mood: busy
music: silence
At the end of my previous post (dated Feb 28), I wrote, "Other than the Very Important Topics, I'd also like to write about Springfield's planned winter farmer's market, rearranging our living room furniture, pizza toppings, and copying stuff from Tivo to DVD, but those topics will just have to wait for another day."
This is not that day. So here's a brief recap of how March went. A very brief recap.
Fri, Feb 29 - Vertigo
Dawn was sick with benign positional vertigo (aka getting dizzy and queasy every time you move your head), so stayed I stayed home from work to take care of Lando.
Sat, Mar 1 - Dinner with the Smiths
Dawn was quite a bit better, so we at dinner at Smiths' house.
Sun, Mar 2 - Vertigo
Dawn's vertigo was worse again, so we did pretty much nothing.
Mon, Mar 3 - Funshop Ice Skating
Dawn was quite a bit better, which was good news, because that morning was Funshop's ice skating event at Nelson Center. Originally Dawn had planned on putting on some skates and doing a bit of ice skating for the first time in many years, but the vertigo meant that would be a bad idea. As before, when we got there, Lando had no interest in going out on the ice.
We spent about 30 minutes with him in the lobby, where it was comparatively quiet (except for Lando, who was running around like a mad man), then another 30 minutes watching the other kids skating (except for Lando, who was running around like a mad man).
Just about the time we were thinking about calling it a day and going home, Lando decided he was ready to go out on ice. He only stayed out there about 20 minutes or so, but he quite enjoyed it. I took plenty of pictures, of course, but haven't gotten any of them posted yet!
Tue, Mar 4 - REALL
As usual, the first Tuesday of the month meant a meeting of REALL, the local skeptics group. I didn't have anything planned, so we just sat around and talked a bit.
Wed, Mar 5 - Funshop
Another Wednesday, another Funshop evening! However, due to the vertigo, Dawn isn't supposed to drive until at least a week after the last symptoms go away! That meant that, rather than meeting her at the Funshop building (which is not far from where I work), I had to drive home to pick up her and Lando, then drive back across town to Funshop. Not a big deal, but I normally have 30 minutes or so to read a book while I'm waiting. Oh well.
Thu, Mar 6 - Errands
I left work at 2:00 and ran a couple of errands. Exciting, huh? Um... I think I went to the post office. I bought stamps. Nobody died.
Fri, Mar 7 - Preschool Registration
This was something of a big day in Lando's life, and in ours. We went to registration for "Preschool in the Park" at Washington Park. This will begin in September, and will be just 2½ hours on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The "classes" are small (10 kids), so Lando will get plenty of attention. And because the classes are short, it will help ease Lando (and Dawn) into the idea of not spending the whole day together. :-)
Lando had plenty of fun playing with the toys that were out while we got him registered. Then when it was time to leave, he had a complete meltdown. *sigh*
Sat, Mar 8 - Moms Group Play Date
Dawn is running the Springfield Moms Meetup Group and had scheduled a play date at the mall for 9:00 am. White Oaks Mall recently installed a very nice soft play area for kids up to about age 6 or so. Scheduling it for 9:00 am meant that it didn't interfere with plans for the rest of the day, but it also meant getting up and moving somewhat earlier than perhaps some moms would like to on a Saturday. In addition to us, only 1 other mom showed up. She had 3 kids with her, so Lando had fun playing. Again, I took pictures. Again, I haven't posted any of them yet.
Sun, Mar 9 - Daylight Saving Time
Daylight Saving Time began! I don't care whether it saves energy or not; I like Daylight Saving Time! The extra hour of daylight after work just really helps me feel a bit less stressed out. Otherwise it feels like, "Get up, go to work, come home, time for bed!"
Mon, Mar 10 - Disk Drive and James Randi
I took the afternoon off to do two things.
One was to go to Best Buy and buy a hard drive. My PC has 600GB of disk space. Of that, it had reached the point where only about 5GB was unused. If you're wondering how I could be using 595GB of disk space, here's how: digital photos (I shoot in RAW format, which means each picture from my 8 megapixel camera uses about 7MB); digital music (I have about 300 CDs copied to disk); digital video; TIVO files; etc.
So, how much does half a terabyte of disk space cost these days? $130.
And since I was going to have enough space to actually do so, I picked up Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the first computer role-playing game I've bought in years.
The other reason I took the afternoon off was for a brief road trip to Champaign. Members of REALL and the Springfield Area Freethinkers carpooled over to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to see James Randi give a talk. Oh, and some Nobel Prize winner, too. :-) James Randi is a former magician who, among other things, exposed Uri Geller as being a fake, appeared on The Tonight Show numerous times, debunked dowsers, psychics, faith healers, psychic surgeons, hypnotists, etc. And he's a funny guy!
About 500-600 people turned out to see him. Afterwards he stayed around to chat, so I got a chance to talk with him a bit, had him sign my copy of his book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, and got my picture taken with him. That picture and the numerous ones that I took of him are still waiting for me to post them. (But you already guessed that, didn't you?)
(Oh, the Nobel Prize winner? That was Richard J. Roberts, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing". Now you know.)
