Showing posts with label concert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concert. Show all posts

11.7.13

Is it really only Thursday?

So for the new laptop I went with Ubuntu 13.04, because I'm used to Ubuntu, overly pretty or otherwise. I had some fun trying to get it installed though. My mother has my 4gb flash drive in her possession because I'm playing her Doctor Who dealer, and I only have a 1gb one otherwise, and the iso once applied to a flash drive takes 2gb, and I didn't have any writable CDs or DVDs that were compatible with the CD drive in the old laptop. This made my life difficult until I found a 2gb microSD card. So I currently have a card as big as my thumbnail loaded up with Ubuntu, fully bootable. Which seems really bizarre to me, because it's so damn tiny. (I should totally try to boot my phone from it. Then again, maybe not.)
Anyhow, spent some time setting that up, and then got it into my bedroom and hooked it up to the secondary monitor that I bought, and watched Torchwood on the monitor while still having facebook open on the main laptop screen. Damn, new shiny stuff is awesome. Heh. I did find out that the new lappy only has 2gb of RAM, so assuming they're the same type, I'll definitely be boosting that out of the old one.

And yes, I had haggis for dinner last night. Cooked it up with 3 sweet potatoes, sliced up, and half an onion, all in the oven together with some rosemary on top. Hit the spot, it did. And had leftovers for lunch today, and probably enough left for lunch tomorrow too. At $8 for one haggis, that works out to 2-something a meal (not counting the sweet potatoes), which is a pretty good deal. Cheaper than eating out, anyway. And tasty. Nom nom nom. I think I weirded out my boss by appreciating haggis. Oh well, more for me.

Didn't get much cleaning done, because of the computer taking pretty long to set up - nor did I get my hair recoloured. But that's okay. I can get some cleaning done today after work, maybe - and definitely Friday after work too. Thankfully, the hair thing (as I said yesterday) isn't imperative - so that could wait til Monday, or even longer, if I wanted. We'll see how it goes.

At work my boss and I set up a computer with two monitors, which is fairly standard, but we also had to put a second keyboard and mouse on it. Hilarity ensued: I'd go to right-click on the desktop for settings, and he'd click away so my menu disappeared immediately; or he'd go to log in, but I'd already hit Ctr-Alt-Del and so he'd do it again and thus exit from the login screen. At one point he was moving his mouse left/right, and I was moving my mouse up/down, so it went in a really wonky circle. What is it they say about small things and small minds?

The radio at work played Werewolves of London this afternoon. I can't take that song seriously. I crack up every time I hear it. I want to know how in hell he sang that song with a straight face. Also, I'm getting bloody tired of Skagit Valley Casino radio ads. That and whichever credit union has the stupid jingle about being "in your corner".

Can't wait for Friday, it's been a long busy week so far. Can't wait for next Friday, either - metal show to see! Woohoo!

Anyways, signing off for now.
Toodles.

Edit: formatting ...

28.5.13

In Which Lizzi Goes Out Monday Night ....

.... And wakes up Tuesday morning feeling like it's Monday again. But it was worth it.

Last night I went to see Sigur Ros with my friend Amanda. She is a lovely and wonderful person who tolerated my Pathfinder geeking with commendable patience. She also has the most awesome hat in the world. It's like a tiny adorable knitted viking helmet with little nubby horns on it. I was a little jealous of the awesomeness.

The show was out in Burnaby, in a park, outdoors, and because BC is and always will be BC, it rained. The entire time. Well, maybe not the entire time, but for enough of it. We had a blanket to sit on, but the water on the ground went right through that, so I sat on my Bag of Holding (it actually is one: Thinkgeek Bag of Holding) and that kept my backside dryish - at least it did til the Bag got soaked through. Whoops.
I think I had a notebook in one pocket of the Bag too... I should check if that survived. Yeah....
There was one chick wrapped up in a tarp, and other people huddling under umbrellas and donning those cheap plastic ponchos you can get that look like you're wearing a garbage bag - oh, and there were actually people wearing garbage bags too. Gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.
It was also Hipster Central - but I guess, if you're going to see an obscure Icelandic post-rock band, you really shouldn't expect anything else. Oh, the beards and the plaid and the skinny jeans and boots and slouchy hats and scarves. And dear god, all the secondhand pot smoke you could possibly wish for. I'm sure if I'd have tapped on someone's shoulder they would have happily shared a joint with me, but I had no interest in such.

The music, of course, was fabulous. Jonsi Birgisson has a spectacular voice and an impressive set of lungs - he drew out one high note for at least three full minutes. The ethereal noises out of his guitar were glorious, but he absolutely destroyed the horsehair on his bow - and then he played so violently he flung it away behind him by accident on the last song, which amused me greatly.
They did one song where he actually sang the refrain into the guitar pickups - looks utterly idiotic, with your face covered by guitar, but sounds amazing. I haven't been a super major fan of them up to this point, but I may have to listen to them more often. They did do a couple songs I recognised - Glosoli, after the encore, and another one earlier that I can't remember the name of. I wish they could have done Fljotavik, but even without - and despite the rain - the concert was still very very good.
Thank you, Amanda, for bringing me.

The unfortunate part is that for the entirety, my phone was nowhere to be found, even though I was certain that it came with me. So I have no photos or video, even though I was fully planning on taking photos on my brother's behalf (the poor boy was incredibly jealous - he's a fan of obscure music of all sorts, and if it's in another language, even better!). I was mildly anxious for the whole length of the show, but it was not in my bag, not in my pockets, not under the blanket...
So we get back to the car, and it's just quietly sitting in the grass right next to the car, having been rained on, but not having been stolen, and (I hope) not having been permanently ruined. I checked if it would wake up, and it woke up just fine and behaved properly the whole ride home, but once I got it plugged into the charger before I went to bed it went a little sideways on me, and this morning it was still slightly erratic. So I left it home while I went to work, laying in a bowl of rice to dry out. Here's hoping it's okay.

So that was my evening. Today has been run-of-the-mill same-old work stuff - imaging computers, wiping computers (I think I wiped a dozen computers today; Friday, when I'm back at this office, I'll see if I can do eighteen), dealing with user issues. I'm getting better at finding my way around here, I think, which is good.

Also, last and sort of least, burnt my hand yesterday when I was making food to take along to the concert. Just a little burn, but it hurt.

That's it. Toodles!