Ok so it's not a Macdate

I originally had planned to do a Macdate today (technically yesterday) but I was away from the computer for a bit longer than expected and thus the Macdate didn't get done. Yesterday was the last day of Vinney's work so her coworkers threw a small get together that we were at most of the evening, then we went over to my parents' house to sit and talk with my mom for a bit.

My mom just recently lost her sister who was very dear to her and has been taking it just about as well as she could, which is very difficult for her. She's trying to stay happy and positive given that my wedding is now 7 days away but it's still very difficult for her. Her sister had just started treatment for cancer and things took a sudden turn for the worse. The worst part of it all was that my mom found out while she was in an airport on her way back home from real-estate searching in CT for a place for Vinney and I to live. My mom is one of the strongest people I've ever known, but to think of her alone in an airport just finding out that her sister had passed even brought me to tears. Luckily some people in the airport noticed her sadness and consoled her until she boarded her flight; the thought of those strangers helping my mom made me quite happy, not only to know that there are still good people out there but also to know that she wasn't alone.

Vinney and I are going to a friend's wedding in Greensboro tonight, which is about 2 hours away. This year has been crazy, I basically went from having only been to a single wedding in all of my life to going to 5 (tonight inclusive) in less than a 12 month period. I'm pretty much all weddinged-out at this point, after mine I'm calling it quits for a while - so no one close to me better get married anytime soon :) Weddings are great, especially when I can see that the bride and groom are enjoying themselves, but honestly they take too long. You end up devoting pretty much a full day to them and most of the time you're sitting around at an uncomfortable table in uncomfortable clothes. Although it's probably too late to have this at my wedding, I think the guests need to have more to do at the wedding. I'm talking a few machines setup if people want to LAN, some board games, pin-the-tail on the groom, etc... If more people did that then weddings would be more fun for everyone, just a thought :)

Despite me being tired of weddings, I'm very much looking forward to mine. It's crazy, at the beginning of the summer it seemed like the wedding was so far away. And while Vinney was still up in CT the wedding seemed like something that would happen in the distant future. But now, in just 7 days everything will change. I'll be married to the woman of my dreams, we'll be leaving Raleigh for two whole weeks only to return to begin moving up to CT for two years. I've lived in Raleigh ever since 1991 and in just 7 days, that's all going to change. It's nuts.

I was born in the Northeast, so in a way I'm going back to my roots I guess; except I was more than happy to leave those frozen roots behind in favor of more humid, less cold roots :) We finally found a place to live in CT, much thanks to my mom spending lots of time looking up in CT and Vinney spending lots of time searching on the internet. We ended up finding a great house to rent with a garage, so I'm happy. For a while it was looking like our only option was going to be to buy a place, but as I've seen countless times - everything worked out for the best in the end.

With the honeymoon and moving I'll basically be offline from the 14th until the beginning of September. For those of you that have followed AT since it's inception, this will be the absolute longest I've ever stayed away from the site - this also falls into the category of nuts. And if you're wondering, there will be no laptop on the honeymoon. I'll have my cell with me but it will be turned off, only to be used in emergencies but most likely tucked away in my luggage. I'm only going to tell one staff member where we're staying with instructions only to contact the hotel if absolutely necessary. But unlike the old days, we've got redundancy in our servers, we've got tons of writers and we've got a great admin and managing editor - if anything goes wrong, there should be someone else available to fix it :)

I hope to return in September rejuvenated and ready to get back to work. I've already been in touch with Seagate about receiving some of their NCQ enabled 7200.7 drives as well as getting on the request list for the upcoming 7200.8. In my absence, our own Wesley Fink and Kris Kubicki will be managing things. We've already pretty much worked out the editorial calendar for the month of August, so content should continue to go up smoothly without any issues in my absence.

It's a huge step for me to be able to leave the site for this long without being in constant contact with it, but I think that it's made possible by the fact that we have such great editors on staff now like Wes and Kris.

Talking about all of this has got me even more excited than when I was when I started writing this blog...hmm I may not be able to sleep just yet. Hmm...I'm sure I can find some work to do.

Take care and have a good weekend.