2008

Aug312008

"Waiting on Gustav"

Unlike just about every other Saturday ever, I woke up at about 8 this morning… just because I was awake. Mom had me to mow the back lawn this morning, which seemed like rearranging the deck chair on the Titanic. I spend the rest of the morning and afternoon packing clothes and some other belongings and watching TV. I also helped get certain things off the ground which may or may not save some things depending on the possibility of mold intrusion.At one point this afternoon I went with Dad to a U-Haul storage facility to move some belongings out of the house. Dad’s space is on the third floor of what looks like a pretty sturdy building so the stuff kept there should be safer than what’s left at home.This evening we packed both cars almost completely so we will have only a minimum of work to do before we evacuate early tomorrow morning. I’m taking a lot of my portable electronics, some hard drives, five days of clothing, photographs, my scrapbook and a painting. I own very few things that are irreplaceable so packing things has not been any ordeal for me.

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Aug292008

Start Packing

Dad and I went to the office this morning but we had no doctor as we usually do on Friday’s due to the impending hurricane. I didn’t have much work to get done and we closed the office early at 2 PM. After getting home this afternoon I divided my time between gathering the material things that will be leaving the house and watching the news on TV. Aside from electronic things I’m taking with me, I have one box of stuff set to go to a “secure” third floor storage space and one box to go with us. Since we were a bit busy this afternoon we just ordered pizza for dinner. Jeff came to town today for no apparent reason and left with Andrew when he went back to Baton Rouge late this evening.

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Aug282008

Online Journalism

Before heading to work this afternoon I got a haircut. Work was no terribly eventful but I did get some reports out. This evening’s class was Online Journalism with Paul Greenberg. There was no lecture this evening as attendance was less than stellar. From what I did gather, I think I’m going to like this class as the professor is obviously intelligent and engaging.After class I went to the LBC for a short while and ran into an old co worker in the food court. Later this evening I watched the democrat convention in Denver and Obama’s big speech. My attention was also turned to tropical storm Gustav which in threatening to make landfall on the gulf coast early next week.

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Aug272008

Introduction to Finance

Dad and I got to work before 11 this morning. There was not a great deal going on at the office today, at least not as long as I was there. I left at 4:30 to catch a shuttle to Tulane this afternoon for my first class of the fall 2008 semester. This evening’s class was Introduction to Finance with Ronald Dyer. There were about 20 other students present in the Boggs building classroom. This evening, the professor went over the syllabus in painful detail and also talked about a running project students will complete over the course of the semester which involves tracking three stocks.Mr. Dyer also held the first regular lecture, more or less, covering the first chapter which covered several topics related to the history of finance. Overall I get the feeling this class will be tolerable, but not particularly interesting. The material does interest me however, so I am hoping for improvement.Class was dismissed at 7:30 and I waited a half hour in the LBC for Dad to pick me up. He was working late at the office.Later this evening, I watched an episode of Architecture School with Mom. The show features students from Tulane University here in New Orleans. Later watched some of the democrat convention. I caught most of Joe Biden’s speech but I had a headache and ended up going to sleep early.

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Aug262008

The End of Summer (Vacation)

Things have been reasonably quiet as summer vacation draws to a close. Work has been quite uneventful for my duties but we are still seeing plenty of patients. Although I “completed” my website last week, I have continued to work on it. Only this past weekend did I finally come up with a satisfactory color scheme.My brother Jeff was in town this weekend. He flew in from Chicago where he spent the summer as an intern with a construction firm. For reasons I cannot fathom, he is transferring from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to LSU. He was here to pack and move to an apartment he’ll be living at in Baton Rouge. Mom and Dad went up there with him on Sunday so the house was rather quiet.On Monday, I was at home answering the work phone rather than at the office. Dad bought Jeff a vehicle today and had to go get it taken care of. He bought Jeff a ’97 Mitsubishi Montero. He got a great deal on it and the SUV runs well. The main drawback is that it’s one owner, a relative, is a smoker and the car smells and has stains all over the place.I did go to the office on Tuesday. On the way to work Dad and I stopped at Office Depot to pick up a financial calculator, an HP 12c Platinum, which I will likely make good use of in an upcoming introductory finance course I’m taking in the fall semester. I spent some time at work today learning about how it works as I’ve never used such a calculator before.

