Friday afternoon I popped over to SLAM to see what I could see. The St Louis Art Museum is actually not bad. The exhibits are smaller sized than some other museums, but are definitely higher on quality.

Please don’t be confused with the local History Museum which is a terrible excuse for a museum. No joke, please don’t go. It stinks. It’s nice to see that they’ve tried, but it really is a waste of an afternoon.

I had such a great time on Friday I had to take Rita on Sunday. They have a great furniture exhibit in the basement! It’s a dirty little secret, but I love interior design. I got into it doing research on restaurant decors and it kind of stuck in my skin. I’m looking for a space to rent as a garage so I can build my own furniture someday.

Just a couple of highlights about the pictures:

An eighteenth century glass with a pirate ship insert. The maker took small bits of leaves and sticks and made a naval scene inside the glass. Fantastic artistry, and I hope to find a glass this unique to use for my bar someday. I forgot to take a picture of the description card so I’m unable to give any more information on it.

I took some pictures of chairs while at the museum. A little photoshop and a trip to Target and Kinko’s were all it took to create some coolio modern art for Rita’s apartment. I’ll have to get pictures of the final installation. It’s gonna be hot.

This last image is a model of a sculpture that was created for the St Louis Airport in 1964. It stood next to the Kitty Hawk Diner on the concourse as a screen to seperate the patrons from the travelers. Apparently, when the airport expanded in the 1980’s it was removed… and lost. No one has any idea where it went. Sadly, it was most likely destroyed. SLAM has the original model of the screen on display and it’s really cool.

I’m going to bust out my metalworking skills and soldering iron and have a go at recreating the model. It’d look great on a dedicated shelf in my living room. I’ll have to wait until I find a job, though. I just can’t justify spending time on fun projects like this until I’m working again.

So I spent a bit of time fooling around with Samurize and configuring a nice script I picked up. It’s a great little program, but I had to manually edit the script massively. Every variable and scrimpt prompt had to be reset. If the installs are the same everywhere why couldn’t it work out of the box? It’s a text file and I don’t think that the file paths change from computer to computer.

I have a full day planned tomorrow. A Microsoft Access database for a newspaper in the afternoon, and a night of work at Scotland.

The Scottish Arms is going well, but it’s only a one day a week gig. The boss says that threre’s a chance of getting my other bartending shift back, but I’m not holding my breath until then. I’ve gotta find a full time gig and fast. I’m a firm believer that as a grown man I’m supposed to work. Work long, work hard, and work well. That’s what I do; that’s my thing.

Also, check Cell Ninja for the story on the table that Rita and I built. Her pictures should be up soon.

Just a quick word of mention so you can search the site if you ever get stuck:

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Genuine Advantage Workaround

From The Inquirer:

“This week, Microsoft started requiring users to verifiy their serial number before using Windows Update. This effort to force users to either buy XP or tell them where you got the illegal copy is called ‘Genuine Advantage.’ It was cracked within 24 hours.”

Little tips and tricks like this come in handy when you fix computers for your friends.

The Wade Money came for a visit this weekend, and we basically spent it nerding around. He spent Friday and Saturday night working on his watercooling kit, and then did a brief run through on his site for anyone that’s interested.

Saturday night I wound up working the Speakeasy at Brennan’s after getting totally sick of working on an open office database for a friend. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now: OpenOffice Base is a pain. They’ve done a good job making an office suite that’s respectable for general “I need to edit and save this file someone else sent me,” but for long haul usage it isn’t done well. Trying to write a working query is driving me insane. There just isn’t enough documentation yet. It might exist, but I can’t find it.

If you’re finding yourself in the same predicament that I am, the best place for help is The OpenOffice Forums. Very nice people that are willing to give a helping hand to new users.

CellNinja made Patrick and I a killer chicken dinner on Sunday night. We hung out and watched some TV and just kicked it. I installed an Airport Extreme card in Larry the Laptop, and hooked up a wireless router. Linksys = decently cheap routers with a nice feature set. Just make sure to keep the firmware flashed to keep the security up to speed.

Patrick and I played a bit of Empire Earth II this evening. He whomped me good. I was building a hot little society, thinking that I was doing ok and WHAMMO! A massive wall of pain flew across the island and completly wiped me out. Since I don’t play computer games very often it was a lot of fun.