Dallas, 11:45 PM: According to my phone (and texting with Adrian), it got up to about 60 today in Seattle and was raining. Nothing too special, I would have spent it inside most likely, and is that really how to spend a holiday? Here, however? Let’s talk 95 and sunny, and we might as well throw in a little swimming in my pool while we’re at it. Oh yeah, the weather gods are apparently in a super happy mood this week because it just doesn’t get much better than this. Of course, this in Seattle would be miserable since they don’t believe in air conditioning up there, but solve that and I could live like this year round. Alternatively, I could just find a position in MS that lets me work from Dallas and not have to try to relocate my desired weather.
Tomorrow during the day is mostly just going to be more computer work for me as well as taking the step of actually hooking up the Xbox 360 downstairs now that the server is running Windows 7 (without a RAID array this time so we don’t have this issue again once Windows 8 comes out). My aunt should also be coming to cut my hair, and then for dinner, I get to experience another thing that Seattle lacks: decent Mexican food. All in all, even if I do get bored tomorrow, this week is definitely going to end up better than if I’d just taken a week off of work and stayed up in Seattle.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:50 PM: So, is it fitting or irony that I happen to be in Dallas the day that I get an email talking about a 5-year reunion for HP? While the details at this point are lacking, it’ll be taking place the Saturday right after Thanksgiving. This would have the potential to be problematic, but with my parents backing off on a New York trip for then, the new proposal is just for me to come here and then we do a family vacation somewhere next summer (not necessarily over any specific holiday). The leading candidate for that trip at the time? Well, I’ll have had my Vegas fix with CES, so naturally my next option is Hawaii. :)
Even though tomorrow might not be the ideal day for movie watching, my grandparents and I are going to make at attempt at seeing Shrek Forever After. Assuming that goes off as planned, my only remaining new movie to go see will be Prince of Persia. I’m afraid that I might consider the video game to be the authoritative source for that franchise, but hopefully it’ll be enough action to offset any plot issues that might arise.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:45 PM: Up in Seattle, I bought the copies of Windows 7 and the Xbox 360 I was going to need in order to complete the project here. Cool, all good, right? Not quite. I realized that in moving the HTPC upstairs, I was going to need a way to get it back on our network since the Xbox needed to use the wireless adapter set up downstairs. Ok, no problem, a quick trip to Fry’s fixed that. Now all good? Well, it would have been had the TV upstairs not be incapable of taking a DVI-VGA adapter in order to connect the HTPC to it. On top of that, I forgot that I has set up a software RAID array on the server here and had no way of backing up the videos (and other data) on it before doing the OS upgrade. So, there was another trip to Fry’s in order to buy the needed parts to fix both of those situations. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually be able to make some progress with the stuff I’ve been buying instead of needing to go shopping for even more stuff.
I’ve already managed to get my body clock on a fairly decent Dallas schedule (you’d never see me waking up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning in Seattle), which I guess bodes well once next week rolls around. Two hours isn’t a bad reset to have to go through, and the going back direction is the more favorable of the two anyway. Granted, Dallas to Hawaii is maybe a little bit too much of a jump (as I know from previous experience) because not too much is open at 4:30 in the morning.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:50 PM: I remembered when I was here over Christmas that I installed a copy of Windows but never activated it since I wasn’t going to run out of the 30 day window. I thought this was a copy of XP, but now that I really think about it (and have the definitive proof in front of me), it was actually 7. So, while I was first surprised to see 7 on here, I was even more surprised to have it boot. I don’t really have that bad of a memory, do I? As it turns out, you can actually keep using 7 past the 30 day activation window. You get a little popup about possibly counterfeit software and I’m betting I’ll have the two hour shutdown issue, but it’s still usable. Hey, Windows team, anything else I need to learn about?
On a similar note, you know all the games/software I was talking about installing to keep me entertained? WoW: check, already installed. Steam: check, already installed. Man, it’s like I already went through a period of time here when I got bored and had a similar idea then also…
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
My desktop is currently going through the Visual Studio 2010 installation process, so what do I do in order to make a post? Do I use my phone? Nope. Do I pull out my work laptop? Of course not. Do I get on my Macbook? Well, duh! The only thing you might not expect is that on my Macbook, I’m running Windows 7. I installed it earlier this week so that I’d have it all ready for my trip, but it also means that when I post, I no longer have to deal with the oddities of OS X + the Wordpress web interface. Windows Live Writer works quite nicely, and posting never has been so easy from my laptop.
