Lunch and dinner and family and friends and politics

Lunch was a Philly cheesesteak from Pat's, which appears to be unrelated to Pat's. But it was still tasty, and the service excellent.

Drove up to Sarah and John's at 1830, and we all went to dinner at Ollie's, a nice Asian restaurant. It was tasty. During dinner, we discovered that we are all social liberals, fiscally uninformed, and generally anti-Bush on those grounds. After dinner, we went over to the house of two of their friends, Brian and Sabrina, very recently returned from their trip to Mexico. We were then treated to the modern equivalent of a slide show--fed directly from digital camera to TV. They saw a lot of awesome architecture, art, and history, and annotated their photos well, even if it did look like Brian was Photoshopped into many of them. :D We then talked politics for a while, because all of us are of similar mindsets, before heading home for the night. (Oh yeah! We were also pounced upon repeatedly by their beagle/JR Terrier mix, Quinlan, and sort of moped at by their beagle, Moqui, both of whom just wanted lots of loving, and to leave lots of fur. :)

Tomorrow, back to class--Day 1 of 2, of Class 4 of 5, for System 3 of 3.

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Obituaries: Former President George W. Bush Dead at 72; or, 2018: The New 1984; or, Birth of a Totalitarian Regime.
Frighteningly plausible, really. (Via sebatical)

Morning links! [Not sausage]

It's not often that motorcycles and sheeting fireballs are combined without any injuries.

Via xviragox: Am I Blue? I apologize for everything I believe in. May I go now? (You're more likely to appreciate this if you're a social liberal/progressive than otherwise. I think he makes some excellent points.)


Re: My current music: It's the last track on the [inspired-by-] I Am Sam soundtrack, which is entirely covers of Beatles songs (as opposed to the score, which isn't.) I'd be interested in seeing the movie solely based on that, but based on the description, I'm not interested. I'm torn!
(Did you know Amazon bought CDNow.com?)

Laptop crapout, bars & football, and download issues

Tonight's log:
1700ish: Get back to hotel, discover that Powerbook--functioning fine todays ago, a little flaky/clicky yesterday, more flaky/clicky this morning, freezy/nonfunctional this afternoon--will no longer boot. Look up the two local Apple stores, pick one to drive to.
A while later: Confirmation from Apple store that hard drive has failed, or a very close facsimile. )They booted from external HD, could barely access my HD.) Get copy of Work Authorization to replace screen (a bit spotty since purchase almos a year ago) and hard drive, but that would mean loss of hard drive data. Unacceptable, that, so got a few business cards from local and national data recovery companies, called Matt on the way home, and chatted with him until I got to the hotel's bar.
Current plan: Leave Powerbook off until I get back to VA Saturday evening, then try to access my HD via Matt's comp to pull data before HD craps out entirely. Then, get warranty replacement of HD and screen. (And get Apple extended care plan, since my warranty runs out on 11/25/04.)
Then I headed to the hotel's open bar, then joined Cliff (one of the regulars) as he headed next door to Brothers BBQ, where he bought beer and I bought fries & wings, and we continued to watch much of the Vikings/Colts game, which neither of us really cared about.

Now, I'm attempting to download AIM, Firebird, MSN Messenger, and Semagic, with very limited success. This hotel has wireless, but it's rather slow wireless. :)