My resolution for this year is to become a US Citizen.
I looked into dual-citizenship, but apparently that kind of thing doesn’t fly anymore, so I’ll have to swear to forget all about how much Argentine government sucks, and promise to treat the flag of the United States of America as my own.
After thinking about it, it doesn’t seem like something impossible or impractical for me to do. In fact, it makes sense.
I’ve lived in the US for a while now, and I have a bigger sense of citizenship towards the USA than Argentina. I’ve never even voted in Argentina, and I probably never will because I’m not familiar nor personally involved in the politics that are going on there. However, I would like to be able to vote in the country that I live in, and that I will continue to live in.
The process is pretty simple:
Fill out a long form with lots of uncomfortable questions (Do you have the Taliban in your backyard?).
I’m freshening up on some civics knowledge, but lucky me, my fiancee is a US History teacher, so I have a good resource to study.
Forms are filled up, and the process will be officially started when I stuff them in an envelope and send them away, probably by the end of this week.
Oh yeah, I also have “secondary” resolutions, which are much more along the lines of the typical promise: Do a Century ride on my bike (like the Chico Century Ride), have a six pack by summer our honeymoon, maintain a positive attitude and continue to be a key member of the day to day operations at work.
Last Saturday was the one year anniversary of the first date that Kelly and I had.
Plans to make it a memorable event had been in the making for many days, and the payoff was grand.
We woke up early, and drove to South Lake Tahoe. Reservations for Montbleu and dinner were taken care of, and Kelly even scheduled us for a fancy couple’s massage at the spa in the hotel.
When we checked into the hotel, I was a bit disappointed about our view. Our window showed us the roof of some buildings, and a mountain that wasn’t even covered in snow. Yuck!
I called the front desk and asked if we could upgrade. They told me that they’d have a nicer room available in an hour or so (for a small fee, of course), so we decided to take the offer. The new room would be facing Lake Tahoe, a sight well worth a small upgrade fee.
We had a couple of hours to kill before our massage appointment, and I had just the plan for that time. We walked over to the Heavenly village to catch a gondola ride to the top of the mountain. It was cold and windy out, but my hands were sweating.
Luckily for us, we managed to get in a gondola by ourselves. The sky was cloudy, but the lake was a very deep blue, so the views we were about to take in got us excited. Kelly sat with her back to the lake, as I took a few pictures of her with Lake Tahoe in the background.
I sat next to her, and whispered some sweet things in her ear. We kissed a couple of times, celebrating our anniversary with a very romantic and private ride. Seizing the perfect moment, I told kelly to “Look at the lake, it’s so pretty!”.
When she turned around to look back at me, she found me on one knee, with a ring on my hand and a huge smile on my face. I simply asked her: “Will you marry me?”, and she said yes. The ring went on her finger, and we spent the rest of the ride looking deep into each other’s eyes.
When we arrived to the top, we walked around in bliss, enjoying the landscape, the view, and our love for each other. Kelly had been questioning me about when I was going to ask for her hand, and little did she know that I’d been planning it all along.
When we first talked about such things, many months ago, she told me that she wanted three things: A ring (she showed me a picture of “a ring”), a private circumstance, and a surprise.
I took these things to heart, and made sure that they were true at the moment that I went down on my knee. Her face told me I’d surprised her. Being on a little cart dangling from a wire above pine trees and snow on the side of a mountain… that’s rather private, I’d say. Happily, the ring requirement was also met, and I did actually hear her say “wow” a couple of times. Success!
When we went back to the hotel, we headed to the front desk to check in into our new and upgraded room. Kelly totally pulled a move from Friends (the TV show) and announced to the concierge that we had just gotten engaged. Luckily for us, it worked! The manager was there by coincidence, and we got a free upgrade to a mini-suite.
We had our couple’s massage at the spa in the hotel, and it was wonderfully relaxing. It was a royal treat to our bodies. The therapists were super nice, and we both felt at the end as if they had transmitted a lot of positive energy our way. If they hadn’t disappeared after leaving the room for us to get dressed, I probably would have given them a hug.
The last item on our anniversary plans involved a fancy dinner at Evan’s, the fanciest restaurant I could find. It had great reviews on Yelp and Zagat, so we had to check it out.
Dinner was very tasty , and the things we ate were straight out of Top Chef. However, the highlight of the experience wasn’t the incredible food. There was a small wedding party dining there, with the bride wearing her white dress and the groom in a tuxedo and all. I took it to be a very good sign of the day’s events.
