May 26, 2003

I had a nice, if rainy, Memorial Day weekend. Kathy, my friend from Florida, was in town for the weekend and invited me to a barbeque in Falls Church with an odd amalgamation of her various cliques (I have to mention people from Florida as such, since I'm now writing from the point of view of the Virginian cadre). Tomorrow is my first day of work.

May 27, 2003

Today was mainly a paperwork day -- signing up for benefits and designating beneficiaries and such. I don't have a desktop computer yet since they waited until I arrived to order it (they wanted me to have some say in its customization). In the meantime, I'm running on an old 433MHz laptop computer that can barely keep two apps up at once. It's good to be back though. I'm in an inner office that's equidistant from the bathroom and the free soda room. The company will be moving somewhere close by (within five miles) around October, but for now, I have about a ten mile commute.

I'm going to be working on a brand new project that just came down the pipe. It's still at the stage where no one's very sure about what the requirements are, but it should be interesting.

May 29, 2003

I had an all-day offsite meeting at Northrup Grumman today. Even though I hadn't been in one since my PEPCO days, I could tell that it was your standard government meeting with all the major players -- the person in charge of information who started every sentence with a variant of "to the best of my knowledge", the developer who brought up relevant concerns at the wrong times, and the developer who interrupted every presentation slide with a tidbit of technical trivia for show, among others. I'm hard at work learning portlets which, intelligently enough, are servlets deployed on a portal.

On the homefront, I haven't had time to do more than practice my cooking.

May 31, 2003

I've gotten into the routine of things now. I get up and get to the office in the morning by 6 AM and get home around 2 or 3, depending on whether I take a lunch break. I then read the paper, have a snack, play with cats, and sometimes take a nap. After dinner, I get back to work on one of my various back-burner projects.

Booty and Kitty are both doing well here. Booty only gets crazy once a week instead of once a day, and still retains all her personality. Kitty has gotten happier now that Booty is around to harass, so she exercises more and mopes less.

June 2, 2003

My parents, as well as Anna's sisters and boyfriend, came to the apartment yesterday evening to sample my cooking. We had pot roast and assorted side dishes. This week, I'm hoping to get my new computer at work, and I'm also planning on some soccer and basketball. People at work play every week on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I wasn't planning on posting a new update until next weekend, but I heard that people in Florida were bored. Since I didn't post any news stories last week, here's all the tidbits I've collected since I left Florida. This should give you some reading fodder on those long, boring afternoons. I've also put up a few new cat pictures (at the bottom of this page ).

Typing monkeys, but no Shakespeare
Hospital seeks Klingon speaker
The SATs: Answering all the questions incorrectly.
Eminem disallows Weird Al parody video.
Badger kicks ass.
Officer resigns over allegations he made girl exercise topless.
Developers are stupid on Mondays.
Every state has its winners.
Deaf woman earns Master's in Music.
Spicing up your water supply.
One more woman has no self-respect.
Michael Jackson wants a f*ckin' burger!
Meow TV to premiere this month.
KFC's secret spices discovered.
Homeless cops give traffic tickets.
Woman has broken bathtub.
Miracle baby 'grew in liver'.
Tyson says he would rape victim now.
Dishwasher kills woman.
The meaning of 'comforted'
Dog robs gas station.