This server had a hard drive failure last night--a pretty impressive one. It was just the OS disk, the user data is fine, but the OS disk was a mirrored RAID, meaning it was two hard drives containing the same data, and they both got completely screwed up (presumably in exactly the same way). I'm glad everyone's data is okay (though I myself had a backup at home from Friday).

Short Rundown:

• My DSL activated at almost exactly 5pm yesterday. It's nice to be able to look stuff up and talk to my friends again.
• I am incredibly annoyed with my ex-housemate, to the extent that I don't really want to talk to him for a while. He left me a ton of trash and other crap to deal with at the house, on top of all my own stuff; partly I'm annoyed that I have so much stuff, but also pissed at him for being an inconsiderate flake, however big-hearted.
• On the bright side, Freecycle people will take a bunch of stuff, and ex-housemate will certainly be paying the cost of removal for the rest of it.
• I am so glad I quit my job. It's worked out particularly well with the nonsense still left to do at the house.
• Totally psyched for the new job, and for going to Mexico. And probably to Portland for a few days, too.
• I love love love my apartment. Everything is what I want, how I want it to be. It's mine in a way no other place has been, and I'm finally able to live by myself without a trace of mental unsettling.
• I have no television, and I do not miss it at all. This year I've been noticing how dissociative TV is, and I'm happy to replace it with books and the Internet.
• To my great relief, my motorcycle fits in my carport with my car with plenty of room to spare, for riding both in and out without moving the car.
• Kat brought me a lucky bamboo as a housewarming gift (which isn't actually a bamboo). We like Kat.
• I'm realizing how odd it is that I've been at a point in my career where the honing of my craft is less about writing code and more about thinking smarter on wider levels. It's something I've always leaned toward, but the transition really happened at Danger, as I was responsible for thinking in an integrated, systems-oriented kind of way, more so than most folks there. So I'm reading books, and actual coding has become slightly less interesting, which gets awkward because if you don't keep up with implementation technology because you're busy designing, then (a) it's hard to talk to and gain respect from people who are mostly implementors, and (b) you can't do good designs that account for the capabilities of new technologies. And all this because engineers who are good at implementation usually end up migrating towards design, because it's fun.

  I'm pretty optimistic about this for the new job, though, since there isn't exactly a team in place: I'll be both design and implementation.