---

    I really didn't do much at work. Reid handled most of the telephone calls. I figured out how to fix the black and white monitor for channel 107 at least. We interrupted several times by one of the techs checking the wiring for a new Muzak box. I guess the box had been sending out too strong a voltage, which blew out its splitter. Reportedly, it's a good thing that splitter was on it, or else the high voltage could've done some damage in the main computer room. Late in the day I finally got around to sending out my weekly reports. I'd slacked off so much, because of our hardware problems, that I needed to send out four reports.
    I went to Meijer's after work to get a couple new shirts, then I went to Big Al's Sports Bar and met up with my buddies after their golf game. Meredith, one of the waitresses. She was dressed fetchingly in denim shorts and an open baseball jersey, with a blue t-shirt underneath. All eyes were on her when she leaned forward to swab down one of the tables. I guess she realized this since shortly afterward she buttoned her shirt back up. The beers made me hungry so I did a sinful thing and stopped at the party store for two small bags of chips. Back at home I got an hour into The House of Mirth and also listened to the first two tracks of a Bela Fleck CD. Dennis had loaned me this CD months ago, and I was only getting around to listening to it now.

---

    Dennis spent much of the day with us, but was on the phone so often that we hardly spoke with him although we were in the same room. On a whim, I suddenly started drawing an SFG super hero. I might end up adding him to the homepage, as a cartoon. I came up with some ideas but I just need to find a way to draw them. Had a couple lengthy calls from some field tech having problems; we could not resolve them, and I think he gave up since he did not call back again. Back home I tried to burn a CDR of U2 concerts I'd collected online. I figured I could fit four MP3 concerts onto one CD, but my burner kept rejecting it. I was only six megabytes over! I hated to drop a track or to only burn three shows and leave all that open space on the disc; so I ended up ripping a couple MP3s to WAV and recompressing them at a lower rate. It's amazing to think that I have twenty-five of the forty-eight shows of U2's North American Elevation tour, and that I got these for free online. In the old days, back in college, I would've had to pay forty to sixty bucks a show (and rarely in DAT quality); but now I can simply download them from FTP sites or web pages! I listened to the rest of the Bela Fleck CD before bedtime, finally able to return it to Dennis.

---

    I had to go to the bank to get a money order. I'm still going crazy on eBay, and had run into a dealer who does not use Paypal. Today was one of the few days I took Telegraph to the expressway and did not see a funeral procession. I almost did, but it turned out to simply be a line of cars with their running lights on. I guess Reid is a big "teacher's pet" today. Dennis, who was in again, took him to Big Fish for lunch, before I came in. I found out some guy from the Atlanta office was in. When they came back from lunch, Dennis took the Atlanta guy to the video production offices and Reid was invited to go there too. Jeremy and I were left behind. (But at least I gave Dennis his CD back.) My big jobs today were to measure the waveform monitors, so they could be shipped out for repairs; and to print up screen grabs of every configuration screen in our on-screen Guide software. Of course, this computer was not hooked up to the printer so I had to copy the screen grabs onto diskette and manually copy them to one of the networked computers. Even this was made more difficult since each diskette I used had some kind of problem. I ended up being able to only copy one screen grab BMP at a time. (And I had to use BMPs since the only graphic program on these computers was Microsoft Paint.)
    After work I went over to the Dearborn Homecoming city festival. It was only up the street, so it was hard not to go. I knew my friend Joe and his family would be there, and I'd brought my two-way radio so we'd be able to meet up. I called out for "Schmoe" on our agreed-upon subchannel but only got crackles back. These seemed to be loudest by the music stage, so I hung around there even though I bet he was over by the carnival rides with his kids. After around a halfhour, I heard him loud and clear. I wondered if he'd gotten new batteries, but it turned out this was his first time calling me. We met up by the Italian American tent and sat around for an hour. Joe found out he and Greg had gotten a bye in the first round of bocce, so they won't play till Sunday. This was unfortunate for me since I won't be able to show up there Sunday. We're hosting our big family get-together picnic then. Nevertheless, Joe and his family will still be showing up at the Homecoming tomorrow, since they live close by. My other buddies and their families will be there too.

---

    My cousin Elizabeth's son Michael was in the paper today. He was modeling in the Kmart circular. He was in the ad below as well as an ad for a vacuum, but the vacuum ad only showed his arms.


