Jeff Billimek’s Journal

As what seems to be the case with all Sunday’s, we had a much slower start to the day than yesterday. Jen did some laundry while we had cinnamon rolls and read the newspaper. We also watched some shows on TLC.

I worked on Jen’s computer to get XP installed (finally). Before beginning the installation, I backed up all of her data on the external HD.

However, I left the USB 2.0 interface drive connected to the computer during the installation of XP via the bootable install CD. Knowing that I had a backup, I erased the partitions of her old HD.

However, as soon as I erased the ’second partition’ of her HD did I realize that it was the external HD partition that I erased! I had no idea that the XP install was smart enough to detect and identify a USB 2.0 external HD. I was both impressed and upset because I blew away her partition.

I told Jen that I would try to recover the HD but have tools for it at my place. Even with the backup temporarily gone, I continued with the installation of XP. It went smoothly but I ran out of time during the installation of patches and security updates. It was time for Jen and I to go to her hooding ceremony.

Once on campus I met up with Kyle and Kristen’s family. Jen and Kristen went off to the assembly area so I stuck around with Kyle and the others.

The ceremony lasted a couple of hours and was really nice. I was pretty far away from the stage but with my 28-135mm lens zoomed to 135mm I was able to get some decent shots of the activities on the stage. The problem was with the lighting conditions though. The distance was much too far for the onboard flash as all I got was a black screen when taking photos of the stage with the flash and ISO 400. Sure enough I saw other around me bewildered that none of their shots were turning out.

I decided to up the ISO to 3200 and take my chances with available light. It was really tough because the scenes were metering down to 1/30s and 1/20s but thankful the image stabilization feature of my lens helped out.

Nonetheless, the photos I managed to take weren’t that great. The ISO 3200 yielded a ton of noise, the lens is pretty bad wide-open, and the slow shutter speeds cause blur from the slightest movements of the subjects. At least it was better than nothing which I fear is what most other people in the stands ended up with using their onboard flashes.

(Jen getting hooded by Dr. Whitman)

After the ceremony I met up with Jen and we went outside to the campus green for cookies and punch. We found Jen’s parents as well as her brother and sister. I got some photos of Jen and Kristen and Kyle got some photos of me and Jen.

(Jen after the hooding ceremony)

(me and Jen)

We were supposed to meet at Jen’s parent’s house afterwards but first we stopped off at Jen’s house briefly and then went to her grandmother’s apartment to pick her up.

By now I’ve met almost all of Jen’s family but today I met her grandmother for the first time. She seemed like a nice woman and her little apartment was very cozy.

From there we went to Jen’s parent’s house for dinner. The food was great and the company was good too. I spent a great deal of time talking with her father. Jen’s cousin, Madeline, was also there. We’re going to her wedding over Labor day in Minneapolis. They had birthday and graduation presents for Jen. For desert we had great sponge cake with raspberry sherbet inside. It was pretty good; I can’t wait to have it again!

After the dinner celebration we went back to Jen’s house to pack up some things and then went down to my house. We’ve been doing a lot of driving this weekend.

I ended up staying up late working on things for deployment as well as a very lengthy email detailing the production problem yesterday.

Work was a pretty usual Wednesday. I made plans on spending the evening with Jen so after work I rushed home. I was only there for about 1.5 hours and in that time I managed to get a lot done.

I took several photos of the new bed, I cleaned up the kitchen and living-room, I watered the plans, emptied the dishwasher, and got some things together for Jen’s house.

While I was doing all of this I called back Craig because I noticed that he left me a message yesterday. Craig bore some very sad news. Our mutual friend Alex was murdered this past Sunday. Alex was dating a girl that he met online. This girl had an ex-boyfriend who, one evening, shot & killed Alex when Alex and his girlfriend returned home from a date. The ex-boyfriend then killed himself.

Alex was a very intelligent guy with a bright future and it was awfully sad to learn of his death. He and Craig were very close and I suspect this hit Craig pretty hard. When Craig told me, it was hard to believe that Alex was really gone.

