Categories
Endured

NYC Trip, Day 1 (slightly late)

After getting out of bed ungodly early, my Mom and I headed out around 6 AM. We drove and drove and drove, a blisteringly boring drive. I was demanded to take the wheel at one point, and of course, it started to pour immediately thereafter. I’d like to think I handled the drive well, though.

We arrived at the reunion at 11:05, earlier than anyone else. And as usual, it was a wee bit uncomfortable at first, as all reunions seem to be. But eventually the people started filling in and we all got settled. I spent most of the time either talking to my relative Roberta (an e-book specialist in the city), Suzy (who lives in Spain), or my cousin Emily, who goes to Goucher. I also got a lot of questions from the elder relatives about the usual nonsense.

We left around 4:30 and headed back to Morrestown. After some chit-chatting and sandwiches for dinner (note: it seems we are required by law to have sandwiches at least once for dinner while we’re here), I retreated to the basement for some good old TV. Game Show Network and ECW drowned my sorrows.

Called Kate – phone trouble abound as usual. Very excited as always to be seeing her tomorrow, though.

Categories
Endured

Fun from work

January this year – my hard drive mysteriously starts making clicking noises every now and then. I check the drive. Nothing is wrong. Life goes on.

This past Friday – Working on my projects when a folder of documentation is listed as corrupted. I run CHKDSK. Errors pop up. Life goes on. Monday – something else fails. My machine and sysadmin insist I run CHKDSK again. More errors pop up. I sigh.

Tuesday – The part of IE that holds passwords fails, so I can’t use forms without two error messages. Then my major project folder dies (luckily backed up the day before). Then Internet Explorer gets corrupted.

Welcome to Hard Disk Replacement City – population, me. I have rebuilt my machine from scratch, and it’s been a complete pain. I thought I was having troubles with my Mac at home, but this puts things in perspective.

Categories
Happened

Home

After my two week hiatus, I am officially (and reluctantly) forced to rejoin the real world. It’s been an amazing break, so let me give the capsule version of what happened.

Kate was up here for the first week, in which we spent a lot of time down by the lake, saw Road Trip, went to the Ithaca Festival, went to the ever-exciting Memorial Day parade, walked the Glen while being surrounded by Mennonites, watched Taxi Driver and Jawbreaker, and just generally enjoyed ourselves.

The ride on the bus to Kate’s house was marred with a little stupidity on the part of the bus people, but that happens. At her house, we played Playstation, watched Eye of the Beholder and Drop Dead Gorgeous, fell asleep watching Snow Falling on Cedars, went and saw MI2 in the theatre, ate a lot of Taco Bell, went to King’s Dominion, had my birthday dinner at Josef’s, and did a fair amount of shopping.

All in all, I’d say it was a very good trip. We both got a lot of time to unwind, we had a lot of laughs, and hey, Kate even found religion.</insidejoke>

I obviously got a lot of crap, so that gives me lots of reviews to write. The list is as follows:

Movies: Road Trip, Taxi Driver, Jawbreaker, Mission Impossible 2,
Eye of the Beholder, Drop Dead Gorgeous
Games: Vagrant Story, Driver, Resident Evil 3
Music: Massive Attack/Mezzanine, KMFDM/Nihil.

I have already done reviews for MI2 and Vagrant Story. Much more coming
over the next few days.