OK, so I lied.  I have been meaning to post a lot more, but until recently I have just been too busy or trashed to post.  I am starting to settle in at my new job tough and everything is going well, so as time goes by I will get back in to the routine of posting more regularly.  Right now my biggest two challenges with work are making sure I take a break now and then, and dealing with the commute, but these are trivial when compared to the positive aspects of the job, and the great people I am working with.

Having said that I did take advantage of the 4th of July holiday to decompress a little by taking a drive.  Because I work in the South-end of Seattle I have been wanting to explore and rediscover the area.  I say rediscover since I used to deliver medical supplies in that area about 30 years ago.  One of my favorite roads to drive back then was Military Road, so on Friday I decided to take a trip down Memory Lane via Military Road.  I thought I had seen virtually all of Military Road, but apparently not.  I started out at 200th St. and headed as far South as I could go.  It was a blast staying off the Freeway and just winding all over the place.  I finally ended up at a "T" intersection which is the junction of Military Road and Enchanted Parkway / Meridian.  Turning right would put me on Enchanted Parkway, and turning left would put me on Meridian.  I really didn't want to end up at Enchanted Park (a local theme park for those of you not in the area), so I decided to turn left and head down Meridian because I knew I would eventually end up in the South Hill area of Puyallup which I have never really explored before.  

After driving through Edgewood, Milton and Fife, I finally ended up in Puyallup and headed on up to the South Hill area. I would be an understatement to describe the South Hill area as one giant strip mall, but that's exactly what it is; one strip mall after another.  I really didn't want to spend too much time checking out all the interesting places, but I did see a few places that I want to check out at a later date, and there is also a Sonic Drive-In there, so that's another reason to return.

I continued driving South enjoying the view of the countryside, and eventually ended up in Eatonville, Land of Ramtha!  Yeah, I know, but aside from that Eatonville is a nice little town.  I drove around town for a bit, and then headed back North.  I ended back up at 200th St. and continued to head North on Military Road until it merged with Des Moines Way.  All-in-all it was nice drive and a great way to decompress.

That was the cruzin part, now comes the bruzin and onion part.  I decided to do a little more cleaning around the place and guess I over worked my back a bit because it's hurting (and falling the previous weekend didn't help anything either).  I am happy with the results of the cleaning though and I am started working on a few projects I have had on the back burner for a while.  One of these projects unfortunately turned into an onion, and by that I mean the more I peeled away at it, the more tears I shed (figuratively).  Basically I tried to install Windows XP on a system a few months ago, but something wasn't right so I gave up. Maybe I should have given up permanently because as I picked up the project again this weekend, it just turned in to a death march.  As it turns out, the system had a bad hard drive, and something was seriously wrong with the NIC drivers I installed.  I finally swapped the drive with a new one that I forgot I also tired on this box on the previous attempt, so I was pleasantly surprised as not having to reinstall XP on the drive.  Unfortunately my joy didn't last because as I finally was able to get things going and install the updates the system started crashing.  The third problem with the system turns out to be a memory issue, but I think I can pick up some PC 2700 DDR fairly cheap, so all is not lost.  If that doesn't do the trick, I bag the system and use what I can on another system.

Well that's it for now.  I have to get up earlier than usual because I-90 Westbound is all mucked up for the next two weeks, so it's off to Slumberland for me.

PS:  Be sure to check out my latest Slumberland post:  Washington Weirdness: UFOs, radioactive wasps, and the wall of gum.

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