i bought a new watch today, since lindsey broke my last one (intentionally). after i made her feel like shit, she did give me $80 the next day, but that wasn’t even one-third of what it cost.

so today while we were killing time at the mall, i made her go with me to buy a new one. it’s the “centurion” from esq swiss. i likes.

shortly after 11am today i took off from indianapolis international airport and around 12.30pm landed at ronald reagan national airport in washington, dc. a short train ride and a three-block walk later, i arrived at the donovan house hotel. having not seen it before today, i was actually impressed. it’s quite nice.

just after getting checked in i took off on a walking journey to see what was in the neighborhood. i ended up near the department of the treasury at which point i realized i was really close to the white house. then i had to go check out all the tourist sites all over again — the white house, the washington monument, the national mall, the capitol building, the j. edgar hoover fbi building, etc.

on my way walking back to the hotel i realized i could go ahead to the dc convention center and “pre-check-in” for the cfunited conference, so i hailed a cab and got over there. whenever i left i realized that i street i was on took me directly back to the hotel, which is pretty nice. it’s about a five block walk from the hotel to the convention center which shouldn’t be too bad.

i got quite a bit of walking in and my feet are pretty sore right now. i scored a drink or two and am now back at the hotel, about to turn in for the night. tomorrow is day 1 of cfunited 2008, which should be interesting considering i’ve never written a line of coldfusion code in my life!

on season one, episode 9 of “house“, the was a conversation between john henry giles and dr. gregory house that went like this:

“i know that limp. i know the empty ring finger. and that obsessive nature of yours, that’s a big secret. you don’t risk jail and your career to save somebody that doesn’t want to be saved unless you got something, anything, one thing. the reason normal people got wives and kids and hobbies, whatever, that’s because they ain’t got that one thing that hits them that hard and that true. i got music. you got this. the thing you think about all the time. thing that keeps you south of normal. yeah, makes us great. makes us the best. all we miss out on is everything else. no woman waiting at home after work with a drink and a kiss; that ain’t gonna happen for us.”

wow… that really struck a cord with me.

see, i got that one thing. for me, it’s computers. as i write this, my girlfriend is at work and has been for about the last 10 hours. i came home when she went to work and i’ve pretty much been sitting here in front of a computer since then.

i’ve caught up on some work e-mail, read up on some bgp stuff, creating and set up some mpls vpn labs in dynamips, checked myspace and facebook, etc.

it was a beautiful day outside, if the weather widget on my dashboard and the kids playing up and down the street are any indication. i wouldn’t really know though, i haven’t stepped outside since i got home about 10:30am this morning.

when the girlfriend gets here after while, she’ll have my full attention and i won’t even touch a computer until after she leaves tomorrow, but, for me, computers — networking, to be more specific — is “the one thing”.

kinda makes me wonder if i shouldn’t re-evaluate things…

by now everyone has, i’m sure, heard about the deadly tornadoes that swept through the southeast united states earlier this week. i’ve seen the continuing media coverage over the last several days and was just amazed. friday afternoon at work, i decided that i was going to head to tennessee after work and help out.

below are pictures that i took while i was there. i apologize for the quality; they were taken with the camera phone built into my blackberry. i did not bring along a “real” digital camera with me.

the photos do nothing to convey the extent of the damage in lafayette, tennessee. without seeing it firsthand, it is impossible to imagine what this small community has had to endure. at last count, there were a total of 14 deaths in lafayette alone. tennessee state troopers are restricting access to the hardest hit areas — which are truly devastated. leveled. a curfew from 6pm to 6am has been instituted due to rampant looting.

trees everywhere are down. one area in particular, as i explained to someone else, “looks like someone took a lawn mower and just mowed down the trees”.

by 7am, the town was packed. people were everywhere, helping each other out. processions of trucks could be seen coming into town, loaded down with heavy equipment to help clear out the debris. it was astonishing to witness so many people (many who were not from the area) coming together unselfishly to help out the folks in lafayette, tennessee.

it was truly an amazing, heartwarming scene. i wish the best for the people affected by these tragedies. godspeed, lafayette.