Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…
Home! We arrived around 7:15 tonight, after a very smooth drive from Sevierville, TN. We went through Champaign around 5pm and stopped in for some BW3 which tasted great.
Many thanks to David and Libby for being such great hosts while we were in Durham, we had a great time and hope to visit again sometime.
Some Traval Statistics:
Total Miles: 2,800
Average Miles/Gallon: 24.62 (damn mountains)
Average Price/Gallon: $1.85
Gettysburg was very interesting yesterday. We purchased a 2 hour audio tour and drove around it ourselves rather than hiring a park guide to ride along with us. It turned out to be a gorgeous day and I took quite a few pictures. We got on the road around 2:30 or so.
We arrived and checked into our hotel here in DC at about 5pm yesterday. The drive from Gettysburg went very fast, even with our accidental detour to Dulles International Airport (the GPS didn’t notify us of our correct turn/exit until the lanes were already divided). The GPS is quite unreliable here, as soon as we got around DC limits it showed us driving all over the map when we were just sitting in traffic.
Shortly after unloading in the hotel, we figured we would take a quick stroll around some of the monuments before grabbing some dinner. Well, that “quick stroll” turned into quite a long walk – we didn’t eat until 9:30. After eating, we went and re-toured them to get pictures at night. The pictures look awesome, but it was 12:30am before we made it back to the hotel, exhausted and with very sore feet. Ana’s still sleeping.
We got up at 4am and were on the road by 5. 12 1/2 hours later, we’re finally in the hotel in Chambersburg, PA. The drive wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, everything from Ohio on was very beautiful. We made two pit stops for probably a total of 45 minutes, and were held up for another 40 or so on the interstate in Maryland due to an accident a few miles up (it apparently took them several hours to get the accident cleared up, luckily we caught the tail end of it).
Time to head out for some dinner I think. The hotel has free dsl so I may try and post the 3 or 4 pictures I took from the car. And there’s always the crappy camera pics.
We went shopping tonight for some more boring, house related stuffs. First was a Shop Vac vacuum for garage/basement cleanups. Second was an electric yard edger. by Weed Eater. That exciting purchase was topped off with a sprinkler hose, faucet splitter, and a few new shirts for work. Like I said, pretty boring, even if they were needed.
Really looking forward to the long weekend. Ana’s sister is going to be in town and we’ll probably shoot off some fireworks!
I thought I’d pass along a couple of very useful utilities I’ve been running for a little while now in Windows. One is the virtual desktop manager Virtual Dimension first brought to my attention by David. There are a few quirks but it works better than a couple other ones I’ve tried (and given up on) in the past. This is the first app I’ve found for which transparency is actually useful.
The other utility is Post-it Software Notes by 3M which I’ve found to be a fantastic replacement for a half dozen copes of notepad running at any given time filled with some text I don’t want to try and remember. Any notes you have open are saved, so they reopen after reboots; damn handy. I’m currently using the Lite/Free version but will probably purchase Standard $15.
Both are great apps and definitely worth checking out if you’re on Windows.
As reported earlier, the sump line was connected incorrectly. Today I took off work and called Construx, expecting a quick conversation followed by them coming out to take care of it. Nope, suprise – they are done. They consider that since it’s functioning, their job is complete. The issue is dead.
So now we have to make a decision – dig and fix it ourselves or leave it alone. There’s really no advantage to ‘fixing’ it, since it does indeed work and is buried. I guess it’s just anger speaking that wants it done the way they originally said. Not sure what we’ll do yet.
I just synchronized my Treo over the Sprint PCS Vision connection. I think it’s pretty damn cool!
You may recall that I had my laptop repaired and when it came back, the battery was wrapped and labeled defective, with a warning saying that any damage caused by it would void my warranty. Well I’m sick and tired of being tethered to a power source, and don’t want to spend the money on a new battery. So tonight I unwrapped and plugged the battery in and, as expected, everything’s working fine. Whee, no more power cord.
Sitting here in Cheddar’s, having just ordered… shit just got notified they don’t have guinness on tap anymore- no black and tan for me. 
anyhow we’re heading to see Chronicle’s of Riddick later on. Pitch Black was awesome, hopefully this won’t disappoint.
Ana and I went to the annual Carillon Festival in Washington Park this evening. We were there for about 2 hours – had a picnic and enjoyed the music. If you are interested in what the bells sound like, I have two avi files up at here and here (3MB and 16MB respectively). A few other pictures were also taken.
And a note about removing my capslock key – no I haven’t gone crazy, I was just getting annoyed today with it. If it behaves on the top of my monitor I may think about putting it back on. Only time will tell.
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