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April 19, 2004

6:00 - Awake to the alarm. Suzy thinks its a little dark outside for this time of morning. I think we just haven't seen 6:00 in a while. Weather forecast is for partly cloudy and windy day. Very warm. High 86F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph.

6:15 - Open work e-mail. 150 messages arrive. 30 get past the filter. 5 are not crap. 1 requires acting on. This should be a good morning.

7:00 - Arrive at Corporate Drive Light Rail station. Kick Suzy out of the car and onto the train. She steals my morning fruit juice to have something for breakfast that isn't coffee.

7:20 - Arrive at office. Start reading through backup tape reports and filling out time-sheet. Talk to Pat and Jim to kill the time before I have to start typing. Oatmeal delicious. Voicemail light blinking as usual.

7:50 - Pat comes in to ask if I got her voicemail, a user wants me to verify that they absolutely positively don't have any e-mail hiding on the server that Outlook isn't popping because they have a very important message that should be arriving any minute now.

7:51 - User's e-mail box is empty. Surprise!

7:54 - Check personal mail. All crap except for 4 newsletters and one (negative) RSVP. Forecast for Friday calls for scattered thunderstorms and highs in the 60s.

8:00 - Visit Jean's office. Brag to Jean about Suzy (as usual). Jean has 535 new messages. She doesn't seem delighted at that fact.

9:00 - Random to-do list things completed and crossed off. Stale e-mails deleted. Two projects tied up and archived. Two more Mountain Dew codes added. Current total: 59. Left to fridge: 241 and $7.50. Cup Noodles steeping on desk. Suzy arrives at class. Company stock certificates arrive, I now own .85 shares of KCI with 30% vested.

9:08 - Woman sues Coors brewing company for being a poor parent to her son when he died in a drunk driving accident after a party. Wasn't that her job? And she didn't sue the car company for being a lousy driving instructor?

9:17 - More news. A police officer Tuesday arrested a male bicyclist accused of grabbing a woman's buttocks on a sidewalk downtown in Indianapolis. Turns out she was a deputy probation officer with the Marion County court system.

9:40 - Looks like I'll be headed to Allentown, PA for a meeting sometime next month. Have I mentioned I hate driving for work? Especially to negotiate web design prices. I'm worth it, baby.

9:41 - Boy in oven, Principal in closet, badass grow op. Moving right along...

9:52 - Why is Microsoft Word for anything such a processor hog? CPU temperature is up enough for the medium fan speed, and I'm just viewing a document in the background. Stupid whores. Office temperature: 72°. Outside temperature: 66°. Time for a snack run. I sense a Diet Pepsi in my future.

10:09 - Suzy reminds us all that the cicadas are coming.

10:45 - Forgot my ID. Didn't notice until just now. It's in my coat. Have to get checked in and out of the front door for the rest of the day. Current Dew U point total: 61. Office temperature: 74°. Outside temperature: 72°. Danny O'Brien wonders how do you introduce yourself to someone who is borrowing your WiFi?

11:20 - Ruminating on the USA Patriot Act. Revised To-Do list printing.

11:27 - Blogger meets Quentin Tarantino. Kinda cool. My hands hurt and my body feels dry. Time to fill up the Diet Pepsi bottle and get my daily dose of H2O.

11:30 - Have I really been awake for 5.5 hours? Nrrrg.

11:35 - User at ecs021pc24.ucslab.umbc.edu Googles for "umbc administrative password." Finds my site. Brilliant.

11:55 - UCS scares the crap out of him. Hee hee.

12:52 - Huge amounts of unread e-mail to deal with. I remember when I used to have a lunch hour. Getting hotter in here. Office temperature now 76°.

13:23 - 78°.

13:38 - I broke my resolution to cut out sugar because the soda machine was out of Diet Pepsi earlier. Now I can hardly see, as I expected. My office remains a sultry 78°. I may make a beeline for the server room in an hour if it gets much worse.

15:13 - Just managed to get out from inside a pretty nasty DDOS attack on our mail server. Everything seems back to normal now. I think one of these happened just last month. Might be time to consider a more robust architecture to deal with this sort of thing.

16:03 - I am completely burned from low food intake and an influx of sugar. I'm gonna go pass out now.

16:43 - Dew U points: 63. Temperature: 79° inside, 82° outside. Thinking of getting out of here a few minutes "early."

17:00 - Cleaned and sorted a rather large pile of old papers that really aren't that important anymore, will archive later this week at home. My backpack weighs quite a bit right now. Time to head to UMBC. Lord, it's gonna be hot out there.

17:51 - Eh, not so bad. Pretty decent temperatures but the cooling effect of 70 mph winds was more than enough to make it tolerable. Now sitting at UMBC cooling my heels until the end of Suzy's shift.


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