Sunday, April 30, 2006

Catching Up

On Friday, I heard a wonderful lecture from Al Ford on the Subsafe program in my System Safety class. He spoke about how to embue a stringent safety program without having those in the company become jaded. The Subsafe program was started after the Thresher sank in 1963, and they have not lost a sub since. We saw very moving video of the Thresher, the Challenger, and the Columbia. The final film we saw showed men involved with the Thresher talking about how scared they were that something they had done had caused the death of the 129 men aboard the Thresher.

After that, Will and I met Josh, Ed,, and Ed's brother Adam out for drinks, followed by a sushi dinner.

Saturday, we went to Hannah's naming. The service was almost two hours long. The rabbi seemed nice, but he did not skip a single prayer, which is pretty ridiculous considering many who attend baby showers are not necessarily Jewish. After the service (during which Eve cried more than Hannah...no, I'm not tired of that joke yet), we had a good lunch at the temple followed by some hang-out time at home with my family, Naomi, and Steve.

That evening, Will took me out to dinner at Sibling Rivalry and then for drinks at Excelsor. The food, drinks, and company were all excellent. =)

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Need a cap?

I am in a short break from a meeting, but wanted to share this info.

Distant Replays, an excellent sports memorabilia store in Atlanta, is having a sale on all of its caps. 25% off! I was able to find Red Sox stuff here I could never find, even in Boston.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Lazy Day with the Evies

This morning Will and I drove to New Rochelle to see Eve, Jeff, and Hannah. We are having a nice, lazy day full of watching quality TV such as Nascar (yeah), baseball, and cheerleading competitions.

Hannah has grown a lot and has a really cute personality. Soooo cute!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Firefox Rules!

I have spent about 6 hours trying to get certificates that work just fine in Firefox to work in Explorer without letting any cooties into my system. Thanks to Keith for this link.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Patriots' Day and System Safety Homework

Despite Monday being a holiday, I had to work all day. This included one two-hour meeting and another 3.5-hour meeting. From there, I went to school for a two-hour meeting about our PDD project. Luckily, we were very efficient about time use and accomplished a lot. It probably helped that before the meeting, Will and I grabbed a drink with Katie and Josh. I work with Katie, and she was in the 3.5-hour meeting so we rehashed a bit, but mostly conversation was about fun stuff =)

Today I spent a lot of time on my system safety homework. We are applying DOE analysis to the Milstar Centaur incident. Yes, I know, sounds like fun =) Actually, it was very interesting and the time went quickly. Yay!

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Bob Francis in System Safety

On Friday, Bob Francis came to speak to my System Safety class. He was Vice Chairman of the NTSB, and headed up the handling of the TWA 800 flight and Valujet investigations.

I took copious notes and will post those later this week. He was an absolutely amazing lecturer. The class only has about 12 people in it, and to have him speaking in such a conversational tone about different aspects of safety was incredible.

This was made even better by the fact that after spending three hours listening to talk about airplane safety, Will and I met up with his Northwest airline pilot Uncle Hal and his co-pilot Joel. We contined discussing the issues of system safety, unions, and airlines over drinks. It was awesome to see Hal again (he and his wife Rae treated us like royalty when we stayed with them in Key Largo...absolutely amazing people. Yeah, i still need to blog about that. Dammit!)

So anyway, I'll post details later in the week when it's not past my bedtime.

Bad blogger!

Yeah, i'm a slacker. Here's a quick run-down:

Been to two Red Sox games, Wednesday and Saturday. They lost both. Grrr...David Wells looked absolutely awful. He had no business pitching. On Saturday, Wakefield looked great and pitched a complete game, but the Sox couldn't bat. I was ready to run on the field and take a shot. I went with Will to both games. On Wednesday, Jon and Meredith, the couple that sits next to me was there. We also met up with LFMers Brooke, Aimee, and Ray. Good times, good times.

Other than that, nothing too exciting. Friday was dinner at the Capital Grille for Will's birthday. I had french onion soup and lobster, both outstanding. Will had lobster bisque and filet mignon. We shared a piece of key lime pie, and I had an amazing Cabernet Franc ice wine. Yum! I tell you this for no other reason than to make you all insanely jealous ;)

After the Red Sox game and some subsequent bar-hopping on Saturday, we shared a couple of bottles of wine with Nick and Liz at Will's place.

