wellington ridge doesn’t recycle
August 27, 2007 on 9:43 pm | In rants | No Commentsafter weeks of calling the city to complain that the recycling trucks don’t swing through our complex, i’m throwing in the towel. they did come back through once, but quit again because my recycling bin and about three others were the only ones to show up on the sidewalk on recycling day. i’ll be taking mine to arch’s each tuesday night.
i came home from work late last week, the day after raleigh entered phase 1 water restrictions, to find workers power washing the building across the driveway from mine. never have i been more tempted to call the city and complain, but any fine would have simply come from my homeowner’s association.
travelling through southern virginia
August 26, 2007 on 7:58 pm | In wanderings | No Commentsi love travelling through southern virginia. the bojangles in south hill that never has toilet paper, the ever-present traffic jams from a simple wreck off of the interstate, the exploding vans…
we pulled over north of south hill for gas, passing a ford econoline van that appeared to be on fire. four mexican workers were trying to put out the flames, and a few other people were standing around watching, talking into walkie-talkies and most decidedly not directing traffic.
i wondered out loud: “do you think we should call the fire department?” arch, who wasn’t driving and saw more than i did as we drove by, set me straight: “they are the fire department!”
wherefore art thou windows vista!
August 20, 2007 on 6:15 pm | In tech stoof | No Commentsso, i went to stay with my friend kristin in greensboro. she wanted me to look at her brand new computer, the one that came with windows vista home edition on it. the one that had a few small things that she wanted fixed – the computer didn’t properly recognize the monitor, limewire needed a hole punched in the firewall for her completely legal music downloads, little things like that.
in the process of fixing these small tasks, my jaw dropped several times:
- a brand new Dell with a dual-core 2.8Ghz Intel CPU performed like a dog. booting the OS, running an IM client and opening Firefox was enough to make the machine swap like crazy.
- there are still *tons* of hardware devices that don’t have drivers for Vista yet. kristin owns one.
- Vista to me is less aesthetically pleasing than Windows 2000 or even Windows XP. much of the interface is unintuitive, many widgets appear distorted, and the colors are downright ugly.
- despite the touted new features, Vista is plain old Windows. settings are still stored in the control panel with the same old applets, though they’re arranged in groups and have different icons. the hardware manager *looked* different, but wasn’t. all data? stored on C:
no wonder the public isn’t lining up around the block to purchase this OS. too bad kristin laughed at my suggestion that she install Linux. too bad that my 3 year-old Dell can run circles around kristin’s brand new Dell. perhaps 2008 will be the year of Linux on the desktop!
back from broke gardens
August 1, 2007 on 7:30 pm | In wanderings | No Commentsspent a warm weekend in lightfoot, virginia, about 5 miles away from busch gardens williamsburg. arch was excited about griffon, the new floorless coaster, but the water tank pumps were out of service, so they had to drain the tanks and refill it before the ride was again operational. time for us to head over to ride the log flume with my dad (closed due to lightning), eat a short but pricey lunch at the festhaus, then drop my dad off in italy so he could take in the jazz shows.
a small monsoon came through, then more ride closures for more lightning. we ate dinner at the smokehouse, and watched as busch gardens security came and kicked out some drunk guy whose wife (or perhaps not his wife?) had been rapping on the window while we waited in the line outside. to top things off, my dad laid his wallet down at a coffee stand and walked off without remembering it. the wallet was turned in to lost and found – without the $600 cash he was carrying.
an all-around bizarre trip to the most beautiful theme park in the country.
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