Oklahoma: Well, the people are very nice. I'm not sure they're used to our east coast mentality. My boss and I were at an italian restaurant in Oklahoma Cities and had just ordered, when my boss got an "emergency" email on his blackberry and had to spend the entire meal talking on his bluetooth headset in a corner of the restaurant. Well, I wasn't going to just sit there and eat alone (while his food got cold), so I pulled out my Treo and talked to Chicklet. My boss got back to the table just in time to ask the waitress to give us the check and pack up his entire meal :) ... she was very understanding, but it seemed that not too many Okies from Muskogee try to pull that.
Speaking of Okies from Muskogee, I finally heard that song and I must say I was slightly offended. What? We don't wave American flags in courthouses on the coasts?! Sure, you don't do LSD or light up, but you get drunk off your arses from "white lightning!" Please. Get over yourselves.
Friday I played Settlers of Catan with Nick and Sean. You may recall that last time we played I went 1-1. The outcome was the same this time as well. (If not for a stupid, stupid move on my second turn of game #2 I would have gone 2-0.)
This weekend I got over a small cold (it was nothing to sneeze at). Also, Chu and I started work on my TiVo, which consisted of putting lots of little connectors into the right pin. It was high school microelectronics all over again. Now the motherboard is connected to the case, so today I ordered a hard drive, CD/DVD-burner, memory, and TV tuner. I also started the bit torrent for the OS (though I'm still deciding between KnoppMyth and Fedora...suggestions?).
On Sunday, I attended my first Easter party. With no clue what traditional vegetarian Easter food is, I decided to bring some Charoset--traditional Passover food. It wasn't my best batch, but people liked it (it's hard to go wrong with Charoset). And I used my honed Afikomen-finding skills to locate four of the nine eggs hidden throughout Miranda's living room. I didn't partake in egg-dyeing: I figured egg-hunting made me a good enough Pagan.
NCAA update: I plummeted to the 59th percetile in ESPN's challenge. But, while I'm out of the running in my office pool, I'm still in the running in the family pool and am 6th out of 88 in the large Capital One office pool (I know someone who works there). Thus, if Louisville beats Michigan St. in the national championship (assuming they beat Illinois and UNC, respectively), then I win $25 in the Strauss pool and have a really good shot at $250 in the Capital One pool. A longshot with those teams, I know, but something to root for.
Tomorrow I leave for a east coast road trip (this time with a new SmartTag card: yay!). The agenda is Princeton, NJ (Wed.)->Columbia in NYC (Thur.)->Yale (Thur., Fri.)->MIT (Fri., Sat.)->NYC again (Sat., Sun.)->home for a friend's birthday party on Sunday. Hopefully, I'll be able to report in at least once on the trip.
No marijuana in Oklahoma? It's their drug of choice! That and crystal meth. But I suppose crystal meth is becoming an all-American pastime--and we all know how all-American Okies are. Not that anyone else finds this interesting, but just thought I'd share.
Thanks for a lovely evening yesterday and I hope you have a fun roadtrip with the Datamobile :)
Why Fedora? Why not Debian unstable? I've heard Knoppmyth has a less-than-ideal user interface, by the way. I've never dealt with it though, so I don't know this for sure.
I'd just point out that Merle wrote "Okie from Muskogee" to tell what he felt was the other side of the story (from his dad's point of view) during the Vietnam War. I'm not a Merle Haggard fan in general, but I do like that song; while disagreeing with its content I appreciate its larger sentiment.
I think we're looking at something similar these days: Progressives have been painted into corners across America as hating the U.S. and being anti-American. I don't pass up a chance to remind my few conservative friends and the many ideological floaters I know that political opposition is key to political freedom and nothing could be more patriotic than a tenacious opposition to the current administration.
Indian Territory is a strange, strange place...and I've lived "near" it most of my life! It's a living, breathing tribute to history's unintended consequences right here in the U.S.A.
...and the White Lightning is much better in Tennessee and western North Carolina!
Chu: it's definitely true that it'd be down-right un-American not to have a Meth Lab in your basement. As long as you fly Old Glory on your front porch, everyone knows the cops won't stop by your house.
Rachel: well knock-me-down-and-hit-me-with-a-shovel! You're dispensing Linux advice! And good advice at that! I think I saw one of the four horsemen pass by my window...why Fedora, you ask? I have stock in RedHat so I felt embedded; plus, it's certain to have a large support community, no? (Though, I'm sure you could say the same about Debian.)
Patrick: that's a good insight. Now we need to someone to right a song about how all the tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, Body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, (gay-friendly, baby-killing) left-wing freak shows are really much more Patriotic that Tom Delay and Rcik Santorum. Can't be that hard, right? Maybe Jewel could help us out?