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07/10/2006: "updates: laptop, work, racing"
A few updates for you today:
- the status of my laptop, and how I might be able to resurrect it
- a milestone I neglected to mention in regards to working at Gerald's
- how my weekend at the Molson Grand Prix of Toronto went
- Happy 2nd Birthday to Isaac!
It's all pretty much good news this time around!
We'll do chronological order today to catch up on the stuff I missed first.
I did some work for Gerald's on the Monday following Canada Day, but didn't have enough time to finish the two tasks I had been given. Thus, I booked myself some time a few days later for some work in the evening to finish things up. This was fine with everyone, but I needed someone to be at the office to open it up for me at 6pm. Instead of having anyone meet me there, they simply decided to give me a key to the office. Yes, I now have an office key. I'm still not full-time, I don't have company business cards or a corporate e-mail address, but I'm one step closer. My feet are squarely in the door here, and I'm only going to be getting deeper. Very cool.
This past Saturday and Sunday I spent the entire day at the Molson Grand Prix of Toronto with my uncle. For years and years he's said that we should go together, and it just never happened. So this year our families got together and bought us tickets to the race together. Very cool. We didn't go Friday, but we spent most of the day Saturday and Sunday at the track. We saw the Atlantic series cars practicing, qualifying, and racing, the Champ cars doing the same, as well as a huge assortment of tuner cars on static display, and the pace cars doing fast laps around the race track. As much as a Ford fan I am not, it was very cool to see (and hear) Mustangs and a Ford GT whipping up Lakeshore Boulevard into Turn 3. There was a supercharged Focus as well, but it sounded... strained. The big V8s sounded much nicer.
Our seats couldn't have been better (other than for some padding, of course). We were in the grandstands right beside the pits, with Alex Tagliani's pit on our left and Paul Tracey's on our right. The eventual race winner A.J. Allmandinger's pit was right behind Tracey's pit, so we got to see all the action, right dead in front of us. Wicked cool.
One thing you simply can't understand seeing the race on TV is how DAMNED LOUD it is!! We bought disposable earplugs after the first practice session on Saturday, it was that loud. And believe me, it was the best $2 I've spent in a while. Especially after the 3 CF-18 Hornets did a low flyby at the beginning of the race on Sunday. Damn, those buggers give a new meaning to loud. You don't hear them coming, but you sure as hell hear them leaving!
Highlights of the weekend? Watching an Atlantic series car fishtail around Turn 11 onto the main straightaway. Seeing (and hearing) Katherine Legge lose it around Turn 11 and smack the wall, damaging her suspension and ending her day (as well as seeing her rear wheels wobbling as she came into the pits). Watching the three Canadians racing 6-7-8 for a few laps. Watching teammates Paul Tracey and A.J. Allmandinger run through the pack, coming from positions 5 and 6 all the way up to dominate at 1 and 2 for nearly half the race. It would have been REALLY sweet had Tracey won, but it was great that he got a podium finish. Oh, final highlight - Team Indeck Forsythe (Tracey's and Allmandinger's team) whip up a sign at the end of the race to show the crowd that read, "We got a hat trick!!"
We're going again. Maybe not soon, maybe not just the two of us next time, but we're going again.
Laptop. Got the diagnosis from the Apple technician today. He believes that it's either the hard drive cable or the hard drive controller on the logic board that is pooched on my machine. The bad news is that Apple considers anything older that 5 years to be "vintage", and does not support it. If I'm going to fix it, I'll be the one doing the fixing. The good news is that he managed to boot the computer from an external FireWire drive. He's removed my hard drive for me, and I'll be able to put it in an external enclosure and get the data off it.
Are you thinking what I've already thought? Yup, I've already reserved a FireWire hard drive enclosure ($42), and will be mounting my disk in it. I'll run the disk as an external drive, but that should bypass the damaged controller/cable, and give me my computer back. It won't be a true laptop anymore, as I'll be permanently coupled to an external hard drive now, but it'll work for now. It will give me the time to wait until school before getting a new computer (and parting out the Pismo).
Meanwhile, I'm going to explore my options at eBay. I'm quite convinced the guy that sold me the computer unloaded his mistake onto me. So I'll see if there's any way I can recoup some of my loss. Anyone more familliar with the eBay conflict resolution system can feel free to leave me a comment.
Lastly, and most certainly not least - my son is now 2 years old today! Man, he's come a long way. He's talking so much, and is getting more active daily. I swear, he's going to be as physically capable as Isabelle by this time next year. Maybe not as graceful, but he'd determined! It's just too bad that everyone calls him a "her", due to his long, curly blonde hair. Despite wearing a blue polo shirt, too. Weird. Anyways, Happy Birthday, Isaac!
