I did two things this week that made me realize I just don't keep up with fashion trends. I got a haircut on Saturday, so I got to see booklets of people with far more fashionable haircuts than I. Then I went shopping for a suit (I need one for a wedding I am attending). I haven't owned a relatively formal suit in quite a while. Again I am behind the times.
On the up side of of it, I like the new haircut a lot (I'll post some pictures soon), and the suit is pretty cool too. As is my typical inclination, its black suit, with a black shirt, and a red and black tie. What can I say, at least I am predictable 8-)
Its official, I am transferring to a new group. Friday was my last day working on Performance Integration. Starting monday I will be in the OS Mobility group. My new group is responsible for making things work better when you move machines around, like the Panther iDisk improvements. As Steve said, its "The year of the laptop." There a lot of fascinating problems in this space to work on, so I am pretty excited about it.
Well, I am in LA. I came down to visit Geoff and Barb, but since Geoff is in Philadelphia I get to spend the whole weekend with Barb, which is cool, cause I have not seen her since she moved to LA.
We were going to go to a bar tonight and hang out with some of Barb;s friends, but everyone was tired, and there is a really big party tomorrow, so we decided to skip it. The people here are telling me that the scene is a lot wilder than in San Jose/San Francisco area. I guess I will find out tomorrow.
This weekend I went to Fry's and bought parts to build a Myth box. I assembled most of it, but since I don't have a monitor I had to wait until today when I could borrow one. Of course when I turned it on I just got a bunch of repeated beeps.
Now, any PC enthusiast can probably tell you that beep codes tend to mean one of few things. No ram, no video, stuff like that. Of course, the manual for the DFI did not list the beep codes. The board I bought requires PC3200 ram. I bought generic RAM, and an OEM Radeon that had looked pretty poorly put together once I got it out of the box. Online I found some references to the beep codes for video error, even though it did not appear to be the beep code I was hearing. Since I couldn't find anything else I decided to replace the card with an NVidia card that was done by a slightly better known manufacturer. Same thing. Then I found out the system BIOS is by Award, so I was able to find its beep codes, and of course the beep code I am hearing means bad ram. Oh well, I'll exchange the RAM tomorrow and see what I can do.
The thing that annoys me about the situation has nothing to do with the fact that system couldn't boot. It happens. I don;t even care that I was reduced to listening to beeps. The fact that there was nothing in the manual (which does have a totally useless troubleshooting section) Is what annoys me. There is actually a DIMM status LED on the board. If they mad that blink or something I might have guessed the RAM was the issue (it and the video card were my two biggest suspects. Ah well.
I have been catching up things that I got behind on during the WWDC madness. One of those things is RSVPing for weddings. Life has these weird synchronicities. Several years ago I went to Geoff's brother's wedding. My cousin Barry was having a wedding reception the day before. Fortunately they were only about 50 miles away from each other. It was a crazy, hectic, fun weekend.
This year, my friends Donna and Mike are getting married. The day after Geoff's sister is getting married. Unfortunately this time the weddings are about 3,000 miles apart. Its the sort of choice I would hate to have to make, though fortunately the choice has been made for me. I was committed Geoff's sister's wedding before I knew about Donna and Mike's, and my parents are flying out for it. The timing so tight there is no way I could make both.
Donna, Mike, I am sorry I can't make it to your wedding. Your both incredibly intelligent, caring, special people, and I wish I could be there to watch your ceremony. I will have to settle for letting you know that your in my mind, and in my heart.