I finished up my first day in Reston on my business trip. Had two visits today. The first went very well, while the other was a trial in patience. Seems the second customer didn’t have the password to his Cisco switch, meaning we couldn’t configure some key features of our product. Worse yet, the company managing his network didn’t have the password, either. I spent two hours guessing passwords before deciding we’d have to settle for resetting it. The next few visits will likely make me work much harder. But I think I’m ready for them now.

My good friends Gerry and Mandy, and their daughter Emma welcomed their newest family member, Caleb James Reid, on Saturday afternoon. Caleb entered the world a whopping 8 pounds, six ounces. A big boy!

Congratulations to the four of them. I can’t wait to meet the big guy!

We have a contract on our house! The papers were signed today. I think the buyer will be very happy with our home. Once we move out of it, that is. The buyer wants to swing by again this weekend to do some planning regarding how she’s going to furnish it. Then she’ll become our landlord for a few months or until we find our new home. I think we all come out winners.

I guess its not bad to have a contract on the house less than two weeks from putting it on the market. We were certainly surprised at how quickly things progressed. I’ll take pleasantly surprised over the alternative, any day!

I’d like to take a moment to thank the number-one reader of MT.Net: my mother. You are the greatest! I love you, mom!

Well, you know its been a busy weekend if you haven’t seen a post from me. We spent it in Richmond celebrating the birthday of Kelly’s mom, Linda. Hallie slept in our hotel room and was a *champion* sleeper. We all appreciated the rest!

Kelly and Hallie went home while I went to stay with Linda and Neil while I go to some business calls this week. I’m scheduled to be crazy busy while I’m here, so there won’t be much time for just goofing off. While I know Neil and Linda will take good care of me, it was incredibly hard to watch Kelly and Hallie drive off. I really don’t want to earn the reputation in Hallie’s eyes of being the parent who was never there. I’ve been fortunate not to have done much traveling this year, so maybe I’ve just grown soft. But with the Wife needing me, the Kid needing me, a house to sell and buy, and so much stuff to get worked out at work, a business trip just isn’t what I need right now.

On the good side, we may have a contract for the house this week! So that’ll be one big, big hurdle out of the way. Now to find and jump the remaining ones. I can be so impatient with things, but the control freak in me likes to be in control of my own fate. I guess life isn’t like that, huh?

So tonight, I’ll retire with Robert Baer’s autobiographical account of his time in the CIA: See No Evil, and get ready to hit the ground running tomorrow. Hope I feel up to a marathon workweek!

I know this got kicked around Fark last week, but I thought it bears mentioning again. Farkers were comparing the school webpages of Eli Manning and Philip Rivers. Rivers won as the ugliest.

Then again, as busy as Philip was during his time at State, I suppose I can cut him some slack for his lack of HTML skillz.

Right after the carnage of the morning of September 11th, 2001, six air traffic controllers were interviewed to provide their account of the events. Now word has come out that that tape was destroyed soon afterward.

Don’t you find it strange that such important evidence describing this unprecedented, criminal act of terrorism was destroyed? I mean, why would it be destroyed unless it contained damaging information?

The would-be journalist in me suspects that the controllers’ accounts might not have agreed with the official accounts we’ve been given. In a perfect world, there would be some jail time for the manager who destroyed the tape. Or at least he would lose his job. Then again, the concept of accountability hasn’t been in vogue lately, has it?

I got this from my friend Melissa Verdery, whom I used to work with in a past life. She and her husband Ryan are asking for donations to help care for a little dog who was hit by a car. If you’d like to donate, please contact Ryan at the number below.

See Max here and here.

Ryan explains the situation:

On Tuesday night, earlier this week, I was on my way home from a late evening of golf with friends at Knight’s Play when I came across a few teenagers who were standing in the middle of the center turn lane of Davis Drive. These sympathetic young people had placed themselves in the middle of the road in order to protect a small bundle of white fluff.
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Once again, I’m dragging tonight as I try to keep up with the pace of life lately. Work has been draining lately, and the househunting takes effort, too.

Tomorrow night, I’m off on a week-long business trip to DC, during which I’ll stop in four or five different cities. I’m like a friggin’ rock star on tour or something.

At least I’ve got a nice family beach trip to look forward to in August. And perhaps a quick jaunt up to Canada for a romantic getaway between now and then.

Damn, I need to go sailing. And soon.