Monday, 9. November 2009, 01:48:52
actor, ava advocate, NC, ava gardner
...
Usually my "card carrying" memberships are for organizations that are considered to be at least mildly subversive, but here's one that is mostly just unusual. It's for the
Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, North Carolina.
Ava Gardner was a leading Hollywood actress and made a lot of movies for MGM. I frequently travel through Smithfield, NC, and kept noticing the museum carrying her name. I finally went in there one day and discovered it to be much nicer than I ever expected.
Once each year, the museum hosts a weekend celebration called "Ava Fest." During the fest, you can see many of her movies in the same movie house in which she saw movies as a child and young lady. There are tours of nearby places she lived as well as her grave site. The museum has on display lots of things from her life and career. It's all rather fun.
I most remember Ava for her leading role in the film
The Night of the Iguana. In this riveting file, she played alongside such heavies as: Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon. I've seen this film many many times. I swear it has saved my life more then once over the years. It's like good mental therapy to me.
The museum just sent me some swag for 2010. Here it is!
Sunday, 8. November 2009, 01:10:22
hard drive, drive enclosure, tech, geek
...
Yesterday,
I was sure my hard drive was failing, but it seems OK now. I'm keeping an eye on it.
Why not use that as an excuse to buy some fun geek stuff. I went and got a 750GB hard drive and a USB enclosure. At some point I'll just install the hard drive internally, but for now it will be a portable backup storage device. My first computer hard drive years ago was 1.5GB, and I paid a princely sum for that. I remember the excitement when I got a 7GB one. Oh, I'll *never* use all that! There were terabyte drives looking at me from the store shelves today, but I got the 750GB. I'll *never* use all that! I got the usual Western Digital. Never had nuttin' else.
Below you'll see the sexy sleek black drive enclosure. Then you'll see the partition being written. I'm just doing one big partition for now to use it as backup storage. Later, if I put it into "production", I'll divide it up into swap and ext3. Geek fun on a Saturday night. Now I just need some geeks to play with.
Saturday, 7. November 2009, 08:10:58
western digital, /dev/hda1, hard drive, linux
...
I think my hard drive is failing, but what do I know about these things. Three times in the past twelve hours I've found my computer all locked up, or everything seg faulting, or a kernel panic.
I switched over to a console as it was going down one time, I typed "df", and it said something about ext3 fs errors on /dev/hda1. That's the master drive. Oh, master!
Should I just assume it's the hard drive? Dunno. I could pick up a new one tomorrow, but I hate to part with $80 right now.
Strangely, I've never had a hard drive just up and fail since 1996. I've always sworn by Western Digitals. I've made my backups.
In other news today, I bathed the dog and wished my sweet BF a happy 20th anniversary.
Friday, 6. November 2009, 07:34:54
statuary, gargoyle, garden statuary, statue
...
Wednesday, 4. November 2009, 21:09:10
deserted, economy, out of business, shopping center
...
I have been lamenting my hotel entrapment on the blog for three days now (posts
here,
here, and
here). Today I went on another walking tour to take pictures. I did take the pictures to accentuate the abandoned look of the nearby shopping centers, but it wasn't much of a stretch.
All images are clickable for greater detail. Select "all sizes" upon landing on the flickr page.
Image #1: not too many customers.
Image #2: park anywhere you like.
Image #3: forlorn.
Image #4: a place to eat that is open.
Image #5: they're open. Give plasma, get cash.
Image #6: they're open, too. Eat the buffet.
Image #7: there's little else to do, but don't loiter. This includes you Spanish speakers.
Image #8: cash a check! I get letters from my bank pleading with the customers to never consider going to these places.
Image #9: a church in an old bank location.
Image #10: the bank drive-up window belongs to the church now. It says, "never thirst again."
Image #11: maybe offerings can go in here now?
Image #12: we are moving. We done gone.
Image #13: a sign of the times.
Wednesday, 4. November 2009, 08:12:09
wifi, hotel, travel
My work vehicle, affectionately called "the unit", broke down on the way to the job this morning. I was rolling along OK when the motor shut off. I was amazed at how hard it is to steer and brake that thing without the engine. I had little time to get a feel for that as it ran over a curb and nearly across the median into oncoming traffic.
Anyway, I got it off into a shopping center parking lot, and two hours later I got it towed away. The bonus is that I now have relaxing free time to read my ass off and have fun with the hotel's blazingly fast wifi. The repairs will probably take two days. I get paid anyway.
If I asked nice, the company would probably get a rental car for me to dick around in, but there's nowhere I really need to go, and it's a nice time to get some exercise walking everywhere. The hotel is in a ramshackle area where almost everything is out of business. People just mill around waiting on the bus or hang out to
give plasma for some cash. In the nearly abandoned shopping center parking lots, cars creep in quietly at night and leave in the morning. I assume people are living in them. It's amazing the feel one can get for an area from walking around in it rather than just whizzing by in a car. I've had several conversations with people who are hanging around. They have all been quite nice and seem to enjoy the chance to chat, as did I.
Here I sit playing with, ummmm, the hotel wifi.
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WIDGETIZE