10:00 PM Yes, I know, I know. It's been a week. I'm sorry. Really.

Things are rather hectic. The short list is, one office being rebuilt, moving from one temp office to another temp office preperatory to moving to the permanent office, a network to move, negotiating a new contract with Siebel, and preparing for a move to Seattle.

Yes, a move to Seattle. Finally. <G> Not quite as planned, though; things are going to get interesting for a while. See, Keri is most likely starting a new job in Seattle in a couple of weeks. I won't be able to leave the Tempe office of Siebel until at least November, at the earliest.

There's a conflict there.

Basically, Keri is going to move up now, and stay with her family for a while. "A while" in this case means several months; November is the early date, late December is the one I'm thinking is more realistic.

I really wasn't looking forward to it. The plan was, up until about last week, to travel up as often as possible while looking for a job once I finished my job at Siebel. But now, Siebel is throwing a twist into the plans...

It seems that the Bellevue, WA office is in need of my services. I don't HAVE to take it, but they're making it tempting. But it eats up a fair amount of my time to negotiate this; salary increases, relocation expenses, and the possibility of making bi-weekly trips up for a couple of months in the transition. On the other hand, there are some other companied that have my name, and are asking for interviews... so which would be better? Who knows. The only certainty is that it will take more time to determine the best choice.

As for the rest, things are getting interesting with the permanent office construction. We've gotten all the wrinkles ironed out of the design of the office - I hope - and phase one is currently under construction. Well, at the moment, demolition, but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, I'm moving to a new office. Until now, I've been one of several people in a large room; everyone else was a developer, and so I was in their way, and they in mine; I was taking more than my share of space (which happens when you have 5 computers on your desk and a portable server rack next to it.) So I am now in my own office; a rather nice one, actually, and much better for all concerned. I can spread the machines out a bit, so it's not so crowded, nobody in my way, I'm not in their way - very nice. Very nice indeed, since I have a view of the ponds around the building. My parents have decided that I have arrived; I have an office on the top floor, with a view. <G>

Tomorrow, I hope, will be a quieter day where I can get caught up on things. Later. Hopefully not too MUCH later.

4:00 PM Hey, all. Spent my day fighting with the travel agent; I'll be on the road Wednesday of next week through Sunday. I have no idea what will happen with web access and such, although I will be able to check my email, if somewhat sporadically. It seems that when you give a travel agent specific instructions - as in, flight number, airline, and departure time - it only confuses them, and they move things around until they feel better, even if that's not what you asked for. Oh well, we got it worked out.

And there is an advantage to travelling corporate! Being a "young'un", renting a car is nearly impossible. We tried it a year ago with iTOOL, and it just didn't work; no way no how, I couldn't rent a car. Seeing as I was going to New York, cabs were a much better idea, anyway.

Well, not this time. When I got my (finally) corrected flight and travel info, it listed a rental car with Hertz. I knew this was a no-go, because Hertz has a policy, which I have already run into, of "no rentals to those under the age of 25, because you are all irresponsible slackers bent on the destruction of our vehicles" or words to that effect. So I asked our office assistant, Kelly, to track it down for me and see what the deal was.

The deal is, Hertz has a special policy for large corporations like Siebel. Although small businesses can't do this, large corporations can make a deal with Hertz so that any employee can rent a car, so long as they do so on their corporate card. Which is kinda nice. As far as Hertz is concerned, I may still be bent on the destruction of their vehicles, but they know where I work, so it's OK.

In other news, Dan Bowman is pointing people this way for a sure-fire cure to whatever ails you. Or, well, your broadband connection.

The story is this; I have some X10 modules scattered around the house, and our cable modem kept losing its connection. So after a while, I plugged an X10 module into the cable modem; since the only way to reset it is to unplug it, then plug it back in, the X10 made that easier. Punch the remote, wait a few seconds, and punch it again - presto.

Being a lazy perl hacker (TM) I decided that it was silly to have to punch that button every time. So, I worked up this. That link takes you to a node on PerlMonks, a site for Perl hackers. The script there is clumsy, but it works; you have to have a piece of software for X10 called "Heyu" which can be found here, Perl 5.005 or better and a CM11A x10 controller, which doesn't cost much at all. I got mine and some modules for about US$20 from x10.com, which is an annoying site, but they have OK prices. Just don't give them your real email address, whatever you do.

Anyway, I used that for a while, and it works. I have a new version, though, that works even better. The basis of it is a perl script I found called "Downtime". Downtime is a monitoring script; it watches one or more connections, logs the times they are down, and notifies you in various ways. I modified mine to add to X10 functionality (the code is GPL'd, by the way) and I'll post my version next week; I simply need to document it a bit and clean it up before releasing it to the world. Until then, there's the original Downtime; if you already know Perl, it shouldn't take long to make the same changes I did.

And now, time to finish working and go home. Later all.

7:00 PM Yes, that's right, a Saturday post! Amazing!

And since it's Saturday, I refuse to be serious. So on with the fun topics...

First of all, Keri's stepmother was interviewed for an article in PC World; congratulations Marlaina!

And second, someone pointed me to this. This, for those that don't care to see, is a character in the online game "Diablo 2" being auctioned on eBay. The opening bid is $500. Now as of this writing, no one has bid on it. That will, according to the person who showed it to me, change; the auction is for two, apparently very good, characters; he recently witnessed $700 in real cash changing hands for one character that wasn't as good.

Now, I play games now and again. Not often; it's been, let's see, at least two months since I played a game other than Solitaire a time or two, or Sokoban on Linux - a very addictive puzzle game. Even when I do play large-scale games, usually strategy games, I play for a few days or weeks until I've beaten the game, then put it away.

But spend REAL LIFE money to cheat on a game? WTF?? Which of us is insane, me, or the people bidding on these auctions?