2 Bit Hacker

This past Saturday was the big housewarming party for Meg and I. Unfortunately, Meg got sick around the middle of last week, and I managed to catch the bug near the end of last week, so we weren’t feeling great when it came time to get ready, but with a lot of help from Meg’s mom and my dad, the party went off pretty well. Big thanks out to everyone who came out to help us celebrate, and to anyone who couldn’t make it, we hope to provide you with plenty of opportunity to visit in the future. In the meantime, I finally took some pictures of the house now that it has some furniture in it.

I was a little out of it from the cold and being dosed up on DayQuil, but I think everyone had a good time. We’re considering having a Halloween party, but I’m not sure if we’ll be up for another party in just a month or not. See how we feel after recovering from these colds, I guess.

One pretty awesome thing that came out of the party was Tom talking Meg into letting me go to the Maker Faire in New York. He was just fishing for someone to drive Jason back up to NH so he wouldn’t have to, but I’m really glad I went, and it turned out that I didn’t even have to drive.

The Faire was held at the New York Hall of Science and had a wide array of crafters, makers, artists and tinkerers of pretty much every discipline. One tent was devoted entirely to home grown 3D printers, some made with parts produced by others. There was also a group from HoSARC, an amateur radio club based at the Hall of Science, attempting to communicate with amateur radio satellites as they passed overhead. Unfortunately, the attempt we were present for was unsuccessful, but it was pretty interesting all the same.

We also took some time to wander away from the Faire and check out the few remaining structures from the 1964 World’s Fair, including the Unisphere, the Tent of Tomorrow and the observation towers. I’m generally pretty interested in urban decay, but this site in particular is somewhat depressing. After seeing the state of the NY State Pavilion, I decided to do some scrounging online, and it appears that it was pretty impressive during the fair, but fell into disuse and disrepair almost immediately afterward. There was an effort a few years ago to preserve what was left of a NY road map that once covered the floor of the Tent, but I had little luck finding out the final status of that project, and the floor is now simply covered in gravel.

After wandering around that area and snapping a bunch of pictures, we headed back to the Maker Faire to catch ArcAttack and their musical Tesla coils. My spirits were suitably relifted by the arcs of musical plasma and my efforts to capture them on film (or in pixels, anyway.) Once that show was over we decided to pack up and head back to NH.

Another weekend packed to the gills with fun, friends, and fascinating stuff. I’d like to have a quiet weekend at home at some point, but it’s looking like that might be a ways off still.

This past weekend, Meg and I celebrated our one year anniversary with a full weekend of running around and having a great time. Technically our anniversary isn’t until Friday, but with the housewarming looming up on Saturday, we decided to celebrate early before we get all stressed out with getting the house ready.

We started off heading down to Boston for a Cake concert at the Orpherum Theater. It was Meg’s first time seeing Cake, and my second. She had giving me tickets to it for my birthday, and the timing just worked out such that we made it part of our anniversary. It was a great show, and we both had an awesome time. Our seats were on the mezzanine, near the front in the center, so we had a great view of the stage.

After the show we took the subway back to our hotel, Le Meridien in Cambridge. We stayed there on Valentine’s Day, and it’s a great hotel. Very comfortable and nicely decorated.

In the morning we woke up early and set out for the Flea at MIT, a monthly flea market of computer, electronic, and radio stuff. I didn’t find anything that compelled me to part with my money, but Meg found a gas mask for a steampunk project. Last month I picked up a rack mount APC UPS for my garage datacenter project, but I still need to pick up some new batteries for it. We also met up with the Coopers at the flea, and we carpooled down to King Richard’s Faire for the afternoon.

We had gone down there last year shortly after we started dating, and I had bought a necklace for Meg at the time. This year she got a pair or earings from Uncommon Adornments and a spinner ring. I also got to see one of the jousts for the first time this trip, and we generally acted silly for the afternoon and had a great time.

All in all, it was a great weekend, and I’m very much looking forward to spending another year with my Meggy-girl.