Month: March 2007

Post-vacation weariness

I’ve been unable to think properly for the last week and a half since coming back from St. Pats. Because of this, I’ve sorta slacked off on posting pictures and such. Also, I didn’t take my camera to St. Pats (because I’m an idiot), so I’m just really waiting for everybody else to send me their pictures and thus I can create a compilation.

Still, I have some newer pictures, so I may as well post those instead.

Last week, Mike and Paola had a beer tasting party. It was a hell of a good time, and I’d like to thank them for having it. I look forward to brewing a bunch of new beers up for the next one. They posted some pictures, which I shamelessly stole and stuck into my own web album because this lets me keep things in one place.

On Sunday, we were having brunch at the Majestic, when Mikey gets a call, walks outside, and comes back with a plastic light-up Spuds MacKensie. Naturally, we had to take him on a tour of the town before returning him to his rightful owners. Mikey has more pictures than I do, these were taken using my cell phone, which I’m getting better at using nowadays.

So that was last weekend. I missed Trivia night at the Saucer last night, because a) I was really tired, but mainly because b) I was actually unconscious on the couch at the time. I’ll be there next week though. 🙂

On the plus side, I received my cell phone gear from Cingular, including a data cable (pictured to the right), which I used to modify my phone. See, the LG CU500 I have now is a 3G phone, and thus capable of good data reception. Google Maps Mobile is extremely cool, for example.

However, Cingular annoyingly broke this functionality when they released the phone. After installing any “unapproved” Java application onto the thing, it asks for approval every single time it connects to the damn network, while you’re using that application. With Google Maps, this makes it damn near unusable.

But those clever people over at howardforums.com figured out a way to bypass this. So with the cable and a piece of software called BitPim, I was able to modify the phone to stop asking me those stupid questions. Suddenly Google Maps Mobile and GMail Mobile are the greatest things ever. 🙂

St. Pats pics up soon. 🙂

Blog by phone: Not so simple

I’ve been trying to get the ability to post pictures to my blog from my phone working for the last week or so. Previously, I used Postie for this sort of thing, but since I’ve switched to GoDaddy hosting, I’ve discovered that that method just don’t work. The fault is, basically, GoDaddy’s shared hosting plan and their insane method of supporting PHP. Ugh. I will not be renewing my hosting with them. I may switch hosts and attempt to get a refund on the remainder, actually.

So I tried a few other tricks. XML-RPC works and I can post from my phone with it, however the clients I’ve put on the phone don’t support pictures too well, or the phone doesn’t support the clients too well, or some damn thing like that. I dunno yet. I tried to get a cable for my phone to let me hack it open a bit wider and allow that sort of thing to work, but finding one turns out to be difficult on short notice. Stores just don’t have them.

So I tried blogmailr. It’s a service that combines the two.. You send email to it, it converts it into an XML-RPC post to your blog. That works too, but photos don’t seem to survive the transition. I suspect this is a problem with blogmailr.

All in all, it looks like I’ll be unable to post photos of my trip this next week on a “live” basis. So just look forward to a gallery of images when I return instead. I’ll have to sort out the live posting capabilities that I used to have sometime later.

Interesting weekend/life

You know, I moved here 3 years ago, and until last year, my life was kinda uninteresting and dull. But then I made a positive decision to actually go outside and make my own life, and that really sorta changed things for me. Now I have interesting friends who live in interesting places and do interesting things. I really dig that.

More so because of weekends like this. It was a busy weekend. First, I’ve got Mikey’s Texas de Brazil event, which was, frankly, incredible. More meat than I could possibly imagine, for free. And it rocked. I’m now a fan of de Brazil.

Second, there was the Rapscallions trivia team drink-fest Saturday night, which was a hell of a lot of fun. I got to try several new beers on the trivia tab, and enjoyed myself immensely.

Next, there was the crazy brunch this morning at the Majestic. At one point we had completely filled the entire bar, which, at the Majestic, is no mean feat. I counted 16 happy people enjoying a quality menu and drink selection. Our bartender, Tiffany, seemed to be quite happy with it as well, for obvious reasons. It was an interesting time full of interesting people.

Finally, after my semi-required weekend workday, I met up with Chad and Rebecca and had an entertaining few hours eating $0.25 oysters over at the Flying Fish (a new and fun place on 2nd street).

So, at this point, I’m both drunk and full of oysters, and really sort of in a contemplative mood. About a year ago, I would not have said my life was a good one. I had/have friends that I loved but rarely saw, and spent much of the rest of my time working/sleeping.

Today, my life is complex and busy, and I love it.

Weekend madness

Unfortunately, I’ve been entirely too busy this last week to say much, so here’s the brief rundown.

Last weekend was a massive blowout on all fronts. Friday night, I was at Sleep Out’s for the last Friday ever. What a blast. I went in early, hung out to hear the band’s first set, and then headed over to Mikey’s for the housewarming. Mikey’s place is cool. I like it. Mikey got a little drunk, so I left and headed back to Sleep Out’s at about 11 for the evenings end. 4 hours later, I passed out. 🙂

Saturday, I tried very hard to make it to Sleep Out’s for the last day, and I was there that morning, but I had this weird delayed migraine hangover thing going on. It kicked in around 2 and I was unable to move very rapidly until about 10. So my Saturday was spent in pain, with iced tea.

Sunday was a lot more fun. We had brunch at the Majestic, which I like for a couple of different reasons:
a) They always have good food at good prices, and,
b) It’s literally right downstairs from me, so it’s not like I have to walk anywhere for it.
They showed off their new brunch menu, which was fantastic. I had a andouille sausage and cheese frittata that was just incredible. I highly recommend it. Paul had good things to say about his smoked salmon hash browns, so I’ll try those this weekend.

Sunday afternoon was spent back at (now closed) Sleep Out’s, helping Mikey remove some TV’s and such. Kinda sad to see it all torn apart like that. I know I’ve only been going there for the last year or so, but still… That place had character.

Sunday evening I went over to Chad’s place for his and Rebecca’s Oscar party. It was a lot of fun and I drank a lot of Boulevard Wheat and had a really good time. I also got the worst score of anybody else in the Oscar pool (a whopping 2 correct answers! woot!), so that was good. 🙂

The rest of the week I worked. A lot. It’s been a vicious week. I put in almost 60 hours.

This weekend is shaping up to be interesting though. Apparently , we’re having a multi-brunch. There’s the brunch at Texas de Brazil on Saturday, followed up by the Majestic on Sunday. And Saturday night, the trivia team is spending the winnings at the Flying Saucer, so it should be entertaining to see how much beer we can go through.

On the whole, all this drinking is good training for St. Pats, which I’ll be going to in T-minus 277 hours, 23 minutes. So that’s nice.

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