August 2004

All I have to say is… the Guinness is good.  Real good

I think I mentioned a few days ago that I have decided to put Guinness back on tap here at the apartment.  It seemed to be a real crowd pleaser before, and honestly I have to say I’ve missed it since it was last on tap over a month ago.  I placed the order today, and much to my surprise it will be in tomorrow afternoon ready for pick-up.  I’ll probably head down there after work tomorrow night to pick it up.  If you were around for the last keg, you remember the mess that it made.  I believe I found the source of that leak and all has been corrected.  This one should go a lot better, neater to say the least!

I’ve always been fascinated by the history of computers, and for some reason when I see a copyright date on a piece of software that is as old if not older than myself, I get a weird tingly feeling all over!

Recently I’ve been playing around with Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 which, as the name may suggest, is a fully-functional PC emulator.  You can change it’s settings to mimic dozens of different PC configurations, and it behaves just like a computer should.  VPC 2004 comes complete blank, so you can install your favorite operating system and other software and have fun.

Last night I was able to install a pieced-together version of MS-DOS 5.0 along with Microsoft Windows 1.01, which was as you may guess the first version of Windows released in the late 80’s.  I actually got it to install and then boot, and even though it was all monochrome and didn’t really have that many features, it was still kinda neat!  And I even got a Blue Screen of Death, which I have to say is comforting to know that the BSOD has been with Windows since its early inception   My next step will be to install the much enhanced Windows 2.03 which I also found floating around the internet.

So much has happened in the past few weeks!  The company I work for is getting new business every week it seems, which is awesome because it’s keeping me busier than ever.  I’ve also been working downtown much more often, which is nice because my apartment is also metro accessible so I get to avoid the drive to work.

My sister is coming to visit in less than two weeks on her way to Italy.  I’ve come up with a few ideas of things we can do, and I can’t wait to hear all about her Independence Airlines experience.

I’ve also been watching a lot of movies recently.  About three weeks ago I signed up for Blockbuster’s unlimited movie pass, so for $14.99 this month I’ve watched 19 movies.  Not too bad of a deal, and I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of independent films I might not have otherwise paid to rent.  My new method of picking out movies at Blockbuster is to scan the shelves until I come to a movie cover that has the oak leaves indicative of an independent film award or nomination.  If I started a separate journal with movie reviews for the lesser known films, would anyone read it?  Maybe there’s a community out there like that already.

I finally had to prematurely “finish” the raspberry wheat that I had on tap.  It was definitely developing a funky taste, so the last gallon or so had to go.  I’m thinking about getting another keg of Guinness, that seems to be a real crowd pleaser.  If not that, then perhaps a good local brew would suffice, but I have yet to find one of which I would like to have 124 pints.  Guinness is always a good choice because while you can have it out, it’s so much cheaper to drink it at home.  The same cannot be said for micro brews, which are a reason to go out on the town and are usually much more reasonably priced!  I am, however, open to other suggestions as it will probably be a week or so before I have the time to pick up another keg.

All right, time to crack open and watch the next DVD from Blockbuster.  I believe tonight’s movie will be The Big Bounce (which I’ve never seen but figured that with Morgan Freeman in the cast it can’t be all bad).  In the words of my high school Spanish teacher, ¡vamos a ver!