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A lot of other stuff has been going on besides the cruise last week.

My roommate, Nuke’em, was supposed to go on the family cruise.

He had accepted a job with a geophysical subsurface mapping company in the past month and his initial posting was (is) Algeria.

He applied for his Algerian work visa and we figured it would arrive after the cruise. Turns out, it arrived the Tuesday before the cruise. And the company needed him right away.

So, at the last minute, SL was substituted for Nuke’s spot on the cruise.

Nuke received his electronic airline tickets on the Friday before the cruise. SL and I flew out of RDU for the Cruise on Saturday afternoon; Nuke flew out of RDU for London / Algeria Saturday evening.

I received a couple of emails during the cruise - Nuke arrived safe and sound in the Sahara desert. Well, safe anyway. ;-)

Yesterday and today, I’ve been able to chat with him via Google Chat and Yahoo IM.

Seems Nuke’s job is going pretty good. He likes the work, his co-workers and the locals. His workday hours are from 7 AM to 7 PM, 7 days a week. So I get to catch up with him typically in the morning here which is early afternoon there.

He’ll be in the field until the end of February; at which time he’ll have 3 weeks off. I pick him up at RDU on February 28th.

Nephew

Also spoke, via IM, to my nephew today. He’s left Red Hat Japan and now works for Google Japan / Asia. I think he’s in charge of 4C in Tokyo. That’s Commie China Content Control.

Joking.

He does something he refers to as user interface environment experience or something like that. Hmmmm . . . I go to the office to work. I guess they go to the office to have experiences. Yaaay for the environment!

Home

It’s nice a quiet around the house.

I’ve already been able to get some serious cleaning done in Nuke’s absence. For example, I cleaned the stove and oven on Sunday. It hasn’t been done in quite a while and had gotten kind of gnarly.

Over the next week I plan to go through the house doing a real good cleaning – one room per night. I should have this house in pretty good shape by next weekend (damn – I don’t think Nuke’s ever cleaned the bathtub in his bathroom – ick).

Critters

I haven’t seen the raccoons since I’ve been back. The temperatures have been dropping into the teens and twenties so maybe they’re in semi-hibernation. Raccoons do that during the coldest weather.

NC State Basketball

NC State dropped their first 2 ACC games against UNC (boooo hissss) and Clemson. But they came back and won in overtime against ranked Miami Saturday night (I gave my tickets away since I was flying back late Saturday).

Tomorrow night (Wednesday) we play Georgia Tech at the RBC. I’ll be there.

Work

Work is just like I left it – darn good. I have a job I really enjoy and I work with a great bunch of people. It feels good to be back in the routine.