Mark’s Notes On The Go

askHad a nice weekend. I got jack done at home of the things I should have done, but sometimes that’s better.

Saturday I slept until noon… yes… noon. And then I napped some more. I did finish painting the trim on the stairs that night but that’s all I accomplished for the entire weekend. I didn’t even put the hardware back on the doors in the hall, pick up the paint paper or clean the carpet so that I can move stuff back into the hall. So, very little accomplished.

But Sunday I got up with the chickens. I had no clear plans other than get in the car and drive. I used to do that in grad school but the goal was usually to visit some town or city or place where my family had sprung from (Auburn was very close to these places). Lots of small family cemeteries were visited in those years.

So, I woke up and I did a quick google trying to find some roadside attraction to visit. I had in mind going north on I-75 into the more rugged terrain. Oddly enough they were even talking to someone on the radio about an attraction up close to where I lived the first 6 mos of my life. But there was a chance of rain coming from the west, so I decided to head east. That was after I was in the car.

I found myself heading towards Augusta. I thought for awhile of taking in some of Greene County. I had ancestors there at the end of the 18th century, but I have no idea of the exact area they lived in. The area is beautiful but about to be built over because of Lake Oconee. I meandered through Greensboro’s small but old cemetery and saw not one family name. So, either not the town we were from or we left no evidence behind, not even the family names.

I headed back to the interestate and continued West. The sun started to poke out intermittently from the clouds. Yaayyy!!

And I saw a roadsign for historic Crawfordville.. hmmm.. The name seemed to ring a bell, but I’ve no idea why. So, I wandered off the interstate again. The only claim to fame for the small burg seems to be that it was the home of Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederacy. The main street was kept up enough, but all one had to do was drive on the back streets to see this town has been dying a long slow death. I got some nice pics back there. Such as:

From there, I wandered the back roads to a very quaint town in Wilkes County called Washington. Quite old but just beautiful. I bit in later spring it will be a show-stopper. Seemed far away from any major city so not sure how it’s holding on but it seems to be. Though they had several museums, main claim to fame seems to be Robert Toombs, a former Georgia politician who saw service during the civil war. I have to admit, I’ve only heard about him because he’s a cousin to one of my great, great… grandmothers. One of the few family kinships to famous southerners that I know isn’t made up.

At this point, despite the clouds, there was enough breaks that there was a consistent bath of the sun’s rays. ahhhhh…

Leaving Washington, I stopped for some fast food and hit the interestate and headed on to Augusta. I didn’t have a load of time there having spent so much wandering the rural byways, but I was half an hour out at this point, so it seemed a waste not to at least see the city. I was surprised by how much I liked it. I felt a fast kinship to the place. It has some history being one fo the older Georgia cities. And it’s a decent but not oppresive size. I wandered on the Savannah River walk and crossed the bridge on foot into South Carolina to take some shots of the Georgia side.

Afterwards, I spent a couple of hours wandering through Magnolia Cemetery, Augusta’s old main burial ground. Very beautiful and interesting. Some of the graves had green Ribbons on them from St. Patty’s day and sure enough if you read the stones, the deceased was born in Ireland. It appears that there were a lof ot Irish in Augusta, which maybe explains why all the fountains on Sunday were still spewing green-tinted water from Friday’s celebrations.

I also noticed that the cemetery isn’t in the best neighborhood. I wasn’t scare there in daylight, but youc ould tell it was a poorer area. And parts of the cemtery wall had barbed wire added to aid in its defence. Now, the funny thing is years ago my Dad taught me that you can tell by the barbed wire direction whether the installers were trying to keep people in or out of an enclosure. The barbed wire at Magnolia Cemetery is aimed INWARDS…. So, who are they trying to keep IN the cemetery anyway?

Got home about 7pm, so all in all, 12 hours spent on the road. I was tired, but a happy kind of tired for a change. I’ll have to do these treks more often, especially as nicer weather is on the horizon.

First, one I’ve meant to share for a week:
HUGE KIDS SALE

I’ve passed that sign at a church on the way to work about this time of the year every year since I bought my house. And every year, I want to know are they selling a lot of kids or just really large ones? And aren’t there laws against that sort of thing?

