And of course, the alarm clock failed to wake me up this morning. . . and of course. . . it being the first day of a working week, servers blew up without warning and without me being present to attempt to fix. Bill and Cliff were very understanding in this regard, handling things as best they can while I tied up loose ends at OC4 before completely shutting the place down. I only hope that the nightmare ends here. . . even though OC5 is still a mess, but at least I should be able to deal with that in good time.

Hopefully I can catch up on sleep for the rest of this week. . . because I'm pretty much way beyond my physical operational limits. . . heuristics functions are barely functional at 30% efficiency. . . muscular control signals are completely shot and needs to be overhauled. . . endoskeletal structures are all beyond their stress limits. . . so yeah. . . good times. . . I'm sure I've managed to chop off about 2 years off of my operational lifespan over the past weekend. The price I paid definitely wasn't worth it though. . . :P

The battle itself pretty much panned out the way I expected it to progress. . . my four strongest divisions made short work of just about everything the 293rd Echelon could throw at me. Unfortunately, my centerline was battered from the get go and was completely decimated before I was able to regroup and encircle the enemy fortress. From there on it was a relatively short siege before the 293rd crumpled and surrendered.

Despite the hard earned victory, I felt that the losses were too great. The "at any price" rhetoric is beginning to run thin, even though that was how I argued for approval of the campaign in the first place. Regardless. . . I made the committment to finish this campaign, and I will see to it fulfilled, even if it may run a little late.

The new place is smaller in some places, but decent sized in others. It takes a little getting used to, but easier access to the docking bay on the lower deck is definitely a plus. I'll definitely have to think about how to rewire the home theater system, as well as the rest of CCCCC.net. . . which is beginning to feel like a nightmare. . .

The Exchange project at work is progressing nicely, and I think we've cleared the last major obstacle to a smooth deployment. We're on the final stretch. . . and I'll be quite busy again next week as I start doing migrations en masse. . . because Bill wants to free up the existing mail server for another project that's coming up to full speed.

The Unification project with Yanyan is also progressing. . . we got most of it done, so there's only a little left to do before all the bases are covered. Shouldn't be much longer now. . .

The Chidori project is on hold, only because I don't now how to install the missing sling hooks (no. . . its not as easy as screwing it in, I've already thought about that). I'll have to get that fixed before taking it on a first CQB engagement.

The Bismark has been temporarily reassigned to Camelot Command while two of its four tires are being swapped out. The last close-call I had was triggered by the poor health of the tires. No more of that. Instead, I've taken command of the Venture, a Sienna-Class medium transport for the near future. . .

. . . because Outpost Command IV is going to be decommissioned! That's right. . . OC4 is slated for closing, and OC5 is slated to begin operations later this month. Its much closer to work, but its still in the middle of nowhere. On the otherhand, I give up none of the amenities, gain 22 sq ft of space, for a paltry $15 more per month. A reasonable price, me thinkith.

Last but not least, the MCSE studying is steaming ahead in full speed. I'm already way behind schedule, so the only thing I can do is make sure it doesn't get worse than it already is. Ideally, I should have everything done by the end of the year. So. . . we'll see. . .

We managed to complete alot of tasks for Operation Unification, so yea for us being productive. The rest of the time we kind of just spent lounging around and being lazy. It felt good being able to do that. I've been to tightly wound lately between work and MCSE. . . so it was nice being able to unwind a little.

I did take Yanyan to the Build-A-Bear Workshop, and we made our first cabbit (basically a big-ear bunny with a "cat" noise maker built into it). We were both thoroughly embarassed for being the oldest people in there making a stuffed animal, but we were both too busy laughing at the whole affair to care about our dignity. Maotu (the cabbit) went home with Yanyan today, but we've decided that on Maotu's birthday we'll start buying accessories for her. Yes, I'm definitely going soft. . .

We also managed to squeeze in a photo session with a photographer Yanyan found, so lots of professional pictures were taken, including a few interesting poses that I snuck in there. :) As soon as the photographer sends the images back, I'll have to post it (just for the hell of it).

Predictably, since I took today off from work to spend time with Yanyan, the new mail server decided to blow up. So I spent some time this morning talking with Bill on the phone and figuring out why the system blew up the way it did. I did fix it in the end, although from Bill's tone of voice, I think he doesn't like the system very much. As much as I love to work with Exchange 5.5. . . Exchange 2003 feels like a completely different beast. And "different" in a bad way too. :P