Hello subscribers! I’m sorry I haven’t been around, but I had a cold last week, making me feel like not doing anything, and that was sandwiched by two busy weekends. I’ll give you the quick recap, and then fill you on all the little quirky things I really want to blog about.

Last Thursday, the 21st there was an evening storm. That storm took the power out about 1030pm, and it didn’t come right back on. I wandered around the neighborhood, since it was cooler outside than indoors with no A/C or fans, and then made a paper copy of my cell phone phone book by candlelight. When I went to bed, there was a black and white police car outside the house but I didn’t figure out why. I slept with the windows open, and it was quiet, hot, and uncomfortable. Every storm that came through the night woke me, and that reminded me how nasty it was, and then I couldn’t fall back asleep. About 7am Monday morning (power still out) I was awoken by trees being cut down, and found out a power line was downed last night two houses down. (The cop was making sure people didn’t drive over the downed line, which crossed Clover lane.) When I left for work, they were still working on it. The power was off about 12 hours altogether. Marc complained about losing his work Internet/WAN link, but losing power is a much bigger deal.

Last Friday I took off for Chicagoland with Eric and AJ. We met up with Rich and Marc and Tony at Dave and Buster’s – a mix of sports bar, bar, and video arcade with classic games (Skeeball!) and some neato technology ones (virtual boxing/bowling, neat shoot’em-up games.) It was a good time, but the only games I really won was the Bartender game, the Cards/Cubs game (suicide squeeze,) and I lost the remembering-to-pack-underwear-game. I didn’t do well enough at Skeeball or Popaball to win the D&B boxers. This trip to the arcade was to make up for not going out with Rich on Saturday for his bachelor’s party because this was a Dave Matthews Band concert weekend in Wisconsin.

Saturday, we met up with Josh and Andrea and started the trek north. Chicagoland/94 traffic sucks, but we eventually got into the hotel, and into the Alpine Valley parking lot. No sooner had we pulled in and cracked some beers, when a huge storm blew in. This was one freaky, omnious, end-of-days, sky-dark, wind blowing so much it’s hard to close the car door type of storm. In no time, the car was getting pelted with blinding rain. We just sat in the car and had lunch. Later, the storm cleared and we tailgated outside and then went into the show. Andrew, Eric and I had lawn seats, and slide around on the hill during the concert.

Sunday we were back for day two, but the rain stayed away. It was perfect Alpine weather – sun, beers, cribbage (15 two, four, six, pairs makes twelve,) tossing the softball. Stuck and I had pavillion seats on Sunday, and it was an excellent show. A neat mix of old and new; the new songs with good jams, and some really old classics (#34, #40, two step by request…) On Wednesday, I was able to bittorrent both shows and have been listening to them. Monday was the drive home – which took most of the day, and more cursing at lane-shifty Chicago drivers and bad I-94 traffic.

I started feeling sick on the way home, and the rest of the week was in a cold and cold medicine induced haze. Wednesday was a hard day at work, and I took Thursday off and pretty much slept all day. By Friday I was feeling a bit better, and was back up to Chicagoland for Rich and Cindy’s wedding. I hadn’t sat in a long catholic mass in a long time. The reception and dancing was fun, and of course we had 1-800-TEQ-UILA and Beam Black. But even better was the White Castle adjacent to the hotel. MMmmmmmm… I finally got my White Castle fix, which was great, even though I had to tackle a hedge to get the steamed-cooked-on-a-bed-of-onions-goodness. Between the drinking, Nyquil, and cheeseburgers, I woke up around 0430 on Sunday morning with one of the worst cases of dry mouth in recent memory.

Some other points to ponder, so this isn’t a total week-in-review posting:

I can’t believe August is here already, and I filed June away in the Daily Planner binder. Summer is FLYING by.

I rented the first disc of the first season of Roswell from Netflix, and after watching two episodes, I think the rest of the disc is going back unseen and the other discs nuked from the queue. This is a cheesy-WB teeny-bop program, and not something Dead Like Me meets X-Files freaky/eerie like I was hoping for.

Speaking of Dead Like Me, season two is here and I should be watching that instead.

