So it is 6 am and we can assume that I don’t yet know where night belongs. I just closed the hot tub… I think… Everyone is asleep, and I had an idea for a phrase that would convey the difference between and what you think and now mean. However by the time I got to my computer I lost it. So sad. Have happiness that by the end of the week I will have a story that invites you the Halloween Party. (In caps).
See you on the other side of vacation, my loves.
Did see most of V for vendetta, Replacement Killers, and Undercover Brother tonight… It is a valid beginning.
Life
To my left is a gentleman playing Battlefield 1942-2. Ahead of me is a duet of of show tunes from the 1776 musical. To my right is a small dog. Somewhere, someone is trying to manage a World of Warcraft guild loot system… all while drunk.
Ahh… Jokifest has begun and it is good.
Off to get another beer.
Life
So I’m sitting at work not really motivated to do anything because I’m counting down the hours until I begin my vacation. Sunday I’ll be heading up to Maine for a week. Gonna spend it drinking and playing games with 15 or 20 friends in the annual Joikifest event. Oh, I suppose we’ll be on a lake as well.
I need to find a fiction book to bring on the trip. I have my stats text book, and the Science of Good and Evil by Shermer, but I don’t a pure guilty pleasure fiction novel going right now. Have to see if I can dig one up or find one in the next 24 hours or so.
Though I am going to have to eke out enough time to do some stats reading, which is kind of sad. Oh, yeah I’m back at the old alma mater, taking a stats course. It’s kind of weird being on campus again and it eats up a chunk of time. But oddly enough I’ve already used the information in a real world scenario.
I do have my concerns about this batch of college students however, after class I was looking for a beer, and since the haunts of a decade ago are all closed I asked the local college students where to get a beer. They didn’t know. I repeat, they didn’t know. That just strikes me as awfully odd… and wrong.
Anyway I should try and actually do some work.
Life
So Susan, a friend of mine from the Fool and subsequent happy hour, actually the person who introduced me to that happy hour crowd, started working at my current place of employ today. Which is a bit odd since she disappeared from life about 3 years ago. A victim of happy hour becoming incestuous among other things.
About a month ago her job description passed over my desk with a hefty bounty so I sent it to her old email address not really expecting a response, but she was between jobs and looking… next thing I know she’s working with me again. Well not really working with me she’ll be at a different site, but it’s still odd.
Life
So last night around midnight I toss in Seven Samurai after misreading the length by about 2 hours. Turns out it’s 3.5 hours long. No sleep for me last night. Decent movie though. It does have that 1950 production quality which I have a little trouble getting over.
Life, Media
Went down to the Brickskeller last night with a small crowd of people. About 10 people, half from work half from Springfield gaming. A good time was had by all as far as I can tell. And since Bo drove down I got a chauffeur home, always nice.
The service may have been the worst I have had at the Bricks to the point where I was employing various ordering strategies to keep beer flowing. I was doing burst ordering and began the process of ordering a beer when I was to only on bottle in reserve. I was having issues with finding something that was in stock as well. First order took me like five tries before I finally selected something they had in stock. Not sure what was going on but I think the waiter was new or filling in in not his normal capacity.
No matter beer was had, conversation enjoyed, all was good.
Woke up this morning and did a run to the metro to pick up my car. I think it was a little shorter than my normal run and once I got near the metro there was a lot of stop and go based on crossing busy streets and that sort of thing. But not bad considering I was out drinking last night.
Beer, Life
Remember the cyberpowerpc issue (http://nephlm.livejournal.com/84068.html) back in April? I finally got my money out of them. It seems that after the Fedex processed the claim and they promised my refund would be processed the next day they ‘misplaced’ my refund for two weeks until I started calling and yelling at them.
When they tried to tell me no refund was due and I started insisting on talking to a supervisor they started hanging up on me. Four times in a row they hung up on me. Only when I threatened them with lawyers if I was hung up on again did they decide to talk to me.
Finally done with them.
Justice, Life, Tech
This is a double event with matching subject lines.
So the AC at work has been set to 35 Kelvin or something. I seriously considered bringing my winter coat into work today. it wouldn’t have really helped because it does nothing for the numb fingers or the ears/nose freezing off problem. I’m exaggerating but not as much as you think. Yesterday I had to take a walk outside every 30 minutes to an hour to warm up my fingers and allow me to think straight again.
In related news my AC didn’t turn on this season. I tried various things to try and figure out what was going on but no luck. Called a guy in, he took one look at it and said that I was leaking coolant and I was going to have to get a new unit. He could recharge it, but it was just going to leak out again, maybe in a couple of days, maybe a couple of months, but it would just need recharging again. Since this would have been the second time I’d run out of coolant his argument was persuasive.
So yesterday 3 guys came over and ripped out my central air and put a new one in its place. It’s interesting that they don’t actually replace the indoor unit so much as rip out the coils of the existing housing a replace them with new ones which they rip out of a different housing.
The whole thing only took a couple of hours but took place right in the middle of the day so I took it off. In case your wondering, it costs $3200 to get a new central air installed in my townhouse, so if you see me buy me a beer.
Tangentially related (and mentioned because it doesn’t deserve a mention of its own) is the fact that my dryer fried its terminal block and cord. Would have fixed it myself, but 220v and why did it do that? Answer was that someone tried to repair it in the past and it arced. 220v arcing melts wires (and is potentially fatal, don’t muck with 220v).
So if you’re keeping track at home in the last two months I’ve had a hot water heater rupture ruining my basement carpet, central air needed to be replaced, dryer broken and HTPC died. In MMO lingo this would be *burst* damage. Good news is that everything except the HTPC and carpet have been fixed. Got measurements for the carpet on Tuesday. So I could likely start that process soon, but I’m doing a bit of a construction project in the basement and was hoping ot hold out until it is done before traipsing plaster all over the new carpet. I’ll tell you about construction later.
Life, Tech
I have a bunch of events I’ve been meaning to document but I’ve been lazy/busy so might as well begin with the easy ones.
A few weeks ago the bank on the ground floor of the building I work in was robbed. I keep meaning to work this into conversation as it sounds like an interesting thing to see peoples reactions on but I always forget.
It wasn’t really that exciting or interesting to me. When I got to work there was a cop with flashing lights outside the bank. During lunch there were some CSI types with big tool boxes and I noticed the yellow tape.
Not really that exciting but it seems like it should be noted.
Life
Attempts to get Knoppmyth installed on the new box have failed so far. Tried installing R5B7 version which installed fine, and would begin recording but about an hour in IVTV would stop passing data and nothing would get it back. Tried a couple of times, and did a search but all found was stuff on the mythtv developer list and I’m not quite ready to begin hacking mythtv itself.
So I burned a copy of R5A30 and I’m trying that, hopefully it has a different version fo IVTV which might not have the same problem. It’s installing as we speak, or really finishing installing. There’s the menu now.
Life, Media, Tech