Sometimes, screwups are GOOD.

I have XP home. When I installed PC Anywhere, it removed hot user switching, which it doesn't like. When I installed the company VPN, it would have done so if PC Anywhere hadn't already.

Assholes. Look, just disable it when I run you, or better yet, tell me not to use you in those circumstances.

Well, I had to upgrade the VPN, and when I was done, I had hot user switching back. It didn't know about PC Anywhere, of course.

I think the PC Anywhere thing is because it gives access to the console, which would just be the first user to log on. But I don't run it as a host, I run it as a remote control. I will just make sure never to do so and switch away, in case it matters. The VPN, puts up the login prompt on the console even if it was run from a secondary login session, but if I complete the signon there, works for all accounts. This is fine by me. I will just always run it from the first login (and if I screw up, swap back to it) and be happy.

I use multiple logins only to have one account "set up" right for work and one for home, since my approaches are totally different. I like it that if I am at home and in the home configuration, and desperately need to check my work email, I don't have to sign out of my IRC session and my mush program and my email and ICQ and the Windows messenger and my livejournal client...all just to check email for five minutes.

Last night, random notes on today.

Was at work till 9 pm. Came home, worked till 1 am. Today much more peaceful. Except for the beeping of the UPS's, of course.

Yep, power's out. Yep, they're aware. So far, 800 or so customers are affected by various outages. I presume these are related to the brief flurry of violent rain and wind that hit for a minute or two a while ago, and caused me such glee at the time.

The laptop can get by for a couple or three hours on its own battery. However, I've got it plugged into the UPS at my feet, so it should sustain for longer than that. (That UPS powers my desktop. Which has been off, since I haven't been using it much lately. As a consequence, it was doing nothing until I moved the laptop to it in order to steal its juice.) I turned Scott's desktop off - no one is using it, so no point in draining the UPS to run it, especially as they warn that it may take several hours to get to all the reported outages. And the other UPS that sometimes handles the Mac, which isn't up right now, is therefore powering only the cordless phone, DSL modem, and hub.

I'm a techno geek. But I'm a techno geek who can survive a power outage, dammit.

I think I'll go find the flashlight while it's still daytime. Just in case, y'know, their estimate was conservative. Whee!

At least I hadn't started the laundry yet. Last night's laundry was already dry and nothing new started. Whew. :)

Happiness is...

...a lovely view out the window, and a lazy day to relax into it. Pictures of the pasture. None from during the storm (it would only have shown water lashing a window), but from this afternoon when the sun came out and struck it vividly. And then, pictures over the pasture this evening, stormclouds at dusk, massive and imposing and gorgeous and powerful.

I love this weather, I really do. Click for larger images....