My new camera is fun!
So I took my new camera out tonight on my nightly walk and I just experimented with some of the neat features. I was able to take this picture (click for bigger) w/ shutter priority mode – 5 sec exposure. It was hard to hold it as still as I did but I think it came out kind of neat! It makes me want to get a tripod and take some neat pictures of the city lights at night and stuff like that. There is some really neat stuff near me, especially once the canal is back open that I would love to try taking random pictures of. I am pleased with the purchase and I really love the 2gig memory card for it!
It is amazing how priorities change.
It is strange looking back. In the three and a half years we dated and the nearly nine years we have spent as friends we have a sum total of like 3 pictures of us together. I have tons of pictures of the house, tons of pictures of computers and car parts but few pictures of her and even fewer of us. Now that things are all up in the air I am finding myself regretting not having more pictures of us. I treasure every moment we have together and I want to remember them all. I want to build on them a wonderful friendship, that hopefully will last a lifetime, or at least a very long time. It is amazing how things change, how before I didn’t feel like I needed reminders as every day was an adventure in it of itself. Now that things are challenging I like to look back to where we have been, good and bad to try and build on it — to better myself and strive to be the best friend I can be.
I think if I can keep the past in mind but not let it haunt me I can grow and improve myself and I can make this thing work. I still have a ton of emotions all wrapped together about all this but I know through and through that my only course of action is to be the best friend I can be right now and build that into the best thing it can be and I believe it can be wonderful. I am still driven by something deep in my heart to protect this girl, to support her and to make her proud of me. I am trying desperately to continue walking this line here, to keep the balance between my own needs and my desire to support her. I think I’m doing an O.K. job right now, I’m keeping myself safe and yet I’m finally opening myself up to Carla.
I am getting better, building this friendship is helping and giving me strength to push forward. If I can keep myself safe in this then it will last and things will be wonderous.
Sunday, productive Sunday!
So on this, the day of rest I instead chose to clean out my car which has been accumulating shit for the better part of a year. After throwing all the crap in the car out I found myself someone unsatisfied with the progress I had made (or seemingly had not made) so off to Delta Sonic I went with the room mate, whereupon I forked over some hard earned dosh in trade for a car wash, interior cleaning, shampooing and oil change.
Now, the year I bought the car (2003) I drove to Thanksgiving Dinner. (Mind you I bought the car in July so it was only mine for 5 months at that point.) On the way out there an apple pie leaked on the back seat leaving what appeared to be a brown poop stain on the seat. In my laziness and general apathetic state I let this go completely untreated, and as time went on it became a source of ridicule and tomfoolery whereupon my friends would dole out jibes dealing with either my poor bowel control or my poor time management skills.
Fast forward to today and the picture shows that in fact I have finally removed the nearly 4 year old stain from my vehicle!
Huzzah! Onward into the brave new apple-pie-stain-free world!
Stain Free (larger)!!
Blister and burn in the sun!
This has been a fantastic weekend, and it is only Saturday.
It’s funny, It has been so long since I’ve gone out and had a good night that I feel actually compelled to write about the weekend I have had so far, ignoring the fact that it is a) not nearly over yet and b) I’m pretty buzzed at the moment and would rather be laying down or sitting on the couch (though I still seem to be able to type pretty well and I haven’t called the ex yet…).
Yesterday the ex and I met after work for some coffee and it ended up that we went to Chili’s with a whole bunch of people I haven’t seen in ages. It was an absolute blast and I had a fantastic time, probably better than a lot of the times I recall from recent history with the ex and I. Great food, wonderful company and just sitting around and laughing. It was a perfect night. Driving back to my car we sang along with the Avenue Q soundtrack, which is something I usually only do when I’m really comfortable with someone or drunk off my ass. It was an absolutely perfect night.
Saturday dawned and the general chores of the weekend settled in and the ex called me up for coffee. So I went, and for what it’s worth it made me smile to spend even 10 minutes with her. I have been so spoiled living with her that now not getting to see her every day is still hard. So any excuse I have to spend time with her is fantastic. But this is where it gets good and of course this will show you how the story ends with me being nicely lit.
One of my co-workers plays guitar in a band called Household Pest here in Rochester, NY. They played out at a pub about 2 miles up the road from me called J. B. Quimby’s Public House so I met up with a bunch of work people there. Beers and shots were had and it was a good old time. So good in fact that I had to have the roommate come get me.
A good time was had by all, they were rocking out pretty hard and even though I’m not the biggest classic rock fan I was bouncing along with the tunes.
I am not so inebriated however that I’ve stared drunk dialing the ex. Though that would be pretty funny to have to hear about tomorrow.
