Saturday's upgrade work went well, after some initial troubles and worries. We've got to go back tomorrow to finish a few things, but the bulk of the job is done. I was too busy most of the day to upload pictures, but I should definitely have spare time tomorrow. I don't have to be in the office until 10 AM, so I even get to sleep in a little. After spending all day indoors, I didn't want to go straight back to my room, so I sat out on the hotel terrace enjoying a beer and the night air before a late dinner. I didn't eat until after 11 PM, but the food and the atmosphere were worth the wait. Tomorrow night, the locals have promised us a big dinner to celebrate the success of the project. "Excellent."

I've posted some pictures from Thursday on my Webshots page. You can see the meal I had yesterday for lunch, the office tower where I'm working, and a few of the sights of Frankfurt. I'll post some more pictures on Saturday when there's a lull in the work.

Today wasn't too interesting. Thai food for lunch, Chinese for dinner, both in the same street where there are many different restaurants with sidewalk service. We did some more prep work for tomorrow's upgrade, but they're well prepared here, so there hasn't been much to do. I have to be up extra early tomorrow, so I'm back at my hotel flipping through the channels and trying to understand German TV.

I haven't tried speaking German yet. Everyone we've dealt with at restaurants and shops has spoken English as soon as I or my colleague start talking. I felt bad for the girl behind the counter at Haggen-Daz tonight, where we got some ice cream for dessert. When I asked her how much, I could see she knew the amount in German, but had to think what it would be in English. I wanted to hold up some euro notes and say "just take the one you need." But after a few seconds she figured out the number.

After lunch we took a walk from the restaurant row down to the river, where there are carnival booths and rides set up for the festival that begins tonight. There were several booths selling different kinds of sausage, like currywurst and paprikawurst. There were others that were even more unappetizing. There may have been a tunawurst, or maybe it was tuna pizza. Either way, I'm not interested.

Today's entry comes to you from the Frankfurt office. I arrived this morning after the usual uneventful flight. I think I slept for about an hour, though I can't be sure. I don't feel quite as tired right now as I did at the same time in London a few weeks ago. You can check out my hotel's web site if you like, so you can see my luxurious accommodations.

My hotel is a few blocks from the office. My colleague and I found the office by my remembering the street name and our knowledge that the office is in one of Frankfurt's newest and largest office towers (specifically, the Main Tower). We're sitting in the IT director's office here, with a beautiful view of the city laid out below us. I'm so jealous of the IT staff here: everyone gets a window with a view. Meanwhile, I get stuck in a cube in the server room back in New York.

This afternoon, one of the IT staff took us to a biergarten restaurant just outside downtown Frankfurt. I had a mug of the restaurant's dark beer and a giant skillet filled with bacon, sausage, pork, steak, peppers, green beans, kidney beans, and potatoes. If not for the copious amounts of caffeine I'm now consuming, I'd be passed out on the desk. I can't let every meal be like that one or I'll have a heart attack by Monday. I haven't seen too many overweight Germans so far, so there must be something in the beer that keeps the metabolism up and processing the fat.

I've taken the plunge and turned on Earthlink's advanced spam blocker feature. This action makes me a hypocrite, as I posted on Slashdot a few months back that I'd never use a feature like this, because of the adverse effect on unknown senders (they get a link to an "add me to your contacts" form, and I get a daily notice of unknown senders). I've been using Mozilla's advanced spam filter, and that blocks about 80% of the spam I receive. But that only works when I check my e-mail from my home PC or work laptop. Lately I've been traveling and reading my e-mail on my Blackberry, which doesn't have any spam filters. So I spend about 25% of my Blackberry time deleting spam, especially while I'm on the road. It's become too much of a pain in the ass to ignore any longer. Since I'm leaving for Frankfurt on Wednesday, this seems like the perfect time to give the feature a week-long trial. So if you're e-mailing me and I don't know you, you'll get a strange response but I'll add you to my contacts if you're legit. Otherwise, screw you, spammer!