In the end, the weekend turned out to be out of a movie. We celebrated our year of falling in love with each other, and we also celebrated our promise to continue to love each other forevermore.
Our City of ReMO team kicked ass. When Don and I talked about Movember at the end of last year, we had a few things in mind:
Better planning and organization: Plan things in advance, spread the word, and try to make things run smoothly.
Bigger focus on the actual goal of Movember, and put the fun and good-looks on the second plane.
Raise a lot of money.
Reach out to more people in Reno.
Get local businesses involved.
It’s a big source of pride and accomplishment to be able to say that we can check all of those.
At the end of September, we laid out a list of things that we’d like to do, and we set our minds to make them happen. Before Movember officially started, we had a pretty well outlined calendar of what was going to happen, when and where. This helped us spread the word. This was a much better approach than planning things on the go, since most people make plans far in advance… So this year, we gave them notice, and the plans they made were to attend our events. Fantastic!
Talking about Men’s Health issues was easier than imagined, and it came naturally. When people asked us about Movember, it was the first thing we talked about. (The second thing was about how sexy we looked). I think this was in part because of our “experience” in the subject, and the conscious decision to focus on getting the word out.
Certainly, humor had its part and no talk about the actual reason behind Movember went without crude mentions of balls and assholes.
Our goal for this year was to raise $5000. At first, that seemed like a huge number, considering that last year we’d raised right about $1600. We figured that it was a good goal, a nice round number, and something that would definitely identify us as a “serious” group committed to the cause.
To our surprise and joy, the $5k mark was met before half of the month even passed, and this was before most of us even had decent moustaches to be asking for donations!
The first thought was to call it good and declare “Mission Accomplished!”, but we were just starting to gather steam and MOmentum, so we decided to step it up, and declare a new goal: $10,000. Ballsy move, one could say, but this was after all very much about the balls.
On the day 30, the $10k mark was met with much rejoice. The final number is yet to be computed, because of cash and check donations, but the accomplishment is there, and it’s a wonderful feeling to know that we made it. If $5000 was a lot of money, we raised two lots of money.
Last year, we felt that our efforts in reaching out were successful when Anthony joined our team. We didn’t know him, and he joined because he thought it was a good cause. Our “campaign” had transcended the circle of people that we knew, and I took that to be a very good thing.
This year, that effect snow balled. The members of our team kept growing and growing. I received an email when someone joined the team, and I remember being excited when it showed that we had 25 members in our team. Quickly after that, our total was up to 40 people. And fifty… and a hundred.
Who were these people? Some of the names sounded familiar, but there were many Anthonies. We even got David Bobzien to join. Way cool!
Eclipse Pizza joined us last year in our official team, and we knew we could count on them again for this year. But what we didn’t know was how well other businesses were going to receive the idea of teaming up, and the response was a very positive experience. KRZQ (100.9 FM) gave us a lot of airtime with ads, and even put us on a show in the middle of the day! One of the owners of The Sierra Tap House, Zach, became very involved and helped us put together some very successful events. Shannon from SOAK Lounge invited us to her business which caters mainly to women, and organized a very creative and fun occasion. The Biggest Little City Club hosted us on a couple of different nights, and made us feel really good. We went to Butcher Boy for lunch, got Rockstar haircuts and had tons of fun bowling with a lot of the ReMO team at Starlite Lanes. The local restaurant Amendment 21 organized the Reno Beer Crawl with proceeds benefiting our cause, and promised to be a big helper next year.
Long story short: local businesses rocked our world. I’ll be making a longer write up about it all on the City of Remo website soon, so I’ll spare the details for that post.
On a personal note, none of this could have happened without Kelly’s support. Despite almost crying after seeing my clean shaven face after many months of sporting a goatee, she encouraged my efforts to make our team a successful one. As if putting up with a prickly upper lip wasn’t enough, she had to tolerate my distracted attention and need to be involved in a lot of things.
That is the job of a “Mo-Sista”, and she did it well without much reward. Rest assured, I’ll be making sure she knows how much I appreciate her.
Even more personal, and somewhat geeky: I was more or less “the” photographer of the things we did. I won’t be asking for money to take pictures anytime soon, but I’m pretty happy with the moments I captured in still images. Most of the pictures ended up on Facebook, if you’d like to see for yourself.
For the Stache-Bash (aka end of Movember party), I got to play with some fancy photo gear I borrowed from Mo-Bro Kyle Walker. The pictures from this event look specially good thanks to the lighting equipment and the improvised photo booth that I put together. It kind of made me want to have a flash and fancy umbrella to be able to do it more.
