Cleanup crew

Well, the house is more or less back in order, as is the rest of the world, at least the portion I occupy. The cats had a high old time making a fine mess of things. Seems like they wait for Lotusphere week before they climb on plants, knock over CDs, devour rolls and rolls of paper towels, and pee on the phone book.

I never use the phone book anyway, and this is just another reason to have discarded it.

Anyway, the house is back in order, though the iBook is still sick. Before shipping it back to Apple, I'm going to try replacing the hard drive with the old 40G and see if maybe it's the new drive that's confusing the system, or if there's a loose device connector that's causing it to not properly enumerate devices.

In any case, I am not going to send the 100G back to Apple, because if they replace the unit rather than repair it, I'll get a 40G back with no data on it. Since I have no way of backing up the stuff that's on that 100G, I'm removing it and replacing it with the original 40. Pain in the ass surgery that I had hoped I'd never have to do again.

I found out today that a friend of mine -- a woman I've known since before I actually took this job here -- has been diagnosed with lymph and liver cancer. This seriously sucks... she's not much older than I am and is smart and cute and actually knows things. Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen to people our age. Even odder, I got an email from another guy I know, one who is actually younger than I am, apologizing for being out of touch, because he had had a mild heart attack!

Time for me to get rid of a lot of weight. Oddly, I've lost some weight as a result of the conference. Staying up all night and walking four or five miles a day around the conference takes a lot out of you, a lot that some martinis and hors d'oeuvres at vendor receptions cannot fully replace.

Tonight, I have to bestow imported cheap smokes and cheap South Carolina fireworks on some friends who asked me to bring them back. One of the advantages of driving over flying, and a station wagon over anything else.