I wish I'd had my camera when I visited with my buddy Jon "Bear Magnet" Amato on Saturday. Jon has been walking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine since the spring. He hasn't shaved or had a haircut in over three months. I didn't know this, so when I saw him for the first time since he started his hike, I was shocked by the mountain man who greeted me. The clean-shaven Amato is no more; he has been replaced by Grizzly Adams, Jr. He says he won't cut his hair or shave until he returns to Washington, DC in October, so I'll get a picture of him then.

Photos from London and Mississippi are now available at my Webshots site. I need to update my web site with the new link.

I haven't posted anything for a week, but I've got a good excuse. I've been on the road again. Liz and I just got back from a week in Mississippi for her grandmother's 90th birthday. She was surprised by all the people who showed up for the weekend, including us and her youngest daughter. We had a great time catching up with her family and eating delicious food from Little Dooey, Harvey's, and other Starkville restaurants. It's good to be back in New York, if only for a week before my next trip out of town. I picked up Liz's German phrasebook while we were at home. I'm looking forward to gorging myself on knockwurst, schnitzel, spaetzel, and who knows what else for a week. I'm sure that by the end of the trip I'll be sorry to leave, but I'd prefer to spend most of my summer at home where I belong.

Pictures from London and Mississippi will be posted whenever I think about it.

Despite my planning, I woke this morning at 5:45 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I scheduled myself for the later flight today (12:45 PM) so I wouldn't have to get up at the crack of dawn, but it seems my body had other ideas. I've been up for a while now, and I don't have anything to do until at least 8 AM, when Tesco opens and I can buy more Cadbury's chocolates to take home for Liz. So I've been surfing and planning the next two days, which promise to be busy as I get home and have only a few hours tomorrow to finish arrangements for our trip to Mississippi on Thursday.

On Sunday I went to Broadstairs to visit my grandmother and cousin. I had a good time seeing them, and it was a refreshing change of pace to get out of the city for a few hours and see rural England again. My grandmother is still in good health and looking forward to coming to California in a few weeks. I had hoped to get some work done or at least play around on my laptop on the train, but the train was crowded in both directions with beachgoers and the seats were far too cramped for me to do anything, even read comfortably. Amtrak it was not -- more like a commuter train. At least I had a seat both ways. After I got back to London I had to walk around Leicester Square for a while to stretch my legs out. I remembered Rob Truhn's comment about taking the bus from Washington, DC, to New York ("it's the train for my ass") and wondered how he would handle this particular train.

Monday was a mostly normal work day for me, albeit in a different city. I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant, Wagamama, where I had a chicken and rice dish with a thick broth of mushrooms and vegetables and some duck gyoza dumplings. After work we went to the Bishop of Norrich pub near the office for some Old Wallop, and then to a Thai restaurant for dinner. I had pork and prawn dumplings and a seafood stir-fry, plus some pad thai-style noodles. I also enjoyed enormous quantities of wine, so I'm glad that I don't have much of a hangover this morning. I don't think it would be too pleasant to get on a plane feeling queasy. But I did accomplish my goal of getting drunk on my firm's dime.

One other bit of news: my travel schedule has changed. One of my co-workers isn't able to go to Frankfurt at the end of July for that upgrade, so I'm going in his place. It wasn't entirely unexpected, though I wish it were Rome instead. Aside from the beer, I don't think there's much to see or do in Frankfurt. And I don't speak a word of German anymore (I had learned a little when I was in preschool, many years ago). Maybe now is a good time to go to the Heidelburg Restaurant at 86th and 2nd so I can get a preview of the cuisine I'll be eating for a week. At least I'll be done with my work on this project one week earlier, I won't have to go to DC for their upgrade, and I get the rest of August to enjoy the new apartment and prep for the NYC Century ride.

That's it for me until I get back to New York. Time to pack my stuff and get outta here.

The London office server upgrade went better than I expected today. We only had a few minor hiccups along the way, and though it took about 15 hours to complete, I think we've done an excellent job and the users here shouldn't have any problems on Monday morning. So tomorrow (Sunday) I'm off to visit my grandmother in Broadstairs. Hopefully no one will call me in a panic, since I'll be over two hours away.

