Faulty Memory

Today I spent more time that I would have liked agonizing over corrupted data on my 1 GB Sandisk Ultra II SD card for my Canon SD500 camera. From googling, it looks as if suddenly having an unusable SD card isn't unusual. Earlier in the week, I'd had problems copying images to a desktop, but I blamed it on the desktop. Then, while taking pictures of a chrysanthemum, the the camera started saying that certain images were corrupted. According to the manual, if you have a non-Canon formatted card, you should use the camera to format it first. Unfortunately, this was not in bold flashing text and I have no way of knowing whether or not this might be the problem. With any luck, I will never know and hopefully I won't have problems with card again. Interestingly enough, I had to do a low level format several times in order to get rid of everything. Fortunately, from the looks of the pictures I took, the camera is now working, for the time being.

How can I blame a poor defenseless sliver of an SD card when I can't even remember what day it is? Yesterday I was planning to go see the Durham Community Concert Band perform in Oval Park, in Durham. Well, that's all well and good if the concert is today. I knew that the concert was on the 30th, but somehow I had not put together that the 30th is not two days before Halloween. Earlier in the week, I attempted to attend a meeting that was on the following day, but at least then my calendar was wrong, too. In both cases, I ended up not attending the actual events themselves.

I've been up to a lot lately, and that's the reason I've been remiss in posting. I saw the new Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit a couple of weeks ago. AE, JH and I went to Champ's afterwards, which was pretty good. We waited quite a while at Rockfish before they explained that they were "having trouble getting stuff out of the kitchen", so that's why we ended up at Champ's, which could seat us immediately.

One weekend, my parents attended a dinner for the retirement of Dr. AB. That was fun, because I got to chat with some of his former graduate students, like MF, and I attended technical talks by them in the afternoon.

I discovered after trying to wash several new sweaters in cold water that the cold and hot water hoses have been reversed on my washing machine for about a year. Fortunately, the sweaters didn't shrink noticeably.

I attended a Duke Symphony concert that included a particularly nice selection of works by German composers, including an oboe concerto by Handel. I also got to meet AE's dad afterwards.

Last weekend, AE, JH, GM and I watched a very strange movie, π. It's about this guy who is effectively losing his mind while searching for patterns in the world that would relate to π. While it may be interesting on certain levels, I wouldn't recommend it. It's certainly not a movie that I would describe as pleasant to watch. We ordered pizza and I contributed macaroons that I had made that afternoon.

Last Monday, I had to go over to the American Tobacco Campus and I got to eat lunch at the Mellow Mushroom with AE afterwards. We shared a jerk chicken pizza and a half order to parmesan pretzels. They were basically just extra pizza crust shaped into a pretzel, but they were still very good, since they have good crust.

Tuesday night, JH met my dad and me at Duke Chapel to see the King's Singers and Sarband. That was excellent. They also had dervishes that twirled around and round. We originally selected seats in the front row and when I found out that there would be dervishes right next to us, I thought it might be best to move back a bit. Beware of dizzy dervishes.

Friday was the Duke University Libraries Staff Association Halloween party. They certainly know how to throw a holiday party! There were tons of decorations, a huge spread for making tacos, and individual candy filled bags for everyone. I donned my deely boppers and bright green glitter face paint. It takes years to get all the glitter off again.

It's been cold here lately. We've had three nights of frost in a row, which is too early and too often. Fortunately, this week is supposed to be really nice.

Another recent accomplishment is that I got my Treo 650 to sync with my Lotus Notes calendar this afternoon, using Intellisync. Maybe now I won't be in doubt of where I'm supposed to be and when. Don't bet on it. I still have to rely on my memory to sync.