Moving the servers, getting away for a few days, and looking at wedding plans.

I’ve been living in Pearland for eight months now, and truthfully, it doesn’t feel like it. It almost feels like I’ve only been there a few weeks still. This is actually a good thing, as it shows how Jennifer and I are meshing well. We definitely haven’t gotten tired of being around one another, and we’ve been enjoying the time we’ve been spending together. Now that we’re past the initial adjustment period, things haven’t really changed much. Life is good.

However, I’ve had one thing still tying me back to the parents’ house, in a sense: the darquecathedral.org servers, which were still being hosted on the DSL line there. I had been planning on moving them down to Pearland anyway, but Mom and Dad decided they wanted to get AT&T U-verse to replace both their DSL and their DirecTV. So, we went ahead and purchased Comcast Business at our house, arranged for static IP addresses to assigned to us, and then went up to Spring this past Saturday to grab them. All in all, it was a pretty quick and painless process, and fortunately everything fit in my car, including the cart the servers were sitting on. Once I configured my parents’ PCs and their router to work without the servers, we headed back to Pearland. We got home by 9:30 PM, and had the first two servers online by midnight. I got up from bed at 7:45 AM the next morning, and had the third server online 45 minutes later.

The one thing we were worried about most with the server move was the heat generated by the servers. Fortunately, we’ve found keeping my office door open keeps the room at a somewhat normal temperature. The temperature gauge on the front of one server shows normal temps, too, which is a very good sign. We’ll keep an eye on things, but all in all the server migration was a great success. Now I just need to clean out boxes to make more room for me to be able to walk around…

The amusing thing, though, is that now that the servers are migrated, we’ll be getting away for a few days soon. Jennifer and I have decided to take a vacation to Las Vegas, as she’s never been and we managed to get good deals on airfare and a hotel. We’re only going to be gone for a couple of nights, but I figure I’ll introduce her to some of the sights and a couple of the shows. I’m thinking at the very least I should show her the dancing waters in front of the Bellagio, the volcano in front of the Mirage, the Forum Shops at Caesars, and the canals at the Venetian. As for the shows, well… Cirque is out due to the high prices of tickets, but we have a couple of other ideas in mind. No, the wedding is not one of them. :-)

Speaking of which, I know I mentioned it on Twitter, but forgot to mention it here: Jennifer and I are officially engaged. :-) Right now, it’s looking like the actual date is going to be sometime in late September. We’re looking at having a small intimate ceremony with just close friends and family invited, and then a few months down the road have a nice big blowout. We’ve been spending days off (on Jennifer’s end) and weekends going to different places to get ideas of venues and the like, plus potential food options, etc. It’s been a bit overwhelming, but we’re off to a good start. Hopefully we’ll be able to announce something to our friends in the next month or two, even if it’s only a “save the date!” type of thing. We’re looking forward to it, and we’re definitely making sure it’s what we want. :-)

Like I said earlier, life is good. Here’s hoping it just keeps getting better.