Just what I've been up to...

A week from tomorrow, I'll be a married man. Sorry, ladies!

Not too much else to report. The last week at work involved a bit more project management and a little less coding than I'd normally like, but I'm largely in control of what I get to do, so just need to make a mental note to spend more less time considering budgets and timelines and more time considering if...then statements and while loops.


Wednesday evening, we went out to see the Feist/Grizzly Bear show and it was incredible. I came home to find that the Mac Book Pro here had decided to stop charging its battery since I'd plugged it in the night before. I looked around on the interweb a bit and read something saying that a firmware update (sorry... getting nerdy here) had been released for MBP batteries. I installed the update and was told that I needed to restart. I clicked OK, but the computer just shut down and showed my background screen for five minutes. At this point, I made the fatal mistake of just holding down the power button to shut it down hard.

When I went to turn it back on, nothing happened. I tried holding down the power button for a few minutes, tried holding down Command+Option+P+R to reset the PRAM, yada, yada. Nothing. It wouldn't work on AC power, with the battery or on AC with the battery removed. Nada. Luckily, I still had the other computer working and started to figure out that the battery was probably completely toast. As it was now about 1am, I gave up and went to bed with plans to try to solve the problem again on Thursday night.

As usual, I couldn't wait; so Thursday morning I took out the battery and unplugged the computer and let it sit for twenty minutes while I got ready for work. This "patience" approach worked once when the other computer wouldn't recognize an external drive after it had been accidentally unplugged. Apparently, just leaving everything unconnected for twenty minutes or so allows for various things to reset. It worked again this time and when I plugged the mac back in after 20 it powered right up... with the fan blowing full force and loudly.

Once it was running, the battery appeared with a little X and wouldn't accept a charge. Late for work, I hussled there with the laptop in tow and after a little internet research at lunch on dead batteries, made an appointment at the Apple Store online for Saturday morning.

Friday night R and didn't do much at all as she had to work early on Saturday morning. Shortly after she went to work, I went to the hell hole that is Pentagon City to get the battery replaced. This proved largely uneventful, except that I had to wait from 10:40 until 11am before anyone even said "hello" even though my appt was at 10:40. After some inspection, I was issued a new $110 battery for no charge as the current one was still under warranty.

With the laptop fixed, I spent another hour searching for a new pair of brown shoes for the wedding and finally found them at Aldo after finding nothing at DSW, Nordstrom's or Macy's. I hate the mall and high-tailed it out of there to end up spending the next 20 minutes waiting for the metro due to work being done on the Yellow, Green, Blue and Orange lines.

After R got off work, we scooted up to MD so that she could pick up her dress for the wedding. Once back, we ate dinner and then I went of to BeBar with CG, DK, and PG where we met up with some others and then ended the night at the Black Cat. All for now, though I suppose I should insert a picture up at the top to make this interesting...