    I showed up around two:o'clock for the Homecoming festival in Dearborn. I finally remembered to bring my two-way radio to one of these get-togethers, so I was able to meet up with Joe quite easily. Pretty much as expected, he was by the carnival rides with his kids. We pretty much spent the whole day by the carnival rides; I was only able to take one or two breaks to nip off to a food tent or a beer booth. At five, though, the kids' ride wristbands expired, so we made our way to the other end of the park. Joe had shown up at five or six in the morning to lay blankets down in preparation for the night's fireworks; but the blankets had been thrown aside when the organizers had put barricades up. We ended up near the bottom of the hill now. The crowds had increased a lot, so there long lines and long waits to get our dinners. I of course had to get my traditional shish tawook from the Lebanese booth.
    At eight:thirty, the legendary Tony Orlando took the stage.



As I said on my Music page, I couldn't resist bootlegging him, and an MP3 of one song is available there. He surprised us all by opening up with his biggest hit, Tie a Yellow Ribbon. At ten, Tony was followed by Dearborn's impressive fireworks display. And then it was all over but the long slow crawl out of the city's traffic and thence home.

---

    Today was a busy one, spent on my mom's family reunion picnic get-together. The guests started showing up around two or three. As before, I broadcast the party live on my website, with my wireless webcam. I think this was for the second time.




The dinner was sausages and hot dogs (with homemade rolls, of course), plus lots of salads (potato, Greek, cole slaw, peas and peanuts). I ate way too much, almost thinking I might repeat my nephew's graduation party. I feared I'd developed some allergy to mayonnaise, or maybe it was just that same tropical Travel Smith shirt I keep wearing on these occasions!

---

    I was able to pack a huge dinner of leftovers for work. Reid called me up at home to request I bring a label maker in...so I had quite a haul to drag in. The stupid on-screen Program Guide died again. This time it was the computer's hard drive. We could not boot into Windows NT. At the same time we could not map to a shared network drive, a drive we'd only recently been asked to specially access every Monday; so of course we had to problems on our first Monday. Reid (and I) then had to play phone games with the two help desks as they played Hot Potato with our trouble ticket. After calling them all day, nothing was eventually solved. According to their latest answering machine message, the help desk is aware of the problem.
    Back at home, I finished The House of Mirth before bedtime.

---

    Dave came back, after a long absence, although I only saw him for a little bit. We still couldn't connect with the shared drive, but Dennis was able to dial in to it on his laptop computer. I least I could do my file updates that way, a day late. I got a call from Dave late in the day, asking if Reid and I could hold the fort until Davbe could come back full time. He was asking but the decision had been made to let Jeremy go. I guess the temp agency was charging a lot and our budget couldn't handle it. This would be a shame, since Jeremy had been a good worker and good company.
    After work I stopped at Best Buy. I had the urge to buy DVDs. I wanted to buy the new Behind the Planet of the Apes documentary set and really wanted to get the original Planet of the Apes with it, but evidently the original is out of print. I got Cast Away instead. I had to wait forever to pay for these, since the woman in front of me had to pay by check and the cashier had a tough time getting the check approved. She was on the phone for a quite a while (with a bank I suppose) and then waiting for a manager for quite a while (after giving up on the bank). I suppose I could've gotten into another line, but I felt compelled to stay, determined to see this sale through as well as determined to keep my place here, as misguided as that might be.
    My brother Rick took the family up to Toronto tonight. He felt like driving at night so they'd have all day there tomorrow. I expected they're coming back this weekend. And we get to babysit Jake's fish, Merlin, while he's gone.

---

    Another day spent trying to fix the program guide. I guess we're trying to get the corporate help desk to fix it rather than relying on the support team in San Diego. We also had to investigate some reported problems on another computer, which isn't exactly ours but which is housed in our facility. To put it simply, since the equipment is in our room that other department seems to think we need to fix it, but we'd prefer if they did since it's theirs. Dennis was just about to leave, at five, when a guy from the department called up about that computer, and poor Dennis was stuck on the phone for an additional hour.
    Jeremy found out today he's leaving, and in fact this will happen as early as Friday.
    I was upset to find, once I got home, I'd screwed up my tape of The Wayne Brady Show. I'd left my cable box on NBC instead. I'd done the same stupid thing on Monday, missing my two hour block of Whose Line on Comedy Central. I spent the evening impulsively working on my SFG comic. I'd come up with the idea a couple days ago, and had even drafted some ideas. I scanned those ideas, fixed them in Paint Shop Pro, and was able to upload the first "Adventures of Short Fat Guy" comic by the end of the night.

