Well, okay, maybe that's a bit harsh. A coworker and I were sent to take the standard class for the Altiris Client Management Suite, and about halfway through it we discovered that it's not really going to suit our company's needs. Thus, we were spending a week vegetating through innumerable bugs in this release, bad exercises and being cut off from the outside world during working hours.

Cut off? Yup. The training facility (CompUSA, in this case, although it wasn't their class, it was put on by Altiris) wouldn't let us use their internet connectivity so we could check our email - what's funnier is that we were told their WiFi access points were there for customers. Aren't we customers? It didn't help that my coworker hadn't been into work the previous two weeks because a member of his family passed away, so that connectivity would probably have been a Good Thing�.

It was also the most ghetto place I'd ever been for training in my life, and the equipment Altiris brought was woefully inadequate (two notebooks per team of two students running Windows server OSes via Virtual PC; and by the way, Virtual PC sucks a sour nut compared to VMWare).

All in all, a bad class experience. Also, it will be a very long time before I take a class at or buy anything from a CompUSA again because of the WiFi incident. If you want to have fun with the CompUSA, though, the passwords on their access points are the defaults, so have some driveby fun. It's the one on Westheimer, outside the beltway. Their access points appear to be on the same network as the rest of their workstations, too. [wink]

Well, after that I was ready for some R&R, so I asked my manager for a couple days off. "Sure," he said. "We haven't missed you this week, so what's a couple more days?"

I hope he was joking. (Actually, he is. He's like that, which is good. I love having a cool manager for a change in my life.)

Of course, Saturday the weather was horrible; I mean, after all, it's a weekend. The weather can't cooperate! Luckily it turned absolutely beautiful Sunday, and has remained so. When Marilynn and I have a long weekend and the weather is nice, we do what we are wont to do - adventure.

Sunday we decided to go to the Texas Crawfish Festival in Old Town Spring. It's held every year, and there's folks sucking heads all over the place. I'd never been to Old Town Spring, so it sounded like a good opportunity to go there.

Marilynn says this picture is Texas - Amish furniture and bikers. I don't know if I agree, but I'll let you be the judge.

Despite my announcement that anybody who didn't get out of the way of my photograph would be posted on the internet, I ended up with strangers in my picture of the Wunsche Brothers Cafe, a historic (and purportedly haunted) location that we will have to return to some other time. We didn't make in this trip, unfortunately.

One sunburn and lighter pockets later, we left for other sights.

On the way out we asked the parking attendants in the lot we were at the directions to the Wunsche family cemetery; it had been discussed several times on an informal Houston-area ghost hunting group Marilynn and I belong to, and we wanted to see it for ourselves. The looks that we got from these guys were almost priceless, but they helpfully provided directions, telling us it's across the street from the Taco Bell, right on the feeder road to I-45.

Um... okay. It's on the feeder road to a major interstate, but it's across from the Taco Bell? How's that?

He wasn't kidding, though. It's nestled between the service road and an overpass, just north of FM1960.

We pulled into its small parking area and stepped within the gate. There was a heavy wind here, and the small space was in bad need of mowing. Some graves were in total disrepair, while others were newer. Many had flowers, showing that they were not forgotten.

I picked up no sense of this place. The Wunsches, grand old settlers of Spring, were relegated to this small spit of state-owned property. If you aren't a local, you don't even know you're driving next to a graveyard. It doesn't seem right to me; it's disrespectful of the dead.

At the same time, we couldn't feel but be a little disappointed by the cemetery. We had heard all the discussion of it over time with others in the ghost hunting group, and we thought there'd be so much more of it. Especially with feeling nothing there, I wondered if it were foolish visiting these sites at all.

After leaving Spring we decided to visit one of our favorite "haunts" - Jeff Davis Hospital.

Our ghost hunting group talks about Jeff Davis Hospital quite a bit, since it's built on a graveyard and is reported to be extremely haunted. Unfortunately, Marilynn and I have never been inside because by the time we found the place it had been boarded up and under a fairly strict guard - the most we've done is go inside the gate on our first trip, when we found the gate open. Since then, too, it's been sold to a private development firm to rebuild it as affordable housing. It's a shame, because it's captured our imaginations, and almost every time we're in the neighborhood we drop by and take a look.

We had a nice chat with the guard, and he told us about how people come by all hours of the day and night, some "nice folks" like us who come by to visit and take pictures, and others he often has to chase kids out of the fenced portion or just call the police. Little did he know that we "nice folks" would go in if we could!

After visiting JDH we had a quick trip to Spaghetti Warehouse another of our "favorite haunts". It wasn't very crowded, but that could be because of all the construction on Commerce Street. Of course, we've never seen the ghost that's said to haunt the staircase, but that doesn't stop us from loving the complimentary loaves of sourdough and the chicken parmesan.

On the way home, we still had the cemetery bug, so we stopped off at Woodlawn Cemetery on our way home. We pass it regularly, but never had occasion to stop until Sunday. It was quite late when we entered, and dusk was beginning to fall. Marilynn looked at the graves of babies, while I was interested in a large section of military graves, but did not enter there.

Near the collection of babies' graves, I captured this photo of orbs, including one colored orb, which is most interesting (specifically, the one lowest circled one in the picture). I have circled some of them in red. Quite a few! We should definitely return there for more explorations.

Much more to tell about our trips Monday, but that is a tale for tomorrow, as it is late and I need to get some much-deserved rest.

restlessmind