Month: May 2006

A Comparison of Days

Yesterday morning, I got up at 5am and woke up judiang in the next half hour. She had a 6:55am flight back to Chicago (gah!), so we headed out to the airport. We arrived at United’s desks at 6:27am. And they wouldn’t let her get a boarding pass. They cited the 30 minute rule for not giving up her boarding pass (and did the same to an irate businessman). So Judi was forced to go on standby for the next flight out. Yuck!

(Oh, Judi, MJ says that it’s quite possible that UA had already given up your seat to someone else because they always overbook. Her hubby’s had that happen to him several times – they use the 30 minute excuse because they can. Blech. Dirty rotters!)

I would have stayed or driven Judi back or something, except that I had to get to work. I had promised MJ, the senior class adviser (and HS secretary – one and the same), that I’d be a chaperon for her on the senior field trip to King’s Island (an Amusement Park in Southern Ohio). Yeah, difficult work to get, no?

We left the school a little after 8am and headed for the park. We made good time and arrived before they opened. No matter, MJ got our tickets and we all skuttered into the park. It wasn’t long before the rides opened and a good portion of us rushed over to Drop Zone. I, of course, did the ride. And once I got off, I took my glasses out of the case where I’d stored them for the trip – and the screw promptly fell out of the left side. The lens fell to the ground, but didn’t break. However, the screw was a loss. Thankfully, MJ and the senior girls with us led me around to the next few rides. We did Face Off and the Racer. Oh, and the Vortex. And some others – but I’ve forgotten them!

Once it became lunch time, MJ and I headed to Skyline for lunch (yay 4-way Cincinnati chili!) while the girls headed off to try the bungee jumping ride, which was currently only $5 instead of the usual $20. After lunch, we headed for a store to see if they had any glasses repair kits. No luck there, and the salesman called to another store – they didn’t either. He did let me have some masking tape and I managed to repair the glasses for the rest of the trip.

MJ and I then headed off to the train station to meet the girls again. Once we got there, we discovered they’d been trying to call us – whoops! We never did hear the phones. Turns out they’d just left on the train we saw leaving when we arrived. So we sat in the train station and enjoyed a breezy, shady break from what was becoming a miserably hot day.

We headed to the water park section of King’s Island where we became Table Sitters. Joy joy. Almost all of the 27 seniors were in the park and left their bags, clothes, shoes, etc at a table (and half of another) where MJ and I sat, watching & waiting. Thankfully, a couple of girls arrived an hour later or so with smoothies and told us where we could get ’em. They watched the table while we nipped off to buy smoothies – yay! I got Mango/Pineapple. Note to self – don’t go barefoot when it’s nearly 90F and sunny – hot on the soles!

We stayed at the table for awhile longer, when MJ’s daughter and some of the other girls said we should switch tables – there was another near the wave pool that was shadier. Everyone gathered all the stuff up (except for one boy’s boots – we’d warned him we weren’t taking them with us) and we moved tables. MJ and I did get to wade in the water – which was refreshing.

Eventually, folks were ready to go back to the main park. Our group of girls decided to do some kiddie rides. We did the Wild Thornberry’s water ride – we thought it should be safe. Everyone getting off the ride was barely wet. Nope. I went with 3 of the girls in one log, MJ went in the next with her daughter and another. And we all came out drenched! Damn, if only we’d known this earlier in the day! 🙂

We did some other kiddie rides, then headed towards the Festhaus for supper. Only we got distracted by the Pop Star try-outs they were doing under the Eiffel Tower. The girls decided they’d enter and sing Stacy’s Mom (but substitute it for Amy’s Mom in honor of MJ). They managed to get a number of the other seniors there to watch and finally got to perform. They did pretty well, and I thought they were better than the girl who kept winning the rounds. They lost, despite being the audience favorite. They got tissues and Loser badges, which they wore proudly to dinner. Supper was La Rosa’s pizza (you’d think they’d want to distance their name from the pizza they serve at King’s Island, but there ya go…) And then Graeter’s Ice Cream for dessert. Graeter’s is a local ice cream manufacturer that is wonderful. And the ice cream here was no different. Yum! I liked it so much, I had some before supper AND after supper. Judi would be so proud!

After ice cream, it was time for the park to close. So we all met up front and took several pictures of the seniors in front of the fountains and Eiffel tower. They even got me in a couple – yuk! Anyhoo, we all headed off to the bus for an uneventful ride home. It was a truly good day.

And while I was having all this fun (hot & shitty fun, but still fun), where was Judi? Still at the airport! Gah!

