After work we were both pretty tired so we ordered in some Chinese food and relaxed around the house for a while.
Killed some more weeds in the back yard. We’re actually gaining ground now. It’s a bloodchlorophyllbath back there. Not pretty, but it must be done.
My homebrew is finally finished. It’s supposed to be a “robust porter” but I’m not so sure about the “robust”ness. It might help if I actually drank it cold.
Finished re-reading American Gods. Every bit as good as I remember. Still one of my favorite books of all time.
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 rather late. Took the day off from work. Emily’s Birthday! I believe she’s somewhere around 29.
Made a lovely pancake breakfast for Emily. Used frozen pancakes since we were short on eggs and needed them for the birthday cake.
Emily and I spent most of the day cleaning and preparing the house. Emily baked a delicious Black Forest cake. I made a trip to the state store and East End Brewing to pick up some libations.
Sneaked in a check of work email. Turns out vendor and customer found an error in the driver that I managed to introduce with a well-placed typo when trying out a fix (there is a world of difference between ‘=‘ and ‘&=‘ in C).
Party got into full swing around 8. Lots of fun. Amusing stories, interesting beer (highly recommend picking up East End’s Toasted Amber session ale while you can still get it). Conversations about politics, conversations about conversations about politics.
Up kinda late; ran some errands that were totally not shopping for birthday presents for my wife 🙂
Spent the afternoon at Rock Bottom with the Beer Meetup. Greg showed up and we watched the Pens’ meaningless final game as we drank and socialized.
Stopped at Lowe’s on the way home to pick up some topsoil and grass seed. I predict some light gardening is in my future.
Headed out to Howlers in Bloomfield to see our friend Megan play with The Turpentiners. Pretty entertaining show overall. Andy stopped by and proudly represented Lawrenceville by drinking Pabst. I could not bring myself to do so.
Up late. Missed the bus. Had to catch a 61. Hence, late to work.
Made decent progress on the audio driver. Added support for a buffered FIFO and now just have to tweak it for performance.
Ducked out a little early to pop up to Sarver and the Evolution Grille for a five-course dinner paired with beers from my friends at Milkman Brewing. The dinner and the beer were both wonderful and well worth the 45 minute drive. For posterity’s sake (and to make some of you jealous) here are the courses we enjoyed:
Soft pretzel made in-house along with an Imperial Irish Ale cheese, served with the Imperial Irish Ale
Pear salad with goat cheese, walnuts, and raspberry ginger balsamic vinaigrette served with Honey Pear Ponyo Wheat
Jameson Lamb Stew with a puffed pastry shamrock served with Mean Ass Hank Irish Whiskey Barrel IPA (this might have been my favorite) (also I’ve met hank and he’s a sweetheart of a pit bull)
Veal cutlets dusted with cardamom and served in an orange glaze over jasmine rice and brussels sprouts; served with Kolkata Kolsh
For dessert, Stout ice cream (made by Milkman) with almond biscotti served with Hello World Oatmeal Stout (their first beer in case you hadn’t guessed)
Quick haircut, then out to my parents’ house to install their multifunction printer. Support for Kodak’s printers on Linux leaves a little something to be desired. Never did get the scan function working right.
St. Patrick’s Day party at Mike’s house. Drank a bunch of beers I’d never tried before. Unfortunately drank enough of them that I don’t remember any of their names. Also the corned beef was delicious. It’s too bad Emily gave up meat for Lent…
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.
Continued wrestling with GPIO problem. Got it sorted, but there still seem to be some corner cases to deal with.
Greg stopped by on the way back from a customer visit and he, Andy, Justin, and I had lunch at Madonna’s. Tough to find a better burrito Downtown.
Picked up a growler of East End Drayman’s Heather Ale and a bottle of the beer they can’t call Eye Opener Coffee Porter after work.
Fake meat tacos for dinner. Delicious.
Still wrestling with the LMDE installer. Turns out the only flash drive I have that’s big enough to hold the installer has some bizarre partitioning scheme on it that chokes unetbootin. The DVD drive in my laptop is way too flaky to install from a disc so the great struggle continues.
Up rather late. Toasted waffles for breakfast. Mmmm.
Finally shaved my “winter” beard. I wanted to give my face some time to breathe before I grow my hockey playoff beard.
Spent the afternoon getting organized for our first “joint filing” tax return. Turns out that getting married was a sound financial move.
Dinner with Emily and Greg at OTB Bicycle Cafe. The portabella panini was excellent, as was the Tröegs Nugget Nectar that washed it down.
Finally saw The King’s Speech. Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth were terrific, but I don’t know about “Best Picture”. It didn’t have nearly as many explosions as The Expendables.
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!
