Dominica was actually up before me this morning and was already deep into Dragon Age: Origins before I came out into the living room.  Liesl was up before either of us running around terrorizing the house.  She had gone to bed many hours before we had last night.

My day was spent working for the office, which was pretty good today, and working on migrating a Subversion repository from one Linux server to another.  Migrating Subversion is really easy but I had the added complication of doing so while also migrating the Active Directory system, and version, against which the repository would authenticate.

Dominica played DAO all day.  She is really into this game.  I am not sure that I have ever seen her get into any video game this much.  Not that she plays that many video games but from time to time she does and this is the most involvement I have ever noticed.

Liesl and I got a lot of time to play today while Dominica played her game.  We are loving having the furniture.  Dominica and Oreo are able to sit on the couch while I sit in the armchair with my laptop.  Makes a great change from sitting at the desk every moment that I am at the house.

Watching DAO was very entertaining.  It is definitely well written and can be watched much like watching a very long and slow movie.  There appears to be a ton of character development and good plot.  I only get to pay occasional attention but when I do it appears to be pretty deep.  I am looking forward to getting to play it although I have no idea when I will get that chance between all of the work that I have to do and Dominica attempting to hog the game.

Liesl took a late nap this afternoon.  When she woke up we got dressed and I wrapped up work and we hit the road to drive up to Allen, Texas to go visit the Kimberlins for an alternative party (as opposed to a Super Bowl Party.)  If we hadn’t mentioned that this was an alternative to the Super Bowl we would not have even known that it was on this weekend.

We had a really nice time just hanging out and visiting for several hours.  Oreo slept in the car – he just can’t be trusted to be on anyone’s carpeting these days – and Liesl had a great time being the center of attention.  We managed to completely avoid any talk of football.  Since I have no idea when the Super Bowl is played it is easier since I have no idea if it is even on or not.

At nine-ish we were all hungry so tried going out to eat.  We went to Mimi’s but they were closed.  I guess it is rather late for a Sunday evening.  So we hunted around and found an upscale Cajun place that was still open.  Actually they weren’t open but they let us in before the waiter realized that we were closed so we were allowed to eat there anyway.

Dinner was quite nice.  It is not often that we get upscale Cajun cuisine so it made for a change of pace.  My father would be very jealous of crawfish bisque.  We all decided to get the Tilapia Supreme for dinner as well.

After dinner we came back to the apartment and I got back to work on my Subversion / Active Directory issues and Dominica played a few more hours of Dragon Age: Origins.  I stayed up as late as I could for her but once eleven o’clock came around I was worthless and decided that I just had to head off to bed.  Dominica decided that she was really tired too and came to bed just minutes after me.  Liesl had fallen asleep on the drive home and was completely passed out.

Dominica and I slept in until Liesl made us get up this morning.  It was great to get some real rest and we did not have to stay up late changing the bed linens either.

We sat around this morning trying to figure out what we were going to do for breakfast when I realized that today was the day that Tuscan Villas was having breakfast catered by the Flat Iron Grill down in the coffee shop.  So we got ready as quickly as we could and got down there at twenty till eleven.  We ended up being the next to last people to make it through the omelette service before they were done for the day.  So our timing was perfect.

Breakfast was delicious and a nice change of pace.  We did end up meeting someone from the complex (which is the idea of the breakfast thing) that is about our age and has a daughter several months younger than Liesl.

After breakfast we came back up to the apartment and I got to work on my homework for RIT that is due today.  I did not have a chance to do any of it early since I was working on my paper yesterday and this entire week has been just entirely crazy with work or projects or meetings.

By the time we had finished breakfast it was noon and by the time that my homework was done it was about two thirty.  By that time Liesl fell asleep.  So Dominica and I got a little while to relax without anything pressing while we waiting for Liesl to wake up before loading up the car and driving down to Arlington to visit with Dominica’s family for the evening.