I finally checked my IPASS account online, and found out I have a $14 remaining balance, minus the $0.80 it took out for today’s tolls. I think that means it will recharge another $40 in my next trip to Chicagoland or two. Isn’t technology nifty? Also, after being satisfied with them and documenting them well enough, I committed the new routes I have through Kankakee and Wilmington to my car’s directions book.

I still need to clean the inside of my car, from over a month ago, and scrape the melted-bun-bag off the inside back window from Alpine.

My Champaign library card expired, and no one told me. All I know is I went to add a book to my wishlist and my PIN didn’t work anymore. An email or something would have been nice. Anyone else been hearing a lot about David Allen’s Getting Things Done recently?

I’m working on a computer program that will help us select where we want to go to lunch. I started working on this in PHP, then decided I wanted to use an object model instead of linear programming. Then I decided I wanted to use XML instead of a database. Now I’m leaning towards Java because of better object handling and I want to present this via a website. Any opinions on XML and Java, or applets versus Java WebStart, and AWT or Swing?

I got the framed certificates for completed my Human Resource Development/Training for Business Professionals Professional Supervisors Program and FastTrack Manager Program. They have the Chancellor’s signature on them, and are very official. One of them is made out to “David E. Musselman” The reasons I’m annoyed with this is three-fold. One, I’ve never submitted anything with my name misspelled — people should be more attentive. Two, there were two certificates/plaques… Someone should have noticed they were different and investigated which was wrong. And three, it hurts. Actually, this has happened quite a few times in my life when getting trophies or plaques or awards. At this point, I don’t care anymore, and I find that a little frustrating.

Polling point: Do you prefer these multi-idea posts as a single long post, or would you prefer multiple shorter distinct posts?

Afternoon delight. Er, um, I guess mid-morning delight. From the Return to Flight website:

NASA officials have announced plans to the begin the countdown to a July 26 launch of Space Shuttle Discovery. The countdown will start Saturday, with a test of the External Tank to follow early on launch day. If all goes well with the test, the countdown will continue to liftoff at 10:39 a.m. EDT on Tuesday.

I’ll have to tell Chuck I might be a little late on Tuesday morning. I can’t help but think of Bill Murray from Stripes: “Alright boys, just like last time… ONLY BETTER!”

[ Ed Note, although this post is about J.K. Rowling's latest book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, it does not contain spoilers. Except the post title, which has nothing to do with the plot of the book. ]

Last week brought greatness into the world. On Wednesday, the space shuttle launched. On Friday, Starbucks opened at 5th and Green in Campustown, and at 12:01 on Saturday morning, the new Harry Potter book went on sale.

Well, two outta three ain’t bad. Maybe NASA should rename their website to be http://www.nasa.gov/stillwaitingtoreturntoflight/ I guess I’m just annoyed because I made a special effort to be in front of a TV for the launch that didn’t come. Instead, I got to watch Judge Judy and other terrible daytime TV. It sounds like they’re going to try for next Tuesday.

As previously blogged, I dressed up for Harry Potter Day, although I ditched the glasses before lunch because they were bothering me, and my scar sweated off before I left work. Afterwards, I met up with Mr. and Mrs. TL&EMK for mexican at “The Toro.” That meant grande margaritas and quesadillas.

Then we went home and drank out on the deck. Oh, yeah, Friday, July 15th, marked the one year anniversary of the house closing. So we toasted some brews outside on a nice summer evening. (”I HAVE A DECK” may not be as fun as it was a few years ago, but it’s still true. Maybe now it’s more like “I REALLY HAVE TO CLEAN AND SEAL MY DECK!”)

Then, it got late, so we picked up AJ and went to BW3s to hang with the Olsons and Steph in post-rehearsal-dinner-drinking, [ Ed Note: wearing Harry costume to the bar got me carded buying the drinks, and giggled at by at least two waitstaff and a table of girls that looked about Hermione's age. ] but only had time for a car bomb before heading down to a local bookstore around 11. (We didn’t even have time to watch Pujol’s 13th inning HR to win against the Astros.) After a not so good glass of butterbeer, and a very large mocha, and a meandering line through the bookstore – chatting with a GSLIS grad behind me, BTW…neat people you can run into at bookstores – I left with the four copies preordered (the Kresls got two, because, hey, who can share?)

