Category: Beer

Categories
Beer General

Tweaking the blog, and house work.

Immediately after my earlier post I started fiddling with my blog layout a bit. No big changes, just made it three-column, tweaked the display of some of the sidebar widgets, and adding a Twitter feed widget, so you can see my ‘tweets’ (ugh, that’s never going to sound anything less than totally stupid).

After that I spent time cleaning some of the upstairs windows inside and out (involving crawling out on the patio roof), finished cleaning the lower eves, and some other cleanup. I’m now exhausted, but am having a beer in the back yard with Kelly. I’m surfing, she’s reading a book. It’s very nice in the shade of my back yard right now. I’m supposed to get cleaned up and head to a friends BBQ / Housewarming, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it (if I don’t, sorry JB, we’ll catch up soon, I swear).

Categories
Beer Food Technology Work

Server rebuild, office move, family weekend

Server rebuild
Last weekend (Labor Day weekend in the states) I spent my time rebuilding my linux server (circusgeek). The poor machine had been running non-stop for 4 years, 2 months, 27 days. The primary system drive was showing some signs of impending death, so it needed to be replaced. I also figured I’d add a bunch of memory since I was in there performing surgery. After meticulously backing everything up, I swapped out drives, added the memory, and began restoring everything. The new OS install was fast and painless (I chose Ubuntu this time around), but the process of getting all the server services running and configured took a bit more time. However, everything’s back and running better than it had been.

Last day in the old offices
This past week was the last for myself and many others in the old SuperSweetCo offices on 3rd and Alder. First thing tomorrow we’ll be joining the rest of the company who have been in the new office building for some months now. I’ve been in the same corner of the same floor of the same building since I started over 2 years ago, so it’s going to be a bit bittersweet. I’m looking forward to the change of work environment, but I’m definitely going to miss the location of the old offices, and it’s proximity to the waterfront, the MAX and bus lines, the restaurants and the shops. The new office however is very close to Powell’s Books and Kenny & Zuke’s, so that’ll be good. 🙂

Family weekend
On Friday after work Kelly and I drove out to a tavern in Beaverton to celebrate my dad’s retirement. My mom had arranged for a large group of his now-ex-coworkers to join, and they all got up, embarrassed him with old stories, and gave him gag gifts. It was actually pretty fun, even though I didn’t really fit in with a bunch of linemen. The thing that struck both myself and my brother was the camaraderie, the feeling of family, that the group had. They all work hard, they all risk their lives together, and they all rely on one another. Oh, and I found out that they put his hard hat on top of a pole to honor him, and it will stay there, even if they replace the pole. Pretty cool.

Yesterday Kelly and I went to a BBQ at my aunt’s house because my cousin Julie was in town. I got to see a few other cousins (Kris and Dana) who I’d not seen in many many years. It was both a fun and weird BBQ. 🙂

After I got home, I did some yardwork, sipped on some beers, and then dozed off watching TV with Kelly at around 11pm. Shuffled up to bed when I woke up at about 1:30 (Kelly was still up watching something). Woke up at 8am this morning, and am coffee-ing up so I can go out and do more yardwork today. Whee!

Categories
Beer Movies Politics Work

Weird week, birthdays, and other stuff

This whole week has been a bit odd, somehow. It’s hard to explain, it just has. I’ve been feeling a bit more ‘out of it’ than usual. It might be the sudden change in weather since it’s recently gone from horribly hot to cool and (for a few days) rainy. It might also be that I’m just now recognizing that the days are getting shorter (I’m already missing it being light out until about 10pm). Might have been the strange but oddly fun downtown scavenger hunt my manager organized for SuperSweetCo’s engineering team Tuesday afternoon (part team building exercise, part reward for our hard work getting the latest version of software out the door). Maybe part of it has been the DNC. Dunno. 🙂

Monday night Kelly and I watched Amazing Grace, a historical drama about William Wilberforce, the late 18th to early 19th century British politician, who fought to end Britain’s part in the slave trade. It was a really good movie, with a great cast. Worth watching.

Tuesday afternoon was the aforementioned scavenger hunt. Ran around downtown Portland with iPhones and digital cameras, looking for random clues, performing silly stunts and making asses of ourselves. It was pretty fun overall (despite the embarrassment of some of the stunts).

Yesterday I had a few pints from my keg with Snooks, talking about the DNC (love Snooks latest post, btw), the upcoming Hobbit film(s), and other totally rad nerdy stuff.

Right now I’m at Moon & Sixpence, awaiting my brother (who’s birthday it is today), enjoying a pint of Guinness. Happy birthday Travis!

Tomorrow we go to another birthday thing, this time for my friend Amy. Happy birthday Amy!

Looking forward to the three day weekend. Much yardwork will (hopefully) get done. And much relaxing. I’d love to just spend 3 days at home, doing whatever the heck I want. That’d rock. 🙂

Categories
Beer Entertainment Food Movies Technology Work

Anniversary, and dinner at a friends

Ciao VitoLast night Kelly and I went out to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. Our anniversary was technically Thursday, but we went out for dinner after work yesterday instead. Kelly picked me up from work after a work happy hour (last one in the current office, I move to a new location in a couple weeks), stopped at home, and then walked down Alberta Street to the restaurant Ciao Vito. We arrived a bit early for our reservation so we went next door to Mash Tun for a beer and a visit with their friendly staff. Dinner was delicious, I had the Sugo of Pork dish, which was very good (and very filling) and Kelly had some kind of fried cheese thing (can’t find on the online menu) and a caprese salad for her dinner. Everything was wonderful, and the staff were friendly and welcoming. It was a very nice and low-key dinner experience, I recommend the restaurant. After dinner we went back to the Mash Tun for another couple pints before walking home.

After getting home Kelly wanted to watch Serenity (I love her!), though sadly I was exhausted and fell asleep on the couch with the cat about halfway through, waking up at 2 or 3 in the morning and shuffling upstairs to plop in bed.

Tonight we went out to dinner at a friends place in Hillsboro. Had a great time out… chatted, ate fajitas, drank beer, and got to see Battlefield Bad Company in action. The game looks like fun, too bad it’s not out for the PC. Grrr.

In related gaming news, I’ve rediscovered OpenArena recently. It’s free and works on Mac, Linux and PC, check it out and get your frag on! 🙂

Categories
Beer Food Travel

Camping (Bernie Man)

This weekend Kelly and I went camping at a friend’s property a little way south-east of Salem. The host (Bernard, aka Bernie) has a house and several acres along a clean, mountain-fed river, and invited a group to join him camping, swimming, and drinking beer. Both Kelly and I had a really good time catching up with friends, walking through the woods, swimming, and absorbing that campfire smell.

Our first night sleeping in the tent, a deer or elk almost killed Kelly and I! I (unsurprisingly) slept through the event, but around 3am a fellow camper heard some crashing and saw a large shape run off. When I woke up I found a hole in our tent, and one of the polls out of it’s peg and the whole corner of the tent was smooshed in. Dunno, could have been sasquatch. All I know is we almost could have died. *gasp*

Other highlights: people brought art (Bernie is an artist himself and has some space he set up as a gallery), the food people made and shared was excellent, and while cold, the swimming was fantastic. Had a great time, and hope to go again someday. More photos in the gallery.