weather. It’s amazing that yesterday was so bad and today was so great.

I had fun with Larry’s lens. I took more photographs today than yesterday and I’m getting a little more used to the lens. It’s really cool how the lens doesn’t telescope when zooming and the aperture is the same no matter what focal length you use. The image stabilizer is a huge bonus too.

(Lily walked towards me with Larry and Tucker in the background.)

Jen and I laid out on the beach in the sunshine and had a great time soaking up the sun. Larry was doing a great job with Tucker and Lily.

Eventually we had to leave for lunch around 12:30pm. We drove into the La Jolla area and went to a Mexican restaurant for a quick lunch. It was so nice outside so we wanted to sit outside, unfortunately everyone else had the same idea so it was difficult to find a table.

Larry got some food for himself and the kids while Jen and I got our separate. We both got burritos. I wasn’t sure if I had enough cash but Jen assured me that I did. I checked my wallet and notice a lot of $20’s that I didn’t see in there before. Jen must have slipped $100 into my wallet! That was really unexpected and nice of her. I tried to give the money back to her but she insisted that I keep it.

After lunch we drove over to the Torrey pines cliffs area where the hang gliders launch from. I’ve never been there before so it was a real treat. It was actually really cool. The wind is so strong that they can land from where they take off from.

A while later we left the cliffs and headed back to Larry’s house. Time was running out and we still had to shower and pack. Larry had a bunch of old Digital Photographer magazines that he gave me. I love that magazine so now I have many more issues to look at.

Jen and I took a quick shower, dressed, and packed up our bags. We said goodbye to Amy and the kids and then Larry took us to the airport. He dropped us off and we had little trouble getting checked in. We also had plenty of time.

We went to the gate and requested to be seated next to each other. The agent said that there is a small chance that we can both get first class but it’s hard to tell.

While we waited for the plane to board, we went to a deli shop near the gate so Jen could get some tea. I got ice water and they gave me a tiny little plastic cup the size of a shot glass. That wasn’t too fun.

We didn’t get first class but we did get the whole middle row to ourselves. During the flight we ordered food from the ‘food for sale’ program since they don’t serve food in the coach cabin anymore. We each got an $8 turkey sandwich that didn’t taste very good at all. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the food. In fact, I only ate half. We did, however, also order some mixed nuts ($4) which were much better. It was all different kinds of nuts and they were delicious!

I attempted to use my laptop but the guy in front of me reclined his seat all the way which made it impossible to open the screen all the way so as to be comfortable. I could still use it but the screen was at a weird angle.

Jen watched the movie which was ‘Whale Rider‘. I typed away on my notebook (writing in my journal) instead. She said it was a good movie. It looked like something that would appeal to girls more than boys.

After the movie was over we switched seats because the seat in front oh her wasn’t reclined and I would use my notebook more comfortably.

We actually arrived in Atlanta about twenty minutes early. As we trudged through the airport I realized that I need some new luggage. The red duffle bag I’ve been using for the past several years is good but it doesn’t have rollers and is hard to carry.

When we got outside we caught the shuttle bus right away and made it back to my car. We drove straight to Jen’s house. We were both pretty tired but we did a load of laundry and then went to bed.

I made it into work around 9am today. It was pretty busy as soon as I got in because I finished up the install from last night. I was still ahead of schedule with respect to the code implementation plan.

In fact, I was so busy with this work that I skipped Carole’s 9am staff meeting.

I finished up the DAS install just in time for the 9:30am bridge call and during the call I worked on the application install across all nine servers. Eventually that went fine too.

It turns out that the DB2 work didn’t finish on time and in fact it still wasn’t done by the time I left today and they didn’t have an estimated time for completion.

I left early today in order to make my 3pm physical with Dr. Feldman. I don’t know why, but traffic was pretty bad up along I-75.

When I signed in, I had to fill out some forms that I’ve already previously once filled out. The receptionist was apologetic and said that they must have lost them or never filed them.

They physical went well. The best part was when Dr. Feldman used his little hammer-like device to test the reflexes of my knees. Afterwards I had to give blood and a urine sample.

I’m supposed to go back next Wednesday to get the results.

I made it out of there around 4pm. I was nice to go against the rush-hour traffic. I stopped by Publix to do some grocery shopping. After that I went to the dry cleaners to drop off some pants.

When I got home I caught up on some TiVo and then went to Jen’s house around 8pm.

We had dinner together. She made pizza with cheese, fresh tomatoes, and basil. Lynne came home and offered us a chocolate bunny. We broke it up and had some. It was thick.

I was pretty tired and ended up going to bed early.

Around midnight last night I got a page from Jeff C. alerting everyone that we’re going to have a bridge call at 2:30am to start the production flow. Everyone is requested to drive into work so that we can begin in a couple of hours.

