I did make it to the office on time this morning. It was quite impressive. I was there before Tara and she was startled when she saw me this morning. I really enjoyed being able to take my time in the morning to be able to do the things which I should have plenty of time to do before leaving. I was able to get more reading done than I typically do and was able to just take some time to ponder.

I can’t directly think of anything to report from the office today. I was pretty busy and have a lot of work ahead of me if I am going to catch up before leaving for Vegas dark and early on Thursday morning.

We went through the articles of faith tonight at FHE and I came home after.

I slept in this morning, probably longer than I should have. I had enough time to get through my reading for Church today, but I would have rather had more time. I don’t think I have anything really super special or crazy to report from Church today, but I guess that means I need to spend more time reflecting and pondering.

The lesson for Priesthood/RS was on marriage today. … Someone suggested taking a potential partner to a service activity to see how they perform, so that you can see how they act in the service of others. … We need to be on the same page as our companion, but they should inspire us to be our best. We want to marry someone who has the highest values possible.

I got tickets today to General Conference. I guess that means I am going now, so I have to figure out what the heck I am going to do about it!

Now I think it is time for me to get some sleep as it is almost midnight. I’m going to try and get to the office ontime tomorrow to makeup for Friday.

The show was pretty much the same as last night. I ended up asking Jennifer at the last minute if she would accompany me. Even though it was the second time I was seeing it, I was still able to enjoy it. I was able to pick up on some different things I didn’t see before and it was actually nice to just be in a different spot to see it. The seats ended up not being as bad as I was expecting, so that was a pleasant surprise.

It seems like I didn’t really accomplish much else today. I did some chores around the house this morning – after sleeping in. I was able to get through some pictures from last weekend. I did get through a lot of mail and receipts, so that was actually a decent undertaking. I also got to completely rearrange wedding staffing for this weekend.

I got a late start today. It was after 9 when I actually got out of bed. After breakfast and all that other stuff, I worked on trying to find someone to cover tonight’s wedding. Mark wasn’t able to do it, and Justin wasn’t available for me to ask. I got Scott to say he could do it if Justin couldn’t, so I went down there to set it up and show him what needed to be done. On my way home I was text messaging with Melissa and then found out she showed up at my office thinking I would be there! I was so disappointed. I guess that should teach me to not be such a slacker!

I took a shower and then headed back out. Melissa was still at the office, but said she had to go home and couldn’t join us for lunch. Tara, Tim, Nathaniel and I headed to Chili’s for lunch, but not without first stopping to drop Tim’s and my car off at the carwash. I probably paid more than I needed to, but they gave the car a good cleaning including washing the carpets. I then stopped at Costco. By the time I finally made it to the office it was after 4 p.m. I tried to take care of a few loose ends before leaving after five.

I picked up Marissa and away we went. Traffic wasn’t too bad and we made it there with time to spare. We were smart about where we parked this time and choose a spot in the preferred lot close enough to the exit in hopes that we could get out and beat the rush before the traffic jam. It actually worked and saved us about an hour compared with Brad Paisley. The show was good. I dragged Marissa to Cheesecake Factory after the concert. I think she would have rather just gone home and gone to sleep after being up at 4 this morning to teach seminary, but she didn’t put up a fight to grabbing a quick dessert.

It’s almost two in the morning, so I need to make this fast. Work went well today.

I found Jennifer at the stake center when I showed up for Institue. It turns out she was working with the auditions for the Christmas musical and I understand she is running spotlight. She mentioned something about me trying out for the show and I told her I belong behind the sound board. That was a bad thing to say because I guess they are possibly in need of a sound guy. I left a business card and we’ll see how thigs goes.

Institue went well. I left in the middle to go find Jennifer as I thought she was going to come down. I didn’t find her, but I did find President Mattson with two no shows. I talked with him for a while and by the time I got done, Institute was over. We (Tara and I) were planning on going to Cheesecake, but everyone seemed to not be interested at the last minute other than Lauren and I. I ended up getting BJ’s and taking it to the Dowden’s for dinner. We were at the Dowden’s till close to midnight before deciding it was time to go to sleep.

And I guess getting to bed is for sleeping – so I’m off!

Melissa finally took me up on my lunch offer and realize how close the office is to her house. We ended up going to Macaroni Grill. She had never been there, but I think she enjoyed it. She got the BBQ chicken pizza and I got my usual chicken fettuccine. … This evening I was sitting in the office going through facebook and came across a question on Melissa’s. It said “What was the most exciting thing about your day today?” I answered: “Getting to have lunch with an amazing person.”