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Aug172008

V8

Another ten days gone by since the last entry. I’ve spent enough time in front of the computer but most of it was devoted to creating my next website. I’ve already commented on it in the site news. The gist of my remarks was that the new website is more practical and simple as far as the code goes, but the appearance still leaves a lot of be desired. As the site Is simpler in structure, it was not especially difficult to make or to make the gallery template.Other than the website, not a great deal has been going on lately. This past weekend, my parents took a weekend vacation in Florida so I had the house to myself. That Sunday evening, Patrick and David came by the house to watch some movies on the plasma TV.I haven’t had a great deal to do at work lately, although I did meet the doctor Dad hired recently. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be working out so well. One day this week, Tuesday I think, Dad and I stopped at the AT&T store and Best Buy on the way home from work. Dad had to replace his phone that took water damage during his vacation. He replaced the RAZR with a BlackBerry Pearl 8120. Earlier that day, I tried his SIM card in my phone that somehow prevented it from booting again. The warrantee expired on my phone two weeks ago but luckily, I was able to reflash my phone and get it working again. Best Buy had a Sony TZ series subnotebook for sale which he bought. I believe it was my first time seeing one of these in person, it’s a beautiful machine.

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Aug072008

A Week or Two

Although I’ve been neglecting the log for the last two weeks, my website has been very much on the brain of late. Last week I completed another significant update to the VAIO wallpaper page. Over the past five days, I’ve been working on the next version of Mr. B’s Domain. It will be the first redesign of my personal website in five years. I didn’t do it sooner in large part because I didn’t have any better ideas. Although the new site probably won’t be visually superior, there are some other goals I have in mind. It will be bigger to accommodate larger monitors and I’ll be moving from XHTML 1.0 Transitional to Strict. I will also be removing some old stuff and making some small additions.Work over the last few weeks has not been exciting, with a new water cooler at the mid city office being one of the highlights. Dad did hire an additional doctor this week but I haven’t met him yet. Last week, I think, I went out with Andrey, Patrick and David. We went to the Hookah Cafe for a while and later walked to the Blue Nile nearby to hear Vivaz!, a local Latin band that I’ve spoken highly of in this log before. After leaving there to make the Rally’s run, we got pulled over after some right-of-way confusion but nothing came of it. I got a cab home that night from Andrey’s house.Other than that, there just hasn’t been much of circumstance going on. Things are especially quiet at home as my brother Andrew is out of town visiting relatives in Atlanta.

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Jul252008

Long Weekend

I took a short trip to Ruston for a long weekend over the past few days. I left work early Thursday afternoon at about three. Krystle and her mother picked me up from the office to head up to Ruston. On Friday, Krystle and I had lunch with Khadijah at Applebee’s and later saw the 9:45 showing The Dark Knight.On Saturday afternoon, I went with Krystle to meet some of her friends at a Mexican restaurant until Khadijah picked me up so we could go to dinner. We went to a place called Cicero’s that wasn’t bad. After dinner we went back to her house and talked for a while before I got back to Krystle’s place at ten. On Sunday, Krystle and didn’t really do much or go anywhere, although a short trip to get butter for a dinner dish turned into an unnecessarily melodramatic mess of a fender bender. Ultimately, dinner was pretty damn good. Krystle cooked steak. Krystle and Drove back to New Orleans on Monday. We left after one in the afternoon. We stopped for lunch at the Olive Garden in Monroe. We stopped again in Brookhaven, Mississippi to visit Bianca for a couple hours. She cooked dinner for us and we talked until we left at about 7:30 to go the rest of the way home. We got home at about 9:30.Before Krystle left to head home on Tuesday, we stopped for lunch at Liuzza’s. Dad asked us to stop for something at Rouses before I was dropped off at the office. That evening after dinner, I went out with Andrey, Patrick and David to Nine Roses again. I wasn’t really hungry but I ordered some sweet and sour pork anyway.The rest of this week has been pretty uneventful. I don’t have much to do at work. I’ve spent some free time with my VAIO Picturebook. I finally got a CD drive for it so I was able to install Windows XP. It runs well enough but a lot of the Sony-specific functions still don’t work after considerable prodding so I’m going to try and get some recovery CDs.

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Jul162008

Louisiana Bistro

Very little went on Monday and Tuesday so I can largely ignore it. I did hear back from the guy I bought the external DVD drive from and it is going to be resent. Next week I’ll actually be able to play with my Picturebook.After work on Wednesday, I met Krystle and her mom for dinner at Louisiana Bistro on Dauphine in the Quarter. The both arrived in New Orleans yesterday for a short visit. It’s a rather small place with no more than 12 tables, but the food is very good. I had a grilled pork chop dish with crawfish etouffee. Before that I had a bowl of their gumbo which was okay but it had too much file in it.After dinner we wandered around the Quarter for a while before they went back to the hotel. I got a cab home before ten and spent the evening watching TV and packing for a trip tomorrow.