I left my place and headed towards Jen’s house. On the way I stopped at Willy’s to pick up some burritos for dinner. When I arrived at Jen’s house, Lisa was there. They had been talking and drinking and having a good time. Shortly after I arrived, Lisa left.

Jen and I had dinner together and were very happy to see each other. I really missed Jen and it was nice to spend the evening with her.

Jen and I woke up this morning at a decent hour and went down to the Chick-Fil-A for breakfast with Lynne. We ended up getting the breakfast buffet which wasn’t that bad.

It was a beautiful ‘fall-like’ summer day today in the Atlanta metro area. This morning was cool and clear and sunny. Jen and I made plans to go to Athens for the day but decided at the last-minute not to go. Instead we decided to stay in town and relax.

A little while after breakfast we both got changed and went down to the neighborhood tennis courts. We played tennis, the first time together, for about thirty-minutes to an hour. It was great fun and we both played horribly but at least we were evenly matched. I’m really looking forward to playing with her again.

We went back to Jen’s house to take a shower and get changed. Our next fun activity of the day was to go to a nearby coffee shop to sit outside and read. Before we left I used my fun new 100mm USM Macro lens to photograph a large spider on Jen’s front porch:

(photo of spider)

I ended up spending about twenty minutes with my tripod experimenting with different apertures to get a couple of decent shots of the spider. I wonder if I need an extension tube?

We left Jen’s house and drove down to a nearby Caribou Coffee. Jen got some fancy-pants coffee drink and I got an iced tea. We sat outside under an umbrella and read our books. It was so nice outside we had a great time. It also felt so wonderful to get back into my book. I made a large dent in it and am really getting into it. Jen was reading ‘The Da Vinci Code‘ by Dan Brown and was also tearing through that book.

Originally we planned to see Spider Man 2 at the 2pm showing but decided instead to see the 7pm showing and get a late lunch right now. We went over to the Mexican restaurant for food, drink, and a good time.

Once there we immediately sat down outside and ordered a pitcher of margaritas. We also had the bean & cheese dip as well as some sort of tasty spicy chicken soup that I’ve never had before. It was very good. We had a really great time sitting in the late afternoon talking and drinking and eating outside.

What made this so wonderful was the ‘island-time’ like pace of everything. There was no rush, no schedule, no worries. We really had a great time just enjoying life together and that made it very special.

Around 6:30pm or so we headed over to the movie theatre and saw Spider Man 2. I had high expectations for this movie given what everyone was saying about it. The movie turned out to be a bit disappointing and slow.

After the movie Jen had to use the restroom really badly and it was so funny to see her running out of the theater waving her arms in the air as she sought a bathroom.

The last thing we did this evening was head over to Ellen & Ethan’s house for their party. Ellen was also having a graduation party and we were invited. They didn’t live too far away from Jen’s house so we found it pretty quickly.

The party was already past its zenith so we felt a bit out of place. In addition we didn’t really know anyone there except for Ethan and Ellen who were entertaining others. They had a very nice house with lots of cool stuff. Ethan gave us a tour. They had a lot of fancy things.

Jen and I didn’t stay too long and left their party after only being there about thirty minutes. After we left Jen pointed out that she had a strange feeling about the party - sort of like she didn’t feel good about herself. I felt the same way.

We went down to my house and went to bed.

This morning I left Jen’s house fairly early. For most schools in Atlanta, today is the first day of school. As a result, I was apprehensive about bad traffic into work. Fortunately it wasn’t that bad.

I wanted to talk to Carole today but she was out of the office. Work was pretty busy and I worked late today - not leaving until 7pm.

I went home and actually continued working. I was in a pretty good groove and working on something that I wanted to finish. I lost track of time and didn’t finish working until 3:30am. At least I got a lot done. I’m working on a new branching strategy for ClearCase.

Also during this time I installed Money 2005 as well as the ‘final’ version of SP2.

I actually got up early today at 5:30am and left Jen’s house at 6:15am. I wasn’t messing around today! I got into work at 7am.

