We hit Carafe (gmaps | web), a french bistro and wine bar, up on a "Friday night date night".  We've started this tradition where Heidi meets me downtown after work on Friday and we pick a spot for food and drinks.  It doesn't have to be a happy hour place but we'll sometimes take advantage of that.

I give a thumbs up for atmosphere being outside in the sun on a beautiful day, thumbs down for service because we waited forever to order wine, and another thumbs down for food because my steak and fries - the steak was overcooked, dry and served on a small plate - maybe 4oz of steak with 8oz of fries.  I was expecting more for $20 steak and fries.

I keep forgetting this one, hopefully this will help me remember and perhaps someone else attempting to do the same thing.

Using terminal services (remote desktop) to log into a remote machine.  You can use the key combination ctrl+alt+end to bring up the Windows Security dialog.  (similar to hitting ctrl+alt+del) on your local machine.  From here you can change your password:

I'm not giving up TF2, it's major fun with the new Arena mode in the Heavy update, but I did sign up for some Warhammer Online.

Can you believe the client download is 10GB!

And what's up with the fileplanet download manager as the delivery mechanism...

A rainy day and a stubborn kitty refuses to be towel dried - fur all matted and wet and full of bark dust as he paces away from me with the towel...

We signed up for the 8 bridge pedal again this year.  There were huge number of riders in the start chute at 7 am on Sunday morning.

It is a chance to ride over a bridge covered in 4x8 pieces of plywood behind people sporting team t-shirts ("knit naked, ride hard)...

I did see Lisa, my old coworker out on the course doing the 11 bridge ride.  What a small world when you're mixed in 20,000 riders.

This was Heidi's first time on the bike since her crash back in May.  She was nervous but riding well.  But sure enough it was too good to be true.  Caught behind a rider who decided to stop in the middle of the road she decided to veer left onto some train tracks running parallel.  I saw it coming and shouted, "be careful of the tracks there!", but the words had hardly left my mouth and I saw her front wheel fall into the groove as she tried to turn and bam, she was on the pavement.  Luckily it was a fairly slow speed and no stitches this time.  Just some road rash on her left knee and shoulder, some torn skin and bleeding on her left fingertip, and a bruised ego.  We had gone over 4 of the bridges and after a stop at first aid decided to try doing the Markham at least.  But she was done at the top of Markham and we decided to call it a day.

On the bus ride home, Heidi talked about trying a tandem, that way I can do the driving next time.

Also, it was my first test run using a Garmin 705 I picked up on Saturday.  I like the auto speed, altitude, and mapping.  It's going to be a fun toy to play with.

Later.

Update 2008-08-11 3:20 PM:  I make many spelling and punctuation mistakes.

Basking in the glow of nerdom.  Signed up an registered for two Portland local area network (PDXLAN) gaming events.

It's a chance to show off your desktop hotrod, rub elbows with fellow gamers, and get a chance to win some nice stuff (the previous PDXLAN  had $130,000 in prizes) due to local sponsors like Intel.

The more the merrier, here's my seat selection if you are interested in coming.

PDXLAN 12.5 Nov 21-23 , 2008		PDXLAN 13 Jan16-19, 2009

Matt, and old friend from my previous job, is sitting next to me.

Hopefully there's some good TF2 tournament action going down.

Later.

Update:  [Thursday, September 11, 2008 3:57:42 PM]

I'm now at table 17, seat 17K for PDXLAN 13.  Someone asked us to move so he could sit next to his friend... and hold hands.