Since I will soon be gainfully employed again, I have been looking at cars a little bit. My short list is currently: Golf TDI, Toyota Corolla LE, Honda Civic LX, Honda Civic Hybrid, and Toyota Prius. The Golf will probably win out because it has side indicators. That is a very major safety feature, in my opinion, and I'm baffled why it isn't required in the U.S. Y'know, it costs a whole $5...
Well, my power went out twice today. The first time was from about 1:30 until roughly 5:20. I didn't expect it to last that long, so I suppose it's a good thing that I wandered around Uptown and got lost a little bit. Still, the power was off when I got home, so I had a rather large serving of slightly melty ice cream for dinner. Just about the time I got halfway through, the power came back on, but only lasted about an hour before going out for another 40–50 minutes.
I was right on the edge of the dead zone. When I got outside the first time around, I could tell that Marcy Open School across the street had power because their huge air conditioner was still running. Down the street at the 5th-Hennepin-Central triangle, the traffic lights were out. The nursing home nearby had its generator running. However, the traffic lights were operating normally at 4th and Central, and power was going to Rick's Market.
Well, I went to Cheapo and got a bunch of CDs. Most of them were used except for the Danny the Dog soundtrack (aka Unleashed, though the actual Unleashed soundtrack is different, I guess, featuring some rapper or summat).
Well, on my first day of work at Secure Computing, I was just about to get there ten minutes early when I was reminded that they're in the middle of road construction on Ramsey County Road C. Well, Google Maps is convinced that I should take New Brighton Boulevard (County 88) anyway. I'll try that today and see how it works out. If that works out alright, I can try one or two alternatives for getting to Broadway, too.
Yeah, we Minnesotans are not so happy that we have to use up natural resources to keep cool, but not all of us have the luxury of leaving a note saying "Too hot, went to lake." Heck, we don't even like thinking about where our food comes from. Well, plenty of folks around here like to get food from co-ops, and like Garrison Keillor says in an opinion piece today:
I [buy from] my local co-op which is run by people who wear clothing made entirely from broccoli and I shop there because everything is organic, which is my version of kosher—it means that someone else has worked out the moral arithmetic so I don't have to worry about it.Hmm. I should probably at least drop by a place or two in Nordeast once Rick's Market finally closes (unless they have some plans to magically stay in business during construction, which I doubt..). Then again, Rainbow is now right on my to and from work, so I'd just be going out of my way to pay more..
I saw Wedding Crashers yesterday and it was very funny. But if I poke at it too much, I'll get annoyed, so that's it.
Edit: Ah, that was Rachel McAdams. I kept thinking that she looked familiar. The black hair threw me off...
Hey! For the first time in five/six years, I can go home for lunch! Well, not that it's really that close, but it's a last option..
Grr. My air conditioner has stopped working. Apparently the wiring between my fusebox (yes, I have a fusebox) and the wall outlet went out. Replacing the fuse has no effect, and I can see that it isn't something inside the AC because my printer won't turn on either. It's on the same outlet pair, and swapping the two plugs doesn't do anything.
I'm done with training at work. We ended up finishing early, and most of the customers in class left to go home or stop by the Mall of America before getting to the airport. I spent the afternoon taking the test, which I undoubtedly passed. Definitely a format I'm unaccustomed to, though, since it was not a step-by-step thing. I was handed what is basically a network layout specification, and set up the firewall with that configuration.
I only got stuck in one spot where I had enabled high availability but neglected to add a rule to allow incoming traffic on the multicast listener IP, so the administration program was cut off from the system. We hadn't dealt with how to add and remove rules on the command line, so I had to get a little help on that.
Hmm, now I'm remembering other places where I screwed up. I'm not going to get a full report until Monday, but it should be pretty good nonetheless. The instructor did a quick check over some major things, and he only noticed a few minor problems that shouldn't negatively affect my score too much. Heh, getting it exactly right probably would have taken twice as long, and I think I was pushing four hours already (which is an average amount of time to go through it).