Loud and Proud

I had a very long workweek in Palo Alto last week. I was doing some cleanup work on an earlier install and ran into problems and was told not to leave until everything was fixed. I guess I should provide a little backstory. I installed some new Linux workstations and upgraded some software on some servers for the City of Palo Alto back in March and when I returned to the office found out they had an unsupported OS on their main servers. We knew that at some point I would have to come back out to resolve the issue by upgrading the servers but the company was trying to push off eating this trip until the start of the new fiscal year. Well, suffice it to say the customer got fed up and threatened financial action which put me on a last minute plane here last week to clean everything up. This week I'm supposed to be teaching a UNIX System Administration class back in Atlanta that started this morning. Around thursday afternoon last week, I realize there was no way I was going to finish everything in the half a day that I had left on my original schedule and apparently the customer did too as I received a call from the office telling me to stay put. Well someone still had to teach the class this week and after much posturing they informed me that I was the only person apparently capable of teaching the class and they wanted me to work thru the weekend so that at worst, I'd be on a redeye flight today and be back first thing in the morning to resume teaching the class. The first day material is pretty basic and also mostly review of earlier classes. Soooooo....basically I got a free pass to work all weekend and possibly sleep on a plane only to land , shower and go straight into work and teach an hour later.

That was the sucky part. The unexpectedly awesome part was that this past weekend was Pride Week in San Francisco which is not too far away. When I realized I would be in town, I gave Carey a shout and asked if we could hook up and check out Pride together. She was most gracious in accepting and we had a blast on Sunday. That parade was the longest parade I've ever been to. It lasted well over two hours and I didn't even stay for the whole thing. On the train on the way to Pride, I met a gay couple and some of their friends and they asked me to hang out with them so I did. I wasn't to meet Carey until after the parade so me and my new friendsa watched the parade and checked out some of the booths and things along the route. They were awesome and when we did finally give up on the parade after nearly two hours, we all went over to the civic center and met up with Carey and Michelle (who I love, I now know why everyone has a crush on her) and a few of their friends including Kathy and her girlfriend who were also just a complete hoot to be around. We talked and laughed and watched Michelle stumble around a bit and had the best time. I wouldn't have traded this weekend for anything other than having my wife here or being able to be home at our own Pride Festivities with her. We did call her several times during the day though and hooted and hollered and I even got a few pictures. My new gay buddies promise to send me more pictures they took with their digital cameras later so I only have a few pics that I took with my camera phone. Unfortunately I didn't have a reason to bring our digital camera so most of my pictures are on a one-time use camera that I bought a drug store saturday.

Let me tell you, if you can't have fun with Carey and Michelle at Pride or anywhere, you just dont know how to have fun. They totally made my week and it was nice to be able to really spend some time with them without having to worry about anyone having to go anywhere soon. Ok, now to some pics, I'll leave off the pic of the two naked guys walking around so that no one gets in trouble at work. But yes, they had a naked section, only in San Francisco, but as Carey pointed out, most of the naked guys were old with small handles...lol.