A little while later I left to attend the all-hands meeting over at the large convention center off Camp Creek parkway. It was very cold inside - even though I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.

The all-hands meeting was very long but didn’t really contain any meaningful information. They basically told us that Delta is in very bad financial state and the usual doom & gloom we’ve been hearing for the past two years. All of the problems are things completely out of my control, so all the information did nothing other than make me feel depressed.

The meeting concluded around noon and several of us went to lunch at Captain D’s. I have to say that their food is disgusting.

Earlier Bob T. asked me if I could take a portrait of his team to give a photo to their departing Mac-loving intern. I brought in my camera and set up in 11 South to take the group portrait. With the camera securely attached to the tripod, I snapped off several photos using the 28-135mm lens. I stopped down to about f/8 to hopefully hit the sweet spot aperture on the lens. They were positioned in a way that I wouldn’t benefit from a shallow DOF anyway.

Back at my desk, I quickly processed the photos and came up with the best one. I planned on getting an 8×12 print either today or tomorrow since the intern’s last day is Friday.

After attending the PAT meeting this afternoon I left work around 5pm. On m way home I stopped at the Camp Creek Wolf Camera and got an 8×12 print made of the portrait. It was more expensive than I thought - around $15.

Jen came over straight from work a little while after I got home. We headed to the grocery store for supplies for dinner. We planned on making something new and exciting for dinner today. Jen did all the research and found some fun new recipes.

We had a great time making dinner together. This seems to always be the case whenever we make fun new things. We started out with some bread-like stuff which was pretty good. It was sliced French bread boiled to toast in the oven, garlic slices rubbed all over it and then spread with a tomato type sauce. It was very good.

While doing this we popped open a bottle of wine and drank liberally.

Next, we made a spiced potato wedges dish as well as lemon pepper zest chicken which I grilled along with corn on the cob. The potatoes were great but we weren’t too excited about the chicken.

After dinner we cleaned up and opened another bottle of wine after finishing off the first bottle. We went upstairs, lit some candles, and took a relaxing bath together. It was very nice indeed.

Afterwards we went back downstairs to watch some television and relax on the sofa. We had more wine. Jen fell asleep. All of this wine didn’t make me feel very good and I lost my wits. After a while I woke Jen up and we went to bed.

I woke up early and logged into work to check on the build. It made me very sad to see that it failed with a compile error. I did some investigation and identified the problem with the changed code that Anil checked in. Due to the wacky way we have to make production breakfixes separate from the next release, we picked up some more changes than we originally wanted. This caused the compile to fail.

I composed a lengthy and detailed email describing the problem and sent it off to Anil and Casey. After that I got ready for work and headed in.

Carole was out sick today. I scrambled to find a more solid solution to the production breakfix problem.

While working on this, I had to go to a meeting to talk about the backloading performance issues. Because I had a lot on my mind, I spent most of the meeting working on a branching solution to breakfixes. Actually, I did both. I was feeling rather sharp today and managed to actively participate in the meeting and work on the other thing at the same time. I wish I could always be so ’sharp’. Our new portfolio architect, Gus, was also present in the meeting.

After the meeting I talked with Casey and Anil about a new time-based rule to allow for production breakfixes. This new bugfix branch should work well until I can implement the new /main branch solution.

I build code from the new bugfix branch and then went to lunch with Casey. We went to Best Buy so Casey could buy a new TiVo and I could buy a wireless router for Larry. Afterwards we went to Steak and Shake for lunch. I had the ‘All-American Melt’. It was very tasty.

After lunch I worked on activating the build and left work around 4pm. Before heading home I stopped by the employee ticket office to buy a ticket for Jen.

When I got home I called Travis to see about the warranty walkthrough. He said that he would be over in an hour. Two hours later he called to say that he won’t be able to come by today.

As I do every day, I logged into work via the eVPN client. Today I noticed some strange behavior. I could access work with no problem, but could no longer see anything else inside my local LAN. Furthermore, I noticed that some websites were now blocked by Delta. This didn’t used to be an issue because only Delta-bound traffic went through Delta and everything else went through my ISP. It now appears that everything is going to Delta.

