Then around 10:30, I get a call from my boss. He’s stuck in training all week, so I figured that he was just calling to check on our group’s work status:

“This is David,” I say, using my standard greeting for internal calls.
“Hey, David. Since I’m out, I need you to sit in on the change management meeting this afternoon.”

I hang up the phone with a sigh. Attending one of our departmental change management meetings is like being subjected to a good hour-and-a-half of Chinese water torture. Not only that, but the meeting is in our conference room, where there are no PCs. I wouldn’t be able to track my packages!

The rest of the workday drags on. I wasn’t able to leave work until about 5:30 or so, but as I neared the driveway, I felt the anticipation returning. And then, there they were… huddled together under the shelter of my garage, three boxes sat calling out to me. At last! Now I can take these boxes inside, and get to work! I step inside to unload my keys, and lunchbox, and give a quick “Hi” to the family – when the cell goes off.

“Hey,” my boss says, “we have an emergency here, and I need you to go troubleshoot some problems we’re having with our cluster servers.”
“Sure.” I said. All the while I’m thinking, Damn! This would have to happen the day my parts come in! I won’t bore you with work details, but let’s just say that I didn’t get back to the house until about 9:30 PM, and by that time, all the eagerness, all of that pent-up anticipation was gone.

Tis a shame really…
Anyway, I was able to finally open the three boxes(still keeping some sense of satisfaction), and I’ve taken some rather poor quality pictures of each of the components that came in today. I still won’t be able to do anything with the parts until tomorrow’s delivery arrives… It has my CPU heatsink and fan, and I really won’t be able to do much until I have that assembled and mounted on the CPU and motherboard. I have, however, made the decision to take pix of each step of the assembly process as some sort of documentary. We’ll see how that goes…

I think I have come to the conclusion that I won’t really have any time to assemble the PC until Friday night at the earliest. I have Cantata practice until 8 tomorrow night, and we have to finish decorating the Christmas tree as well. Moral of the story? All that eagerness and anticipation just turned into anxiety… wasted feelings and emotions when you consider that I can’t really build the PC until the weekend.

Patience, my young Grasshopper.
[tags]work, pc, pictures, patience, zen, newegg, UPS[/tags]

Note to Self… take more vacations during the month of October…

Also turns out that I don’t have to go straight to work whenever I land in MB as originally planned. We are doing a major building infrastructure upgrade at work which may or may not require power to go down, and as with most anything electronic, power surges/spikes and computers/servers/data DO NOT mix well. Anyway, I think they’ve got it all worked out that I won’t have to come in until Saturday morning. Still sucks, but it’s better than having to be there both on Friday night and Saturday.

So, my flight leaves San Jose at 7:25 AM PST which means I need to be checked out and on the road to the airport by 5:00AM at the very least. Probably more like 4:45AM. Anyone that knows me and knows my sleep schedule will tell you that if I can pull this off, it will be a major accomplishment! Next will be the looong flight to Atlanta and then a short hop to MB.

To pass the time, I stopped by the book store this afternoon and picked up the latest Raymond Feist book entitled Flight of the Night Hawks. This is one of those series that I follow pretty well, and I’m really looking forward to delving into this one.

Back at the end of February, one of my co-workers lost his wife to cancer. In trying to respect his privacy, I will not provide  any details here, but suffice it to say that the following week or so was very hard for me, both at work and at home and I still worry very much about my friend and how he is holding up.

March has been a flurry activity with Amy’s Birthday, and our 8th Anniversary as highlights. At work, one of our best Windows admins submitted his resignation and has since left for bigger and better things. I’m really going to miss having Scott around at work. His seemingly natural cheery disposition always seemed to lift me up. With him being gone, my workload has grown sizably.(Hence, lack of updates.)

I picked up The Elder Scrolls:Oblivion the other day. My gaming has pretty much dwindled down to nothing, but this is a game that I have been waiting for for quite a while. If you liked any of the previous TES installments, (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind) this one really and truly tops them all. What a beautiful game!

Greetings friends and family, and Merry Christmas Eve to you all! I hope everyone is as happy as they can be during this festive time and spending it with their loved ones… That way, I’d know that at least someone out there is enjoying it.

Got the call from work around 5:30… “Something’s not right, but we don’t seem to need you right now. Go back to sleep and hope we don’t call.” When the phone rang a couple of hours later, I knew it was trouble…

So here I am at work, wishing everyone else out there a wonderful Christmas. Don’t exactly know how much longer I’m going to have to stay, but I’m optimistic that I can get back home before sundown… I’ll post more then