Yet another schmuck is suing Google for something. It must be Monday.
So last weekend was pretty good. Saturday was Jan and Nef’s wedding, a very classy affair. For the ceremony, they chose a gorgeous little spot in Fort Mason with a view of the bridge. Of course, when you hold an outdoor wedding in a San Francisco park, you always run the risk of finding an obscenity-spewing “Vietnam veteran” stumbling through your reserved location… and this particular occasion was no exception. Fortunately, said veteran was convinced to take his leave, and the ceremony was able to begin without interruption.
After the ceremony, we all took a ride on a pseudo-cable car through the Presidio, and then sat down for a nice dinner. Good wine, and lots of it, was served. There were lots of Mudders in attendance who I hadn’t seen in years, although honestly I spent much of the time playing with Katie (Page’s two-year-old daughter) and Karen (Wendy and Phil’s two-month-old daughter). Little Karen was polite enough not to spit up on my only suit — I can already tell that Wendy and Phil are going to be excellent parents.
Now Katie, unlike Karen, happens to know all the Poker BuddiesTM. In fact, when she comes home from daycare on our poker nights, she always blows us kisses and says “Night-night!” to all of us before going to bed. It’s kind of difficult to maintain your tough-guy poker facade when all the other tough poker guys are grinning like idiots and saying, “Night-night, Katie! Night-night!” in high-pitched voices. Sheesh, we’re pathetic. Now in the old days Katie treated us all equally. However, a couple of weeks ago I attended the San Carlos Art Festival with Page, his wife Jan1, and a bunch of friends of theirs. Basically, Page and I walked Katie around, I carried Katie on my shoulders, we swung her as we walked… you know, typical father/daughter/random-poker-buddy-of-father stuff. Well, ever since then, Katie has been calling me by name and running up to hug me. I guess all I have to say to the other Poker Buddies is Ha ha ha, Katie loves me best.
But I digress.
Sunday was also a good day. I have lots of spare PC parts lying around the house, and I came up with a grandiose plan to use them up: build a system for my little sister. She could use one for college next year, after all. I figured that all I really needed was a new CPU and motherboard, and we were golden.
Ah… how naive I was. At first, I could only get the CPU fan to run. No hard drive spinning, no LEDs, no nothing. After much frustration and fiddling with a voltmeter, I discovered that Pentium IV motherboards require an entirely new kind of power supply. (When all else fails, read the directions.) Then I learned that Intel’s new 845/850 chipsets have implemented a remarkable new feature called, “If you plug in an AGP 2X video card, you will damage your motherboard“. That would be, as they say, double-plus ungood. In other words, the old ATI video card I wanted to use is right out. At least on Sunday I got the new power supply. Now the hard drive spins up, the LEDs light, and the system makes a lot of loud angry beeps. But they’re the right kind of angry beeps2, so it’s a victory. Of sorts.
1. Not the same Jan that was getting married Saturday. Page’s wife Jan is already married… to Page. Pay attention, people.
2. The beeps are saying, “You idiot! Where’s my video card?”