morrowlife

Here’s Timur, one of our secretaries at Baikonur. The interesting thing about this guy is that he was a Russian medical doctor, but he made more money working as a secretary for us. Sadly for us but happily for him, he eventually got a visa to move to Germany and work as a doctor there. He’s in the money! Photo courtesy of somebody at Baikonur – maybe my pal Doug.

Wonders of Blogger today. There just wasn’t time to write last night. So I’ll keep it short.

I’m planning to pick up the Miata on Thursday evening. Yea! It’ll go to work on Friday.

Meetings went well on Wednesday evening. I’ve been trying for a few weeks to figure out how to update and print the New Member Report for the bishop. Finally got it figured out. Now I just have to go actually do the update. Maybe Sunday morning.

Which reminds me. I have to start attending a Stake meeting on the fourth Sunday at 7:30 in the morning. That will make it just a little bit tricky to get to church on time. Don’t worry. I’ll get by . . . somehow.

Note to Loyal Reader Number Five: I need more baby pictures! Send them! Thank you.

And now I’ll quit. See you on Thursday.

While we’re on the subject of Cannes restaurants, here’s my favorite one. Ho La La! They served Central American food. Yum.

Happy birthday to Loyal Reader Number Five! If my calculations are correct, she’s somewhere in her mid-twenties by now. Many happy returns, and we’re sorry you’re not here to celebrate with us.

Non-exciting day today. I still haven’t heard from the Miata Lady, so I emailed her this evening. Saturday, hopefully. I want that car. No, wait: I need that car. No. But I do want it. Now.

Felt much better today and went to work. Several of my colleagues have also been out sick, including one who went home at about noon. Something‘s certainly making the rounds.

I’ve been working on salary adjustments for my direct reports. We’re going to be able to do pretty well by everybody, I think, and very well by a few. It’s tough to decide who gets what, so the company has thoughtfully provided an automatic raise calculator for everyone based on current salary, percent of “market” that represents, performance rating, raise money available, and probably the price of tea in China. We can adjust the automatic level up or down a little bit, but not by much. That probably keeps us from getting sued too much, and it certainly makes it easy to decide how much everybody’s going to get, but it does cramp one’s style just a little bit.

By the way, just to follow up on an recently-reported story, Loyal Reader Number One successfully disassembled his computer, inserted the apparently-loose-but-highly-necessary magnet, and got it back together again on Saturday. Hooray for LRN1.

It’s late already! I’m for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s my favorite snack stand in Cannes. Le Scoubidou. No more need be said.

Rough day today. I had a splitting headache yesterday evening – quite unusual for me. It kept me tossing and turning in bed for probably two to three minutes, which is also unusual for me. I felt pretty reasonable when I got up this morning, so I got in the car and went to work as usual. After I’d been there for about half an hour, I suddenly felt terrible. Not much was going on today, so I opted to come home and rest for the remainder of the day. Hopefully, I’ll feel better by tomorrow, since it’s a very busy work day this week.

The weekend was fairly good, other than the headache. I finally got the brakes on the Sable changed on Saturday morning. It was a very easy job, which is good because, while they’re working perfectly, they’re squeaking to beat the band, so I need to take them back apart again next Saturday and apply anti-squeak goo. Sigh.

In tragic but also very good news, Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve have gone home for good. They decided on Friday evening that they really needed to be home and they left mid-day on Saturday. It’s absolutely the right thing for their family, but we’ll really miss having the baby here. We need to make sure we get together on a very regular basis from now on. It’s a half-day drive each way, so perfectly doable on a long weekend.

Loyal Reader Number Three has been talking for a little while about quitting his job in Arizona and finishing college full-time. I think it’s a very good idea if they can swing it financially, which he thinks they can do. In the meantime, I heard this weekend that he may be quitting his current job and going to Big Bear to work for Loyal Reader Number Six on his house. Personally, I would rather work in a nice comfortable office doing stuff I don’t particularly enjoy and going home every night than be standing out in the weather pounding nails and living in a remote location, but there are many people who feel just the opposite, possibly including LRN3. We’ll see how it works out. We’re kind of waiting to hear what he ended up doing, but there’s no word so far.

