Happy Holidays, everyone! I’m here in L.A. for a week and a half, visiting friends, Margie’s family, etc. The weather is a welcome change from recent chilly winds in NYC, and the abundance of sky puts a smile on my face.
Keeping with annual tradition, we made and decorated cookies tonight. So, what’re you waiting for? Check out the pics!
Margie just got two rolls of film B&W film developed. Some random shots in this group: bridges, snow, fire escapes, a Paris carousel horse, me.
(Click on any picture for a larger resolution)
If you’ve read The Davinci Code, you’ll definitely have fun playing the Uncover The Code Contest. Hidden on the book’s dust jacket are clues that will help you solve questions on the site. It’s pretty fun, and all but one of the puzzles are solveable without having the book in front of you (the site has magnified images of the dust jacket available) (you might be able to decompile the Flash for the answers, but it’s more fun to just play along, right?).
Ever wonder what happens when you open up a Magic 8-Ball? Luckily, you don’t have to. Heh:
The cylinder of fluid and device are still able to render opinions without the protection of the outer shell. At this point, the authors enquired whether the Oracle was enjoying the disassembly. “Outlook not so good,” was the pensive reply.
(Thanks, Chris!)
So, I bought a fake Rolex today in Chinatown. It was $30 (I ‘haggled’ him down from $35). It’s a pretty good fake, except the sticker on the back isn’t a hologram and is the exact same (look and number) as the counterfeit example shown here. It feels heavy, looks good, and I think it actually winds itself because I can hear a winding sound whenever I move my wrist around (of course, this could be parts moving around in some way to make me think that it’s the real thing, but that seems awfully elaborate). Anyway, I’m happy with it.
Here’s three pics I took during a walk around Radnor Lake, in Nashville:
Click on each for the full resolution version.
So, my trip to Nashville was nice. I spent nearly all of my time working on Mom’s computer, but it was mostly volunteer work. I upgraded her iMac’s 7GB hard drive to a beautiful 120GB Western Digital with an 8MB buffer.
The best part about the upgrade was the purchase of the drive. We went to CompUSA because it was closest, and I figured they’d have decent prices on drives. Sure enough, they did. We found an 80GB Western Digital for around $100. I thought I’d seen a rebate for that drive at Best Buy recently, so I asked a sales rep if they had a rebate on it.
“Nope,” he said. “But, we get different rebates than Best Buy does.” “Oh, so I could probably get this drive cheaper at Best Buy?” I asked. “Yeah.”
So, we did what any savvy shopper would do; we walked over to the demo computers and browsed www.BestBuy.com, where we were plesantly surprised. They had a 120GB drive for $60 after two mail-in rebates! The site said that the nearest BB was in Hickory Hollow, and that they had the drive in stock.
We didn’t know where Hickory Hollow was, but we knew that Yahoo Maps would help. One problem was that we didn’t know the exact address of the CompUSA we were in, and we wanted driving directions. I flagged down a nearby sales rep.
“Do you have a business card I can have?” Problem solved.
We got the directions, drove out to BB, got the HD, went home, and I installed the drive. Suddenly, I was faced with a bizzare problem.
MacOS X was telling me that the drive was only 35GB, not 120GB. I’ll save you the trouble of telling you everything I attempted in vain before I finally discovered the reason. I had set the drive’s jumper settings to ‘Master w/ Slave present’ when it should have just been set to ‘Master’.
From then on, it was smooth sailing. We did all sorts of software upgrades, and her iMac is now pretty fuckin’ slick.
Merry Christmas, Mommy.
Tomorrow I’m hopping on a train to Islip airport in Long Island to fly out to Nashville and spend an extended weekend with my Mamacita. It feels weird taking another long weekend right after Thanksgiving, but I won’t worry about that too much. What’s the point in earning vacation days if you don’t use ‘em, right?
So, you’ll probably see less of me here for a few days. Miss me. O_=-)
Every once in a while, Tutor.co’s CEO sends out a newsletter to our clients and his friends. I thought I’d share it with you, too.
If you’ve got no idea what company I work for, or what we’re doing, the newsletter will give you some idea.