At any rate, I took pictures of my moustache growth on a semi-frequent basis, so if you’re ready to see how it all went, check it out right here:
Finally, I’d like to say thank you on a personal level to those who donated to Movember and “sponsored” my moustache. Thank you Kelly, Joan, Elinor, Kathy, Zach, Willie and Roger. My prostate and testicles appreciate it!
Today, Don and I went to one of our local radio stations in Reno (which also happens to be one of my favorites), KRZQ FM. They invited us over so that we could talk a little bit more about MOvember, and it ended up being more than just a little.
Don and I were there for more than just a little bit. We were on air for almost 24 minutes!
At first it was awkward knowing that my voice was being broadcast over the air, but after a bit I got over it, and it was just plain fun.
Did you miss it? Are you sad about it? Don’t be anymore, because you can listen to it below.
For the 3rd year in a row (see 2007 and 2008), I’m going to do this:
On the 1st of November MOvember, I will shave all facial hair.
During the rest of the month, I will only allow hair to grow above the lip. Well, maybe just a tiny bit under the lip, but not on the chin.
I will be asking for donations to “sponsor” my ridiculous appearance.
Make a difference, and raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer.
Just like previous years, this is all happening in the Biggest Little City, the City of ReMO. My friend Don and I have been talking about this year’s Movember for a long time, and it looks like our efforts are paying off.
As of this writing, it’s not even MOvember 1st yet, but we have 56 members, and over $500 raised to benefit the Movember Foundation’s partners: The Prostate Cancer Foundation, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (aka LIVESTRONG).
Our goal before this whole year started was to put Reno in the map by raising over $5000, but at this rate our hopes are shooting at double that figure.
Why am I doing this? It’s not about being irresistibly sexy anymore. I’m getting older, and 1 out of 6 men suffer from prostate cancer. This scares me, and I want to do something about it. Sure, I can eat right, exercise, and keep rodents away from my behind… but that would only go as far as making sure I’m one of the 5 guys out of the 6 that doesn’t get the cancers.
In other words, I do this so that the chances of a guy suffering from cancer hopefully diminish, and soon.
There’s certainly a fun factor to all of this, and that’s why we’ve planned lots of events with the City of ReMO that will keep people entertained. They are also secretly designed to have non-participants wonder why a group of 20+ men with moustaches are hanging out, with the ultimate goal of getting them involved by either raising awareness or funds -or even better, both.
A noble goal, with many pleasant side effects… all for the price of a shave, and looking like an ’80s porn star for a month.
Do you want to help? Awesome! Here’s what you can do:
Join MOvember. If you’re a guy, grow a Moustache. If you’re a lady, you can register anyway, and raise funds in honor of your favorite man.
In Reno, the option is obvious. Register with the City of Remo: http://us.movember.com/register/799.
Make a donation (which is totally tax deductible, by the way). A dollar, ten, or a hundred, it all makes a difference, and gets us that much closer to a cure or a better treatment. You can donate with a credit card or paypal: http://us.movember.com/mospace/1753
If you’re interested, stay tuned to the City of ReMo’s feeds on Twitter and Facebook. I will post my daily shots on Flickr, and at the end of the month, I’ll share a sideshow for your enjoyment.
I found myself an awesome deal on Craigslist, a 2005 Giant TCR 2 bike. And with the economical help of Kelly, it became mine. ( By the way, anyone wanting to give me a birthday present, feel free to make a small donation to go towards the money spent on the bike)
It’s awesome! The front and rear derailleurs are Ultegra, and the brakes are Shimano 105s. It’s very light-weight, and it rides very smoothly… and it looks sexy, as you can tell by the picture.
I’ve only ridden it a bit in its first week, but I’m already enjoying it a lot. The uphill ride from work took 10 minutes less than on the old bike, and it’s such a treat to ride on something that gives me a bit of pride. It’s the best birthday present!
It’s so hard to try to tell a story, that I’m not even going to try! Instead, here are a few tid-bits of how it all went, in no particular order:
We left on Thursday, September 3rd. It took us about 3 hours to arrive to our camping spot. Not bad!
One of the first people we saw at Burning Man was a man in his late 40s, wearing nothing but shoes and a hat. His testicles were dangling around, remarkably stretched. The heat probably was to blame for that.
At any rate, Kelly was welcomed by cock and balls. We gave the guy a nice and cold beer, and chatted it for a few minutes. It was a great way to start, with a friendly naked guy.