---

    Dave was in again, staying later than before. We finally found out our program guide computer is covered by our extended service agreement, so the gang in San Diego can fix it after all. I contacted them and found out they'd prefer if we shipped the computer to them. This did not sit well since it means our program guide will be out of commission in the meantime.
    I had a bizarre problem with a dealership by the name of Widener. They had installed one of our receivers and wanted us to program it. They'd done this a day or two before but I'd been able to remotely connect with the receiver. The settings were correct, so in this instance it usually means the tech on-site has tuned the receiver to the wrong satellite. There are so many satellites up there that this is not unheard of. But today, there was a different tech at Widener who'd also installed a different receiver box. And we had the same problem. The tech swore he had the box tuned right, and the settings seemed to suggest he did. The box was evidently tuned to something. But once again I could not connect with the box. A different tech, a different box, but the same problem. I could not explain it.
    At home, I spent the evening working on my Links page. I changed it from its old look to something conforming to the design of my Music and Movies and Gadgets and Food pages.

---

    Jeremy was taken to lunch on his final day. I guess left from there, since I didn't get a chance for any goodbyes when I got in. Not much went on at work. I got an e-mail from a site called Friend Finders. It sounded vaguely familiar so I went ahead and created a personals ad when I got home. Tired of being mopey and honest, I wrote what I hoped was a funny and smart-alecky text...only to find out I'd have to buy a subscription to get the most use out of the site.

---

    I had to work Saturday morning, but only for a couple hours. I had to start a lot earlier than normal, which for me was a good excuse to pick up some Breakfast Burritos from McDonald's. I used to love those things, but it had been a while since I'd seen those for sale, and a while since I'd been out on the road at breakfast time. But I'd recently spotted them again, listed on drive-thru menus.
    I went to the new McDonald's by my sub, but did not see Breakfast Burritos listed. I then took I-75 to the McDonald's in Woodhaven. They had them, so I ordered two. I was downright salivating when I got my bag, since I'd been formulating this plan all night. I drove off, eager to partake of my meal...only to find out I'd been given a Sausage Egg McMuffin!
    AAAAAAAAACCCCKKK!!!!
    Now it became a matter of pride. I refused to go to work unless I got my damned Breakfast Burritos. I went to the "Classic" McDonald's on Southfield Rd, but they didn't sell them either. So I went deliberately out of my way to another McDonald's "somewhat" on my way. But they didn't offer them either. I finally had to give up, after four tries. Luckily I'd left early so I was only a couple minutes late.
    My whole diet was fast food today. I got Arby's for lunch on the way home. And then went out for Taco Bell at dinner time.
    About a week ago I'd joined the Colin Mochrie listserv, from his official site. Since then I'd seen nothing but a bunch of stupid messages from girls saying how "cute" and "cuddly" Colin is. Today the girlie talk was veering into dreams about Colin, and I finally got so sick of it I wrote in, myself: "Please, could someone let me know when this slumber party crap is over?" I unsubscribed by the end of the day.
    I watched Shadow of the Vampire in the afternoon and then went out and rented State & Main and The Gift in the evening.

---

    Along with the movies I'd rented, I even managed to watch X-Men, which I'd borrowed from my nephew. I did some computer work in the afternoon and then finished the X-Men extras in the afternoon. After dinner, I watched The Gift, and thus was able to return four movies Monday.

---

    I stopped at Wendy's on the way to work, having to enter through the exit since a huge orange County truck was blocking the entrance. I got my obligatory spicy chicken combo, and thus was confused when some chicken nuggets fell out of the bag when I accelerated onto Southfield. Further, I discovered a bacon cheeseburger in my foil wrapper. But before I could complain too loudly about being shafted by another fast food place, I discovered I did still have a spicy chicken sandwich and fries in my bag. Somehow, I'd gotten those two other items free!
    I couldn't help wondering if the guy behind got an empty bag.
    I was a little spooked by a spider crawling around the floor at work. Reid made me feel guilty about wanting to stomp it, and there was no way I was going to pick it up and escort it to the door; so we let it crawl away to a corner. I couldn't help noticing I seemed to deliberately shy away from that part of the room for the rest of the day.
    I accidentally discovered a site which explains how to upgrade Dell computers...specifically, Dell Dimension XPTs like I have. As soon as I read the page on upgrading the processor I knew it was inevitable I'd be buying one. After a couple visits to Price Watch it seemed useless to resist and, sure enough, I succumbed by the end of the day and ordered a new processor from a site called M Ware. I got Intel's #BX80526H1000256 Pentium III, a 1 GHz 100 MHz processor that would reportedly would work with my Dell Dimension XPS T500.

