Another batch o' randomness

Quick thoughts:

David turned 6 last weekend. We took him to the same Mexican restaurant we've been spending all the birthdays at lately and made him wear the sombrero. He didn't like that. But we gave him a Nintendo DS Lite as a birthday gift, which made it all cool.

Work is a little more manageable right now. I still haven't hired a new person yet, but I've talked to a couple of possibilities. We'll see where that takes us.

I really wish I could vote for John McCain. Unfortunately, I just want to see the religious wing of the Republican party crushed so badly that I can't even think too hard about it. So I went with Obama - I decided on him about 2 days before the Mass. primary and I'm willing to overlook the areas where I differ with him. Why? Because he's not a Republican. Once the religious right collapses and we return to the days of a relatively moderate, secular Republican party I could come back someday. I'd rather be a conservative than a liberal, but I'd rather be a liberal than what passes for conservative nowadays.

I put a clear 3M skin on my MacBook Pro's wristrest. Nice. Now I don't have to worry so much about the wristwatch scuffing effect.

Over the last two months I have lost seven pounds.

Which doesn't make much of a dent in the basic problem. But if I can make that pace for a few more months, I'll be in a good place by the end of the year. We'll see.

The problem I had with a mail server in mid-April is now solved forever. I worked a few hours on Monday and deployed a permanent server (4 cores of Xeon goodness) to handle the system. It isn't even breaking a sweat now. Meanwhile, I got to build my first high-end system in several years to do the temporary fix, and now I'm going to stick a decent video card in it, bring it back home, and play games on it. A win-win.

Leopard 10.5.3 was released yesterday. Which means it's now finally pretty much ready for prime time.