Quack

Dad was up this weekend, both for a visit and to bring back Hawkeye.  It had been awhile since he had been up to Boston, and he had the honor of being the first overnight guest in our new house.  The house is still a complete mess, with boxes all over the place, but at least now all of our stuff is in the house now (and out of storage or my parents’ house).  Now it’s just a matter of unpacking it all and putting things in their place.  I’m trying to get rid of as much crap as I can as I unpack things, especially a lot of the geek cruft I’ve accumulated over the years…  I have several boxes which are just full of cables, and that’s just ridiculous!

Anyway, I got home from work a little early to meet with the RCN technician who was there to install the two CableCARDs into my new Tivo Series3 HD.  It took about 45 minutes, some of which was the technician waiting for someone at dispatch to pick up the phone and activate the cards…  You would think they would just do that before sending out the tech, but that would make sense.  Anyway, after the dispatch guy putzed around for like 20 minutes they were eventually up and running with almost all of the channels, but Discovery HD, HDNet, and HDNet Movies had no picture or sound.  I made an executive decision to neglect to mention this to the tech and deal with someone over the phone instead.  This morning I read on the Tivo Community Forums that those three channels were the only members of the HD Tier, so I assumed that the HD Tier was not activated on my account.  Sure enough, a quick call to RCN resolved that (in theory, I’m at work so I can’t test it.. :P).  Now I just have to get an HD television… :P

After the tech left my dad called and said he was mired in traffic on 90..  Pretty unusual, since most people are leaving Boston around that time, but who can predict traffic around here…  Anyway, Dad arrived around 5:30pm, and Corinna got home for work soon afterwards..  After a quick tour of the new place, we hit up the Summer Shack in Cambridge for dinner..  I normally might have preferred the downtown location, but I was pretty hungry and it was a home game for the Red Sox, so it tends to get a little hairy down there…  Dinner was awesome, and afterwards we headed back to the house and took a walk along the Charles before settling in for the night.

Saturday was pretty busy, we left the house pretty early to head over to the Museum of Science.  We weren’t actually going to the museum, though, instead we were picking up a Duck Tour there.  We got there around 11am, but they were already sold out until 3pm, so we ended up heading over to Harpoon Brewery for one of their tastings.  It was a pretty good time, even if I’m not the world’s biggest beer fan.  I did manage to get a case of their draft root beer, which is delicious.  The Duck Tour was OK, but I think it was pretty redundant for someone who’s lived in Boston for 6+ years..  I did learn a bit about Charlestown, which I had never really explored much…   I made some BBQ chicken and grilled veggies for dinner and we watched a movie which was terrible.  Never watch this movie, and reprimand

and

for making me write about it.  I now realize they hate me with every fiber of their being.  Little did they know that not only did they attack me, but their car bomb also took out

and my father.

My dad left Sunday morning, but before he did I made some french toast and bacon for breakfast…  It came out pretty good, I used half a baguette I had lying around for a few days, so it was good and stale and really sucked up the custard.  After dad left there was much napping and eventually we saw Crazy Love with the film club.  It was a small turn-out, but it was a good time.  The movie was almost unbelievable, just a crazy story..  We had a good time afterwards discussing the film and other randomness.. 

turned up towards the end, he was passing by on his way to play pool with

at Flattop’s.  After we finished chilling with the film club peeps we popped over to Flattop’s to say hi to the two of them, which was cool…

Even if the terrorists don’t win, we still fuck it up

Last weekend and I headed down to NJ… I was going to Wired NextFest to give a little support to , who was there representing Ensemble Robot. Corinna planned on heading into Manhattan with me so she could visit the NYPL as well as her college roommate and family. Friday night we drove down after work, me driving the whole way, Corinna watching 5 episodes of BSG as part of her massive catch-up effort. I made her watch the 4 hour miniseries the previous weekend, and in 8 days she made it through all of Season 1 and 2. We are going to have some people over this Friday to watch the terribly-named Webisodes as well as the Season 3 premiere. She’s an fracking junkie now.

Saturday, we parked in Hoboken and took the PATH up to 33rd. We grabbed a slice of mediocre pizza (Presto) and split up. I headed over to the Javits Center.. To be honest, NextFest was kind of a bummer.. There were some interesting things, but it really didn’t grab me… After seeing Gib’s panel discussion, I headed over to meet up with Corinna over at Sara & Dave’s place. They live down near Battery Park, so I took the opportunity to head over to the World Trade Center for the first time since 2001. It was really tough for me; I bounced back and forth between sadness and anger. I can’t believe it’s still a fucking hole in the ground. WTC7 has been completely rebuilt, but the crater looks like it hasn’t changed in ages.. I moped my way over to Sara & Dave’s, which gave me time to bounce back, and we hung out with those guys all night, eating some Indian food from Baluchi’s and catching up. We made it back to Hopatcong around 11am, and I passed out pretty quickly.

Sunday we hung out a bit for hitting the road.. Corinna plowed through another 5 episodes… She skipped out on the film club, but I headed over to Harvard Square to catch The Science of Sleep. It was enjoyable, but not great… I think Gael Garcia Bernal is overrated, and kind of annoys me, to be honest..