I picked up my 2000 Pontiac Grand Am GT last night. It’s got 138K miles on it and the quirks to go along with something that high on mileage, but it runs great, the V6 makes her want to go fast, and the sunroof is dreamy. She’s named Blinker because of one of her quirks – the blinker noise sometimes goes off at random, and has already been replaced once to fix the problem, now it’s just one of those things I’ll have to deal with. We still need to finish the paperwork, Mike (PinkFreud) is getting a copy of the title and we’ll transfer registration to PA and ownership and insurance over to me as soon as that’s settled.

Pictures :)

Back home, getting back into work and catching up on things. More photos and stuff later.

A few months back I was asked if I wanted to be considered for the Ubuntu Regional Membership Board for the Americas. It’s one of three Membership Boards in the world whose task is to handle applications for people who apply for Ubuntu Membership.

Well, this weekend I learned that I was appointed along with 8 others the board. I know most of my fellow board members pretty well and it’s a fantastic group of folks, if I do say so myself :)

Hooray!

I’m no longer in my long time IRC Home of #13thHour.

So I have a new home:

#rainwreck
irc.psigenix.net

And I already have the domain! http://rainwreck.com/ (to be prettified soon)

Join us, won’t you?

..of course I’m insanely busy, and will be away from home most of the weekend, so drop by and lurk, meet others :)

Our My marriage is over, divorce papers are in the works.

Saying we’re both I’m devastated and in a great deal of pain over this doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I won’t be discussing this more here, or anywhere in public. There has already been too much hurt and we I just want to deal with this ourselves and move on.

Thanks to everyone who has been there for us me, your love, support and friendship continues to be invaluable.

EDIT: Michael objected to me “speaking for him” in this “meaningless internet/IRC like fashion” so I’ve edited it to exclude.

Things are a bit rough at the moment so I haven’t really been in the mood for posting anything, and haven’t been reading much either (might try and catch up today).

I have kept busy though, aside from the constant Buffy watching (Nita, the awesomest friend in the world, brought home seasons 3-7 for me to watch, borrowed from a friend, I just finished season 4!) I’ve been going out with friends. I’ve now checked off visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mutter Museum thanks to my friend Stephen who is helping me indulge in my “I want to go to all the touristy things in PA” desire. I’ve also come to like Philadelphia more as I’ve been spending a lot more time down there lately, it really is a fantastic city.

I’ve been playing on my Nintendo DS more lately – anyone have suggestions for good online play ones? Or just wifi ones I can play with local friends?

Thursday I took a half day off of work for a trip down to the Franklin Institute to see the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit. Being the Star Wars fan that I am, it’s probably surprising that I haven’t seen a lot of the original props before, but I’ve never really gotten the opportunity until now – so this exhibit was really exciting to me, there were several *squee* moments. Perhaps the best was getting to see an original R2D2 costume, and an original Leia dress:

Michael also snapped a photo if me standing on the steps in front of the institute, which they had decorated for the exhibit – way cool!

While we were downtown we also got to go to Eulogy Belgian Tavern in Old City. The beer was great, the bartender was great, the burgers were great, the fries left a bit to be desired, but in all a nice outing. One more Philly Belgian Beer bar down, how many to go? We also wandered around Penn’s Landing a bit, which was chilly but fun.

Last week I also decided to take a trip. One of my closest friends moved out to San Francisco to work for Google about a year ago and although we’ve kept in touch online I haven’t seen him since he left. So I’m flying out there for a long weekend in mid May, flying out from Philadelphia Thursday the 15th, spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday there before flying back on Monday. Aside from the chance to check out Google (cool!) we’re planning on doing one of the Napa Valley shuttle tours, which I’ve wanted to do since a couple of beer friends described how much fun they had when they went on one. So wow, SF! Should be fun, I’ve never been to California. I won’t really have time for visiting while I’m out there, but I hope this won’t be the only time I come out there.

I’ve started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the recommendation of a couple of friends. I never gave the show I real chance (saw a couple episodes here and there, wrote it off), but based on their recommendation I borrowed Nita’s DVDs and over the past week made my way through seasons 1 and 2. I’m really enjoying it! Thanks Aidy and Wiggy. I pretty much spent this entire weekend watching Buffy and goofing off in IRC and on email, which makes me feel really really lazy, but I think I needed a weekend of staying in and vegging out. I did manage to leave the house for a bit on Saturday and take a walk on the Schuylkill River Trail that runs behind Nita’s house.

