Restaurant

Tonight we went out for the first time since Baby! I suppose that's some sort of red-letter day: we went out while Karston stayed home with my mother. In fact, he wore himself out early today, and slept the whole time we were gone. I didn't miss bouncing him in a restaurant to keep him quiet instead of eating my food, but I did miss our typical cuddles. Daddy said he wasn't very cuddly today, though, so I probably didn't miss much.

We went to Barry's retirement dinner. Barry's worked with the Networking group since it started. I even stood up during the speeches to chime in with my thanks. If he, and the people who work for him, didn't do such a consistently good job, I wouldn't love my job nearly as much because I would be plagued with installation problems, like bad cables. Starting off with excellence means that many networking problems can be avoided. If you want pesky problems, buy no-name NICs and cables from Fred's NIC Knack Shop. However, when I've gone to conferences, I've learned that I'm lucky to work with Barry because most people who do what I do (network management) aren't nearly as fortunate.

PS: if you run across a bad cable, do not put it back to annoy the next person! Test the cable in an otherwise known good configuration, and destroy it if it's still bad. (If it's an Ethernet cable, make sure it's a standard cable and not crossover, or vice versa.) Some people stand on one connector and yank to get out their frustration, although I usually just take the scissors to it. If I don't have time to test a cable, I tape a note to it that it may be bad. Don't share the headache of a bad cable!