I'm not sure if I'm souring on the hotel bar here, or if I'm just not interested in drinking alone and making a spectacle of myself. I had one drink there tonight and after twenty minutes, that was all I needed. There was a DJ working tonight so the music was extra loud, but the crowd wasn't as big as the previous two nights have been. While I still think it's the greatest bar in the world that will allow me in to drink, I realize now that I had a great time here three years ago because of the people I was here with, not because of the bar or this hotel in and of itself. I can have a great time at really crappy bars and restaurants if I'm in good company. And I'm not enjoying this bar anymore, mostly because of my lack of company. And I don't think there should be anything wrong with that opinion. I guess I don't want to admit that I'm maturing and I'd rather spend my free time sitting in my room listening to music or reading than at the bar drinking by myself. I still think my office owes me a drunken evening. Maybe that's what I'll do on Monday night. It doesn't matter much if I'm hung over for my flight back.

I got plenty of sleep last night, after a delicious dinner from the Asia de Cuba restaurant at the hotel and a few drinks at the Light Bar. I drank alone, which isn't my favorite activitity, but since no one was around to drink with me, I wasn't going to let my singleness keep me out of my favorite bar in the world. I'm sure I looked pathetic, standing around by myself while others partied with huge groups, but I didn't care as much as I used to. Back in college, if I was alone at a party, I worried about what everyone else thought of me. This time, I didn't care so much. I'll be back there tonight, but I can't allow myself more than one drink. I have to get up early Saturday morning for the upgrade, the reason I came to London in the first place. It would be a good idea for me to be responsible and make sure I get to the office on time.

I've arrived safely in London, gotten settled at my hotel, and spent most of the day at the office, getting reacquainted (I was here three years ago). I haven't slept since Tuesday night, since I can't ever sleep on planes, so I'm keeping myself going with crappy coffee and water. If the caffeine doesn't keep me running, the constant trips to the bathroom should do the trick. I had a bit of an adventure this morning, getting to a Citibank ATM a few blocks from my hotel, then finding my way on the Underground to the office. Before that, I had a two-hour car ride in from the airport. Next time, I'm taking the shuttle train from Gatwick to Victoria Station: it's quicker and cheaper. Not that the cost matters when the office pays, but I like the convenience of the train.

I'm just about ready for my trip to London. I leave Wednesday evening for six days in the greatest city in Europe (my biased opinion, but hey, it's my blog). I'm working on a major network server upgrade for my job, and the upgrade requires some of us to travel to the overseas offices to do the work. I'm only going to London; one guy from New York is going to Paris, Rome, and Frankfurt. If I'd thought about it, I would have requested Paris and tried to schedule the upgrade so that it was the same weekend as the end of the Tour de France. But I'm happy with London. I know the city, I speak the language, and the people in that office are friendly and fun to hang out with. I get to fly business class and stay in the same fancy hotel I stayed in the last time I was in London, the St. Martin's Lane Hotel. You can check out the entire Ian Schrager group of hotels on their web site. Aside from its location in Leicester Square and its comfortable rooms, the hotel features the best hotel bar I've ever seen. The Light Bar is (or at least was in 2000) a hip hangout for models, celebrities, and hotel guests. Basically it was a swanky club that would never let me in, except that they have to allow hotel guests. So I got to drink and drool over attractive models and the occasional celebrity partygoer (John McEnroe walked right by me several times). I hope it's still as popular as it was then. If not, at least the drinks are good and my firm is buying.

Liz and I saw Finding Nemo on July 4, in the small multiplex at 86th and 3rd. The movie was wonderful: great for little kids who will like the story and the colorful fish, but entertaining for adults who will appreciate the celebrity voices and more sophisticated gags. Liz pointed out that the lobsters who walk through one scene speak with New England accents. I missed that one, but there are many other such jokes. I liked it even more than I enjoyed Monsters, Inc.. It's another triumph for Pixar and Disney, which makes me wonder how Disney's bottom line would look without the Pixar films on the ledger. IIRC, the last few Disney-produced animated movies have not been so successful, but everything Pixar does is cinematic gold.

