projects always end with a whimper instead of a bang. today marked the end of project S. the project itself isn't over; i'm just not working on it anymore. i am both relieved and sad at the same time. relieved because it frees me up to do other projects, but sad because i've worked on this thing for the past 4 months and now suddenly it's over. projects aren't the kind of things you get personally attached to, but when i put in as many hours as i have on this one in particular, i can't help but to think this is some how my baby. a baby who's cost me countless restless nights and a string of working weekends. a baby that i've wanted to kill at times, but who also provided me with a steady flow of income during the winter.

how this all happened is i told them early today i didn't have time to work on their project despite a deadline next week. originally this project was supposed to be a small one, taking the month of december, maybe extending into january, but with april right around the corner, the work seemed to be neverending, and i didn't seem to have enough time for my other clients. there was a few hours of dead silence after i dropped the bomb, and then i got an e-mail response saying that found another developer to take over. in a way this was the reply i was hoping to receive, but it still stunned me when i got it. now i'm down to two clients, and once these projects are finished within the next few months, who knows what i'll be doing.

elsewhere, in the on-going dramedy that is my life, my upstairs neighbor wrote me a note telling me the amount i owe him for the water bill this quarter. at the bottom there was an additional message, something weird: "if you're thinking about selling your place, please talk to us first!" should i be offended? when did i ever give him any indication that i was going to move? it worries me that he's scheming to buy my place (coveting my property!), not like his 2nd and 3rd floor of the condo isn't enough already. i wrote him back telling him that i wasn't planning on selling anytime soon. what i didn't mention is if he should ever decide to sell his place, he really should contact me first, because i'm sure i can strike up a tasty offer with my jars of pennies.

manny's wife's sister anne and his mother-in-law came to visit me in the afternoon. i'd advised anne on what kind of memory she should get for her powerbook, and apparently she assumed i'd help her install it as well (i didn't mind, really). to access the memory on a 15" powerbook you don't remove the keyboard; instead there's a panel at the bottom of the laptop that requires a tiny screwdriver to open. anne had told me she had one empty memory slot but when i opened up the machine i noticed both slots were already filled. after some trial and error this is what we found out: one of the slot is bad and even though she had 512mb of memory, her machine only read 256mb. just so happened they were going to the chestnut hill mall and i advised them to take the powerbook down to the apple store there and see if they can get it fixed since it's still under warranty.

when evening came i watched the last episode of hustle, having now completely seen seasons 1 and 2. season 3 is currently broadcasting in britain, but i don't know when we'll see here on television (that's what the internet is for fortunately). for dinner i made a barbados style macaroni cheese pie. julie just got her canon 550 digital camera and was pre-occupied with her new gadget. we watched a repeat of ANTM and an hour's worth of NBC tuesday night comedy lineup before she decided to go home.