JeffJournal

I sent this to the Fail Blog, but they didn’t post it.

This is the admission wrist strap to the posh dining room where Tracy and I watched the Kentucky Oaks race last Friday. Gotta love it.

Some random quickies:

• I have a broken SD card reader. So I ordered a new one off the internet (about $20). Less than 24 hours later, I found that I had another working SD card reader upstairs in a pile of spare parts. Doh!
• Brian passed his PhD. defense. w00t! That’s Dr. Mr. Brian, to you.
• Tivo caught A Knight’s Tale the other day. Eh. I give it a zero (sympathy), which exactly fits the situation (I made no effort to catch the movie; Tivo caught it by chance).
• I saw Body of Lies last night. Enjoyable, but dark. Perhaps even somewhat accurate. Shrug. 7.5 minutes.
• I also saw The Dark Knight somewhat recently. Wow, the Joker had a fantastic performance. Excellent flick; 20 minutes.
• The 2 weeks before the Kentucky Derby are the busiest of the year for Louisville.
  • We tried to go to the balloon race last weekend, but it was delayed 3 times due to high winds, and we therefore missed the actual race.
  • We took the munchkins to the Pegasus Parade (a Derby-themed parade in downtown Louisville) this past week. Good stuff. Downtown Louisville is more or less in the landing pattern of the Louisville airport; we could see private jet after private jet after private jet in the landing pattern — presumably for the Derby.
  • Tracy got tickets to the Kentucy Oaks race through work (Oaks = the race that all the Louisville locals go to; Derby = the day after the Oaks, the race that all the tourists go to). We saw a bunch of other GE people and generally had a great time.
  • Pictures and a movie of both the Pegasus parade and the Oaks Day are here:
    • http://gallery.me.com/jsquyres#100676
    • http://gallery.me.com/jsquyres#100668&bgcolor=black&view=grid
  • My Blackberry performed terribly at Churchill Downs while we were at the Oaks. Granted, there were nearly 150k people there, probably just about all of them trying to use their phones as well, but others seemed to have no problems getting and placing phone calls. My BB couldn’t place any calls (every single call resulted in “Call Failed”), and it randomly rebooted at least 4 times during the day (I saw it reboot twice, and twice I saw typical slowness / “optimizing index” behavior that happens after a reboot).

I saw Burn After Reading recently. Bad. Bad bad bad. It is supposed to be a dark comedy, but it certainly failed to deliver the “comedy” part. It was just dark. And bad. Bad + dark = “bark”?

With all those stars in it, how could it be so bad? I give it (at least) 15 feet.

My iMac mightly mouse finally died. May it rest in peace.

By “died,” I mean that the horizontal / vertical scrolling button wheel thingy on the top finally quit working. I’ve read lots about this on the net — I knew it was just a matter of time before mine stopped working. From having cleaned on many trackball mice, I can see how gunk just accumulates in the mechanism and that is probably what makes it stop working. Shrug.

I got a cheapie optical Logitech scroll mouse to replace it. Works fine.

In other Mac news, Anna A. face-dialed me with her iPhone the other day (meaning: it’s like pocket dialing, but with your face. She was on another call, holding the phone up to her ear and talking, and her face pushed enough buttons on the iPhone to call me. Awesome. ☺ )

After having been missing for nearly a year, I found my MacBook Pro keyboard protector the other day. It’s a rectangle of soft cloth that just barely covers the keyboard when you close the MBP lid — it protects the screen from getting an imprint of the keyboard. It’s small, light, and easily misplaced.

I suspect that it was off seeing the world, sowing its wild oats, getting into trouble, etc. (perhaps a mid-life crisis?). Or perhaps it was off wherever socks go. Maybe it didn’t like the fruity drinks wherever it went.

Shrug.

Regardless, it’s home now. We’ve reconciled, and have mostly moved on beyond this incident (although the “rebuilding trust” therapy will continue for a while).