The Best Things in Life Are Free
The most important conversation I had at work today:
Pasq242: That Petersen management thing today?
Mr Nutty37:
OH FUCK
Pasq242:
Something about free shit in the lobby?
Mr Nutty37:
FUCKING FUCK YES IT IS
Pasq242:
WHAT TIME
Pasq242:
WHAT TIME
Mr Nutty37:
OH SHIT, I DONT KNOW!!!
Pasq242:
OH GOD I'M ON FIRE
Pasq242:
I deleted the message.
Mr Nutty37:
FUCK ONLY 10 MORE MINUTES
Mr Nutty37:
FUCK FUCK FUCK
Mr Nutty37:
GO GO GO
Pasq242:
HOLY SHIT
Free Cider and Kettle Corn is no laughing matter.
My Triumphant Return
Well, I finished class yesterday at noon and headed out to the airport, hoping to get on a plane before my scheduled 9:00 PM. Had to put gas in the crap-o-van...It took 10 gallons, which gave me a total mpg of 15.something. I was a little disappointed in that figure, as I was beating on it pretty hard and would have liked to be less efficient about it. After filling it up with 87 ($2.15 per gallon, OMGWTFBBQ???) I turned it in and went to the terminal. All the planes were full until 5:30. Being in the airport for 4 hours was a lot better than being there for 8, so I took a seat on the 5:30. Tried to get on the 2:15 and 4:05 on standby, but that didn't work out. The guy at the ticket counter looked like a really gay version of Matt Waite.
While I was waiting, I was sitting next to a guy who got bumped from the 2:15 on his way to South Carolina. He was very cordial about the whole thing, and the employees of Independence Air did their best to help him out. In the end, he was pleased with their solution, whatever it was. He got on the 4:05. The only reason I'm even bringing this up is because the guy was clearly from somewhere in the middle east....Pakistan, Jordan, something like that. That, by itself, is hardly interesting. The really weird thing was the way he talked. He had a Middle Eastern/South Carolina accent. Very strange. Nice guy, though.
I almost made it onto the 4:05 because some couple (from Texas, I think) was too busy yelling at their kids on the phone to hear them make the final boarding call. Then the gay Matt Waite (gay-ER Mat Waite?) paged them and they scurried onto the plane. Curses.
I finally boarded the plane at 5, and took my seat. I listened to the safety briefing...Something I neglected to mention from the first flight. Independence Air does "celebrity briefings," where they play a recording of some famous person or persons telling you how to buckle your seatbelt and not to bring your CD player with you when you crash. On the way there, it was Chuck Berry. On the way back, it was James Carvell and Mary Madeline. Carvell and Madeline had "a message for the right side of the plane, and a message for the left side of the plane," and made a whole big joke out of that. It was good, I guess. Nice to have a little something different when you fly. As soon as we were in the air, I put on one of the new Derek Howell sets I took from Mat right before leaving and went to sleep.
Michelle picked me up at the airport. I got her a Cinnabon, as promised. She was amazed that I remembered. Hard not to, when as soon as you walk off the "mobile lounge" at Dulles, the air is saturated with the smell of sweet cinnamon death. That place must make a killing.
So I'm back from the great Naperville adventure. I'm sure you're all thrilled. I know I am.
I just looked at my rental car receipt, and it says I drove over 4000 miles in the 4 days I had that van. Either someone can't read, or that van had a much more interesting time in Illinois than I did. And if it did go 4000 miles on 10 gallons of gas, I think I want it back.
That sucked.
I just spent like an hour on a post, and Blogger ate it. Here are the highlights:
Steak N' Shake is actually in Warrenville (pop. 13,400). I spent a long time in the drive thru, behind some wanker arguing his bill. Food was damn good though, and well worth the wait and the $0.15 I had to pay in tolls to get there.
Class was about the same as always. The people in my class are idiots, and one is Canadian. My teacher's not too britght, either.
Dinner. Cross Noodles & Co. with P.F. Chang's, and this is what you end up with. Not bad.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is better than 95% of the movies that have come out in the past 15 years. John Williams and Short Round kick ass.
The Blogger Spell Checker suggests that if you've written the word "Voltron," you may have been trying to spell "paltriness." Voltron is a lot of things. "Lacking importance," "wretched," and "contemptible" it is not.
OMGWTFILL!!?!??11?1?!
