Back at work after Memorial Day weekend, it’s beautiful out and I want to get out of here, so I’m killing some time by doing a quick general life update.
The holiday weekend was good. On Saturday I went to a cookout at the house of one of my coworkers. It was a good time, though I ended up having to leaver earlier than I would have liked in order to get Jason back in town in time for a family event.
Sunday had a new first for me, a family event at my home! In the past my apartments have always been too small or too unpresentable to have people over, so it was nice to finally have my mom, one of my stepbrothers and his family over for a cookout. The weather was great, and it seems like everyone had a good time. Bailey was a little freaked out about all the people, but was okay with the kids.
Life in generally has been going pretty well. I hit 30k miles on the Prius last week and purchased a new set of tires, Goodyear Assurance Fuel Max. We’ll see if they actually make any difference on the fuel mileage. I’m still on track to hit my savings goal to hopefully get a house next year. Also decided to switch banks. I don’t really have any complaints with TD Bank, but their online services have somewhat stagnated. A lot of places now let you set up e-mail or SMS alarms on limits or events, and they’ve shown no improvement to their services in the past 4 years or so. Opened up a couple of new accounts at Bellwether and will probably be transitioning over there in the next month.
With the nicer weather, I’ve been giving more thought to taking a real vacation this summer, but I have no idea what to do. I was thinking it would be cool to get a few people together to rent a house somewhere for a week. Not sure who would be interested or where to go, but I think it’d be fun.
Personal
holiday, money, prius
Spent last weekend out in Ohio for my grandparents’ 60th anniversary. Drove out there with my mom on Friday, took just about 12 hours to make the drive going out I-90. The anniversary party was on Saturday. I had a pretty good time. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a lot of my family, so it was good to see people again, though I went in to my anti-social mode with all the people around. My Nikon was acting up again, so I don’t have any pictures, which kindof sucks.
On Sunday, Jason and I had planned to meet up in Dayton at the National USAF Museum. Unfortunately, Jason’s fuel pump died just outside of Indianapolis. I decided to drive out there to see him anyway. We ended up going into Indy to grab some food, then we went to a Fry’s, since we don’t have any of those up here.
Overall, not a bad trip. A lot of driving in a short period though. Ended up putting a little over 2000 miles on the Prius, so I’ll be taking it in for its 5k service this weekend. Don’t think I’ll be doing anymore road trips for a bit. I think I’ll be flying next time.
Travel
family, prius
Threw this together this evening using the data from Highway Manager on my Treo. I plan to use it as my signature on PriusChat. Unfortunately, I generally generate data fairly slowly, only needed to fill every couple of weeks. The two close data points were from driving to northern Maine and back.
Car
prius, treo
Yeah, I know, I’ve only been posting about the Prius lately. I just can’t help it, it’s a major purchase, and it’s like a giant geeky gadget. What am I to do?
What I do need to do is get it registered this week. I think I’m going to go for vanity plates again, but KYZOKU really doesn’t feel like me anymore, so I’m going to get something different. My current thinking is to get 2BTHCKR, but I’m open to suggestions at this point. My coworkers came up with a bunch of ideas, of which LSFILNG was my favorite, though some variant of ONCALL would also be appropriate. I’d kindof like to avoid the xxMPG that you see on so many Priuses.
Car
prius
Snapped a couple shots of the Prius the other day and uploaded them into my gallery. I’ll have to get some of the interior and such this weekend.
Car
prius
Tuesday night I became the proud owner of a shiny new magnetic gray 2007 Toyota Prius! I’m loving it so far, it’s like the ultimate geek car what with the SKS, the ICE, the MFD and all the other great TLAs in the vehicle. I’m looking forward to apply a few hacks to it, including the EV mode button and figuring out how to feed video into the MFD and get the screen touch data off of the AVC-LAN.
I would have pictures of it, but my Nikon Coolpix 5700 has become non-functional. There seems to be an issue with the CCD or something connected to it, as the image contains basically random horizontal lines that jump around. Luckily, this appears to be a known defect, and Nikon offers a free repair for it. So I should have pictures of the Prius once I ship that off and get it back.
Update: I didn’t change anything, just left the camera in the car overnight, and this morning it’s working fine again. I think the camera must have absorbed some of the Prius’s newness and magically fixed itself. Or something.
Car
camera, prius
So, another birthday come and gone. Nothing terribly eventful this year. Delia gave me a tool bag along with an RJ-45 crimper and a Cat5 stripper, so I can finally make my own cables without having to use tools at work. She also picked up a business card holder for my desk at work, and some additional coasters for the apartment.
I’ve also been on a bit of a spending spree lately, picking up some new shoes from Zappos (online shoe buying is so much easier than offline), a new mouse and laptop AC/DC adapter from Woot, and a new 2007 Toyota Prius which should arrive on Monday or Tuesday.
Car, Gaming
bday, gifts, prius
