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.

Well, I decided that paying off my rent debt was more important than a new laptop, so I’ve done the financially responsible thing and put more tax return toward that. Now I just have to pay off a couple smaller debts and I’ll be debt free once again. Yay!

In other news, the apartment building we’re living in is up for sale. Looks like the asking price is about $350k, and I’m trying to think of a way to get together with our friends on the first floor to buy the building. One person suggested working out a system by which the building is split into individual condo units and purchased separately, but I have no idea whatsoever on how to go about doing such a thing.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on in life. We had a party for Delia’s birthday last night (I’m actually still awake from that, haven’t felt the inclination to sleep yet.) Much fun was had, lots of Karaoke Revolution, a surprising amount of alcohol and more than enough pizza. I’m sure Delia will post more about it at some point.

Not really sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my weekend. I’ve been tossing around the idea of going geocaching, since I haven’t done that in quite a while. I should do some work on the SimPro stuff as well. Maybe I’ll even get a chance to work on one of my own projects for a change.

I really should get back into the habit of updating this thing more often, though I’m not sure I want to write much till I figure out what I want to do with my LiveJournal. I suppose I could write a plugin for WordPress to cross-post, but I haven’t really felt motivated to do that yet, though WP’s plugin API looks to make such a task a lot easier, providing hooks at publish time, unlike MT, where I had to do things at build-time.

Anyway, not a whole lot going on at the moment. Friday night we went to Amanda’s graduation party with Melody. We got there kind-of late, after a roving thunderstorm kind-of killed the bonfire, so we just played a little Guilty Gear Isuka and a lot of Apples to Apples before taking a wandering route back to Melody’s place to drop her off.

Delia and I then wasted all of Saturday playing World of Warcraft. She’s got a level 25 Tauren Druid, and I was questing with her on my 24 Undead Warlock. It was fun, though we did completely waste the day away. I did manage to install Ubuntu on Delia’s new-to-her laptop, a Gateway Solo 2500. It’s not a bad little laptop, though it’s battery life seems to be pretty short. Ubuntu appears to be running fine, though I have yet to get audio to work properly. I never have much luck with ISA-based soundcards.

Sunday was Delia’s cousin’s graduation party. Delia left before I got up (I stayed up to late fiddling with her laptop and playing WoW) and I only managed to get there for the last half hour or so. We then met up with Melody at Taco Bell for lunch and where we bore witness to the aftermath of a series of stupid events involving a purse. It’s kind-of involved, and I don’t feel like typing it all out right now. We then went out separate ways, Delia and Melody back to the apartment to hang out for a while, and I off to my weekly D&D game. I’m tempted to start writing about events from the game, but I don’t think many people would be interested. Perhaps I should start a category for it. Anyway, after game we all met up again for the traditional self-inflicted punishment of eating at Denny’s. I really need to stop doing that, as I’m feeling ill enough not to go into the office today. I think I should just stick to a bagel or something next time.