Well, here I am, in beautiful Naperville. It's actually pretty drab. Reminds me of
Boulder, or Jeffersonville -- other garden spots I've traveled to on business. Here's a
recap of the trip so far:
I took off work at noon on Monday, since I was going to have to travel here that night.
Michelle drove me to the airport a little after 7 for a flight leaving at 8:30. Due to
weather, the plane didn't leave until about 9. The flight was uneventful. Many thanks to
Gaafar and way Out West for providing a marvelous soundtrack. It's been ages since I've
taken off and landed at night. I sat next to a girl who looked like the female version of
my cousin, Beau, but with dreadlocks. That was...interesting. She took it upon herself to
use the entire arm rest AND turn off my AC vent. Dumb hippie. My neck and knee were
killing me by the time we got close to Chicago. In an effort to make myself more
comfortable, I looked out the window at what I expected to be nothing. It was actually
quite spectacular, as we were flying next to a thunderstorm. Every few seconds the clouds
would light up, but there was no turbulence since we were probably 10 or 15 miles away from
it. Very cool. As we approached Chicago, we flew over some low flying, very thin clouds.
They made the view of all the lights on the ground quite spectacular. The first building I
was able to make out definitively from the plane was a Target, which is only interesting
because that's the last building I remember seeing when we took off.
We finally pulled up to the gate around 10, Chicago time. I immediately removed my pants,
but it seems that people here aren't as well versed in their style as they should be. I
nervously slid them back on, to a chorus of strange looks. (Yes, I am kidding about all
that, Michelle.) Independence Air inhabits a terminal at O'Hare which is about as far from
any kind of rental car shuttle as you can be. I followed signs to the "Bus and Shuttle
Terminal" for what seemed like several miles, expecting that when I finally DID emerge from
the airport I'd actually already be in Naperville, and not need a car. I parked myself
underneath a sign out in the cold which read "Rental Car Shuttle." To me, this seemed like
a reasonable place to be picked up by the Thrifty Rental Car Shuttle. Apparently, Thrifty
does not agree with me on this matter. I eventually got fed up and walked over to where I
had seen several shuttles driving by. After a total wait of about 40 minutes, I got the
last seat on one of the Thrifty busses. By this time, it was about 11:15 (12:15 where I had
come from). We got to the rental office, and I got in line behind everyone who was on the
bus. After about 20 minutes in line, I went to the counter, to find out all they had left
were minivans. I was awarded the ugliest, most featureless one for all my trouble. This
van will rue the day it tangled with me.
I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to spend the next few days practicing my J-turns
in a minivan, and made for the freeway at a dizzying pace. It has some pep, but that's
about it. It's gold, with brown interior. No tinted windows, no power mirrors, no
automatic-down driver's window, and no rear defroster. I didn't know you could even buy a
car without a rear defroster anymore. No anti-lock brakes, either...A feature I almost
immediately check for in every rental car, thanks to Jamie. The brakes it DOES have are
incredibly soft...So far it has proven difficult to get them to even lock. The thing just
stops REALLY slow. Fantastic.
After about a half hour of break-neck speed on Illinois freeways, I got to my hotel. I was
informed that the only room available was "accessible." That means it has a handicapped
bathroom -- hanles and such all over the walls. Whatever. I just want to go to bed.
I woke up this morning to my wakeup call, right on time. I went to take a shower, but
noticed something missing. There's no shower curtain. In a hotel. I'm not kidding about
this. A shower curtain is apparently something I've been taking for granted in all the
other hotels I've patronized. I called the front desk, who assured me they would have a
shower curtain for me post-haste. This gave me a few minutes to examine my new home.
Other things I noticed missing: pillows (I have one, but it's a king size bed), an alarm clock (another thing I've apparenlty been taking for granted), a hairdryer (I wouldn't use it anyway, but it should be here) and an iron. It does have free high speed internet, so that's a plus.
The lady from the desk showed up and gave me my shower curtain. She also said she'd get me some pillows and an alarm clock. A few minutes later, maintenance showed up for no apparent reason. They came in, and put batteries in the thermostat control and turned on the heat. They were curious as to why I wasn't freezing. I had noticed my feet were cold the night before, but I think those months spent in Blacksburg with no heat due to laziness prepared me more than adequately for this challenge. They turned on the heat, and the room started to smell like burnt death. Smashing. They also stole an iron and a hair dryer from the room next door. I forgot to mention that I had an ironing board, just nothing to use on it. Weird.
