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Wedding Recap

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The service was short. I am a fan of short services. They did a non-traditional wedding. Their friend Vivian was the officiant. We held it in a gazebo right on the beach. It was beautiful. It was touch and go on the rain for a while but by the time we got to the site for the service it was not wet at all.

After the service we went to a park across from the inn where the reception was being held. We took photo’s, etc. We then went to the reception and partied. I partied a bit more than others. I lost count of how much I drank, but it couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 drinks. I made it thorough desert, but then I decided to drop my jacket off at my room because I was hot and I didn’t want to forget it at the reception. Bad idea. The next think I know it is 2 hours later and I woke up sitting in the easy chair in my room. I had missed the last hour and a half or so of the reception.

Today I feel like crap. That is what I get for drinking. I had a head ache this morning, but I am feeling a bit better now.

Amanda’s Aunt gave me a ride to the airport. She was cool. I got to Portland so early that I was able to fly standby on the earlier flight. I am in the air now (as I write this), and I hope my luggage got on the plane. The lady at the counter reassured me that it would get on the flight. I will find out in less than an hour.

Now that I am getting back to NYC early I am hopeful that I can get my Tux back to the rental place tonight instead of paying the late fee and returning it tomorrow. I will see how long it takes to get home later before I commit to anything.

Visa, MasterCard or OTHER!

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I am an American Express Card holder. I am happy about that. Amex treats you right. I don’t remember any major problem (nock on wood) with them as a credit card company. I do remember all the good things they have done when I have had problems. Sometimes without me even asking. That is good service. Yes I pay allot for that service, but isn’t that the point?

Because I am so happy with my Amex I have decided long ago that I don’t need any other card. I mean I have a charge and credit card with Amex. Well since my bank has given me a Debit card allong with my ATM card I figure I can use that if I ever come accross a place that does not take Amex. I must say that I have been known to leave stores when they don’t take Amex. If you want my business you should take a credit card that huge portions of he popuation have, and the vast majority of stores take. Being cheap about the percentage point or two that Amex charges over Visa/Mastercard is just petty and looses my business. I got that attitude from my dad. He had a Visa card that he never used. I remember on a few occasions where we would leave stores if they didn’t take amex, even though he could use the visa card. I am the customer, I want to pay in a legitimate way using this card. If you won’t accomodate me, I am leaving. And leave we would. I am like my dad (even though sometimes I don’t like to admit it). We can both be stuborn. he a bit more than me, but as a customer I am right. Aren’t i?

I am here in Maine. More on that later. The inn I am staying at has WIFI. I was like cool. I have 2 hours to kill so let me get online and check my mail. Yeah, that didn’t work. Why you ask? Well the wifi company doesn’t take Amex. I was a bit miffed but then said ok, this is why I have my debit card anyway. So I broke out the debit card and punched in my digits only to get rejected. The credit card authorization company does not recognize my debit card as a valid MasterCard. So I am stuck with no WIFI. I am actually cool with that, but I am really pissed at a company that makes it so difficult for me to use there service. OK, I know everyone DOESN’T take amex, so I use my debit card, and you STILL won’t take the dam card. Come on. I am still not going to run out and get a Visa or Master Card. I will spend my money at a place that is willing to take it!!!

The Wedding

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I am sitting in my room (super small, but lets not go there right now) waiting to put my tux on. I am supposed to be ready to go in about an hour. Since it will take me like 20 minutes to get dressed I have time to kill. In a minute I am going to run down to the inn bar and fill up my flask. Rich & Amanada got me a flask kit with cups and stuff for a gift. It was exactly what I wanted. I am going to fill it up “just in case” for the ceremony. I wonder how much the bar will charge to fill up a 6-oz flask with JD or Southern Comfort? I will find out.

I am not looking forward to wearing a tie. Rich’s dad helped me get it ready, but I hate wearing them. I know I “clean up nice” in a tux or good suit, but they are so uncomfortable to get into. After a while I get used to it and am fine, but it is that first few minutes that I dread. I hate sweating in them:(

Day Off

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I took today off. I mean I did work all weekend, and I needed the time off. My big plans for the day are sleeping and watching stuff on my Tivo. Well I got up at 10AM. There went the sleeping part of my day. Then I realized that I don’t have much left on my Tivo that I want to watch. So I am just relaxing now. Maybe I will go get a hair cut later, or go out and do something. Since I was running around all weekend it is nice to sit around and not do anything for a while.

Disaster Supplies

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Watching a disaster unfold (from a great distance) gets you thinking about things. For me first and foremost I wonder if all my friends and my friends families are ok? Then I begin wondering if I am prepared if something would happen in NY again? The answer is I am not prepared.

I have a well stocked (or it was the last time I checked it) first aid kit that was once my first responder bag when I did volunteer EMT work. I have some non refrigerated food, like cereal bar’s etc. I need more. I have no stockpile of water except for the 2 or 3 letters I keep in my fridge. I have 1 mag light flash light with only the batteries in it. The only self protection gear I have are a bunch of ceremonial swords I have, but I don’t think they will be of much use.

So in an effort to be prepaired for anything I am making some changes. I just ordered some fresh direct, so I got several gallons of water, and batteries for the mag light. I need to get another flash light for backup, and a replacement bulb for the mag light. I am also researching long lasting food stores. I am going to buy some MRE’s or MRE like food from ebay.

I figure that should be enough stuff to start. Then I will reevaluate the situation and get more stuff if needed.

