September 1999

9/30/99
At long last I finally got a hold of Nikki, her granddad is better, and she's thinking about coming out to visit in October, or perhaps before Xmas, though I have now been invited to christmas dinner in Boston with her family, will have to think about that, especially given the normal weather conditions. Was kinda under the weather most of the week and the weekend.
9/24/99
bought pet food for the kittys, now maybe they won't complain so much. The company is throwing a sponsored outing to the Giants game on Sunday got 2 tix, a parking pass & $20 in giant bucks to spend, should be fun, but may not be able to find anyone to go on short notice. Oh well.
Work is now claiming we'll get an internet accessible VPN to access work via any ISP, time to order that DSL service and get that sun box rebuilt ;)
9/23/99
Wow, it's been awhile and no update, no one sent email, maybe nobody's reading ;) Saturday I went with Shannon to participate in a beta test of her company's new art auction site -- not bad, not great, we'll have to see how it goes (if you're into art check out her company at Art Insider) Since I was under the weather most of the week I slept in almost all of sunday. Been catching up on work, but managed to play volleyball at the rec league tuesday -- we're gonna move up to the next level, hope they're all up to it. Yesterday I was supposed to play with Daryl & Candice in SF, but Daryl was sent out of town (short notice again !!) so it was just Candice and I at the Embarcadero YMCA, tried to get Tiffany to show, but apparently the busy girl was playing against some college team in LA ;) Play was decent, but it was really dark in there, in any case I need to start rounding out my play for the Dallas tourny in Oct. Really only knew Candice at the Y, but there was another NAGVA setter there (the snotty one from Denver/Houston/Seattle). Afterwards it was dinner at Max's (food was "just ok" skipped dessert) and then off to some party/function. Turns out there was a free shindig at the Design Center (8th & Patrick Henry) hosted by the SOMA Magazine (?) nice place, lots of posh folks, even though it was a "jeans" ball. Drinks were a bit on the expensive side but since there was no cover I can't complain. The dj was pretty good, but they played almost exclusively industrial house remix so I didn't dance much. Still fun though, kinda what you'd expect an SF city party to be like, lots of tall, "beautiful"/stylish/trendy people.
It rained yesterday too (and more lightning and thunder tuesday night) and now my car's all dirty (I've never seen it rain dust before, very strange)
9/16/99
Life is good, I discovered that American had bought Reno Air, so I used my free round trip ticket for the Dallas tourny. It saved me $500+ then I noticed that there was a (web) fare war going on and I got my next Seattle trip for $88 (whee!). I also worked up a web page for my sonic season ticket assignments.
9/14/99
Managed to hold down the dinner Kat & I had last night (some Mongolian Grill place in Mt View, won't be going there again), then went to see Chill Factor, it was ok, the dialog was pretty funny once Cuba Gooding Jr got into the film, and there were some interestingly gory parts. Walking back to the car afterwards its "stop don't go by the car", there is a (smallish) skunk, who apparently was doing a Pepe le Pew, we think he (she?) was checking out my car to see if it was a large skunk (being black and white) it finally wandered off and we could get in and drive away. Could have been a very smelly incident if we hadn't spotted it from across the way.
9/13/99
Its bonus points day, Shaunagh sent me her wedding picture so its up on the page too. Not going to waste time with an additional email though. Especially since the one I sent out announcing that all of the wedding pictures were up, had a typo (it needs a .html at the end of it) Good catch awards go to ScottT, TiffanyY, and KerryK. I'm assuming the rest of the folks either figured it out, or they just deleted the email ;) On a work note, the plagues continue, our network is up and fast, but now our main build tree is corrupted -- couldn't get a simulator up and running for tests until about 4pm *ugh*. Oh well Kat's in town, so it'll be an early dinner, movie and catching up on the Seattle gossip tonight. Maybe, just maybe, I might be putting up a few more pictures tonight, especially since Angel actually sent out a few this time.
