It’s been quite a dry spell, here at the ol’ blog. What juicy bits can I dig up to tell…

I was in California for 2 weeks, from August 27 through September 9. Looking back, it was a perfectly fine trip. But I felt pretty odd about it just before and during. I really just didn’t want to go in the first place. I never really understood why, but I put off packing as late as humanly possible (I started packing at like 1am the night before I left). My heart just wasn’t in it. Then I had this string of a couple of bad days. And then I guess for whatever reason I started feeling better, and at the end of the 2 weeks, I didn’t want to leave. Which seems altogether odd to me, but perhaps it’s the change that I shy away from and not really the actual trip or the destination.

Upon my arrival back to Atlanta, my car promptly didn’t start. No lights, no nothing. The guy who picked me up from the airport was finally able to jump start me. I let it sit for a bit and eventually headed towards home. I drove around for a bit, picked up dinner, and searched for an open auto parts store, only to find none. Once I got home I let it sit and charge for a bit. I then turned it off so I could test to see if I would be stranded again in the morning. It immediately returned to a no lights, no nothing state. The next morning I managed to get someone to jump me off again and headed to the Napa store. They checked the battery, found it dead, so we replaced it. I guess while it was pretty straightforward, it was still a pain.

My car still needs new tires. I continue to put it off. I have no real idea how many tires I really need and I will eventually have to get new tires before I head up to the East Coast Wesleyite thing. I definitely don’t trust them enough now to go all the way there and back.

My video card started being very flaky on me. X would freeze, and start using 100% cpu. You could still move the mouse, but not click on anything, and the keyboard wouldn’t work. You could still ssh into it and restart. What was worse is that eventually it got so bad that it would do this 5 minutes after boot. A 5 minute usable window isn’t that usable. I got another video card from a friend, but it’s not dual headed, so it’s not too much fun.

Also, I thought it would be nifty to run a self-test on my ups. Not a good idea. Now it says I need to get the battery replaced (Emergency! Batteries have failed on UPS argento. Change them NOW). Not a good sign. I guess it’s had a good run, but I’d rather not spend money on stuff like that. I’ve been needing a second one anyway, so if I got one, I’d really need to get two.

And, since I was having all these issues with argento, I’m thinking that now might be a good time to buy new guts for it.

Well, I did manage to read Freakonomics while I was gone (actually I read a bunch of it on the way back on the plane).

I will be signing a 3 month lease, so my rent is going up to the “market rate” of $730. I continue to have this looming question of how soon I should go to California. This decision has been especially hard for me. I really don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t think I ever mentioned it here, but I got a new manager way back when at the first of July. It means I’m officially doing different stuff than I was before and working for a group based out of Mountain View. All in all a very good thing.