Last night, we attended the New York Philharmonic's free concert in Central Park. I think the threat of rain kept people away, because we arrived in the park around 6:30 and found a good spot underneath a tree about 150 yards from the stage. Usually showing up that late means you're forced to squeeze in between early arrivers or find a spot far away from the stage, where you can't hear anything. Also, the audience listened to the announcements from the stage to please keep quiet so that we could all enjoy the music. The first time we went to one of the free concerts we were far from the stage and surrounded by noisy groups, so we hardly heard any music. This time, every note was clear, and the music was fantastic. It was an all-Russian composers program: Borodin, Tchaikovsky, and Moussorgsky. The Tchaikovsky violin concerto was exceptional: the soloist, playing on a 1715 Stradivarius, had a clear tone and total command of this difficult work, and the orchestra was excellent as always. I know every note of this concerto, as it's one of my favorites, and this performance was energetic and compelling. I don't know about anyone else, but I was hanging on every note. The second half of the concert was Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, another of my all-time favorites. Listening to this piece brought back memories from my childhood of my brother and I trying to play it on the piano and studying the orchestral score, comparing it with the piano original. For the record, my brother had more success at the piano than I did, to my eternal chagrin. What I love about this work is that it's so chordal: since it's originally for piano, it's full of great chords for brass, winds, and even strings in some places. There are huge, booming chorales for brass, quiet harmonies for winds, lumbering marches for strings. For about a half hour, I was 14 again, sitting in front of the stereo in my room with the score, discovering the finer points of orchestration.

I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night. It's a great book, full of adventure, mystery, and humor, but Goblet of Fire is still my favorite in the series. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I won't post any sort of review here. But for those interested in parallels between Harry Potter and another great sci-fi universe, please see this detailed list over at TheForce.net. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't notice most of them.

For my next book, I'm continuing to broaden my literary horizons and read classics that my wife has always loved. So I've started Dickens' Great Expectations. I saw the 1997 movie with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert DeNiro, but I'm trying not to imagine those people in the key roles. Besides, Liz tells me that the movie is not an accurate representation of the book. My last experience with Dickens was A Tale of Two Cities in high school, of which I read little. Instead, I'm not proud to say that I used the Cliffs Notes and got an A on the exam anyway. I couldn't get into that book, and I was extremely busy with other work at the time. But so far, GE is more approachable that I would have expected, and I'm already absorbed in the story.

After this book, if I can stand another tough one, I'm hoping to tackle Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I've read some great reviews of that novel, so despite warnings of its difficulty, I've got to see what all the fuss is about.

This morning, I noticed this item on ESPN.com. I don't know much about Marvel Smith, but obviously the Steelers have great confidence in him if they're giving him this much money. However, this sentence in the article bothers me:

"Another key element: Despite three full seasons in the league, Smith won't turn 25 years old until August, and locking him up for six more seasons means the Steelers won't have to worry about the crucial left tackle position for a long time."

Thanks, Len. Why don't you just jinx him? For some reason, I foresee an injury-filled two seasons for Smith, after which he's released by the Steelers. I hope that doesn't happen, but I've got a bad feeling about this.

Late at night, the traffic outside our apartment is beginning to annoy me. Apparently trucks aren't allowed on the FDR, so they use 1st Avenue to go uptown through Manhattan. And they all seem to do it starting around 10 PM, continuing all night. Our bedroom is far from the windows on the 1st Avenue side of the apartment, so we don't notice the noise while we're trying to sleep, but it's a big problem when we're trying to watch TV. I hope we're not bothering our downstairs neighbor by using the stereo and turning up the volume to hear the TV over the traffic. I'm also annoyed by the late-night revelers at The Gaf, the bar next door, but since it's a decent place, I can forgive them. Maybe in a few years, when I become an old man and completely anti-social, I'll get really upset.

