Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Being that it is the first of the month, I checked my website statistics to see what the top five search strings were that led people to my website. They were:

1) “mole removal”
2) “photos of lakes”
3) “anna ruby falls”
4) “tivo statistics”
5) “photos of larch trees and glaciers”

It’s a shame I didn’t have my recent Canadian Rockies trip photos posted because there are a lot more great shots of larch pines and glaciers. I’m also still baffled about ‘mole removal’ being such a hot topic.

Jen needed to get to work early so we woke up a little earlier than usual. She took a shower while I shaved and brushed my teeth, then I took a shower. We haven’t taken a shower together in a long time. I guess it’s more efficient this way.

I packed up my backpack with a change of clothes for my trip to Austin this weekend. I’ll be gone until Sunday. I think this is the longest amount of time in a long time that I will be apart from Jen.

During my drive into work the info display in my explorer showed about 70 miles remaining until empty. Normally this is not a big deal but all of a sudden, the estimated miles remaining dropped to 0! I was on 285 at the time, so I took the first exit that showed a gas station and filled up.

I had a god-awful RFC to do this morning for the ticket viewer component. It needs to be deployed on the three integration servers, and is composed of twelve components. This means that I have to do thirty-six different installations.

It took me all morning to work on this. I really wish I didn’t have to do that sort of work or at least the owners of those components could combine some of them. There is a great amount of overhead for each component and it makes no sense to me for there to be so many of them.

James, Casey, and I went to the varisty for lunch today.

After lunch I worked on some more things. Larry also shared with me his temporary ID and password to terraserver.com. I had great fun looking up different locations. I found my office building and captured an image of it that was precise to 0.25 meter resolution. It was pretty cool.

(The Delta Technology A3 buildling)

I also looked up my house, but it is too new. I found my old apartment building as well as Jen’s house.

My flight was at 3pm instead of 4pm like I originally thought so I went down to the lobby to check-in for the flight using our kiosk. When I was down there Karen, Brent’s administrative assistant, congratulated me on getting married. I have no idea how she heard about it, but I can only assume that women on my floor gossip quite a bit.

James was kind enough to give me a lift to the airport as I wanted to work later rather than wait around for the unreliable shuttle bus. I went through the employee line and boarded as soon as I reached the gate (B34). I was in a window seat (16A) with an empty seat next to me.

The flight was uneventful and I worked on my laptop and read my book.

When I arrived in Austin, Dad picked me up from the airport. We drove back to his place. Tex and Hick greeted me at the door and were quite happy to see me. Dad and I sat outside and talked and just hung out together.

Larry called a little while later. He informed us that his flight from San Diego was late to leave so he and Tucker would not arrive until around 7:30pm.

I helped Dad install Office 2004 onto his computer. I also hooked him up with a gmail account and showed him how to use it.

Larry called a while later informing us that he and Tucker were in Austin and getting their rental car. We made plans to meet at Iron Works BBQ over on 1st street for a late dinner. I was very excited to be going to Iron Works as their BBQ is great!

Dad and I got there before Larry so we grabbed a table and waited. A little while later Larry and Tucker arrived. Tucker was a bit tired, but going great. He looked a lot more grown up. We ordered our food and sat outside on the patio. I had the chopped beef plate. It was delicious.

After dinner Larry got a lens out of the car for me to use. It’s his new Canon 24-70mm L lens. It was in a cool felt bag. Larry and Tucker went to their hotel (the four seasons) while Dad and I went back to Dad’s house. Dad and I sat outside (I got bit up by mosquitoes) and saw an approaching thunderhead in the distance with lightning dancing all around. We talked for a while and then I went to bed.