---

    Dave came in deliberately so he could work with Dennis after hours on changing some of our software settings. One of the things we wanted to do was remotely upgrade the firmware of our boxes in the field. We needed to test a few in-house boxes first, but found these did not go as planned. Dennis asked about my plans for September 15. We'd planned on going to a Tigers game on the 8^th but I'd gotten a recent e-mail from Dennis saying this was being moved to the 15^th because too many people had conflicts. This figured, since now I had a conflict. The 15^th was my Jimmy Buffett concert in Chicago. Dennis jokingly said I should sell my tickets, and I confessed I was thinking about it. No one else I knew seemed to want to go, and I dreaded having to drive to Chicago by myself.
    I stayed around an hour extra. And for my trouble found that the entire Southfield service drive was blocked off. Every single exit was closed, including the final one which I'd been using for weeks. I was forced to take side streets to finally get back to I-75. Once home, I found out that by amazing coincidence Jimmy Buffett had extended his concert tour. The show on the 15^th would no longer be the finale -- and the additional dates brought him right here to Detroit! Now there was even less reason to hang onto my Chicago tickets!

---

    I forced myself to finally get a haircut before work. Despite having stayed late last night, Dave was in today. He told me that since I couldn't make it to the Tiger game, the company would buy me two tickets to another game. I thought that was quite nice of them, but I told them I could make the game after all since I'd decided to unload my tickets.
    My friend Mike and I have had ridiculously bad luck trying to catch the new Wayne Brady Show. Last week I'd recorded the wrong channel; while at his house, his power had gone out, shutting off his VCR. Now, today, I came home to find our cable was out; and, I heard from Mike how the guys building his patio had blown a fuse so his VCR was once again not working! We seemed doomed to forever missing this show. It didn't even matter to us that the show was reportedly not very good.
    I'd gotten home as quickly as I could to catch the show, but since there was nothing to watch -- and I couldn't even use my cable modem! -- I went over to Big Al's to meet my buddies following their golf game. I found out about Mike's VCR woes and I consoled myself for the loss of cable by joining them for a late dinner. I usually don't eat when I meet them at Big Al's, but this time I got chicken tacos with the rest of them.
    They asked me if I'd be coming to the party this Friday. I could've sworn the party was September 7, but they were saying it was this coming Friday. They'd be picking their teams for Fantasy Football and I was in charge of bringing the Whose Line tapes (the two PPV shows and the 100^th show. Since I have no social life, it was easy to adjust my calendar. But I was still curious where September 7 came from -- especially since the original e-mail invitations said August 17.

---

    I'd watched Monday's Comedy Central line-up Tuesday night, on tape. I was extremely impressed with a comic named Stephen Lynch. I enjoyed his material so much I actually duped the halfhour show to minidisc last night. It was fun teaching myself how to edit the commercials out. I turned them into separate tracks and then erased them, causing seamless joins between the comedy segments. This morning I was pleased to discover Lynch's own web site, and I even ordered his CD. I also did some research on selling tickets on eBay.
    It seems all my September plans are in shambles. Now, this afternoon, I found out that ELO had canceled their tour due to poor ticket sales. I'd been planning on seeing them on the 22^nd.
    Dave let me listen into the weekly conference call to the San Diego support company. We found out that the communication problems that other group were simply due to the fact our receivers were not built for it. We'd need to upgrade to a later model. Dave was deadset against, remembering all too well the nightmare of swapping out every single receiver, a months long process which had ended shortly before I'd been hired. There was also talk about replacing our Program Guide computer.
    At long last, Southfield Expressway was open and I was able to take both expressways home, just like the old days! As soon as I got home I got back onto eBay and impulsively wrote up the page for my auction. I'd paid $230 for my Buffett tickets, so that's what I was going to sell them for, using the Buy It Now option. I put $100 as my opening bid. I put $150 down as a reserve, just for the heck of it. This was only the second time I'd tried to sell something on eBay. I'd once tried to help my dad sell some books (who, coincidentally, was having his garage sale today and tomorrow) and no one had bid. Hopefully, I wouldn't get a repeat of that.

---

    I checked my auction (#1265839928) in the morning, but had yet to get any bids. I was leery about seeing a small legend under my Buy It Now option, saying the option would disappear once the reserve bid had been met. My goal was to sell the tickets for $230, so I did not want this figure disappearing. I poked around the eBay auction settings but couldn't find any reference to the reserve amout. I'd added this in on a whim and now it threatened to spoil my auction.
    I ran into Christa again on the way to my office. I hadn't seen her since late May. She told me she was married now; her wedding had happened early in July. I'd worked with her husband Paul at my previous job, where she and Paul had met, so I made a mental note to send him an e-mail...which, no surprise, I failed to do. Dave was in today, but was at a meeting. I told Reid about my auction so he checked it out. Amazingly, it was already closed; someone had used Buy It Now and bought the tickets for the full amount. I immediately tried to get into my AOL mail, but, of course, the corporate network seemed to have trouble negotiating AOL's Javascript, so I was locked out. It wasn't till the afternoon, when Dave was back, that I was able to confirm a guy named Randall in Illinois had bought my tickets and had already paid for them through Paypal.
    Since I wanted to get out early for the party, it was inevitable that something would keep me from this. After weeks and weeks, Mexico programming suddenly returned. There was nothing in the schedule log about it, so I was pretty ticked off when one of their shows suddenly started at seven. It meant I wouldn't be able to leave till nine. But fortunately Joe's house is close by, and I was able to make it to the party and even pick up beer within fifteen minutes after I left. Despite the fact the guys were there to use the computer to pick Fantasy Football teams, we were still able to watch my Whose Line tapes. I even played the Stephen Lynch tape, and was surprised to find out most everyone already knew who he was. I guess his songs are played on the sports and talk radio stations. I think I drank thirteen neers, which for me might be some kind of record (for one evening); and, as usual, I overstayed my welcome and was the last to leave at two AM.

