Time to move out

I thought much of moving desks today. And I even helped others actually move. But tomorrow is my day, and I don't look forward to it. Well, sure, I somewhat look forward to having new digs (in contrast with the old), but I HATE moving. Desks, houses, cities. It just sucks. All aspects of my past are full of plenty of moving, so I'd just as well not do that anymore (though I will plenty more I'm certain).

Traders should be shot... can I get an amen from the bobble heads?

I'm trying not to get too worked up about this, but I'm VERY upset about the Phils trading Abreu to the Yankees. I know they needed to free up a big salary, but dammit, the Yankees don't need him. Going anywhere else would have been not as bad. Yes the Yankees can use the bat, and the strength at right field while Sheffield is out, but what happens when he comes back? They'll sit Abreu, so what a waste...


This is the part where you imagine me screaming.

Visiting Aunt Bully

Took the kids to see the Ant Bully today. Critics have given it a B grade, and I'd tend to agree. Many cute moments follow a slow start, and though the technology is probably better, this film will forever be stuck with comparisons with Antz. The "battle" scenes were pretty neat, and the movie is riddled with big name voice overs and producers, so it's almost no wonder it's a decent movie. It's shorter than many movies these days (88 mins), so doesn't have a lot of time to develop story, which may have hurt it. Maybe it would be an A with that extra thirty minutes?

Graduation observation

A friend graduated from the University of Phoenix today with their MBA. His family came down from Tulsa so we all met for breakfast before heading to the graduation. The graduation itself was one of the longest and most boring (aside from my high school graduation, which included a baccalaureate mass) I had attended, as they called all three hundred something names (and it turned out I knew someone else graduating, too).

Afterwards we all went to dinner before they went back up to Tulsa.

The kids and I went to another friend's following dinner to go for a swim. Afterall, the girls were pretty good having sat through such a long and boring ceremony without getting excessively in trouble.

Starting the big move

Today we had a big server move. Our work area is being renovated, so we had to move the servers to another room like five hundred feet down the hall. Something on the order of seven or eight hours later were were done, after unwiring, moving, rewiring, and powering all the servers. And let's not forget the many banks of UPS batteries (at 65 pounds per battery). We were all proud of ourselves until we turned everything on and learned that the network lines we were promised were active turned out to be, in fact, rather non-active. Ugh. So we had to call an emergency line to have some on-call comm guys activate the lines. Even that was a trial and error process getting all the lines active. But finally we were good to go. Except that I stayed a little later and ended up having a power supply blow on a box unexpectedly. Bleh.

Even though all the servers are up now, there is still MUCH to do for the entire move to be complete. And on Monday, they're supposed to finish up our new desks so that on Tuesday we get to move to our new desks. It will be my first move in years, but for the eighth time in the nine years I've been here. Unfortunately it is not my final move. I have one more move in three months. Hopefully THAT will be the last one.

Elvis is in the building?

Strange things happen at work sometimes. Strange. But in the nine years I've worked where I work, never has there been an Elvis impersonator singing in the cafeteria (blurry cameraphone pic disclaimer) at lunch time. That... was some freaky crap. Well beyond your run-of-the-mill strangeness.

So I wonder, did he get payed for that? Better question yet, did the government/taxpayer pay for that? Or was that, like, a dare or community service or something?

Nothing against Elvis or anything. And not that this guy was bad at what he did. It was just... rather misplaced. I mean, you know... this ain't no Vegas casino. I might even argue that a nearly sixty year-old military facility could be considered the anti-Vegas.

Who would even have believed me without that crappy pic? Because "hey, I saw Elvis at work today in the cafeteria singing a tune for the foraging Air Force worker types" sounds completely made-up.

Primarily mixed

It's election day. Primaries only, but no less important in some regards. My first task of the day was to vote. I did so before taking the girls to camp so they could observe the process. Most of the votes have been counted at this point, and the results are mixed with respect to how my votes were cast. There's some good news and some bad, but there are plenty of folks I'll be rooting for in November.

Passport semi-mayhem

I must preclude my story with an it-could-have-been-much-worse disclaimer. Because I've heard worse. The kicker today was that I was on the cusp of a super smooth process that fell apart on a technicality.