Our camp, BRCU, was awesome. We had two big domes, one for partying (with our DJ, dance floor and lights) and the other one for chilling out (full of kiddie swimming pools, overflowing with stuffed animals). It was home for a few days, and it really kicked a lot of ass.
There was a lot dust wind. Of course there’s dust, it’s a dry lake bed. And the dust is a pleasant experience as long as the wind comes and goes, or is a breeze.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the wind was strong. It was also consistent, starting at around 10am and dying down sometime around 11pm. Ridiculous, crazy and annoying.
What’s one to do? Well, you can either find shelter, or you can spontaneously dance.
I’d always heard the myth that there are a lot of orgies at Burning Man. Well, let’s just say that -without participating!- it’s not a myth.
On a somewhat related note, and once again without being involved in it, I’ve learned about more and more people into polyamory. I guess my upbringing makes it something that would never work for me, but that my open mind makes it acceptable as long as it’s not shoved into my face.
Our diets consisted of a lot of canned foods, like Spaghettios. All we used was a couple of plastic spoons, and not even half of a very small camping propane tank.
The one thing I enjoyed the most this year is easy for me to decide on, and probably easy for you to guess: having Kelly with me.
We spent most of our time together, sharing our experiences and caring for each other. Every single moment worth remembering involves her as an integral part of that memory, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love sharing my life with her!
The second “best” thing this year was on Saturday morning. We rode our bikes into the “deep playa”, and checked out the random art installations that were there. There’s stuff out there that you can’t see from far away, but it’s definitely worth the shot journey. It’s far away enough from everything else that you don’t hear the incessant music, which is a welcome change.
While cruising around, we found plenty of art pieces, ranging from a collection of statues to a huge guitar. We’d ride up to something, check it out, look around aimlessly until we saw that there was something out there, and then do it all over again. It was a very wonderful way to spend a day with Kelly.
I’d like to share about one of the things we found: a typewriter on a tall desk, with a tall chair. There was roll of paper, and the machine seemed to be in very good working condition.
I climbed on the chair, and while Kelly took some pictures, I figured that I might as well write something. Without difficulty, a love note was born. When I was done, I handed the note to Kelly. She smiled, and climbed on the tall chair to write a note to me.
The notes that we wrote to each other will be a good addition to a little scrapbook that Kelly is making, but even if those were lost, I’ll never forget how we spent our time together. The fun, the playfulness and the love are things that I’m grateful for, and they sometimes make me wonder how I ended up being so lucky.
Sleeping in a tent is nice, even with an air mattress. But it’s not nice enough for Burning Man, when your body needs good rest after battling playa whiteouts, climbing on art pieces and cars, dancing, walking and riding bicycles.
We’ll try to rent an RV for next year, and hopefully we can share with a couple more people, to lower the cost, and share in the awesomeness of having some more comfortable living quarters.
I’d never really gone and hung out at Center Camp, but this year we went there a handful of times. We had some iced coffee, and sat around enjoying all that goes on.
The Center Camp scene is apparently what most people stereotype Burning Man to be: hippies hanging out, people doing Yoga, drum circles, dancing. And in a way, the stereotype is true – but with a twist.
Most people’s stereotype includes the above mentioned activities, and that’s it. My stereotype goes a bit further, and involves the reason why people are doing such things. So of course it’s true that people are doing all those things that some people label as lame, stupid or childish. Of course they’re doing what they want to do. It’s obvious that all they want to do is enjoy themselves, and that there’s at least one place where they can totally freely do it, and that’s at Burning Man.
I don’t really want to go deeper into how people could have fun in the “default” world, because that’s not what I’m trying to get to. My point is that I don’t understand the criticism of people doing things that they enjoy.
I took my Canon 40D camera, and took a few pictures. I didn’t have it on me at all times (in fact, I had it with me very little), but when I did, I think I captured some decent photographs. If you’d like to check them out, head on over to my Flickr.I feel like Burning Man is my yearly test of how my photo skills are doing. It’s a good reference point to look back and compare, and -just like last year- I can say that this year’s pictures are better than last year’s. This is a nice feeling!
Our “exodus” took us 5 and a half hours, with 2 of them being spent on the exit line from Black Rock City to the highway. We left on Sunday, because we were exhausted and ready to get home to our dreamy bed, and anxious to be able to spend at least one day snuggling in the morning. We got home, enjoyed the wonderful feeling of a hot shower, and went to bed.
On Monday, Labor Day, we woke up 11 hours after having gone to sleep. And then we spent the rest of the day cleaning up, and enjoying each other. We had no regrets of having left on Sunday and missing the Temple burn.
