Well, this marks the end of yet another weekend, and quite frankly, it was just what I needed. I didn’t get much, if anything, accomplished. It’s simply been a weekend of relaxation while I recuperated from the events of last week. I had mentioned that the network circuit had gone down at my office Monday in a previous post. It went down again Tuesday, and I was at the office until 8 PM with the AT&T repairman while he fixed it. I thought the problem had been resolved… until the circuit went down AGAIN Wednesday evening. After a couple of hours, it came back up again. About all Qwest could get out of AT&T in regards to the outage was, “Sorry, our fault. It’s fixed now.” It’s stayed up since then… however, Wednesday evening the backup server died. :-/ I managed to get it partially operational on Thursday, and then after going through a bunch of hoops I managed to get it up Friday afternoon. It was stressful and annoying, and I am SO glad it’s all fixed and working properly.

So, what did I do this weekend? Yesterday I took Mom for her birthday dinner at Steak & Ale. We hadn’t been in years, and we figured it was time for a change from Outback Steakhouse and Cheesecake Factory. (I had actually been to the latter on Wednesday with Dave.) It was pretty good, and we’ll go back again at some point. I’ve always liked Steak & Ale; the menu might be rather limited, but the ambience of an old time steakhouse is always so relaxing. Heh. Mom really appreciated the meal, too, which is what counts in the end. As for today… I ended up going to meet my friend Lindsey to see The Lake House at the Cinemark off of Market Street. I don’t go for chick flicks as a rule, but it was good to see Lindsey, and I admit the movie’s preposterous premise had me intrigued. My verdict? It was a bit slow, but otherwise it was a good film. Afterwards we ate at Johnny Rocket’s (a burger joint with a 50’s setting), browsed around Border’s, and then I came home. All in all, a fun afternoon outing.

As for this week, it should hopefully be a bit more calm than last week was, even with my boss’s boss coming into town for meetings. I also plan on making a bit of a tech purchase, but that’ll be in a day or two. For now, though, I’m just going to relax for the rest of the evening; tomorrow’s a new day and all.

Today was not one of the better days around here.

I woke up very early this morning to the sound of heavy rain and thunder outside. I heard some barking outside that sounded like our dog Chase, so I peeked through the blinds to look at the front yard below. Mom was outside walking Chase in the yard so he could do his morning business… and to my shock, the street was flooded. I went back to sleep for a short bit, and then went downstairs for breakfast and learned what was going on. I later told Sean about it…

D’Arque Bishop: We almost had water get into the house. Thanks to all of the construction to the north of us, rainwater doesn’t get soaked up there like it used to and so it comes down our way. The water was nearly to our back door’s seal.
D’Arque Bishop: In fact, I didn’t even bother leaving for work. I’m at home now logged into the corporate VPN.
Sean MC: Oh god!
Sean MC: We were okay– wonder how dad faired? You know there’s got to be water in the DeHaas house then.
D’Arque Bishop: More than likely, as the only way we avoided water getting into the house was Bicycle Repairman springing to action and digging a 6 inch trench and drainage pipe.

For the record, “Bicycle Repairman” was our old nickname for my father. It came out from the old Monty Python skit where the superhero of a world full of Supermen was Bicycle Repairman. He earned it after coming out to fix our bikes one time after something happened to them while we were in some other neighborhood.

Anyway, I digress. The entire city suffered flooding, especially around where my office was. After getting warnings about the conditions from a few employees, I decided it would be best if I just worked from home today. Of course, it didn’t help that the main network circuit at the office died and we had to find a way around it. I’ll likely have to go in early tomorrow to make sure the makeshift replacement circuit is holding up, which is not a good thing considering weather conditions tomorrow morning are forecast to be the same if not worse. :-/ *sigh*

Oh, well. I can’t afford to work from home another day, as I’ve got too much going on at the office to even consider it. All I can hope for right now is that the weather will cooperate tomorrow morning and I’ll be able to get to the office with a minimum of issues. Here’s hoping…

Well, I would like to say that today’s been productive, but unfortunately it’s not been the case.

Last night was actually kind of fun, because Sinc and I finally gave Dawn of War a spin in multiplayer. I think we’re getting used to the concept of having infantry squads as opposed to just singular units. It took me a little bit to get used to playing as Chaos Space Marines as opposed to regular Space Marines, though. Sinc played as regular Space Marines, and we ended up playing against a pair of CPU opponents: one was a group of Space Marines too, and the other was a group of Orks. We won by the skin of our teeth… mainly because Sinc couldn’t figure out how to get his troops around this obstacle he had put up for a long time. I came damn close to being knocked out… fortunately my base defenses held against the sea of troops attempting to take it. :-) I think we’ve found a keeper, especially seeing as it didn’t have anywhere near the amount of lag problems that Command & Conquer Generals had been having recently.

We ended up taking Dad for his Father’s Day dinner tonight at Outback Steakhouse. We never go to dinner on the actual holidays, simply because the restaurants get more crowded than we’re willing to deal with. The meal was pretty good, as always… though, I must admit, I’m starting to get burned out on Outback. One place I wish I could go to more often is Chili’s; however, Dad doesn’t like Chili’s, so it becomes a moot point. That’s one nice thing about travelling out of town: I can usually find a Chili’s nearby. Ah, well… maybe I can convince them to try something different next week.

Speaking of out of town… the flight home yesterday wasn’t the most fun one I ever had. I got to the airport, had a rather generic burger in the food court, and went to the gate at 4 PM… only to see that the 4:25 PM flight to Houston (the one before mine) was cancelled. Oh, boy. I checked Continental’s website using my cell phone, and it turned out my flight WAS still running, but that it was going to be a half-hour late. Sure enough, it was. *sigh* Oh, well… at least I didn’t have anything pressing going last night. All in all, though… next time, if I’m going to be going to Odessa, I’m going to eat before I get to the airport. The generic food there did nothing for me, and there’s several good places between the location and the airport. At least I got everything done there that I needed to get finished.

As for tomorrow… I might meet a friend for drinks after dinner (I’ve found myself roped into having dinner with the folks), and I still need to replace the hard drive on Frost (I actually found a spare I can use as a replacement here). Otherwise, it’ll be just another quiet day, which is just what I need, really. Ah, well… :-)