After work Emily and I met Oskar at Yo Rita in the South Side for some farewell tacos, as he’s off home to Sweden on Monday. I tried the potato, braised chicken, and calamari tacos. All three were tasty with just the right amount of kick, but the chicken was definitely underwhelming compared to the other two. They went great with an East End Big Hop.
Home to pack for the trip to San Luis Obispo this weekend, and cleaned up my desk. It’s mostly in a usable state, just in time for me not to use it for a few days.
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).
Headed out to The BeerHive in the Strip with the Beer Meetup. Had some East End Pedal Pale Ale, which I don’t believe I’d had yet this year. It was good, but not as good as I remember from previous years. Maybe it’s designed to be tasted after chasing it through the streets of Pittsburgh on your bike. Also, Jeff talked Greg and me into joining the Ultimate Frisbee Meetup. It will be nice to get some regular exercise for a change.
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.
Worked from home. Nice after a long car ride to sit in a comfy chair with a cat and a laptop and get some work done.
Further progress with the audio driver. From reports on the scene I infer that while the issue hasn’t been eliminated it has been improved. More work to come.
Headed to the gym in the evening, motivated by the desire to maintain my ability to toss my nephew around (30 lbs. doesn’t sound like much until it’s toddler-shaped and moving).
Drank some of the beer that East End isn’t allowed to call Eye Opener Coffee Porter and watched some Arrested Development while I noodled around with some hobby projects.
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.
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.
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!
