Not the kind you get from Saturday Night Live, either. What a weekend it was. I left last week for Houston for work. That’s right, I’m in the great state of Texas. A co-worker and I were sent down here to convert a company we acquired from their computer domain to ours. My weekend was 26 hours spent in an office building changing domains and loading new apps and transferring user profiles on 40 or so workstations and resetting about 10 network printers. My co-worker handled the server end of things: setting up the email server, the file and print server, the DHCP server and the local domain controller server, as well as transferring data from the old servers to our newer ones. Welcome to Houston, BillH!!

On the upside, we’ve eaten barbeque a few times and also gone to other local restaurants when we could. The local office only has a contractor that handles their IT needs up to now and he’s been great. He’s quite knowledgeable and been extremely helpful with our needs both in the office and getting us to a number of fine eating establishments. After all, if I’m going to travel, I’m going to eat local!!

It’s been a comfortable 55° here. I’ve been talking with KC on the phone and it’s been a rather balmy 8° there! I was concerned when I heard about her latest issue there: due to the garage door being left accidentally open for a few hours in the dead of the night and the temperature reaching -5°, we had water pipes freeze. Luckily she remedied the situation and found that not only had the pipes frozen, but some had actually burst. She got in touch with a plumber who came and fixed it the today, but she did go without water this morning. The good news is the plumber’s bill will only be about $50 or so.

Well, we’ve got two more days at the office here in Houston before flying back on Thursday. We’ll get back in time to take the company vacation day for Christmas (Friday). Works out pretty well, I think.