When we got home, Tony started devouring the book like it was covered with melted real cheese and ranch dressing. I, on the other hand, was still a bit drunk and a bit wired from the coffee. Now, I’ve been drunk before, and I’ve been wired before – but I don’t think ever at the same time. I take that back; too many Baileys and coffee does that too me too, and although I love the potent potable, I don’t enjoy the upper/downer battle going on in my head. It makes me edgy, and possibly because of the Christmas Eve connection, makes me want to play board games.

I tried, very hard, to read the first page, several times, and just wasn’t ‘getting it.’ AJ pointed out the irony that the very first sentence of the book talks about reading something and not remembering it. I read that sentence at least four times and didn’t understand/catch it. I decided I could wait until the next day to start the book.

[ Ed Note: Okay, I said I wasn't going to spoil the book, but that's not a spoiler. It's not like I quoted the words from the book. And the first sentence isn't critical to the plot either. A spoiler is something that gives away something you care about, like Harry got caught with his [ THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION CENSORED BY THE MINISTRY OF MUGGLE UNDERSTANDING OF WIZARDRY AFFAIRS AND OTHER LONG BRITISH GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT TITLES. ]]

But I was too wired to sleep. Too wired to put in a movie. (This would have been one of those times Mom or Aaron would have told me to run around the house four times. And I would have done it.) So, while we goaded Tony and forced him to sit downstairs in the papasan (which is Ikea for “uncomfortable,”) AJ and I played backgammon. We played a few rounds until he got the hang of it, and then the cribbage board came out. I think I played 20 or so games with AJ, Marc and Tony through the weekend, and it was great. I hadn’t played in a long time, and it felt good. Junior, we gotta dig out that old Cribbage program, and sound clips, and play again.

At some point in the night, I opened the book to a random page and yelled down to Tony the title of this post. A while later, after he Apparated several times to different areas of the house to read, he chuckled and told me he’d ran across that page. Sunday, when I read it, I laughed – and today, at about 12:30pm, Andrew sends me an IM with that message. He was reading it over his lunch break. [ Ed Note: That's not the only time that quote is said in the book. ]

More about the rest of the weekend, and what I think’s magical about Harry Potter in another installment. If I make this any longer, your RSS Owl will fall down.

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Those in Champaign might want to check out the second UI Summer Band concert on Wednesday night, the 20th, on the quad. Concert starts at 7. I’m planning on heading to Murphy’s afterwards; you’re welcome to join us.

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Word of the Day for Saturday July 16, 2005

apparition \ap-uh-RISH-uhn\, noun:
1. A ghost; a specter; a phantom.
2. The thing appearing; the sudden or unexpected appearance of something or somebody.
3. The act of becoming visible; appearance.
4. (Astronomy) The first appearance of a star or other luminary after having been invisible or obscured; — opposed to [1]occultation.

Dictionary.com can be such a Zeitgeist sometimes. Tony has finished HP6, while I was too drunk/wired to focus on it last night, so I’ll start it sometime today and probably finish it during the week. I’m always amazed how quickly he can read and still absorb/enjoy things.

Congratulations to Steph and Steve, who are getting married this afternoon. This one’s going to be fun.

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  Too hard, even with a CS degree

david-potter

Originally uploaded by TromboneKenny.

I am the half-blood prince! Who’s excited about tonight’s book release? This guy, that’s who.

No one’s seen me yet at work. I wonder what response I’ll get. I think I got a few looks driving in this morning.

It always scares me a little when I have to give grad students under networking professors special assistance getting on our networks. You’d think this is something they could figure out. The most recent case involved a student who couldn’t get online because s/he had given me their wireless MAC address for me to setup their wired connection. (They should have given me the address for their wired interface.) That’s pretty understandable mistake. With laptops having modems and bluetooth and firewire and everything else, all spitting out addresses when you run “ipconfig /all” it can be confusing. But if you’re here to work in a networking group, you should be respectful of those things.