I did a lot of research and quickly honed in on the problem. They recently changed the behavior of the VPN such that split-tunneling is disabled. With split tunneling enabled, only traffic bound for the VPN network went through the VPN and everything else went through the original gateway (my ISP). However, with split tunneling disabled, ALL traffic goes through Delta which sucks. This means that I can no longer see my local network (including my printer).

This change really sucks and there isn’t anything I can do about it because it’s a rule sent down from the VPN switch on the remote side. This means I won’t be logged into work as much anymore because it’s not very convenient.

Jen came over after work and we went to Publix to get some things to make Key Lime pie. We went back to my place and quickly made the pie. While it was baking, we dressed for the party and eventually headed out to Christin’s dinner party.

When we arrived at Christin’s house, in addition to Christen and Kyle, John and Cassie were there too. Cassie works for the Delta Employees Credit Union.

Dinner was great. It was a very nice night outside tonight as it was clear and cool given the time of year. We had grilled chicken and veggies as well as margaritas. Christin’s two dogs, Henry and Rocky were really cool.

Jen and I had a nice time at the dinner party but left around 11pm. We didn’t want to stay up too late given our flight tomorrow morning. I was also pretty tired too.

We went back to my place and worked on the bags that Jen got. After work today Jen stopped at Michaels to pickup some fun things. She got me some candle holders and candles for me, but she also had a wonderful idea. Jen got some small denim bags, goodies to put inside, paint to mark them, and custom keychains.

Jen and I (Jen mostly) decorated the bags. We painted Tucker, Lily, and Cal on each of the three bags. Next, we printed out the phrase, ‘I love my uncle bags’ for each keychain. Jen had the brilliant idea that ‘Uncle Bags’ (me) would bring his bags for the three kids. I loved it and looked forward to giving them the bags of goodies tomorrow.

Shortly after that we went to bed.

Due to us being used to Eastern Time, Jen and I were wide awake by 6am. Jen brewed some coffee and the two of us sat in the living-room and read our books together. It was nice and relaxing and I realized that I really enjoy sitting and reading with Jen.

(Larry watching television with the three kids)

A while after the others woke up we got things together and all headed out to breakfast. We went to a nearby restaurant called ‘Miltons‘. Jen and I weren’t too hungry so we split an order of french toast made from a Jewish Callah bread. It was a lot of food and I enjoyed the thick bacon too.

After breakfast, Amy took Cal back home. Larry, Tucker, Lily, Jen, and I headed over to Torrey Pines to go hiking. Despite the kids being with us, we went on a lengthy trail and had a great time.

(Torrey Pines)

The weather was nice, we got lots of sunshine, and we hiked all the way down to the beach. Along the way I took lots of pictures. I only brought two lenses with me: the 15mm fisheye, and the 50mm prime.

(Me and Jen)

Once we got down to the beach we took our time to walk along back to the entrance of the park. Larry volunteered to hike back up to the car and bring it back down to the entrance.

(The Torrey Pines beach)

Jen and I remained behind to watch after Tucker and Lily. We had lot of fun playing with them on the beach. They were very well behaved.

(Jen playing with Tucker)

Once Larry returned with the car, we packed up and left. We went back to the house. Jen and I ate some lunch and were feeling pretty tired.

As the afternoon grew on we took a shower and got ready for dinner tonight. One of the babysitters, Sarah, came over to look after the kids. Larry, Amy, Jen, and I headed out for dinner.

On the way we stopped at a furniture store called ‘Indigo’. It was a pretty fancy looking place with (in my mind) high prices. Larry and Amy bought some shells and a large mirror. Unfortunately the mirror would not fit in Amy’s car so we had to leave it behind to be picked up a later day.

Next we went on to dinner to an Italian place. It was very cozy inside. We opened up a bottle of wine we brought (A merlot called ‘Switchback Ridge‘). The wine was excellent and the dinner was wonderful. It was fun to hang out with Larry and Amy as they are great hosts. We ended up getting another bottle of wine, talked a lot, and had a great time.