While I was chaperoning, I kept texting Judi to find out her status. And it just never got much better. When the 10am flight came around, they were too full, so no go for Judi. Then she was shooting for the noon flight. And the 3pm flight. And eventually the 6pm flight! Already at the airport for 12 frickin’ hours and they couldn’t get her on a flight?

We sent several text messages (I think I got 14 from her throughout the day) with a couple of actual calls during the day. I felt so bad for her having to deal with all that shit & boredom while I was having fun watching senior bags and shoes. Once they finally DID get Judi onto a flight, it was delayed! Good grief! There were storms in Chicago, apparently.

In the end, she did get home – yay! And she got home around the same time that I did! Eeep! Poor Judi!

Apart from Judi’s horrible trip home, I think she had a nice weekend with me and elsaf. I know that I loved having them here again! And it’ll be great seeing them in Chicago for the 4th of July! And grief, I hope I don’t have to wait a day at Dayton International to get there!

Lazing @ the Lake

This has been a fun (albeit warm) weekend @ my folks cottage. We’ve been having a great time and eating lots of great food. So, ditto what Elsa and Judi said. (Heh heh.)

WRT (with respect to) the things we’ve been viewing: my easy-to-please nature & ability to turn off my brain while watching stuff means that I really enjoyed last night’s Doctor Who and the X-Men movie. 🙂

Also, I post for your culinary enjoyment, a photo of last night’s German Meal. (Supper by elsaf, photo by dad. Oh, and dad supplied the photos for my Lake icon and judiang‘s new Lake icon.)

German Meal - yum!

I couldn’t top that meal, but I did grill some mean steaks & veggies tonight. And Elsa bought us a sugar cream pie for dessert. Yum!

Memorial Day Weekend at the Lake – 2006

Ah, it’s good to be in the 3-season room at mom & dad’s cottage at Lake Loramie again. It means (a) summer’s nearly here, (b) the girls are visiting, and (c) I can nap whenever I want!

Yesterday, I picked judiang up at the airport, took her to KFC for lunch, brought her back to my place, and then finished up at work. After work, the high school teachers were treated to an ice cream sundae bar in appreciation for the great OGT (Ohio Graduation Test) scores that the sophomores got this year. 82% or higher passed each of the tests (Reading, Writing, Math, Social Studies, and Science) and 76% passed all 5 tests. Yay sophomores! Yay teachers!

When I got home from work, Judi was sleeping (no! such a surprise!) so I geeked a bit, transferred some David Tennant vids from her laptop to my PC (for burning onto a DVD for watching this weekend – providing the DVD player here can play ’em) and played with Leo a bit. Once Judi was rested up, we zipped off to BW’s for booze (amaretto sours, of course) and wings, chatted with my coworkers there (many of whom Judi met on our trip to Italy last summer), and then bugged out. We then headed to Pizza Hut to get pizza for the Shorts. I ordered 2 large pizzas, going halvsies on each. Pineapple/cheese, sausage/pepperoni. I figured there’d be something for everybody – and there was.

Once we got to town, I dropped Judi off at Becky’s with the pizza, then popped round to Robbins’ gas station for some chips (ranch Doritos and Munch ’ems) and pop for the Judester and myself. Back to Becky’s for pizza (Becky, Deanna, mom, dad, and my little cousin Taylor were also in attendance) and conversation. And then it was time to play cards. Dad and Taylor bugged out at that time to their respective homes. And in honor of Granny, we started the game off by all saying “Shit!” in unison. We miss you, Granny!

So we played our usual game of Shanghai Rum and, as usual, complained the whole time about it. “Why are we playing this game?” “I hate this game!” “Crap, another bad hand.” You’d think we were a group of masochists, but honestly, it’s FUN to play and bitch about!

As for who won, well, it’s not that important. But I suppose if you really want to know, judiang will probably have the blow-by-blow on her journal. 🙂

After the game, mom went home cuz she had to work the next day (blech) and Judi and I returned to my place. I gave Leo a day’s worth of food, which he proceeded to eat. Then I packed and we headed off to the Lake. We chatted on AIM with hergrace and elsaf for awhile as we got caught up on LJ and chatted on IRC. Then around 2am, we finally headed for bed. And I proceeded to wake up at 5:30am. I think my cat finally has me conditioned. I didn’t get up until 8am, however. So there, Leo!

After half an hour of playing CoH on Judi’s laptop, I started vacuuming the floor (cleaning up after the plumbers who had to install a new water softener yesterday). And I’ve got stuff soaking in the sink (cuz mom & dad couldn’t wash because of the plumbers) which I’ll get to after this.

Elsa should be arriving around noon and dad will get here soon, so we’ll have hot dogs on the fire and whatever else we pick up at Wagner’s before they arrive. Yay! It’s so good to be at the Lake! Yay for memorial day weekend!

