Catching Up, Part Two
Well, so much for updating this every night this week. Tuesday was my birthday, so I took the night off, and the next day, my laptop died. More on that later. So now I continue with:
Where The Hell I've Been
I've only spent two days in the office this month. The rest of the time, I've been in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania. It's a little town about an hour north of Pittsburgh, and is home to the North Country Brewing Company, and Slippery Rock University (which has about three times the population of the town around it). This area is like a small enclave devoted to the late 1980s. The blue jeans are artistically ripped, hairspray has never been more popular, and the wild mullet still roams free. Slippery Rock, being a college town, is rather more trendy, but you don't have to go far outside town to see what I mean.
We're installing a brand-new, high-tech, never-installed-or-field-tested-before card system. I had help the first two weeks I was up here; this week, it's just been me. Crunch time is here, the system is supposed to go live next week, and I'm not done. On the plus side, everything I've installed has worked; it's just that there's so much of it to do. No pressure. Setting these readers up requires network configuration through my laptop (Yay! I finally get to use those networking classes!), and when it snow-crashed and died yesterday, I was in a bit of a bind. But I was able to borrow one from the IT department and keep rolling; it could have been much worse. [1]
The weather up here has been variable. The first two weeks were oppressively hot and muggy; early this week it was quite pleasant, and now it's straying back toward hot and muggy. It's a bad sign when you're in a basement laundry room with no ventilation, saying "At least we're not outside!"
One thing I didn't know about Slippery Rock is that it's the closest town to where the SCA holds Pennsic War. [2] As you drive up I-79, if you look to the left as you're heading north, you see this incredible little city of tents and pavilions, and if your timing is right, you see prefab castle walls and towers and a siege going on. If I could have fit my armor into my luggage, I might have run off to join them.
There are no pictures from this trip. No time to take them, no weather good enough to justify it, and no place notable enough. The entire area is quite pretty, but it's rather blandly bucolic. Lots of corn.
What The Hell I've Been Doing
Frankly, not much. Back in June and July, I tried a couple of short kayaking classes, one on Chickamauga Creek, one on the Tennessee River, and I really enjoyed it. [3] I haven't had the time or the energy since, though; hopefully that'll change come fall (and before it gets too cold). Been relentlessly smiting evil in City of Heroes. Still making it to aikido class, except when I'm not in town; it's been a long month without a chance for any more exercise than lugging around my (very heavy) laptop bag.
Went to a one-day weapon seminar at the dojo last weekend; the weapon of choice was escrima sticks. I can at least say that I'm not the most uncoordinated person there. But the combination of not keeping a death grip on your sticks, keeping both hands moving, turning your body--woops, loosen up on those sticks again--and keeping your feet moving all at the same time was very difficult. But it was also a lot of fun, blisters and all. The episode of Human Weapon about escrima was probably the best one of the series so far [4], so I was primed to give it a try. I got whacked on the knuckles a couple of times, but I think everyone else did as well.
What The Hell Is Coming Up
Well, there's no telling when I might have to come back up here to do some more work on this installation; I will almost certainly be having to do so later this year as new dorms are built. Dragon*Con is at the end of the month; I'll be attending, camera and booze in hand. I currently plan to take a short vacation in Destin with friends in the middle of September. And after that...well, we'll see; I may have big news on the travel front in the next week or so.
In more immediate plans, look for my review of the latest Harry Potter film in the next couple of days, among other reviews.
[1] I was kind of hoping the office would tell me to go buy a new one. No such luck; they overnighted a spare to me.
[2] A war between the East and Middle Kingdoms. Loser gets Pittsburgh.
[3] Sandra was there as well, coincidentally, so at least I had someone available to laugh at me. Very important.
[4] An interesting show in some respects. I'll detail my thoughts on it in a later post.
Where The Hell I've Been
I've only spent two days in the office this month. The rest of the time, I've been in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania. It's a little town about an hour north of Pittsburgh, and is home to the North Country Brewing Company, and Slippery Rock University (which has about three times the population of the town around it). This area is like a small enclave devoted to the late 1980s. The blue jeans are artistically ripped, hairspray has never been more popular, and the wild mullet still roams free. Slippery Rock, being a college town, is rather more trendy, but you don't have to go far outside town to see what I mean.
We're installing a brand-new, high-tech, never-installed-or-field-tested-before card system. I had help the first two weeks I was up here; this week, it's just been me. Crunch time is here, the system is supposed to go live next week, and I'm not done. On the plus side, everything I've installed has worked; it's just that there's so much of it to do. No pressure. Setting these readers up requires network configuration through my laptop (Yay! I finally get to use those networking classes!), and when it snow-crashed and died yesterday, I was in a bit of a bind. But I was able to borrow one from the IT department and keep rolling; it could have been much worse. [1]
The weather up here has been variable. The first two weeks were oppressively hot and muggy; early this week it was quite pleasant, and now it's straying back toward hot and muggy. It's a bad sign when you're in a basement laundry room with no ventilation, saying "At least we're not outside!"
One thing I didn't know about Slippery Rock is that it's the closest town to where the SCA holds Pennsic War. [2] As you drive up I-79, if you look to the left as you're heading north, you see this incredible little city of tents and pavilions, and if your timing is right, you see prefab castle walls and towers and a siege going on. If I could have fit my armor into my luggage, I might have run off to join them.
There are no pictures from this trip. No time to take them, no weather good enough to justify it, and no place notable enough. The entire area is quite pretty, but it's rather blandly bucolic. Lots of corn.
What The Hell I've Been Doing
Frankly, not much. Back in June and July, I tried a couple of short kayaking classes, one on Chickamauga Creek, one on the Tennessee River, and I really enjoyed it. [3] I haven't had the time or the energy since, though; hopefully that'll change come fall (and before it gets too cold). Been relentlessly smiting evil in City of Heroes. Still making it to aikido class, except when I'm not in town; it's been a long month without a chance for any more exercise than lugging around my (very heavy) laptop bag.
Went to a one-day weapon seminar at the dojo last weekend; the weapon of choice was escrima sticks. I can at least say that I'm not the most uncoordinated person there. But the combination of not keeping a death grip on your sticks, keeping both hands moving, turning your body--woops, loosen up on those sticks again--and keeping your feet moving all at the same time was very difficult. But it was also a lot of fun, blisters and all. The episode of Human Weapon about escrima was probably the best one of the series so far [4], so I was primed to give it a try. I got whacked on the knuckles a couple of times, but I think everyone else did as well.
What The Hell Is Coming Up
Well, there's no telling when I might have to come back up here to do some more work on this installation; I will almost certainly be having to do so later this year as new dorms are built. Dragon*Con is at the end of the month; I'll be attending, camera and booze in hand. I currently plan to take a short vacation in Destin with friends in the middle of September. And after that...well, we'll see; I may have big news on the travel front in the next week or so.
In more immediate plans, look for my review of the latest Harry Potter film in the next couple of days, among other reviews.
[1] I was kind of hoping the office would tell me to go buy a new one. No such luck; they overnighted a spare to me.
[2] A war between the East and Middle Kingdoms. Loser gets Pittsburgh.
[3] Sandra was there as well, coincidentally, so at least I had someone available to laugh at me. Very important.
[4] An interesting show in some respects. I'll detail my thoughts on it in a later post.
posted by Matt at
7:55 PM
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