Author: ryan

Categories
Beer Entertainment General Technology Television

I broked the internets!

Haven’t written in a few days. I intended to, but I couldn’t. I broked the internets! 🙂

It all started Saturday, which was truely a day to myself. I didn’t leave the house except for some grocery shopping (translated: I bought beer and some meat to grill). I spent most of the day tinkering around my home office, backing up data, updating software, and researching some new computer equipment to buy. Fun stuff, yeah? Yeah, well it was for me. And, it was nice to spend a day doing practically nothing. Not seeing anybody, not going anywhere, just hanging out by myself. Well, me and the cat I guess.

The research was for a new WiFi access point. I have been running on a dinosaur, the original Apple Airport (known as the Graphite model) since around the year of our lord 2000 AD. It was old, slow, and though it worked, I’ve recently been using the wireless a lot more (what with the new laptop) and it’s shocking how long it takes to transfer a large file over that old, slow WiFi connection. I also wanted to move to a WiFi router, something new that could take the place of my old WiFi access point and my old ethernet switch. One power plug instead of two, one or two less cables snaking along the wall, etc. This, after loads of research, lead me to the newly released Apple Airport Extreme (1 gigabit ethernet version).

While out grocery shopping Saturday I tried to visit the nearest Mac store and buy one, but they’d closed. Oh well. I spent the night surfing the net and watching season 3 of Black Books, a very funny / snarky English comedy series.

Sunday however, I was able to purchase my new toy. So I got home with it in the afternoon and set in getting it all hooked up. One thing I knew was going to happen in all of this was that my current setup was going to break a lot… my old setup was such that my broadband modem fed into my Linux server, which then fed to my ethernet switch, which then fed into my old WiFi access point. Long story short, a LOT of configuration was done on my Linux server to get all this working… and I had to undo it all, and do a lot of new stuff, to get everything back up and running.

I had however underestimated how much of a pain some of it would be. Getting my network up and running and getting my computers online was really easy. That part only took 10 minutes. What was more troublesome was getting my Linux server happy again, and then discovering some things that meant some larger changes to my setup (new nameservers, routing for my domain name, port forwarding, blah blah blah). What that all means is that Circusgeek was offline for a couple few days until everything got sorted out. Which, as far as I can tell, happened today sometime. Now I’m finally able to post to my blog again. Hence, the long-winded post. 🙂

Now that it’s all running, things are faster and I’m happier overall. More than anything, I’m just glad to have everything running again. What a pain in the ass!

Categories
Beer Travel Work

Quite the day

Interesting day today. Beside some time spent doing typical work tasks early in the day, I had my review (which went really well), and the afternoon was spent doing filming & recording for a video demo of a new feature of SuperSweetCo’s flagship product. I was picked to do this work since I was responsible for designing the feature, but it was a pretty stressful thing to do, and I now fully appreciate professional voice actors. It’s hard work, trying to time a script to a video. I’m pretty sure it was dreadful, but I won’t won’t know for sure until early next week.

After work, I spent some time hanging out with some coworkers; first in the office break room sipping on beers, and later at another coworker’s place in NW Portland. The coworker was hosting a poker night, and other SuperSweetCo employees were attending so I figured I’d go hang out for a bit. While I didn’t join in on the gaming it was nice to spend some time with coworkers in a setting far removed from work.

After that, Snooks and I went to Moon & Sixpence for some beers before calling it a night. Had a great time hanging out.

Oh, and Kelly seems to be having a great time. All day she was taunting me with photos from her camera of her visit to the Met, MOMA, pubs, and photos of New York city at night. She also sent me a text message about how she got her photo taken with David Hyde Pierce. And no, I’m not jealous of her adventures or anything. Heck no.

Oh, and I’m very annoyed that it’s the last day in August, and watching it get darker earlier and earlier every day. I already miss the days it was light until almost 10pm. Hrmph!

Categories
General Movies Work

Just Hangin’ around

Last night was kind of funny… funny in that “I’m, like, an old man now” way. My ‘plans’ to stay up irresponsibly late, with the stereo cranking out the heavy metal and dancing in my skivvies (what with having the house to myself and all) were ruined by a combination of a couple beers and general exhaustion. I dozed off sometime around 11pm watching some old Humphrey Bogart film. Awoke at around 1am and lurched my way to bed.

Not much to report today. Woke up early to the cat biting my leg, got out of the house at a decent time, and got to the office where I spent my day taking care of some of the last bits of the big new feature I spent the last few weeks working on. Another hot day in Portland, and only now (as it’s now dark) has it cooled off to what I call an “acceptable level”. Had a good friend stop by for a beer and a smoke, and now I’m just cooking up my chicken on the grill.

Tomorrow I’ve got my first annual employee review at SuperSweetCo. Well, a bit more than a year (more like 1.25, shit happens, we’re all busy). I’m a little nervous, only because I’m not sure what to expect. Hell, perhaps I’ll write tomorrow that I’ve been fired for being too much of a dork. Or maybe I’ll have been promoted to Grand Poobah. Time will tell. 🙂

Categories
Entertainment Humor Movies

How to be the perfect girlfriend

Saw this video via Digg.com just now. Hilarious (and yet, oddly accurate).

Yup, still slacking off. 🙂

Categories
Beer General Travel Work

Happy Birthday Travis, & “all byyy myyseeellf”

Happy birthday Travis! You’re 30 now. Not only a parent, but an old man too!* 🙂

Last night we drove out to the home town for dinner at my parents house. We arrived just in time to hear my brother shooting old hard drives with his semi-automatic assault rifle thing (I can’t remember what it is, I keep thinking it’s an AR-15, not sure) from 100 yards away. After a delicious, home-made fish and chip dinner, he raced his fancy remote-controlled car up and down the gravel road. Yes, he’s a parent. Yes, it’s a scary, scary thing. 🙂

After some delicious apple pie and ice cream we came home and I zonked out cold on the bed, fully dressed, at around 10:30 or so. Food coma. Urgh.

Today I took Kelly to the airport for her visit with our friends ‘back east’. I got up early and worked from home, then drove her to the airport, and then drove to work (something I’ve only done twice before in the 1.25 years I’ve been at SuperSweetCo). Of course, the work day kept me busy with meetings and design tasks, so it was as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Except I got to drive home rather than take the bus. Now I’m home, sipping on beers, and it’s just me. And will be until Monday. *sniff*.

Oh well, I’ve got work to do anyway (that I’m putting off at the moment), and there’s a lot of little things I hope to get done around the house while she’s gone. She called around 6pm and arrived safely. Hopefully she’ll be posting about her adventures.