Locations: Whitewater, WI; Chicago, IL; Minneapolis, MN; and roads in between
Soundtrack: various, mostly NPR
I haven't written in a while. Last Monday I got notification that my work visa number had come through from the Korean State Dept., so I drove to Chicago to shepherd my paperwork and passport through the consulate there, in order to ensure I had the actual paper visa in time for my departure for Seoul (now in 5 days!).
I spent 3 nights with Bob and Sarah in Whitewater, WI, and it was good to see them before my departure. I enjoyed my time with Henry (their son of 9 months, now). Bob is into this show he had DVDs of, called "Corner Gas" – a Saskatchewanian sit-com, basically. Rather dry, but quite funny and entertaining. My last night there, we watched a few episodes, and ate blueberries and drank beer (I know, I'm supposedly a teetotaler, but seems like I've been relaxing my dogma a bit, lately).
So then Thursday I drove back up to Minneapolis, but didn't get out of Chicago with my visa till nearly 5 pm, and between rush hour and the severe weather they were having (thunderstorms, high winds, power outages), I didn't get into Minneapolis until about 4 AM. Oh well. So Friday was a lost day, I was tired. And so much to do!
Boxes, boxes, boxes, boxes. I have packed 75 boxes with books (almost exclusively books!) over Saturday and today, and placed them into my storage unit. Why couldn't I have opted to collecting something small and light, like stamps? No… I collect books. Oh well. They're all packed away, now. Must work on all my electronics stuff (5 computers, CDROMs, doohickeys galore), my paperwork (taxes for 2006 still due!), clothes, kitchen stuff. But the worst is out of the way – all them dang books.
Meanwhile, I have a pleasing announcement to make: I've got my new Sony Vaio running a "triple-boot": Ubuntu-Linux, Windows Vista Business, and Windows Server 2003R2. This is VERY cool. And I've transfered my email to Mozilla Thunderbird (ending my last horrible Microsoft addiction), and I'm doing most of my work most of the time under the Linux platform. I feel so… liberated!
I'll try to get my Win2K3R2 working well enough to run SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio, so I can continue to do my .NET development hacking and website stuff there – I'm not ready to take the huge step of migrating my DB work to Linux just yet. But my desktop is FREE!
Ok… back to all that stuff to pack.