The News

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I have mentioned before that I do not watch the news. I can’t stand it. I am not going to rehash all the reasons why I can’t stand the state of news in this country. I used to be able to watch the news for hours, now I can’t stand it. When a disaster hits like the hurricane last week I am forced to the news channels. The thing of it is you can watch CNN for 30 minutes during the entire ordeal and get all the news you will ever get from them. I didn’t watch very much news. I checked out individual news articles online from CNN, NY Times, and the BBC. I like the BBC because it gives an outside view of events in this country.

It is not that I am not interested in current events that I personally block myself from watching news updates. I just can’t stand the way it is packaged and presented these days. I do want to find out what is going on. Gus found a great blog that he passed along to me. it is a bunch of guys at a hosting provider who stayed behind to keep their systems running. You can check out their blog here. Besides the fact that the blog is run by a bunch of guys (and girls) who do what I do for a living, it is also unedited front line account of what is going on. They have feeds for video, and tons of photos. Gus sent me the link saying that if it was in NYC he thought that would be me. I told him I wasn’t so sure. It is true that our data center is one of the safest places in the city, but depending on the situation I would head for the hills! Either way these guys are a great read!

They have inspired me to try and find other blogs like it from people down there living through what is happening. Still searching…

Light Day

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Friday was relatively light day at work. Got allot done since not many people were around. I met my friend Kristen for drinks at this swanky bar near the office. As she pointed out for a swanky bar, they had ikea furniture, and plasma TV’s. I love some places priorities. After a few rounds we hit Angelo & Maxi’s. It was an unplanned visit to one of my favorite steak places. The food was great as always. After dinner we ended up at some dive bar in the village. Kristen liked it because it had a Pac Man machine. I couldn’t recreate my steps finding this place if I tried. I had a good night and then cabbed it home. I don’t even want to attempt a subway ride from the west village home on a friday. It will take too long.

The Picnic

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Well I was going to write all about the company picnic that I was going to on last Sunday. It rained, so we had no picnic. So nothing to talk about. It was rainy and everyone from work that I would hang out with (now that we all had no plans) were either sick or lazy and didn’t want to do anything.

I was with them on the being lazy part, so I did almost nothing productive on Sunday. I played with Sync on my Mac and robocopy for Windows. My goal is to automate backing up of my most important stuff. I have both scripts working. Robocopy can be (and will be) made into a scheduled task to run weekly on my XP box. Rsync needs a bit more work to make it a cron job that runs on a schedule. I may not even do that since my laptop is not regularly plugged into the firewire drive I will use as backup. I may just run the script manually when I want to backup stuff.

The picnic will most likely be rescheduled for the weekend I am away for a wedding. Not a huge loss for me. I always have mixed feelings about all day recreational get togethers from work. The parties usually rock, but the picnic can get a little long. Of course the wedding may end up making me feel the same way:)

What Would You Do?

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The events going on this week have me noticeably disturbed, but more importantly it has gotten me thinking. I wonder what I would do in similar situations? Would you set out to help people in your boat? Would you do it only if they paid you? It is reported to be happening. Would you loot for bottled water and food? In certain circumstances I can see that being necessary. Would you loot for a better pair of shoes if you were having trouble walking? If you said yes to that last one, then why wouldn’t you loot for shoes for 20 of your friends and family? While you are at it, would you loot for jewelry? How about a new TV or computer? I mean you can just take it and plug it in at home and watch cable? Oh wait, you don’t have power. And there is the problem that you have no house left, but you stole a TV. Good for you.

Would you goto a children’s hospital and shoot at the doctors there for no apparent reason? I guess you can answer yes to that one, if the hospital was conducting hideous medical experiments on the children. If they aren’t can anyone explain why in the world someone would shoot at a hospital?

How about shooting at the rescue helicopters. Would you shoot at them if they were going around saving people and weren’t armed? I mean doesn’t it sound like a good idea to take out your rifle and take pot shots at them? Or maybe it is a better idea to flip over an ambulance that was trying to evacuate patients from a hospital?

Or would you be the guy to lend out your generator to a friend if your house had power and they didn’t? Sounds like a good idea. How about letting friends and family use your house (that has power and water) to come over and shower, eat and sit in AC since they have nothing? That sounds humane too.

The really messed up thing is all the things I have mentioned here (good and bad) actually are happening right now. The good deeds are things friends of mine have done or are having done to them by other friends down in Louisiana right now. The other stuff is things that people (no, people wouldn’t do that, animals would do that crazy stuff) have done or are doing right now. This is a tragedy on a monumental scale. Why would something passing for a person take this opportunity to steel TV’s, or shoot at friggen rescue helicopters? I have been thinking about this for 2 days, and I cannot come up with an answer. I am just at a loss. At first I wasn’t going to write about it, but instead of thinking of this tragedy I am thinking how these people think stealing jewelry will make it all better? I am glad I don’t live down there anymore. Not because of the natural disaster (where I lived is actually relatively intact) but I don’t want to be associated in any way with the people on the news now doing these crazy deeds.

Why can’t everyone be helping everyone else get out of the city? Instead of shooting at police and steeling? Am I wishing for a utopia?

Disaster Supplies

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All the natural disasters going on have gotten me thinking that I need to stock up on emergency supplies. Frozen pizza and soda will not get me through a disaster. I need to get bottled water, and batteries for my mag light to start.

On that note I need to order more fresh direct. I am running out of food. I have to see when I will be around for a delivery.

My mom’s CD ripping task is almost halfway done. I had a long talk about her taste in music but she didn’t seem to budge:) My Dad is sick with a cold this week. My mom called to say she is sick now. I told her I will be very upset if I got sick from being with her yesterday. Lets hope I avoided it.

I blinked and it is 10:30 already. I need to wind this down, so I can (once again) try to get a good night sleep. I haven’t been sleeping well all week.