I actually didn’t spend too much time playing with the server today, but we did get the new ram installed. Maybe tomorrow I can actually get down to work.

I got a call from Bro. Rodriguez just after seven asking me where I was. I thought our meeting was at 7:30, but I guess he wanted me there early. I hopped in the car… Our meeting went well I think. I enjoyed the time that everyone was willing to give to discuss Sunday School. I hope it helped get some things out in the open and give everyone a better idea of what is going on.

I had so much more to say and think about, but it is almost 1 o’clock so my brain is starting to shutdown. good night!

Ryan and I actually made it for a ride this morning. I would leave out the part where he was 15 minutes late, but I don’t know what else I would have to complain about then! After the ride, I didn’t make it into the office until almost noon. I did some work from home, so I didn’t waste the entire morning.

I did some actual work, but spent most of the afternoon working on getting the server up and running for good. When I left after 7 tonight, we had it serving files to Macintosh users and serving remote desktop connections for Quickbooks in virtual server. I’ve still got to work on some other things like Exchange, but I want to take our time and make sure things are working before we get too far ahead of ourselves.

I was hoping to get some reading time in this evening, but after eating dinner and talking about Matthew’s teachers, there just wasn’t much time left. On that note, I think I’m going to try and get to bed before it turns tomorrow tonight!

I made it to the office late this morning, but I made it there. I think it was close to 10 by the time I actually rolled in and got working on the server. I think we might actually be ready to rock and roll with some pieces tomorrow. I ended up reinstalling server a few times trying to get the right versions of things in the right places. We  have 64 bit server running as the main instance, and then are virtualizing a 32 bit windows environment for terminal services. I was going to install Exchange in another VHD, but it looks like it wants the 64 bit so will need to be installed on the root server.

Our board meeting this evening went well, other than I didn’t get dinner! By the time we got done discussing and drove to BJ’s, it was about time to leave. I didn’t even get to finish half a glass of water first. I did order a pizookie platter to go and took it to the Dowden’s for FHE though. Sister Dowden taught a great lesson on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It’s a sad subject, but she did a good job presenting the information and giving all sorts of excellent background information that I was not previously aware of.

I was talking with Larilyn on the way home tonight, and she said something about if I wasn’t “busier than a coyote…” I don’t even remember what we were talking about, just the “busier than a coyote” line. Unfortunately for her, I am going to post this for the world to see. And now, it is really past my bedtime, so its off to sleep I go!

I spent almost all day yesterday on facebook and looking through old pictures. I got an email in the morning stating that Alana had just signed up and wanted to be my friend. She wasn’t really sure how it worked, so I tried to explain to her that it was just like myspace, but much better for pictures. This led me to think about finding some pictures of her to post. I started looking through all sorts of pictures – and I physically mean looking through pictures: Like the 4×6 glossy things that I have in a filing cabinet. I found a handful of her, but then realized that they needed to be digital to put them online, and I really didn’t feel like going through the work of scanning them. That started me on the mission to find digital pictures and I started finding all sorts of old fun stuff.

I was planning on going to the office in the afternoon to work on the server, but just never got off my lazy rear end to do anything like that. I almost forgot about the softball game, but fortunately Kristin reminded me. She said they were short people and that I need to come prepared to play. I wasn’t looking forward to that, so I tried to text message a bunch of people and get them to come. I ended up being late, and there was plenty of people to play. I took some pictures – about 400 – before deciding it was really too dark to get anything good. After the game we went to Chili’s and then I came home to continue looking through old pictures. I know I try to stay away from the front of the camera, but it really surprised me how few pictures I could even find of myself when i was trying.

Today went well. I slept in, got my reading done for today and then spent some more time on facebook. I didn’t find any good pictures this morning, but I still have a few discs left to go through.

Church went well. I stopped by the office before hand to pickup a wireless mic and check the mail. I knew I should check the rack to see if it had everything I needed in it, but for some reason I didn’t. Fortunately, we had a small group today, so we decided to teach Sunday School in the Relief Society room and we didn’t need the mic – because all I had was the receiver and cables! I don’t know what I did with the transmitters, but hopefully they are still sitting on a case in the shop.

I got a late start this morning, as expected. So late in fact that I was able to go into Costco when I stopped there this morning to get gas. As is customary with Costco trips, I really just needed stamps, but ended up spending over $800! Most of it was on backup drives and a monitor for the the server which arrived today. I also got some office supplies and of course worked on stocking back up our candy supplies.

