| Another one of the books I brought with me is/was Terry Pratchett’s Making Money. It’s almost a sequel of Going Postal, picking up just about where it left off. Except that, as we know in the real world, being successful at one thing means you get more projects. Moist must now take over the mint and clean up the economy. Add in scheming relations of the previous owners, golems, and some missing gold and you’ve got classic Prachett goodness. |
Author Archives: Pat
The MacBook Pro Just Got Roomier
I went back to the FastMac booth today to get the new drive installed. After a couple hours of moving data it came back with me. I went from 21 to 211 gigs free and looking at the specs of the new drive, it’s faster, cooler, quieter, and uses less power than the drive which was installed when it was made. Now I’ve got room to put the Parallels VMs internal, which will help out with school because I won’t have to lug external drives around.
MacWorld Expo 2009
I got a little time to head over to the expo floor today to look around at what I could find. Snagged a couple iPhone and iPod cases, got some free software including Avery’s label designer stuff, Sun’s VirtualBox, and VMWare Fusion. The only other thing I really took a serious look at was the upgrades that FastMac was offering. They’ve got a sweet deal on a 320g upgrade for the MacBook Pro. I’ll probably be back tomorrow if nobody can talk me out of it in the mean time…
Christmas 2008
Another great unwrapping is done, and as usual, Reese made out like a bandit. Lots of cool Hot Wheels stuff, some alien things, plus some paper airplane and flying stuff from dad. Looks like we’re all going to be busy helping him put stuff together!
I got a great UIS hoodie, a Beeropoly game, and some Serenity books. All nice and very appreciated.
Back Home
Had a good ride back, the train was running about 20 minutes late coming in to Bloomington, but overnight we made up time and were pulling in early to just about every stop. It was another good ride, though I had a little more trouble sleeping than I did on the way out. I’m going to do this again next year, but I’ll be booking a sleeper instead of coach.
My First Long Distance Train Ride
I’m in Peoria now, and it’s cold! But I had a blast riding the train. It was a whole lot slower than flying, but also a lot cheaper and a lot more fun. I met and talked with some really interesting people, and had plenty of time to relax. We left Fort Worth at 2:20 PM Saturday and by the time I dropped off to sleep, we were in Arkansas. Dinner, in the dining car, was brisket, mashed potatoes, and steamed veggies. I woke up as we were pulling in to St. Louis, went back over to the dining car and enjoyed some really good french toast. As we made our way in to Illinois the weather got colder and colder, slowing us down as well due to malfunctioning signaling systems on the host railroad. No worries as far as I was concerned because it meant I wasn’t out the the cold for a few more minutes. We got in to Bloomington-Normal where I braved the cold to pick up my checked bag and meet my ride to Peoria.
Riding the train was a lot of fun and I’ll definitely be doing it again, maybe in a sleeper instead of coach, but either way, rail travel was a lot better than I thought it would be.
Odyssey
| While on the train I had plenty of time to read, as was intended, and the first was Jack McDevitt’s Odyssey. It’s another one of the Priscilla Hutchins series, and as usual, I’m reading them all out of order. It definitely fits in with the rest of the series and kept me engaged, eagerly turning pages until the end. There was one heck of a twist to finish it off. Too much fun, but please read them in order, they’re better that way! |
The Day The Earth Stood Still
A bunch of us got together today to do birthday type stuff for the December birthdays. Part of it was going to see The Day the Earth Stood Still. The movie was OK, but I really do think it beat us over the head a little too much with its message.
Took The GRE Today
Today was the big day, after a few weeks of studying and cramming I went down to the testing center and took the GRE. I needed to report scores to UIS as a condition of my admission. It looks like they’ll have the scores in about 2 weeks, at which point it’ll just be the accounting and operations management classes keeping me from full admission.
The test itself was interesting, and I definitely benefited from using the software that ETS sent to me. It helped me to be comfortable with the way the test was administered. I did well on the verbal side and definitely could have done better on the math if I’d applied myself a little more. But no worries, the scores should be good enough to satisfy admissions. If not, I’ll do some heavy math cram and re-take…
Zeroing the AR
Alex and I went out to Quail Creek Range to zero a couple rifles in. I finally got time to run some rounds down the new AR and he had a .22 which he needed to sight a newly attached scope.
We should have called the day the Quail Creek Mud Bowl as the overnight rain turned most of the range into a quagmire. It was fun slipping and sliding every time we went down to change targets!
Back to the subject of this post… Stag claimed it was zeroed from the factory, and the 25 yard range showed that to be close to the case, but it did need a bit of windage adjustment. After we got it dialed in we moved on to the 100 yard range for some real testing. Elevation was spot on, and after a few more tweaks of the windage adjuster and I’m down to 1 to 1.5″ groups. Not too shabby for factory ammo on a brand spanking new rifle.
The first bit of upgrading I’m going to do is a trigger job. The trigger is a bit rough, with a strong pull and a sharp break. I’m going to pull the trigger group before I go up to Illinois for Christmas and send it off to be polished. It’ll be back by the time I am and then I’ll re-install and test. Look for a report then…