Craziness

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.
 

Hair of The Dog

Woke up at 9, remembered the computer was still running the repair. It failed. I tried some things, but in the end had to run a system restore, and re-install the RAID controller drivers.

Now I have the backup restoring all the files from the old RAID to the new one, and expect that to take until sometime on Tuesday. But everything I need for day to day operation is on C: so I'm okay for now.

Installed the webcam, installed Skype, logged in and it works. I'm how3ird on Skype in case you want to add me. I'm not on it much, but that's partly because I haven't had a camera for a long time, and don't have Skype at work.

I've had my meds, glued my teeth in, and now it's time to get into my band uniform and head for the concert.

Concerted Effort

I left the apartment at 11:30 with a croissant and a baritone, took a slightly alternate route to Shoup Park which did not include the bumper car merge lanes of San Antonio Blvd or the jaywalk capitol of the west bay, Los Altos' Main Street. It took maybe 7 minutes longer, but was much safer. Someone was parked in my spot, the same someone was parked there Thursday night, so I'm thinking it may be an abandoned vehicle. I don't think it was a band member because there were still plenty of spots down in the park's lot.

It was about noon, th concert doesn't start till 1:30, but everything was already set up.

I had brought my Kindle, but instead of reading I found a nice shaded park bench  and phoned my Baltimore sister. We had a nice chat, she encouraged me to try a gluten-free diet to see if it solves my tummy issue. I told her I don't have any cellulite. She laughed. Both because it's celiac, but also because "everyone has cellulite".

We chatted a little about my missing the Princess Bride quote-along. Her one and only son named his one and only (so far) son Wesley. Wes is 4 months old, and nephew says the first thing they are teaching him to say is "As you wish". :-)

We had nice but not optimal weather for the concert, it started out windy and stayed chilly through the whole thing. I got a chance to try out my new fancy music holders, see-through plastic strips about an inch wide, with a short L on one end with a magnetic strip to help hold it onto the stand. It took a little experimentation, but by the 3rd or 4th number I was able to use them without the aid of clothes pins. Much easier to flip pages and slide multi-page music into place.

It was a fairly easy set as far as lips go, but challenging reading. Lots of medleys with lots of time and key signature changes, and we had one case where two numbers in a row were in the same time signature but one was at 120 and the other at 40. Threw me off big-time.

At halftime one of the tuba players (we have 4! - 2 of them female) raved about a new Thai place which just happens to be one I have triued to go to many times, it is in the same stip mall where Janice and I have coffee every week we are both in town, but we usually do that on Sunday, and this new place is closed Sundays. I was pleasantly surprised that she uses Phad Thai as her test for whether it's a good place. She said their "medium" is very spicy. It really shouldn't be. But she said they barely speak English and the waitress is cute, so I need to get there on a non-Sunday and check it out.

Home by way of an auto supply which had a pair of the right size bug-eye mirrors. Then to the Milk Pail, which only had one piece of my favorite sheep milk cheese, but they also had French brie on sale for $5/lb so I bought two $3 wedges. And 99 cents a pound for green grapes. I skipped the limes, 8 for $1 but too small and coloring looked like they were picked off the ground.

Kaan was waiting right at the door, but he's scared of the baritone case, so he scooted away. Come to think of it he's scared of anything I'm carrying low to the ground. A couple of days ago he did bolt, but came right back when I shouted at him. Good doggie.

Put the stuff away, checked on the computer's restore program (16 hours to go. It was 32 when I left this morning. Their estimator sucks). Got undressed and tried to take a nap, but Domino decided to park herself near my head, and then Kaan jumped on the bed and there was hissing and growling and they both took off for parts unknown.

Remembering I had not showered this morning, so I took care of that, got dressed and headed for Starbucks. Cookie crumble frapp. Cute barista, some nice customer eye candy both at the tables and coming through for "to-go".

Time to go home and have some dinner and do some more reading, and maybe preview the DVD I'm auctioning at BASFA tomorrow.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Talk to boss about the new automation foo and other things to do
BASFA