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Endured

NYC Trip, Day 2

What a day, what a day.

Was woken up ridiculously early – well, not in comparison to yesterday I guess – for a breakfast excursion. Standard diner fare, nothing too thrilling.

At 10:15 we headed into Philly towards the art museum. I continue to marvel over the lack of cultural identity that New Jersey seems to be displaying. There’s a uniform sameness that irks the crap out of me.

A side note about the art museum – the art museum is notorious because it was in the original Rocky (you know, the bit with the steps). Now, I haven’t seen Rocky (for shame!), but I’m fully aware of the bit when he gets to the top of the stairs and pumps his fists in the air. And if I wasn’t, all the tourists who do the same thing for a photo op make it painfully obvious that something exciting happened here. I must’ve seen at least 50 people of all types doing it, and it got dreadfully painful to watch.

Anyhow, once we got to Philly, and Kate et al showed up, things turned great. We meandered around the art museum for a bit, sat outside and talked, ate lunch at the Museum Restaurant (very good asian fare), and went to the Ben Franklin Institute. The whole day was a lot of fun, although there were a few snags here and there, including my completely awful directions regarding a meeting place.

Back at “home”, we had spaghetti for dinner and some very good Key Lime Pie for dessert. And now, after being told I can use the computer, my mother is demanding that I come play Scrabble, something I have explicitly said I do NOT want to do. Sigh.

And we triumphantly kicked their teeth in by about 100 points. That’ll teach her.

Oh, before I forget – be sure to check out my beginnings of a MWNY archive. In there right now is just about all the promotional and administrative emails I’ve gotten regarding the thing. Some of the PR stuff is interesting, and you can get a feel for what I have going on over the next few days. I know the icons are broken – I’ll do something
about it when I get home. Cope.

Tomorrow, I sit around all day and then take a bus up to NYC and meet up with Steinberg. More news then.

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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.

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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.