Went over to the courthouse today to help set up one of our reporters on a realtime trial. The courtroom looked pretty much like the ones shown on the plethora of legal dramas populating the television networks, with one huge difference.

Computers were everywhere. On the bench. At the bailiff's desk. A cart with an astonishing array of computers, monitors and PDAs sat in the area between the bar tables and the bench. The bar tables themselves were studded with the attorneys' laptops. Long narrow tables were crammed into the first row of the gallery, covered with the paralegals' laptops.

I couldn't help thinking it would make for an awesome LAN party.

Sweet Cuppin Cakes.

Flash animation, with sound. Safe for work, as long as your boss doesn't mind you watching flash animations when you're supposed to be working.

Last night, as I was packing like a crazed monkey on speed, a thunderstorm occurred. In Tampa Bay, this is a common occurrence. However, after one particularly bright flash of lightning, suddenly the lights in the house dimmed and began flickering, and the UPS beeped stridently.

My computer's monitor (not hooked into the battery-backup side of the UPS, since all three backup plugs are taken up by computers) went dark. A few blind keystrokes later and the computer was shut down. But the big problem: if more than one light was on, they'd dim and flicker alarmingly. And forget anything like air conditioning or the washing machine. (While it was meaningless since I couldn't use the computer or the TV, turning a light on or off would also reset the cable box and the cable modem. Weird.)

Packing is really hard when you've got only one light and a flashlight to work by. At least the way I pack, which entails an almost constant circulation from room to room in order to consolidate things and pack as efficiently as possible. After half an hour of brownout, I called the electric company. The guy answering the phone was unfamiliar with the term "brownout", if you can believe it.

A technician finally came by around 3 AM. I was still up, since I was determined to finish at least most of the tasks I had set for myself. He puttered around outside, shut off the power entirely for a while, turned it back on and eventually told me the problem was in the interior wiring.

Yet after he left, I tried the lights and everything was back to normal.

Well, this was the big moving weekend. I'll spare you the boring details, but hit a couple of bullet points.

• One needn't worry about falling asleep while driving, if one is driving a rolling deathtrap with no pickup, mushy brakes, a turn radius only slightly smaller than the CERN particle accelerator, and a tendency to throw a Grand Mal seizure upon hitting 35 miles per hour.
• I really have to find out whoever it was that called a bunch of folks up in Tallahassee on our behalf to let them know we might need help moving stuff in.
• A charged cellphone is your friend. The abovementioned folks called us to offer their help, but the phone was dead and we didn't find out about their offer until we'd got most of the stuff moved in. However, their assistance was still greatly appreciated, as they helped us finish unloading the truck, get a bunch of boxes into their proper rooms, and get the one piece of furniture upstairs that we hadn't been able to manage on our own.
• Scandinavian furniture sucks. Oh, it's good-looking and sturdy, but when the drawers don't come out of the dresser, it's really freaking heavy.
• A truck which gets seven miles per gallon, and a sixty-gallon tank, really makes me appreciate my own car.

I ended up taking a bus home; the original plan was for me to drive back to Tampa with Karen, and then for Karen to go back to Tallahassee, but it took longer to unload than we'd expected. The bus ride was a treat.

Many thanks to Brian, whose offer to help us load the truck was greatly appreciated; Cedric, Charley, John, Norm and Lisa, the "bunch of folks"; and Lisa, who braved the downtown Tampa bus depot at midnight to pick me up.

And man, am I tired.

Ever since I gave my notice this morning, my boss has been going into the phone closet to make telephone calls, instead of making them from his desk like he normally does.

This doesn't bode well; after he fired our receptionist, he spent a couple of days on the phone trying to find out how to make sure her unemployment benefits would be denied. Having witnessed that incident, it's hard not to be paranoid when he's suddenly making sure I can't hear the content of his phone conversations.

I guess there's a reason you don't hear the second verse of "Oh, Susanna!" sung these days. I know times have changed, but ye gods! have times changed...

Things I threw away this morning when cleaning out my desk at work:

• An ESDI hard drive.
• The November 7, 1995 issue of PC Magazine.
• Two different OEM copies of Windows 3.1. On 5¼" diskettes.
• A 25-pin serial cable.
• Computer keys. Remember when computers had locks on them?
• Netware 3.11.
• An 80286 motherboard.
• Diskettes containing the FORM and STEALTH viruses.
• Eight floppy cables, three of which had both pin and edge connectors for the drives.
• Five mouse balls.