We continue to discover great new channels on the digital TV system. Last week I watched a program about the development of the Luftwaffe's escort fighter on Discovery Wings. Last night, Ovation ran a three-hour marathon of The Phil, a late 1990s documentary on the Philharmonia orchestra in London. Late one night, VH1 Classics had a show called “The World's Fugliest Rock Stars” on the schedule, but it started at 2 AM and I had to go to bed.

We installed our air conditioner on Saturday afternoon, and now that we're finally getting some summer weather, we're happy we did. We also bought a new bed and mattress, a variety of household items at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and the new Harry Potter book. I'm about 200 pages into the last item, and it's good so far. It is far darker than the other books, and Harry's quite the moody teenager. I don't want to spoil it for anyone else, so I'll keep my other thoughts on the book to myself.

I had to pay for the cleaning and painting of the old apartment, but now it looks fantastic, like we never lived there. I may have complained loudly about the apartment, but the truth is that we had too much furniture and junk in there, and a more creative decorator could live comfortably for years. I tried to list the apartment in my firm's daily newsletter, but they rejected the ad because we're using a broker to find a new tenant, and the firm's policy is not to print any real estate services' listings.

So I'll post my ad here.

One bedroom apartment available in heart of Greenwich Village, just off Sixth Avenue. New fixtures in bath and kitchen, large closet. Apartment has been renovated in the last four years and recently painted. Pets OK. Steps from West 4th St. subway station (A,C,E,F,V trains), five minute commute to Lower Manhattan and 10 minutes to midtown. Dozens of great restaurants and shops within walking distance, one block from Washington Square Park. Rent is $1570. Available July 1. For more information, or to see the apartment, please contact Wil Jean-Baptiste at 347-693-4973 or at wbaptiste@citi-habitats.com.

I'll add that the building is full of friendly neighbors, the apartment itself is quiet since it's in the rear of the building and far from the street noise, and it's extremely safe, even though it's on the ground floor.

I have my precious broadband back. Monday morning, the same customer service rep at Time Warner's office had no problems with giving me my self-install kit for Earthlink. The installation was about as easy as the DSL install was three years ago. I connected the splitter to the cable modem and to the cable box, ran an Ethernet cable to my laptop, and plugged in the modem. The modem ran through its setup process and once the lights were on in the correct order, I had my connection back. There was a minor snag when I disconnected my laptop and plugged in my wireless router instead. The router couldn't get an IP address because the modem had already assigned its IP address to the MAC address of my laptop. But my router has a convenient "clone MAC address" button that lets me spoof the MAC address that the modem sees. Once I did that, I got right back online. My wireless network worked right away, since I didn't have to reconfigure that. The only drawback to the entire setup is that both the cable modem and the router sit in the living room, but the desktop computer is in the office. I've had to run a network cable behind the couch, through the tiny foyer, and along the office wall to reach the PC. I still need a longer cable for the living room so I can get the wire off the floor. But at least the broadband is back.

I had to stop by the old apartment on the way home to pick up a few things the movers forgot and to take some pictures of the little damage we did to the place in four years. It's still really too small, even with all the furniture out of there. I can see how easy it would be to furnish for one person -- there are lots of creative ways to arrange things to create more space than we had. I'm just so happy to be out of there. My real estate broker says that it's been shown a few times already, and he's confident that it will rent quickly. It had better happen soon; the only thing preventing me from enjoying this new apartment to the fullest is the nagging fear that the old apartment won't rent, and that we'll be on the hook for the rent for another few months. Anyone out there looking for a cozy 1 BR in the heart of Greenwich Village?