Getting back to normal

So, I know you’re wondering – did the restore DVD ever come in? Well, I was afraid it might not. The day after the picture tube arrived in lieu of my DVD I received a phone call from the service lady I spoke to the previous day. She said that they’d had a complaint just like mine that day! Someone else had received a picture tub instead of DVD as well! I was afraid I’d find another large box on my porch the next day. But no! The next day there was a padded envelope in my door. Yay! DVD for me!

Thursday, then, I was able to restore my computer back to Windows Media Center Edition. As soon as that was done, I installed the video card and then transferred all of my files from the SATA drive I’d copied them onto. And as soon as that was done? Yup! Time for my fix! I played City of Heroes for an hour or so and enjoyed it immensely.

Ever since then I’ve been tweaking the computer to get it back to where it was before (or better). I’m currently deciding on skins & desktop colors. I’d been using “Brick” from Winders Classic (we use that at school) but wanted a change. Before then, I had a Seventh Doctor color scheme (lots of red & yellow like the logo). But now I’m going with black/white/gray. I have a few skins for QCD that work with it (one even has purple on it – yay!) Now to find something for Trillian that does the same.

(Hmmm, you know, I really like tweaking my computer. I’m glad I’ve now got this restore disk so that I can do this all over again when things get unweildy. Heh.)

Sony’s new DVD technology…

OK, so today my restore disc was supposed to arrive from Sony. I get home and find not one, but two boxes outside my door. An itty bitty box and a large box. So, of course, I figure the itty bitty box has the DVD. Heh, I figured wrong.

The box that held the box.
This is the box that supposedly held my restore DVD. The umbrella is there for scale purposes.

So, I think maybe they’re just into over packaging. However, it was rather heavy. Could there be a manual with it? I opened the big box to find a slightly smaller box inside of it. And it’s not really the shape one expects DVDs or even DVDs and manuals to be in.

The box inside the box.
Here’s the box that was in the bigger box. A bit more oblong than one would expect.

Well, I opened that box to find something I just didn’t recognize.


It was definitely NOT a DVD.

I had to laugh. Sure, I’m upset that I can’t fix my computer today, but to be sent a picture tube rather than a DVD… Come on, how can you mistake this for a DVD, warehouse people?

So I called Sony and talked with a very nice service lady. She’s sending FedEx to the school tomorrow to pick up the picture tube and overnighting me another attempt at the DVD. Plus she’s returning me some of my money since it didn’t wind up being overnighted originally. Here’s hoping it arrives ASAP!

(Oh, the itty bitty box was a new barcode scanner. Yay me!)

Computer techs are cursed

My dad has noticed that whenever computer techs do upgrades on their own equipment, all hell breaks loose. Upgrading 20 computers for a lab, no problem. Changing video cards on your home computer? Big problem.

When I bought my Sony VAIO PC last summer, it had everything that I wanted except a decent video card. Of course, I bought it all the same, despite the onboard video. But my main addiction, City of Heroes, didn’t play corrently on the VAIO. Bugger. No matter, I decided to upgrade the video. I couldn’t use the card out of my old PC – it was AGP and this computer only has PCI-E and regular PCI slots. So I found an ATI PCI-E card for the computer and installed it.

ATI and City of Heroes are not the best of friends, but my game played. Sure the video card occasionally crashed (well, the driver software did) and I’d lose picture. But it was a rare thing. And sure, sometimes after being off, the card wouldn’t send data to the DVI port and I’d have to turn off the computer blind. But I coped.

But then the fan started going bad. Bleh. I was afraid it would stop altogether and the chip would burn out, so I purchased another PCI-E card online. Yay for NewEgg.com! I found a nice nVidia card to replace the ATI. nVidia and CoH are lovers, you know.

Now, before I installed the new card, I uninstalled the ATI drivers. I know what a pain in the ass conflicting drivers can be. And I pondered, but only pondered, installing the nVidia drivers before I swapped out the old and installed the new. And did I even think about dropping down my resolution? Nope…

So I turned off the PC, uninstalled the ATI card and installed the nVidia card without a hitch. Then I turned it on. And it went into Windows XP without a hitch. Except that once WinXP opened up, no picture. Wrong resolutions for the card! 1280×1024 without drivers is very hard to maintain. So did WinXP automatically switch down to one that worked? Hell no. Incompetent piece of shit software…

No matter, says I, I’ll just see what keystrokes are required to run the driver software disk. I put the disk into the laptop to see what it does. But the piece of shit driver software doesn’t have nice alt-key commands for running it. Still, it does beep when you move over the options. I think I might be able to get it to work blind. But I can’t. Bugger.