After dinner we stopped at a beach to watch the sunset. It was so much fun sitting on the beach watching the sun dip below the Pacific Ocean.

When we got back to the house we learned that Tucker had hit Lily on the head with a toy train and as a result, Lily had a cut. Sarah left and they put the kids to bed.

Jen and I attempted to program Amy’s new car to use the garage door opener, but could not make it work. The four of us watched some of the Ellen Degeneres special that Amy TiVoed but I was really tired so Jen and I went to bed early.

I filled out a missing item form for Delta to report the stolen router from my bag. Unfortunately they don’t cover any electronic items. The long list of items they don’t cover is basically anything of value.

When I called American Express to exercise my ‘Purchase Protection‘ benefit, they happily informed me that it doesn’t cover checked baggage. They then had the nerve to try to sell me some $10/month coverage which DOES cover baggage (but only if you buy the plane ticket with the card). What a waste.

Jen and I were awake long before Craig and Erin. In fact Craig and Erin didn’t wakeup until I knocked on their door at 11:30am. We made plans to go out for breakfast this morning and I was getting pretty hungry.

We headed out to J. Christopher’s off Powers Ferry road. Because we were there so late, we had to wait about twenty minutes. While we waited for a table, we bought a Sunday newspaper and looked through the ads. It was another beautiful day outside.

Breakfast was as wonderful as I anticipated. I had the blueberry crunchcakes and they did not disappoint. I think Craig and Erin enjoyed their breakfast as well.

After breakfast we stopped at Publix to buy tickets to Six Flags. They were pretty expensive, but I bought all four tickets.

We stopped by my place to change and apply sunblock before heading to Six Flags. The drive over to Six Flags was pretty short and it cost around $10 to park. Because it was after noon, parking wasn’t that bad and we got a close spot.

(As Jen and I walked from the parking lot to the entrance)

Six Flags was fun. We rode many of the rides and had a great time. We actually managed to ride up front for the batman ride which made it very fun. However the highlight of the park was when we rode on the super man ride. I’ve never been one a ride where you lie in a prone position. It was pretty wild.

It must have been very popular too because we had to wait in line for a very long time. It was worth the wait.

(Jen and I waiting in line for the Superman ride)

(Craig bought this photo of us after the ride)

The park closed around 6pm so we had to leave earlier than planned. Actually it was better that we left when we did because we were all getting pretty tired.

(Craig and Erin in my car after we left the park)

After Six Flags we went back to my place and got cleaned up. It felt great to have a shower. From there we drove over to Roswell for dinner. We went to Swallow at the Hollow. It was the first time I’ve been there for dinner.

Swallow at the Hollow is a fun. They had live music playing and the atmosphere was festive. It’s a great BBQ place made from an old barn. We had a lot of food. I had the chopped beef platter with baked beans and potato salad.

(Me in a thoughtful pose at the restaurant)

After dinner we drove over to Jen’s place to have some drinks after dinner. I made us all a chocolate martini. Lynne was home so we all hung out and talked for a while. We also watched a little bit of the Olympics.

Eventually Craig, Erin, and I left and drove back down to my place. Jen stayed home at her place because she has to go to work tomorrow.

Back at my house we watched more of the Olympics. While we were doing this, I logged into mpix.com and ordered prints for Jen and Mom. Eventually we all went to bed.

Today I worked from home because of all the warranty work that’s supposed to happen at my place that will require me to be there.

At 8am sharp the drywall people arrived. It was a short Mexican guy and a large white guy (the boss) who worked on my drywall stuff. The foreman guy didn’t do much work and after he left, the Mexican called him ‘gorgido’ which I understood to mean ‘fat guy’. It was pretty funny listening to the Mexican guy make fun of his fat boss and how much of a mess he makes. They did an excellent job.

Travis from Beazer came by with a painter but lamented that the drywall wasn’t dry enough to work so he asked about coming over later in the day.

I managed to get a lot of work done today despite not being in the office. I did a lot of work related to the clearcase project I’ve been working on.