My day started at 5:30 AM, when Liz and I got up extra early to take the cats to the new apartment. Luckily for us, they cooperated for the most part and didn't put up too much of a fight. I left Liz alone with the cats at the new place and took the subway back to the old apartment. I finished up some unplugging and cleaning up, and waited for the movers to arrive. The Moishe's crew appeared exactly at 7:50 AM. At 8 AM they started packing all of our stuff, while I did my best to stay out of the way. They took a few coffee and smoke breaks, but even so it only took them 2 ½ hours to pack everything we owned. I took a cab to the new apartment, trying not to worry about the crew taking our stuff and disappearing while demanding more money. (I've seen too many horror stories on “Dateline.”) At 11:30 the truck pulled up in front of the new apartment. One hour of unloading later, and the movers were gone. Letting them do the packing along with the moving was the best decision we've made so far. There was no room in the old, tiny apartment for us to pack and live at the same time. And the packing would have taken us an extra week; I figured that if we're paying rent in two places for June, we might as well live in the larger one for as much of the month as possible. The only bad thing about having the movers pack everything was that they didn't label the boxes as they packed them, so we had to open every box to know where things were. But even that wasn't terrible: it was all here, just hidden away in 40+ boxes. At this point, it's 11:45 PM, and we've unpacked the entire kitchen, bathroom, and most of the clothes for the bedroom and the closets. The living room stereo equipment is still in boxes, as is my computer. Usually that's the first thing I unpack, but since I have my laptop, I don't need the PC yet. And I don't have broadband until Monday at the earliest, so I'm stuck looking for open Wifi access points in my building. (So far, I've found two, though neither one is a strong signal. But wireless networking is a fantastic, beautiful thing.) Tomorrow we'll finish the living room and start on the office. The landlord has to finish some painting in the apartment, and the plumber has to fix the drain in the bathroom sink, but by early next week it will be completely livable.

I still can't believe we're here, that we have so much space, and that we are as far along in our unpacking as we are. At 4 PM today, I was happily watching the cable guy set up my new digital connection, while Liz puttered away in the kitchen, stowing our food and cookware. Four years ago, at the same hour of the day, immediately after the move, I was in tears from the lack of sleep and the sheer amount of stuff we were trying to cram into the tiny apartment in the Village. (I'm man enough now to admit that at the time, I cried like a baby. And that Liz told me to snap out of it and get back to work.) So this time around it's a much better experience. I'm not sure we'll ever move again, this place is so amazing. We actually need to buy things to put in our spare storage areas. Is that crazy or what?

We're as packed as we can be for the big move tomorrow morning. The movers are packing our stuff as well, so we just had to clean up and unplug everything in preparing for their arrival. It's amazing the things you find when you're cleaning up almost four years' worth of detritus and assorted crap. We had several sealed glass storage jars we stowed under the kitchen sink when we moved in. I'm certain they were empty when we put them there. A few nights ago, we cleaned out the area under the sink and found the jars, two of which had water in them. One was filled almost to the top, the other about halfway. I know that the sink had been leaking; the wood panel that forms the bottom of the cabinet is warped from water damage. But how did the water get inside the sealed jars? Is it four years' worth of condensation? We may never know.

I had a fun run-in with Time Warner a few days ago. I ordered Earthlink cable Internet service instead of DSL, since we're not getting a phone line. I made the call about the Internet about 10 days ago, not sure yet when our move-in date would be. Earlier this week, when we found out the move was this Saturday, I called Time Warner to cancel the cable TV and set up an appointment for a digital cable TV install in our new apartment. At that time I mentioned the cable Internet setup, for which I was still awaiting a phone call from Time Warner to set up an installation appointment. The TW rep suggested that I go to the TW sales office on 23rd Street and pick up a self-install kit for the Internet service, so I could hook myself up once the cable TV is installed. So on Wednesday I went to the office and waited for another customer service rep to help me. That's when I found out that they couldn't give me a self-install kit, since I didn't have "active" cable service at the new apartment. Apparently you have to be "on" in their system before they hand out cable modems. I tried to argue that I'd have an active connection on Saturday afternoon, after the TV guy hooks up the TV connection, but that didn't matter on Wednesday. Also, I could have scheduled the Internet guy to come out on Saturday as well and hook that part up, but since I hadn't requested a dual install when I was on the phone with the TV rep, I was out of luck. So now I have to hope that my TV is unpacked, or at least in the apartment, when the cable guy shows up tomorrow, and that we get the TV hooked up without complications. Then I can go back to the 23rd St. office on Monday and get my cable modem. In the meantime we might be "borrowing" wireless Internet service from someone else in the neighborhood. That should be fun. I have to remind myself that I've got an entire apartment to set up, and that the Internet is not that high on the priority list for a few days.

