April « 2007 « Where Is Hawkins?

April, 2007

cycling — No Comments
22
Apr 07

Cycle of Dorkiness

I got a new toy for my bike on Thursday – the Garmin Edge 305. I did get it with the cadence meter which I haven’t gotten to work right. Friday after work I took it for it’s trial run from the bachelor pad to Navy Pier, up the bike path to Fullerton, over to Cycle Smithy’s on Clark, down Clark to North, over to Wells to Village Cycle and then home via Wells. Lame, I know.

Today I did a 20+ mile ride with my coworker – the bachelor pad to Hyde Park and back. It was lame riding into the wind (it was a brutal stretch from the Museum Campus to 35th) but I survived.

We also did manage to see some men on horseback. Yes, men on horseback on a biketrail. Why, I don’t know. But it’s just one of those things you shrug your shoulders at and go “well, I didn’t expect to see that this morning.”

So I have the KMZ file for Google Earth and am trying to figure out how to incorporate Google Maps into the blog so I can bore you to death with routes.

Buenos Aires / India / travel — 2 Comments
17
Apr 07

Future travels

For the 5 of you who read this:

Memorial Day: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Post-Thanksgiving: Delhi, India. (The Golden Triangle)

Don’t worry. Those aren’t the only places I’ll go. There’ll be another trip to Dublin for certain along with perhaps going back to Frankfurt so I can go to Luxembourg and chill there.

I’m happy that fellow dork Tim and his wife are coming with to India. Otherwise it’d be a pudgy white guy with lots of camera equipment by himself? What could go wrong?

Uncategorized — 2 Comments
15
Apr 07

Crikey!

5 more months until I hit 30. Awesome. It’s all downhill from there.

Apple / Grrrrrrr — 2 Comments
15
Apr 07

Macbook woes (or, why you should never go Apple).

Let me tell you about how not awesome my 10 month old Macbook is. By awesome, I mean totally worthless. Yes, I was one of those who bought into the “Intel Macbook” hype so I could run cool apps on OS X and like blammo, still run Windows.

I was had by the folks in Cupertino. I should have learned my lesson with my older iPod. I sent it back 3 freakin’ times in 3 weeks, all with different errors, and then had to wait for a month more until they sent me a new model. Thanks a lot, jerks.

Here’s the timeline:
March 30th: Gave up after having to deal with massive screen flickering and dropped it off at the Apple North Michigan Avenue.
April 2: Received it back, got the happy dance. Then I fired it up. Blam, the screen had 5 dead pixels, some crap underneath the LCD and still had screen flickering.
April 9: Gave up and dropped off the Macbook for repair at the Apple North Michigan Avenue store again.
April 14: Picked up Macbook. Fired it up at the store. All looked good and right.
April 15: Battery isn’t holding a charge. It’s down to 80% and when I plug it in, the LED on the charger is indicating that it’s fully charged. I reset the PMU and PRAM per Apple’s instructions online and still, it’s not recharging. Awesome. So it looks like tomorrow during lunch I’m going to take this puppy back and see if it doesn’t get repaired yet again. If it does, I’m going to write a letter to Apple.

Not that I’m trying to be a pain in the ass, mind you, but when you drop $1300 on a laptop and another $250 on extended warranty (seriously, if you’re going to buy a Mac, you need it), you’d expect this thing to hold up under some use (I use my home desktop more).

Grrrrr….

Uncategorized — No Comments
15
Apr 07

Allergies

Today is a crap day. Being pasty white and not being exposed to grass/pollen/trees/etc has made my immune system crap with regards to allergies. 24 hour Claritin is supposed to last 24 hours. I shouldn’t need 6 of them in a day to feel like I’m not going to scratch my eyes out. Plus benadryl to keep me from itching has made me into a drowsy mess.

Back to bed… ugh…

Chicago / Nike / irony / protests — 3 Comments
14
Apr 07

The Ironicles of Narnia

One of the coolest things about living in my neighborhood of high fashion and high-maintenance women is random protests. Today’s protest featured everyone’s favorite “sweatshop”, Nike. Now I like Nike, but I’m not like totally “let’s get a room” with Nike. They make cool stuff, most of it being overpriced.

But let’s look more at the irony.

Oooh, protester wearing Pumas. Surely they aren’t made in a sweatshop?

Now, you’re saying, Hawkins, what the hell is this? Look at their shoes. One guy wearing the white basketball shoes is wearing Converse. The funny thing is that Converse was bought by Nike in 2003. That’s right, those same damn sweatshops that you’re protesting put those shoes on your feet.

Hurray for capitalism!

Uncategorized — No Comments
12
Apr 07

Duckies!

From yesterday at the AMA building.

Grrrrrrr / The Hawkins 7 — 3 Comments
9
Apr 07

The Hawkins 7: You know your weekend sucked when…

1) Your MacBook, fresh from being repaired from Apple, has to go back to correct errors that weren’t fix plus a few new ones.
2) It’s too damn cold to get a good ride in, even in clothing that makes me look like a flamboyant ice skater.
3) Your refrigerator dies on Saturday evening. First GE repair opportunity? Friday, sometime between 8 and 5. Nothing quite like helping me narrow down the timeframe.
4) The pretty girl doesn’t call.
5) Dead refrigerator = ice cream mess. Yum!
6) Your sleep medication is starting to be less effective along with your allergy medicine, making me a tired, groggy, itchy and scratchy mess with red eyes.
7) It’s freakin’ April and it’s in the high 30s. WTF.

And for some other stuff.

1) I’m glad that The Shield has started back up. Seriously, don’t ever ask me to do anything for the next 13 or so Tuesday evenings.
2) Dell better ship my Canon Powershot TX1 next week otherwise I’m going to be without a new toy.
3) My orthodontist mentioned that he might have to have some teeth pulled. Nice. Braces do provide a lot of fun and drama.
4) If you have a Netflix subscription, I urge you to start renting episodes of The Wire. This is the best damn show on television – in all internet seriousness. Screw the Sopranos. Seriously. Add them to your queue now. Your patience will be rewarded.

humor — 3 Comments
6
Apr 07