It was around four when Liesl finally woke up and we were able to get moving.  We stopped by at La Madeleine and picked up some dessert.  While Dominica and Liesl got dessert I stopped by at Jamba Juice and got fruit smoothies.  I have been focused on getting a lot of fruit lately given how sick I have been feeling.

After getting our food supplies we were on the road and down to Arlington by five-ish.  Dominica’s cousin is in town from Shreeveport, Louisiana and we have not seen her in over a year.  She has not gotten to meet Liesl yet.

Oreo and Sneakers, a two year old 32lbs Boston Terrier got to play all evening and Oreo just loved it.  In no time Oreo was acting like a little puppy again.  He needs more dog interaction with dogs more like himself.

We had a really nice time this evening.  Liesl especially had fun playing with Andrew and we got some hilarious videos of her playing with him.  He would pick her up by her feet and hold her so that she could walk on her hands.  She would then work herself backwards on her hands and knees (like moon walking but crawling) back to him and then stick a foot up in the air indicating that she wanted him to pick her back up by her ankles again.  She did this again and again.  It was so cute and funny.

We got back to the apartment around ten.  I really wanted to work on some projects tonight but just could not bring myself to do it.  I did not even have the energy to really play a game either.  Liesl was asleep almost the moment that we got back.  After Liesl went to sleep I plopped down in the new chair with my laptop and got to work updated SGL as I am several days behind and Dominica put in Dragon Age: Origins on the PS3 (that Joe and Britt got for me for Christmas) and started playing.  She is playing a dwarven noble.

So far Dragon Age: Origins is looking really good.  I am going to play it myself soon as well, maybe even tomorrow.  I will play a completely different character, though, so that it will be a minor deal that we are both playing the same game.  So far the game is pretty impressive.  I am not sure that I would put it on par with Oblivion or not, it is too early to tell, but it definitely does not feel like it is on par with Fable II.  The graphics are great except that they are not tuned well enough for the PS3 so the PS3 has to run the game turned down to a measly  720p which does not look good on 1080p displays and even so the framerate is a disaster with the game constantly jittering and sometimes stopping for a second or more.  It gets hard to watch at times.  I’m not sure if it is a matter of the software not being up to snuff or if the game is just too much for the PS3 hardware.  I can see why people say that the non-console version is so much better.  The computer version will run at the full resolution of the TV with a much faster framerate if you have decent hardware.  These days it is pretty cheap and easy to best a PS3 in rendering power.  Even my business desktop is more powerful for games and it isn’t designed for that at all.

The strong point of DAO is in its storytelling which, thus far, is pretty good.  So far the game feels pretty linear but we are just getting started so we will see.  The game is supposed to be very replayable and should take fifty to one hundred hours to play through so we have a lot of game to explore in different ways.

Dominica played DAO for about five hours tonight which got her pretty far into the game.  Five hours is a drop in the bucket of a one hundred hour adventure but it tends to get you past the initial story setup bits and into the early meat of the game, generally speaking.

At two thirty I decided that it was late enough and that it was time to wrap up for the night, walk Oreo one last time (we can’t afford to wait for him to tell us when he is ready to go out) and hit the sack.  I am working as usual tomorrow and we are planning on going up to Allen to hang out with some friends in the late afternoon / early evening.

This morning I thought that I was feeling a bit better and got up and walked into the office.  The morning went well and I did not get the impression that I was not doing okay.  I was clearly still sick and very congested but I felt better than yesterday and thought that I was on the slow road to recovery.  Wrong.

While I was at the office this morning Dominica went out shopping to Best Buy to take advantage of the pre-Super Bowl sales and picked up a 40″ 1080p LCD display for $450.  We just could not pass up that deal.  The television had gotten some pretty good reviews too.  No one was claiming that it was as good as a Samsung or anything like that but that it worked well and was amazingly good considering the price at which it was being sold.  The sale was only going to last until tomorrow so she ran right out to pick it up.

