Category: 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!

Damn, it’s HOT (and some excuses)

Post author By ryan
Post date July 2, 2009
No Comments on Damn, it’s HOT (and some excuses)

Holy crap it’s hot out! Got to 95 here in Portland. Yikes!

Anyway, been a while (nearly a month) since I’ve posted, and I’ve had stuff to write about. For those who subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed, you’re going to see a few posts that I’m going to back-date (because I want it dated correctly in the blog), so when you see some of these posts, the present tense I write will be referring to the real date, not today’s date. For everyone else, just ignore this entire paragraph, ok? Thanks.

Two reasons for my lack of blogging activities of late: Work, and Twitter. The latter has successfully managed to usurp much of my “hey, this is what I’ve been doing lately” style transmissions. Combine that with a heavy workload, and the result is massive blog rot. To the 3 or 4 people who actually read this blog: sorry ’bout that. However, I’m pretty sure most people who read this also follow me on Twitter, so it’s probably not a big deal. I guess I’m just feeling guilty as I watch the date of the last post recede further and further into the past. Oh yeah, again, for anyone who doesn’t reads my blog via RSS, ignore this paragraph too, ok? Good.

Today (yes, the real today, July 2nd) I took the day off of work, and spent the day just hanging around the house, keeping indoors due to the heat. I did manage to scan some more photos, sort some music, watch some TV and play a bit on the Wii. I spent the (now tolerable) evening writing the blog posts mentioned above, and sipping on beers. Never left the house, which was fantastic. Tomorrow is supposed to be as hot as it was today, but I’ll actually be doing some running around, so it will be less ‘chill’ than today. Anyway, that’s it for now. Keep cool folks.

Tags Beer, Blog slacker, excuses, lazy slacker, Twitter, weather, Work

Beer Technology Work

Guinness. Yes, again.

Well, I went and did it. I got yet another keg of Guinness. I know I’ve said it before, but I swear this is the last one. I swear! Honest!

Looking through my blog, it appears I’ve been pouring Guinness from my kegerator since October. I think it’s been 6 kegs (roughly one per month), with several little gatherings and nights with friends to help me polish each of ’em off. Worth every penny.

I debated getting Trumer Pils or Amstel Light, but the weather just isn’t quite warm enough yet to warrant such summery beers. Though I suspect that by the time this keg of Guinness runs dry, it’ll be about that time.

Øther news: Work is keeping me busy

Øther øther news: Yardwork is coming along, the place is starting to look somewhat decent again. Still a lot to do, but it’s getting there. I’ve also continued my picture scanning extravaganza with my new scanner. Being able to scan negatives rocks, and makes the process so much faster. That’s about it for now.

Tags Beer, Guinness, tech, Work, yardwork

Beer Entertainment Food Movies Technology Work

The past few weeks

Yeah, it’s been a few weeks since my last post, which means it’s recap time!

Work has been keeping me plenty busy. Many long hours and late nights. It’s been good, but very exhausting.

We had a petty nasty wind storm a couple weeks back. The large tree in front of the house lost about five 8-9 foot long branches. The front yard looked like a war zone. Branches, twigs, and needles blanketing everything. It took a good few hours of sawing and raking to get it mostly cleaned up.

On the morning of Obama’s inauguration I had to rush into a dentists to get a filling replaced (one that’d started breaking loose from a molar a few months ago). It wasn’t what I would call fun, but it’s all good now.

Portland got a bit more snow earlier this week. Just enough that my bus got stuck trying to go up an incline (the bus wasn’t chained up). After getting stuck, I got off and walked back home and worked from there for the rest of the day. The strangest part was by 5pm it was 40 degrees and all the snow was gone.

My kid brother C turned 24 this week, and he and brother T came over to my pub (my garage) for a few beers, some pizza, and some dart throwing. Happy birthday C!

Tonight Kelly and I met some friends at the Goose for some dinner and beers. Yum.

I picked up a Roku (used for $80) earlier this week. So far I’m pretty impressed, the streaming quality is pretty good. Kelly’s watching An American in Paris as I write this. She’s quite excited.

Oh, and I got another keg of Guinness today (after the last one ran dry about two weeks ago). I swore I was going to get something different, but I couldn’t help it, Guinness is just too delicious. Yum!

Other than that, I’ve been watching Lost and Battlestar Galactica now that those are both back on, and as I said above, working.

That pretty much covers it, I think.

Tags battlestar, Beer, dentist, lost, roku, snow, wind, Work

Beer Food Technology Work

Server rebuild, office move, family weekend

Post author By ryan
Post date September 7, 2008
No Comments on 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!