Up early; hopped in the car on the way to Rochester, MI; a suburb of Detroit. Some friends of ours are getting married on Saturday and Emily is one of the readers.
Showed up early for the rehearsal. The park where the wedding is being held is beautiful.
Rehearsal dinner was at the Rochester Mills Beer Company. I’m a sucker for local breweries and there seems to be no shortage in Michigan. The black IPA and porter at this place were lovely. They had a very interesting array of pizzas as well.
After dinner took a walk around the town with Emily. The town itself reminds us a bit of Mt. Lebanon back home, with little shops along the main drag.
Up early; last day at Timesys. Hopped on the bus one last time.
Bought bagels for the office as an explicit bribe that they might remember me fondly. I hope it worked.
Due to inclement weather we ordered in from Chinatown Inn for my going-away lunch. Delicious food and interesting conversation. My (now former) boss told me to go screw myself. Good times.
Cleaned up my workstation and tarred up my various configuration files (git, vim, bash, etc.). I think the intern is inheriting both my computer and my seat.
Happy hour at the Sharp Edge Bistro with Justin, Andy, Ian, Tony, and Ed (a.k.a. Former Boss). More good times as I said my farewells.
Home for a quick dinner with Emily then lots of packing.
Still no word from customer about memory leak. Perhaps they solved it on their own?
Started redding up my desk. It’s amazing how much crap one can accumulate on one’s desk in three and a half years.
A bit unsure of my feelings regarding the death of Osama bin Laden. He was a mass-murderer of the highest degree, but it does feel weird to celebrate someone’s death. I guess my feelings can best be described as relief that the man who orchestrated the deaths of so many has seen some measure of justice done. However the partying in the streets of New York and Washington, D.C. are a little too reminiscent of scenes I saw in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries in September of 2001.
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.