Oh well, there are more weekends and plenty of opportunity for that!
P.S. Matt, your car is in the J. B. Quimby’s parking lot. Don’t freak in the morning when it’s not in your parking spot. Love Matt!
P.P.S. Next time you go out, maybe you should eat something, that day…. you damned cheap date you!
These early mornings are going to be the death of me
I think this is the earliest ‘morning’ yet at work thus far — which is to say that I made it in the office by about 4:20 AM to start work on a rolling set of software updates on our various RADIUS clusters. Of course the wonderful remote management modules in the particular brand of servers we happen to use here are total crap and randomly decide to pack it in and stop working. Of course since they are purported to be ‘LOM’ or whatever they don’t power off when you power cycle the server so nothing short of yanking the two PSU modules out of the arse of the server for a minute will bring them back from la-la land.
Wonderful.
So I’m sitting around on my thumb waiting for someone to drive out to a remote office to yank the PSUs out of a server that the vendor swears up and down can be managed remotely. Oh to live in that perfect world of vendor-created illusion and wonderment. Other than that hiccup the work itself went smoothly and I finished up with about half an hour to spare in my allotted time.
The consolation prize is that I get to go home at noon, which is never a bad thing.
Holy Movies
Last night I went and saw 300 with the roommate, Luke and my brother. It was over the top and filled with man nipple and leather codpieces, but dammit it was enjoyable. I got the lecture about how historically inaccurate it was later from my brother, but I thought it wa amusing and the cinematography was well done, it was bloody and gruesome and over the top. Exactly what I needed to see. Today the ex and I got together and saw Number 23. Jim Carey never ceases to amaze me with his range as an actor. He played the part very well and it was quite good. Also I enjoyed getting the opportunity to spend time with the ex, and getting to spend time in a movie theatre holding hands with a pretty girl is always a plus. Afterwards we talked for a while and the whole time I couldn’t stop smiling, well except for the teary-eyed bits, but other than that I was grinning like an idiot. And slowly but surely I’m forgiving myself.
Step one, complete. 3,998 more steps to go!
I completed the first step of many on my trek to go to Scotland this year. I applied for my passport. It seems like a somewhat trivial step but the only way this is going to get done is if I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Next I need to buy a digital camera and some memory cards to take with me. I need those anyway so it’s not 100% for this trip, but the thought of visiting another country certainly makes it more of a pressing need than taking pictures of my bedroom.
I have to keep walking my path, straight and true.
I have made a resolution in life to push myself to do new things, to move forward and force myself kicking and screaming if need be to grow. In that vein I have begun the process of obtaining my passport which the US State Department assures me will take upwards of 10 WEEKS to complete.
Now to start pricing hotel and flights to the UK.
I hate Linux somedays…
So I tried to upgrade Apollo to kernel 2.6.20.2 from 2.6.14 because 2.6.14 was feeling a tad long in the tooth and I wanted to finally roll up to the latest kernel. This was a horrendously BAD idea as I was about to find out.
Long story short, I wasted over an hour of my life fighting with 2.6.20.2, first getting the new Q-Logic FC-AL HBA driver to load, since they saw fit to move the microcode outside of the driver for god knows what reason. They also removed the isp2xxx module completely which is what I had been using in favour of the qla2xxx driver prior to this.
Once I got the FC drives to detect it seems that the kernel software RAID (md) changed at some point between the two version so even though the drives were awake, the RAID layer wouldn’t come up. I suppose that I’m going to have to finally upgrade the disks on the box and get rid of the fibre channel gear if I want to upgrade to the newer kernel.
Dear lord Linux, please for the love of Bob stop making the user experience HARDER. I’ve been using Linux since 2.0.10ish and compiling my own kernels and it’s just getting more irritating to do.
Please lord can I have that hour of my life back?!
Dinner ambitions
So I am attempting my most ambitious dish for dinner tonight — Chicken Casserole. The prep work was pretty simple, now it is in the oven cooking. In a little less than an hour we shall see if I suck or if I am passable as a domesticated human being. I must admit I am excited to find out for myself, to see if I am actually able to handle this part of living on my own or if I have been totally spoiled by my ex taking care of me for the last few years and will end up totally failing. I am of course worried that the truth is the latter, but I am trying hard to force myself to not suck.
The house is finally clean for the first time ever, and I mean the WHOLE house, basement and Ukie’s room included which is a totally amazing thing, and I’ve been doing really good keeping the rest of the house clean on a daily basis. It is nice, it makes me feel like a real adult which for some reason is still somewhat shocking to me, even though I am nearly 26 years old.
Edit: Dinner was wonderful.
Edit 2: proof that Ukie cleaned his room!!!