Dominica also hunted around and found a GameStop that had the new, slim 120GB PS3 in stock as a lot of places were out of stock on them and got that too so that we will be able to watch DVDs, BDs, Netflix and play some games again.  We have Dragon Age: Origins for the PS3 sitting on the shelf in the house taunting us and we both want to play it so this will work out well.  That game is supposed to be huge so we will easily be able to make due without any other games for the entire time that we live in Tuscan Villas without ever needing to play anything else.  It would be amazing if we got through that game in a year so we have a lot of buffer.

On her way back to the apartment Dominica picked me up from the office.  It was about twelve thirty so perfect timing for lunch.  We went out to On The Border as I was in the mood for a “traditional” fish taco.  On The Border had several new menu items that worked for us vegetarians which was very exciting.  I got the grilled mahi mahi fish tacos and Dominica got an avocado enchilada which was excellent.

After lunch we stopped back at the house so that I could help Dominica unload the car.  We had just walked back to the apartment from the car with Liesl and Oreo and had not moved anything yet when I went into the bathroom to blow my nose – which I have to do quite frequently since I have a sinus infection.

While blowing my nose I suddenly got the “fuzzy” feeling in my left ear just like I do when I get high blood pressure or if I am going to pass out.  Then, almost instantly, the world started spinning like crazy and I grabbed the sink and went to floor as fast as I could.  I had no way to keep my balance and thought that I was going to be sick but figured that I would black out before actually getting sick.

I put my head down on the floor and breathed heavily and was able to hold on to consciousness and after a minute was able to stumble into the bedroom and lay on the bed for a little bit.  Dominica was in the other bathroom and did not know what had happened.  I was laying on the bed with Liesl jumping on me when she came out and I explained what had happened.

So so much for feeling better.  Now I am feeling like total crap.  I did not end up passing out but now I have a migraine and my whole head just feels awful.  I had left my SafeWord at the office and I cannot work from home without it so I did not really have the option of just staying at home but I sure could not walk back to the office either.

Dominica drove me back to the office just long enough for me to go in and get my SafeWord and to let the guys at the office know that I was really sick and would be working from home for the rest of the day.  Then back to the house.

I worked a normal busy Friday evening.  Dominica cooked dinner and we just ate in.  After worked wrapped up I focused on writing my paper for RIT.  That took an hour or two.  This is the last of the three reflection papers that I have to do for class.  I am now seventy percent through the main body of the class (will be eighty percent tomorrow after I complete the homework for this week), have done the midterm and the three reflection papers.  All that is left is a few weeks of class discussions and the final project – which I hope to start working on this week and maybe even complete.

After my paper was done and submitted we sat down with our new television and Sony PS3 and popped in the final disc of the first season of Torchwood.  We have been waiting more than a month now, almost two in fact, to watch the last two episodes of the first season and it has been driving us crazy.  So now we finally know how the first season ends.  That show is awesome.  We are looking forward to getting the second season now.  We are also going to try the Sarah Jane Adventures which is the third portion of the new Doctor Who universe.  The other two shows are so good we really want to check it out as well.

By the time we were done with all of that it was a little late and quite time for bed.  I originally had quite a lot of work to do tomorrow morning but my boss did it for me tonight and I now I get to sleep in and relax a bit in the morning.  While I like getting the overtime I really do need some time to relax and sleeping in is very important.  Tomorrow should be a relaxing day now.  Dominica is looking forward to that as well.  We are visiting family in Arlington in the afternoon.

I am home sick today.  Just a sinus infection,  I think, but quite a bad one.  Liesl was really  that I was staying home today.  It has been a long time since I stayed home with her during the week and we really miss the time together.  I try to come home for lunch most days but often she is asleep when I do and we get nearly no time together and sometimes none at all.  So even though I am sick this makes for a very nice day.

We are very excited as our furniture is coming today.  We have been a full month now without any and it has been really hard.  Although, in reality, it is amazing how quickly this month has passed.  We have been living pretty Spartan up until now.

Today actually wasn’t too busy at the office.  Being home helps as I get many fewer questions when not physically sitting with people.  But it was a relatively quiet day as well.

