When it Rains, it Pours

I just heard from another old friend. This time it was Glen Gordon, who was part of the original Gunters back in our college days at Georgia Tech. I had heard from Glen briefly a few years ago, but then he suddenly disappeared again.

Now if my pre-college friends and I could just get in touch with Marlowe Daley (last known to be leaving Utah for some place in the New England area, possibly Boston?), that would take care of most of my MIAs.

Old Friends

Remember when you were young? Maybe back when you were in junior high or in high school, and you had a close-knit set of friends? The kind of people you knew would be your friends forever?

I feel very fortunate that I have a lot of those kinds of friends. Friendships that were formed from middle school all the way up to college. There are some (mostly the college ones) that I still keep in touch with on a regular basis. And there are others that I have lost track of through the years.

But today, I saw one of my friends from back in my junior high days. Nick Jordan (who is in the Army and has lived all over the world since our school days) happened to be in the area. And as he apparently has done in the past, he checked the phone book to look for my name. And this time it was finally there. He dropped by my office on his way home today, and we spent all too short a while catching up. And now I have contact information for two other friends from back in those heady days of our youth.

We haven’t kept up with each other over the years as much as we might have liked, but I have always considered these people some of my closest friends. And I still do. I hope everybody out there has friends like that.

Mover’s Guide

Here’s one for the list of Neat And Useful Things You Can Do On The Internet: MoversGuide.com. This is a service of the U.S. Postal Service. You can file your change of address online, and they have other helpful resources to help you rent a moving van, get your phone and utilities hooked up, subscribe to the local newspaper, etc.

RDP for Unix

I’m a Linux and FreeBSD fan (though I live in a Windows world at work), and I’m always intrigued by unix tools that improve interoperability between unix and Windows. Today I spotted a reference to rdesktop in a discussion about PC Anywhere on a Windows-oriented security mailing list. It lets you use your Windows NT Terminal Server desktop from XWindows. Cool!

I don’t use Terminal Server at work, but if I did, this would bring me one step closer to being able to run unix at the office.

A Cause for Celebration

Susan and I were married on Saturday, September 22. It was a day that we had waited for and worked towards with great anticipation, sometimes with little patience. We have been very appreciative of the support we’ve gotten from our family and friends.

I was going to say something here about the road being long, but the destination being worth it. But really, we haven’t reached our destination yet. Susan and I are just starting a new journey. And as the old Chinese proverb says, “The journey is the reward.” We will set and reach many goals, but the journey always continues. It is the things we pass along the way to those goals that create the experiences that make life full.

Sorry about the philosphical diversion there — life-shaping events tend to do that to me. Anyhow, we are very happy about our wedding, and we’re both glad that we were able to do it with the Scottish theme. I’m sure it’s an experience that everyone who attended will remember for years to come. I might have to learn to play the bagpipes myself one of these days 🙂

Crawling Toward the Light

The people of our nation are slowly trying to return to some semblance of normalcy. Obviously, though, things will never quite be the same as they were before the attack which occurred a week ago. This was literally a world-changing event, one which will define the beginning of a new era for the global psyche.

We almost feel guilty for having a wedding so soon after such a great tragedy. Sometimes we think about the people who won’t get to have their weddings. But it’s part of the healing process. In our small, insignificant way, we’re showing the terrorists that they might be able to make us pause, but they can’t stop us. Life goes on. And we’re contributing to the healing process. We and our guests will have some time to get outside of the Real World for just a little while. We will have some time where all we talk about is dresses, tuxedos, kilts, bagpipes, flowers, food, beer, wine, kids, and all the other good things in life. I, for one, am looking very much forward to it.

Morning of Terror

I don’t know if it’s possible to express the soul-wrenching horror that I feel over the events that have occurred this morning — both towers of the World Trade Center down, attacks at the Pentagon and State Department, and a plane down near Pittsburg. And we don’t yet know if there is more to come.

Thankfully, my aunt and her family who live in NYC were upstate at the time of the attacks. My stepfather is in Boston. Most likely, the disruption to airline schedules will cause him to miss my wedding.

There is no reliable estimate of casualties yet, but any is too many.