Categories
Beer Work

Bro, Brew, & Bond… James Bond

Last night my brother Travis and I got together at Moon & Sixpence for the first time in several weeks to chat over some beers and grub. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the bro again, and he’d loaded his iPod with dozens of photos of my nephew Henry which were pretty fun to flip through.

Today SuperSweetCo released another version of the fancy product I’ve been working on, and ended another development cycle for for the next great version due out in three weeks. In the midst of the flurry of activity trying to get a lot of new changes in, I met several friends at a burger joint on Broadway called the Red Coach for a hamburger, fries, and a soda. Fun lunch, and a nice distraction from the hectic work day. At the end of the day, after scrambling to get one big improvement implemented, the team demo’d the new stuff, and then embarked on a helluva happy hour.

Happy HourFor the past few months, during the ‘release week’ different groups or departments within the company have been “sponsoring” happy hours. It started with the engineering team, and has worked it’s way through support, sales, etc, until tonight which was the happy hour driven by the SuperSweetCo management. Each group has tried to top the previous one, and tonight was no exception, though there’s no doubt that the managers clearly outdid everything before it. The theme (each of these happy hours has had a theme of some sort) was James Bond. They dressed in tuxedos, had bartenders serving martinis, and hired a company to come in with blackjack, craps, and roulette tables. Everybody was given vouchers for chips to play with, and at a later point in the evening, people cashed in their chips for raffle tickets to win new iPod Nano’s and Shuffle’s. It was a blast.

Afterward, I walked with Mr & Mrs L. to SC’s place in the Pearl before getting a taxi home. Overall a brilliant night out. Though I’m exhausted now, both from the work week, and the evening itself.

Categories
Art Entertainment

Fantastic photos

Martin Klimas still life photographyI found this article from one of the design blogs I read regularly. A photographer named Martin Klimas has taken some amazing photos of clay figurines, the moment they shatter in to bits.

From the interview: “I drop the figurine from the same height in complete darkness while the lens of the camera is open. When the figurine hits the ground, the sound triggers the lights to go off for a fraction of a second.”

My favorites: 1, 2, 3, 4. And there are more at his website.

Categories
Technology

CircusTroubles

Not sure what the heck I did, but sometime over the weekend, I managed to do something bad to circusgeek. This meant that anyone trying to reach the blog for the past couple days has either not been able to reach it at all, or it’s been insanely slow.

Over the weekend, I did a number of things to the server, from trying to tweak the config files, to upgrading software (including upgrading my blog software, which, in case you haven’t noticed, includes some new sidebar items, like a tag cloud view of categories, a list of recent comments, and an inline login form). All of the blog upgrades I did yesterday. Most of the meatier server changes I did on Saturday. Of course, I was at home, connected directly to the server, so it wasn’t until last night while chatting with Snooks that I discovered that things weren’t working properly.

I spent the past couple hours prodding at things, trying to figure out what was causing the slow connections to the server, only to finally try a reboot of the server. Magically, everything seems to be working normally again. I’m still not sure what was going on, the system wasn’t displaying any unusual behavior, but regardless, everything seems to be fine now (crosses fingers).

Categories
Beer Food Travel Work

The week ends

Hooray for short work weeks! Aside from continuing to tweak my home network & server setup, the week was pretty fun. I got to design and work on some pretty fun stuff for SuperSweetCo, and on Wednesday evening I (and some other neighborhood friends) visited Miranda & Brian at their new place. I had a great time hanging out in their yard, even if it meant we were keeping them from unpacking. 🙂

Last night Kelly and I went to the Mash Tun for a pint and some grub. Had a nice time chatting and hanging out.

This morning, however, I woke up feeling a bit wobbly in the stomach, so decided it best if I worked from home. That said, I managed to get a lot done and by the afternoon I felt fine. Not sure if it was the food at the Tun the previous night (which I doubt, since I’ve had their food many, many times) or the sickness that seems to be spreading around the office for the past week or two, but whatever, all I can say is that I’m no longer ill. Hooray!

After the working hours, I grabbed a beer and moved from my home office to the back yard. I’m determined to make the most out of what’s left of the summer in my back yard, before it’s too late. I sat out and tinkered for a bit on the laptop, set out the sprinklers, and chatted with friends. A bit later, I got to IM’ing with a coworker who was going to dinner down the street from me (to the Concordia Ale House). While I had already decided to stay in for the night, it was nice to spend some time with my coworker/friend and his better half. After two pints of Hobgoblin and one pint of Terminal Gravity Extra Special Golden, I walked back home and chatted with Kelly a bit about her night at class, and her upcoming day.

Oh, and in case you haven’t read it, Kelly posted about her trip to New York / Jersey last week. Read it, and be jealous (like I was). 🙂

Categories
General

Kelly’s home!

Among mess I got myself into over the past few days, Kelly made it home safely on Monday from her trip to New York to visit some friends. She had a blast, and got to see a lot of cool stuff, which I’m sure she’ll blog about once she finishes going to interviews, working on papers for school, and working at her internship. No, she’s not busy at all!

Also, in other news, our friends Miranda and Brian moved into their new house near to us, and over the past few days (today included) we’ve gone over to visit them. Glad to have more friends living in the neighborhood.