We waiting all day for the furniture and it did not end up arriving until quite late – nearly five o’clock.  It is very exciting though, we got a “new” couch, chair and coffee table.  Definitely nothing fancy but very serviceable and once we sat on it we decided that we are pretty sure that we are going to want to keep these pieces once we try to get our own house after we are done renting the apartment.

I had a SpiceCorps call at five which overlapped with the furniture delivery.  A busy evening.  I had to cut the call short so that I could run out to go to SpiceCorps Dallas which is being held in Las Colinas, just minutes away.

I got to the Aloft, where the meeting was being held, at a quarter after six.  Not as early as I had hoped but not a bad time.  Given that I am sick and that it has been a very busy evening it was as good as could be hoped for, I think.

The meeting went really well this evening, I think.  We only had nine attendees which was about what I had expected.  We had only had nine confirmed people coming so really I think that we did really well.  It is the first meeting since August so all of the momentum from the first meeting has been lost and we are effectively starting over so it will take a while to pick up steam and convince people that this is really going to be happening.

We were really fortunate this evening to be sponsored by the nice people at Rackspace.  Rackspace paid for the venue, pizza for dinner, snacks, soda and even an open bar!  They also gave a presentation on what Rackspace is doing in the hosted apps arena which went over quite well, I thought.

It was a good evening and we are planning for another meeting the second week of May.  I’m not sure how late we stayed at the meeting tonight.  Not real late as far as I could tell.  Maybe nine o’clock.  Then I drove back home.

Dominica had set up her laptop on the coffee table so that she could watch DVDs from the couch.  Liesl had gone to bed just ten minutes before I got home so I did not get to see her this evening at all although I did see her all day.

We tried to go to bed early tonight, around ten, but we discovered that Oreo had had an accident on the bed!  He has been having a really tough time transitioning down here in Irving.  We aren’t sure if he is scared, confused or if he has some sort of infection or some combination but he has been having a record number of accidents and it is becoming a real problem.  We have no idea what to do.  We have figured out that we get almost no warning anymore and often he has an accident in the hallway while taking him out.  In fact, just the other day he barely made it to the stairs and peed all of the way down the third floor stairs in the apartment building and a yellow rain fell on people down below!  Luckily Dominica was able to shout a warning that time and everyone was able to take cover before actually getting hit but boy was it every close.

Oreo got much of our bed dressings this time and we don’t have anything on which to sleep so at eleven at night Dominica went down to do the laundry.  Not what we were hoping to do tonight.  I stayed up with her until around one in the morning but being sick and needing to get to work tomorrow I really needed to get some sleep.  It would be at least another hour before the laundry would be done for the night.  At least there is a laundry room on our floor just down the hall but not having a washer and dryer in the apartment is pretty crappy at moments like this.

Oreo and I went to bed at one – we didn’t have bed dressings so I had to just lay on one sheet and roll up in one cover to try to keep warm.  Without my puppy snuggles it would have been far too cold.  Dominica came to bed around two.  She did the same thing as we were too exhausted to get up and to make the bed in the middle of the night.  It will be a rather uncomfortable night, I suspect.

Tomorrow I am going back into the office.  Much to do.  I need to get my final reflection paper done for my class at RIT tomorrow so that will help to make it a rather busy day no matter what else is going on.  We are talking about getting a television now as well.  We really need something in our empty apartment.

Our big news is that I have gotten paid today!  What a relief that is.  This is my first paycheck, other than getting paid for a single day, since we left New York in late December. Obviously we have bills piling up and we have been becoming a bit concerned that there was never going to be any money and that things were going to get really bad quite soon.

Today is Wednesday and that means that it is dollar oatmeal day at Jamba Juice.  So before work I walked over there and picked up a large Coldbuster smoothie for myself and eight oatmeals to take into the office.  I swung back to the apartment and dropped off one oatmeal for Dominica and then walked to work.  It was a little late by the time that I finally got into the office but I did not want to get myself up too early today as I am still not feeling well from my sinus infection and I need sleep in order to get better.

