My wife is losing weight. She is very serious about this process and is making the commitments of time, money and energy to accomplish her goals.

We have always been on the slothful end of the spectrum. Well, I have always been on the slothful end, anyway. I am therefore keenly aware of the small changes in her attitude and outlook that accompany changes in diet and exercise. I am unsure if it is inherent in the process or just an attitude you acquire by working out with other fitness freaks, diet dealers and iron pumpers.

Sign #1

"My personal trainer said..."
First thing is having a personal trainer. I would not even know where to find one. I am very sure I don't know where they work.

I am a life long geek. I used to get beat up at recess by guys who become personal trainers. My only defense mechanism is to consider them to be less intelligent than me. Therefore following the advice of someone I consider less intelligent just doesn't make sense. I (the sloth) would never utter the words, "My personal trainer said..."

We had a hard crash at work. Pretty much blew the whole day getting the system to respond. We had a dozen experts guessing what went wrong and I am not sure anything was fixed. They rolled back one change and got everything restarted.

It was then time for mopping up. I put in a few extra hours monitoring render queues. It is not exciting work, but it is vital.

Trouble is I couldn't sleep. I am sure today will be a continuation of the problem and I don't see any glaring configuration problem we can fix to make this system right. Here is hoping WebSphere behaves today!

208

The Blue Man Group is launching another tour. They are planning to span the U. S. off the Complex album / Show. What better place to start your national tour than the Sovereign Center. In Reading. Pennsylvania. Well, I suppose that is one for the home team!

BTW the next stop on the tour is Uncasville, CT. Sounds exciting, doesn't it. (actually it is the Mohegan Sun Casino, way classier than the Sovereign Ice Rink)

Today was the first days without our Level 3 Experts. When I started at Countrywide we had two groups of analysts supporting VLF. Our group was called level 2 and a Level 3 group was scattered in California and Texas. Level 3 had 4 people. One became our supervisor, one left the company, one switched departments and the other was out sick today.

Strangely thing went smoothly. Apparently they did a great job transferring the knowledge.

209

I became a Countrywide employee today. I went in to work at 8:00 a. m. and signed a pile of papers. I was at my desk like nothing happened by 9:00.

So, that was an easy process. Not bad for the first day back after Jamaica.