Reading (For Dummies)

Falcon Ridge Folk

I got back late last night from the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. It was amazing. This year we planned a bit too well, and had another campground on the edge of Camp Dar, which was odd because Dar wasn't even there this year.

Annie and I got there Thursday afternoon, at around 3pm. We set up camp and wandered about a bit. Kat and Cherie arrived at 5, we had a tent party before Aaron and Greg (our Maryland crew) came in at 7-something.

Friday morning started off with a stop at the gas station for beer. We started drinking at 11:30. Then it was music.

The band showed above played an awesome set in the showcase, and they were from Maryland too. Or maybe that was the liquor talking. Anyway, things progressed along right away.

My dad showed up as smoke was leaving my nose, quite literally. He had some papers for me, and had been staying in New Paltz, mountain biking and rock climbing and such. It was the sort of comic timing that made us both laugh, and he let me get back to my "debauchery".

Saturday morning we went down the road a bit.

The water was somewhere in the 50s. Cold is all we knew. All in all an amazing weekend, in part due to who wasn't there. Hooray!

Luck

Okay so the dilly, since people are bugging me.

The weekend: Annie came, it was fantastic. We went to the Sterling Renaissance Festival, which is in my opinion a big outdoor shopping mall. Oh wait I'm trying not to be derogatory. It was actually fun, with some how shall we say interesting entertainers.

Annie and I cooked, loafed around, did the usual couple things. Was a fun weekend. I was dying for a bike ride by the end of it though. I haven't been riding enough and my body is feeling it.

I went for an awesome ride Sunday night. Got to the top of a huge hill down in the next county, near Peter Plumley's old house. A giant 150lb rotweiller then decided to run out of its neighbor's driveway, unchained, and chase me. Keep in mind I was exhausted at this point, having just ridden uphill for about 2.5 miles. Well I managed to get away, then I came back with a big stick. Unfortunately the dog owner took it inside, so I couldn't kill it.

W'e're prepping for Falcon Ridge tomorrow. Annie and I are going and hopefully we'll be meeting up with some people there. I bought myself lots of Cliff Bars. I also bought myself one of these. I figure it might come in handy when travelling about, and I need to get rid of my desktops. Speaking of which, anybody want to buy one?

Kevin Kelley tried to hook me up with an Apple employee who wanted to help someone out with a discounted iBook, but I called the guy, he says call back in the evening, so I do and he doesn't answer the phone. Then I call the next day, no answer. I call that evening, still no answer. Then I call using caller ID defeat (*67 for those that don't know) and he answers, but says call back in an hour. So I do. No answer. Now he's not answering at all, even if I use *67, so I guess he didn't want to help a brotha out. Ohwell, I think I got a pretty good deal still.

Panicking about money lately, but I forget my brother is sending me some dough from stock he sold. I sold a laptop on eBay and the package got ruined in the mail, so I'm out a bit of money until I can get the USPS insurance claims people to pay me back (even still I'm out some money, since I'm being generous and giving the guy back more than he paid so he won't leave negative feedback).

So my luck is bouncing all around lately. I found it odd when I went to the grocery store this evening and spent $24.13 on groceries (24 is the sum of two primes, 11 and 13), and then spent exactly $13.00 on gas when I filled up my car. So maybe I'll be dying this weekend ;-).

Random Pictures

So I've just been taking random pictures, just for fun.

High Contrast Pictures are Fun

Half Empty Glass

Not much new these days. I'm getting my finances back under control and doing more fun work at work. I'll be releasing a bugfix for the linux kernel in a few days, so now I feel mighty cool. Other than that nothing's going. Falcon Ridge next weekend, Annie coming to Rochester this. It's been a long time since we've actually gotten to see each other so it promises to be a good weekend.

The Gunks, the Traps

So I went rock climbing this weekend. I brought my camera along, but I came to realize something on my my first pitch of Shockley's Ceiling -- if you want the view you should see it for yourself.

Anyway, I started off my Saturday in the Gunks with Shockley's Ceiling. Stephen's brother Tom lead, and we made it up the first two pitches without incident. The third pitch gave him some trouble though, and he took two falls. I caught him both times at the expense of my left hand, which got eaten up by the belay rope. He's a lot heavier than me, so when he fell it dragged me up and pinned my hand on the rock. But that was okay, at least I caught his fall and was tied in so he was fine.

He eventually made it up over the Ceiling, but I couldn't get it by the fourth try. I blame it on my puny arms. So I ended up having to rap down and meet up with Matt (one of Tom's friends) and Stephen cleaned out the rest of the route.

Tom and I then went on to do Minty next, and I actually finished that one. It has a few tough parts but nothing spectactular. After those two, it was about 6pm, so we went out for dinner. And sleeping in tents.

Sunday (today) we went up Gelsa, which took me a while. The second and third pitches on it were amazing. Two had almost no handholds to speak of, and three was a really tight corner with not a lot of anything, and a loose rock. I fell once on three and needed to take a breather. But I figured it out after some thinking. The rap down off Gelsa was beautiful...it was an overhang, so you're rapping down air the whole way.

If it isn't obvious, I really dig rock climbing after my first taste, and hope to be again Real Soon Now (tm).

