The LOOOONG week...

I guess I did post last on Wednesday, but it sure seems like it's been a long time....this seemed like one of the longest, busiest weeks I've ever had. Not in a bad way, but...well I was glad to see Saturday morning and a chance to just breathe!

Wednesday was another very long work day, followed by dinner with friends Eric and Bill, and then the monthly poker night with guys from work (one of them anyway - I actually have 2 "mostly" monthly games). By about 11:30pm it was storming really bad, so we all decided to quit early - which was fine because I was just dead tired. More rain Wednesday night although not nearly as bad as it could have been (and I'm not complaining at all when I see how bad Cedar Rapids and other parts of Iowa have gotten hit).

Thursday was yet another packed day at work - including two different hours where I had 3 meetings (each) to attend...I can't remember that ever happening in 11 years. On top of that, my new work laptop arrived (we get a new one every 3-4 years) - normally a cause for celebration, but the amount of time it takes to set up, well, I just didn't have that day. I did manage to squeeze in enough time to start the long set of automatic updates running. Thursday night was salsa band practice, and by 9 I was dead tired again.

Friday things were starting to slow down - only one meeting that day, but I spent much of the day setting up the new laptop and copying over everything from the old one. This SHOULD be easier - seems like the faster and better computers get, the bigger and slower programs and data get. Oh well...by 5:00 I had it done enough where I didn't need the old one anymore, and was excited to run Darik's Boot And Nuke, a program that pretty much zeros out the hard drive (actually it does a lot more than that if you want it to). It boots off of a CD and is free, so anyone with an Intel machine can use it (Mac users now too!). I would STRONGLY recommend running this before you ever get rid of a hard drive or a machine with a hard drive, if it's going to a stranger. It has options to write/re-write up to 6 passes of pseudo-random data so that any trace of anything you ever had on there is gone (yes I'm a computer security-chondriac, probably stemming from knowing how computers actually work...I guess ignorance sometimes is bliss). Friday night was grilling, drinks, and the half-season finale of Battlestar Galactica - I have to say, without giving anything away, that it was quite puzzling, not the drop-your-jaw cliffhangers they usually have. Only 10 more episodes left in the series, and then it's done *sniff*

Saturday...finally some rest! I spent two hours at Starbucks outside just reading...my friend Dave in Arizona loaned me his copy of "The Watson Dynasty", a book on the history of IBM - probably only interesting if you work there, but I am liking it. Saturday afternoon, Shelley picked up her wedding dress and brought it over to store at my house (so Ryan wouldn't see it) and we stared at it for awhile and tried on her tiara :) I can't post pictures of the dress because Ryan might see them, but here are some of the tiara. Saturday night Erin and I headed over to Ryan & Shelley's because I had some spare hard drives from the Tivo that had died, and Ryan was looking to upgrade. Two hours later, Ryan's Tivo had 3x the space it started with (hooray! - Shelley is quoted as saying "Now I can record all the CSI I ever wanted!") R & S took us out to dinner at one of our old favorites, Mr. Pizza south.

Which brings us to today...another nice day out. Breakfast at Panera, then watched the movie Jumper (don't waste your time). I went downstairs to check on the sump basket (I discovered it was full Saturday morning with all the rain - no overflowing though thank goodness). It hasn't gone down though, so I will need to buy a sump pump just in case. Ah the joys of home ownership....