After I got all showered, I went to class. There's 8 people in my class, 5 of whom work for EDS in different parts of North America. Interestingly enough, I seem to have the most experience with BMC out of everyone there, save the instructor. That's pathetic. Class went until 5. Not much else to say about that.
So now I'm watching Seinfeld and writing this update. After seeing a commercial for Steak N' Shake, I've decided that's where I'm going for dinner. There's one somewhere in this town...I just gotta find it. This is gonna be sweeeeeeet.
Kudos to you, gentle reader, if you actually read this whole ridiculous thing.
The Champion
Well, I did it. I defeated my broken TiVo. Many thanks to Stacy and Matt for letting me use one of their many broken TiVo's to resurrect mine. I copied their hard drive onto the one I bought Friday without a hitch. Well, not entirely, but without any major problems. I had to completely erase the entire thing after I had it installed and bring it back to just having the software on it. But after that, it worked great. Now I just have to put all my season passes and thumb ratings back in so it actually does something. But it works...and it has either 107 or 129 hours of recording time, depending on who you talk to (my computer, or the device itself). The drive is a little louder than the old one, but I'm sure I'll get used to that. And next week, I'll have a brand new TiVo in my bedroom. I'm sick.
I'm going to Naperville, IL tomorrow night for four days. I have to go learn all about the wonderful things BMC software can do for my project at work. I guess it'll be good to learn something new, but I can't say I'm thrilled about the prospect of having class 8 hours a day for four days. I haven't done that since high school. Maybe my freshman year of college, but even then, it wasn't for four days straight. My attention span isn't what it used to be, and it never was great. Of course, I've got to really try and learn some stuff, or I'll be in a world of shite when I get back. Wheeee....
Fortunately, I know NO ONE in Naperville, so it promises to be a very BORING week. Until a few weeks ago, I didn't even know where Naperville was. It's about 30 miles from Chicago. My guess is they wear pants there. Damn. Dennis is apparently in Chicago, so I may go try and hang out with him. I've never really hung out with Dennis unless we were with a bunch of people. But I did ask out his sister (to no avail) one time like 10 years ago, so I guess it'll be cool.
My basement is a mess. There's hard drives EVERYWHERE. And an open computer, and two laptops and dirty dishes and dead bodies and old mail and laundry. I need to clean up this shizzle. I WILL DO THAT POST HASTE.
p.s. -- Only 30 shopping days 'till Michelle's birthday. Ack.
Awesome.
Everyone needs to watch this. Whether you're a fascist or a commie, you'll be able to appreciate the new one Jon Stewart tears these jokers.
Round One! FIGHT!
So I went to Best Buy last night with great haste to purchase a new, large hard drive. I found a Maxtor 120 GB which, after rebates, etc. will cost me about 50 bucks. I can live with that.
I promptly came home and gutted my old computer so that I could install both my TiVo hard drive and my newly acquired 120 gigger and let the fun begin. Following instructions I found on the Interweb, I created a boot disk for some Linux utility and went to work. The first time I created the boot disk, I made the mistake of trying to view its contents within Windows. It didn't like that. My second boot disk, however, worked famously.
I started the copying process, and was greeted by many MANY cryptic error messages. I'm now Linux haxxor, but I do know that words like "uncorrectable" and "sector fault" are bad when you're talking about a hard drive. I decided to press on anyway.
The copy got to about 40% and started throwing up more strange error messages. Then it failed. Crap.
I decided to try again. This time, the copy got to about 40%, had a bunch of error messages, then continued on. It actually got to 100%!! Huzzah! I've won!! Or have I...
So I put my new drive into my old, busted TiVo and start her up. Everything seems peachy. It went through the process of trying to download information from the satellite (doot doot doot doot doot....). Waiting for any of my receivers to download information from the satellite is akin to watching paint dry, only slightly less exciting. It takes forever and freezes many times along the way. Last night was no exception -- the process halted at 60% for a good 20 minutes. Clearly, this will not do. So, I forced it to phone home. That seemed to take forever as well, trying to download new software or some nonsense. Then, in the middle of the call, it decides it's going to get info from the satellite again. Ok. Whatever. I left it that way for a good 2 hours. 61%. I'm losing.
I rebooted the machine and waited. 61%. I got fed up and went to bed. Came down this morning, a full 8 hours later, and....AND....64%. 3% in 8 hours. Something is wrong. There's a disaster in his life.
