Last Night in the Tower

So, the cable modem has been returned. The bed has been disassembled, and the toaster oven has been boxed up. I spent the last night in the Tower of Odd Smells on the sofa. I got up this morning and picked up the wedding programs from Signal Graphics and returned the the modem to Comcast, but not until after I went to Daz Bog and got myself an Americano and an orange scone to mark the end of a housing saga. I'm not sure if just over 2 years counts as a saga, but it had enough drama.

I think I'll miss the location and the many good restaurants within walking distance. The convenience of not having to drive everywhere was great. But this morning as I went out to my car and smelled the distinct odor of dog crap in the stairwell, I could safely say there were no regrets about getting out of the Tower.

Cycles of Violence

Today was Ride Your Bicycle to Work Day, which means it is the only day of bike commuting where I had to deal with congestion that has nothing to do with sinuses. At least this year there were no dead bodies.

It was good to ride today, as the Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Prerelease Tour was tonight. It was held downtown in the Magnolia Ballroom, so it would be more convenient for me to ride my bike there and then home than to try to park downtown. My coworker Jamie also had his bike and we locked ours together on a bike rack outside the ballroom with another bike.

The presentation was good and it looks like there is a ton of cool stuff in the upcoming releases of these two software families. I'm particularly interested in being able to call CF methods straight from Flex and the data management capabilities.

Speaking of presentations, my presentation at the Rocky Mountain Adobe Camp went well, especially for being my first at a conference. I think that out of the audience of about 16 there may have been 2 or 3 programmers, though, so everything I eloquently said went right over my audience's head. I should have asked up front how many were programmers. Oh well. The presentation went well, and the whole event was very good.

So anyway, back to tonight. After the features were touted, the products hyped, and the swag given away (to people other than myself), we went outside. Our bikes were nowhere to be seen. They were gone. So now I am up to three bikes stolen in this city. Jamie was the one who suffered more though, as his bike was much nicer than mine and had sentimental value to boot. The irony here is that the other bike, which had a much flimsier looking lock than mine, was left alone, probably because it looked beat up. Oh, and also, tomorrow would have been my last day of bicycle commuting.

I'm ready to leave now. This city has been pummeling me lately with insult and injury. A while back my rear bumper got scraped by someone, then came the parking tickets (one of which looks like it will be dismissed), then a very early morning run-in with neighbors, and now another bike stolen. It's like this neighborhood is condensing all the kicks it would give me if I stayed into a concentrated package.

I am ready to go now. I would like to believe that I will be leaving the buttheads behind. I know I won't, but an escape and fresh start sounds mighty, mighty good to me.

The Weekend in Briefs

Man, what a weekend. Too much to tell with too little time to tell it. So here's the rundown:

Friday, I went to a birthday party for Rachel, which involved contra dancing which is an experience in and of itself. It is a different world, and one not well suited for a perfectionist like myself. It was fun, but when the person calling the dance comes off the stage to try to correct the mess you're making, it's probably not a good thing. ;) And I have video ... later!

Saturday, Jen and I went and got yummy breakfast at Das Meyer and paid for our cake. We then packed the rest of the day, and it was intense. I am so amazed at Jen's packing abilities. Once we came up with a plan, she was a force of Nature going through and putting the things I sorted into boxes. There is still some to go, but I am no longer crushed under the task. I love my woman!

Today (Sunday), I went to Aspen Grove for the last time and then went down to celebrate Father's Day with my folks. It is the first time in a long while my Dad has been close by in order to celebrate. We had some pizza and I helped them clean camp sites. Now that's what I call a party. I came home from that, grabbed a quick nap and then made it over to the pre-Adobe Camp BBQ at David's house. John had cooked up a messed of delicious smoked meats. I stayed for a while before coming home to practice my presentation for tomorrow. Now it is time to pack a little more before going to bed. It is a crazy busy week. Here's the preview:

Rocky Mountain Adobe Camp all day tomorrow, packing and cleaning after work on Tuesday, the ColdFusion 9/Flash Builder 4 event after work on Wednesday, a project due on Thursday, Jen's mother's birthday on Friday, followed with breakfast with Brian and moving to Boulder on Saturday. Whew! This is gonna be intense!

Parting Gifts

Honestly, I'm surprised how calm I am. My parents came up for dinner, which was at Little India and fantastic. We went down to my car so I could drive them to the light rail station when I discovered 2 yellow envelopes sticking out of the door of my car. Yellow envelopes are bad. These are jolly missives from the Parking Violations Bureau letting you know you owe them money for some bad, bad thing you've done.

I was pretty pissed. Am pissed? I dunno. I'm strangely calm. I couldn't figure out what they were ticketing me for. As is evidenced in the photo above, I am not sticking out into the driveway. Turns out there is an obscure rule that earns you a $25 ticket for parking within 5 feet of a driveway. Who knew? Of course, the irony is that I made a freaking parking map for this area.

The part that chaps my hide, and I'm going to see if they can do this, is that I received two tickets on the same day within 6 hours of each other. They came at 4:52 AM and 10:35 AM respectively. I'm hoping there is a 24 hour limit or something. Otherwise it's a $50 @#$@! you present from this place. I'll add that to the two stolen bikes, the scrapes on my rear bumper, and the foul foam that bubbles out of my sink. Only 9 days to go...

