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 Humor Technology Television Work

Since the trip…

Since the last post, I had a nice end of my two week vacation. A couple relaxing days that allowed me to get back into our timezone. During that time I also discovered that Belmont Station carries the Bruges beer that Kelly and I had much of on our trip, Brugse Zot, so I picked up a couple bottles of that. Hooray!

Last Wednesday Kelly and I had M & B over for dinner, to thank them for watching over our house and our cat, and I figured that would be as good a time as any to tap my keg of Guinness. The countdown begins. Tapping it proved to be more complicated than I’d thought. The first problem was that I hadn’t tightened the stout faucet all the way, and when I first went to lock the tap on, beer sprayed everywhere. Damn! Once I’d fixed that, the tap wouldn’t lock down easily (making me wonder for a bit whether I’d picked up the wrong tap). Finally realized that it just needed a bit more ‘elbow grease’ than other taps, and finally got the delicious black stuff flowing Yum!

Kelly and I went out to my hometown on Friday after work for a belated birthday dinner for Kelly. We went to this newly opened Chinese place, the food was mediocre, but it was still a nice dinner. Afterwards we drove to my folks place for dessert (ice cream cake, yum!) and I got to spend time playing with my rapidly growing nephew, Bart. After getting home I had a couple pints of Guinness (naturally) while getting distracted by this Comcast site Fancast, where you can watch full episodes of TV shows… I ended up watching some of the original Battlestar Galactica. I hadn’t seen it in many, many years.

Last night we went out with Mr. & Mrs. Ghost Dog to the Goose Hollow Inn for delicious sandwiches and beers, before coming back to our house for a bit. Had a great time, and it’d been quite some time since we’d seen the GDs.

Today, finally, the unseasonably cold and rainy weather broke, and Kelly and I were able to spend a few hours outside doing yardwork. Soon, we’ll be grilling some chicken kabobs on the barbecue. Hooray!

Between all this, was a crazy first week back to work. Loads to do in the next few weeks for the next software release. Gonna be nuts.

Oh, also, discovered a new web comic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Enjoy.

Edited to add one more thing: My friend and coworker Aaron recently blogged about this news site The Big Picture, where I found this photo/article about an uncontacted tribe in Brazil. Really found the photos amazing, imagine not being in contact with the ‘modern’ world and having a helicopter buzzing around your tribe’s camp. What must have been going through their minds.

Categories
Entertainment Technology

If Facebook were real

Caught this little gem from Digg just now and had to repost it here, because well, it’s hilarious. And sadly true.

This video represents the downside of being too connected. Sometimes it can be good (yielding some favorable contact with long-lost friends), sometimes it can be awkward and slightly uncomfortable (being contacted and ‘friended’ by people who you might rather not bother with), and sometimes it can be outright weird. I’m sure anybody who’s ventured into the MySpace or Facebook worlds have had all three happen at one time or another. I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just work towards removing my profiles, and going back ‘off the grid’ and return to relative obscurity. 🙂

Categories
Technology

Backups

Yesterday I picked up a 500 GB external hard drive, and connected it to my Airport Extreme so both Kelly and I can take advantage of the OS X‘s automated, versioned backup goodness that is Time Machine. I got my MacBook Pro all backed up yesterday, and Kelly’s is working at it now. It’s pretty nice, specifically because with very little attention, Kelly and my Mac’s will be fully backed up… and, the drive shows up and can be used by my Windows and Linux machines to use for backups too. Nice.

Categories
Beer Technology Work

4 gigabyte Horse Brass

Last Friday I ordered some RAM for both Kelly and my laptops (through my work’s IT department, saving about $40 from what I’d have paid otherwise). After ordering I was told it would be 3 to 5 business days. I arrived to work this morning and had the RAM already. Woohoo! So I borrowed the tiny screwdriver required and upgraded my MacBook Pro from 2 GB to 4GB (the maximum), and later tonight upgraded Kelly’s MacBook too. So now we’re both maxed out on what we can do to these machines, and it was massively cheaper than adding such an upgrade through Apple (each 4 GB kit I just bought came to just under $100, the same upgrade when ordering the laptop at Apple’s site is a whopping $700!)

Before going home I met Snooks at Horse Brass for some beers, joined later by Kelly. Mmmmm… delicious Beamish on nitro.