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Link thanks to Kevlar.

Tracy and I went to Lake Hodges today to go hiking. The rain has overfilled the lake. Last year when we went, it was so dried up and small, we were laughing at it. This time, it had filled up far beyond normal and the damn was overflowing. Neato. Lots of greenery, wildlife and flowers. No rattlesnakes this time however.

I came home hungry with slight headache. Had some lunch and took a nap for a while. After a dream about getting chased by Jaws, I woke up and worked on the Fiat the rest of the night. Might be starting that sucker soon!

Yesterday I spent the day hacking up that ugly cedar tree in our front yard. Filled two 35 and one 45 gallon bucket with trimmings. Not that much IMHO. But it still has a lot to go. It's so close to the house I'm afraid to use and axe so I may have to get a chainsaw afterall. But powertools are fun.

Worked outside for a few hours today. New laptop + powerful wireless means we can sit in the grass against the tree, in the sun. Very nice. In the pic is Brian, just about ready to fall over.

The reason I'm working outside? Work's been ultra-workey the last few weeks. This week will be a 70+ hour week for me. A first since the Telalink days I believe. But it's ok, I'm really enjoying it...and the overtime is nice. I'm implementing internal corporate blogs. And since it's a big company, it requires a pretty robust solution. Above about 500 employees, you have to start looking at internal company tools like an ISP would. Scaleable, manageable and self service. And since I should expect 10K users, self service is required. A Blogger appliance would be the best IMHO, but that doesn't exist and my contacts at Google haven't told me of anything like it coming out. So, I used a pretty famous open source package, LiveJournal, modified to work with our intranet SSO, fit corporate style, etc. Kind of a bitch to get going. mod_perl + apache 1.3.x. Wish it could run on Apache2/mod_perl2, I feel so lame putting a 1.3 out there after going to ApacheCon. Did a beta demo today to show it to the manager of our department. Good stuff, he liked it. A few more weeks of polish and we release it to the CIO, the first customer. Then to a few VP's that have been asking for it. Then everybody else. It'll change our corporate culture for sure.

Pics of Dan and Will trying out Patty's off-road board and Will's carve board. Cool!

Taking a smoke-walk with my co-workers. It's like a smoke-break but instead of smoking, we go for a walk. Discovered a nice little path that takes you out of our office complex and onto a neat little hill overlooking the freeway.

So, here I am again walking the .8 mile walk from W to AE. It's a beautiful day outside. I should do more walking.