---

    I had to work again today. Thankfully, it was later than last week so I didn't have to get up quite as early. I pretty much got up at my normal time. I felt obligated to get Breakfast Burritos on the way, even though I was still pretty full from all the snacking last night. But, then again, I hated to miss the opportunity, plus McDonald's owed me from last week. I at least skipped lunch on the way home. I worked on the computer in the afternoon, got Taco Bell for dinner, and then struggled through Requiem for a Dream in the evening which was a hard movie to enjoy.

---

    My brother Mark and his family came over for dinner. I was very disappointed I hadn't gotten my 1 gig processor yet, since it would've been a good opportunity to show it off. Only one of his daughters, Cathy, showed up, since I suppose Heather was busy getting ready for junior year at U of M. Cathy used my scanner to upload some drawings of wolves she'd done to a site called NeoPets.
    Thinking about my new processor got me thinking about the next upgrade I wanted to do. I want to get one of those 100 GB hard drives. I use two hard drives right now and don't have room for a third, so, after our guests had gone, I started messing around and clearing out my partitions. I burned a lot of stuff to CDR just to get it off my hard drive, as if getting ready to make the great swap.

---

    I sent off the Buffett tickets to Randall on the way to work. We'd been under the impression the Program Guide computer was working all right now. We'd run Check Disk on it and NT said it had fixed four bad sectors. It had been working fine for over a week, but when Reid came in today he found the program had crashed again. We tried rebooting and, once again, we now could not even get into NT. I guess the computer missed all the attention and needed to throw a fit again. I let San Diego know that what we'd told them last week was wrong.
    At night, at home, I was disgusted to once again not find my new processor waiting. I checked with the M Ware site and was astounded to find they hadn't even shipped my order! Their catalog page listed the item as being in stock but for some reason they still had not send it to me. So much for paying extra for second day air! I noodled around my web site and discovered my Tummy Name Generator page was messed up. Somehow a huge chunk of its CGI script was missing. I guess I'd inadvertently deleted it while trying to proofread the text. I fixed it, but was chagrined it had been bad for so long.

---

    Reid was teacher's pet once again. He'd noticed something and had mentioned it in an e-mail to our superiors and now he was basking in their praise. Dennis had me check the Program Guide computer some more, trying to run Check Disk again. I used a Win98 boot disk and was puzzled that the computer reported it had no C:\ or D:\ drives, on A:\. I found out how to make an NT boot disk, and the computer saw it only as a non-system disk. Technically speaking, the computer appeared hosed. I tried to catch some of Reid's glory by sending my findings off to our superiors. But they did not respond.
    Late in the day I got word back from M Ware. They gave me no explanation as to why my processor order was taking so long. But they did say I was being given a free upgrade to Overnight shipping, so I should expect my 1 gig chip to arrive tomorrow.

---

    I'd been told yesterday that San Diego could not send us a replacement Program Guide computer since they had none in stock. They continued to insist we'd have to send ours to them. But, amazingly, a new Program Guide computer was delivered to us in the morning. I guess someone had yelled loud enough. NT and the Program Guide software were already loaded. I just needed to configure it for our own system. Having gone through this before, I already knew what settings to use...as well as what mistakes not to make. Strangely, the Guide did not work at first, so I was on the phone with San Diego for some of the afternoon. What I'd done was correct, so we made no changes; and late in the day, the Program Guide started working, as if having corrected itself.
    It had been a rainy day and it was so cloudy that it was quite dark when I left. I decided not to meet the guys at Big Al's. For all I knew golf might've been short and I might end up waiting at the bar for nothing. So I went straight home. This allowed me to finally catch The Wayne Brady Show, which, as I'd somewhat expected, did not seem worth the wait. And right afterward I installed my processor. As that web site had suggested, it was so simple and easy I wished I'd done this months ago. I rebooted, delighting to see "1000 MHz" show up on the screen.

