Unquiet Desperation

photo credit: Old Shoe Woman

Forgive me for not writing sooner. Things were crazy, exciting, and exhausting ever since New Mexico, and blogging fell completely off the radar.

So…looking back…

• We spent a night in Flagstaff, AZ, and met up with Evo Terra and his better half, Sheila, for some fabulous pizza. I want to say the name of the place was Fratelli’s. Good beer, good pizza, good company.
• On Saturday 8/23, we crossed the Mojave desert. It was everything that Evo led me to expect…dull, brown, and hot. At one point, there was the following exchange in the cab of the truck between myself and my daughter:
  

  Me: I spy something brown

  Her: The mountains.

  Me: Yep. Okay…I spy something brown.

  Her: The grass.

  Me: Yep. I spy something brown….

  You get the point. Amazingly, I had cellphone coverage almost all the way across the desert. This will come into play later…so wait for it.

• On Sunday 8/24, we unloaded the truck. Holeee Sheee-it. It was 105°F. Hottest day on record for the area. It took us eight hours, and would have taken longer except that my co-worker Suzy and her sister showed up to give us a hand. ¹ We collapsed at the end of the day, boxes piled everywhere, beds barely made.

The next three days (Mon-Wed) were a whirlwind.
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1. Thanks, Suzy![back]

photo credit: lumierefl

We’re here. All is finally settling down. Sorry for not blogging, but after three days crazed activity and some customer service calls, we only JUST for the phone/DSL working.

Lengthy post tomorrow to explain what’s been happening.

We’ve made it to Tucumcari, New Mexico.

What a hole.

photo credit: bravofourthree

Holy cow…they have trees here.

That was my first thought when driving through the upper corner of Oklahoma. I know…it’s silly. The mental picture I’ve had of Oklahoma has always been one of dry grass, dust, and weatherbeaten farmhouses standing watch over herds of cattle.

I got the cattle part right. The rest I attribute to watching too many Westerns.

I’ve been holed up in the hotel room working for part of the week, but the last two nights my father-in-law has taken me out, showing me where he grew up, the farm where his family lived (now long gone), the schools he went to, the places he spent his time. Gave me a real perspective for how far he’s come since he left home.

That’s comforting to say the least.

Last night, we drove some of the backroads between Bartlesville, Ramona, and back to Dewey. I have never seen so much undeveloped land in my life. Green rolling hills, small copses of trees with cattle grazing in between them. One ranch we passed was about 5000 acres. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around someone owning so much land.

The wild horses, though…they took my breath away. I see now why they symbolize power and freedom to so many people. It was amazing to watch them run.

Tonight is our last night in Oklahoma. Tomorrow morning, we’re on the road again, headed for New Mexico.

Microsoft HPC – O’Reilly ONLamp Blog

Windows HPC Server 2008 is about high performance computing on the Windows platform. Or highly productive performance computing how we call it on our main product website www.microsoft.com/hpc.

Will this be better than the LPC we’ve been dealing with for years?

Promise?