Had a great summer weekend

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I took a 3 day weekend and spent friday on a hike and drive in north central MA, then headed down to Long Island for my friend Pat’s 40th birthday.

I’ll post a few pictures from the hike later. I went to a trail system near Long Pond, which is sort of near Athol and Royalston, MA. These are the kinds of areas I like in MA – they’re only lightly populated and generally aren’t afflicted with the sort of run down strip mall retail blight you find is so much of the more populated areas of MA. Plus you occasionally run into one of the quaint old towns with a public square and grand old houses.

The hike itself was decent. I found what would have been a spectacular waterfall had I gone in the early spring. It was still running enough for it to look cool, and Soolin had a blast clambering all over the place. We also made our way to a rock ledge that sat about 1100 ft above long pond and looked out over the surrounding area. All told it was about 4-5 miles round trip over generally really easy terrain – the only hard stuff was near the steep sections of the creek that fed the waterfall. The bugs were annoying but not overwhelming and the weather was excellent.

I also took a leisurely drive home in the afternoon, choosing to try and hug the east side of the Quabbin reservoir since I had not yet seen that side of it, but I managed to miss a turn and ended up sort of lost. It was funny in that I ended up in South Barre, a town my friend Andrew used to live in where I visited him occasionally, so suddenly I had this ‘aha! I know where I am!’ moment after a half hour of feeling like I was heading in the wrong direction.

Saturday I headed down to LI and went to Pat’s supposedly surprise 40th birthday. I showed up first and ended up being the only surprise for Pat because he showed up second. All in all we had a blast, with tons of kids running around, lots of beer, and a ton of jumping in the pool.

Sunday I went to a Father’s Day party at my sister’s inlaws place. They had a pool too and Soolin had a blast jumping in after toys. Kir’s inlaws are great cooks and the food was fantastic.

I’ve grown to love the ferries – that’s how I got home. Despite only booking a reservation Sunday morning, I managed to get on the 7:30 ferry and I was home in bed by 10:30. All in all a great summer weekend. I had so much fun I want to go back again next weekend.

Don’t eat the yellow snow

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While I don’t comment on it much here, I was in a very raucous co-ed fraternity in college. We threw the best parties by far, for at least a couple of years we had the largest membership of any of the social groups on campus, and for 2 of the years my house was ground zero for party central. My friend’s Dad bought a house that was adjacent to campus as an investment property and we lived there, host to more keg parties than I can possibly recall. We were the generation who grew up thinking Animal House defined what college life was like, cartoonish as it was, and on several levels we strove to live up to the standards set in the movie.

We had our fraternity pledge party at the house for several years, and one of those years it was an absolutely brutally cold night, as in you could spit and it would freeze almost immediately. We had the kegs out on the back porch, and there was a balcony up above it that connected to my bedroom. At one point several of us were standing out on the porch braving the cold, smoking cigarettes and shooting the breeze. A friend of our, so drunk he could barely walk, came out of the house and made his way down the steps. There was a sheet of plywood at the foot of the stairs that we had put there because in the preceding week it had become so muddy that it sucked trying to get into the house. None of us knew it, but a thin veneer of ice had formed on the plywood, and when his foot hit that his legs went out from under him. He ened up sprawled on his back at the foot of the stairs, all of us including him laughing.

As he collapsed, what appeared to be snow started to fall over the plywood. Our friend stuck out his tongue and started to try and catch flakes with his mouth, rolling on the plywood, a huge grin on, giggling like a little kid. ‘It’s snowing, it’s snowing!’ he was saying.

I noticed the snow mysteriously seemed to be falling in a very localized area around the plywood, so I poked my head over the edge of the porch to figure out what was happening. I looked up and saw another friend on the balcony above relieving himself over the railing. Barely able to stop laughing I turned to the guy on the plywood and said ‘umm, that’s not snow dude…’

Fortunately for him he was too drunk to realize, and as the snowfall ceased he gathered himself up and wandered off into the night. I’ll never forget the look of childlike delight on his face as the ‘snow’ came down though and I still laugh to think of it.

Play Red Orchestra for free on me

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Red Orchestra is a fantastic fps that simulates combat in WWII on the eastern front. I’ve written about it a couple of times before. Though I don’t play much anymore it’s still my current fave fps. They recently released a major engine and content update (more players per match, new maps, etc) and to celebrate they gave all players 2 free passes they can give to friends so their friends can try the game. First 2 folks to say the word get a free pass from me. Not sure how long it lasts, probably at least a couple of days, certainly long enough to get a feel for the game, and it’s cheap enough to buy if you end up liking it. Post in the comments to get your pass.

For what it’s worth, I thought the Sopranos finale was…

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…great. Don’t read any further if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to spoil it for yourself.

There’s lots of sturm and drang and angry fans bitching on the net about how unhappy they are with the ending. I thought it was great – it left things open to the viewer’s interpretation, with lots of possibilities to consider, and it fit perfectly with the ambiguity that was a central theme of the show over the years. Honestly, what did people want, that Tony should get whacked and be done with it? We’ve seen that ending in any number of mafia movies and personally I would have been a lot less satisfied with that ending, whereas what we have instead is an ending that lets you imagine Tony being whacked as one possibility amongst many. I can’t imagine a better ending, and it’s left everyone talking about it. What more could you ask for?

Consider adding testdisk to your toolkit

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I’ve lost partitions more than once due to failed linux installs, my own error, and data integrity issues, and over the years I’ve used many tools to recover. Almost all of them have been commercial solutions. Enter Testdisk, a free, open source, cross platform data recovery software. There are binaries and a recovery disk image there, as well as Photorec, a tool designed to help recover files from digital camera memory cards, which is another category of tool I’ve purchased in the past. Testdisk has the broadest format support I’ve seen in a tool and you can’t beat the price.

Housefire scare

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I lost two friends in college to a house fire and I’ve been nervous about them ever since. Last night I got the shit scared out of me by a keening smoke alarm. I went to bed around 12 after watching the Sopranos and Tudors finales. I fell asleep and woke some time later to the smoke alarm going off. I woke up pretty quickly, popped the light on and noticed smoke seeping under the door. Shit! I did just like they taught you in elementary school and felt the door for heat. There was none so I grabbed a fire extinguisher (I keep one in my closet) and popped open the door. The house was thick with smoke. I started running through the house popping on lights to try and find the source of it. It had a very funny smell and at first I thought it was electrical, but eventually I found that a burner in the kitchen was on and had started a fire in the pan I cooked my dinner in. The lid was on it and it had been simmering away for over an hour. I had a tex mex burger with jalape

A friday laugh

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So I noticed this great quote in a discussion over on metafilter.com by Benny Andajetze which cracked me up:

If Dumbya causes the collapse of the Republican party, can we say they were hoist with their own retard?

Cracked me up and should be at least worth a smile to anyone with sensibilities similar to mine.

Visit new york, have fun, then catch cold

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Sorry for the lack of posting. I went to NY for a long holiday weekend and had a great time for half of it, then came down with a cold which I caught from Mike and I’m still not recovered from it. Spent the worst night in recent memory due to this at the Lord’s house, with glands that felt like they had swollen to the size of baseballs and a throat so constricted I could not swallow. Sucked, basically. I feel like I’m on the mend but it’s been slow so far. Hopefully things will return to normal by next week.