Category: Adventure

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Adventure

Wizard’s Wedding

I attended the Wizard’s wedding on Sunday. It was all the way up in Douglastown NY at the Douglastown Manor. Since the Wizard was pretty much our honorary 4th brother growing up our entire family got the invite to attend. My older brother who was also the best man, my mom and myself were able to attend.

The car ride there wasn’t too bad. We were able to navigate with the assistance of GPS without a wrong turn. Traffic wasn’t too terrible either, especially considering that this was Memorial Day weekend.

Once we arrived it was great to get out of the car and walk around. I did get a quick bite to eat at a Subway across from where we had arrived. I did assist the store keeper with removing an older advertisement cling on from their window. Stuff like that is fun to me.

We then headed over to the church. Besides the lack of air conditioning the church wasn’t too bad. The ceremony went by rather quickly. Outside I got a chance to say hello to a few of the other guys who were invited and were in my older brother’s grade growing up. All older now, but still just as goofy as I remembered them all.

We then went over to the reception. Driving to that wasn’t too bad either. It just just 3 or 4 miles from the church. It was very nice inside the Douglaston Manor and the hors d’Å“uvre were excellent. In fact I found that as long as you were eating that random people would spend less time talking to you. Needless to say, I really did overeat at this time. But at least it was yummy stuff.

The rest of the night went smoothly. The band played a greatest hits of the 80’s set. So there was anything from The Police, to Judas Priest going on. I thought that they really sounded great and did a good job. People were dancing the entire time. I never realized that the Wizard’s family was such dancers, but I guess they were always into music so it does make sense. Especially keyboards.

Oh and for my embarrassing moment of the day. I had to use the restroom and on my way to locate them followed a guy who was walking a few feet in front of me into the restroom. Well upon my exit, I literally bumped into two girls who were entering the restroom. All three of us froze in confusion as to why each of us were in the wrong spot. Well apparently I had entered the women’s restroom by accident thinking it was the men’s (thanks a lot guy for going in the wrong one). I’m pretty sure some guys followed in after seeing me enter similar to what had happened to me. Oh well, I pretty much felt dumb at that point and just vanished. At least the people whom I encountered all seemed to be with a different party and I didn’t have to continually see them the rest of the night.

The drive home went by much more quickly than the ride there. It was very late and even though we took a wrong turn that took us through Manhattan, it didn’t set us back too much. All in all it was a fun though exhausting day.

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Adventure

How to Clean a Mighty Mouse

Somebody at work asked me if I knew how to clean a Mighty Mouse, and by chance this is something that I’ve been doing every few months for my Mighty Mouse scrollball. I’ve found that by folding a piece of paper several times then wedging it into the scrollball seems to do a good job. I’m always amazed out how much stuff can build up inside of a mouse (honestly I’m not a very dirty person).

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Adventure

Free Chicken and Waffles

While on lunch break, I noticed a little something going on in the now closed KFC parking lot next to IHOP. There were some chefs from Reddings in Atlantic City cooking up some free chicken and waffles outside. Free food, especially from Reddings is something that only the dumberest of the dumb would pass up so I stopped my car to check things out.

There were several reporters there from numerous local publications covering the challenge that apparently Reddings had issued against the chicken and waffles that IHOP had apparently just recently added to their menu. They were out to prove that the IHOP chicken and waffles was inferior to their dish.

After waiting a minute or so for my waffle to finish, I was very politely handed a big plate and could hear the cameras all going off. Apparently me being handed a plate of chicken and waffles is quite the event these days. I then found a nice curb to sit on and digged in.

It was excellent, the fried chicken was especially good. Several reports continued to ask me questions while their photographers continued to take photos of me eating on the curb. I’m sure there are now several photos of me looking like quite the slob (chicken and waffles can do that to you).

It was nice to have a random bizarre lunch occurrence, seems like I had only had one so far this week. By the way Reddings does make some good food from what I sampled and will have to make a stop over there to try more of their menu.

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Adventure

Jury Duty in Atlantic City

Yesterday I had to do my civic duty and participate in jury duty. This time it was in sketchy Atlantic City not the fairly new building in Mays Landing. I had to park in a parking garage a few blocks from the courthouse.

The parking garage was pretty gross. The walk from the garage wasn’t too pleasant either. I don’t know how they have jurors make that walk. I honestly wouldn’t want my mom to be walking in that part of town.

When I arrived at the courthouse I had to go through a metal detector. I made it through on my first attempt, I felt so proud. Then I had to wait in a line with some fairly miserable people (it is jury duty after all) to get registered, etc. Many people were talking about how fed up they were with living in New Jersey and how they were hoping to move someplace else. I’m pretty sure it’s the cost of living and taxes that primarily had them up in arms.

