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Feb. 24th, 2007
Friday Happy Hour
Feb. 24th, 2007 03:34 pmWhile several primary folks from our Friday night happy hour crowd were indisposed, the B list --ourselves included-- was well represented.
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firestroke is acclimatizing to his return to DC and coordinated bringing Dave Decot & Craig Mahaffey in from the burbs of of Virginia. Andy M. brought a newbie, John C, who is quickly being assimilated into our pack. Peter & Carlos arrived late, joining Doug M. and kent4str already in progress.
Towards 8 PM, Dave & I started making noises about selecting a restaurant for dinner. By 8:30 PM, our little group had narrowed the selection down to a mere 300+ establishments within the tri-state area:kent4str doesn't do gluten or seafood, Andy doesn't like Thai, Peter & Carlos didn't want to walk more than a few blocks, etc..
Ultimately, over Andy's (mild) objections, we headed down to Bua Thai. The menu is great, the service is quick and they usually don't have difficulty seating a large crowd like ours. Alas, our path took us directly past Jack's (formerly known as Peppers) on 17th Street; two of our crowd really wanted to eat there instead so we shuffled inside to wait for a table.
Considering the time of evening, we did pretty good by waiting only 20 minutes at the bar for a table for nine. Alas, that was close to the only high part of dining there. The orders for drinks and appetizers went somewhat well, although the staff had difficulty recalling who ordered what once the items were prepared for distribution. A considerable time later, they were ready to take entree orders, and that's when things really went downhill.
The entrees took a rather long time to arrive; I'm willing to write that off as being due tokent4str insisting his carrion be nearly cremated before consumed. But when they did arrive, the numbers of items were wrong, the staff couldn't track who ordered what, some folks were offered condiments while others who ordered the same dish were not, glasses weren't kept filled and utensils were missing. And the $7 chocolate mousse tasted like it was made with Hershey's syrup; for a chocoholic like me, there's no greater sin. At $15-20 per entree, the restaurant has a midranged menu but definitely had low-end service.
Despite our disappointing meal, the company was delightful and it was an evening well spent. We arrived home shortly before midnight and crashed soon thereafter.
firestroke is acclimatizing to his return to DC and coordinated bringing Dave Decot & Craig Mahaffey in from the burbs of of Virginia. Andy M. brought a newbie, John C, who is quickly being assimilated into our pack. Peter & Carlos arrived late, joining Doug M. and kent4str already in progress.Towards 8 PM, Dave & I started making noises about selecting a restaurant for dinner. By 8:30 PM, our little group had narrowed the selection down to a mere 300+ establishments within the tri-state area:
kent4str doesn't do gluten or seafood, Andy doesn't like Thai, Peter & Carlos didn't want to walk more than a few blocks, etc..Ultimately, over Andy's (mild) objections, we headed down to Bua Thai. The menu is great, the service is quick and they usually don't have difficulty seating a large crowd like ours. Alas, our path took us directly past Jack's (formerly known as Peppers) on 17th Street; two of our crowd really wanted to eat there instead so we shuffled inside to wait for a table.
Considering the time of evening, we did pretty good by waiting only 20 minutes at the bar for a table for nine. Alas, that was close to the only high part of dining there. The orders for drinks and appetizers went somewhat well, although the staff had difficulty recalling who ordered what once the items were prepared for distribution. A considerable time later, they were ready to take entree orders, and that's when things really went downhill.
The entrees took a rather long time to arrive; I'm willing to write that off as being due to
kent4str insisting his carrion be nearly cremated before consumed. But when they did arrive, the numbers of items were wrong, the staff couldn't track who ordered what, some folks were offered condiments while others who ordered the same dish were not, glasses weren't kept filled and utensils were missing. And the $7 chocolate mousse tasted like it was made with Hershey's syrup; for a chocoholic like me, there's no greater sin. At $15-20 per entree, the restaurant has a midranged menu but definitely had low-end service.Despite our disappointing meal, the company was delightful and it was an evening well spent. We arrived home shortly before midnight and crashed soon thereafter.
Friday Happy Hour
Feb. 24th, 2007 03:34 pmWhile several primary folks from our Friday night happy hour crowd were indisposed, the B list --ourselves included-- was well represented.
firestroke is acclimatizing to his return to DC and coordinated bringing Dave Decot & Craig Mahaffey in from the burbs of of Virginia. Andy M. brought a newbie, John C, who is quickly being assimilated into our pack. Peter & Carlos arrived late, joining Doug M. and kent4str already in progress.
Towards 8 PM, Dave & I started making noises about selecting a restaurant for dinner. By 8:30 PM, our little group had narrowed the selection down to a mere 300+ establishments within the tri-state area:kent4str doesn't do gluten or seafood, Andy doesn't like Thai, Peter & Carlos didn't want to walk more than a few blocks, etc..
