dubiousdave's Journal: updatelets

I haven't felt much like writing in my journal for the last several months, as evidenced by the journal itself, or the lack of journal. I still don't really, but I figured I'd do a little update.

Nicci and I are no longer dating. We broke up amicably during the holidays. We're still good friends; we're just not right for each other, and neither of us really wants or needs a relationship right now. She's moved out and is gradually moving all of her stuff to the new place. I'm going back to the plan I had last spring after blue died of spending some quality time alone, enjoying my personal space.

Work is still there. I'm glad it's Friday. We upgraded the OS on nearly all the machines in the department during our winter holiday, and I upgraded the cluster software and completely reconfigured the clusters. Actually, I set up the cluster change in advance, so that the person who was actually getting paid to work during the holiday (as opposed to all the rest of us who were logging in from home to work for free) could just rename two directories before restarting all the machines after the OS upgrade and it would pretty much happen on its own. Of course, we had several people bitching that they couldn't get cluster jobs to run, either because they ignored the half-dozen warnings we sent out or somehow thought they didn't apply to them.

I'm in the doghouse at work, too. Apparently I'm doing such a poor job of supporting the clusters that my boss thought I was depressed and blowing off my job. She had a vague feeling that I just wasn't doing a good job, which isn't much of a problem; she has these completely baseless hunches sometimes, but she doesn't take them too seriously because she knows she can be kind of flaky. This time, though, she received complaints from some users to back up her hunch. Then to seal the deal, some of my coworkers have complained that I'm not doing a good job. I guess I suck. She didn't have anything specific for me, but I'm supposed to go back through all the email for the last month or two and figure out what I'm not doing right. We'll have another meeting in two weeks to discuss my progress.

In completely unrelated *cough* work news, comparing the cluster stats from now and from when I started, we have about 10 times the number of users, more than 25 times the computing load, offer more services, and have a custom job priority system in place, all of this, in part, because I've talked to users to find out what they needed and helped them to bring more of their jobs onto the cluster, while I'm slacking, of course.

Austin is still great. We're in a pretty bad drought, but it's hard to complain about 75F and sunny in January, at least until the city burns down. South By Southwest is approaching again. I have no idea if I'll go, and if I do, whether or not I'll do anything other than the free shows. I'm not sure I'll have the time off or the money for it, and blue killing herself in my house while I was at a show last year has tainted the festival for me a bit.

I still haven't gone back to school, despite the fact that I can take one free class each semester and get time off to do it. It's very tardly behaviour (why the hell do I always type that word with the British spelling?).

My high-level WarCrack (Alliance) characters are a little stagnant. Well, my 60 rogue is stagnant like New Jersey landfill tire water; the 58 paladin much less so, but he only plays with Nicci's hunter, which is a little harder to coordinate now that we're not cohabitating. They're to the point that nearly every quest they have is in a high-level instance, so they need a good group to do them, but there's hardly ever anyone else from the guild online long enough to do anything. It's a very small guild and not terribly active. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone on Garona who's not in my guild. I guess I'll have to start questing with random strangers if I ever want to go anywhere interesting -- blech!, or switch to playing the little Tauren druid I have, who was invited to join The Knights Who Say "Moo". They always have people on, and the ones I've dealt with so far have been nice and not too serious. I still love the game, but at the moment, I'm a little tired of grinding by myself (hehe), if you know what I mean.

That's a long gorram post. I think I'll shut up for another nine months now.

Hey

[leoPetr]

Good to hear from you. Hope your work morass sorts out to your advantage.:)

Re:Hey

[jawtheshark]

I second that :-)

SXSW

[johndiii]

In contrast to all of the other times I've told you that I will be coming down to Austin, I will really be there for South by Southwest this year. :-) Looks very cool [sxsw.com]...

As far as blue is concerned, it was going to happen when you were out of the house anyway. It is very sad, because one could see the person that she was struggling to be. Sad that she did not quite make it. But you did help her find some measure of joy while she was staying with you - something that she would not have had otherwise. So her memory is best honored with joyful things. It may not be much consolation for you, but there is truth in it.

I'm sorry to hear about you and Nicci, but it sounds like things did not work out too badly. It's good to stay friends.

hi

[SolemnDragon]

good to see you online

i hope things sort out at work

i miss texas, maybe in the spring??

cause i know better than to go in summer, heh

but right now no travel till things sort out here

solemn

Re:hi

[dubiousdave]

I'll try to arrange for lots of bluebonnets for this visit.

He's alive!

[Some Woman]

Good to hear.

Re:He's alive!

[dubiousdave]

Don't worry. I won't let the great squirrel conspiracy keep me down. Nasty little buggers.