Our Burning Man experience ended on a high note. Additionally, we would have been dead to the world for the entire week if we had to do all the cleaning we did on Monday during the week, after very busy and stressful times at work. So busy, in fact, that it’s my excuse for posting this almost a whole week later!
On Thursday, Kelly and I will be going to Burning Man. This will be my third year, and it will be Kelly’s first.
We’ve been getting ready for a while:
We have scavenged thrift stores and garage sales, ending up with a selection of excellent outfits. Kelly is definitely not going to look like a burning man virgin, and I probably won’t look like a ridiculous mess of unmatched garments once again. I will still look ridiculous, but I think this will be my best looking year yet, because all my clothes go well with each other, and the outrageousness will be of the awesome kind, instead of the “oh, boy” kind.
There are lists for food, packing supplies, people we definitely must visit and attempt to see, and places or things that we’d like to go see (such as the Raygun Gothic Rocketship and the Bootie mashups party).
We are actively participating in a registered theme camp, and have been involved in the planning process since day 1. We are part of the Black Rock Center for Unlearning (Washing all that knowledge right out of your brain since 2009).
Our camp’s theme is exactly what I need, because I’m in need for some unlearning. You see, last year’s experience was positive in some ways, but it was overall a negative one. My enjoyment was shadowed by the frustration and disappointment that some of my company brought. There were several times where I just wanted to drive away, and go back to the default world.
These circumstances saddened me, especially when I took into consideration how much effort, time and money I invested, and how little I got in return.
Well, fuck all that!
This year, I’m unlearning all that.
I’m unlearning my self-destructive tendencies of letting people take advantage of me, so I’ve distanced myself from parasitical personalities. I’m unlearning my reluctancy to be impolite, and if someone needs to be told off, flipped off or punched out, I’m ready to do it. Most of all, I’m unlearning to settle, and I’m going for what I want.
Kelly is my partner in crime and my other half. With her hand in mine, I look forward to re-discovering Black Rock City. She’s excited to see the things that everyone talks about, and I’m even more excited to be there to see her jaw drop with every “oooh” inspiring moment that we experience. I know I won’t have to babysit her, and I know that she’ll be genuinely enjoying herself.
That is why this Burning Man should be the best one yet for me. Because Kelly is coming with me. Also, because BRCU is an awesome camp, and the people I’m befriending through it are sincerely good.
This is also why I love that the theme this year is Evolution. I’m saying “fuck what I know” about Burning Man, and ready to know it in a whole different way: with a heart full of love.
I’ve been thinking about MOvember 2009 a lot lately.
The other day, I had an idea that some might consider grand.
On October 4th is the Run for the Cure, a 5k running race. I’ve done this a couple of times, because my work sets up a booth and tells people about what a great job we do with mammograms (which we do, by the way).
I’ve shown up, ran the thing and then hung out at the booth for a bit.
Now, here’s my idea for this year:
Citizens of MOvember sign up under a City of ReMO team.
We don’t have to run, just participate. Lots of people walk the whole event, and chat with people. Say hello to getting people to sponsor your Mo! (We should have things to hand out, flyers or cards)
We wear a tshirt with our awesome logo.
We rock out with a lovely hair ribbon, aka Moustache.
I mean, we have time to get ready for this event! First of all, there’s enough time to train to at least be able to jog the whole thing (check out the couch to 5k program!). More importantly, it’s plenty of time to develop some respectable whiskers. Hair growth can happen in any shape, and doesn’t have to be a Mo. It would only become a Mo on race day.
For example, I’d keep my goatee until the day of the event. Easy to do, no body laughs at me. On the morning of October 4th, before putting my socks and shoes on, I shave to leave the Mo.
With my fancy tshirt, I show up to the event with a nice brown ribbon on my lip, where I meet my Mo-bros and we accomplish many goals:
We support women in their fight against breast cancer. Because we care.
We spread the word about our own cause, because we want people to care about us.
We get some exercise, fresh air and -hopefully- compliments about our lovely moustaches.
A while back, a server running Sharepoint Services 3.0 went down. Of course that we had to get it back up and running immediately, so I was tasked with reviving a Sharepoint site and I didn’t know how to do it.
Seriously, unless you’re doing something with brand new technology, chances are that someone’s already had the exact same problem that you’re having. And if they take the time to share and document their process, other people can use that to their benefit. This is also why I’m re-telling the story, so that if anyone comes across the problem, hopefully they find this and can use it for an answer to their issue.