Ultimately, over Andy's (mild) objections, we headed down to Bua Thai. The menu is great, the service is quick and they usually don't have difficulty seating a large crowd like ours. Alas, our path took us directly past Jack's (formerly known as Peppers) on 17th Street; two of our crowd really wanted to eat there instead so we shuffled inside to wait for a table.
Considering the time of evening, we did pretty good by waiting only 20 minutes at the bar for a table for nine. Alas, that was close to the only high part of dining there. The orders for drinks and appetizers went somewhat well, although the staff had difficulty recalling who ordered what once the items were prepared for distribution. A considerable time later, they were ready to take entree orders, and that's when things really went downhill.
The entrees took a rather long time to arrive; I'm willing to write that off as being due tokent4str insisting his carrion be nearly cremated before consumed. But when they did arrive, the numbers of items were wrong, the staff couldn't track who ordered what, some folks were offered condiments while others who ordered the same dish were not, glasses weren't kept filled and utensils were missing. And the $7 chocolate mousse tasted like it was made with Hershey's syrup; for a chocoholic like me, there's no greater sin. At $15-20 per entree, the restaurant has a midranged menu but definitely had low-end service.
Despite our disappointing meal, the company was delightful and it was an evening well spent. We arrived home shortly before midnight and crashed soon thereafter.
firestroke is acclimatizing to his return to DC and coordinated bringing Dave Decot & Craig Mahaffey in from the burbs of of Virginia. Andy M. brought a newbie, John C, who is quickly being assimilated into our pack. Peter & Carlos arrived late, joining Doug M. and kent4str already in progress.Towards 8 PM, Dave & I started making noises about selecting a restaurant for dinner. By 8:30 PM, our little group had narrowed the selection down to a mere 300+ establishments within the tri-state area:
kent4str doesn't do gluten or seafood, Andy doesn't like Thai, Peter & Carlos didn't want to walk more than a few blocks, etc..Ultimately, over Andy's (mild) objections, we headed down to Bua Thai. The menu is great, the service is quick and they usually don't have difficulty seating a large crowd like ours. Alas, our path took us directly past Jack's (formerly known as Peppers) on 17th Street; two of our crowd really wanted to eat there instead so we shuffled inside to wait for a table.
Considering the time of evening, we did pretty good by waiting only 20 minutes at the bar for a table for nine. Alas, that was close to the only high part of dining there. The orders for drinks and appetizers went somewhat well, although the staff had difficulty recalling who ordered what once the items were prepared for distribution. A considerable time later, they were ready to take entree orders, and that's when things really went downhill.
The entrees took a rather long time to arrive; I'm willing to write that off as being due to
kent4str insisting his carrion be nearly cremated before consumed. But when they did arrive, the numbers of items were wrong, the staff couldn't track who ordered what, some folks were offered condiments while others who ordered the same dish were not, glasses weren't kept filled and utensils were missing. And the $7 chocolate mousse tasted like it was made with Hershey's syrup; for a chocoholic like me, there's no greater sin. At $15-20 per entree, the restaurant has a midranged menu but definitely had low-end service.Despite our disappointing meal, the company was delightful and it was an evening well spent. We arrived home shortly before midnight and crashed soon thereafter.
Linux upgrades
Feb. 24th, 2007 06:32 pmMy old Linux box was suffering hardware problems; I've ordered a replacement motherboard but I was planning to upgrade the hardware anyway to install the latest SUSE/Novell Linux ver 10; we're deploying this version of Linux on servers at my office so this seemed like a good opportunity to do some self-training on this platform.
The refurbished 2.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM Pentium 4 box I bought off eBay arrived yesterday. My initial efforts to install the Linux OS on the hardware failed for a while before I ultimately figured out that (a) the machine's floppy drive was dead, (b) the CD-ROMs were burned incorrectly so the machine couldn't boot from them as needed, and (c) the BIOS wasn't capable of seeing the entire 250 GB hard drive so I had to install the kernel in an 8 GB initial disk slice so it could boot far enough to see the rest of the drive.
Now that I'm past those hurdles, I really like what I've seen so far. The configuration was fairly easy and the new beast now sees the network and recognizes my USB devices (the old Red Hat version was too hold to handle USB correctly). I still need to install the latest Apache httpd server, Sendmail, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Majordomo and Majorcool, not to mention copy over my personal directories and web pages from the old beast; I should have the rest of the configuration done in the next couple of hours.