So, I’m sitting in IRC and someone says:

<person> I am typing bdaly
<person> badly*

See, they use this “typo*” syntax to correct their typo. What is that? Where did that syntax come from? No one I asked seems to know, there are theories ranging from it being some old DOS thing (hmm?) to it just being some arbitrary typo correction syntax that someone started and it caught on.

FWIW, I don’t see this a whole lot, most channels I’m in you’d see “s/bdaly/badly” used for typo correction …because we’re nerds, and I know where that comes from!

Thursday night Alex Launi swung by to rescue me from being stuck without a car. We went out to Coyote Crossing in Conshohocken. It was a great dinner and we spent the evening talking about Ubuntu and how tough relationships are sometimes…

Friday evening at 5PM I received a call from the body shop informing me that R4’s repairs were complete and I could pick it up… before they closed at 5:30. I snagged Nita and she brought me down to the shop just in time to pick it up, good thing too since if I couldn’t get it that night I would have had to wait until Monday. The repairs look good, as usual Grand Sport Auto Body did a nice job. I expect the age (2003 vs 2006) and Make/Model (Toyota Rav4 vs Honda Civic) accounted for the difference in timing between getting the Civic back in a couple of days and the Rav taking over a week.

This weekend I was on call all weekend.

Monday evening was the PLUG West meeting, where John Kirk presented on the Perl Data Language. The Polyhedra 3D Graphics Application bit of the talk was interesting on an acedemic level, but I really enjoyed the later Document Scanning Application part of the talk – where he used perl to analyze coloration on a document to determine where specific horizontal and vertical lines were, then crop the image accordingly. Image manipulation with perl? Cool. After the meeting Paul, the organizer of the PLUG West meetings, JP Vossen, John Kirk, Karen, Kenny and I went to McKenzie Brewhouse for the usual after meeting discussion and beer. I wasn’t planning on having a beer, but it was St. Patrick’s Day AND McKenzie’s is one of the breweries from Lew Bryson’s PA Brewery book that I haven’t been to. I had their amber ale and lots of good discussion with my table mates. We didn’t end up leaving until around 11!

But a real highlight of the evening? Kenny gave me his old laptop! It’s a Compaq Armada E500 – 800mhz, 330M of RAM. It’s a fantastic replacement for my 500mhz, 128M Inspiron 7500 with the cracking screen. This Armada (I’m typing on it right now) is ligher than the Inspiron, has a nicer form factor (smaller) and the better specs are very nice – especially in terms of RAM. As soon as I got home I wiped the OpenBSD install (hehe) and installed Ubuntu Server + xfce4. It’s running like a champ, I’m so excited. And while we were chatting at the table that night I learned that JP also owns an old Inspiron 7500 but it’s got some bad parts – so I offered to give him my old one sans hard drive. Cool, my old laptop will have a new home too :) I’m so loving my new toy *hugs it* This also means I can put off buying a real new laptop for a while longer, which is good given my whole life situation right now.

Tuesday night I went out with John and Karen to Tamarindo’s on W Skippack Pike in Ambler. Wow, what a place! It’s a Mexican restaurant with a fantastic menu with a lot of seafood and steaks – not your typical taco joint. But their signature item is the free margarita with an entree. And not just any margarita – a bottomless one! They came around with pitchers to refill them! What torture, they were very smooth and had a generous portion of tequila, but I had to drive home so I only had half of one. Next time I’ll have to make sure I have someone else driving :)

Tonight I don’t have any out of the house plans, but there is an Ubuntu US-PA meeting where we’re tossing around some ideas for a Gutsy release party in April. We’re going for something more community-based rather than the Halloween party we had for Gutsy. Tomorrow I’m going out with Michael to have dinner and see Juno and discuss some things. We haven’t seen much of each other lately and have a lot to talk about. Friday I’m meeting up with a friend in New Jersey for some sushi (mmm) and warm sake (which I’ve never had). And the weekend? I keep forgetting it’s Easter weekend and that’s why I have no plans. Looks like it’s going to be a quiet weekend of reading and hacking.

Finally, I belong to the Phoenixville YMCA – which has a branch just 10 minutes from the house. Since moving I haven’t been (ack!) so I’m feeling a bit chubby and out of shape. Finally I decided to look up the other two clubs – and it turns out there is one 15 minutes from where I’m staying now! Excellent! Rush hour traffic in this area will make it a bit tricky to get there, but I might try to brave it once or twice a week, and will certainly start swinging by on the weekends for a bit.

Dinner now.