Carolling downtown, Porn

Very European buildings at Clinton Square

Becca threw together a song circle down in Clinton Square. We met up near the future stage of the Syracuse Jazz Festival, which takes place this weekend. Things were pretty good, but at about 10:30 a bum showed up. He kept rambling on about Christ and how we were all good Christians. Laugh. It was all fine and good until he started getting near Becca and Danya.

I tried to get myself between them and the bum...call it chauvenism or whatever you want. He kept slapping my back during songs and singing, "Hallelujah." Dennis got a bit fed up with him when he asked if he could, his breath wreaking of cheap booze. We left and the drunken bum got pissed off, then got one of his homeless friends to follow us down to the coffee shop, heckling us. I was almost hoping that they tried something so that I could try some of my Kenpo out ;-). Anyway we all made it safe and sound to the shop.

From Left to Right: Becca, Matt, Neil, Danya, the woman whose name I never remember, a guy whose name escapes me, and a kid whose name I can't remember

I'll fill in those names as they return to my memory.

Anyway, this weekend Stephen and I are hauling off to the gunks to do some rock climbing. Might get some snazzy pictures from 500 feet off the ground :).

I'm on cnet!

I'm not sure how happy I am about this. But hey, my name is in lights on the front page of news.cnet.com today, which is kinda fun. The interviewer guy of course was asking me loaded questions, with the angle that Sharp isn't doing its job and is using Open Source as a crutch to put out their project (by having people work on it for free). Of course I wouldn't buy into the trap, but I'm not sure the article came out looking great anyway. I love reporters. Anyway slashot might be picking us up. I'll be preparing to pitch some comments.

Anyway, bike riding tonight, and then to Clinton Square to sit around with the folkies. More news soon.

Nobody writes 'em like they used to

Went to Happy Endings for the Open Mic night.

Becca Singin'

Met up with the usual gang there, and some more of the old-skool kids like Gabe showed up, which is always nice. I taught the folks there about the universe, and they taught me about words, and a little about Plato. I've been reading a book Emily gave me for my birthday or x-mas or something over the winter, so that she and I can have a re-match and I can beat her with some original thoughts. Yes I like to win.

I was solicited by a prostitute on the way home. Stopped at a red light with the windows rolled down blasting Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying and singing along relatively in tune, when a woman approached my car from the literally the wrong side of the tracks and offered me her "best trick for $5." She was carrying a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag and staggering across the street. Needless to say I drove through the red light rather than deal with that sort of nonsense. Luckily there was no traffic trying to get through the intersection at 11:30pm, and I made it through alive. It was a close call, you never know how dangerous a drunken staggering prostitute can be in the middle of this mean old city.

I'm ready to be shot into space

Space Monkey

So I went home for the 4th of July. It was..well..interesting. A lot bit of annoyance at having to fix up my brother's new computer, which I'm giving to him, and even more annoyance at oversleeping. And yet more annoyance at people that should die, like James. But I've vowed not to worry about that bullshit anymore. So in a tribute to Pete I'll summarize my actual July 4th:

Wake up, bagel, kiss girlfriend goodbye, car, grandparents. Hellos, meet and greet, pictures, Medoc. Michelob. Flying Fish, Flying Fish, more hellos, Yeungling. Waves, hugs, car. Kat's house. Meets and greets, hugs, pina colada. Pina colada. Pina colada. Corona corona yeungling hot tub. Learning to swim again. Swimming laps. Drying off. Hugs. Waves. Driving home. Sleep.

I guess that's my Thursday in a nutshell. Annie came over Wednesday night and crashed at my dad's house, went to Virginia in the morning. I was sad to see her go. Sometimes it's just really nice to have people around, y'know?

The rest of the weekend was spent being pretty boring, working 12 hours on Jason's computer due to stupid problems, like the motherboard being labelled wrong, and the CPUs having the wrong (ie incompatible) stepping. Ohwell.

And yeah, I buzzed my head in a fit of sober rage Friday night, after watching Fight Club again. But yes, I was planning on head buzz before that anyway. It just made me do it that night. And no, I don't regret the decision despite female parental unit calling me funny names.

Cleaned up my old apartment tonight.

Bottom's Up!

Jason left a ton of crap there, so Chris and I ended up cleaning the place for four hours tonight. Still a little bit left to do tomorrow, but we're definitely getting our damage deposit back, no question about that. More news on the 'morrow, it's sleep time for this simian.

Moving moving moving....

Far too much moving lately. Went to Rochester Saturday morning, early-like.

Climbing at Rock Ventures

Saturday night lead to a heated debate between the scientists and the philosophers, with the philosophers claiming victory. At least the scientists recognized it was a draw :).

From left to right: Sherry, Mike, Fred, resting after moving all of Emily's stuff to the van

Sunday was moving day for Emily. Woke up early, started packing all of her stuff in the van. By about 6:00 we had her all moved in to her new apartment.

Emily sitting in her bookshelf at her new place

Stayed in Rochester Sunday night. Woke up real early Monday morning and drove back to the 'Cuse so I could go to work. Look for me on BugTraq soon.