Note to self: when mixing egg white protein power and juice, do not mix them like you were taught in high school and college chemistry, or how you mix your soy sauce into the wasabe.

None of this mix a little of the liquid in with the solid, stir until incorporated, then add more liquid and repeat.

Oh, no, none of that.

Just dump all the juice into the protein powder and friggin' shake it like a mad woman.

You'll end up with a protein lump if you try it the "correct" way.

Yum. Protein lumps.

The DSL guy just left. He spent a little over an hour and a half installing the DSL line in our new offices. The process would have been much quicker if the people assigning IP addresses to our account had actually told him the correct IP addresses that were routed to our lines.

But that's dodging the first point.

Mike and I are officially in business!

Somehow, he convinced Kate that, yes, starting a company with the neighbors was a good thing.

That those neighbors included me was purely coincidence.

Really!

When I called and told my mom what we had done, she was overjoyed. When she told Eric, I think his reaction was something along the lines of, "Well, it's about time."

People have been saying that a lot to me in the last few years. Probably because I've actually started doing what I've said I was going to do who knows how many times or for how long.

As in, from the Shawshank Redemption, "Get busy living, or get busy dying."

But Eric was excited.

And Kris wants to know when we're going to hire him.

Heh.

We had looked at probably 10 office spaces over the last 6 months. Starting a company or not starting a company seemed to be dependent on the workload of the moment (too much work = not enough time to look for offices). We kept our eyes open for a good place that we both liked, realizing that we were doing well without office space specifically.

But we found some!

Our offices are located in downtown Sunnyvale, close to the Sunnyvale Caltrain station. This was the first office within our price range, with a good location, close to home (I can bike to work! Heck, I can walk to work if I want!), and a decent size with good lighting that wasn't run down or vibrating all day long. One of the places we looked at sat just over the input ducts for the airconditioner for the building: every time it went on, my feet went numb standing in the office. It was a cheap-ass place, though: $1.25 / ft2.

Next up ... furniture!

After looking in the dotcom graveyard, er, office furniture warehouse, we settled on L desks for the office. I tried to convince Mike of a large round table, but we couldn't find one large enough for four people to sit around with computers and monitors.

So, L desks it was.

Mike has one desk of the L style, so he purchased two more like it, nominally of the same wood color/type. Kris and I helped him carry them up yesterday. Will probably set them up tomorrow.

Whoo! Exciting!

Okay, here we go.

Done did got me my binaries.

And a tutorial.

And, in theory anyway, a reasonable setup from Andy (theory only in as much as I have nothing to compare it to, but I'm sure it's beautiful).

QS rescanned my dirs, so it opens with three keystrokes.

So.

Yeah.

I'm all set.

Mike is just going to love this when he starts hearing my cursing from across the office when I use the wrong editing strokes.

Last Friday night, Mischief descended on Wes' house for the inaugral event of the Shirley-Paul-I'm-gonna-kick-your-ass duodecathalon. The first event was, somewhat appropriately, a DDR dance off. Other events include Being Tall (Paul at 6'+ will probably win that one), Being Short (Paul will lose that one to Shirley's 5'5"), and others that, no doubt, include ro-sham-something.

The winner gets breakfast in bed. Said winner does not have to let the loser into the house. Should said loser wake up said winner before serving breakfast, the attempt doesn't count and the loser has to try again.

I arrived a little late, working on various projects. As I arrived, a ro-sham-eat had just finished up. Wes ran out of the kitchen and came back into the room dragging his dog's kennel. I looked at the crate, one made for the big, big dogs, and declared three people could fit in it.

Wes and several others looked at me like I was insane. Three people in that kennel? No way!

I responded, "Not only can three people fit in there, but if one is one of the small Asian women, the other two could be Tyler and I."

No one believed me.

Tyler was game, and, after taking off his shoes, crawled into the crate. He lay on his back, taking up most of the bottom of the crate. No, no, no way could more than two people fit in the crate, the men called out.

I asked Tyler to move to the back of the crate, and I "tried" to climb in next to him. The trick is, of course, to all great cons is to not quite fit.

Well, if I had truly been trying to con these guys.

When I didn't quite fit in the crate with Tyler, everyone started calling me on my "three people" declaration. I responded quickly by pulling out my wad of cash from my pocket. "I have 60, no, 80! Eighty dollars says I can fit in the crate with Tyler and Shirley or Pei. Eighty dollars."

Both Kevin and Paul immediately offered $20. Easy money they joked. Hand over the money, Kitt.

Silly boys.

I could get four people in that crate for $100.

Tyler unfolded himself from the bottom of the crate, I slid in next to him, and Pei zipped in, pulling the cage door closed behind her.

Easiest $40 ever.

EVAR.

Heh.

That would be me.