Then I took a seat and waited and waited some more. Luckily one of the cases had settled early that morning, so they would only need our group for one potential trial. The woman next to me turns out is the sister-in-law of someone I grew up with. She was really cool, and destroyed me in two games of checkers on her iPad. Apparently I’m pretty bad at checkers. I did defeat her in a game of air hockey however. I was surprised at how many iPads people had brought there.

As we were being led to the courtroom like cattle a former co-worker’s husband recognized me and we chatted a bit. Mr. Battistelli shared my views on Atlantic City (or at least the part where we were situated) and it was cool to see a familiar face.

As we got to the courtroom for jury selection, I stood hoping not to get called. This just wouldn’t of been a good week had I been selected. It was most entertaining listening to some of the excuses that people had once they were called up. After about an hour and a half, the jury was selected and we were sent home.

They really need to come up with a way to make the process a bit more bearable. iPad checkers and air hockey are my suggestions.

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Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago Day 3

Day 3 was pretty cool. I walked over to the West Egg Cafe for an early breakfast. Got blueberry and granola pancakes which they called crunchberry pancakes. They were massive and very good.

The Keynote Speaker was very entertaining. It was usability expert Jared Spool. He gave a good presentation, and had much of the room laughing at times.

Workbench: Managing Content Management

About the Workbench module. This modules seems great and will be a perfect fit for atlantic.edu to manage users and the content publishing process. This is a very exciting module and I look forward to using it.

Drupal Commerce: Setting up Shop on Drupal 7

This was an excellent presentation. It’s great to see just how much hard work goes into module development. I’m going to have to seriously consider whether or not to go with this one right away or not. Great job.

Drupal 7 Theming Basics

Wasn’t a big fan of this one. There were a lot of errors on the slides, it seemed a bit hurried.

Building awesome user interfaces with Drupal 7’s Form, AJAX, and Theme systems

I was just plain old burned out at this point. There was some cool stuff demonstrated, but I thought it was a bit too much for me to follow at times.

Night Exploration

I walked over to the massive Apple Store then stopped by Giordano’s to get some dinner. I went with the Italian beef sandwich not the deep dish pizza. I then walked in some other random stores for warmth, stopping in the Giaradelli store for a yummy peanut butter something sundae. It was great.

I then stopped in the Disney store to see if they had Thanos. They didn’t, but oh well I continued to explore more of Michigan Ave. The shopping is really weird to me, Floors are kinda small, but many many stories tall. I know it makes sense given the buildings here, but it still seemed rather strange to me.

On my way back to the hotel I let some bum sucker me into a shoe shine. Yep, that’s right I got my sneakers which should of been thrown out 4 months ago shined. I feel so dirty and scammed right now, but just didn’t have it in me to say no. I’m really getting exhausted from this whole adventure.

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Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago Day 2 & Exploration

IMG_0749I work up early and took a walk around the city in the rain to find something to eat for breakfast. I would up at some simple bagel shop. It was nothing too special. Then the sessions began.

Views Demystified

I found this session to be very useful. It started a bit on the slow side and I was beginning to feel that it was going to be a waste of time. But then out of the blue the attachment display was mentioned. For reasons that cannot be explained I wasn’t aware of this in Views. This alone was amazing to discover.

Making Beautiful Maps

This session was ok. The openlayers library and TileMill are two things that I will be checking out. The guys were extremely knowledgeable, but at times a bit too much over my head.

Design Thinking

The panel was great, but I really didn’t like the session. There really wasn’t any solid point to it for me. They just played a few videos and just seemed to be winging it at times.

Baby Got Backend: Content Administrators are Users Too

This was a pretty goos sesssion, the content admins are very important to me when developing a site. They had some very useful tips. I just wish they had shown some actual examples.

Drupal 7 JavaScript for Developers

I didn’t know what to expect, this can be a very difficult subject. The presenters did do an excellent job though. Good suggestions of examples and going over #states was great. Some very useful stuff here that I’m bound to use in the not too distant future.

Lego Store

I did make a trek (actually just 3 blocks or so) to the Lego Store. They had some amazing sculptures there. Including a life size Darth Vader and R2-D2! So glad I stopped here for some photos.

I also managed to walk around the city a bit too. Some amazing buildings here, with impressive sights all over the place. I never got that creepy feeling where you feel like you have to be on alert while walking around. It was really pleasant minus the damp rain.