Dlostboy’s Journal

Friday afternoon, about 2pm, Leslie was robbed at gunpoint while trying to get out of the car at a Marathon gas station. The ~19 year old took her purse, watch, and the GPS in the car before being scared off by the staff of the station.

Today, my friend Mike M passed away at 6:15pm after losing a battle with cancer.

Great weekend.

Did you know that if you remove the ssh daemon from port 22 of your server, the thousands of hacking attempts you get per day turns to zero?

And now you know.

I had high hopes for 2011. I mean, I had some highs in 2010… Got married, kept a roof over my head, got to spend some wonderful moments with friends… But it was a hard road to run overall.

2011 has thus-far not proven different.

On January 4th, Leslie was fine until about 6:30pm when she started vomiting every 5-10 minutes for little apparent reason. This went on for about 4 hours before we headed to the hospital. We showed up and there was a 4 hour wait so we returned home. Three more hours later with no end in sight we headed back up to the ER where she was admitted.

After 3 rounds of Phenergan and Benedryl, she was no better so at 1AM they decided to admit her to the hospital itself. That said, due to the influx earlier, there was about an 8 hour wait to get a room. She was finally admitted and so they began the tests.

After two days, they still didn’t have her any closer to a solution and had not been able to improve things beyond 15-20 minutes at a stretch. Her potassium levels were dangerously low and she hadn’t had solid food in 3 days.

They finally put her under-ish (they call it twilight- you’re conscious but very much useless…) and uses a scope to check her upper GI and take some biopsies. The next day they said she had an intestinal infection and that the IV antibiotics would fix everything.

Saturday they released her with a few prescriptions and an estimation that she’d get better in a few days.

On December 31st, Leslie and I descended upon Pete & Mindy’s place for New Years’. Had a few drinks, a countdown to midnight, and watched some British TV game shows…

Not so bad. Hoping for a good 2011.

The anchor is always just that- an anchor. This is because its powerful arms are trying to bring the world up to you. The ascension to higher levels is not accomplished by dragging your surroundings up but instead by allowing them to fall to the wayside. Those who build genuine attachments to you may then simply follow your lead.

Pull in your arms and let those formerly caught in their path slide away while those who are to become part of your new embrace join you as you rise above where you have been before.

Wow, I may get spoiled if this doesn’t stop soon!

Friday night, Leslie and I went to Salvador Deli in NoDa (North Davidson Street… the artsy-fartsy district) to watch Pete’s new band, Chow Tiger, play out. Good set. We would have stayed longer but she’d given herself a charlie-horse in the neck that morning so being out-and-about was a lot of work. After we got home, Mike G stopped by for a beer and to catch up.

Saturday, I ran some errands and then came home to cook, cook, cook. While cooking, I got a call from Mark L who was in town again so that he and his friend, Amber, could see Wicked, a Broadway show of an alternative Snow White. They came by to hang out for like an hour or so before departing to get some rest for the big Sunday they had planned.

Carl came over from Franklin to visit with me this weekend. We went and had lunch at CookOut, where he’d not eaten from before. Then we worked on an IP camera he had brought over. It was pretty cool but the documentation left a lot to be desired.

Later, we headed over to Pete’s shop where we met up with he and Mindy. We went to go eat at Intermezzo before returning to Pete’s house. We hung out for a little bit before heading home.

Sunday afternoon, we went and checked out the iPad at the Apple Store contained within the SouthPark mall. Not bad. A bit heavy.

I tried to get a new case for my iPhone 2G. They don’t carry a single case for it. Not one. Awesome. Guess I’ll hold it together with Scotch tape and hopes until the iPhone 4 comes out. *sigh*

I’m so glad to be able to post this entry today. It’s the brief account of a great weekend spent with friends.

Friday night, Mark L came to visit me from Franklin. No particular agenda, just time to hang out. After arriving, we headed up to Pete’s shop so he could see what it’s become. While there, we made plans with he and Mindy to have dinner at Intermezzo. I’d eaten here with them before with Leslie and enjoyed it. That time, I had the margherita pizza (ok) while Leslie had the Blackened Chicken Pasta (awesome). This time, I had the Milanese pizza and enjoyed it a little more. Afterwords we headed to my house to hang out a bit, have a few drinks, and just catch up. During this time, Pete started playing with the new music PC and managed to figure out how to import our old tracks into it. Whoot!

Saturday, we got up and sluggishly made our way over to Pete’s place to pick him up so we could play some disc golf. Pete killed us with a score only like 4 over par for 18 holes. I was like 16 over for 18 holes and Mark did similar. From there it was back to Pete’s so he could grab a few things and then over to my place to start grilling.

Mark had purchased a few T-Bone steaks so I made up those with vegetables and some faux burgers for Pete & Mindy to eat. Mindy joined us after she got off work and all was good. I introduced Mark to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as well as Community. Then we played some Wii games until we wore out.

Sunday afternoon, David K came over to pick up his Jem guitar he’d left here like 6 months ago.  Good seeing him. He’d cut his hair!

Mark and I went over to the SouthPark mall to check out the iPad at the Apple store. I had a gift card with a little left on it so I intended to pick up a new case for my iPhone. Turns out they don’t carry ANY 2G cases anymore in the stores. Teh suck. I could order one from the online store but shipping is like half the cost of the case (which is already over priced). =(

The iPad was kinda cool but a little heavy IMO since I know if I had one, I’d immediately purchase some accessories. Between them and the unit itself, it’d be half the weight of a laptop. Oh well.

Then it was back to the house where Mark packed up and headed home. I cleaned up and called it a day while watching the new Dr Who.

Yup, a great weekend.

So the Gab man had a spare motherboard that was collecting spare grasshoppers from his iguana. He got convinced sending it to me was a good idea since I had a project I had to start on in short order that I didn’t have a machine for.

The hardware he sent was good enough that it warranted a bit of musical chairs with my processors in the house. The first rotation was actually not directly related to what he sent but was indirectly caused by it. That machine would be my music recording machine.

The hardware in place is a 1.8Ghz AMD Athlon processor. The machine treated me pretty well but it’s had a few blue screens…. after all, Justin used to install random games on it and download porn. Today I assembled a 3Ghz P4 machine to take it’s place. It doesn’t have IDE raid like the old one did but the old one’s raid got outta sync anyway. What it does have is a WAAAAY faster bus speed which I hope will really help with playing when there are a lot of tracks with VST plugins running.

More on this topic to come…

On the 24th, I went to a housewarming party at my friend, Chris P,’s new home. While it was a pain in the ass to get to, it was a beautiful place. I took Pete & Mindy with me and we had a pretty good time. I even got to try out some of my Mandarin on a guy there named Yi.

My birthday was on the 29th so on Friday I had a party for some of my friends. Lynn, Jack, Mike, Aaron, Fred, Travis, and Karina all came out to help celebrate. It was pretty tame but a lot of fun. The thing is that I had to keep it simple because I was having another party the following night.

Yup, that’s right.. first year ever of having back-to-back parties.

Now I bet you’re asking why? Well it’s simple. Friday was for hanging out with friends. Saturday night, on the other hand, was musicians only for a jam party. Pete, Mindy, and Jim H all came out. Don N &Krista were supposed to make it but they had car trouble. Tony B (of Lamb Handler fame) was supposed to make it too but he played out twice this week and Friday was one of the nights. Fred was going to come but he already was feeling ill when he popped in Friday night… Saturday he was laid out.

We hung out with some jams until about 2am. I was a little beat but we all had a great time anyway.

Not too bad! Two parties. A dozen friends. Jam night. What more could a guy ask for than a steamer trunk full of cash, eh?