damn.
if you ever, ever, *really* hate someone, wish a herniated disk on them. this is the mother of all painful things i swear to the goddess. it’s been 4 months, something like 2500 bucks to the bone cruncher, and while it’s a *lot* better than it was, it’s still got to be one of the most physically painful things i have *ever* experienced. it’s not even that it hurts so much, as it just won’t quit. :/

still losing weight, i’m down to 210 now. this whole atkins diet thing is working pretty well.
by the way, any of you geeks decide to try it, you’ll find that the hardest thing is finding something to drink you like. the answer is crystal lite (basically tastes like koolaid) and diet mt dew, diet dr pepper or diet coke.

i always thought people who dieted were kinda weird. now i have to so my back will heal faster :/

almost done with the astrology section of paganality, and the purchase order processing engine is almost finished. (yay!) nightmares in perl continue, but it’s a small price to pay for a project of this magnitude. it’s neat. i’ve always really liked the feeling of accomplishment i get when i watch something i envisioned taking shape before my very eyes…

chaneecat told me what you said the other day re: tony and rachel, you and i, and the manor.
thanks gothkittyn, it’s nice to hear 🙂

so may crown was fun, but the trip there was a nightmare. threw a rotor in the rx-7, so i had to hustle up a truck to tow my trailer with, and it, being a ’60’s ford pickup, beat the crap out of my back :/ but we made it there… flint, amphipteres, myself, azrayel, jenygirl, and the lovely chaneecat, all went and set up the grotto. the look on chaneecat‘s face was wonderful. earlier in the week she had suggested we wash the parachute in the front yard. heh. (it’s bigger than my lot, and the lot next door) t12 cargo parachute. 100 ft across, 7500 square ft of nylon, 400 lbs dry, 1400 wet. and it makes one hell of a pavilion 🙂

Saturday night court was still going on, so we had been asked not to drum… the belly dance troup that was performing had canned music, so it was still cool…
and a huge house sylverstone huzzah! to the members of rolling thunder that picked up the drums when their bard in a box went on strike. very *very* well done my friends. any time you need wine, women and song, drop on by. 🙂

i wish my back wasn’t screwed up. one of the dancers was a guy. normally i pay like, zero attention to men of any kind, in any way… but this was .. different.
as someone who is, to put it mildly, rabidly heterosexual, i watched this guy in rapt fascination. i would *love* to be able to move like that. well, and be built like that too for that matter 🙂 … but it was very cool to watch. i think i’m going to take a crack at belly dancing when my back heals up enough to make it something more than an exercise in futility…

so my room is almost done.

for those of you who have seen my office / loft, it’s almost done.
downstairs i moved the overhead equipment rack to above where my desk is going to be.
in it i installed the following:
(2) 48 port cat5e rj45 patch panels that run tot he noc / server room
(2) 1400 va apc rackmount ups’s
(2) compaq servers
(2) smc fast ethernet 24 port switches
(1) usrobotics total control modem pool
(1) livingston terminal server
(1) cisco 2924 xl en 24 port network switch

of course this prompted rewiring the network runs for half the building… 9 miles of cat5e network cable, and half a mile of fiber optic, is quite a handful, *especially* in a 900 sq ft home. 🙂

since i put in the lofts, i think it’s more like 1200 sq ft… but still 🙂

upstairs i widened the catwalk, lined it with bookshelves, and built the stairs up to the catwalk and loft area.
i reinstalled the aquariums and built my altar table… the next step is going to be moving my desk. then my machine. then my altar.
the ceiling has been done in purple tissue over white, and the lovely chaneecat spent several hours drawing magick on my ceiling with stick on glow in the dark stars… it’s very cool. i like it 🙂

the server room cooling is getting interesting. last year we had (2) 12,000 btu air conditioners running full bore all the time. costs a lot to use. .. now we have a big squirrel cage fan at the far end of the room in the floor that pulls cold air from under the house. at the other end of the room there’s a ceiling vent that ducts to outside for the summer, and inside the main hallway for the winter (no point in wasting the excess heat when we can use it). it seems to be working very well, although i may need to get a bigger fan. this one does about 100 cubic ft / min or so, but i think we’ll need more. we shall see…

and the fiat is almost roadworthy again! 🙂 whoohoo! goddess i can’t wait to get it finished, it’s that time of year again. sunshine, convertible tops, some call ’em rags, i call ’em drops… pretty girl in the shotgun seat, whee 🙂

i need to get back to work. :/
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