Craziness

[howeird]

Saturday was kind of crazy, kind of stupid and lots of impulsive. I had been up till 2 am for no justifiable reason, slept in till about 10, decided not to fight the traffic to Gilroy - I haven't been to the Garlic Festival in ages, because there's no good way to get there, I generally don't like the music, and it's a long way to go for food I can make better myself, and lots of eye candy.

That left Plans B and C, which were the Princess Bride quote-along and installing the two hard drives and the RAID controller card which have been sitting in a box on the office floor for a few weeks.

Which is when my colon decided it was going to be uppity. So Plan B was not an option.

So I chose Plan D: Take another Immodium, get some cash from the ATM and visit my favorite massage parlor. After that it was about 1 pm, I was hungry, so I went to St. John's in the same strip mall. Long lines, which went quickly until the person ahead of me wanted something they don't make there. And wanted to argue about it. I ordered a philly w/mushrooms, a soft drink and garlic fries. Found a seat, it was 15 minutes before the pager went off. Collected my food, went back to my table and was reminded why I don't go there often. The food sucks. It's noisy. One plus is they have added about half a dozen TVs, so there is no seat in the place where you couldn't see the A's game. The A's were wearing retro uniforms, BRIGHT yellow.

Fry's is only 2 blocks away, and has restrooms which are easy to get to, though they have not been maintained at all. First stall was backed up. Second stall was out of TP, so I stole a roll from the first stall.

And then went hunting for a cam to use with Skype, something I have been meaning to do since upgrading to Win7, because my very expensive and fancy motorized one from Logitech is no longer supported. Bummer. The Sunnyvale Fry's has been re-shuffled completely. Twice. And they continue to move things around without always moving the signs accordingly. Finally had to ask someone where they were, and he pointed me at first to the row I was in, the one with the about a hundred CIA-quality home security surveillance systems. But then he remembered I said I just needed something for Skype, and pointed me to a row which had not existed last month, where there was a wide array of cams, none of which could be panned/tilted/zoomed via motor. I chose a mid-range one from Creative which has a base designed to fit where I plan to put it.

Also picked up some cheap DVDs which were on sale - one of which will be on the basfa auction table Monday.

And now I am craving cake. Black Forest Cake. Google Maps says there is a bakery across the street from the massage parlor. I drive there, and the place is not open weekends, plus today they are remodeling. I remembered a place across from Costco I had been meaning to check out for  a long time. Got there, the paper on the windows looked like they had been closed for a decade. Makes you wonder why the sign it shares with the furniture store has no been scraped off.

GPS suggests Specialty's but I know they don't have Black Forest Cake, so I head for Safeway, but walk across the complex to Prolific Oven first, but they are out of BFC. Safeway sells lots of cake pieces, but today it's a whole BFC or nothing. I buy a whole one and a diet Coke, and drive home.

The cats are happy to see me. Domino joins me on the patio as I eat a slice of BFC and drink the Coke. Kaan guards the patio form the inside.

Okay, now I am ready for Plan C. This is going to take a LONG time. I do one final backup of drive E (my 2Tb mirrored RAID), power off, unplug, install the two drives (I now have 4 2TB SATA drives, almost identical models), install the Intel H/W RAID card, attach the two new drives but leave the mirror in place.

Long story short, by about 7 pm way too man hoops have been jumped through, some of them flaming well, not really, but it felt like they were) and the new RAID 5 array was initializing. 6TB of data, 2 TB striping. This is going to take hours.

Back to the recliner, reading A Scanner Darkly and checking on the initialization every half hour or so. You never know when a program like that will throw up a dialog box asking if you want to continue or something.

Part of Plan B was the Psychotronic Film Festival, which I am now missing, followed by a late dinner at Denny's. Plan B was all part of dprisoner's birthday doings. I was monitoring on FB via my phone, and at about 20 past midnight it looked like time to head for the dinner. I got there just in time to be part of the mob waiting for seating for about a dozen. I ordered the same thing as last time, original slam with extra bacon, when the food finally arrived I was given whole wheat pancakes (someone else's order) which I did not notice until it was too late, and extra sausage instead of bacon. Their sausages suck, but it was a zoo, especially when  another 6 people showed up, so I just let it slide.

Bailed as soon as I could, about 2 am.

Home, the RAID was initialized, but Windows kept rebooting. Automatic repair was taking forever so I went to bed.