Author: ryan

Categories
Entertainment Food

Good day and night

Despite the new street sign I received this week (more), and discovering that I owe big on taxes earlier today, I had a really fun day today.

Kelly and I, after our neato meeting with our accountant, went to Ground Kontrol to play some video games. I rocked it old school with some Discs of Tron, followed by some Doctor Who and Stargate pinball, while Kelly played some Centipede and Addams Family pinball. Afterward we wandered around the various shops in the area (such as Compound) before getting lunch at Old Town Pizza.

After that we stopped by our good friends Cora & Craig’s house for a little bit (both of whom are old friends, co-workers, and Craig is the creator of humanclock.com – check out the phenomenon if you haven’t already).

And a bit later this evening we had Miranda and Snooks over for some drinks.

A successful Saturday, despite the taxes bit. Stupid taxes.

Categories
Technology

My MacBook Pro is ALIVE!

I got my MacBook Pro back today. Hooray! I was getting a little tired of using my old office PC.

It’s amazing how much I rely on the little efficiencies (such as ‘Quick Look’ for email attachments and in the file manager) to get work done. Not to mention the portability.

Too bad I’m too tired to put in a late night of work, now that I can again. Besides, I need to watch last nights LOST.

Categories
Technology

My MacBook Pro died

Last Friday, as I wrapped up a long week of work, I shut the lid of my MacBook Pro like normal and go home. Later that night while at home, I grab the machine to look something up; I open the lid, the optical drive makes it’s usual sounds, but nothing appears. I put the machine to my ears and the hard drive is clicking away, but the screen is totally black. I forced a reboot but still nothing.

After spending an hour or so scouring Apple’s forums, I discover that my MacBook (a mid-2007 model) appears to be suffering from a well known flaw in the nVidia graphics chip (the 8600m GT) that afflicted not only MacBook Pro’s manufactured between about June and October of 2007, but a load of other machines by Dell, HP, etc. Somehow, despite heavy use for the past two and a half  years, it finally manifested on my laptop. Hrmph!

Saturday I made an appointment at the Apple Store, and their diagnostic confirmed the problem. The upside of the situation is that since nVidia took responsibility for their manufacturing flaw, the repair is covered at no cost to me. The downside was that I had to have it shipped off for a motherboard replacement and haven’t had it for the past few days.

I checked the status of the repair on Apple’s website today, and was pleased to see the repair was completed, and it might just arrive back in Portland tomorrow. Hooray!

In the meantime, I’m sneakily using Kelly’s MacBook this evening while she’s out at a work event. Shhhhh!

Categories
Entertainment Movies

CoD5, and Men Who Stare At Goats

Spent most of my day playing Call of Duty: World at War (aka CoD5). It’s a fun game, and I’m glad that I finally picked it up.

Kelly peeled me away from it for long enough to run over to Kennedy School to watch The Men Who Stare At Goats, which was pretty funny. Quirky and ridiculous, but fun. Jeff Bridges even channeled a bit of The Dude in his role.

However, since it’s early enough on this Sunday evening, it’s back to CoD for a little more shooting at baddies.

Categories
Beer Entertainment Food Movies Work

Recap: work, movies, games, etc

Returning to work after 2 weeks of time off always means a lot of catching up to do. That means, as always, I fail to post. Sheesh. So here we go with more recappy goodness of the past couple weeks…

Kelly and I have watched a few decent films; the animated film 9, Charlie Wilson’s War, and just this evening, Michael Clayton. We’ve also continued to hang out from time to time at a recently discovered bar a few blocks from my house, NePo 42. They’ve got a decent beer selection, good grub, and free pool on a table in the back. The only downside are game nights when the Portland Trailblazers are playing (the place fills up with dudes that get drunk and like to loudly holler at the TV).

And today I freed up enough hard drive space on my PC to finally pick up Call of Duty: World at War off of Steam. Since I refuse to buy Modern Warfare 2 (no dedicated servers, no lean, etc – read more if you care), and I enjoyed the demo of World at War, I dropped my $39 on it and am currently gobbling up my bandwidth waiting for it to download and install. Game on!