Because of my ability to do things remotely I’ve already worked out with Carole that I’ll be logged in remotely during the call. I set me alarm and went back to sleep for two more hours.

At 2:30am, I got logged in and used my cordless phone to join in on the bridge call. After a few moments everyone else joined and we began.

I was up literally all night working on this. Jen was asleep in the bedroom with the door closed as I worked in the living room with my laptop on the cordless phone with the earpiece. I tried not to make too much noise to wake her. At one point, the cordless ran out of batteries and I had to temporarily switch to my cell phone as it charged back up.

Things were taking so long because we had some problems that I was trying to help resolve. Carole paged Casey to come in around 4am.

Around dawn Jen woke up and got ready for work. I took a shower and dressed for work too. On the next bridge call Carole told me not to come into work but keep working from home. I wasn’t going to argue with that since I wasn’t operating on any sleep.

I saw Jen off for work and continued to wrestle with the production problems we were having. Around noon I took a break and met Jen for lunch at her office. She sent me directions and I followed them as I took back roads to her workplace.

The drive was actually quite pleasant because I drove though the Northside Drive and Riverside Drive areas of town in which people have massive mansions. Seeing that is certainly incentive to do well in life.

When I got to Jen’s office she showed me around. It struck me how ‘modern’ and clean her office looked compared to my office. She showed me her cube and introduced me to Victoria, her manager.

We left for lunch and actually went to REI first. I wanted to look at the backpacks and she works near REI at perimeter mall. We spent about 20 minutes looking at bags. I brought in my current bag filled with my laptop and camera to see how things would fit in a prospective new bag. I found one that I liked a lot with respect to how thins fit, but I don’t like how it looks. I found another that I like how it looks, but things fit a little tighter. All of the bags I looked at would work better than my current bag.

After REI we went down the road for lunch to a place called Roly Poly. I had some sort of turkey and bacon wrap thing with a great sauce. It was truly delicious and I enjoyed it very much. I can’t wait to go back.

I dropped Jen off at her office and went back home. I was feeling pretty tired and dragging quite a bit. There was another bridge call. I worked with Sameer and Jegan to test a library to see if the problem was fixed or to gleam more info. Originally they wanted to go through the whole build/deploy/install process. Given the current state of affairs, we simply didn’t have the time for that as every hour was critical. I came up with a much faster way to prototype the fix.

Unfortunately the fix didn’t work. We worked over the problem and finally during an afternoon during another bridge call we had a bit of a breakthrough. It was decided that we could easily turn off the problematic derivation. Casey made the appropriate changes and all of the major problems went away. We still need to come up with a fix, but this buys us time.

By this time it was around 4:30pm and my cordless phone had died again. We all decided to break and work on things again Monday since the major problems are suppressed right now.

I was still very tired due to a lack of sleep. Jen came over after she got off work and we went out to Copeland’s for dinner. We sat outside because it was so nice out. We had a great dinner together and it was sort of romantic.

After dinner we left for Jen’s house and didn’t get there until around 10pm. I was so incredibly tired. Jen gave me a great massage and I fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up today around 8am. Jen was already awake and doing homework. She’s so disciplined, no wonder she’s getting a masters degree.

Shortly after I got up and ready, we went to breakfast at J. Christopher’s. I ordered way too much. I had two blueberry crunchcakes with maple syrup, potatoes, eggs, bacon, and orange juice. The crunchcakes are pancakes with granola sprinkled on top. It was so incredibly good I can’t even describe it. I ate so much I got very full.

After breakfast we went back to Jen’s house. We spent most of the day up in her study working together. She was at the desk working on schoolwork and I sat, cross-legged, on the futon/couch with my notebook writing in my journal.

I used MS publisher to write up a flyer for my washer and dryer to post up at the mailboxes to sell. I tried to connect to her computer via the network but was unable to do so. This frustrated me quite a bit. I finally broke down and hooked the printer directly to my notebook via USB cable (at Jen’s suggestion). I printed out a few copies of the flyer.

We left Jen’s house around 3:30pm and drove down to my place. At my apartment we dropped off the boxes we acquired yesterday from the liquor store.

Quickly after that we drove down to Highlands View to look at my future home. We had a mission: To look for and document all cosmetic flaws that we want corrected. I took along a pen and paper and we set to work.

It took us about an hour, but once we were done, we had a pretty comprehensive list of all problems we discovered. Jen was actually instrumental in most of the observations. She looked at things from fresh perspectives (like from sitting on the floor).

Before we left, I looked inside the Levithon patch panel box inside the garage. I had to use a screwdriver to get it opened. Once I could see inside, I was happy to see that all of the phone lines met at a junction inside this box. They were all cat5-e grade cables. This meant that I could use them as Ethernet cables instead of phone wires.

I took a photo of the box as well as the cable patch panel with my cell phone.

After we left the townhome we drove around the area, specifically the intersection of South Cobb and East-West Connector. I saw the local Publix grocery store that I’ll soon be going to.