The server came this afternoon. The FedEx tracking showed the box weighed 150 pounds. I couldn’t believe that, but when I saw that the machine was basically on a pallet, I quickly figured out this was not a typical little machine. This thing is about as deep as an Xserve! I worked this afternoon and evening on getting its software setup.

Earlier Lauren stated she wanted something to do tonight. It didn’t appear as if anything had been planned, so Tara and I started planning a movie night with pizza and pizookies. I think it turned out well. We went to her grandparents to watch it on their screen. The pizookies weren’t quite as good as BJ’s, but they turned out well.

I stopped and got a new CTR ring this afternoon. They didn’t have the same one I had before, nor did they have anything in the size I really wanted. It has the CTR on the top with the line going through to the backside like my previous one except the line is thinner and is off the bottom of the R instead of a continuation of the T. The back of the ring has a CTR cutout from the inside, so it looks backwards when looking at it. I’m just not sure, but I guess I can always get another one if this doesn’t work out.

I was fairly busy in the office today. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I was hoping to before Buck called and said he was in the area. I’m glad he called when he did though because I was starving. We ended up meeting at BJ’s. They messed up my pizza somehow, so we had to wait for a new one. I got to meet Paul from Bosch. Hopefully we can use him more in the future. We got some cool swag this time around, so at least that is good. We even got an LED EV sign! I’m anxious to put that up in the office tomorrow.

My wedding this evening went well. I was able to get out in enough time to make it home to take a shower before going to institute this evening. It went well, but was pretty deep. I am certainly learning a lot and am grateful for the experience to be there. I should have been taking these classes a long time ago. I also got a chance to talk briefly with Stephanie and we actually setup a meeting for Sunday to try and hammer out a schedule of what lessons we can combine and so on.

We just hung out in the Church until after 11. Lauren had a 9 o’clock meeting with President Mattson, but she didn’t get in until probably 10. Amanda, Josh and I had fun playing with photo booth on my laptop while we were waiting for lauren. Once Lauren got out, she had some more fun playing with it and we got some funny pictures. We decided to head out around 11:15 when we decided it was time to go home. Well, we then realized Lauren’s car was on the other side of the church and when I drove her to it, we decided we should at least go say hi to the Dowden’s before coming home. I knew that a quick five-minute hi wasn’t going to cut it. We spent about an hour there before deciding to come home for real.

I really need to get to sleep, but I would say things went well today. Alison and I talked this morning on my way to work. She seems to be doing well. I think Aimee and I are meeting up for lunch tomorrow, so this should turn out to be a pretty full week.

The past two days have actually been fairly busy in the office. I don’t think I have any thing major to report other than the gear came back from the zoo and seems to be in good shape. We need to check it all out thoroughly, but I imagine that isn’t actually going to happen based on past history.

I spent the past two nights at home, which has honestly been nice. It is starting to feel like I haven’t been out or done anything in a while, but I love it! I had a major headache when i came home tonight so I just watched a movie after eating dinner.

Last night I made fettuccine which was good. As I was cleaning up the dishes, I took off my CTR ring. What’s really funny is that when I got home, I immediately took it off, as I seem to always do. As soon as I took it off though, i wondered to myself, “why do I take my ring off as soon as I get home?” I wasn’t able to come up with a good reason, so I decided to put it back on. Now apparently I know. As I was going to put the ring back on after doing the dishes, it slipped out of my hand, bounced on the floor and hasn’t been seen since. I think it either went behind the dishwasher or underneath a cabinet. I spent some time looking for it, even reaching my hands into places where I would not normally be willing to put my hand, especially without – or with in some cases – seeing what I was putting my hand into. After a valiant effort, I gave up. I looked online to buy a new one, but I can’t find the one I had!

I thought for a while about the significance of the ring. The first thing I thought about was a story I read in the prayer book about one of the writers who had lost her scriptures. I’ve prayed to find the ring, if it is God’s will, but in looking I haven’t found it. I’m sure I could find it if I was willing to take apart the cabinets, but that seems like a lot of work for a $20 ring. I was thinking I could grab it with a magnet, but I don’t think it is actually magnetic.

On a deeper level, I was trying to figure out why I wear it. Was it to remind me or was it more of an outward sign? I’ve decided it is more of an outward sign. It was great for me as well as it helps me, but I think I always hoped it would be more of a missionary tool than anything else. I wore my other ring, the spinner one today, but it just doesn’t seem to accomplish the same purpose for me. I guess I will need to breakdown and spend more time trying to find a replacement.

I really don’t think I have anything else new or exciting to report, so I think I’m going to head to bed.