So I have the potential for some international travel, which I'll go into another time. Considering two factors -- first, that all air and sea entries to Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico will require a passport by December 31st of this year, I've heard there is some possibility of a rush and some delays later in the year; second, electronic passports will be rolled out soon -- I decided to get that part out of the way so that if I end up traveling, the passport process would be the least of my issues. Also, I read some security forums that claim an electronic password similar to those that will be used by the U.S. was cracked in two hours by researchers. So as much of a techno-geek as I am, I was actually not terribly eager to pick up a vulnerable passport. I figure if I can get a traditional paper-only passport that won't expire for ten years, maybe they can work out the kinks before my next renewal.

Anyway, I decided not to get my photo done somewhere else over the weekend, because the downtown post office has a passport center that includes on-site picture taking. So when I showed up downtown at lunch time today, there was almost no line, and so a very short wait before I was at the counter working with the one clerk that does passports.

He went over all of my paperwork and everything checked out, but then he asked where my photos were. I said I planned to have them taken there, to which he replied, sorry, our camera is broken. Ugh. He advised that I go to the Walgreens on 23rd and Classen (I was at 5th and Harvey).

So I get myself over to the Walgreens and end up in a lengthy line at the photo processing center, only to be told by the clerk once I finally got my turn that she didn't do passport photos very well and that she'd have to get someone else. That someone else showed up to take my photo with a digital camera, after which he put the memory card into the self-serve kiosk, cropped the photo to the right size, and said it would be just a few minutes. Right away it seemed like a rip of a process, as I could have done all of that for much less. But after a few minutes I got my (very terrible) pictures back and paid my nine (freaking) dollars.

I made my way back to the downtown post office, only to find a massive line waiting for me when I got back. I waited in the line for quite some time, but was told by the clerk once I got to one that I needed to wait in the passport line, which was the two other guys standing off to the side that had been standing there not moving for the entire time I was in the much longer line. Apparently, the passport clerk was tied-up doing something else right then, so us folks waiting for those services had some waiting to do. And wait we did.

When I was finally called by the passport clerk, my paperwork checked out, I had to turn in my old passport (from when I was four years old... he said they'll send it back to me), write out two checks for different fees, and then he placed my pictures down in front of me. Of course, that drew a WTF look from me.

He said he wasn't sure the photos would work. I asked why, of course, since he was the one that sent me away to get them, to which he responded that my face was too big. He put a transparent guide of some sort over my photo and said my face was supposed to be inside the oval dotted line, but that my face touched the line a little bit. I gave him a please-don't-make-drive-back-across-town look. Twice. So he said, well, I can go ahead and send these photos in, but if they don't like them, they'll send them back to you and ask for new ones to be sent in which will delay the process. I told him that was fine as I was doing this early on anyway, and that if I did travel at all, it wouldn't be for a bit, so no hurry or anything. He said fine, but advised that I keep my photo receipt handy so I could get a refund from the Walgreens if passport services sends my photo back.

Finally, after a few more minutes of getting things in order, he said I was done, good to go, and that I'd have my passport in 6-8 weeks of they don't send the photo back.

So the moral of the story is to get your photo done ahead of time no matter what, ensuring that your face is small enough. Had I done that, I would have been done with the entire process in less than thirty minutes, since I had good line timing initially, and would have been back to work inside my lunch hour. Instead, the process was thrown for a loop, took two hours, and cost much more in frustration. Though I know it could have been much worse.


Update, 16 August
I've received my passport... early even!

Monster house

The girls were dying to see Monster House, though I wasn't looking all that forward to it. Looked kind of silly, but it turned out okay. Silly, sure, and graphics a bit bland, but it was funny at points, and the girls seemed to enjoy it.

Two parties

The girls went to a birthday party this afternoon with their mom, only to be picked up by me shortly after, and taken to another party, so lots of cake and ice cream for one day. In fact, cake and ice cream were considered our dinner at first, because we didn't have time to stop for dinner before the second party, and there wasn't any non-party food there. So on the way home, we had ourselves a very late dinner.

Shelby is well (but not my laptop)

Shelby was okay this morning. No fever! Eating better!

Unfortunately my laptop's fate remains unchanged.

