I did not go out much on Saturday and Sunday. I mucked out cleaned the south end of the basement, which is occupied by the fireplace area and my study. I rearranged some of the furniture, added two work tables to my corner and relocated large set of shelves. Hundreds of books were relocated in the process. So my corner has much more workspace and, with the shelves moved, looks much more open. The fireplace area is now fit for human habitation again. I put away some camping gear that had been there since October and wrapping paper that had been there since Christmas.

In the process I relocated the three computers I have there (two are mine, the third belongs to my employer). Mine share a KVM switch with the monitor, keyboard, and mouse on the left side of my desk, while the County’s are on the right. The desk was my father’s. I wondered about putting computer stuff on it, but this way means that I will actually use the desk more. So far I am really enjoying the configuration. Besides, the desk is still less cluttered than when my father used it. The mess he had there was truely awe-inspiring. BTW, I managed to relocate all three computers and all their peripherals without any connection problems. I was able to reconnect all the cables correctly and all three systems have booted up correctly and connected to the Internet.

I had been wondering about to use for work tables, but part of the answer became quickly clear to me. We had an old table that had belonged to one of my parents’ closest friends. If I am using my father’s desk, I ought to be using this table as well. It had been languishing in our unheated workroom for the last decade, so I decided to bring it in. This was easier said than done. It is very heavy, and I had to unscrew the table top from the leg assembly. Even then I had to take the basement door off its hinges to bring the leg assembly in. I was able to accomplish all of this and the table is now sitting in the middle of work area, already being put to use. It is very solidly constructed. I think we could use it as a tornado shelter :-)>

I was planning to go to church Sunday morning, but the phone rang at 9AM. It was the data center at my employer. One of the server admins had run into trouble with patching one of the database servers and needed advice from the DBA he knows best—me. I answered his question, but I had to stay near my computer until he emailed to say he was done—something else might have come up. By then it was 9:40. On a sunny summer day I could still get to church reasonably close to the start of the service. In the winter, with snow falling, I realize that it would might be more that half over by the time I could safely get there. So I stayed home and did more stuff around the house.

In the late afternoon we took our son J out for his birthday celebration. This went well. The restaurant we took him to had draft Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. This is a fine brew that I have often enjoyed in bottles, but this was the first time I had it from the tap.

Today was Tom’s turn. We picked him up at his group home and took him for a walk in a nice St. Paul neighborhood, then ending with lunch at the Groveland Tap. This went well (the weather is much milder than a few days ago). We all got some exercise and a nice meal, and enjoyed being together.

We heard some of the MLK day stuff on the radio, notably Colin Powell’s speech over in Minneapolis. This was really good. He told several jokes: I had no idea he could be funny. This was followed by a recording of excerpts from Barack Obama’s speech about Jeremiah Wright. I had seen countless references to it but never actually heard it before. Also very good. Tomorrow the USA will have a President who knows something about Game Theory :-)>