After work cleaned up a bit and welcomed Emily’s parents for their visit this weekend. They arrived just as we sat down to a nice quinoa and chickpea dish that Emily made. I swear with her cooking I might even be willing to try vegetarianism. Maybe.
We got caught up and Emily’s parents gave us a belated first anniversary present: a pair of very fancy crystal whiskey glasses. They match the set we had already and now we can have as many as four people drinking whiskey out of fancy glasses. I need to meet some more people who drink whiskey.
After a long week everyone was exhausted so it was time for bed.
After work I made spaghetti with ground turkey sauce for dinner. Not bad, if I do say so myself.
Finally watched Citizen Kane from Netflix. I say “finally” both because I had until tonight lived over 28 years without having seen it, and because it’s been sitting on my mantle for three or so weeks. I think it would be tough after 70 years to come up with anything original or profound to say about this movie, so I’ll just say that I enjoyed it and that it belongs on all of those “Best Movies Ever” lists that constantly place it at or near the top.
Started testing bip out as a replacement for my long-time SSH+screen+irssi always-on IRC solution. I’ve been using XChat with the irssi proxy module since I joined Canonical because with IRC being the primary means of communication with my coworkers I wanted to have desktop notifications to make sure I knew when someone wanted my attention. However irssi’s proxy module doesn’t provide a backlog of messages received while you aren’t connected so I would end up connecting to my screen (actually byobu) session to read the old messages anyway. Now I can just connect with whatever client I wish and I have both my missed messages and fancypants notifications with a single step.
Internet connection was dead most of the morning. It’s really hard to telecommute when the tele- part goes belly-up. Luckily it came back before lunchtime.
Took a bus downtown for the gallery crawl. First time I’ve paid bus fare since… forever I think. I miss my Pitt ID.
Met up with Emily and some friends and toured some exhibits. There was some art being created live at SPACE by artists and by onlookers. Pretty neat. Wood St. Galleries had an Icelandic exhibit which was… weird. There was one room where they lock you in the dark for five minutes. Another where they had a candle being magnified against the four walls of the room by magnifying lenses, but one of them was out of focus. I must admit I didn’t “get” most of it (like the guitar player guy with the buzz saw lowering into his head and retracting) but then I don’t really get Bjork either.
A couple of our companions had a Groupon for Olive or Twist, so we stopped by there for drinks and a bite to eat. The main bar area was full so we headed up to the very swanky upstairs lounge. I was pleasantly surprised to see East End Fat Gary on tap. Emily got some godawful drink with olives and vodka (yes even Boyd & Blair can be ruined by adding olives).
Continued work on audio driver. At vendor’s suggestion tried to make all operations local to the board (I was using a network filesystem for development). Unfortunately flashing the board took most of the day so not much real progress was made.
Dinner at Shiloh Grill on Mt. Washington (we had a Groupon!). Lots of fun, with the menu and overall experience nearly identical to that of Harris Grill.
Work continues on the audio driver. Made some progress, but work continues.
Lunch at DiBella’s in Market Square. Really tasty subs but the ordering->paying->receiving your food process is pure chaos. Will be returning in any case.
Another area in which work continues is we’re trying to empty the keg of East End Snow Melt in the kegerator. I fear we bought too much. Each of us did our part as best we could.
Home. Dinner on the deck with my beautiful wife enjoying the beautiful weather before it turns cold again.
Watched Titus from Netflix. Wow is that a weird movie.
Up early, to work. Apparently the apocalyptic weather forecast was slightly exaggerated.
Today was my day to buy bagels for the office. I performed that sacred duty with the proper reverence and without incident.
Audio driver still not quite right. Sent a patch to the customer to try along with their fancy-pants logic analyzer (the board they sent doesn’t have the right signals broken out to use ours).
Home for our thrice-rescheduled Impromptu Zombie Party. Many zombies were killed (as were a few humans). Much beer was consumed, and I dare say a good time was had by all.
Bagel Friday, a sacred tradition in our office, was observed.
Read up on possible DMA/EDMA issues. Started to doubt my earlier conviction that this is where my driver problem lies. Turned my attention to the possibility that the data transmission timing is off from the get-go.
Drank a glass of East End Snow Melt at the end of the work day and suddenly realized that my stomach troubles were gone. Truly it is the nectar of the gods!