I worked some more on the Gardenville Software website yesterday. It’s now a Drupal site, on the correct server, and looking much better than before. There’s still lots of work to be done, not to mention lots of content to generate, but it’s finally making some progress. Now I need to get back to work on the HRVA. Not to mention Spinfo, which as of today is just on a GoDaddy parking page. I’m thinking of at least making it point to this site, but I’m open for suggestions.

Not much else memorable in the last few days. Loyal Reader Number One and I did a little home teaching yesterday afternoon and we otherwise spent the Sabbath quietly at home. I’m planning to spend the remainder of Monday quietly at home as well. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a picture of the new iPhone from Macworld the other day. The back side of it, anyway. Very artistic, says I. Dopey, says you? What do you know?

Disaster! The Miata’s not ready yet. Sometime next week, they say. What is left for me to believe in now? Still, I suppose I would rather have it be right than quick. But I want it now.

It’s the weekend! Time to stay home and work on the Sable. And not drive the Miata. Dang. And do a bunch of other things too.

Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve are heading for Big Bear tomorrow for LRN5’s birthday celebration. They’ll be gone until Wednesday. It’ll seem kind of quiet around here without them. LRN12’s other grandparents need to see her every once in a while, though.

The DVD for Aunt Misty appears to have worked out just fine. At least it plays on my DVD players. We’ll have to see if it works on hers. She’s certainly the star of that show.

The boys went on a temple trip today. They’re still not home yet, so it’s impossible to tell whether they enjoyed it or not. I’m betting on yes.

And it’s time to quit. A new episode of Monk is on. See you on Monday.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number One up to his elbows in his iBook, getting ready to install his new hard drive. All those guts look pretty gory to me. Oh well; no guts, no gory.

And no, Loyal Readers, that wasn’t a typo. I was trying to be funny. Sheesh.

And please disregard my statement of a few days ago that I bought a new Toshiba hard drive. Photographic evidence proves it’s a Fujitsu.

No post yesterday, and I didn’t even find the time to use the Wonders of Blogger. I didn’t attend my church meeting, though. My brother-in-law Ken called in the afternoon and told us he was in town. He came over for dinner and we spent a few hours chatting while LRN1 worked on setting up Ken’s new Smart Phone. It’s a really nice phone, but it was pretty hard to set up and begs the question asked at Macworld Expo – if these phones are so smart, why is it so hard to make a phone call with them?

It’s finally starting to warm back up here in Lardville. The cold snap‘s not quite over, but it’s actually predicted to be in the mid-sixties on Saturday. That’s a huge improvement, and quite possibly just in time to bring the Miata home. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was good top-down motoring weather? I thought you’d agree. Especially my Loyal Readers in Cold Country.

I’m working on making a DVD for Loyal Reader Number Six’s Aunt Misty tonight. I ripped one of LRN6’s DVDs of Airwolf for him and extracted the episode featuring Aunt Misty. I wasn’t quite sure how to get that one episode on the DVD he wants to give her, but I finally just decided to try importing it into iMovie. It seems to be working – it’s been crunching for about 45 minutes so far with 15 minutes left to go, so I can’t guarantee anything, of course, but I fully expect my trusty Mac to reward me with unmitigated success. As usual.

Tomorrow’s a work Friday, alas. I managed to finish my Top Secret clearance application today. I put it off for about a month and a half because it was such an unpleasant job the last time I did one. Imagine my pleased surprise when I discovered that the online system remembered all my answers from my last application. All I had to do was make a few minor updates and it was good to go. Now I’m sorry I procrastinated it for so long. Only about a year to wait now and I’ll be eligible for a few additional programs.

Saturday is Miata day, as mentioned before, and it’s also Sable brake job day. It needs it pretty badly – metal scraping sounds are so disturbing on the freeway – and I’ve decided to do it myself, for better or worse. It really shouldn’t be too hard, assuming the rotors will come off with any degree of ease. Fortunately, I can afford to leave the car in the garage for a few days if things go Horribly Wrong. Which probably won’t happen.

Anyway. Time for dessert and bed. See you tomorrow.