And Then There Were Pictures

So, they've been a while coming, but I now have pictures up from my friend Angie's visit and my friend Laura's birthday. There are even pictures from when Jen and I went to get our wedding license. They are all up in my gallery and ready for you to adore them. ADORE NOW!

Gamedra Strikes Again

I'm taking a break from working on my other computer to work on this computer to tell you about Gamedra vs. the Tower of Odd Smells. I figured it would be a waste to leave this apartment without taking advantage of the cool rooftop patio, especially after it got remodeled. So I called up a few friends, reserved the patio, and got cooking.

Friday night I made 3 different pies: vinegar pie with coconut, avocado pie, and apple rosewaterm, which I was quite pleased with. I also made some dill pickle roll-ups, a family favorite. The next morning Jen made the Red Lobster cheese biscuits while I did up the ribs and made the sauce for those. We took the maddeningly slow elevator to the top and set up shop.

We had a good crowd. It is dicey to mix three distinct friend groups, but no one got pitched over the railing. I was afraid we would run out of ribs, but there were a few people who didn't show, so I actually have a good stash of ribs to eat this week. Once the clouds got dark and the wind picked up, we moved to the inner room upstairs and played some Balderdash. It was good to see folks, but I was a bit too distracted with cooking to really get to hang out with people. Something to remember for the future. Thanks to everyone who came!

The rest of the evening was spent cleaning and recuperating. The next day (that'd be today, I guess) it was time for church and catching up on some of the things left undone yesterday. I practiced my presentation for Rocky Mountain Adobe Camp, and fixed a few things in it. I still have to cut about 15 minutes off of it or learn to speak faster. We'll see what I can do. It's on Monday the 22nd, so I have a week to whip it into shape. Where's my cat-o-nine-tails?

Gremlins

So, it hasn't been a good week for me in tech. My laptop started having trouble playing back audio and was making distressing chattering noises. It even corrupted a file due to a bad sector of the disk. This is something I've encountered before, and a good reformat takes care of it, for a while at least.

I reformatted my laptop on Sunday, but it was a struggle. First I couldn't gain access to the BIOS to change the boot order to get the laptop to boot from my installation CD. Then, once I figured out how to do a reformat, I twice was blocked from reformatting by a bad sector on the hard drive. Fortunately restoring to the factory image did work, so I was up and running.

Before this, I obviously backed up all my files on the external hard drive I got back in August. Now today, 2 days after my reformatting, my hard drive is now inaccessible. I think it is just the power brick, but if it is not, I am going to be livid, as most every picture I have is on it. Seriously? Two days after putting everything on there? That's when it breaks? @$#$!

And on top of that, I spent a good long while downloading a ZIP of some pictures from this last week, and the file was corrupted in the download process. I'm trying another method of downloading, so hopefully that will work. It's only going to take another hour according to my FTP client. :(

UPDATE: The FTP client, though slow, did a successful job of downloading the ZIP. I think my install of Chrome is bad. It mangled some Windows updates I tried to download too. More gremlins...

Engagement Photos

Two weekends ago, Jen's friend Kerri took some engagement photos for us. Sure, we planned our wedding before our engagement, but we almost waited until the wedding to take the engagement pictures. Actually, that was calculated so we could have some green in our pictures rather than the brown and white of Colorado in February.

We went to the CU campus and clowned around for a bit while Kerri took pictures. Here's some of the highlights. Thanks, Kerri!

Remiss

Yikes, stripes! It has been a while since I have posted. It has been a busy couple of weeks with plenty of wedding logisticizing and work. My friend Angie also was in town from Switzerland, so this last week saw a lot of time spent with her and my friend Dan.

So quickly, here are some things I did this week:

• Finished up a project working with a really horrid open source video player.
• Started working on my presentation for Rocky Mountain Adobe Camp, trying to get back into Sync SWF development.
• Went to several new places with Dan and Angie, notably Beatrice & Woodsley and Sweet Action. Beatrice & Woodsley is notable for its amazing decor (pictures forthcoming) and fantastic, expensive cocktails. Sweet Action is notable for fantastic and original ice cream. Also good was Spicy Basil, a new (to me) place on Broadway.
• Celebrated Laura's birthday down in deepest darkest Highlands Ranch and delivered the birthday lobster on a stick (pictures forthcoming on that too).
• Went hiking with Angie on Lookout Mountain above Golden amongst the wildflowers and graves of Wild West showmen.
• Got a wedding license with Jen and then went with her and Angie to The Kitchen in Boulder where I had some mindblowingly good lamb and some surprisingly bad cheese.
• Did a walk through of the wedding site with our photographer and followed up with plenty of other wedding logistics and a viewing of the move Up, which is truly fantastic and wonderful. See it with someone you love.
• Went to church and then, along with my parents, succumbed to Italian kitsch at Buca di Beppo. The portions there are truly monstrous. I had forgotten this, but am now reminded by the several pounds of carbonara in my fridge.

I've got quite a bit of photography from the last week. Those will be up, but first I need to reformat my laptop. That is the task for the rest of today. Now where are all my software discs at?