I came home at lunch today.  I really was not feeling all that well.  I had another call at lunch today that ate up pretty much all of my time but it looks like we have managed to line up some sponsors for SpiceCorps events which is awesome.  Getting good sponsorship seems to be key in getting good attendance and interest going.

This afternoon while I was at work Dominica went out furniture shopping.  We are just getting used furniture rather then buying new or renting.  That makes it far cheaper as we really only need it for six months.  It was too late in the day by the time that Dominica got over to the used furniture warehouse so they were not able to deliver it today but they will be delivering tomorrow.  Only one more evening without furniture.  We can not wait until we have something on which to sit!

I was really feeling bad this afternoon and decided that I needed to leave work early today.  So at four I came home.  Not a real early end for the day but it was definitely better than staying rather late which is what usually happens.

For dinner tonight we ordered Thai from Blu Ginger and I walked over to get it.  We did our best to get to bed early tonight.  I am going to stay home from work tomorrow.  Maybe being home will help me to feel better.

Still feeling a bit under the weather today.  My sinus infection is not getting any better.  I did get some sleep last night, though.

Off to work today but nothing exciting to report.  I came home for lunch today but ended up being on the phone for my entire lunch time at the house and had to run right back to the office.

This evening I worked on getting SugarCRM installed on Rackspace’s Cloud Sites.  The installation was pretty smooth.  This was my first time hooking up a database driven application on Cloud Sites and it required me to modify some system settings to get it working properly but it went well and runs great now that it is installed.

I hope to get a chance to install several different applications on the Cloud now.  It is very unfortunate that only PHP, Perl, Python and ASP.NET apps are able to run on Cloud Sites at this point.  I would really like to see Ruby on Jails and Java available on it.  If a Java container was available then I could try out LifeRay or Glassfish Web Spaces on it.

Got up early this morning, which is surprising considering what a long weekend it was.  But given all of the stuff that was done over the weekend I felt that I should probably get up early and get on the phone and check in with people to make sure that everything was working okay.  Dominica slept in for a little bit but was up pretty early as well.

Dominica ended up having a rather busy day.  She was on the phone almost all day dealing with migration wrap up stuff.  It was a good day for her overall though.  It could have been bad but was really just busy.

At lunch I came home and helped her out with a few issues that she was having and hung out with Oreo and Liesl.  I am feeling a bit under the weather today – probably from the late nights this weekend.  I have a sinus infection or a cold or something similar.  It is very hard to tell.

After work this evening I came home and Dominica was going to make dinner but I reminded her just how long of a weekend it was and what a busy day she had today and she agreed that we should probably go out to dinner.  I was in the mood for pizza so we went to Boston’s.

We went to Boston’s and I got the 32oz Shiner Bock.  I am very glad that they have a 32oz size which is a more appropriate beer size than you normally get in the US.  In Germany beer comes in a liter which is 33.8oz so this is just a tiny bit smaller.  Close enough though.

Liesl had a great time at dinner.  The manager came over to check on us and Liesl decided that the manager needed to hold her!  We were about the only people at the restaurant so the manager took Liesl and walked around with her.  All of the staff was really doting on her.  They gave her a balloon too.  The manager’s mother and daughter were the only other people eating at the restaurant so Liesl went over and hung out with them.  Liesl thought that it was a really great time.

We ate way too much food and then headed home for the evening.  Our goal for tonight is to just get to bed and to catch up on some sleep.

Dominica and I were both completely exhausted this morning.  It was after four in the morning when we finally called it a night and I had to be up around eight today.  Dominica and Liesl slept until around nine thirty but that only helped a little.

I worked for a few hours while Dominica got ready so that we could go.  Then at eleven or so we drove down to Arlington to meet up with her aunt and then we followed her down to Mansfield, which is south of Arlington, where several of Dominica’s cousins, aunt and other extended family live.