Lots of news to report.

Liz and I are moving. The afternoon before my major network upgrade, we saw several two-bedroom apartments on the Upper East Side, none of which had the necessary space for us to consider moving into them. They all had two good-sized bedrooms, but little shared living space aside from the kitchen. With all our living room furniture, we would have had to put all our stuff into the spare bedroom, leaving us with the same situation we have now. The last apartment we saw looked the same as the others, with a big kitchen and two large bedrooms. Then we opened the door to what we thought was a closet and found out that it was another bedroom, the same size as the other two rooms. It was exactly the apartment we'd been looking for. A flurry of activity over the weekend and into the next week resulted in us signing a lease for the new apartment, beginning the process of re-renting our current apartment, and planning a move. Everything happens this Saturday starting at 8 AM, so hopefully by midafternoon we'll be unpacking all our stuff in a much larger space. We're not paying that much more for the extra room, either. Until then, it's going to be crazy around here. I'm taking a few days off to clean up the apartment and make some other arrangements, but we don't have to do the actual packing, we're letting the movers do it. Those who have seen our little apartment will agree that there isn't enough room in the place to pack and live for more than a few hours. If we packed our own stuff, by the time we were ready to move, we wouldn't be able to get to the door to let the movers in. Aside from the added room, I'm excited because we get a home office that eventually will have separate spaces for Liz's stuff and my own. My friend Carol and her husband have a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago with a home office filled with computer equipment. That's my dream, and someday, it will be a reality. For the time being, we'll have digital cable TV and Earthlink cable (instead of DSL) to occupy us.

Adding to the craziness last week was the musical for which Liz and I played in the pit orchestra. It was a production of COMPANY, by Stephen Sondheim, by the St. Vincent's Players, a group of nurses and one doctor from St. Vincent's Hospital in the Village, along with some professional actors. We got roped in by one of Liz's friends who played bassoon in the pit. We had a great time, met some cool people, and we're looking forward to playing their shows again. I'm not a big fan of Sondheim's music, but the songs for this show weren't bad. To try and keep them out of my head, I've been listening to the soundtrack of Godspell, which brings back all sorts of fond memories from Georgetown. Oh, how I pine for simpler days sometimes....

Friday night was one of the longest nights of my life. And it was definitely the worst network upgrade I've ever had the misfortune to be involved with.

We spent 18 hours, from 10 PM Friday until 5 PM Saturday afternoon, trying to upgrade two NetWare 5.1 servers to NetWare 6 and preserve our server cluster setup. Things went well until 3 AM. We had both servers up and running with the new OS and we were re-enabling services that had been shut down. At that point we reconnected the servers to the network storage device (over 3 TB of disk space), and everything went to hell. We spent the next six hours trying to get the servers to "see" the SAN. When they would finally get connected, we'd reboot them and they'd break again. Finally, around 9 AM, we got a solid connection. Then we broke it again and again, trying to tweak things. Around noon, over 24 hours in, we worked on resurrecting the NetWare volumes. By 5 PM, we were goofy from the intense work and the lack of sleep, but the system was working again. Tomorrow I go back to see what bugs we didn't catch the first time through.

Liz and I saw "The Matrix Reloaded" this afternoon. She liked it, but thought it was too wordy. While I enjoyed it again, I felt like I needed a degree in philosophy to be able to understand all the "causality" and "ergos" in the script. And the scene with the Architect isn't any easier to follow on the second viewing. My favorite fight scene is still the one in the Merovingian's lobby, with the swords and acrobatics. That one kicks serious ass.