Sick Shelby, sick laptop

Shelby vomitted at school this morning, so not even an hour and a half after I dropped her off, I had to pick her up. We hung out for half the day, and I got some errands out of the way. Car maintenance, laptop servicing (it's kaput again), a few other things. And I met a friend I hadn't seen in awhile for lunch.

Not long after lunch I learned my dad was off work today, and he agreed to watch Shelby while I went back to work. So far, so good in the no-further-vomitting department, but her mom tells me she had a fever this evening before bed, so it's conceivable that the matter has not concluded.

As for my laptop, it will probably be next week before I get it back. Same problem as back in June. Now I'm thinking I should have gotten a Dell, instead of the off brand I went with. I've only had it a year and a half and have had more trouble with it than it's probably worth.

Groundhog daze

The last three days, when I've walked out of my building at work, the marquee outside has read 109 degrees. Now, it's usually a little off, but it's a very good "it's a pretty freaking hot day" indicator. And now, with three days in a row of exactly the same conditions, I'm practically in a daze. I feel like I'm stuck in the same day over and over. And we have a couple more days of this same weather pattern. I think it's not until Saturday that it gets "cool" with a high of "only" 90.

Might as well move to the desert

I follow the weather in my three most important places, and I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've noticed us being WARMER than Tucson in the middle of the summer. I've often said I'd move back to Tucson in a second if I could tolerate the summers. But heck, if we're going to have the heat AND humidity here in OK, maybe I should just go back to the desert and at least have the beautiful mountain view.

Weeze me a River

I'll be the first person to say that their last album was their least best, but that's no reason to throw in the towel. Alas, it seems that after nearly a decade and a half of mind-soothing tunes from Mr Cuomo, smarty-pants has decided to go and leave the world here, the way we were, before he appeared.

What a RIP.

Return of World Softball... and Superman

I've been long disappointed with the fact that I let the first ever World Cup of Softball come and go last year without making an effort to attend. So I made sure this year that I kept my eye on the schedule so I could take Darby to at least a USA game. Considering it's here in Oklahoma City, it seems obligatory that we make the effort, lest they move it due to poor attendance and I kick myself for not having gone while it was so close. I mean, heck, I traveled to Phoenix in March to attend the first World Baseball Classic, but I can't make the ten minute drive to the WCS?

So I picked up Darby from her mother's this morning. Shelby had previously declined the offer to go and so stayed with mommy. The downside of the event was the temperature. The heat index was over 100 before noon, and we were in the direct sunlight for HOURS. We had Darby put sunblock on more than once, and even I applied some sunblock. We did a little shadow following until it became impractical, meaning we followed the shadows cast by the light poles to try to keep out of the sun, but that was short lived as noon approached.

The first game was a dominating team USA win over Australia. Coincidentally, not unlike the World Baseball Classic game I saw in March, Team USA run-ruled their opponent in the fifth inning. It was pretty cool to see Cat Osterman dominate with her pitching, but we only got a short glimpse of Jennie Finch, who pinched hit late in the game.



I'm trying to get Darby inspired by the various heroes of the sport, so she'll have role models to emulate as she advances in her sport. Speaking of role models, we got to see Michele Smith, a local softball legend (from OSU) get inducted into the Softball Hall of Fame upon the conclusion of the first game. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I caught a shirt for Darby between innings... with my left hand!

Unlike most fans, we stayed for the second game, Japan vs. Great Britain. And fortunately for us, seats cleared out that weren't so directly in the sunlight. I felt so bad for the UK team, as they played REALLY hard and had a lead most of the game, only to lose to Japan in the last inning. I think they're like 0-3 now in this tournament.

A third game (Canada/China) started on a different field while we were watching the UK game, and we caught about five minutes of it upon conclusion of the second game before deciding to get out of the hotness. It was nearly over anyway. And it was SO good to get into an air conditioned vehicle. I noticed as we left that Darby got some sunburn in spite of the multiple sunblock applications.


When we arrived to pick up Shelby from her mom's, she was swimming, and then, of course, Darby wanted to swim. So I let her take a quick swim for about thirty minutes before taking off for dinner. Having only eaten a hot dog all day, I was feeling rather carnivorous.

My dad had called asking if we wanted to meet them for dinner, so I suggested a personal favorite, TGIF. While such an effort is just asking for a long wait on a Saturday night, it was well worth it for the meal quality. Their steaks rock, and the mashed potatoes are among my favorite anywhere.

