Which was immediately followed by a short excursion to Houston for my Microsoft Conference. We left a bit later than I had planned, but managed to get into Houston in time for YanYan to meet a senior designer at HP/Compaq for advice. We were obligated to head over to Chinatown on Bellevue for dinner, and while it was expensive, it was quite good.

Spend pretty much all day Tuesday in the MS conference. Learned some interesting things, although can't say it was as technical as I had hoped. Ironically, the presentation made by some of our more talented consultants was the most technical of all. . . and it happened to be one I found the most useful. Go figure. . .

Since by the time the conference ended, it was rush hour in Houston, we once again felt obligated to stay for dinner in Chinatown, followed by a short shopping trip to pick up some tasty goodies that are not available in Austin.

On the way out of Houston. . . we were waylaid by a nice Swedish store named IKEA. Yeah. . . bad news. If there are three stores in the world that I should be banned from, they are: Fry's, Home Depot, and IKEA (in no particular order). We wandered around in the store oooing and ahhing like a couple of foreign tourists. . . and wound up with more stuff in our hands. We did get some great ideas on how to furnish the Outpost Command V though. . . (OC5 slated for deployment in 2005).

Last couple of days at work have been playing catch up. Poor Cliff was by himself Monday and Tuesday, until I was able to relieve him yesterday. Today everyone's back at the shop (Joe and Bill were at ConSec for their CPEs). . . so its back into the void yet again. . .

On the other hand, today's Yanyan's birthday. . . so I intend to make some chocolate covered strawberries for her, a little birthday cake to celebrate with, and also take her shopping at the mall later when she comes home from work. Happy birthday baby!

All this was interrupted by a very tasty dinner (beef bourguignon) made by his wife, followed by a fudge covered ice cream pound cake sprinkled with strawberries. He's a very fortunate man, I say. . . its surprising he stays fit with that kind of fare every night. . . :P

On the software side, I finally took a couple of hours to rebuild the bleem! Refugee Boards. . . something that has slipped off of my priority queue for the past several months. After about six hours of hacking away at it last night, I was able to port over all the data from the old (and nonfunctional) bulletin board system into the new (and functional) BBS. Already some of the old (and die hard) members are trickling back. . . so its all good. . .

Unfortunately, it never got to that Quincy XI. Phase I, which was laying the software foundations for Quincy IX and XIII went okay, not spectacular. When it came to Phase II, which was moving the bulk of the services from Quincy V to IX, things started breaking down. The only good news is that Quincy XIII is fully operational again, awaiting the wrap up of Phase II and beginning of Phase III (advanced software loadouts). In the meantime, I have to look for a replacement hard drive for Quincy IX. . . since the 20GB I had loaded for it is about to be tossed out the window. . .

Grrr. . . most of a weekend's work down the drain. . . I would've been better off if I had played video games all weekend. . .

On the other hand, things between YanYan and me have been a little rocky lately. . . can't really say any more on that. . . except that I'm not ready to give up yet. . .

Good times. . . good times. . .

So yeah, lots of gaming goodness was to be had, and we also went to see Resident Evil Apocalypse last night as well. While not a Academy Award contender, it had its ups. . . although my biggest complaint was the barge-through-church-glass-riding-a-big-motorcycle-with-big-guns scene. . . a little TOO cliche. . .

In other news, I managed to liquidate two of the older Quincies. . . so that's that. . . at least they're going to a good home. . .

So there's a group of people who started a AD&D (3rd Edition rules) game last night, which I opted to join. It was such a rare event for something like this to happen that Evil Twin opted to join too. So we wound up with a pissed off Ranger, a nonchalant Sorcerer, a reserved Druid, and a amnesiatic Fighter (me) wandering around in a not so nice town in the middle of a freakin' desert. Since I usually play as a noble Paladin of some sort in these types of games, I figured I'll play as a chaotic neutral wildcard this time around. Things should get interesting with my character asking "Now can I draw my sword?" during every other encounter.

Even though I tried to reduce the number of Quincies that are in use here at OC4, I find myself fighting a losing battle. At the moment, I have nine (9) systems available, five (5) of which are running at any given time, sometimes all of them if there is the need. Which is to say its a scary thought, even after I dropped three (3) Quincies from the TO&E last month.

On the other hand, all the running Quincies haven't been overhauled in a long while (the newest additions Quincy XIII and I3800 don't count, and Quincy XII was the last to be overhauled almost a year ago). So I decided to give myself yet another project and do some shuffling around with the systems, and do some rebuilds in the coming months. The .plan is available to be viewed in my Stats page, as usual.

Nothing much else happening. . . just feeling flat out lethargic and lazy today. . . so will probably be juggling studying for my Net+ and playing games.