The one thing Windows 7 doesn’t want to play nice with is (ironically) my Microsoft bluetooth mouse. It will appear to pair just fine, but then if you want to actually use it, no dice. It isn’t a horrible tragedy if I can’t get it working, but it is slightly amusing (and confusing at the same time). Still, I’ll take 7 and a trackpad (or one of my many other mice that just require a USB receiver) over OS X and the actual mouse itself. What can I say? I truly am a Windows fanboy through and through…
Personal - Seattle
In one of the games that I can say defined my childhood, The Island of Dr. Brain started off with a puzzle of pentominoes. For those of you who have no idea what that is (in other words, everyone), I direct you to Wikipedia. It’s ok, I’ll wait for you to come back.
Well, since my suitcase for my trip is not full of clothes but instead rigid shaped objects, I was getting quite a bit of experience with finding the optimal arrangement of things to maximize space usage. I think I’ve settled on a pretty good permutation, so we’ll see if it holds up when I finish packing tomorrow. Whatever the overflow is should be able to fit into my backpack fairly well, so I don’t foresee any major catastrophe if there’s just more stuff to fit than there is space.
Personal - Seattle
So, last night was also the 24 finale, but it took me about 24 hours to get around to watching it. All I have to say is that if I loved the Chuck finale, I felt the 24 one was even better. I’m also fully willing to admit that at the end, I cried. Yeah, it was that good. While it set up a movie (or hopefully three) nicely, I’d actually be totally content with the end of the series being the end of Jack’s story.
Now, aside from Glee, I think all of my TV shows have wrapped up their seasons. From my sleuthing, Glee appears to be airing its season finale next week. After that, I guess it’ll be onto the second season of Fringe and then beginning the epic journey known as Lost.
Personal - Seattle
NBC,
I watched the Chuck season finale tonight, and I thought it was, in a word, awesome. In fact, I chose to watch its finale over the 24 *series* finale which I’ve now been invested in for eight seasons. (Don’t worry, I have a DVR, and it’ll be there to watch tomorrow.) Regardless of whatever reasons you have for renewing Chuck for a 4th season, I would simply like to say that the longer you keep this show around, the happier I will be. Do whatever you need to do with the product placement, it doesn’t really bother me. If that’s what it takes to keep Chuck on the air, you have my full permission and support.
Thanks again for renewing Chuck, and you can be sure I’m watching whenever the season premiere comes around.
-Jeff Guebert
Personal - Seattle
Apparently going to see Iron Man 2 on its third weekend at 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon was still within the “large crowd” timeframe, but it had been moved into one of the smaller theaters. Overall, I’d put it about on par with the first, but maybe give the original a slight edge in which one I liked better. Ultimately, I want to see how these plus the two Marvel movies next summer (Thor and Captain America) all build up to the release of The Avengers in 2012 which if that isn’t an amazing movie, I’m sure there will be plenty of disappointment going around. My score: 8.5/10.
Even though I’m looking forward to Friday now, and the times when I’m doing stuff in Dallas should be entertaining, the down times will probably end up being slightly more boring than if I were here. WoW will definitely be getting installed/played, but I won’t have my 360 or have my entire library of computer games at my disposal (although of the ones I’d be likely to play, Steam covers the bases fairly well to this extent). When you think about it, my average level of entertainment will probably be about the same if not lower than a typical week up here.
Personal - Seattle
Well look at this, a Saturday so devoid of anything interesting that there’s no title in existence that could be seen as appropriate for my post. Let’s see, I woke up, played games, watched TV, and didn’t leave my apartment complex all day long. I’m not denying that anything more really needs to be expected out of a Saturday, but from a posting standpoint, it can make life a tad difficult.
The SC2 beta is only running for about another week, so that actually coincides nicely with my Dallas trip. It probably won’t be worth it to download/install the game there, so I’ll have to get in all my playing with Andrew over the next few days. When the game actually comes out I’ll be able to play the single player campaign, so it might take a little while for me to really get back into the multiplayer mode.
Personal - Seattle