After arduous searching and much head-desk contact, I decided that this little post on EggHeadCafe.com would be my main point of reference.
So here’s what I started with:
A server with a fresh install of Windows 2003 server.
Installed a clean version of Windows Sharepoint Services (with Service Pack 2)
A few database files floating around, recovered from a backup that basically just copied everything on the drive to somewhere else. The files were: STS_Config.mdf, STS_Config_log.LDF, STS_controlfreak_1.mdf, STS_controlfreak_1_log.LDF, WSS_AdminContent.mdf and WSS_AdminContent_log.LDF.
A lot of pressure to get this done quickly, and no idea on how to do it.
I then installed Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express. There are ways to do all the work via command line, but since I didn’t really know what was going on, and didn’t have the luxury of time, a visual interface made things much easier for me.
When running the Management Studio, I connected entering for the server name “\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query”. For Authentication, Windows Authentication did it, because the database was setup like so when I ran the WSS installer.
Once inside, if you right click on “Databases” there’s an option to attach. I attached the STS_controlreak_1.mdf file that I’d recovered, and bam! It was in the database. Ok, that was easy.
Next, I went into WSS Central Administration, which is the localhost and port 36459. From there, there’s a section for Application Management. This is where the magic happened.
Under “Content Databases” you see what databases the Sharepoint sites was using. The top right of the screen shows what Web Application you’re working on, and I could chose from Sharepoint (port 80) or the Central Admin site. Of course I wanted the Sharepoint one on port 80.
It was showing me a Database called “WSS_Content” as listed. I clicked on it, and at the bottom of the page that opens, chose “Remove content database”. Then hit OK, and felt my heart beat rise. Luckily, nothing exploded, and all that happened was that the site was no longer using that database. Turns out that “WSS_Content” is the default site that comes with WSS, so it’s safe to remove. No harm done.
Now, after clicking on “add a content database” all that I had to do was enter the name of the database holding the site. The name had to be like it appears on SQL, which in this case was “STS_controlfreak_1″. The Database Server name I used was “CONTROLFREAK\Microsoft##SSEE” (CONTROLFREAK is the server’s name, to make things even more fun).
Then panic ensued. I got an error message, saying “Attaching this database requires upgrade, which could time out the browser session. You must use the STSADM command ‘addcontentdb’ to attach this database.” This was because the install I was doing was more recent than what was there before. In other words, I had a brand new SP2 install, and the old site apparently wasn’t Service Pack 2.
The visual interface would have worked just fine, but I was going to have to add the database manually so that it could update it at the same time, and so it was time for command line action: Windows Key + R. “cmd”. Enter.
cd c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN
stsadm -help addcontentdb (just to get a clue for what’s up) stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://controlfreak -databaseName STS_controlfreak_1″
That took a while to process, but eventually I got a nice message telling me “operation completed successfully”. Apparently this was good. To make sure, wanted to make sure the site was listed, so I ran:
stsadm -o enumsites
Sure enough, my site was listed there. And then, the glory. Browsing http://controlfreak had my old site back, running as if nothing had ever happened! I went all TechnoViking and the problem was gone!
Now, the truth is, I was lucky in resolving this. After many a google search, and many different attempts, I was about ready to give up. As a venting channel, I expressed my frustrations on twitter… and then the real magic happened.
A guy named Todd Klindt replied, saying he could help me. We exchanged a few messages, got on messenger, and he held my hand through the last steps.
Turns out I was close, but I needed some more clear idea on how to add the database to Sharepoint. It it hadn’t been for Todd, who knows how much longer it would have taken me to figure it out.
What I do know is that I was very thankful that Todd found my rants on Twitter, and that he volunteered his time to help me out. He is very knowledgeable on Sharepoint overall, and he runs a site on the thing! I checked it out, and bookmarked for future reference: http://www.toddklindt.com. If I ever have to work with Sharepoint again, I’ll make sure to check there first for guidance, how-to’s and best practices. If I was a super-user of Sharepoint, I’d probably be checking out his podcast too.
Our camp, 
The second “best” thing this year was on Saturday morning. We rode our bikes into the “deep playa”, and checked out the random art installations that were there. There’s stuff out there that you can’t see from far away, but it’s definitely worth the shot journey. It’s far away enough from everything else that you don’t hear the incessant music, which is a welcome change.
I feel like Burning Man is my yearly test of how my photo skills are doing. It’s a good reference point to look back and compare, and -just like last year- I can say that this year’s pictures are better than last year’s. This is a nice feeling!
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