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Jul132008

July So Far

With not much going on this week, or last week I guess, I wasn’t included to post anything. Aside from work I spent a lot of spare time in front of my computer. Last week, I spent a good deal of time searching and subsequently made a major update to my VAIO wallpapers page. I won an AR series Sony VAIO laptop on eBay this week that I intended to sell if I won it. It looks like I may sell it to my little brother at cost rather than bother to list it on eBay to make some money. It came in the mail this week and I spent some time fooling with it. It’s a huge machine with a 17 inch widescreen monitor.On Saturday, Mom, Dad and Andrew drove out to Baton Rouge to visit Jeff who is there for LSU orientation. That night, I went out to Frenchman Street. The cabbie that picked me up was a familiar face that I’ve seen times before, Elliot Flood III, #146. Unlike most United drivers, he works the west bank frequently. I met Andrey, David and Patrick at the Hookah Cafe and were there for a couple hours. We went to d.b.a. for a little while after that. I think we left there at about one, at which time I was tired. We stopped at Rally’s and then Andrey’s house for a short while. I called a cab from there and arrived home some time before three.On Sunday, the auctions I listed last weekend ended so I spent some time getting those items ready to ship. I spent most of the afternoon assembling a new computer from spare parts in my closet with the general intention of building a file server. Unfortunately I don’t have a spare PCI express video card and the power supply I have on hand doesn’t have SATA power connectors so I’ll have to spend a few bucks before I have another working computer.

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Jun302008

St. Louis Slim and Pappy Van Winkle

Nothing of circumstance happened this weekend so I’m skipping it. Work was a bit of a downer today as it has been with increasing frequency of late. When I got home I learned that the DVD drive I ordered for my new toy was shipped to the wrong address, an address which was listed on my ebay account and appeared as my Paypal confirmed address in the email receipt even though it certainly is not. It sucks not only because I’ll likely have to pay the inflated shipping charges twice but I’m still unable to play with my new gadget.After work while I was at the grocery store with Dad I got a call from Patrick who told me he and a couple people were going out to Frenchman sometime tonight. Going out on Monday night is a bit odd but it’s David’s 21st birthday. At ten I had to call him because I hadn’t heard what, if anything was going on. I got a cab downtown and arrived at d.b.a. at about 10:45. Andrey, David and Patrick were already out and about and got there not long after I did. Some local act I’d never heard of called St. Louis Slim was playing. I didn’t recognize the band leader but there were a few familiar musicians in the band I’ve seen play with other acts. I had my good camera with me by request this evening which became a primary source of amusement after we found a place to sit.After a few rounds and perhaps an hour and a half, designated driver Andrey drove us back to his place after stopping at Rally’s for some much needed solid food. While we were there, Andrey showed us his model car collection he was parting with through Craigslist. I called at cab at about 2:15 and got home not long before three.

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Jun262008

June 16-26

Over the past ten days there have been a couple occasions that just barely justified their own entries but I never got around to it… not enough time on my laptop I guess. I finished MGS4 last week, an absolutely epic work. I also completed a substantial update to the VAIO wallpapers page on my website with 21 “new” items. Last Friday, I went out to dinner (after eating at home) with Andrey and Patrick at Nine Roses in Gretna. We all had some kind of Vietnamese soup that was perfectly decent.This past weekend, Aunt Lauren and her daughter Arien came to New Orleans from Florida to visit for a few days. They’ve been staying with us since Sunday. I have wanted to play with my new VAIO recently but I am still waiting on an external DVD drive so I can reinstall Windows on the new hard drive I bought for the notebook. Yesterday, the replacement keyboard and extra RAM arrived. The keyboard was somewhat dirty and used so I cleaned it up and swapped out some of the keys from the old one which were in better shape, a somewhat delicate operation.

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Jun152008

Week of June 9

For the most part there were no major upheavals at work this week. Dad did have me redesign the initial evaluation form but we have yet to implement it. On Thursday after work I picked up my preordered copy of Metal Gear Solid 4. Like everybody else, I am in awe of this masterpiece of a game. Gameplay, story, graphics, sound… all remarkably polished. A lot of the reviews already online say raises, if not obliterates the bar.When I wasn’t playing MGS4, I was probably online reading about Sony’s old VAIO Picturebook line. I won a PCG-C1MVP on eBay this weekend and I’ll be fooling with it in the coming weeks as a pet project. I’ve also already bought a couple things I’ll need to upgrade it.

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Jun082008

Weekend

I spent a lot of time at home this weekend, mostly in front of the Playstation with Metal Gear Solid 2. I preordered MGS4 at Gamestop on the way home from church Sunday. On Saturday I went with Mom shopping for paint. Sunday night, a botched boot time Diskeeper operation screwed the boot sector of the OS drive on my desktop. After some simple remedies failed I opted to just format the drive and reinstall Windows rather than continue to fight with it. I am diligent about backing things up but I did lose seven months worth of Trillian chat logs. By the time I went to bed that night I had the computer largely restored, but I’ll be reinstalling programs periodically for a couple weeks. This incident got me thinking about doing weekly backups of my OS drive in addition to all my media which is multiply mirrored. That way I could bounce back from a goof like this with only minimal hassle.

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2008

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