FedExing and Airborne Expressing Stuff Around Town...

My Dell PC died on me a few weeks ago. I called their customer care, and they offered to send me a replacement tower of the same specs. I got it last Thursday. The machine was 200 Mhz faster, had 80 GB more HDD storage, and a DVD Burner in addition to the CD Burner. Cool! They sent it to me via FedEx. When I went to go pick it up from the FedEx distribution center, I drove by the Dell Manufacturing campus where the computer was built!

Since this is a swap, they asked me to ship my old PC back in the same box as the new one, and provided me with a DHL / Airborne Express shipping label to send it back free of charge. I dropped it off at the DHL counter across from the IBM site, and noticed something peculiar; the box was going to be sent to a destination five minutes away! Its even in the same ZIP code! I could have dropped it off there on my way to work. I asked the associate working there when the box would be delivered, and it turns out it won't actually be delivered until Tuesday of next week!

I think four full days to make it less than a mile is a new record, especially for a company that can ship things across the planet in < 24 hours.

Update on the P5+...

We had a "Go Us!" party at work today; they set up kegs, had wine and snacks, and all in all, closed out the week on a really high note. Cool!

A Little Taste of What IBM is Working on...

The IT Jungle has an article talking about the latest, greatest POWER chip that's been developed by IBM. The POWER5+ announced publically a few days ago comes in Dual-core and for the first time Quad-core packages, delivering up to eight simultaneous threads in hardware. That means that your shiny new server / workstation can dedicate its hardware to executing eight different tasks at once (most computers use a task switching system, where applications share access to the single execution pipeline available in the processor).

My current job is bringing up new devices like these (and others) in servers; its amazing what people are working on here...

Wisdom Teeth Out...

Friday morning I had my wisdom teeth surgically removed. I sent out an email at work earlier this week about this, and started getting "war stories" from people about their own experiences. I suppose I ought to tell mine.

My friend David graciously took a good part of his Friday morning off from his job at NI to drive me to and from the dental surgeon. I was referred to Dr. Steven J. Perkins here in Austin, who, as near as I can tell 36 hours later, did an awesome job. I remember joking with him about something just after they put the IV needle in my arm... And then I woke up forty-five minutes later. I don't feel any pain, exactly, just a dull throbbing. This might be because of the various medications they gave me come to think of it.

Anyway, Dr. Perkins did a great job extracting all four teeth. I don't have any numbness, and have no sinus problems. My only complaint: Jello, Pudding, and clear soups only get you so far; I'm incredibly hungry! Depending on how I feel, I may have to work from home on Monday as well; I'm not exactly operating at 100% yet.

For anyone that needs a dental surgeon in Austin, Dr. Perkins did a great job.