Meanwhile, I’ve opened up the week on a strong note. I was going to be at work late anyway trying to complete (and failing) research for a big customer. In between waiting for reports to generate, I went and tried to help (mostly moral support) a couple of friends who were there late getting ready for a huge customer visit today. In the end, I’d have left sooner as I could see my stuff wasn’t getting done. But the whole helping them thing got in the way. We all left at 11pm. I would have left even if they weren’t because this was about the point that my massive migraine hit. Luckily these are rare for me, but this one was to the point of nausea…

I came in, took a pile of pills, turned on the aquarium (poor fish), and came upstairs, checked messages for a few minutes, and then collapsed, literally leaving on every light downstairs including the aquarium lights. I knew they were on, but my body rejected the notion of going back downstairs violently.

Glad to say that the headache has passed and I woke up sooner than I’d have expected. We have our own customer visit to prepare for tomorrow and Thursday, so don’t be surprised if tonight is a late one…

So many half complete projects that I’ve GOT to take care of. Trim painting to complete in the stair well and the little matter of a bare computer chassis and such in here. Nevermind the back-up of household tasks…

So, despite being cool yesterday, in an almost fall-like manner, the sun was bright and beautiful. I know this because I saw it from my window.

Despite my gung-ho attitude to get out and enjoy Saturday, I was tired and bum-like and barely stirred before noon. And when I was finally up and moving, I came in and began spring cleaning on my 4 year old PC.

This is the geeky part. I actually feel bad that I’ve never done a clean install on it. In four years, I’ve just banged away on it. Installing new software, removing software, adding new peripherals, etc. And in the last year, I’ve beefed it up just enough to shove along a bit more before another purchase. And in all truthfulness since I’m not a big gamer, tis still working for me anyway. My only push on it is image editing and that I watch TV on it often while doing other stuff. Hence new memory and a video card in the past year. Plus a big hard drive.

Basically, I guess despite my making fun (all in good humor) of the programmer geeks at work. When it gets down to bits and bytes and knowing the hex value of a letter/number in ASCII and EBCDIC, I’m not your guy. Bores me to tears. Probably why I lasted only a year in that major in college.

But I still like my toys.

So, I spent a long day, with the sun bathing me through the window while I dismantled my machine… to a point.. only to discover that HP’s back-up partition is far from a good thing. See, HP doesn’t provide back-up disks or CD’s to install from. They have a “hidden” partition that houses everything you hypothetically need to either do a destructive or non-destructive fix. I wanted destructive, but something is wrong with the set-up. Don’t know if a bug got it or what, but I finally caved. I spent the night tearing out everything that had been installed since I got this PC until it was down to its roots. And now that it’s finally at ground level of what I want, I’m going to do a bootable CD or DVD so that I can restore what I have now should I need to.

This is with working nearly 7 hour today. One team-member was still there when I left. That was enough for a Sunday for me.

Now, a little more TLC and then I’m going to go look at some lap tops. I’ve thought on those lines a lot of times and always moved myself back to a desktop in the end. And I’m not ready for a new one of those just yet. This one has a lot of life left. But the portability looks better all the time.

So, there’s the geek life. A sunny day spent inside, a week-end with the PC case open (still is) and pondering spending OT pay on a new techno toy.

Not down the drain I hope!

Having a reflective moment, so deal with it.

Yesterday, I notice that there are new students at my tiny little high school and bop into to see who. Turns out to be someone I knew of but didn’t really know. A few years ahead, he dated a sister of one of my classmates. The point to this is I bounce over to see who it is because the name doesn’t immediately trigger anything until I get there. And I see the a comment on his page from his daughter who is a senior in high school! EEP! That’s right, I suddenly remember, they did end up with a kid straight out of school… oh man… I’m that old… or close to that old… which is enough…

A similar conversation came up when I was getting comics at Chris’ the other day and the topic of age came up. I commented, truthfully, that it took a lifetime to get to 25, but the years since have flown past in the blink of an eye.

And then I get home to find some music I ordered off of Amazon sitting on the stoop. The first to hit my CD drive, is a best of collection. The only time I buy those is when I decide to get music from the cassette years. So, here I sit, feeling old, listening to punk music from the Godfathers. And the kicker, the collection, which includes music I listened to in high school, is decade old as well….

Ouch!

I kept looking for this one everytime I went to the UK. They were (are?) a Brit punk band after all. Nada. I finally caved and ordered it.

Long work week. Several 12 hour days. And I know I have to go in with my team for awhile on Sunday to try to catch up. Granted, I’m lucky because I know there aren’t a lot of professional jobs that pay overtime, but it still gets old fast.

Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler but sunny, and since Sunday is work, I’m getting out and enjoying my freedom! If time is going down the drain, I intend to swim upstream!