Finally got around to getting my hair cut, so now my head feels a few pounds lighter. In the meantime, I'm getting a little restless lately due to not having enough field time. Our first field maneuver for the new year is on the 8th, so I'm really looking forward to that.

And if your mind is able to untwist itself after that, congrats. Needless to say, I'm in a cheerier mood after having a nice R&R of the past four days. Yanyan arrived midday Thursday, and both of us trekked north to Camelot Command for Christmas. Unfortunately, its rather quiet this year because mom is on the other side of the planet tending the grandparents. Our hope is for the best, but the sad reality is very forgiving on these matters. The most recent reports back from that front is disappointing at best, and serves as yet another reminder that even the greatest of us cannot defy the deterrioration of old age. *sigh*. . .

Because of our worries overseas, the holidays was quite subdued. And just as well I suppose. . . spending time with family is rewarding enough as it is. I also managed to bump into two old high school friends today, which was a surprise in and of itself. Both of them seem to be doing well (translation: gainfully employed), so its not all bad news.

Last weekend was spent at Las Vegas, visiting Yanyan while she worked on getting her exhibition put together at the annual PowerGen convention. Her stuff looked as good as it can be done, which is no small feat considering her experience. We also lost too much money at the casinos, which is prompting me to issuing an edict to bar all future trips to Las Vegas. . . at least until my luck changes or something.

Rest of the week was spent at work getting things ready for yesterday's downtime. CT is switching ISPs and so we are going to have to renumber all of our servers. However, the ISP techs got bogged down in the weather (and a dead squirrel who caused a blackout in a significant part of the city) so they won't be done until Monday. Wedensday was spent at a Symantec conference learning about their revamped offerings now that they and Veritas are joined at the hip. Not surprising, I got more out of the Veritas presentation than the Symantec presentation. It was educational nonetheless.

The downtime yesterday went fairly smoothly, despite the fact that we didn't do a whole lot other than migrate some servers behind a new firewall. Right after that I went home and packed (newly upgraded) Quincy X and XII and headed to campus to join in some digital mayhem with some ACM folks. Unfortunately, Quincy X decided to pout and not play nice, so I was not able to use it as a file server as originally planned. Otherwise, it was nice to see people again, and trade sniper fire with each other.

I was able to get away from it a little while over the weekend though. . . Yanyan was on assignment in Las Vegas prepping for a major exhibition. So through some thoughtful planning, I was able to visit her and see what fun things she was doing. We then proceeded to lose oodles of money in the casinos, much to our dismay. But it was fun spending time with each other. Going to Las Vegas twice in one year. . . I must be making up for lost travel time over the past couple of years. . .

Originally I had planned to join a few hundred other troopers in a massive field exercise this weekend. However, Bill scheduled a major network downtime this weekend, and unfortunately work won out in the final decision.