We had a really nice time visiting with the family today.  It was great seeing people that we haven’t seen in over a year and almost no one had every met Liesl before – the last major family gathering was at Papa’s funeral one month before Liesl was born – so it was a big chance for her to get introduced to everyone.  We got to meet a lot of the “kids” of Liesl’s generation ourselves as there are many that we have never met before including Samantha, Liesl’s second cousin, who is just seven months younger than Liesl.  It is rare for Liesl to not be the littlest of the children.  She definitely liked having a baby around.

We hung out for several hours.  It was  a very nice day.  Then we headed home and stopped by at Waffle House for dinner in Grand Prairie.

This evening we spent a bit of time working on cleanup work from the migration that we did last night and getting more websites moved over to the Rackspace Cloud.  I am loving using them so far.  Very easy and very powerful.

I had to be up pretty early this morning.  They wanted me to start work at six thirty today.  Ugh.  My weekends are not very relaxing.

My Saturday morning deployments ended up going until almost two in the afternoon.  I’m not exactly busy that entire time but I am tied to my desk.

This evening Dominica and I got to work on a major desktop Active Directory migration project.  We started around ten in the evening after Liesl had fallen asleep and ended up working like mad until four in the morning!  What an exhausting night.  Overall the work went well though and it was stuff that needed to be done and we were able to knock it out.  While being extremely tired I am very happy to have this work completed.  I feel better about the situation.

Simultaneously tonight I also started working, for the first time, with Rackspace Cloud Sites.  This is my first time working with a commercial hosting entity like this which, I think, most people will be pretty surprised to find.  I’ve done tons of hosting over the years but either a business large enough to do our own hosting or as a hosting provider.  So the experience that most people have, using a hosting provider, is one that I have never experienced directly.

Tonight I only worked on moving over static websites so nothing too exciting.  The first batch of sites moved over without any incident.  It was quite easy.

The speed of the sites being hosted on Rackspace is noticeably faster than it was before.  The console for Rackspace Cloud Sites took a little getting used to but was pretty easy once we figured it out.

Again this morning I was awake super early.  Not as early as yesterday, that was just crazy, but very early.  It was probably five when I woke up so I got up and showered, made my morning coffee and drove over to the office getting there around six thirty or so.  It is nice getting in early, I get so much extra work done when I do that.  Plus it is a very stress-free way to start the day because you know that you are getting in and resolving any issues that arise early in the morning instead of letting them pile up and hit you all at once when you finally get to the office.

The weather was predicted to be really bad today so a lot of people were thinking that they would not be coming in to the office today.  There was rather a serious storm last night but nothing too horrible and this morning it was simple cold and rainy but hardly “stay home from work” weather.  I drove because of the rain.  A little too much water falling to make walking worth it.

I accidentally took Dominica’s keys today so she was unable to leave the house as she had no house key.  So at lunch I drove over and picked her up and then we drove down route 161 to Northgate and hit the Waffle House there for lunch.  We are starting to learn our way around the area just a little bit and are starting to be able to actually drive places without using the GPS (which is mostly useless anyway) which is very exciting.

I left the car with Dominica after lunch and walked back to work.  It is Friday so work was busy and I worked quite late.

After work I walked over and Dominica, Liesl and I drove down MacArthur Boulevard down to Boston’s Gourmet Pizza where we met up with Brian, a friend of mine that I have only previously known online via the SpiceWorks community.  Brian has been the acting SpicePioneer for SpiceCorps Dallas and I am not his co-Pioneer helping to get that community really going.  Our second meeting, and the first one with me here, is in six days in Las Colinas.  To make it even more exciting, Rackspace is sponsoring us, which is awesome.  I am hoping that they will bring some Rackspace Blue Cloud Cotton Candy like they have given out in the past at other events.

We had a really good time at dinner.  Brian brought along some friends of his, Mike and Sara <sp>, who all live very near to us.  The pizza was actually quite excellent at Boston’s too, which I was not expecting, as no place in Texas has decent pizza.  We are having great luck finding people to hang out with in the Dallas area.

After dinner we stopped by Yogurtzone and got some fro-yo for dessert because Dominica wanted it.  It was pretty cold for fro-yo but there were a lot of people there eating too.