Within Rafael

Been a busy weekend.

Friday, a few co-workers and I went out to celebrate a birthday. Went from about 4pm to 11pm, oops. We had drinks, pool, and fun. morgan and I sent some emails back and forth, but she had to jump off to prepare for a local horse show of sorts.

Saturday was recoup. day, but that got interrupted by the mother. She wanted me to drive her all over the place in preparation for her travel on Sunday to New York to some funeral. Don't know or care about the details. While she was getting her hair done, I went over to BestBuy and pre-ordered Fallout 3. Also had a chat with a cutey at the register... but I promptly left. It dawned on me she's probably 15. LOL.

Late night Saturday I received some tidbits from morgan on her performance at the show so far. She managed to rake in places ranging from several 1st's to a 4th, which is pretty fucking impressive in my books. We chatted for like 30 seconds before I let her go sleep -- I think she was sleep-chatting!

I also spent most of Saturday night debugging a new issue that came up with iTunes 8 and Windows Vista computers. Apple deployed a newer USB filter driver that seems to have caused a shitstorm. They rolled back the driver and quietly re-released iTunes 8, but a friend and I are trying to track down why it's crashing machines.

Sunday (today), isquiet so far. Parents left to New York for two nights while I take care of the dogs and sister. I spent a good chunk of time doing some work to make up hours that I've been dragging ass @ work. Just going to relax and prepare to speak to manager about going to PDC in late October because I may have secured a method to get out there. I'm excited. I need the time off.

Sometimes I'd rather be behind a monitor, figuring out the internal mechanisms of Microsoft Windows but... today, I enjoyed a happy hour with some co-workers. Had a few drinks, hit some pool, and watched some jailbait Olympic action too. Happy hours are good temporary distractions for how boring and uneventful your life may be, trust me on that one.

I dicked around with Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Media Center in VMware, but it started complaining about missing files, components, etc. I think it's really just bitching because VMware can't emulate or provide pass-through for complex graphic operations (like displaying video). I'll disassemble it later and figure it out but in the mean time I'm going to try some alternate approaches tomorrow while morgan and jimmy fix up (read: explode) their Scribbld network! Maybe I'll just copy the raw WMV files and let Media Player handling licensing? We'll see.

Other than the above, I don't have plans on the weekend -- don't usually do anyway. I'll hang out indoors, catch up on sleep, work on the above, and probably play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. until I get dizzy, due to the headbob effects, to keep occupied. There's nothing around here I'd venture outdoors for and I'm not the go-to-the-bar-and-try-to-pick-up-a-girl type.

Oh, and Tom @ Neowin shot me a note stating Windows Media Center "Fiji" leaked onto the Internet. Raise your hand if you give a shit! I didn't think so. Screw Windows Media Center, I'm waiting for my Popcorn Hour device to arrive so I can connect it to my HP MediaSmart NAS! >> http://www.popcornhour.com/ <<

Bed now.

Note to self: Need a picture of myself for magazine interview asap, grrr.