Dallas, 11:30 PM: First, I’d just like to point out my perfect record this trip with making posts on the same day as the blog instead of having them come in close to Seattle midnight instead. Primarily this is because I’ve actually been falling asleep and waking up on Dallas time for the past week, so I’m going to be going to bed and waking up really early by Seattle standards until I get readjusted. As fun as going to bed at 10:00 would sound, I don’t expect that to last for more than about maybe a night.
I’m pretty sure I know what my flight plans are going to be for Thanksgiving, and in order to save money, it’s a strange schedule of Wednesday night through Tuesday morning. Even though I’m not the one paying for it (well, to an extent I am, but only to make sure all of my free Alaska Airlines money gets used), saving $100 isn’t an insignificant amount when you look at that I’ll be making an identical trip less than a month later. It doesn’t quite beat the week turnaround time of my two trips last fall, but there will be a third (shorter) one chained on about a week or two later to Vegas. It’s a great thing that I don’t feel about plane rides the same way I do car trips or else we’d have a serious problem on our hands.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:50 PM: Both my mom and Brandon’s mom alone are entertaining enough, but put them together and the entertainment increases exponentially. Throw a party in the mix, and I guess you’d have tonight. Despite the fact that the entire evening was just one big comedy of errors, it was enjoyable, and I’d guess that everyone would be willing to do it again (but maybe with a little less…excitement).
The HTPC situation upstairs is confusing me since there obviously isn’t a bandwidth problem (I can play videos from the server through WMP just fine). That means that both XBMC and WMC have to be doing something in the background that interferes with the buffering and/or transfer rate. Now that I know it’s a software problem the possibility of finding a solution is greater (although limited in the time I have left here) since I at least know it’s possible for it to work properly now.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:45 PM: Wicked keeps its ranking of second in my musical list, but the production tonight was slightly different than I was expecting it to be. I guess it wouldn’t make sense for everything to be identical to the first time that I saw it, but there were some noticeable differences between the two. The biggest probably was that at the end, there was quite a bit of dialogue that wasn’t there and actually changed how it ended (not plot wise though, it was still the exact opposite ending of the book). I don’t really want to say whether it was better or worse, but I think I prefer the way I saw it the first time.
Tomorrow we’re having another “pool party” with Brandon, his mom, and Crystal coming over. Aside from that, my day is pretty empty. Since I’ll actually have stuff to do on Saturday, my goal tomorrow will be to make sure all of the house technology is back in working order. The only big thing I have left is to fix the TV streaming to my dad’s laptop (which, in a perfect world, is just a software installation away), but the HTPC upstairs is also giving me difficulties that I’d like to solve. The big server upgrade + Xbox 360 effort seems to be complete though, so I can be happy that at least one part of my plan worked as intended.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:30 PM: Do I remember why I need to go get the Bow of Light in Zelda: Spirit Tracks? Of course not, I reached that point in the game around five months ago. Am I going to restart the game just so I have the story fresh in my mind? Of course not, I would like to actually finish it on this trip so in the future I can move onto games like Bowzer’s Inside Story (which I have also already started but likely will be subject to the restart treatment). Speaking of restarting games, Bioshock 2 also is needing some attention from me once I get back to Seattle, so I have that decision to make also. I don’t think I’d be losing an insane amount of progress if I was to restart, but it’s all a matter of how I think my time can best be spent in relationship to the enjoyment of the game.
So even though I neglected to talk about it at all, I did go see a movie on Monday that I should have reviewed. While a little delayed, better late than never I guess. Shrek Forever After was supposed to still have one more movie coming after it, but I guess Dreamworks realized that they were trying to stretch the series a little too much. I have to say that I agree what that assessment, and while it wasn’t a bad movie, it was never super good either. I think the first still holds the title for my favorite, although the second does have some pretty cool things about it (especially the big musical numbers at the end). It probably would have have been best for the series for it to end after those two, but it seems Dreamworks is willing to at least put some amount of respect for the series over the money that would undoubtedly be made with a fifth. I can only hope they let Dragon go out on a high note as they begin the franchise plans for it. My score: 7/10.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:45 PM: So, the last time I got my hair cut before tonight was…approximately 5 months ago? Yeah, it had been a while, and as a result, my hair was probably the longest it’s ever been. However, now I have my short, football-style haircut for summer (even though temperature wise up in Seattle, that really isn’t necessary). I’m going to get back to work next week, and it will probably be one of those doubletake moments for people on my team just because I’m going to look so different than I had a week prior.
Xbox 360 connected, check. Successful streaming from the file server, check. Strange cancel symbol appearing next to videos that I’ve never seen before but appears to have no impact on the playback capabilities, check. That last one requires a little more investigation on my part, but the hard part is knowing exactly what to search for in the first place in order to get answers.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
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
Dallas, 12:50 AM (1/6): I bet that if I didn’t point it out, no one would notice. However, by not pointing it out, then I can’t reference it in my title and make up witty comments concerning it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then obviously you don’t read my posts closely enough because this post should have come 8-12 hours ago. As it turns out, I am on a flight tomorrow, I got paid $400 to be on said flight, and all is well with the world since I’m able to make this post just fine.
So, tomorrow will be just like today, but with everything shifted a tiny bit earlier. Instead of a 6:45 flight I’m on a 4:30 flight, so that means that I actually get into Seattle at a more reasonable time. All that really does is allow me to have more time at my apartment unpacking before I feel the urge to fall asleep, but I’ll gladly take more over less.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle