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Aug292009
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d.b.a. and BMC |
This evening after work, Andrey called me and told me he was putting together an outing this evening to d.b.a. and points elsewhere. I got a cab to d.b.a. for 9:45, the prearranged time. My friends showed up a little later. In addition to the regular crew of Andrey, Patrick and David, Chelsi accompanied us this evening as well. Alex McMurray began his set not too long after they arrived.After a while we walked to the Balcony Music Club on Decatur Street where Sasha Masakowski was scheduled to appear there but it looked like only her band showed up. We hung around there for quite a while. We left there sometime after midnight to walk around a bit. We ended up at Cafe Bamboo at the Dragon’s Den. It’s a vegetarian restaurant by day but apparently by night it’s a dimly lit bar with a DJ spinning some sort of techno music.Following a round there we walked back to Patrick’s car on Esplanade and went to Rally’s and then to Andrey’s house. Patrick and Chelsi parted company after we got there. Andrey, David and I got to talking about movies and we watched a bit of Be Cool. I called a cab shortly before three and got home at about 3:30.
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Aug272009
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Back to School |
After an uneventful day at work, Dad drove to me Tulane’s Elmwood campus in Harahan for class this evening. The fall semester started this week and I only have one class this term, Media Arts Practicum with Katherine Hart. The class centers around an internship each student is required to have to complete their major. A couple weeks ago I had a meeting at WVUE and I will be starting there next week. During this first class we all introduced ourselves. It didn’t take very long as there were only seven other students. The instructor also went over the writing assignments that we will be doing. They include a journal we are to keep and a final report on the internship at the end of the term.Class was dismissed at about seven. Dad went to see some relatives in Metairie after dropping me off and it was to be a little while before he could pick me up so I walked to a strip mall nearby to pass the time. I browsed around at Guitar Center for a while before going to Nacho Mama’s for something to eat. Dad showed up sometime after eight.
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Aug262009
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Evening Out |
This Saturday evening I met Andrey, Patrick and David at the Balcony Music Club on Decatur Street. This was my first time there but apparently the rest of the “crew” has been there a few times. I regret I do not recall the name of the band that was playing but they were entertaining. It was a bit louder than necessary but not bad. After about an hour there we walked across the street to Checkpoint Charlie and played some pool with a rather mediocre band in the background. After a good while there we drove to Rally’s and on to Andrey’s house for a little while before calling a cab to go home.The rest of this week has not been particularly eventful. If it has I don’t remember much. I did update the VAIO wallpaper page for the first time in several months this weekend.
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Aug192009
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Another Long Weekend |
With Dad’s car in the ship through the morning we didn’t make it to the office today. I used the extra time to get ready and finished packing for a trip to Ruston this weekend. I was taking a train to Jackson this afternoon so I had to call a cab to get to the station. The train departed shortly before two this afternoon. The ride was reasonably smooth an uneventful. Unfortunately the train didn’t have a observation car to sit in.The train arrived a few minutes early. Krystle was still a half hour away from Jackson so I waited outside. The weather was cool and it rained sporadically. When she arrived we went to the nearby Mayflower Cafe for dinner before the drive to Ruston. It was a bit late to do anything when we arrived.Saturday evening, we went to the theater after Krystle made dinner. We went to see District 9, a sci-fi film with an interesting premise and less than stellar execution. I shared Roger Ebert’s lament that an otherwise intelligent film devolves into a firefight in the third act. On Sunday we got out of the house in the afternoon and went to Raising Cane for lunch and probably paid Krystle’s family a visit. Krystle’s roommate Sabrina hosted a party on Monday that made going home on Tuesday rather imprudent and inconvenient. Tuesday afternoon, we had a late lunch with Krystle’s roommates Sabrina and Thomas at Chili’s after dropping off Krystle’s dog at her mom’s house. The canine was sick with worms. We went to the movies again that night and saw Julie & Julia, a lightweight and inoffensive film about Julia Child and Julie Powell, who cooked through Child’s imposing Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. It was a decent date movie but I would have enjoyed a well-made biopic of Julia Child more.On Wednesday morning, we had to leave for Jackson early. We didn’t leave the house until nine in the morning which was later than we should have but I was able to catch the train to New Orleans, just barely. The train pulled away less than a minute after I found a seat. During the ride I listened to an audiobook, a reading of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and played with my laptop. The train arrived early at around three o’clock and Dad was at the station to pick me up and go to the office for the remainder of the workday. When I got home, the remaining parts for the Blackberry were waiting for me and I installed them to finally have a fully functional Blackberry 8800. I also put in an 8 GB memory card for music and videos.
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Aug142009
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Pho and Fox |
This past Sunday, I went with Andrey, David and Patrick on an evening out on the west bank, a more than somewhat unusual occurrence. They wanted to go to a Vietnamese restaurant on the west bank for some pho soup. They picked me up and we drove past a few possibilities but they were all closed. We ended up at Three Happiness restaurant on Lafayette Street. I went there once before a few years ago with Jessica and the décor, or lack thereof, was nothing like what I remembered. The food wasn’t too bad though.After dinner we went to Honey’s pool hall on the west bank expressway. We played pool at a bar on Magazine a few weeks before but it was a bit cramped so this was a better venue for the game, if not the scenery. We played several rounds before leaving sometime around 11.Rather than go over the river, we went to a Rally’s on Gen De Gaulle and went to my house to eat and talk for a while. I think it was close to one before my guests left for the evening.On Monday I made some calls and was able to schedule an interview with Fox 8 for an internship for the fall. As part of my upcoming Media Arts Practium class, I am required to have an internship. I had the interview on Tuesday afternoon which went rather well as it seemed I was “hired” as soon as I walked through the door. I met with the managing news editor, Nancy DeCorte, and eventually was given a tour of the studio by a current intern and was introduced to a few people working there including Bob Breck, their resident meteorologist for evening newscasts.On Wednesday after work, I went to the movies with Andrey and David. I got a cab to David’s house and then Andrey picked us up to go to the AMC theater in Elmwood. We saw Funny People, a movie with Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen. I couldn’t call it a great film but it was funny and entertaining. We went to the 10:30 showing and I didn’t get back home until well after one in the morning.Thursday had the makings of a typical workday but Dad’s car broke down in the afternoon as he was picking Andrew up from an appointment. Mom retrieved them and eventually me close to six o’clock. We went to dinner near the office at Venezia where I had lunch on Wednesday. Dad and I had the lasagna, Mom had stuffed shells and Andrew had some sort of combination plate. That evening, I spent a lot of time doing laundry as I needed clothes washed for a trip I’m taking tomorrow.
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Aug072009
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Unbreaking Toys |
This week has passed with relative quiet although I did get out of the house this weekend. This past Saturday evening I met Andrey, Patrick and David for a little outing to Mona’s Café on Carrollton. Before that I went to Andrey’s house to try and resurrect an external hard drive belonging to Andrey’s friend Veronica that wasn’t working. Without having seen the drive, my best bet was a faulty USB controller so I brought along a universal USB drive adapter. Removing the drive from the enclosure and connecting it with the adapter didn’t work. The drive still read as having an 8 GB partition and the rest unpartitioned, probably caused by some sort of fluke involving another flash drive. I then tried restoring the original partition with a program called Partition Table Doctor which worked swimmingly. Mission Accomplished.With the drive fixed we eventually made it to Mona’s where we sat around for a while with a sampling of beers Andrey brought. Patrick’s friend Paige was working there and we saw a lot of her while there. Later on we went back to Andrey’s place and eventually made a run to Rally’s. I was rather tired when I left there sometime after one. Before I did leave Andrey gave me a battered Blackberry 8800 to play with.Over the course of the week I’ve been killing a lot of time with the phone. Apparently it had seen some liquid as there was rust inside but I was still able to revive it with some attention and a new battery. The outer casing is in pretty bad shape so I bought a new housing for it. I also discovered that the microphone is virtually dead and got the part to fix that as well. With the hardware side accounted for I’ve been playing with applications and other such things, this being the first Blackberry I’ve had time to play with for an extended period. The GPS receiver works and I installed TrekBuddy so I can use maps without a data connection.I also watched a few movies this week including One Six Right, How the West was Won and Cinerama Adventure, a documentary about the ground-breaking motion picture process that ushered in widescreen movies.
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