Thursday, April 26, 2007

Busy, Busy Week!

Ah, spring! The return of daffodils, tulips, and absolutely no time to smell them.

Things are amazingly busy right now. At work, we're gearing up for a big customer milestone, so we have lots of efforts going on right now finalizing a nearly thousand page technical design specification. Getting thirty people to contribute to a document and then trying to get that document to look consistent is quite a chore.

Of course, Luke had his performance on Tuesday night. Then, last night, Becky and I were received into the Episcopal Church. This "reception" is a bit like an adult confirmation. Even though we were both baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic, which the Episcopal Church recognizes, they have this reception service to formally "accept" us into the faith. It's a very nice service. The bishop comes in, they say a bunch of prayers for us, we each get a cool new Bible (the New Oxford Annotated Bible), then after the service, we have a great champagne party in the church hall.

(The Bibles really are very cool. They have all kinds of historical data in them, including ancient maps, units of measure, and the Apocryphal books. I may have to take a lesson from Gaz's playbook and read this baby from front to back.)

Meanwhile, Luke was at his first baseball game. I wasn't able to see it (because I was in church), but the head coach, Dan, told me that he did really well. Luke played a little outfield, 2nd base, 3rd base, and even catcher. Dan said he was really fielding well, and was doing very well at the plate. Luke said he got on base "a bunch of times" and even got a couple runs. Good boy. He also said that he had this "amazing" play when he was on third. Despite his knee hurting, he caught the ball and was able to tag out a runner to third. Awesome. Luke looks so handsome in his baseball uniform. I will have to post the pictures tonight.

I also took the plunge this week: I started removing Microsoft from my home. Yes, thanks to some very helpful advice from Chuck, I have successfully upgraded one of my three computers to Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu is a wonderfully free open source OS that is very polished and installs just as cleanly and easily as any Windows crap. I had been listening to a podcast about the evils of Microsoft Vista and its content management protection schemes, when I finally decided that it was time to switch over. So far, the switch has been really easy. All my peripherals work fine, Office documents and multimedia files work fine, my Slimserver is up and running on Linux, and my computer is about 50 times faster!

Lest there be a let up in the week, tonight we also have choir practice for Becky and Eddie. And then it's another baseball game this weekend, plus the normal yard chores and rat cleaning.

Ah, spring!

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