I reserved a room at the Henrietta Microtel for the CSH Welcome Back party in September… Room was $50/night, which is a pretty good deal, so hopefully the room doesn’t suck.
Buffer Zone
Even though the weather wasn’t interested in cooperating, this weekend was fantastic. A bunch of friends from RIT descended upon scenic Lake Hopatcong this weekend for the now annual Summer Outing. This year we actually camped in the back yard, which was rather full (mostly due to my gigantic tent, though). It’s tough trying to figure out who to invite, etc… The boat provides a good upper cap to the number of people, I’d hate to have to leave people on shore because I over-extended… Heck, a few of the people we were expecting were unable to show. But I guess if we grow too much we can always rent a second boat.. :P
Anyway, it was a ton of fun, we boated, swam, caught a flick (Clerks II), and drank. Another highlight of the weekend was tooling around with Air Hogs, which several people purchased… They are neat little toys, makes me want to get a real R/C plane to compliment my helicopter. This was also the triumphant return of my Helicopter, which has been out of commission for awhile due to a bad crash.
Clerks II was fantastic, way, way, way better than I had expected.. Working long hours again this week to make up for Friday, which I am taking off for Stellafane 2006. Then I am going to hide in Boston for a few weekends to recover from all the recent travelling…
I am teh awesome
Continuing a streak, I went to the dentist yesterday and found out that I am still free of cavities! Time for another endorsement of flossing and specifically those Reach Access flosser doohickeys.
Renovations Fun
So the contractor eventually showed up yesterday and begun demolition of our bathroom. Corinna waited around all morning for them to come, they were supposed to show between 8 and 9am, but didn’t show until 2pm… The guy doing the demolition got most of the wall down (which is a tall order since it is all steel-backed plaster) and came back today to finish the job. I will be taking pictures each day as I did for my parents’ renovations. I will also be showering each day at work, which should be interesting.. Fortunately I won’t be spending the next two weekends in Boston, so I don’t have to figure out a showering procedure for when I’m not at work.
Attended a great lecture today on some interesting image processing algorithms developed by a colleague at our parent division (Goodrich Optical & Space Systems).
Fucking Hippies!
Today a hippie inconvenienced me. I walked from my desk to the vending machine to grab a Coke, and when I got there I found that the machine was rejecting my perfectly good dollar bill. I examined the bill, and found what I presume is the culprit. A stamp near George Washington’s mouth with a cartoon speech bubble reading “I Grew Hemp”. I tried the bill in all possible orientations, but all were rejected even though it was in tip-top shape. And since I had just brought enough for a drink, I had to hike back to my desk to obtain a non-patchoulli bill.
A tired morning entry
A generally fun weekend…
Sunday we went to Duxbury to swim in
The contractors are apparently going to start our bathroom renovations tomorrow, which is exciting… Even though they were supposed to give us 1.5 weeks notice, yet they called Corinna at 5pm on Friday saying they were starting Tuesday… So we had to have a mad scramble to get the tile and sink… On top of all that, I have to pad hours in the beginning of the week, as I am taking Friday off to go to Jersey for some boating with some of my friends..
Another shot of the finished shelves
Corinna just put the finishing touches on our big project for last weekend. We built some open cabinets/shelves from scratch for a space in our kitchen. Our goal was to make them look like they fit in with the existing work in the apartment, and I believe we were successful. Check out this set over on Flickr to see the project from start to finish.
Death by Steamship
Last night, after some Quake IV with the coworkers, I gave the new game “The Ship” a spin. When I first heard the description of this game, the first thing that came to mind was the real-life game we played at CSH called “Death by Dagger”. The jist of “Death by Dagger” is that each player is assigned a dagger with another player’s name on it. To “kill” your assigned player you have to be alone with them in a room; when you kill them you take their dagger as your next victim. Repeat until you are killed or are the last man standing.
“The Ship” is a video game interpretation of these same ideas. You are a passenger on a cruise ship, and you are assigned another passenger to murder. But before you can do that you have to find a weapon; a fire axe… a screwdriver… almost anything you can pick up.. Of course, if you can’t find anything, and you are lucky, you might be able to lock them in a sauna. Don’t forget, however, that one of the other passengers has your name and is hunting you. On top of the primary goal, your character has “needs”, similar in concept (but cooler in spirit) to “The Sims”. Your character needs to eat, sleep, bathe, and go to the bathroom. So you have to take the time to serve these needs; but while you are doing so you are rather vulnerable…
While the game has a “bot” based single player variant, it is really meant to be played against real people online. I had alot of fun playing last night, and look forward to taking another voyage. But you don’t have to take my word for it!
It’d be interesting to run a server at CSH!
The Daves do “Comfortably Numb”
Terrible Video (with decent audio) of David Bowie singing the Roger Waters’ parts alongside David Gilmour onstage.. I want a high quality version of this.
An Award for Good Parking
Found this note on my car after eating lunch in Lowell… Someone apparently can’t deal with parallel parking as well as I can… :)
Garrett’s first thought after seeing it was “They left out the comma between opener and you”.