titles are for suckers

Last night I saw Rent for the third time. I had no idea that Darth Vader was Lukes father; I should really pay more attention when I go to plays. First time was in London sophomore year, then in New York last winter, now Baltimore. I'm beginning to think that this is the only play I'll ever see. Maybe by the time I die I can have seen it in every major city in the world. Maybe not.

Ninas cats are starting to be more friendly with me, despite my best efforts to make them hate me. I think that animals like it when you play rough, just so long as you don't actually hurt them. I know this holds for most dogs, but I always figured cats didn't like it. Maybe only kittens deal with it well, and when they get older they just want to be pet or left alone.

Today is my sisters birthday. She turned 24. That about sums that up.

Moving back in time:

Saturnight (I meant to type Saturday night, but that came out instead and I don't feel like using the backspace) I turned off my computer to make some quiet, and the next day when I turned it back on I got this nice little "Operating System not found" message. Restarted, same thing. Went into BIOS and my /home hard drive wasn't found correctly (the one with / and /boot was fine, though.) There was some other name (not WD200G or whatever) in place of the name of my 200 gig /home drive, and it had all sorts of extended ASCII characters. Somehow, opening the case and pushing all the EIDE cables connected to my hard drives against the drive fixed it. (nothing was disconnected, nor did any of the cables even move) So now my computer works again. Whatever that was. I'm beginning to think that I should upgrade my computer. I'm using the same MoBo and CPU that came with the computer, and while I have plenty of memory, my system isn't as fast as I would like, and every now and then it decides to stop working for a few days. Maybe I'll get a new computer over the summer. Maybe not.

Sunday I got to see some of Baltimore, including the National Bohemian building (I saw the face wink), Ninas school and the neighboring graveyard, the inner harbor, and some cool library. I'm not usually impressed by libraries (okay, maybe I am by the glib or libpng libraries, but that's different) but this place was different. Huge open spaces, a fountain with gold fish in the children's area... it felt like a museum, only a museum where you can touch things. I went home afterward to decorate the Christmas tree at my parents place, and despite the fact that I told them I'd be there in a half hour or so, the went ahead and started without me. Not that I was really bothered by it, hanging little trinkets on an evergreen is by far one of the most bizarre rituals in the Christmas celebrating culture.

I think we're going to try to go skiing some time next week (between Jesuses birthday and that day when, five years ago, every computer stopped working thrusting mankind into a digital ice age.) If anybody is interested in going skiing, let Tim or me know what days you're available so we can figure out an excuse for why you can't come.

Was that a date or a fig?

Nina and I got dinner and saw The Incredibles last night. I thought the movie was fairly good, and would recommend it to anybody who likes movies about superheros, computer graphics, or the thought of Samuel L. Jackson ice skating in form fitting spandex. I liked it for the superhero stuff. Now, I'm not much of a movie critic, nor am I down with the comic book superhero scene, so I'm pretty sure you shouldn't care that I liked the movie. Dinner at Duclaw was good, but the new beer they had was too bitter for me; Nina liked it, though. Man... I just realized that Nina is one letter off from Ninja. I should watch my back.

At the job I've been installing, and re-installing MySQL, php, apache, and java among a few other programs. The version of MySQL I'm running doesn't work with php out of the box, and the settings to make it work breaks phpmyadmin. I've managed to find a happy medium that supports everything, but I think the settings I came up with should be the defaults. Far be it from me to know if there's an easier way I somehow missed. That, and I've been burning CDs and DVDs. Fun.

who wants gmail?

Gmail has given me six invitations to dole out. If any of you bastards want a email account like biggest_looser@gmail.com, let me know. If you're some random person reading my blog, and don't know me, chances are I won't give you an invitation (I'm a bastard like that) so don't waste both of our time posting and asking for one. That goes for you, too, Tim. Also, you probably shouldn't post your email address on this blog unless you want spam, so I don't really know how to go about all this. How 'bout you throw a brick with your email address on it through a window at my house. If more than 6 people ask me for an account, I'll come up with some crazy competition to decide who gets them, or just play favorites. That's all, move along.