Tue, Mar 11 - Disk Drive and Oblivion
I installed the new 500GB hard drive in the computer. I really like the physical layout of my computer. It was definitely designed to make it easy to get to the components and install stuff. What a nice change!
Installing the hard drive was a snap. Now all I had to do was move some files from the old drive to the new drive. About 240GB of disk space was being used for digital photos, so I decided to move those. I decided to play it safe and copy them to their new location, rather than moving them, so I could verify that everything worked before I deleted the old copies.
However, after I started the copying process, I saw the time estimate: 180 minutes. That's right -- 3 hours! Okay, forget that. I canceled the copying process, reasoning that if it was going to take 3 hours, it could do so while I slept.
So I installed Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and played it instead. It's fun! And now you know part of the reason why I've been unable to find time to post anything on my blog for the last few weeks.
Before I went to bed, I started the processing of moving the digital photos to the new drive. Because the process was going to take 3 hours, I decided to be brave and tell it to move the files rather than just copying them. (Yes, I know. Don't worry. It turns out okay.)
Wed, Mar 12 - Disk Drive, Sick Son, No Funshop
I woke up early and decided to check to see whether the digital photos had been successfully moved to the new disk drive. I walked into the office and saw a dialog box informing me that one of the files to be moved was a read-only file. Did I wish to move it anyway? Yes, damn it! *grumble* Luckily the read-only file showed up with only about 30 minutes left in the process, so it didn't cause a big problem.
After the files finished their move to the new drive, I started Photoshop Elements, then went into the organizer to tell it where all of the files had been moved. That's when I discovered that I had messed up. There is no way to tell the organizer, "hey, all of the files in this directory are now located in that other directory." Instead, you have to specify the new location one file at a time! As you might have guessed, with 240GB of digital photos, that would take quite a long time. The organizer catalog contains all kinds of information, such as the captions and keywords attached to each photo, so just ignoring the problem and starting over wasn't an option.
It turns out, what you're supposed to do is move the directory from within the organizer. *sigh* So that meant I had to move all of the files back to their original location (which took another 3 hours), then go back into Photoshop Elements and move the files yet again (which took yet another 3 hours). So all together it took 9 hours to get everything moved to the new disk drive!
Everything worked out in the end, though, and now I have plenty of room on both drives!
Another Wednesday, another Funshop session. However, Lando was sick, so no Funshop for us! (That was sort of good, because it meant that I could stay home and work on moving those files around!)
Thu, Mar 13 - Oblivion?
I'm drawing a blank here. I must have been playing Oblivion. Actually, Thursday is Dawn's night to do stuff, so probably I was keeping Lando entertained. And wanting to play Oblivion. :-)
Fri, Mar 14 - Er... Oblivion?
I suspect an alien abduction. Or more Oblivion.
Sat, Mar 15 - Sick Son, Play Date, Freethinkers
Dawn tried another play date at the mall, this time scheduling it for 9:30. However, Lando was sick, so he couldn't go. Since Dawn was the one who scheduled it, she figured she at least had to go. Unfortunately, nobody else showed up. *sigh*
Also, it was the third Saturday of the month, which meant another meetup of the Springfield Area Freethinkers. There was a pretty good turnout this time. I think the receding winter weather is making people feel more like getting out, even if "getting out" means "going to the Buffet King and eating lunch."
I suggested that for the April meetup we get together somewhere quiet where we can listen to the CD of Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God. Remember the Saturday Night Live routine, "It's Pat"? That was Julia Sweeney. Anyway, she now does a standup act where she talks about her spiritual journey from being a Catholic to becoming an atheist. (Her transition began, ironically, with her decision to attend Bible study classes at her church. Oops.) Anyway, we'll be getting together at Janet's house to listen. And because Janet's house isn't a restaurant, it will be BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch).
Sun, Mar 16 - Um... Oblivion?
Nope, I can't think of anything that happened on this day.
Mon, Mar 17 - St. Patrick's Day, Early Riser
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I went to work, of course. When I left, everyone was still asleep. Later, Lando got up, went into the living room, and sat on the couch. Dawn eventually woke up to the sound of him calling out, "Is anybody home?" :-)
Tue, Mar 18 - My Night
We didn't feel like cooking, so I swung by Panera Bread and got us dinner. Every other Tuesday evening the Schwan's delivery guy comes by. We're pretty much limiting ourselves to pizzas and ice cream these days. Definitely not local and definitely not whole foods, but definitely very tasty!
Oh, and I played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion until midnight.
Wed, Mar 19 - Funshop, Playing Outside, Super Size Me
Another Wednesday, another Funshop evening. The weather was nice enough that Lando was able to play outside for a bit after we got home.
At work, I have a 30 minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks. My computer has a DVD drive, so sometimes I'll bring a DVD to watch. Today I watched the first hour of Super Size Me. So far, wow! Here's the trailer:
To Be Continued...
I started writing this post a long time ago. March 19, actually. It's pretty much sat untouched ever since. Well, I'm not caught up yet, but rather than risk letting this sit around any longer, I'm going to go ahead and post it now. You'll just have to wonder how the rest of March turned out. Pretend that it's a cliffhanger!
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