And I eagerly looked forward to fast and trouble-free computing...only to have my Dell lock up about ten minutes later.

---

    Dennis came in, sending off some e-mails. He was on his way home already, looking forward to a three-day weekend up North. I visited the Johnny Carson web site, and I ended up leaving something on their guestbook. (It hasn't shown up yet, so I can't quote it here.) I also tried to participate in the online Chris Carter chat at TV Guide.com. It turned out to be an AOL chat, so I quickly fired up my laptop. As usual, everyone in my Row was spewing out questions, not knowing these would be invisible to the moderators and Carter. I knew enough to use the Ask a Question button, but none of my questions got used anyway. After a while I started sending off snarky questions just to pass the time. "Do you plan on returning to your CSM and Samantha subplots, seeing as they came to such disappointing ends?" "Do you feel the Fox network is holding you hostage?" "Could you ask Gillian why she never returns my phone calls?"
    What with the chat, and spoilers coming out about season nine, and the arrival of The Official Season Seven Guide, I was quite immersed in X-Files this week. I even finished the Guide tonight. I continued work on my Harry Potter CDR, trying to compress all 18 discs of the audiobook for book 4 into one MP3 disc. And I also finally got around to updating my homepage late at night.

---

    I continued work on the Harry Potter MP3 CDR. I'd been compressing the WAVs at a variable bit rate but it soon became apparent that the whole book would not fit on one disc. I was forced to junk all my work, whcih I'd begun Wednesday, and start from scratch. At work I discovered last night's homepage update had prompted an e-mail from Jeremy. Back at home I got back to work on the Harry Potter files. I encoded them at 56kbps but after finishing four CDs it looked like I'd have too much room left over. So I started once again, at 64kbps.
    I was excited to get an e-mail saying the QuickTime problem with IE6 might finally be fixed. I needed to go to the Quicktime page and download an Active X plug-in. I did so, but my audio problem remained. It turned out this plug-in is a fix for the XP version of IE6. Evidently IE6 does not recognize Netscape-style embedded webpage objects, and that's what this fix corrected. Still no word on how I'm supposed to actually listen to QuickTime audio.
    I was ticked off to see my other web site was down, supposedly due to bandwidth overages. This is a load of crap. Since removing my U2 Cleveland show there's nowhere near enough data to warrant exceeding 20 GBs of downloads. Those "Bandwidth Exceeded" pages always seem to show up near the end of the month too, as if it's some blanket effect of doing their bookkeeping. I got back to working on my online Diary -- specifically this very page. I'd left off my August entries on the 10^th, but I finally got around to writing up entries through the 16^th. Foolishly, I stayed up til four:thirty in the morning to do this!

---

    I didn't get up till noon. My plan for the weekend, now that August was complete, was to work on the June page. I'd been putting this off for the longest time simply because it started off with our Buffett debacle. Part of me didn't want to go through it, but mostly I knew it would require doing a lot of video captures and graphic work. But I forced myself to start and, as is apparent, then found it difficult to stop. I also took occasional breaks to rip more Harry Potter MP3s. I eventually finished the nine discs in part one and got halfway through part two.
    I got my Planet of the Apes DVD but not my Wicker Man DVD from DVD Planet. I also got a packet from ASCAP. Apparently they were giving me the "opportunity" to pay them a minium of $264 to keep my music downloads and downstreams legal. Ironically, the majority of files on my site are for Jimmy Buffett, who's allied with BMI. But, I found out later, U2 is allied with ASCAP. I went out to Taco Bell for dinner. My luck finally ran out in that I got caught by the train on Vreeland. My nephews Joe and John dropped their little brother Jake off to be babysat. I didn't notice it at the time but JOhn has gotten his eyebrow pierced, the idiot.
    I happened to be watching a tape of Johnny Carson. It was fun watching my nephew watch it. Most of the celebrities meant nothing to him, but he liked the animals and the sillier skits. Afterward I got back to working on my online diary. I finished the August page and then stayed up til around two in the morning working on the June page.

---

    Phil surprised me this morning; he e-mailed me asking if I was interested in going to Vegas in November. It was certainly something to think about...but I can already bet the trip somehow involves November 12, when Buffett is in town.
    I spent the whole day working on Harry Potter and the June page again. I finished up ripping the 18 Harry Potter CDs before dinner time, at 64kbps 44kHz mono. It worked out to be around 580 MBs, so I had a hundred twenty megabytes left over. Some of the CD tracks were in stereo, so I had the room to go back now and redo some of those tracks at 128kbps. It turned out more tracks than I'd expected were in stereo, so I was forced to spend the evening actually listeing to the audiobook to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I got through four discs, but then had to stop at nine to watch John Cleese on The Learning Channel, in a show called The Human Face. I was quite pleased to unexpectedly discover Michael Palin was part of the show too!

