Well, we made the train in Providence with plenty of time to spare … it's just taken me a while to get setup … had to reboot Orion after the display went into bozo mode on me. Last night, Brian burned me a set of CDs for installing RedHat Linux 7.3, and once I've backed up the pictures from the trip and the changes I've made to the WISLjr workspace, I'm going to reformat the hard drive and turn Orion into a Linux box! I hooked up the floppy drive, tried the boot floppy, and it looks like it should be a painless installation. Brian even sold be a 10 base T card so that I can Ethernet Zathras and Orion … once I get a PCMCIA NIC card for it.
Let's see … Brian was just a few minutes late picking me up on Tuesday, but we were in contact by cell phone so that he picked me up on the correct side of the station … "Can you see the State Capitol dome? No? Then you must be on the Other Side of the station."
The train got in about 17:47 … we went to the Milford Mandarin for supper, spent the evening playing with Orion and the digital camera, and I crashed at 22:30 … woke up at 02:30 and hit the sandbox, then I don't remember anything unit around 09:00 … the longest I've slept uninterrupted in months.
We made a couple of wrog turns and missed Concord, but we went to Burlington, had lunch at Victoria Station (the Pewter Pot was closed by new road construction and a by-pass, but reopened as a Thai/Sushi place that we decided to avoid), I got replacement ear phones, a sharpening tool for my pen knife (EMS), a Kodak tripod for the digital camera, and forgot to get new slippers.
We came back to Milford, then got up to N. Chelmsford just around sundown, a little before 20:00 … it was too dark for photos, but there was a guy fixing supper in the kitchen of Six Russell Road and car in the driveway … we drove on down to Dick and Joyce Mace's place at the end of the road (I'd called in the morning to let them know I was coming) and had a great visit … they'd been hearing me talk about Brian for years, and finally got to meet him.
The first thing I noticed about their place was a motorized chair lift on the outside stairs … Dick said it was for Joyce, and sure enough, when we got inside, she came riding down from the second floor in another one … if Phyllisolive doesn't more to a single-level place, then she should really get one for Varnum Street
13:37 - New London, CT … looking at the big green assembly building with "General Dynamics" on the side across the bay … "I've stood in that parking lot before, with the big NO PICTURES signs!" … I paused the CD player, pulled up MyPhoneBook, and called the office number I had for Greg Morea … got his voice mail, so I told him I was sitting in the train station on the way back to DC from Boston, that FurFace had crossed the Rainbow Bridge, and that I'd get in touch with him again later … it was an impulse. :-)
… and now back to our narrative, already in progress …
I fired up Orion to show Dick and Joyce pictures of Luzon Ave and FurFace … "Dennette's always got a new toy when he comes over!" I took pictures of them, but didn't take the time to xfer them to Orion for larger viewing on the spot … we were running late for meeting Mike Seher at Bickfords at 20:30.
I met Mike and Brian in 1988, but this is the first tie in 14 years that they had met! Of course, each had always been hearing about the other from me, but neither really had a face to put with the name … Mike is flying down to DC next weekend, will get a rental car at BWI, and spend the first night with me.
I tried calling several people (Dr. Lender, Dr. Bahn, Dr. Potts) but never got to N. Chelmsford in time to visit any of their offices, so they'll just get notes with the letter I'm sending out … I called Danny Silva, chatted a bit, and got Mike Ball's number … eventually caught up with him by phone just as Brian and I were pulling into the parking lot at the Nudie Bar in Tyngsboro, which is where he's living now (in his sister's place) … I invited him to join us, but he said that it was to pricey for his blood … Brian bought a table dance, and I bought a VIP dance from a woman who looked like Willow from "Buffy" ("Is that a good thing?") … breasts smaller than my first wife, but she had Willow's smile, and that's what attracted me … not much jewelry, but she had a dangle in her navel and a clit ring … we finished our drinks and tipped the most buxom blond during her runway routine, then split.
We got back to Brian's about 22:30, and I tried Jason Brothers, the teenager who lived a few blocks from the lake … his mother said he had his own place now and gave me the number … got his voice mail.
It was about that time that Brian and I got into the discussion that led me to decide to turn Orion into a Linux box (and upgrade the dual boot on Zathras), so Brian started copying gigabytes of RedHat 7.3 stuff that he'd downloaded from the 'Net … I just to the three (!) installation CDs … "Don't you want the Source Disk?" "No, thanks - I'll download it myself on Zathras!"
We went out on his deck several times for cigarettes (no smoking in the house) and caught occasional glimpses of the moon through the clouds … just enough to let you know where it was … I'd brought my new telescope eyepieces and filters, but it was so cloudy the whole visit (it's been raining all morning) that he didn't even take it out of storage to see if the eyepieces would fit.
I hooked up Orion's floppy drive and we verified that the ISO image he'd copied was in fact bootable … we got to bed about 03:30 after watching some of the extra material on the "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" DVD. Speaking of DVDs, Brian has this HUGE collection of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (like, a dozen disks!), and I tried to find the "Schoolhouse Rock" collection that was released this week on the 30th anniversary of the first show … I hope it has a cute lunch box like the CD collection.
I woke up before Brian, around 09:30, shaved, and called Jason … he was home, and we had a nice chat … he's sharing a pace with two other guys, and he's back in school majoring in Criminal Justice … he wants to be a cop … maybe he wasn't West Point material, but I'm Real Proud of how he's turned out.
Brian got up, made coffee, we chewed the fat for a while, then I packed up the last of my stuff and we hit the road for Providence … I think that it was a Goof Visit for both of us … the only regret is that I forgot to take picture of the ferrets … he has three now, and lets the two females have the run of the bedroom while the male has the Really Big cage (two stories, three horizontal sections).
Well, I got on the cafe car (not tables, but bigger seats with more room between them), and I never got breakfast, so I think I'll nosh now.
Last update: 2002-08-29 by Dennette@WiZ-WORX.com