I’m not into abstracts. I prefer concrete things. Usually. Except when the abstract referred to is, say, a nice elegant little algorithm.

The last few days have been nice.

Over the weekend we went up to the U.P. to go a-birthday-partying for Regan. She’s 4 years old now! What a country this is, where kids grow up to be big kids, and big kids ask for money. Er, never mind. Stay on target… stay on target…

Saturday was the Day to Do Stuff. It started with the initial attempts to get mom and dad Mager’s computer back from the dead. Turns out it wasn’t really dead — it just had Mac OS 9.0.4 booting and no way to bring it back to Mac OS X again. The Startup Disk control panel was too old. Luckily I had forgotten to bring back Bob’s (boss’) FireWire cable back to him, and it was still in the laptop bag. I managed to check the file system, copy an updated Startup Disk to his machine, and got it back into normal mode. Interrupt…

Dad M. asked if I was interested in going to see the speed skating World Cup event down in Marquette. Sure, I said, so we packed up, dad, Nate, and I, and headed off for the Berry Event Center. At least, I think that’s what it’s called. It’s where NMU plays “hackey” — you know, the game with the round black hackey puck, eh? Yah, for sure. Anyways, we managed to get into the arena just in time to see Apollo Anton Ono win his first qualifying 500m heat. It was pretty exciting to watch the guys go at it on the ice. Looks like fun.

So then we walked around to find some seats on the side where the finish line was. As we came around the back side, I ran into my old friend Marti (Tomasi) Morgan. She was decked out in her Mrs. Michigan regalia, and since she looked like she had somewhere to go and I didn’t want to lose the guys, I just said “hi there” and kept walking… until Marti hauled me in and demanded that I talk with her. It was a huge sacrifice, but I did it in spite of that. No, seriously now, we had a great (but brief) chat, and managed to divulge the fact that our family has expanded by 2 girls since she last saw Mercedes at 3 months old. In the middle of that she signed autographs for a couple of girls. The joy and the pain of being a celebrity! I promised to get her the web site address and relay a message to Chuck for her, and let her get back to her celebrity concession booth helping-out duties.

While talking to Marti I missed a fairly evil crash. Someone had fallen and taken out 2 other skaters. Ow! Later on the announcer said he was expected to make a full recovery, which was good, but it looked scary for a while. He had to be taken out on a stretcher. I can only guess that it was a broken ankle, or something like that. (I didn’t see a collar or a back board so it seemed to be non-threatening when he left, but still, it’d stink to have a career ruined over one bad move on the rink.)

We ended up watching the races for a couple hours all told. Saw the quarterfinals just before we left, and while we weren’t sure, it sounded like Fabio and Apollo were both DQed in their race. That’s sorta icky if you’re one of the top two finishers, destined to go on to the semis. Oops.

So we went home, ate dinner, and then had the birthday party. All I can say is that Regan is a little card. She loves getting presents — what 4 yr old doesn’t? — and she’s really cute when she discovers what it is. I tried to capture it with a few pictures but I missed the good expressions. Worse still, the camera is still up in the U.P. (sigh). I do hope we can get it back undamaged and soon-ish. I would love to be just as happy as Regan is to get the simple things in life. I think I’ll work on that. The stuff I like costs too much money, and doesn’t really make me happy anyway.

Sunday, well, was Sunday. I managed to finally get Mac OS 9.1 installed (for Classic) and set up the apps that required it, and the Mager computer is back online. It was also drive-home day. But that’s generally pretty relaxing. We took our time and got the girls home well after bed time, but at least they fell asleep in the van. I was happy to be home. So was Maximillian… he nearly drove me batty with his nuzzling up to me. Michelle’s cat, but comes to me for attention (even though I’m not around as much as Michelle!).

Monday was a half day of work. There were stressful points but I also managed to leave after only 5 hours of work. Happy, joy! Not bad considering how things are lately. It was nice to be with the girls in the afternoon. They liked it too.

Today was somewhat long but involved riding (not driving) to the Milwaukee area and back. All the way down and back I was connected through BlueTooth from either the laptop or the Palm Tungsten|T to my AT&T phone. It’s not fast, but wow, is it handy to have basic data connectivity while hurtling down the road at 65 mph (or maybe 70… or 72…?). I processed email all the way down and experimented with an app for moving files between a SMB/CIFS server (e.g. Windows) and a Palm connected organizer. Pretty nifty stuff. Pricey for a personal bill but I was infinitely more productive having a connection to my work email than I would have been for that 3+ hours otherwise. But I digress. I’m not going to tell you why I was there, other than to say it was work related, and it’s just boring computer stuff. I’m not excited about it personally (professionally maybe, but that’s as far as it goes).

And tonight, I was in a dead spot for cell phone coverage, and I had time away from the house with Michelle. Our home group is doing a series on financial planning called “Good Sense.” (Get it? sense, cents?) We just started, but it is promising. Between that and the 90 minutes of gabbing afterwards it was a fine, relaxing evening.

And now it’s 3:44 in the morning. Oops.

G’night.