So Many Excuses, So Little Time

Let's take a new stab at the daily blogging thing. Of course, this is just day one of the new effort, so you'll have to check back to see if I can do this.

Today isn't such a bad day, even though I'm still stuck at work for the moment. I'm listening to a conference call for something I really can do anything to fix. However, since I swapped hotline days with a colleague today, I'm stuck with this.

BUT ... since I'm not really much involved in this call, other than knowing I'm here and being available if needed, I have time to blog while listening.

I have the hotline next week as well, except for Friday, I'll have more such joy coming up. (Hopefully I can also swap next Saturday, Cinco de Mayo, to go to the Cubs game).

Excuses for not blogging:

• Long, weird hours at work: We're still doing 24/7 monitoring, so that takes about 16-18 hours a week. It's also at variable hours, so my schedule is not set. I've mostly been taking evening shifts, and a late night one last night. Next week I've scheduled more mornings, in order to avoid overlap with my hotline coverage.
  


• CodCon & Conflagration: I was fried at work, and so I took my time to myself for my gaming hobby. I had volunteered to judge at CodCon, though I wound up judging two slots and playing two. So a nice balance. The games at CodCon weren't my ideal play plans, and I was particularly ineffective in one, but oh well. I then decided to go up to Milwaukee for Conflagration the next weekend so that I could play the Greyhawk special and the Xen'drick expedition. The latter didn't go off, and I'd gone an extra day to prep for the Highfolk interactive I wound up not playing, but it was overall fun. Four slots of gaming, two as "Joe" and two as "Aelorin", and got Joe up to level 11 (Ranger 6/Scout 5).
  


• Baseball season: Hey it's baseball season again, so I have to get to some Cubs games. Right? I've been to four Cubs games so far this season: one in Milwaukee, opening day, and the past couple of Sundays. Just two games scheduled in May, though, so that should be less busy.
  


• Computer problems: ugh, my Acer laptop died a death of a thousand cuts. A number of faults slowly piled up, not the least of which was that I had to literally (and yes, I am using "literally" correctly) beat on the power button multiple times to get the relay to catch and turn the computer on. Then it would freeze if I didn't have the barcode scanner plugged in, it would freeze if it was plugged into Ethernet rather than using wireless, and eventually it would just freeze pretty much anytime after it had been on for a couple minutes. So, we waited until after we got our tax refund and I bought a refurbished IBM ThinkPad T40. Only $500 for a very decent computer, and it came with Windows XP Professional rather than getting stuck with the under-featured Vista Home Basic which comes on new low-price laptops. I was happy with the reliability and sturdiness of my work laptops, the old T23 and the new T60, so when I saw I could get a T40 from Tiger Direct at that price, with the right OS, I decided to jump on that. So far I'm very happy with it, though I'm still getting aspects of my computing environment set up again.
  

OK, that's enough for the catch-up post. More TOMORROW!