Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Okay, now for the continuing chapter of my long island adventures. The morning after the power came back on, I discovered that the build of the release I was supposed to test wasn't going to be ready in time for me to test it before I had to catch a plane so it became obvious I was going to have to go back on monday. I caught an early evening plane to Baltimore and made it back to my place just before midnight on friday. On saturday, I caught up on sleep. I also did something that evening, but I don't remember what it was. That sunday, there was a spaghetti dinner after church. I helped out by watching my nephew as well as helping sell raffle tickets for some prizes that were donated. Sunday evening, Tiff came back from Ohio. She came over to make sure I could get up early enough to drive to baltimore to catch a flight up to long island. When I got there, my supervisor wasn't there so I had to get everything organized myself. I couldn't the system that the system I'm supposed to test working. So, between waiting for the guy who can fix that system, new builds of the release I was supposed to test and having to wait for a government test of a different part of the system, I ended up not being able to test. I told the people at work that if I can't test, I'm going home thursday because I had Aerosmith/Kiss tickets which I didn't want to miss because I was waiting for a system to get fixed up in Long Island, especially since last year I had to sell my Aerosmith/Run DMC/Kid Rock tickets because of a long island trip. So I left early Thursday morning to fly to Baltimore to fly back. I stopped by the office on the way home and found out that they fixed the problem so I was going to have to go back the next day.
When I got back to the office, I found out that they had pushed a file cabinet into my cube because they were shipping out computers and needed floor space. They also had moved my books from a nearby desk because they needed that space, so there were stacks of books on my desk. Finally, my computer had that damn computer worm. So by the time I fixed that and read my email and made plans to go back on friday, I had time to drive home and shower before my cousin Kim picked me up for the concert.
The concert was great. We hit traffic, so we missed the opening act, Saliva, which wasn't too big a deal. I got to see Kiss perform in full make-up. Aerosmith did basically a greatest hits type show since they weren't supporting a current album. I would have like a more obscure song or two, but they did mostly 1st Columbia era stuff, so that was great. Most bands nowadays save a couple of their big songs for a planned "encore" where the band says goodnight and leave the stage to give the audience time to chant for them. Aerosmith didn't do that. They played all their usual encore songs without pausing for the encore break. Some in the audience complained about the lack of encore but to me it was just like they did the encore without making us wait.
When we got into the car, there was a ton of traffic. After sitting not moving for twenty minutes, we finally started crawling. And I was half-sleeping when Kim said that the car had stalled. It wouldn't start either. We pushed it out of the line of traffic, but since, when we tried to start it it tried to start, we figured it wasn't the battery. So we just sat there figuring out what to do next. Finally a guy in a cart whose job it was to help people who couldn't start their car. He tried to jump it and it actually started, although the lights were dimmed, so it was almost definitely the alternator. I haven't talked to kim yet to see what it was. So she drove me to my place where I hurried up and packed and drove to Tiff's where I showered and Tiff gave me instructions to the Cleveland airport. It takes about the same time to drive to baltimore and fly to long island as it does to drive to cleveland and fly (via baltimore) to long island. I was falling asleep the whole way to the airport, but I made it there alive. I slept on the first flight, but by the time I got to work I was exhausted.
When I got to work I found the one system thing from the previous week was fixed, but a part of the thing I was supposed to be testing wasn't working so I couldn't test. Finally, I got a call from my supervisor. He was coming up the next day (saturday) and we could fix it then. So he couldn't get a plane up until late afternoon, so I slept in and then spent some time at the Long Island Dave and Buster's. So, finally, between saturday evening and sunday, we got things working and tested. I couldn't get a flight home sunday night, so I got a flight home monday.
When I finally got home, Tiff was excited to see me until she saw that I hadn't shaved in a while and almost had a full beard. I also smelled from a day's worth of walking in airport, napping on planes, and driving through Ohio. She was very displeased. I have since showered and shaved my beard back down into a goatee and she's a little bit happier.
Tuesday, I went back into work and had to do updates on my windows box so I could block that microsoft worm. I had stopped doing updates since the last time I did a update, it totally killed my computer. It wouldnt' reboot and I endedup having to reinstall windows and losing my whole C: Drive. I also had to fill out my expensive report to get back the money I spent on air flights, hotel rooms, and rental cars. So it was well into the week before I started doing real work again.
When I got back to the office, I found out that they had pushed a file cabinet into my cube because they were shipping out computers and needed floor space. They also had moved my books from a nearby desk because they needed that space, so there were stacks of books on my desk. Finally, my computer had that damn computer worm. So by the time I fixed that and read my email and made plans to go back on friday, I had time to drive home and shower before my cousin Kim picked me up for the concert.
The concert was great. We hit traffic, so we missed the opening act, Saliva, which wasn't too big a deal. I got to see Kiss perform in full make-up. Aerosmith did basically a greatest hits type show since they weren't supporting a current album. I would have like a more obscure song or two, but they did mostly 1st Columbia era stuff, so that was great. Most bands nowadays save a couple of their big songs for a planned "encore" where the band says goodnight and leave the stage to give the audience time to chant for them. Aerosmith didn't do that. They played all their usual encore songs without pausing for the encore break. Some in the audience complained about the lack of encore but to me it was just like they did the encore without making us wait.
When we got into the car, there was a ton of traffic. After sitting not moving for twenty minutes, we finally started crawling. And I was half-sleeping when Kim said that the car had stalled. It wouldn't start either. We pushed it out of the line of traffic, but since, when we tried to start it it tried to start, we figured it wasn't the battery. So we just sat there figuring out what to do next. Finally a guy in a cart whose job it was to help people who couldn't start their car. He tried to jump it and it actually started, although the lights were dimmed, so it was almost definitely the alternator. I haven't talked to kim yet to see what it was. So she drove me to my place where I hurried up and packed and drove to Tiff's where I showered and Tiff gave me instructions to the Cleveland airport. It takes about the same time to drive to baltimore and fly to long island as it does to drive to cleveland and fly (via baltimore) to long island. I was falling asleep the whole way to the airport, but I made it there alive. I slept on the first flight, but by the time I got to work I was exhausted.
When I got to work I found the one system thing from the previous week was fixed, but a part of the thing I was supposed to be testing wasn't working so I couldn't test. Finally, I got a call from my supervisor. He was coming up the next day (saturday) and we could fix it then. So he couldn't get a plane up until late afternoon, so I slept in and then spent some time at the Long Island Dave and Buster's. So, finally, between saturday evening and sunday, we got things working and tested. I couldn't get a flight home sunday night, so I got a flight home monday.
When I finally got home, Tiff was excited to see me until she saw that I hadn't shaved in a while and almost had a full beard. I also smelled from a day's worth of walking in airport, napping on planes, and driving through Ohio. She was very displeased. I have since showered and shaved my beard back down into a goatee and she's a little bit happier.
Tuesday, I went back into work and had to do updates on my windows box so I could block that microsoft worm. I had stopped doing updates since the last time I did a update, it totally killed my computer. It wouldnt' reboot and I endedup having to reinstall windows and losing my whole C: Drive. I also had to fill out my expensive report to get back the money I spent on air flights, hotel rooms, and rental cars. So it was well into the week before I started doing real work again.
Comments:
Post a Comment
