Category: Work

Categories
Beer Food Technology Work

The Big Recap

Yes, it’s been a bit, mainly due to the house guests mentioned in my last post, and my new toy. I won’t recap the whole thing, as Kelly did a good job of that, but here’s some bits from the last few days:

Friday: The BBQ at Snooks place was fun, though I was feeling a bit ‘out of it’ from the work week, so I don’t remember feeling massively social. My brain just needed some "switch off" time I guess. I did however have an excellent hamburger. Along with the other food items Kelly mentions in her post, Snooks had also picked up some patties from the Sapphire (raised naturally, containing a mixture of spices other veggies, and about two inches thick) which he grilled to perfection.

Saturday: Went to Ground Kontrol with Sean (one half of our house guests) and Brian, and got our classic arcade on. I had fun playing some old pinball machines, including this very old Star Trek machine. After a few hours, we went over to the infamous Low Brow Lounge for some beers. Afterwards we met up at Khun Pic’s for dinner, which was, as Kelly mentions, fantastic.

Sunday: Sean, Brian, Snooks and I spent a few hours at Mash Tun while the baby shower thing was going on at my house. Had a blast playing pool, throwing darts, and drinking beer. After that we (minus Brian) went to Kennedy school for a bit, and were met there for dinner by the ladies.

Monday: Worked all day and then went home. Kelly brought me some delicious spicy mac & cheese from the Montage though. Spent my last night with Sean out in the garage, chatting away, sipping on beers, and listening to music. Went to bed WAY too late, but oh well.

Today: Said my goodbye to Sean (his wife was still asleep by the time I left the house) and worked all day. On the way home Kelly met me at the Mash Tun for a quick pint, before arriving to a relatively empty house. Had a fun time over the past few days, but I’m pooped. 🙂

There you have it, all caught up. Also, I’ve been playing a lot with my new Mac. It’s been running great. I got Windows XP installed on it (on a second partition) and it runs great. Also tried out VMWare Fusion, allowing me to run my Windows apps (from the second partition) inside of the Mac desktop. Pretty slick! I’ve also been able to narrow down the crashing issues I mentioned previously. There is something very specific happening with the OS X drivers for the new WiFi hardware this new machine has. At the office, when I enter the range of one of the two WiFi access points, I get the crash. Also, while at the Mash Tun, something about it’s access point won’t let me connect, though while booted into XP, I was able to connect. It’s become apparent that it’s the OS X drivers, and I’m sure that Apple will release an update for it sometime soon. But until then, my WiFi may be a bit spotty depending on where I am. Kind of sucks, but it doesn’t outweigh all the other benefits of the machine. I’m still very happy with my decision. 🙂

Categories
Technology Work

My new toy, and house guests arrive

During my lunch break at work today I bought what I’d been (not so secretly) craving for months… I bought one of the new MacBook Pro‘s. I’ve been coveting them for a while now, however I’ve known for a while now that Apple was about to release a new model, so I waited. And waited. And waited some more. However, yesterday Apple finally released the new models (faster processors, better video cards, etc) so today I broke down and bought one.

First impression: beautiful, elegant, easy to use. All the things I’ve come to expect (especially after using the MacBook that Kelly bought a while back)

Second impression: slightly disappointed due to some nasty system crashes that I experienced at SuperSweetCo. With the assistance of a coworker I was able to narrow down the problem to some bug with the new hardware and the WiFi encryption that my office uses (WPA). It seems like something that a software update from Apple would fix, though the store I bought the machine from is willing to replace the laptop if the problem persists. Not sure if I’m going to go ahead and replace it yet or just give it some time.

Third impression: I get the new toy home (and on a slightly more standard WiFi encryption scheme) and everything has worked flawlessly. My guess is that this is one of those "early adopter" issues with a brand new piece of hardware that Apple will surely fix with some upcoming software update. It’s a great machine that I’ll (hopefully) get years and years of use out of.

All this aside, we have house guests who arrived today from "back east" (Jersey). Had a great time hanging out with them this evening, even though I had to skip out on a dinner thing with them due to work and work-related stress… I just needed some time at home alone, relaxing, and playing with my new toy. Looking forward to spending time with ’em over the next several days.

Categories
Beer General Work

The Fountain, the Walking, & the Garage

To follow up from Saturday, I spent most of yesterday playing with my photo gallery software, in an attempt to better link it with the blog. Kelly and I also watched The Fountain, which Snooks had recently metioned. It was indeed a beautiful film, and one that left me pondering afterwards (even now), and led me to some rather interesting dreams. At least I think so. I never seem to remember my dreams, but I distinctly remember waking up feeling rather introspective. Woah, that’s heavy man!

Work today was filled with meetings, mostly around upcoming work and planning the next release of the software I’ve been working on at SuperSweetCo. The next few weeks are going to be pretty nuts.

Fortunately I was able to get a good amount of walking in today, as the temperature has finally dropped to more sane levels. Early this morning I got few miles in walking from my house to a bus stop a bit further than I’d normally go to. During my lunch break I was finally able to do my three mile walk around the waterfront. Again, the weather (and workload) last week prevented me from my usual lunchtime walks. After work I went to my friend Jenn’s place (same spot as Memorial Day), to have some beers (Mount Hood Brewing’s Ice Axe IPA) off of her new kegerator (which she was supposed to have had by her party last week). After that I walked another few miles from her house to mine. In total I walked a bit over 7 miles today. Hooray!