    I discovered the buyer of my Buffett tickets had given me feedback on eBay, so I was glad to know the transaction was complete. I finished up the June page in the evening, and then brought this August page up to date too.

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    Mike sent me some bad news in the morning. His computer had completely crapped out over the weekend. One of his hard drives was completely hosed due to some inexplicable problem with the allocation tables. I'd had the same problem a long time ago, and a program called Lost & Found (from Power Quest) had helped out a lot. I offered to bring it to Big Al's sports bar when I'd see him Wednesday, but by the end of the day Mike was e-mailing us that he'd been spurred into ordering a new system from Dell.
    Things looked strange when I got in to work. Reid was not in the room. I assumed he must've left for the lavatory, unable to wait till I arrived. It took several minutes before I realized my mistake. He'd asked me on Friday to come in early today, because he had a doctor's appointment. I had completely forgotten, so he had obviously been forced to abandon the post to keep the appointment. I guess I should've know better than to agree to anything before a weekend; I have a knack for going through a complete brain wipe between the lobby and my car, and even more so on Fridays.
    It took a while to dawn on me that the fact I was alone meant I had to field every phone call. Luckily, it was not too busy, but by the end of the day my jaw was tired from talking and I felt like I'd worked a double shift. I ordered another item today, courtesy of Tolkien Online. I found out a place called Badali Jewelry sells facsimiles of The One Ring. They looked great and I could not resist. The solid gold rings were far too expensive, so I bought a gold-plated One Ring for forty bucks. I was definitely multitasking tonight. I watched the night of The Human Face, while at the same time I listened to the first night concert of the second half of Jimmy Buffett's tour on Radio Margaritaville, while at the same time I listened to Stephen Fry read Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire to quality check the MP3s I was making.

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    It was either from Tech TV or C|Net I learned that it's possible to Instant Message someone on a network even with a firewall. Windows has its own Winpopup program. I tried it out with Joe at work, since he works for the same company but in a different building. He was able to reach me, but I could not send to him.
    Mike was upset to find his Dell computer would not show up til late in September. I e-mailed if he knew of any 7200rpm 100 GB hard drives other than Western Digital. Maxtor makes a 100 GB drive, but it's 5400rpm. Mike wrote back the Western Digital was available at Best Buy with a $100 rebate. It sold at the list price of $299, but I could get a $100 gift card. This was too good to pass up. I wasn't quite ready to buy another upgrade, since I'd just gotten my processor last week; but this was too good to pass up. So, after work I hopped over to the nearby Best Buy and got the hard drive.
    I did not want to rush, so I forced myself to wait till tomorrow before putting the new hard drive in. I blew out the old hard drive ythe end of the night, copying all the remaining files to CDR and then using Partition Magic to erase the drive. This would be good news for my brother Mark, since he would be inheriting this old drive and my old processor...sooner than he expected. I went to bed, but was unable to sleep. I kept thinking about putting the new hard drive in, but I knew I should wait; but by around two:thirty the siren song was too great. I decided to just get up and get it over with. The hard drive was easy to swap; but instead of just finishing the job and going back to bed, I felt compelled to power up the computer, get into Windows, and run Partition Magic again. I confirmed the hard drive was there, but I noticed only 95 GB was listed. This was close to 100, so I shrugged it off; but it struck me as funny how I was missing a whole five gigabytes, even though that was over ten times the size of my first Packard Bell. Instead of just confirming the hard drive was there, I ran Partition Magic and started creating partitions. I created a ten gig partition for the future home of Windows 2000, then a five gig partition for the future reinstall of BeOS. I wasn't sure what else to do, so I just created an 85 GB "Data" drive. This turned out to be foolish, since I hadn't considered how long it would take for Partition Magic to prepare and create the drives. Instead of just leaving the computer running all night, I was driven to stick with to the end, killing time by watching Requiem for a Dream.