The refurbished 2.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM Pentium 4 box I bought off eBay arrived yesterday. My initial efforts to install the Linux OS on the hardware failed for a while before I ultimately figured out that (a) the machine's floppy drive was dead, (b) the CD-ROMs were burned incorrectly so the machine couldn't boot from them as needed, and (c) the BIOS wasn't capable of seeing the entire 250 GB hard drive so I had to install the kernel in an 8 GB initial disk slice so it could boot far enough to see the rest of the drive.
Now that I'm past those hurdles, I really like what I've seen so far. The configuration was fairly easy and the new beast now sees the network and recognizes my USB devices (the old Red Hat version was too hold to handle USB correctly). I still need to install the latest Apache httpd server, Sendmail, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Majordomo and Majorcool, not to mention copy over my personal directories and web pages from the old beast; I should have the rest of the configuration done in the next couple of hours.
Linux upgrades
Feb. 24th, 2007 06:32 pmMy old Linux box was suffering hardware problems; I've ordered a replacement motherboard but I was planning to upgrade the hardware anyway to install the latest SUSE/Novell Linux ver 10; we're deploying this version of Linux on servers at my office so this seemed like a good opportunity to do some self-training on this platform.
The refurbished 2.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM Pentium 4 box I bought off eBay arrived yesterday. My initial efforts to install the Linux OS on the hardware failed for a while before I ultimately figured out that (a) the machine's floppy drive was dead, (b) the CD-ROMs were burned incorrectly so the machine couldn't boot from them as needed, and (c) the BIOS wasn't capable of seeing the entire 250 GB hard drive so I had to install the kernel in an 8 GB initial disk slice so it could boot far enough to see the rest of the drive.
Now that I'm past those hurdles, I really like what I've seen so far. The configuration was fairly easy and the new beast now sees the network and recognizes my USB devices (the old Red Hat version was too hold to handle USB correctly). I still need to install the latest Apache httpd server, Sendmail, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Majordomo and Majorcool, not to mention copy over my personal directories and web pages from the old beast; I should have the rest of the configuration done in the next couple of hours.
The refurbished 2.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM Pentium 4 box I bought off eBay arrived yesterday. My initial efforts to install the Linux OS on the hardware failed for a while before I ultimately figured out that (a) the machine's floppy drive was dead, (b) the CD-ROMs were burned incorrectly so the machine couldn't boot from them as needed, and (c) the BIOS wasn't capable of seeing the entire 250 GB hard drive so I had to install the kernel in an 8 GB initial disk slice so it could boot far enough to see the rest of the drive.
Now that I'm past those hurdles, I really like what I've seen so far. The configuration was fairly easy and the new beast now sees the network and recognizes my USB devices (the old Red Hat version was too hold to handle USB correctly). I still need to install the latest Apache httpd server, Sendmail, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Majordomo and Majorcool, not to mention copy over my personal directories and web pages from the old beast; I should have the rest of the configuration done in the next couple of hours.
Discoveries
Feb. 24th, 2007 07:24 pmRemember back when I bought a refurbished Tungsten E2 PDA off eBay and discovered the prior owner hadn't wiped the information from it before returning it to Circuit City which resold it to me?
It's happened again.
This time, the refurbished Compaq EVO I bought from a leasing firm in Minneapolis came with two 40 GB hard drives. While the OS had been cleaned from the disks, they chose not to remove the DVD ripping software and DVD images of "In Living Color," "City of God" and "Cold Creek."
Why couldn't they have left me something more fun, like bank accounts, credit card info and social security numbers? Bastards.
It's happened again.
This time, the refurbished Compaq EVO I bought from a leasing firm in Minneapolis came with two 40 GB hard drives. While the OS had been cleaned from the disks, they chose not to remove the DVD ripping software and DVD images of "In Living Color," "City of God" and "Cold Creek."
Why couldn't they have left me something more fun, like bank accounts, credit card info and social security numbers? Bastards.
Discoveries
Feb. 24th, 2007 07:24 pmRemember back when I bought a refurbished Tungsten E2 PDA off eBay and discovered the prior owner hadn't wiped the information from it before returning it to Circuit City which resold it to me?
It's happened again.
This time, the refurbished Compaq EVO I bought from a leasing firm in Minneapolis came with two 40 GB hard drives. While the OS had been cleaned from the disks, they chose not to remove the DVD ripping software and DVD images of "In Living Color," "City of God" and "Cold Creek."
Why couldn't they have left me something more fun, like bank accounts, credit card info and social security numbers? Bastards.
It's happened again.
This time, the refurbished Compaq EVO I bought from a leasing firm in Minneapolis came with two 40 GB hard drives. While the OS had been cleaned from the disks, they chose not to remove the DVD ripping software and DVD images of "In Living Color," "City of God" and "Cold Creek."
Why couldn't they have left me something more fun, like bank accounts, credit card info and social security numbers? Bastards.