This weekend was pretty party-filled. I took Bryan to the airport on Friday for a weekend trip to take his CISSP certification test, and then came back and watched some Scrubs and Family Guy with Cat. On Saturday I met up with Cat again and we watched The Goonies. Just as the movie was finishing, Kelsey text-messaged me and suggested I come over for an impromptu get-together she and her roommates were having in New Orleans. What perfect timing. I knew I was going to have to drive back out to New Orleans the next day to pick up Bryan at the airport, but I've only hung out with Kelsey once since I moved up here, so I figured it was well worth the drive.

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Moving in is going well. There's great things and not-so-great things about this place. I love the apartment itself — very spacious, nice carpets, etc. And the location is awesome — about half a mile down the road I have a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Circuit City, Books-A-Million, Sav-A-Center grocery store, Waffle House, IHOP, and a bunch of other stuff. About five miles away there's another large collection of useful stores including Best Buy. And of course, being a two-minute walk from Bryan and Cat is great — quite a step up from having a four-hour plane ride separating me from my nearest friends.

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The visit in Clemson was perfect. I didn't miss out on any visits, and I got to do all the things I had on my list: I watched Metalocalypse with Meg, ate at Waffle House, took pictures at the abandoned mill in Newry, finally hung out with Katie in person, went to Super Taco, spent a good amount of time with Alia, did an Irish Car Bomb with Jeff and Bobby, hung out with Kells, and even got to see Jenn, which I though would be infeasible.

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I haven't posted in a while, I know. I've been busy making the preparations to move to Covington, LA — a town about an hour away from New Orleans. I'm excited as hell about the move — it's something I've been really wanting for years. I've already got an apartment in the same apartment complex as my friends Bryan and Cat. My move-in date is September 8. My car is up for sale — I'll be back in the good ol' cow-spotted Civic once I get back up there. I'm also giving thought to the idea of beginning to consider packing. Fortunately, I never really unpacked when I moved down here two and a half years ago. Most of my belongings are still in boxes, so it should be a much easier move this time around. Hooray for practically living out of a suitcase for two years.

In other news, today is System Administrator Appreciation Day. I don't need to be showered with expensive sports cars (that would hurt), but perhaps a peck on the cheek would be appropriate. You do like receiving your email, right? I'm just sayin'.

Cat sent me her pictures from the trip to New Orleans two weeks ago, so this seems like a good time to finally write about it.

I arrived on Friday evening, and, after some brief discussions of geography, we immediately set to drinking.

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In a fit of vain hope, I tried connecting to BinRock again this evening, and was surprised to find it up and running! I logged in and looked around and everything seemed to be in order. What euphoria! I hadn't realized how empty my life is without BinRock.

OK, maybe that's a little sad.

Anyway, in honor of the prodigal son's return, I will post about a great baby's t-shirt I came across today. Perhaps you remember the big uproar in the early 80's about the Australian woman who claimed a dingo ate her baby (it was made into a movie with Meryl Streep). I read on PlanetDan that a woman has surfaced claiming she is the supposedly eaten baby. But what I really liked was the link a commenter posted to this shirt. It's so ridiculously cute, you almost forget that it's actually pretty damn offensive. Man, I want to have kids so I can buy them shirts like that.

This was interesting. As I was catching up on the various blogs that I read, I came across this entry on Bram Cohen's site. Bram is the inventor of the well-known BitTorrent protocol. The entry discusses the pros and cons of living in a valley between two barely contained bodies of water, but what I found amusing was this comment posted by someone whom I apparently know, and who seems to think I was irresponsible in offering my friends free hosting on my server. It's surprising to find yourself discussed on the website of someone notable.

It's also somewhat annoying to have him suggest that I was "encouraging" people to host their irreplaceable data on my server, and never mind those mountains of water just over the horizon. For one thing, pretty much every one of the users on BinRock asked me if they could have space on my server; I didn't go out recruiting or anything. But even if I had, it's not like I was suggesting people come play on this cliffside with me or something. It's server space. Sure, it sucks to lose the files that were on the server, but nobody is going to suffer any material losses because of what happened. It's an inconvenience, and I apologize to everyone that I wasn't able to keep more complete backups, but I think there's much more significant things to worry about in the wake of this hurricane.

So you might have noticed the site has been down for a week or so. (If you didn't notice then you're a bastard and you don't love me). The server on which BinRock is hosted is (was?) near New Orleans, which is currently underwater thanks to Hurricane Katrina.

The site went down about the time the storm started to hit New Orleans, and has remained inaccessible since then. The server was on the second floor of a building, so it's possible that the only problem is a power outage. However, since I've read that 80% of New Orleans is under up to 20ft of water, I figure there's a very real possibility my server is currently making friends with a family of carp who have taken up residence in its spacious interior.

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