We took Cumberland Parkway all the way back to my apartment. We passed by the cool looking giant satellite dishes and the Vinings area.

Once back at my apartment, I called Dad to see how he is doing. Shortly after I got off the phone with Dad, Mom called. She was in San Diego and asked for me to check on some flights to Atlanta.

After checking flights for Mom and getting off the phone with her, I went outside to the mailboxes and hung up three flyers for my washer & dryer.

At 6:30pm Jen and I went out for dinner. We drove over to Mama Fu’s off Johnson’s Ferry road. Jen had a soup dish and I had the Pad Thai. We sat outside and enjoyed the wonderful springtime weather. It was actually a great day outside. I forgot my wallet so Jen paid and drove my Explorer back to my apartment.

After dinner, back at my place, Jen did homework and I did laundry. I also caught up on some journal entries.

This morning I left Jen’s house at 6:30am. Because it was earlier than before, traffic wasn’t quite so bad. It still took a long time to make it to the office from way up in Woodstock, but at least it wasn’t constant backed-up traffic like before.

The weekly 10am core team meeting today was pretty intense because of the ongoing poor production performance issues. It’s starting to get a lot of visibility but we’re all working extremely hard to identify and resolve the issues.

After the meeting I was working at my desk when Brent came by. He asked me to work on the family feud software for the upcoming all-hands meeting. I, of course, agreed. He also asked James to work on it too.

Later though I realized that the meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, the same day I have a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. I explained this to Brent and he was ok with me not taking as an active role in the presentation. It’s a good thing James is involved too.

Today we took Casey out for lunch to celebrate his 1st birthday. We went to the Marriot buffet. It was pretty good. From the pasta bar I had a great custom pasta. It consisted of: bowtie pasta, linguine, sausage, bacon, onions, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and cheese.

Late this afternoon while I was working, I got a call from Brian who was down in the parking lot about to leave. He informed me that my front passenger tire looked flat.

A little while later I packed up my stuff and went outside. It was hot in the parking lot this afternoon. Sure enough my tire looked pretty flat. I began the process of changing it out for the spare. This was my first time dealing with a flat in the Explorer. Fortunately the spare is full-size tire which is nice.

I cracked open the spare tire area in the back and got out the jack and wrench thing. Using the wrench ting I lowered the spare from underneath the car. Once I got the tire down and out of the harness, I couldn’t figure out how to operate the jack. The wrench wouldn’t connect at all to the jack, so I couldn’t figure it out. I looked around and finally after like 15 minutes I discovered that I was missing an extra piece that connected the wrench thing to the jack.

As I was jacking the car up to remove the tire, a guy walked up and asked if I needed help. He suggested that I pump up the tire to see if it will hold air so I don’t need to put on the spare. He left to get his truck and drove around and hooked up the air compressor to my flat tire. It took a while to get it filled up to 45psi. The guy (who is named Brian) works on the first floor and was very friendly. It was quite nice of him to help me out.

The tire held the air so I drove down the street to Boyd & Sons Tire Company. This is where I usually get my oil changed. I trust these guys and they seem to do a good job. Even though it was late (like 5:15pm) they were more than happy to take a look. I grabbed my backpack and went to the waiting area.

While waiting for them to get the tire checked out and fixed, I used my laptop. I sure am glad to have a laptop so I can do fun stuff while waiting now.

It only took about 25 minutes to get my tire fixed and everything taken care of. It cost about $15.

I actually had two emails today from people interested in my washer and dryer from the ad I placed on craigslist. That’s not bad considering I just posted the ad last night. I actually spoke with one of the guys and he was going to come to look at them this evening.

I also had a phone call from some people who saw my flyers up by the mailboxes and they want to look at the washer & dryer tonight too. When I got home I called up the people who saw my flyer (Sylvia). They actually live in the same building on the same level so it would be very easy to transport. They came over and looked at the washer and dryer. They turned them on to make sure everything works.

They didn’t have a dolly right now but will get one in a couple of days. Because I’m selling them for $200 total, they gave me $100 to hold until they take delivery of them on Thursday at which time I’ll get the remaining $100. I handwrote a simple contract for Sylvia and then she left.

I called & emailed the other two interested parties to let them know that the washer and dryer were now sold. I think I priced them too low at $200 since they sold so quickly. At least I don’t have to move them now.

This evening I watched ‘24‘ and it was a great episode. Jen called me late after she got out of class. We chatted for a bit and then said goodnight to each other.

A few minutes after we got off the phone there was a knock at the door. It was around 11pm so I was curious who could be at my door. I looked through the peep hole but whoever it was had their finger over the hole so I couldn’t see them. I stupidly opened the door anyway and was shocked & exited to see that it was Jen! She came here from school to surprise me.

We had a light snack and then went to bed. It was really cool that she came over.