So, we went to Wedge Gaming last night, which was good since we got to play games and see All Sorts Of People who we haven’t seen for the summer, plus meet some new freshmen.

And then we went home. We started trying to sleep at about 10:30 or 11, but the people upstairs were playing Loud Obnoxious Music, which made sleeping very difficult. Eventually, at about 1:30, Jessi was kind enough to go upstairs and ask them nicely to turn it down a bit. Quite kindly, they did. Unfortunately, our sleep schedules got interrupted enough that we couldn’t get back to sleep. So we’ve been tired but unable to sleep since then, and have been playing around on the computer and just generally Wasting Time. (Jessi continued her adventure in Black & White, which runs much better on our new computer than on her old one.)

PeteJessi have shiny new computer! Is pretty, is fast, has 19 inch flat-panel (which is rotatable to portrait mode, has USB ports, has attached speakers). PeteJessi very very happy.

Tuesday night we watched Revelation, which is part of a Christian what-happens-in-the-end-times movie put out by the people who made the Left Behind series, although it’s a separate series all its own. Anyway, I found one climatic scene just really neat: The Good Guys are trying to upload a virus into the Bad Guys’ mainframe, which is of course running the traditional Movie OS. When the virus upload is at 97% or so, a Bad Guy comes into the room, frantically tries to find which computer in the lab is uploading the virus, and frantically tries to stop it. After the standard abort sequence doesn’t work, he attempts to destroy the computer. He pushes the monitor off the desk. It disconnects, falls to the floor, and cracks. The image on the monitor stays, and moves to showing the process 98% complete. (There is presumably a supernatural force involved here.)

• We’re getting a fancy new computer. A Dell Dimension XPS, 19 inch flat panel, fun fun fun. It’s scheduled to arrive next week.
• I am in fact planning on running a Magic tournament at WPI SFS Gaming Weekend the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. (More Details)
• I start my final grad class this fall, starting after Labor day.
• Today’s a day for relaxing. It’s nice to have those every once in a while.

We finally have Direct Deposit at work! Muchness of happiness!!!
As my former manager said, we’re going to take this company kicking and screaming into the 90’s!

Whew. I’ve been busy. Some recent life highlights:

• Last week, and I went to Costa Rica on a trip with our church. We got a lot of stuff done on a recreation area for children in an extremely poor city, worked with children, and had a wonderful experience.
• My boss announced today that he was quitting, effective today. It was quite surprising news.
• I received my official notification today that I am now a Level 1 Judge for Magic: the Gathering. I took the test 3 months ago, and the paperwork has now gone through and made me Official.
• I’m contemplating running another Magic tournament during SFS Gaming Weekend at the beginning of WPI’s A-term. It’ll likely be either Sealed Deck or a Booster Draft, and I’m trying to figure out the details.

Jessi & I leave dark & early tomorrow morning.

See you all on August 10th. (We come back on the 9th, but we’re unlikely to see any of you that day.)

Things I did today:

• I drove Jessi to Fitchburg to take her teacher’s test. I’m fairly certain that it’s the most North that I’ve ever driven.
• I lounged about the house, enjoying my first weekend in a while without homework to do.
• I read the current issue of Reader’s Digest and the rest of a great book on Web site usability called Don’t make me think.
• One of the things I tried to do today was participate in a Magic Online draft. After my last pick, the server crashed. When it finally came back up, the cards I had drafted were gone, along with the packs I had used to enter the draft. Wizard’s Customer Service emailbox is now likely full of requests for refunds from consumers like me.
• I drove back to Fitchburg to pick Jessi up.
• We went to Applebee’s in Auburn for supper. I enjoyed the meal (and a delicious dessert). I then promptly got briefly sick after leaving the restaurant. After that I felt much better.
• We went to see my friend , who is back in MA with a new out-of-college job. It was good to catch up with him for a bit.
• We went to a brief Costa Rica team meeting, at which we got our team shirts. We have our final meeting before leaving tomorrow evening.

I just completed the final exam for my summer course yesterday. Hooray!

So, I get about a week off (only having work, and not having a class) and then we leave for Costa Rica.

In case you’re too lazy to look at my archives to see when we’re going, I’ll tell you here. We’re leaving a week from tomorrow (July 31) and coming back two Mondays later (August 9). While we are gone, we will not be reachable. Email to me will sit in my inbox. Phone calls will sit on our answering machine. My pager from work will be turned off and sitting here.

After getting more comments than I ever dreamed possible when posting something controversial, I think I will now post something slightly less controversial: Bowling is fun.

I took Jessi, Ben, and Cheri bowling Sunday afternoon. Jessi, having grown up in New York and thus outside of New England proper, had never seen Candlepin Bowling before, so we had to introduce her. Plus, it seemed like a fun activity for us all.

We played two games, and the scores were quite close in both of them. For the second game, we had the kiddie rails up that prevent balls from going in the gutter, so our scores where higher, but very very close to each other.

So, I’ve been paying about $50 a month for 768K cable Internet through Charter ($10 of which was for basic cable, and $40 of which was for the Internet access). I was playing around on their web site and noticed that I could sign up in my area now and get 3 megabit access for the $40 a month. (My current 768K plan seemed to no longer be available.) So I just called them up and asked if I could get the faster speed at my current rate. The answer was yes, plus they’d give me 2 months of free access just for upgrading.