corinna

Weekend Hijinks

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This was a crazy weekend… Friday night I went over ‘s place to watch the first World Cup games (Tivo delayed, of course). There was chili to be eaten, booze to be dranked, and friends to scream and yell with. Before lots of people got over we played some pass-around Worms. We had to play passaround because people had to wait until Sunday to get their DS Lites… Anyway, that was tons of fun and I didn’t get home until like 1am.

Saturday morning I had to wake up extra-extra early to take to South Station, as she was headed to NYC for the weekend to visit with some college friends.. When I got back to the apartment I couldn’t sleep, so I watched some TV and geeked out until noon. At noon I returned to Matt’s for grilling, DS-in, and more soccer. At night we headed out to Saugus for some delicious Kelly’s Roast Beef, but on the way noticed that the Krispy Kreme in Medford (which has been closed for months) will soon be replaced by ANOTHER KELLY’S! Kelly’s delicious roast beef only half as far away? Sign me the fuck up!

Sunday was more of the same, except Pat and Matt both had their DS’ finally, so we were able to play wireless Worms instead, which was way more fun… Saw Raiders of the Lost Ark with the film club last night, which was awesome on the big screen, and Corinna returned, exhausted, from her weekend trip.

This morning we met with the contractor who will be renovating our bathroom in the next few weeks, which took way longer than expected, but he answered alot of important questions for us and made us feel generally better about the whole process.

CLASH OF THE TITANS

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The CFO approved my purchase order for a new air conditioner for the living room a few weeks ago. This weekend I was sitting on the couch like a vegetable this weekend when it turned itself on. I mustered up the energy to get up off the couch and see what was going on. I stared at the thing for about 5 minutes, unable to figure out what was going on and fearing that I’d have to remove it from the window and return it to Target. Finally, I figured out that the stupid remote control that came with the A/C was using the same signal for “Power” as the “Select” button on the Tivo remote. I laughed for about 10 minutes straight, and eventually covered the IR receiver on the A/C with some electrical tape.

Who actually needs a remote on their A/C? I have never had to adjust my A/C so much that I felt a remote was in order. As Ron Popeil says, Just set it, and forget it!

MovieOS is Universal

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The Wall Street Journal is running an article on portrayals of computing and the Internet in film. I had plenty of discussions at CSH about the lame treatment of these topics by Hollywood. We even had a term to refer to the mystical graphical operating systems used in these films: MovieOS. Well, last night, I learned that these gripes are not limited to computer nerds.

was watching “The Ninth Gate” (despite my strong admonition) when I got home from the film club, and she instantly went off into a tirade. Some of the choice highlights were:

  • “No real rare book dealer would smoke around his collection!”
  • “Look at this guy, he’s supposedly the worlds most reputable rare book dealer but his books are piled up next to a live fireplace!”
  • “Come on! Nobody would store a book with it’s spine facing UP! ALL THE PAGES WOULD FALL OUT!”

I was telling this story to this morning, and he told me of a guy who was complaining about the portrayal of lead miniature painting techniques in “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. So clearly, these feelings are universal among geeks, and aren’t limited to the computer variety.

Fun in Northern New Jersey

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and I headed down to the family estate on Friday after work and dinner. By leaving at 7pm, we were able to miss all the traffic, but by the time we rolled in around 11:30pm I was really tired… We pretty much crashed Friday night, Saturday morning we woke up rather early.. Chuck came over and we both flew our helicopters. We also both crashed our helicopters, and my crash was the most spectacular of my limited pilot career.. I tapped the blades into the ground a little, which usually isn’t a big deal, but this time the spindle sheared off and the blades went flying off in a very exciting fashion. The first few times you crash the helicopter you get disappointed, but you reach a point where you realize it is par for the course. :P

After the heliflopter activity, Dad and I went down to get fitted for our tuxedos for ‘s wedding. Wasn’t too painful, but I can think of better ways to spend that hour or so… :P For dinner we went to the County Seat in Newton to celebrate me (which is this week) and my dad’s birthdays (which was last week). We were trying to pick a place none of us had been before, and while I had gotten confused and the restaurant in my head wasn’t the restaurant we ended up at, it was a good place, and they made a mean burger. That night Chuck, Corinna, and I went to see Inside Man, which was only OK.