9/12/99
Friday I went to a Giants game at the "Stick" it was pretty windy and cold, but it was fun to see an NL game. Saturday I played a sand tourny with Amber, it was a fun tourny, but I got progressivly worse as the day wore on. It was windy and overcast in Santa Cruz, and my lack of (recent) play really started to show in the afternoon, I guess sand has that effect. After the tourny we played a few more games with one of her friends. I managed to have another small world incident. One of the women I played against (Hanshin??) was a very good player (as was her partner Mike) and happens to live "over the hill" in Santa Clara, she said she might be interested in playing some reverse-coed pickup and I mentioned that I tried to set up with Miki, and it turns out that she'd just received email from Miki, without knowing who she was, I guess they have common friends. Sunday I vegged, and have been working on getting the pictures from the weddings online, I got Cindy & Scott's up and am working on the bundle from Angel & Ken's shower & wedding.
9/9/99
Well, as we approach the mini-millenium problem (9/9/99) there has been nothing but bad luck at work. Tuesday the network wasn't up after the weekend "upgrade", then that afternoon (after the network was working) one of our building neighbors did something that caused an hour power outtage, which also caused network instability, got maybe a full 2 hrs worth of work in. Wed morning when I get in I find that power had been out sinc 6am or so -- a power line had failed into the main transformer for our buildings, power was out till 10, then the lights came on, but none of the powerstrips worked, then at 11 we could boot our machines up, but none of the servers (or the routers) were up. Turns out the server room AC had broken. Finally by 2 or so everything was running (slowly) again. You'd think we were done, but *NO* at 4:30 it started to rain (whee!) but even better, there was thunder and lightning all around (seems like every direction I looked) and it went on till at least 1am (then I went to bed). Hoping for a better day, I read in my email today that there is now *flooding* in the server room, and we might shutdown again. Rumors of locusts abound, we're out of diet soda, and believe me, I'll be out of here before the rest of the plagues hit. ;)
9/7/99
Not only were there network problems all weekend, the power was out for a portion of the day, at this rate I'm lucky I even got through my email. Oh well at least I managed to wash my car yesterday, and even got to go see "Universal Soldier 2" blech. And on the news front, it appears that Cheryl (good Cheryl not bad Cheryl) got engaged this past weekend, though she doesn't have a ring yet (way to go Kent, *not*) and, while they're not announcing a date yet, I'm putting the info here anyway ;)
9/5/99
Just heard that Barri's dad is back in the hospital again, that makes two, I suppose I should wonder about the the third one. Shannon's decided to stay with her boss' family (and network) so I'll still have a spare room for when Kat comes to visit on the 12th. Friday I managed to scrounge up new cube parts for the custom re-arrangement, but what was more amazing was watching the movers do the reconfiguration of the other building, the moved 12 intact cubes all at once (furniture skates) by the time I was done it was 10:30 -- oh well I'll probably finish decorating tomorrow. Lounged around most of Sat and Sunday, but did manage to see "6th Sense" and "Mickey Blue Eyes". Visited about 3 bike stores looking for the Trek quick connect clip for my seat bag, turns out Trek is rare down here (Cannondale is even rarer) most everyone has Specialized I may have to wait for my next trip to Seattle to pick the part up.
9/3/99
BUMMER !! Nikki's Grandfather just went into the hospital, so she wanted to go there instead, just in case, so she won't be making it out this weekend, hope her granddad fares well. We'll try to plan another time (maybe DC for thanksgiving)
Daryl's in town (well, in SF) so I got together with Candice and he, for drinks, food and much carousing around. We tried to bar hop Russian Hill (about 4 places) some were packed others really dead, finally we ended up at this place called Mick's on Van Ness where a band called Tainted Love was playing 80's covers (mostly rock, some wave) they were actually pretty good and the place was packed until close (1:45AM or so) which made for a really late night for me. Line of the night, Candice to Daryl: "Guess you won't be getting any tonight" you had to be there..
Since Nikki's not going to be here, I'm going to try and hook up with a Sac team, and ride out to the tourny with Candice -- may even get a chance to catch up with PattyY who's living there now.
The only other thing of interest is that we spent about an hour disassembling someone's cube (partition walls, table tops and all) to re-arrange things, this is good, cuz I'm probably going to do mine this evening when the power is out (I really hate sitting with my back to the door)
9/1/99
Hey, got a call from Shannon, she finally made it in, so I went to dinner with she and her mom. It was pretty fun, turns out she works right by my work. She doesn't know where she is going to stay yet, but she may live in my spare room for the remainder of Sept (after Nikki leaves) while she looks for an apartment.