I’m off to Vegas for the rest of the week to attend a conference for work. Hopefully there’ll be less internet drama this year @ Blackhat than the throngs of lame Mac users that got riled up last year. It’s going to be both raining and 40C. I’m going to die. :(
Archive for July, 2007
Away again
Monday, July 30th, 2007The weekend is nearly over
Sunday, July 29th, 2007The GF had her birthday yesterday we had a fun day of hanging out with the usual couples of Adam & Sophy in the morning/afternoon and Stella-n-Rob in the evening. Much food was had by all.
Friday night I spent the post-work hours trying to assemble the recently ordered TV stand that had been delivered that morning. The old TV stand is still fine but we needed a larger one to store all the consoles/tv boxes/etc. that I’ve been collecting. The stand is thick and sturdy and putting it together was going along smoothly until I got to installing the backplane. More exactly it was the cable “holes” that were the problem. The wood is 4-5mm thick and there were only outlines for where the holes were supposed to go, they weren’t perforated and certainly didn’t just pop right out with any amount of force. I spent 2 hrs digging a quarter circle through the wood with my folding knife only to give up exhausted and hungry. I resolved to purchase a dremel and drill those holes, so I proceeded to just assemble the rest of the stand and deal with the holes at a later point in time.
Saturday I bought a variable speed dremel. It’s pretty cool and it cut through the wood with loud screaming vengeance. Today I moved my heavy beast of a TV onto the stand and cabled everything up. Now I’m going to relax and get on with finishing these Harry Potter books.
Harry Potter
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007I had pre-ordered the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter: Episode none – The Death Star Hallows, from Amazon waaaaaay back in April. Just like everything that I get from Amazon, I had it set up to ship it to my office since UPS delivers it all for (most of the time) 2 Day shipping and we have a front desk person that can always receive packages. I had not looked ahead and noticed that Harry Potter Day was a Saturday. HPD was this past weekend (like you didn’t know that) and no one was at the office to receive packages. Monday, I checked Amazon’s order page and it said that UPS claimed it had been delivered. I checked with the front desk and nothing had arrived, nor did it arrive at any point on Monday. This morning I emailed Amazon about my missing book since apparently UPS had lost/not delivered a bunch books on the weekend. They just sent me back an email saying that they’re sending me another copy of the book and since it wasn’t delivered on Saturday per their Guaranteed Delivery Extravaganza, they’re refunding my moneys too. yay.
blah
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007Blah. Picked up my new specatcles on Friday afternoon part way through a goodbye bash for our departing Office Manager Helga. I’ve been now called both “emo” and “mod”. The GF likes to call me “Smart Jeremy” because apparently the old me was dumb. :(
Power went out at work 5 times in the span of 30 minutes today, so I took that as a sign to head back to the Eye Carumba and have them adjust the new specs. They had been digging their way through the back quarter of my skull. After the adjustments I phoned the boss and asked if I should bother heading back into the office. He said no so I rolled back to Oaktown and hit up the gym again since this morning’s visit was a poor 15 minute effort.
driving test results
Thursday, July 19th, 2007My Director of HR let me borrow her car for my driving test today because renting a car again seemed silly. So I took my test in an Audi S4. HOT CAR. Though it was a convertible and thus had the world’s biggest blindspot with the top up.
I passed. I now have a Cali licence huzzah. Next step, some kind of cheap ride.
results of the test
Friday, July 13th, 2007I picked up the rental car on Wednesday night. I got a Scion xA. It’s small, seats four, cute and totally gutless. Getting onto the freeways here means just stomping on the gas for it to start accelerating up to traffic speeds. :( Since I was considering getting an xB though I’m glad I got this car since the xA and xB are the same car with different bodies on ‘em.
There was no test. While I had a rental car and was ready for the driving test the DMV wanted to have some paperwork from the rental place stating that I was allowed to use their car for the test. The actually helpful DMV clerk told me to call them and fax it back to her and then I could do the test. I called the rental place and explained the situation. They responded with “Yes, but you’ll need to talk to a manager.” I asked if they could just fax the papers up to the DMV since after all I’m apparently already trustworthy/skilled enough to be renting the car in the first place. Nope said they, I had to physically appear in their office which would mean I’d miss my scheduled time for the test. Thus re-scheduling of the test for next Thursday occured.
Saw Transformers and wasn’t too impressed. I hated the robot design. They all looked basically the same once in robot form so it was hard to identify which evil decepticon was attacking which heroic autobot. I realize that the target audience wasn’t primarily my generation so all the goofiness/slapstick stuff should be expected, but man the house scene was just dumb. The bots didn’t seem to be the sharpest hammer in the toolshed and were always bumbling around. I did like John Turturro’s character though. I won’t even comment on the computer-ese used. :)
back
Sunday, July 8th, 2007So i’ve been back for a couple days and have just been lounging and doing laundry etc. over my super extended holiday since work closed the office for Thursday and Friday.
Things I did while i got home:
- scheduled driving test for Thursday
- rented a car for Wed – Sunday
- canceled my AT&T phone line since i’m no longer on DSL
- priced out new laptop. I’m gonna get the Dell XPS m1330 cuz it’s so hot right now
- ordered frames and lenses for my new found sight problems
- received my fancy new sofa
- moving old futon up into the now crowded computer room
- laundry, oh the laundry I had to do
AX in Long Beach was as much fun as usual. Long crazy lines. Stupid heat. Hanging out with friends. A few beverages. Tonnes of food. All combined to make another long weekend of memories. The pics are starting to show up in the gallery. I picked up all six of the Akira manga volumes for $40, a Momusu Best Video #1 for $7 and a couple of CDs. Most of my funds were spent on food and drinks we ending up eating at place with SF prices, so it wasn’t a vacation for my wallet.