So I have returned from my weekend journey to Georgia, and it has been an interesting trip, so I'm not really sure where to start.

I suppose I'll start off with the most interesting tidbit of the trip. The ghetto bowling alley. On the night of my arrival, we had decided to go to the local bowling lanes in Toccoa Falls to bowl a few games. Clint had told me before what to expect, but nothing prepares you for the sight (or experience) once you are actually there. These lanes had to be at least 30 years old, and did not work half the time. As is evidence in the photo you see, their "bumpers" were made up of those flexible plastic drainage pipes. Also, none of the pins really matched so you would get the occasional blue, yellow, green, or some other odd colored pin mixed in with your white. The lanes would malfunction frequently (we actually got to bowl 1 1/2 games because they moved us to another lane as ours kept messing up), and the lanes were uneven. Needless to say, it was by far the most interesting bowling lanes I've ever been. Although, even with all of that going on I still managed to bowl a 169.

In other news from Toccoa, I've posted some photos from Toccoa on my Flickr account of the scenery of Toccoa. You should check it out. Toccoa is kind of rural, but makes for some nice scenery as it's nestled in the northeast Georgia mountains close to South Carolina.

On the trip there from my Grandparents, I had decided to surprise Rick at work just kind of randomly. He didn't know I was going to be in Atlanta, so I thought it would be funny to stop in and say hi without him knowing. I had been trying to find out when he was working all week from Jeremy, but finally got his schedule from Sadie. Although, I didn't hit the right Applebee's the first time, I got directions and headed to the second one which I knew was his once I saw a green Ford Taurus parked backwards in the parking lot. When I walked in and asked for Rick Watts, and the girl working up front started yelling out, "WATTS!" pretty loudly, since he was in the back. The shock and surprise on his face was pretty priceless though, as he stood there stunned repeating, "What are you doing here!?" several times before I actually got the chance to say anything. After that we just sat down and talked while I ate lunch. I do feel kind of strange however, I've never given Rick a tip for his services before...

Although, the most frustrating part of my trip wasn't until my journey home. Something ripped through my tire about 30 minutes outside of Birmingham and caused me to have a flat tire which took me about 1 1/2 hours to change. It should not had taken that long, but it took a while to get the lug nuts off and then the tire got stuck, which took me the rest of the time to get it off. During that time AAA didn't show up, but a state trouper did and even he couldn't get it off. Oh well, at least I'm back in Birmingham now...

I don't know about you, but I thought this was pretty amazing. It's even more amazing that no one died from the event. It even reversed the flow of the canal, causing the flow to come from the Gulf of Mexico. Here's a Wikipedia link for more info.


In other news, this is the 101th blog posting I've made, so I missed the 100 mile marker. Go me?

I suppose one of Murphy's laws could be, "The more you need a piece of technology, the more likely it is for it to break." I have experienced that on this weekend. Not only with one items, but two as a matter of fact. First, my iPod is in for minor repairs which will take two weeks longer than a mistake on BestBuy's part. Secondly, my laptop harddrive decided this weekend would be the perfect time to fail. Both of these items I really needed for my long trip this weekend, yet I'm having to cope without both. Oh well.

I do love tech support however, I tried to call Sony up since I wanted to replace my laptop harddrive ASAP, and needed to know if a new harddrive was compatable with an older standard on my laptop. A simple question with a simple "yes" or "no" answer... at least so I thought. My conversation with Sony went something like this:

Me: I need to replace my laptop harddrive. Are newer ATA-6 harddrives compatable with the ATA-5 standard on my laptop?

Sony: (Some mumbo jumbo about how they can't provide support for new hardware, even though I only asked a simple question that could be solved with such a simple answer)

-- Here I explained the problem I have, the steps I tooked to come to the solution that my harddrive no longer works.

Sony: You need to [some steps to reinstall Windows] and [some more steps].

Me: I can't even follow those steps, because the bios doesn't even recognize the harddrive.

Sony: Then you need a new drive.

Me: ... (Internal Thoughts: Well d'oh. )

I decided at this point, I would be better off with my time spent on google, and sure enough I found the answer within 2 minutes. It frustrates me to no end that tech support can not answer such a simple question reguarding their product. Customer service should be just that, service, and should not feel like a diservice to the very customers you are supposed to be serving.

I have bought a new drive already. It is a good thing though, even though my old harddrive went bad. I'll have a lot more space for doing things (2x the space infact) and might even try to install Linux. Who knows?

I've decided to start sharing photos via Flickr, which you view following the link in the menu. I'll try to upload photos there from time to time so I can share them. Enjoy!

I'm testing anonymous comments again, to see if I've foiled the spam bots or not. I'll keep a close eye on things today to see if they're able to get by it or not. If everything works out okay, I should be able to keep anonymous comments in.

Well, I guess there's been a lack of updates for quite a while since there really hasn't been too much to post about. Things have been fairly uneventful lately. I started Japanese at UAB in early January, and teaching as well, but that pretty much covers the extent of things. I'll check back here I suppose if anything interesting happens.