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    It took about ninety minutes to run Partition Magic last night. I think I finally got to sleep at around four:thirty. Now that I had graded the land and tilled the field, it was time to start filling up all my new hard drive real estate. I started by installing BeOS. I've never had much luck installing BeOS straight from the new version (and the old version seems to have more extras), so I installed BeOS 4.5 first. Then, from within BeOS, I ran Installer and upgraded to BeOS 5. Oddly, the upgrade failed right at the end. I rebooted just to see if it might've worked. I forgot how the BeOS CD was bootable, so I ended up in BeOS after all. I redid the install, and this time it worked without a problem. I didn't have time to start configuring stuff, so I saved that for tonight.
    I'd managed to finish my Harry Potter MP3s and was able to burn my Goblet of Fire CDRs. By remarkable coincidence, Dennis happened to be in today, so I was able to give him his copy immediately. He wanted to play it for his kids, so he talked about extracting the MP3s back to CDs. This would be ungainly, since it would be eighteen CDs (since I'd ripped them from my eighteen CDs). I told him how he should use a Rio Volt, like I do, and I even went back to the parking lot to fetch my MP3 CD player from my car.
    There's been some debate about how to set up our boxes with that new company we're dealing with. We know the boxes have to be at right polarity, but the new company's engineers had sent out an e-mail saying it's left polarity. I got a call in the evening about a problem box. The tech on site said he'd seen an e-mail that the box should be set for left polarity but I told them no. They tried right, but could get no signal. They went ahead and tried left, and immediately the boxed tuned and was operational. Then, of course, the tech had to ask me why the box had tuned on left if it was supposed to be right. I really wanted to explain the piece of crap just wanted to piss me off.
    Since I had plans to get out at eight, I guess it was inevitable that Mexico screw me over. Instead of running from six to eight, as it had been doing the last few weeks, the Mexico late show was inexplicably starting at seven, which held me hostage till nine. I got to Big Al's though, and was able to hand over my Lost & Found diskettes to Mike as well as pass out CDRs of my Goblet of Fire rips.
    I decided to give Linux a try when I got home. I've had a copy of Mandrake Linux sitting around for a year or two. I figured I might as well load it along with BeOS and Windows 2000, so I started it tonight. I had trouble getting it to install into the partition I wanted, so I tried a different tack. I booted into Windows 98 and ran Partition Magic to create the Linux partitions ahead of time. I then went back into DOS and tried again. It sure looked like I was installing, but suddenly it started rebooting before I'd gotten a chance to configure anything. I tried to get into Linux after the reboot, but nothing happened. I now have a feeling the install was trying to test the boot disk I'd just created, but at the time this hang-up was the last straw. I restarted the computer, got into Windows 98 again, and deleted the Linux partitions I'd just created. I turned them back into the planned Windows 2000 partition. The changes forced me to run Power Quest's Drive Mapper, which took quite a while each time, but at least all my shortcuts were maintained. I found out however that BeOS was dead. Its partition hadn't changed, but I was unable to boot into it. So I ended up reinstalling the whole operating system again. I had the same problem upgrading to BeOS 5 as this morning, but the same success when I tried again. But, once again, I didn't have time to configure anything; and it bugged me that I was no farther along than I'd been this morning.

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    Mike had bad news this morning. As I'd feared, Lost & Found said it would not work on his system since, like a dinosaur hatchling, it had imprinted on the first computer it had been operated on. I thought I'd installed the upgrade that would eliminate this, but evidently not. What was worse, Mike was willing to buy a copy -- since it had at least shown him the list of all the files he could restore -- but it appeared Power Quest no longer sold the program. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't, since Lost & Found had been a good program and had really performed a miracle when I'd been able to save all my digital photos during my own allocation table problem. I tried to search out alternatives but discovered to my horror that it was already 11:45! It was time for me to leave and I hadn't even showered yet!
    It's been said that I take too long in the shower and that I use up all the hot water. But I would've done them proud this morning, since I was washed, dressed, and groomed in about fifteen minutes. I still got in to work late, but not as late as I might've.
    After work I gave Mike a call. He'd removed the damaged drive and hooked it up to a working computer. I was able to FTP my backup copy of Lost & Found to him, which he transfered to diskette. This time, it said it could not operate because it was an unauthorized copy...even after he downloaded and installed the update patch. He ended up downloading a similar program. We ended the call as he began using to this program to search his drive.

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    I expected it to be a very quiet day, the day before a holiday weekend. The parking lot was a bit more crowded than expected. Reid hadn't gotten any calls in the morning, but as soon as he left, right after two, the phone started ringing. It was not inundated with calls, but there were certainly more than expected. These tapered off significantly at around six. Programming ended at around six:thirty on all channels, and since the day was now so quiet I decided to leave early at seven. Reid had left an hour and a half early, our big boss hadn't come in at all; so I gave myself a break too.
    I hadn' really intended to, but I installed Windows 2000 again when I got home. I went back to running a three-OS system: WIndows 98, BeOS 5, and Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 install took pretty much all evening, and I rebooted the computer countless times each time I downloaded a new add-on or critical update from the Windows Update site. I deliberately stayed clear of IE6, and was relieved to be able to hear my old QuickTime files again.

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