Fortunately, I now have a feasible backup plan. I figure the problem is that I tried to copy a bad hard drive onto a good one. That's why I had all those sector faults. Assuming that didn't do any harm to the new drive (and if it did, I'll just return it and get a new one) all I need is a GOOD drive, right? Well, fortunately, Michelle's friend Stacy has a TiVo with just the drive I need. So that's what I'll be trying this afternoon, hopefully with more success than last night.
I get you next time, TiVo!!! NEXT TIME!!!!!!
Dear TiVo,
Suck it.
So far, I've wasted no less than 2 and a half hours on the phone/hold (mostly hold) with the people at TiVo. Don't get me wrong...They've all been very nice. Not necessarily always helpful (one person had me go through a series of steps that took about 40 minutes, and actually made the problem WORSE), but nice. Ultimately, their solution is a reasonable one -- they're replacing my TiVo for free. That's all well and good, but they're taking 5 business days to get it here. Now I'm faced with the prospect of a weekend without TiVo, and I'm not sure I can handle it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: stupid technology.
On the up side, this gives me the opportunity to try and bring my old TiVo back from the dead. Anyone know where I can get a cheap hard drive?
Another bonus is that I have played Burnout 3 pretty much the entire time I've been on hold. I'm now about 25% done with the game and, more importantly, decent competition for neighbor-Mike. Huzzah.
Updating Am Hard.
I haven't updated this thinger in a few days. I'm way too lazy. Maybe I need to concentrate less on actual content and more on random thoughts/stupidity. Yee-haw.
My wonderful wife bought me a copy of Burnout 3 for the Xbox. The only stipulation was that I hang a full length mirror on the back of the door. So now I have a totally sweet Xbox game, but I can see myself in one more place than I used to be able to before. It's a mixed blessing. Seriously though...The game kicks ass.
My TiVo broke yesterday. Apparently, TiVo sent out a software update that rendered 1/3 of the DirecTivos in the US inoperable. Way to go, guys. Somebody lost their job over that, no doubt. After 45 minutes on hold (time passed by playing Burnout 3) I learned of the wondrous software "update" and a possible way of fixing it. I forced my TiVo to call home and get a patch, which seemed to work out ok until today, when it says that it can't find a signal on one of the tuners again. Stupid technology. Not having any kind of signal doesn't seem to stop it from recording hour upon hour of nothing.
In all this TiVo madness, I discovered that it's relatively simple to upgrade a TiVo these days (no Linux code modules or high level h@xX0Ring required) and that my old broken TiVo most likely has a failed hard drive. So, maybe before too long I'll have two TiVo's. Then we'll see who's in charge around here!
I spent my Saturday with Mikey, so if you've read his weekend update, you know what I was doing. Except for the part where I was risking life and limb as his brother tried desperately to destroy his car on our way to the drinking. He did not succeed, much to his chagrin. I was pleased, because I didn't have my seatbelt on. I like to live on the edge.
Then, of course, there was Friday night, and my trip to Justin's new place. It was a complete dump, as advertised, but it definitely has potential. It was a good crowd of people at the party, including (but not limited to) Butter, Kevin, Kramer, Mandy, Amanda, and Jimbwaaah. I met Justin's neighbors from C'Ville, who were very cool. I also found out that Justin still has the Caddy, and that makes me happy. And his house has a beautiful view of the "Springfield Arch," a.k.a. that big ass bridge dealie linking the inner-loop with 95 south. You can thank Tommy for that new name for what is sure to be one of the DC area's main tourist attractions, intentional or not.
Sunday was spent with neighbor-Mike playing (you guessed it) Burnout 3. And a little Halo, which I had played only once or twice before, and only with people like Joe and Jaime, who repeatedly kicked my ass all over the place. I sort of enjoyed what I played of the story mode, and may consider borrowing it for future use. Maybe I can find love for a first-person shooter that isn't Wolfenstein 3D afterall.
That's pretty much what I've spent my past few days doing, in non-chronological order. I went to work in there somewhere, but nobody cares about that. Work was filled with much mundane bullshit not even worth mentioning here. And if what I've already written is worth mentioning here, that's pretty sad.
More adventures with the Blogger spell checker: WinXP SP2 blocks it, it thinks "Mandy" should be "Moaned", and my new personal favorite: it caught "Wolfenstein" and suggested "alpenstock." Good grief.