Oh yeah! On Thursday, I had a very fun dinner of Matza, wine, and cheese with Jamie. We sat in, ate, drank, and told stories for several hours. Girls' nights are fun =)

Okay, that's enough details for now. I promise to be better about blogging this week.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

First Red Sox game of the season

Tonight I have tickets to the Sox. I had to make a tough decision: Seder or Red Sox. Unlike Yoav, I have decided to be a bad Jew and fulfill the needs of my other religion instead. The Jewish tribe vs. Red Sox Nation: what can ya do?

I'm debating if I will be a completely terrible Jew and have a beer. I already have conceded the Fenway Frank, something I eat at every game. I guess I will play everything by beer...I mean ear!!

Go, Sox! I'm so excited.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Another softball game....

Still sore from the game on Saturday, my fellow Zara's Revengers took the field vs the LFM '07's. It was a really fun game, despite the fact that we got pulverized.

Personally, I had a great game. I got a ground-rule triple over the left-centerfielder's head that I could have stretched into a home run if it hadn't run into bushes on the periphery (I actually ran all the way to home and had to go back to second, then to third, as the rules were decided). Will did great as well, with a double and a single, which I guess add up to my triple. ;)

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Amazing Coincidence

Eve, Jeff, Hannah, and their cats moved on Friday into a house formerly owned by Jeff's grandfather. They were cleaning up the house and my dad was tasked with clearing a bookshelf. In doing so, he came across a text book. When he opened it up, he saw his name on the inside cover. On the outside was Jeff's father's name.

In short, my dad bought a book, which he sold back, and was then bought by Jeff's father, ending up in the house that Eve and Jeff would eventually move into. How cool is that?

Softball with the LFMers

Yesterday was my first softball game of the season with Zara's Revenge, the LFM softball team run by Aimee that I played with last year. It was great to see everybody again and be out on the field.

It was very cold out, so it was hard to grip the bat or the ball, but I did okay. I batted out to the pitcher, then got a base hit to short right-center field, and batted out to the right fielder. (I can place the ball pretty well, so was trying to get it over the right fielder's head into a nice, clear spanse of field...didn't quite make it).

The other "highlight" was when I went to turn a double play. I was playing second (as I have been doing since I was 19) and our shortstop made a play on the ball and tossed it to me. I was about to turn to first when some little brat from the other team came SLIDING into me. Who in the heck tries to break up a double play in softball???? I have been playing recreational softball for over 10 years now and have never seen anything like it. I was too schocked to even say anything. It was kind of a nasty fall, and I am sore today from it. What a jerk! Will overheard members of the other team saying that they should "Be aggressive on the bases," even if it means "taking out" members of our team. Asses.

The ump called this ass safe because (surprise) I dropped the ball during my unexpected spill. Next play, the guy at first comes over to second, where again the shortstop tosses to me. I had my foot on the edge of the base (after 13 years of playing this position, I know not to block the bag. Hear that, first guy?) The ump calls him out and the guy starts bitching. I said, "Dude. You're out. You're standing on my foot. I got here first with the ball." Idiot.

Aside from those two incidents, it was a really fun game. The team stayed afterwards for some batting practice, but I had to go get ready to have dinner with Will's parents, who were in town from Texas for the evening. They were staying at the Custom House (in a room with a gorgeous view of the Harbor), so Will and I took a cab to meet them there. We had dinner at the Sail Loft, then grabbed some dessert at Modern pastry in the North End which we brought back to eat in the room. It was my first time meeting Will's dad, second time for his mom. I really like both of them, and it turned out to be a great evening despite my various bruises. =)

Friday, April 07, 2006

Joke for you

I am still slammed at work and school with little time to blog. To tide y'all over, here is a joke (warning: SDM-centric joke ahead). Thanks to Nick for helping brainstorm such a lovely joke:

What is a pirate's favorite class?

(See comments for answer.)

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Oh, and

it's snowing.

You know you're a dork when....

...you're running on an elliptical, and the number of strides comes up as "777" and you think, "Cool! Now everybody has permissions!" For those non-dorks, read about chmod and 777 here.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Ilana is back!

Sorry I haven't written yet. I had an amazing time in Key Largo, but have been paying for it since my return. Things have been very hectic at work (DBA: "I made the change only to the production database, because I thought you were working on the development one." Me: "Noooo...I was in Key Largo, and regardless of where I was you never make a change to production without testing in at least development first!") and school.

I will try to post highlights of the trip by tomorrow night =)