Dreary Monday Outside / Pleasant Monday Inside

I just had the greatest weekend! It was very productive as well as spent with good friends. Plus, I had lots of fun in the process!

Saturday morning, I was so proud of Tiger because he actually woke me up in order to be let outside. Usually I'm the one waking him up (Monday through Friday at least) but since I went dancing Friday night, I slept late. It's nice to know Tiger has figured out our living situation. After letting Tiger out, I got back in bed and spent the better part of the morning there. It was perfect. When I got up, everyone was gone (which is VERY unusual) so I got the whole house to myself! I revelled in the peace and quiet of an empty house.

Since Jason and I had plans to finish building my computer on Saturday, I called him around noon. I expected him to be anxious and asking where I was but instead I found him sound asleep. Jason's so cute when he's asleep and he answers the phone. Monday through Friday he tries to sound awake and professional since he never knows who's going to call. But I always know when I wake him up.

Tiger and I got ourselves together and started out on the 45 minute trek to Jason's house. One of my sisters made a very good point the other day...if you have to drive farther than 15 minutes, it's a long distance relationship. It's a good thing this one is working out better than my last. When we finally arrived, Jason and I took Tiger for a walk. It was gorgeous outside. Since we both felt rather lazy, we watched Office Space before getting to work. (Which, by the way, is a very funny movie if you work in an office...especially in some computer-related industry.) After the movie, we tok off to eat. Jason figured we needed sustinance in order to make it through building a computer. He probably just needed the energy to put up with teaching me! At the restraunt we gazed longingly at the green beer but held ourselves back. Ok, we didn't really gaze longingly, I mean, green beer just looks crazy - "moldy" as Jason put it. But there was a whole bar full of men drinking it. Again, I ask...where are the women?

When we got back home, Jason's friend, Mike Marsh was coming down the stairs. Mike just moved to Austin to work at Zebra Imaging, a company that does 3D holograms, so it was a surprise to see him in Dallas. Mike's job seems good, but the company is not exactly using his skills just yet. From what I hear, he's writing some of the best policies ever. For example, the policy on policy writing. God, I wish I could have that job! So we hung out with Mike who is the most sarcastic person ever. Which kindof explains why Jason and Mike are such good friends. That and the brotherly bond of computer obession. (I think I saw Mike get a hard-on when he got his lap-top out...though, I won't say I blame him. Apparently it's a great machine.) Hopefully I'll get to spend more time with Mike in the future...maybe this weekend if we end up going to Austin.

So Jason and I finally sat down to work on my machine. Well, we didn't exactly sit down because Jason only has one office chair and it's more like a recliner than an office chair. Years of sitting back in it with a keyboard in his lap has completely ruined that chair for anyone who ever hopes to sit up straight at a desk. Of course, Jason thinks it's the best piece of furniture in the whole apartment (other than the bed). Since Jason ordered a new processor for me, that's where we started. Jason and Mike offered completely useless advice while I nervously put the proc in. There's nothing quite like holding a $200+ object in your hands and know that if you touch one of those little gold prongs you could ruin it completely. Luckily I didn't.

Instead of telling you step by step what I did in my machine, and put most of you to sleep, I will skip ahead to say we got it running. Again, I have to commend Jason's teaching skills. He's the best teacher for technology I've ever had (except for the molesting, which is a completely new part of the learning process for me). Jason isn't such a geek that he can't explain it. He's able to make all the technical stuff easy to understand and remember. He's just a great teacher who has taught me tons and tons already. I was SO excited when Windows loaded up for the first time! I never knew a desktop could be so exciting. There was a real sense of accomplishment for me. And of course, shortly after we got the machine running, I realized what a bad-ass processor Jason picked out for me! (Penium III, 880mHz - which until yesterday didn't mean a thing to me.) We decided to celebrate our achievements by going to bed early. Yes, I know, going to bed before 11pm on a Saturday night is lame. I am lame.

The ironic part of getting my machine going didn't hit until the next morning when Jason's machine wouldn't work. He had a dreaded O/S failure! So we stayed around at his house that morning trying to fix that. Well, Jason tried to fix it while I watched since I know next to nothing about operating systems (other than it really sucks when they don't work). We thought we fixed it so we packed up Tiger and my machine and drove to Arlington where we had an unexpected lunch with the family (yumm...spagetti).

After lunch, I succeeded in getting Jason to help me install cable! This is amazing since Jason once told me that "he never does it." I guess Jason made an exception for me since I'm so cute. We ran a line from the hub in the office into my bedroom so I can network to the other computers as well as get internet access through the cable modem. Though Jason and I could have done all the work by ourselves, and he knew it, Dad ended up helping. He loves to do this kind of thing and couldn't just leave it to us. I always enjoy working around the house with Dad and it was so fun yelling through the ceiling at each other. Everything was pretty easy including rummaging around in the attic. And of course, since I'm the smallest, I was the one who got to climb through all the dust (while breathing fiberglass particles) to get behind the furnace and run the cable into the office. Getting it into my room was easy since there was flooring close to the hole. Then Jason showed me how to attach the RJ-45 modular plugs to the end of the cable (category 5) which is used for networking. (Jason, you'll be happy to know I remember that RJ-11 plugs are the kind used on telephone cords.) Can't you tell that I'm just brimming with new information?! It's so exciting to learn all these new things!

When we first plugged everything in, we had a bad connection or some sort of interference. I had no idea what it was. Dad was stumped. Jason goes into the office and comes back saying "it's fixed." God, don't you hate know-it-alls?! The funny part was Jason just switched plugs in the hub. I could have done that!

We spent the rest of the afternoon putting the rooms back together and Jason set some things up on my machine. He was all excited about the speed of our connection. How could he not be? He's been dialing in at 56K for two months now. Poor, poor boy, telephone companies hate him. But my whole point of that is not that you feel sorry for Jason. You should actually be feeling sorry for me, because the first hour my new computer was connected at my house, I wasn't even able to touch it! Jason hogged it the whole time!!

Before I even had a chance to sit down, we had to rush off to a meeting about the cruise I'm going on in May. Then I took Jason back to Dallas, ate dinner, and drove back to my house just in time to go to bed. My computer, which doesn't have a name as of yet but is deinitely female, was calling to me all night long. I had to use major restraint not to stay up all night long and play with her. Of course, now the day is dragging by because all I want to do is go home.