(no subject)

No, I still haven't written about the trip to Detroit. It was good. It was really good actually. I covered all the highlights in the last bit of text I tapped out on the subject; maybe all the little details aren't significant enough to post about. I do have to note how amusing it was that, while inside Michigan Central Station, an imposing fourteen floor abandoned structure that, in addition to having a razor wire-topped chain link fence around it and being plastered with great big 'No trespassing' signs, was also not more than ten blocks or so from a large police station, Posi and I bumped into no less than two other multi-person groups who were exploring, and we may have heard a third one too. As Posi pointed out, it was like a convention in there!

The best part of it though, and probably the part most suitable as an illustration of the nature of the city we were in, is this. Posi and I were waiting for our chance to slip out of the entranceway we'd found. After several cars went by, we finally judged our escape to be safe and, one right after the other, popped suddenly out into the real world. We were met by a homeless gentleman who reacted to our sudden appearance with a, probably deserved, "What the hell!?" Posi apologized for having startled him and, apparently reassured that we weren't killers on the way back from having disposed of a body or something, asked us if we had fifty cents or a dollar for some beer. Yes, less than two seconds after extricating ourselves from one of Detroit's ruined jewels, we were hit up for beer money by a bum. Somehow, it was very fitting; Posi couldn't help but give him a dollar. I think it seemed like good karma.

I've been typically busy this past while. Laundry had gotten away from me again, so I put off visiting Posi today in order to work at home and ensure that I had something to clothe my carcass while at work tomorrow. Concerns of appearing at work nude not withstanding, I'm certainly not going out in this weather without a full compliment of body coverings, thank you very much.

I've been out to the hospital a couple times to visit a friend who's been in there for a few days now. I won't say much more on that subject since I don't know how much of what's going on he wants to be public, but I'm worried about him. I think he'll be okay, but positive thoughts are always appreciated.

I spent a while on Saturday at Seven Mile Faire with serinthia and todd_riverden; that was lots of fun. I picked up a 100 piece security bit set that has tri-wings, offset Phillips, spanners, splines, security Torx, standard Torx down to a T-5 (wow, that's small!), security hexes, Pozidrives, Robertsons, and more! Nice deal for fifteen bucks if you ask me. I think it's going to be a good while before I find another product that I don't have the right bits to disassemble. Of course, I promptly left the case at Dwarf's house on Sunday.

Why was I up there? Well, ( probably of interest only to geeks. )

I haven't had a lot of time recently. There are a bunch of little things wrong with the house we're in, and now the dining room light has stopped working too, which makes at least one middling-sized thing. I'm going to concentrate this week on cleaning up so we can have the handy man fix some stuff. At this point, I'm actually a little worried that the landlord is going to complain about us neglecting the place. I'm going to patch the small holes that I made upstairs in the plaster wall while moving a desk myself before the handyman goes upstairs to fix the light in the computer room, but we have a dripping faucet and broken door handle downstairs and what seems to be a loose step right below the stair landing. It's ok; I started cleaning downstairs tonight and it really wasn't as bad as it looked. We'll have everything looking pretty good soon, and then we can get the rest of the stuff taken care of.

I'm hoping that once that's out of the way, I'll have more time to spend on my own projects, and online, in the evenings. I feel a little disconnected from from some people lately, and I need to try to get online more and talk. I've never been very good at that, and I should try to get better.

I guess that's about it for now. 'Till next!

(no subject)

I'm signing up to download an evaluation version of Windows 2003 Server R2 and, of course, I have to fill out the fun little survey about who I am, where I work, and what I do.

One of the choices for my primary job function within my company, among things like Analyst, Manager, Sysadmin, DBA, and others, was the following gem: "Unofficial IT person". What, is that like, that girl over there who isn't really in IT but everybody asks her how to make their spreadsheets look right? (Yes dear one, that's a nod to you. *grins*)

Of course we all know that such people are out there. They can be very helpful and save us techies a lot of work, or they can be entirely clueless and and make triple the trouble of any other user. I just find the fact that this choice is right there in the listing in Microsoft's form very amusing.

On a completely unrelated note, the more I use this flat screen monitor, the more I think that I really need to replace my second CRT with one. The difference is impressive. I think I'll be a little more conservative than my brother though; he just used left over money from his college grants, after paying off his tuition for this year, to buy a brand new 32" flat screen. You can already tell that this boy is destined to be a lawyer. I just hope if I'm ever in trouble, I get him to represent me.