Jen came over straight from work and we waited a bit for Travis and the painter to come back over. They never came over. I called Travis and got his voice mail.

We went over to Publix to get a lot of groceries. Afterwards we went back to my place and made dinner. We made BBQ chicken along with salad and sweet tea. It was a very good dinner and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Jen doing this.

After dinner we relaxed and I gave Jen a nice back massage using lotion.

A while after this Jen had to go back home. She left around 10:30pm. I spent the rest of the evening getting caught up on some TiVoed programs as well a working on my financial stuff.

I found a cool section of the Cobb County website in which many officially documents are scanned. I did a search on my name and saw that all of my mortgage documents were scanned for anyone to see.

With this newfound knowledge, I spent way too much time looking up detailed mortgage info on my neighbors and other people. It was an eye-opener to see how much detailed info is public information.

I woke up around 9am to find myself at Jen’s house. We spend the night at each other’s place so often now that it’s easy to forget where I am anymore. In fact, it’s a rarity that we spend the night alone.

We woke up and decided to go to Jen’s parent’s house to pick up Chloe. On the way there we stopped at Chick-fil-A for some breakfast biscuits. We didn’t spend much time at her parent’s house but we did collect Chloe and drive back to Jen’s.

Back at Jen’s place we took Chloe for a walk around the neighborhood and adjacent nature trail. Afterwards we spent some time at Jen’s house. During that time I made reservations for us to go white water rafting tomorrow using a coupon that Jen has.

The trip will be at 11:30am on the Ocoee River. It should be a lot of fun. The last time I was white water rafting was with Craig long ago in Colorado and that was a blast.

We made two key-lime pies together before packing up the car and taking Chloe back to her parent’s house. We then drove back to my place but Jen wasn’t feeling very good so she took a nap. I did some work downstairs but joined her for a while. It felt nice to relax together on the bed in the afternoon.

When Jen woke up we made some snacks and eventually got ready for Christin’s party. We took the pies with us and went to Christin’s house for a dinner party. Tonight there were more people there than last time.

Christin and Kyle catered BBQ and it turned out really good. The food was great; we had margaritas and hung out in the back patio with the others. It was a very nice time.

We didn’t stay too long because we had a second party to go to. So, we left around 8:30pm and headed over to Tom’s house for a going-away party. It was all of Jen’s kung-fu friends as one of the guys is moving away to Arizona.

I’ve met most of the people at least once before but there were a few new faces this time. Jen introduced me to some of the new people and we mingled and talked with others.

It was a fun party and Tom is a fun guy. Jen’s brother and sister were also there so I didn’t feel like too much of an outsider.

We actually stayed pretty late and didn’t leave until around 12:30am. We went back to Jen’s house and went to bed.

My drive to work from Jen’s house took a bit longer than usual because I left late. I left late because I slept late due to the late-night production call.

When I got into work around 9am, I was met with a similar database problem as last night. I worked with Brett from the DBA group and then called up Bob C. to see if he could look at the MVS environment to see if there is any contention.

Sure enough, there was a ton of OMNI reporting jobs running which were sucking up the available resources. Bob immediately dropped their priority and the problem went away. It looks like that was the same problem last night too.

Later in the day there were some problems with a production activation I did, but we got it all taken care of.

After work I helped Casey with upgrading his TiVo to a new hard drive.

When I got home, I took a short nap (I was still a bit tired from last night). A little while later Jen came over. We made plans to go walking along the Silver Comet trail this afternoon before it got too dark.

I didn’t have my tennis shoes with me so I wore my tevas. This turned out to be a bad decision. Jen and I have never been to the Silver Comet trail before so it was pretty fun to explore it together. We got there close to sunset so we didn’t have much time.

We walked around for about an hour before it got to dark so we had to head back. Unfortunately that short period of time results in some blisters on my heels from the tevas. Next time I’ll wear appropriate shoes.

After this Jen and I had a pretty nice evening together. We took it easy and watched some television. Jen read and I gave her a back rub. In all we had a very nice time together.