We got back into Boston around 4:30pm yesterday and basically turned right back around and headed out to meet with the film club, which was a great time. We caught Thank You For Smoking, which was great.. The group was rather big last night, with 3 new faces, which are always welcome.. The only disadvantage to a big group is that I don’t endup getting to talk to everyone afterwards because the table is so large, but what can you do… :P

Screw All People

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Headed out to MassArt last night for the inaugural season opener of the Boston Derby Dames. and I were meeting a bunch of people from work there.. As we were walking from the bus to the venue, I got a call from John telling us that they had been waiting on a long line and by the time they had gotten to the front of it, the show had already been sold out! So we were totally screwed out of the event I have been waiting for weeks to see…

We ended up trekking out to Sunset Cantina on Comm Ave, thinking a mexican restaurant probably wouldn’t be that hammered on St. Patty’s Day… It was busy, but I’m sure not as busy as any of the pubs in Southie or even the rest of Boston, which was good. Afterwards Corinna and I headed back to the apartment and crashed.

Festivus and Kong

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‘s graduation party on Friday was great, I finally got to meet several of her coworkers and friends from college, and the lot of us managed to plow through 8 bottles of Champagne as well as some beer… It would have been nice if we could have invited more people, but our apartment was pretty much packed to capacity as it was.. When we move, though, hopefully we will be able to have some bigger bashes… =) Saturday was the Goodrich holiday party, which was pretty lame… I wasn’t expecting it to be a blast or anything, but even the food was bad this year.. And once again there was a designated driver tax — they charged $2 for a tiny little coke. Lame.

Sunday I caught King Kong (2005) with the film club. It was better than I had expected, and while there was one glaring plot point (the “kid” on the ship) that was left hanging by the end of the film, it was pretty tight overall (which is surprising given the 3 hour runtime).. There were obviously points of the film that were slower than others, but they all seemed in place (except for the aforementioned subplot, which should have either been trimmed altogether or at least followed through).

I am getting antsy for the holidays, counting the days until I get to drive home and enjoy 11 days off!

Phew

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is having some friends over tonight to celebrate the completion of her classes… Our apartment is so small, it should be interesting to actually have a party there with more than 6 people… =) I’ve been distributing the load of obtaining all the stuff she wanted acrossed the past few days. I have one more trip to the grocery store this evening before I’m done. Last night after she got back from work we cleaned the apartment. It’s been so long that I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like having a girlfriend who doesn’t spend every evening in class or tethered to the computer. It will be nice to have her (somewhat more) relaxed and not stressing out about a new assignment, etc.

Tomorrow is the Goodrich christmas party, which hopefully won’t be lame. Last year was OK, and Corinna’s volunteered to be DD, so I can take better advantage of the open bar this year… I have convinced more of my coworkers to go, so hopefully we can at least make an oasis of cool..

Where to start…

Posted on by grahams

I haven’t really talked about what’s been going on in life for a few days, so here’s a bit of catch-up:

If you enjoy the work of William Gibson then I highly recommend watching the biographical documentary “No Maps for These Territories” if you can. It’s a well-made documentary and it is an interesting look at Gibson. And as this is an independent film being released on video/dvd independently, if you can you might want to consider buying the film.

Today I cleaned my “bed clothes” (as some of you seem to call them). I can wash my sheets here, but my comforter needs to go to the laundromat (it’s oversized queen and also overstuffed, so it would burn my washing machine out real-quick-like). It didn’t really need to be washed in the “dirty” sense, but it was shedding lots of little fuzzies and I figured a good wash might get rid of some of that. Unfortunately, though, the dryer I picked was apparently busted and it took me 2 rounds of putting quarters in, leaving, coming back, finding it wet, and repeating before I realized it was busted.. I moved to a different machine and everything was hunky-dory..

Adam and I met up with a bunch of Rovia peeps for lunch at Redbones, which was awesome. Adam and I were supposed to go see Gangs of New York today but the douchebag decided he didn’t feel like going… Hopefully someone will go with me before it exits the theaters, or else I am going to have to go alone, which feels way too Kaczynski for me…

Tomorrow I am going to see Chicago with my new friend Corinna in Harvard Square… Up until this point I have always maintained that I never found Catherine Zeta-Jones that attractive, but the trailers of this film have definately changed this opinion.