None, for about two weeks. Okay, this might not be a big deal to any of you, but it is to me. I was a serious coffee drinker - multiple POTS a day. Yes, multiple.

If you are tring to get off of caffeine, here is some advice:

1. Stop on a weekend, or a really slow holiday. I stopped on a Friday before a long weekend.

2. Sleep. Let yourself sleep in. If you drank as much caffeine as I did, you will be pretty useless - and you don't feel the pain when you are not awake.

3. Water is your friend, and drink lots of it. You will be fiending you liquid, and it is not the perfect solution but it fills at least some of your need. Plus, water is good for you and will help clean you out. I was drinking about a gallon and a half a day.

4. Non-caffeinated teas are almost like coffee and have some flavor. Great.

5. Multivitamin and extra B multivitamin. Okay, not sure if this really helps, but it couldn't hurt to get some extra vitamins in your body.

That is all I could think of. I had hardly a headache the whole time - every other time I tried to quit I went back because I could not take the insane pounding in my head. This time was much easier. Hope this helps someone.

New Box for Work

Just got off the phone with HP and it looks like we are ordering an RX2600 loaded with Red Hat Linux AS 3.0. This is a pretty big deal for a pretty much HP-UX-only shop like the one I work at. It was HP-UX or GNU/Leenucks and Linux offered extra flexability that we couldn't get with the HP-UX box. It's a smaller system, but it is a start. Finally, a system that will come installed with the tools that I use.

Mark Finlay

We exchanged a couple of emails, and he seemed like a really cool guy. I was supposed to work on a project with him once that got sidetracked by work and school, but I kept it in the back of my mind to get with the guy and start hacking it out. Pity I will never get the chance.