What’s a girl to do? Well, go into Safe Mode and change the resolution, of course. Except that the VAIO has NEVER been able to go successfully into Safe Mode. And yesterday was no exception. Grrrrr.

OK, next choice is going into VGA mode. Except I get told by WinXP that it’s missing a key file to do that. Good news – my laptop has that file. Bad news – how am I going to copy it onto the PC? Didn’t have any luck doing it through the network – I never bothered to share the C drive and when I tried the hidden share, I, um, forgot my administrator password. (And bugger all if I didn’t remember it later on after I’d passed the point of no return. Stupid ass tech.)

No matter, I’ll just use a Win98 boot disk and copy it that way. Oh yeah, SATA drive. Duh! The DOS on the Win98 disk hadn’t a clue how to view a SATA drive. I decided I had to go to school and get BART PE and a WinXP Pro disk. And to comfort pissed off treen, I also went to Taco Hell for take away. (I’d been working since 3:30 on this gathering disaster and it was after 5pm by then.)

My first thing to try once Leo and I had eaten supper was BART PE. I was able to copy the file that the VGA mode said that it needed. Only the bloody file was already there. *sigh* But attempts to boot into VGA mode still resulted in black screen, and worse, now when I tried booting into Safe Mode, it rebooted instead of just sitting there showing off all the drivers it loaded.

I’d done some research online and suggestions were to do a WinXP repair if you can’t successfully go into Safe Mode. I follow the instructions and things are going OK, until it reboots and goes into Windows – black screen! Still hasn’t dropped down resolution. I haven’t a clue if it’s asking me to type stuff or key buttons or just wait for it to finish. When it gets to a point of inactivity, I turn it off and try going into VGA mode. Ah! Now I can see a picture. And it says that Windows upgrade is restarting. And just sits there. Bugger all.

A second attempt at the upgrade leads to the same results. No way to get into VGA mode while its installing. And when rebooted, it just sits there. Of course, I later realize why this might be so. My computer had Media Center Edition. XP Pro with bells on, but still no XP Pro like I’m “upgrading” it with.

So now I’ve borrowed a computer from school with a SATA drive and copying my documents, videos, and MP3s onto that computer’s HD. And I’ve just wasted $35 to get the Sony VAIO recovery DVD shipped to me overnight (which really means I’ll get it Tuesday since it’s the weekend now). So hopefully on Tuesday I can get my computer back to where it was when I first purchased it. And then get all my stuff back onto it.

Man, I’m gonna miss City of Heroes while I wait for this. I did try installing it on my laptop, but the graphics on here are so bad it’s black & white. Heh. If all goes well, though, I shouldn’t lose any data in this fiasco. At least, I hope not!

Happy Free Comic Book Day!

No, today is not the celebration of the Independence of Comic Books such that they became free entities. Today is the day that all good comic book stores have free comic books on offer. Yay!

I’m not a big comic book geek, but I do love free stuff. And they had quite a few freebies at The Bookery Fantasy in Fairborn (my comic book store of choice). One major surprise for me was a HeroClix of Wolverine. Wow – I now own a HeroClix other than City of Heroes/Villains! Not that I’ll ever play HeroClix, but they are cute little figurines. 🙂

Today was my day out. I had a meeting in Columbus in preparation of B-WISER, the science camp that I teach at each summer. It was great seeing my summer co-workers again. We met at a nice tavern in Columbus (Red Door Tavern) and I had one of the best reubens I’ve ever eaten. Good eats, good conversation, and good planning. Should be a fun week at Wooster!

On my way home, I did a bit of a detour and headed for Beavercreek/Fairborn to check out Best Buy and my comic book store. (I only get there once every few months.) At Best Buy I finally found a nice cover/belt clip for my iPod. And it was on sale for $13! Plus I got Enya’s latest album. After a few arguments with the card swiping device at the check out, I was on my way to the Bookery. There I got the freebies plus my file o’ stuff. Doctor Who & Dreamwatch magazines, but still no Devil’s Panties. When I inquired, the salesman said he remembered seeing it out in the store, so he picked it up for me and then made doubly sure that Devil’s Panties was definitely in my file. (Alas, I’ve missed out on Issue 1. Here’s hoping I can find it some place!)

When I left this morning, I told Leo that I’d probably be back by 5pm. Well, our meeting lasted longer than I anticipated (we ladies had a lot of catching up to do!) so poor Leo had to wait an extra two hours and a half for me. Still, he’s feeded now, so he should be good. And speak of the devil, here he be! Ready to push stuff off my desk so that he can sit in front of my monitor. 🙂