Life of Dave

nights in

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 22:06:27 GMT

We had a big wine and cheese party last night - a random group of guests, which was fun, and a random group of wines (Malbecs all). A very nice way to spend an evening. Though, being in bed by 9pm, as I am this evening, is also nice. Is this a bad sign?

crazy week

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:16:32 GMT

Another crazy week - we went out with friends Wednesday night, Thursday night (well, actually Thursday night they came to us), and Friday night. Add in my Tuesday night Japanese class and things were quite busy!

Thursday night was the big Windows 7 party, and since I had been sent a box containing streamers and balloons and so forth, it seemed silly not to use them, even though we hadn't really invited very many folks over. As it was, the party ended up being dinner with friends and drinks, which is honestly a perfect evening anyway. I have photos of the decorations, which I'll post soon-ish.

Friday night (last night) we headed over to Lisa's house for pumpkin carving. Lisa is one of the new profs here, and happens to also be a graduate from my alma mater, Albion College. She acquired some massive pumpkins for us and also had a set of pumpkin carving tools, which made the process significantly easier. So now our house is guarded by giant pumpkin guardians

busybusybusy!

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:53:36 GMT

I noticed last night that it had literally been over a week since I last posted - we have simply been insanely busy over the last week or so - I honestly have no idea where the time goes sometimes! The big part of last week was eaten up by a trip to Austin, Texas. Sasha had a conference and I went along for the ride. It was a good trip - I took my camera (and my swanky new memory card, which is replacing my swanky old memory card, which is AWOL), so there will be lots of pictures.

Outside of the trip, there's just been a lot of socializing - I often convince myself that I am anti-social, and can only take a certain, limited, number of nights out. Then I have a week where I go out every night (followed by a weekend when I do the same), and I realize that so long as I don't mind not knowing where my head is at, I can go out a lot.

This week is actually also chock full of crazy, what with Hallowe'en and all that - many a party is planned, some of them two deep, which is a bit of a problem - we're working on the details of that. We're going to try to throw our re-scheduled Windows 7 party (seriously) this Thursday, I think, although I'm not sure how many of the potential guests are aware of this! My ability to communicate outside of work is apparently inversely proportional to how often I am forced to write emails and schedule meetings inside of work, and lately that number has been quite high.

hacked!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:17:20 GMT

Argh! Site hacked! We're restoring from backup - may lose some days blog...

party

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:27:04 GMT

My colleague Darbi had a birthday party over the weekend, and as she is a big Rock Band fanatic, the cake was something memorable. The party itself contained much mayhem and random faux-guitar playing, immortalized here.

boom goes the website

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:59:21 GMT

Had a bit of an adventure with the blog today - seems they did some support and didn't bring my site back up. This is a post to double check it's kind of working, as they had to restart lots of services to bring the server back up. As a side note, my hosting is 3essentials, and while the server did go down, customer service responded quickly to my notes.

tech stuff

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:31:39 GMT

In anticipation of my Windows 7 Release Party this coming week, I wiped my laptop and installed the release version of Windows 7 (I think the idea of the people behind the party may be to install windows at the party, but that strikes me as... insane. And lame. So it's not going to be how I do it!) As I was going through getting my laptop back up to speed, it occurred to me that a post I should probably make (or perhaps a web page I should make) is a list of the software I use on my computer to make it ready for business. Since almost everything I use is open source, it might be useful for some people to know how to set a computer up from start to finish for free. So I think I'll post that sometime this weekend, probably in the technology section.

whipped!

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:18:45 GMT

Good golly was -that- a busy week! We went out literally every night last week, and during the day I had meetings on some days nearly every hour of the day. By Friday I was just done. Thankfully, outside of a party this eve and a fun brunch tomorrow the weekend is empty. Rest for me!

what a week!

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:48:15 GMT

This week was kinda crazy. On Tuesday night Art Spiegelman came to speak at Hendrix, so I had to skip Japanese class (I've started a Japanese class here in town) to see him. Then Thursday night we chalked about a mile of sidewalks in preparation for ArtsWalk on Friday, part of ArtsFest here in Conway. Then, of course, Friday morning early it rained like a mad fool, washing away all our work. Friday morning Sam set out cones along the path, and then Friday afternoon the Chinese Dragon Elephant wandered up and down the walking path, as did we. It was cold and wet, so turnout was fairly low, but we had a good time. Once Friday wrapped we came home and slept until noon (and then I did it again today). Now it's back to a normal, less stress version of life for a while.

renters

Sun, 4 Oct 2009 23:08:09 GMT

When we moved down to Conway, the first house we visited was in an obviously African-American part of town. The Realtor told us there were a lot of 'renters' around, and we assumed that was code down here for 'African-Americans'. As it turned out, more than likely, it simply meant 'people who rent', which translates into 'take care of their property less well' and 'lower your property value by association'. Now that I've been here a year, with rentals on every side of me, I understand better the qualms people might have about renters (especially in a college town). Then I read this article in the New York Times, and I discover that 'renter' can mean a lot of things to people. The article tells the story of St. Bernard, "a quiet, insular suburb just east of New Orleans", which has been fighting tooth and nail to prevent an influx of... something. And here's where things get murky. Maybe it's low-income families. Maybe it's rental units. Both would be something people might do to protect their home values. But maybe, in a parish which is ninety-three percent white, people are also concerned about keeping out someone else. It's hard to say - things get mixed up in these conversations, especially in the south, and there is certainly the possibility that classism, rather than racism, is the (main) cause. The article points out that "A development of 35 single-family, lease-to-own homes in the black middle-class neighborhood of New Orleans East was blocked by the New Orleans City Council in August. The arguments against it � that it would damage property values and quality of life � were similar to those heard in St. Bernard."

weekend visitors

Sat, 3 Oct 2009 23:50:42 GMT

Sasha's folks are in town this weekend, so it's busy, busy, busy!