While we ate, we discussed the possibility of seeing a movie. We settled on Superman Returns, though weren't looking forward to another nearly three hour movie. Turns out the duration didn't detract from the movie, and other than the retro opening credits (which is stupidly picky I know) I wasn't at all disappointed with the movie. It was rather super, though I'm not sure I would say it was better than Batman Begins.

Casting was good, the cinematography was rather remarkable, and the plot wasn't too bad. Though if I were picking on something, I'd go off on Superman's apparent variance in reaction severity to kryptonite. They could have definitely messed up this movie, but I don't feel like they did, so my thumbs are up.

First time of true old-feeling-ness

At a staff meeting today, one of my team members noted that they were still in high school when I started this job nine years ago. I've been on the opposite end of that sort of statement many times, but this was the first time I was on the "old" end of it. It felt... unpleasant.

Two years, two home run derbies, two Phillies win

So why can't we do that in the pennant race?


Either way, good job Ryan Howard. I was disappointed that Abreu didn't make it back in, but you'll do quite nicely. Now do us a favor and stick around more than a few years, okay?

Bye-bye "GaGa", hello pirates

I met the girls' aunt Andrea ("Ga-Ga") to pick-up the girls. They'd spent the week with her, and she's returning to San Francisco tomorrow. We had some lunch and snapped an obligatory pic, of course, and the girls and I headed to the movies.

I figured they'd want to see Nacho Libre or something, but when I asked what they wanted to see, it was Pirates of the Carribean. I was shocked because Shelby is easily frightened, and she's balked at much tamer movies. We tried to work in a 2:10 show, but that was sold out, so we bought 3:50 tickets and got some ice cream.

Even though we returned to the theater 45 minutes before show time, we ended up in the middle of a very long line to get in. Our seats ended up being not the most desireable (though it could have been worse). And it was like 4:06 before the movie actually got started, which is not the best way to kick off a two and a half hour long movie.

The movie was pretty good, though I'm not sure it was better than the first. And it was definitely a middle movie. Similar in that way to Lord of the Rings II. I'm sure it will fit nicely into a Pirates trilogy, but watching it on its own made it obvious there would be a third movie. Shelby handled it surprising well. And overall I think everyone had some fun, as it was a fun movie to watch if nothing else.

More fireworks, mixed review

I've been kidless for a few days, plus there was that two hours of fireworks the other day, so I wasn't exactly all hyped up about seeing more fireworks. But it's wholly appropriate to celebrate our nation's 230 years of existence (depending on which date you use... because the war for independence started in 1775, ended in 1781, and didn't get a peace treaty until 1783, so...) in such a manner and on this day. So I went with some friends to a local fireworks display and, while it wasn't a complete waste of time, at 20 minutes long and only the finale all that spectacular... I wasn't all that impressed. Probably it would have been more exciting if I had the kids with me, as I was only about 85% paying attention as it were.

Wanna buy grandma's car?

So dad flew out to Arizona last week and then he drove back in grandmas car. He's got to sell it and split the proceeds with his siblings. It's a 2003 Buick Century with 35,500 miles on it (basically just grandma going to work and back, and then the trip to Oklahoma). Dad had it completely detailed yesterday, and he put brand new tires on it before he left Arizona. Blue book range (good to excellent) is $9100-9750. Dad is splitting the difference at $9,500 because there is a dent, but that's pretty much the only flaw in this low-miles vehicle (for comparison, my vehicle is also a 2003, but it's got 65K miles on it).

Any buyers? Dad's going to put it in the paper soon, so you get the sneak peek. Here's some pics, click on them to enlarge.

Receptive

Having spent a week away WITH me, the girls left today for a week AWAY FROM me. Their aunt (of last year's trip fame) is in town from San Francisco, so they're spending the next week with her and their grandmother in Kingfisher.

After dropping the girls off, I had a wedding reception to attend. My former employee that left the team to move to England got married there in March. She came back to have a reception for the Oklahomans, so there was much catching up today. I asked a lot of questions about the overall England experience as I do intend to get out that way some time in my life. I really wanted to get out there in March for the wedding as it was the perfect excuse to make such a trip, but I just couldn't make it work with the schedule/finances.