Laptop

I got a message from Comp USA late last week telling me that my laptop was ready to be picked up. I managed to make it out there on Saturday (going to rockville on a saturday afternoon two weeks before christmas was a dumb idea.) When I got there the guy at the service desk told me I owed them something on the order of $300 for parts and labor. This is despite the fact that Apple said they'd take care of it all for free and all I had to do was take my laptop to any AASP (which Comp USA is.) I asked about this, and they said something about having to give them a proof of purchase to prove that I have a waranty. I don't, however, have a waranty. I got a one-year waranty which has since expired, but this repair was covered by an extended waranty that Apple granted to any ibook within a range of serial numbers. Mine fell in that range. I asked about this, and they guy went back into the workshop, came back and argued some more, then let me take it without paying. So either the people at Comp USA are idiots and didn't read the form I filled out (which had all this information on it) or they figured they'd try to sucker me out of a few hundred dollars. On the plus side, I got to argue with a business over money, and tell a worker that I wanted to speak with his manager. A first for both. I've finally achieved the rank of annoying uppity customer.

Also, I saw Dodgeball. Hilarious.

weekend update with that guy who isn't funny

Ahhh the weekend, a time when I don't have to go to work or school, or generally bathe or practice oral hygene. Seriously, though, I wash.

Friday night was uneventfull; Paul and I got high and hung out, but it was a fairly boring evening all in all.

Saturday I went up to Baltimore to see Edgar Allan Poe's house with Karen and Nina; it was a nice walk from Ninas appartment to the house, but I like walking and cities facinate me so there's no real news there. The house itself was unobtrusive and small, but Poe lived in poverty so I wasn't expecting a mansion. We got there shortly before it was going to close so we didn't have to pay to get in. The stairs are hard to navigate and the informative video playing in one of the rooms was put together, apparently, by a 4 year old with sticky fingers. If anybody wants to get drunk on cognac on E.A. Poe's birthday this year, just let me know. Oh, and bring a ski mask so we don't get caught on film. On the way back from the house we walked through this indoor food market place, can't remember the name but it a few blocks from Ninas place. It was weird in that cool circusy kind of way. When we got back to Ninas building she and Karen went up and I went home. Later, around 8ish, Paul and I went up to Ninas for her birthday party, and once everybody else showed up we went to this bar around the corner. There was this band there, and like a sucker, I bought their CD. And like me, it sucks. I'm not even going to waste time describing it. Now mind you, by the time I bought the CD I had around 3 large glasses of beer, so my judgement wasn't working full time (eventually, I think it went on sabbatical.) Most of us went back to Ninas place where the drinking and talking continued, but not before Tim and I raced up 23 flights of stairs because, for some reason, the elevator wasn't good enough for us. Running up that many stairs while drunk, only to go drink more, really does a number on ones feeling of well being. We made margaritas, then Nina and I wound up doing 4 shots each of the tequila I got her for her birthday. That's 9 drinks for me, a few more for Nina. Needless to say we were drunk. Slowly the bodies started walking out the door, and Karen, Nina, and I carried on a very drunk, meandering conversation before falling asleep... um... yeah.

The next morning Nina made us pancakes and baccon (which kicked ass, by the way) and some coffee that I think Tim gave her. Karen and I went back to the house where I showered and went home to practice piano, still hungover but wanting to do something with the day. The Gershwin pieces I used to play are a bit rusty, but the Rachmaninov Prelude in C# minor came back quite easily, which surprised me since it's a lot of complicated cords and the hands kindof get in eachothers way in parts. Some time this week I think I'm going to the piano store on Rt. 1 and check out the electric pianos. So anyway, we had dinner and I traded cars back with my dad (I had been driving his car that week so that my brother could practice on an automatic and take the driving test in something other than the van, which isn't great for parallel parking.) The next morning I get a call. It's my mom. My parking permit (which I need if I want to go to work and not get a parking ticket) was still at home, so I had to take a hour long detour on my way to work to pick up the permit. Only later did I realize that the garage door opener my dad uses was still in my car. Ah well, I'm going home later this week for Chanukah and can give it to him then.

That's about it. Some other interesting things happened, but nothing I'm going to broadcast on the internet. If you really want to know, just tie me down and put a coat hanger on the stove. It won't take long before I start talking.