More than my fair share of drama during this timeframe, but that’s already been ranted elsewhere here. I’ll probably do a bit more ranting later, then try to forget about it all…
Thurs.: Seder dinner at J.R.’s place! (I’m not Jewish, but I can fake it convincingly…especially when there’s such good food to be had!) Best. Turkey. Ever. Not only a great dinner get-together though; also an educational experience. I don’t normally like singing, especially in languages I don’t know, but the whole thing was a sanely symbolic representation of Biblical history – IMO, a lot better symbology than a magic bunny leaving his chocolate eggs in the yard for little kids to find.
Sat.: Bought over $300 worth of pot at Macy’s…okay, not myself, but I did watch the deal go down. Being a hopeless bachelor dude (whose idea of “cooking” usually involves a can opener and a magnetron), I don’t normally get excited about cookware. But that’s before I saw a raw egg dropped directly onto one of the non-stick pans right out of the box, made non-raw, and swirled around and around effortlessly by slightly moving the pan. No butter, grease or anything. It slid right off onto a plate with a slight tilt, and it looked like the pan wouldn’t even have to be washed. Hover-egg.
Then, since it was across the street, convenient, and I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time, I was dragged popped into Ye Olde Cellphone Store since my phone (ahem, phone) was getting long in the tooth and couldn’t be converted from rapacious pre-pay to a real plan. TheOuchBrick (affectionately named after I dropped it on my bare foot once) is out of my pocket and will be officially retired in about a month when its minutes expire. Man, I loved that phone…it was a tank. I could (and even did once, for demonstration purposes) put it on the sidewalk and stand on it without worrying about it breaking. Then again, its replacement, a Motorola E815, includes a still/video camera, mp3 player, Bluetooth, BREW2.0, a Web browser, fullmotion video playback, personal organizer, alarm clock, and a working kitchen sink. And best of all, it appears to be easily hackable with an inexpensive data cable to unlock Verizon’s intentionally crippled Bluetooth and transfer media in/out of the phone without going through some ridiculous pay service. (Me, mess with something I shouldn’t? heh… I just looked around my room and realized that besides the phones, my alarm clock is the only pieces of electronics in my room that I haven’t modified in some way.)
Sushi, Failure To Launch, then hung out in the lab (rat cells lab, not my electronics lab), plundered the electronics recycling plunder-pile in the basement (found an ancient DEC optical drive with motors/coils that would make good rodentpower generators).
Sun: REPAIR TABLE [IF EXISTS] table_reference FORCEINDEXREBUILD
Saturday night, as I was all semi-crashed-out, I heard a crash followed by some unhappy language from the next room. J.R. and her mom (grr…must…resist…urge…to…strangulate) were at war, and somehow a big, borrowed cafeteria-style folding table got broken. (The legs ripped out of the table and the folding mechanism got bent up a bit.) Turned out to be an easy fix, with powertools to the rescue! For some reason I love power tools… it’s fun and somewhat fulfilling to fix things, at least those things which can be fixed.
Mon: Daytime – pressed into service as an IT Guy, soldering-iron-wielding style, when the project server at work dies (failed PSU) and there’s no replacement to be had anywhere in the building. Turns out the powersupply was mostly fine; its fan died (could rotate freely, but just sat there drawing a ton of current instead of spinning), so the server would randomly shut down every few minutes as it overheated. Lacking any underpaid IT monkeys, it’s more cost-effective to just replace the PSU than go digging around inside and replacing components, but there were no spares, I had shit to do, and it all lived on that server, so I spent (and billed) 2 hours soldering and heatshrinking a new fan into a dusty $30 power supply. ;-)
Tech (to woman holding a broken clothes iron): “Ma’am, I’m an electronics expert. Would you ask Einstein to add up your grocery bill?” – Electronics Illustrated, c. 1969
Evening – Sauced at Sauce. Maybe less than sauced, at the restaurant formerly known as Sauce in Davis Square. Met up there with some of the work crew to celebrate PB’s completion of the Boston Marathon. Woot! Had my arm twisted to drink a big pink Cosmo, and chased it with a Guinness. (“Tim, you’re the only guy I know who can pull that off.” -DG) Ate some oysters and questionable clams, but didn’t get sick on them.
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