A Geek in Beantown

Maximum dorkitude!

This weekend, Dad and Cathy were in town so I met with the family for dinner on Friday. A smaller group of us has breakfast on Sunday morning where we got to spend time talking and visiting together. It was lovely.

In between those, we had a LAN party at Mosaic Commons. We started our World of Warcraft guild as a bunch of locals who already knew each other and would hang out semi-regularly. Over time, our guild has grown. We now have almost 100 different accounts playing ~280 different characters and still we have many, many people in the local area or within a reasonable drive. So we decided we'd all bring our various computers, etc and hang out together for the day.

We play WoW, we played Rock Band, there were naps had, lots of food was consumed (chicken & bean enchiladas, beef stew, veggie platters, fruit trays, cheese plates, homemade bread from Colorado, banana bread, homemade cinnamon rolls, homemade twice baked potatoes, brownies,, pancakes and other food that I'm forgetting now).

We started arriving a little before 11 am and the place was cleared out by 11 pm. There was a tour of the community, so we had non-gamers visit a bunch of times. Other people who live in the community also visited to see what was up. A bunch of people hung out and watched us play and chatted. Our non-local members were online with us via vent (think voice communication) and a few people had web cams up. 

There was so much laughter and joy at being together and hanging out that we're going to do this again sometime. 

What a great weekend!

Friday fill-ins #168

Janet's still at it...

1. Today I will be _happy to see my dad and stepmom_.
2. _I'm looking forward to a lot of laughter tomorrow_ and I say why not?
3. What do you think of _this weather! Is it really spring?_
4. At _Starbucks, I think,_ it's free Pastry Day til 1030 Friday!
5. People say that what we're all seeking is _someone to share a smile with_.
6. The image I cherish most is _the way he looks at me_.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to _dinner with the family (drat, forgot to bring my niece's Xmas present with me!)_, tomorrow my plans include _hanging out at Dave's where we're having a LAN party with some of our World of Warcraft guildies_ and Sunday, I want to _have brunch with my family and enjoy my visit with them_!

Hope you have a great weekend all!

Switched to Win7

In an attempt to make my laptop happier when I am playing World of Warcraft (because it's fine for all other purposes), I decided to upgrade to Windows 7, 64 bit. I have enough memory and the right kind of processor and if this worked, it would be a much cheaper way of making me happy.

So I went to my list of Installed software notes and skimmed through it. I remembered to deauthorize iTunes. I checked to see if any new software had been installed since my last update to the list. Then I copied some of my data that isn't backed up by Mozy (ZOMG, I love this service so please let me know if you'd like to sign up for it and I can refer you and get you a discount). Anyway, I thought I'd gotten everything from my list, but I missed 2 things: my Outlook data file and the password db from Password Plus. I still have the passwords on my old Treo, but I can't seem to find the cable to re-sync it back to the laptop and haven't gotten around to entering all of those passwords into my Pre yet. Ugh. I'm bummed about Outlook as well, even though it's been synced to the Pre. I liked having an offline calendar. Hopefully I have everyone's birthdays still.

Anyway, WoW is running nicely so far. Better framerates than it was getting with XP. I'm just bummed about the passwords and my calendar.

That was a doozy!

Last Thursday night I went to bed at normal time (around 11), but woke at 4 am feeling really queasy. I got up and proceeded to throw up. Rar. I went back to bed, but was still feeling woozy. Eventually I went to my own bed because I could tell that I wasn't done being sick. It turned out that I had a really bad stomach bug and didn't manage to eat anything until dinner on Friday (white rice with a little butter) so I could take ibuprofen (I had a fever of 101 when I got around to checking it). And then I went back to bed. Until Saturday at 10 am. I woke up from time to time during this crazy 35 hour stretch, but not for longer than 30 minutes. I was awake until about 10 pm on Saturday and then slept until 8 on Sunday.

I hope that doesn't happen again for a long time!

Still exercising

So I kept up the walking through the whole month of Feb. On average, 3 days a week. I'm working on upping that average. Anyway, since I stuck with it, I decided it was time to get exercised bras. (Exciting, eh?) They're pretty comfy except for the seam in the back. But definitely better than wearing an old underwire bra.

My weight hasn't changed, but I feel like I have more energy in the mornings. That's part of what gets me motivated to drive into work an hour early. 

Re: my IPod. Brad told me how to set it so it would bookmark each track. I've finally figured out that while it might reset itself to track one when I charge it, if I find the track I was on, it picks up again where I was. So win! And with one iPod. The new (refurbished, bright pink 16G) iPod because the old one decided it was no longer interested in talking to any computer other than to charge.

I have to load more music and books on it. Right now I just have the 2 books that I got in a couple weeks ago. But I'm excited that I can swap between music and books. Thank you, Brad!

Happy birthday, Bill!

Yesterday was my stepfather's 85th birthday. 85 years! Impressive. (Link 1, link 2)

We had a crazy busy weekend at home, including social plans on Friday and Saturday plus helping friends move on Sunday morning.

Anyway, happy birthday, Bill!