Up late, but still managed to get over to Art All Night at the old Pittsburgh Brewing building in time to see Andy’s show with the Electric Situation. This breaks a long-standing “curse” in which I was never free when they played. Also there was art.
Brunch at Dozen in Lawrenceville followed by a walk in the rain up and down Butler Street. We were hoping to visit Backstage Guitars but they were closed. A simple web search would have told us that but it was somehow refreshing to find out the old-fashioned way.
Home for a mostly lazy day of cleaning the basement and setting up my new work laptop.
Inducted into the Order of the Engineer. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I finished my bachelor’s degree (I missed the deadline at the time). It’s also something I feel very strongly about. While I may not be designing bridges I still feel that as an engineer I should be using my skills to help people as much as possible.
After the ceremony my parents took Emily and me out to lunch at Joe Mama’s in Oakland. Haven’t been there in years, but it hadn’t changed at all either.
Went to see Lewis Black at Heinz Hall. He’s as angry as ever. His bit about asking an inanimate object where to get sushi had me rolling on the floor (or would have if the seats weren’t so tightly packed in there).
Got final confirmation of my travel plans to UDS. Really excited now.
Planned to get sushi for lunch at the Fish Market but that was scrapped due to Justin coming down with stomach trouble. Ended up at Fadz instead. Not exactly sushi but their Ragin’ Cajun sandwich is quite tasty
No response from customer on memory leak issue, so I set it aside for now. Scoped some projects, which is much easier to do when you won’t be responsible for completing them š
Went on the Gallery Crawl. Checked out some interesting robotics installations at Wood Street Galleries. Ate a hot dog from the Franktuary truck which was parked in an alley nearby. Bought a Batman button at the Toonseum. Emily got a button featuring Wolverine, who I understand spends his time off from the X-Men as a mascot for the University of Michigan.
Got a “real” dinner with some friends at the Church Brew Works. They still make a mean buffalo burger and the Pious Monk Dunkel is still top notch.
Continued wrapping up projects. Rebuilt toolchain and kernel for memory leak problem using customer’s configuration. Still can’t reproduce. Asked for more details (if they’re using custom hardware, etc.).
Got in touch with Canonical’s travel folks and let them know that I need to depart from Detroit but return to Pittsburgh. Picked from a set of itineraries. Waiting for final confirmation.
Lunch at Zorba’s on Smithfield St. They claim to have invented the “Pittsburgh Salad”. I don’t know if that’s true, but they certainly know how to make one.
Continued wrapping up projects. Can’t reproduce customer’s memory leak problem with our kernel. Asked for their configuration files. Waiting for response.
Sad to see the Penguins’ season end so early, but given what they’ve gone through to get as far as they did I can’t say I’m disappointed in them.
Began my farewell tour of favorite Downtown lunch spots with DiBella’s. It’s a recent entry but quickly rose to become the best sandwich place in the Golden Triangle.
Started looking at travel arrangements for UDS. New manager said he’d put me in touch with Canonical’s travel people.
Started helping with support issues since I’m not taking on any new projects. Andy gave me a nasty support ticket about a possible memory leak in the USB gadget driver for one of our boards. I shouldn’t have said anything
Home then off to guitar lesson. Learned some interesting finger picking styles and variations on Travis picking.
After everyone had showered we all visited the zoo. It was a slightly rainy day, so happily the zoo was not crowded at all but it was still pleasant enough to walk around most of the time. Nephew was most impressed by the aquarium portion, with the colorful fish (and penguins!) though later he would claim to most vividly remember one of the elephants peeing (“Big pee!”) (he’s two).
Later we went to my grandparents’ house for an Easter party. Great food and lively discussion as always.
Finished installing new cellar floor with Father-in-law. Then built a very nice work bench with a peg board and storage for tools.
My parents joined us for Easter Dinner. Lots of Polish food, all of which was as delicious as it is hard to spell.
After dinner Emily and I opened belated birthday gifts from her family. I got a home brewing kit (with a starter set of ingredients to make a porter), a Star Wars apron and lunch box, as well as a solar-powered lantern for the back porch. Emily got a similar apron along with Star Wars cookie cutters and a solar-powered wind chime.
Up early; Final preparations for incoming in-laws.
Mother- and Father-in-Law arrived around lunch time. Father-in-law and I immediately went to work tearing out the old floor from the cellar under the porch. Many rotten and moldy boards were pulled from that room. Bleached the crap out of the dirt floor and built the frames for the new flooring.
Brother-, Sister-, and nephew-in-law arrived late in the evening. Young boy was pretty wired for that late hour but eventually he was put to bed, as was everyone else.