Once I got home I helped Kelly unpack the espresso machine I got her for her birthday (which finally arrived today), and then tidied up my garage a bit. Kelly and I have some friends coming to stay with us in a few day (for about 6 days). Kelly has been doing a lot of work on the house itself, but the manly area that is the garage was a mess. It’s a bit better now. The looming guests have been a good exuse to finally get in and clean like I’ve been meaning to do for a while. There’s talk of renting a projector so we can play classic arcade games on a wall in said garage, while sipping on beers and talking about manly things. The garage is now a bit better set up for such manly / nerdy activities. 🙂

Categories
Beer Food General Work

Weekend Report: Backyard edition

Been a very busy week. So let me start off with…

Monday (Memorial Day): as Kelly wrote, my friend Jenn threw a big BBQ / Housewarming. I was there far too late and had far too much beer (from a keg of IPA from Pelican Brewery), but it was a blast. Though I paid for it on…

Tuesday: the final push week for a development cycle at work. The company has engaged in something known as a ‘release train’ model, whereby every 6 weeks the company will release a new versions of it’s products. In this model there are three weeks of development followed by three weeks of quality assurance testing. This means that at the end of the dev. cycle, the developers begin work on the next release, while supporting any bugs that QA finds. So basically, development and QA happen at the same time, just for different releases. Since we’re just now getting on this model, it’s been hectic. ANYway, it was a mad rush to try and get everything done by the end of the week. Fast forward to…

Friday: barely got everything done for a 4pm demo to the company. Following that, the company held a big happy hour bash. Since the company has gotten so big, it’s been decided that once in a while each department sponsors a happy hour, complete with a small budget for whatever it is they want to do. This first time out, the engineering department got the task, and decided to go with the theme "ice". The break room windows were blacked out, there were blue glowing things (both to wear, as well as set around the room), buckets of dry ice pouring vapor all over the floor, and images cycling on the big TV of glaciers, snow-covered mountains, and Vanilla Ice. Hehe. It was pretty fun, and I didn’t get out of the office until a bit after 7:15pm. Waited a painful 40 minutes for a bus to arrive and finally made it home a little after 8pm. Kelly and I sat in the back yard for a bit before I grilled up chicken (both real for me, and fake stuff for Kelly) and ate dinner. Then I fell asleep on the couch shortly after 11pm. This leads me to…

Saturday: Woke up just before 8am and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I shuffled downstairs, made coffee, and though of all the things I was going to try and get done today. Once I had a cup ‘o joe in hand, I went upstairs to my office and sat at the computer to read some news for a bit. Well, I got heavily distracted (mostly with this blog) and didn’t end up doing anything I thought I might get done. Oh well I guess, it was a fun nerdy day. You might notice one new feature of the blog, there’s now a ‘Random Image’ sidebar item that’s pulling images from my new photo gallery software (Gallery2). One thing I was trying to figure out was how to more tightly integrate that application with my blog. I’m a bit frustrated with one of the blog plugins (it’s not working quite as well as I want it to) but that led me to do all kinds of other things (more behind-the-scenes) to the blog software iteself. Still tinkering, but thought I’d write a bit here before I lose myself in nerdiness again. I’m finally sitting outside (now that it’s not so damned hot out), beer in hand. Ahhhh.

Other interesting tidbits: It’s been hot this week, very hot. It hit 90 once already, and it was still May at the time. Even today the temperature was about 13 degrees F above normal. We basically went from winter to summer with only a couple weeks of sprint-like weather inbetween. *sigh*. InfoWorld posted a positive review of the product I’ve been focusing on for the past several months. Also, as of next week, I’ll have been employed at SuperSweetCo for a year. Man how time flies!

Categories
Beer Food Work

The holiday weekend begins

It's Memorial Day weekend, and I'm glad I've got an extra day off, as the past week has been pretty exhausting.

Thursday (Kelly's birthday) Kelly spent the afternoon downtown. We went and had a delicious lunch at Mother's Bistro & Bar and then I went back to work while she wandered around town and shopped until I was free. After work we drove out to my parents house for a little birthday dinner for her, and then at around 9pm we left for home (about a 45 minute drive) so we could watch the season finale of Lost finally. However, we get home and discover somewhere between 30 and 50 little ants on our kitchen counter, specifically (and oddly) in and around the coffee maker. This meant about an hour of killing and cleaning, including a trick a friend of mine told me about; put liquid dish washing detergent on your finger and mark a line, they won't cross it. I was able to trap a few near where I thought I saw a hole by marking a circle with detergent, and then I placed some Terro within the barrier I'd created, hoping they'd be forced towards than and then retreat to their lair, unwittingly carrying their deadly package with them… cue evil laughter. A little after 11pm we were finally able to put on the 2 hour Lost season finale, which was really really excellent.

Yesterday I was a bit tired all day. Kelly had made dinner plans with some friends at around 7pm, so after work I took the bus to Belmont Station to meet up with Kelly and pick up some things for the weekend. Dinner was at Wild Abandon, where I had a really top-notch hamburger (a thick, half-pound patty of free-range beef, with a lemon-garlic aioli, mmmm). Dinner was long though, my patience level for sitting at a restaurant for three and a half hours watching courses come and go is a little low. This is because I'm a very simple and direct person when it comes to eating: go to place, order meal, eat meal, done. 🙂 That said, it was a nice place, and the food really is excellent. We sat out on the patio which was nice, until dusk settled in and the mosquito's and spiders came out.

After dinner a few of us went up the street to the Horse Brass for a pint or two. I was designated driver, so I was taking it easy all night, though I did have to have 2 pints at the pub, especially when I discovered what they have on tap now: Old Speckled Hen, and Bluebird Bitter, two really delicious English beers. Oddly, I'd picked up bottles of these while at Belmont Station earlier in the evening, but on tap they're so much better. Anyway, it was a nice end to a nice evening out.