Our new living room set was delivered this afternoon. We certainly did add some color to our living room.
Catnapper brand from Jackson Furniture that we got at Rhodes called their 'Passion' series. 5 total reclining spots, though one on the loveseat is blocked from reclining because it's moved over a bit to make the L shape. We may move it out more since there's plenty of walking room between it and the chair, but who knows... we'll have to look at it for a while.
Here's a link to a few pictures including one 'before' picture:
The shadowbox things on the wall behind the couch probably have to go... much different shade of red... looks odd. Plus, we really need to find different curtains than the ones we have now.. or do something else there.
Christina and I went up to Matt and Misty's wedding yesterday in Ninety Six, South Carolina. The wedding was beautiful and it was a gorgeous day for them!
I took a lot of photos, but not as the official photographer which is nice because that's a lot of pressure. As such, these are more candid type photos rather than formal photographs and poses.
There are 9 pages with 12 images on each page and as usual just click a thumbnail to see a larger version. Click on the image below or the link below it to go to the gallery:
Seems like this was a pretty long weekend. Even though we didn't do much today.
Saturday was the annual Garnet and Black Spring football game at USC. The game was picked up nationally this year by ESPNU, the new College Sports ESPN. It was also simulcast on ESPN2 nationwide because of the interest around Steve Spurrier.
We got down to the tailgate at around 10am and it was already packed. For a game that started at 1pm. We had a good time tailgating and the game was really nice. We had a record Spring Game crowd there of 38,806. Pretty much all the lower decks were 90% or so full. The picture below shows the crowd and if you click it, you can see the rest of the pictures from the game.
We sat about 6 rows from the field and all the way over to the South side. I shot all the pictures with the new camera, but for most of them I had a borrowed lens. A friend we tailgate with loaned me his Sigma 100-300mm f/4 lens with a 1.4x converter on it for the game. Heavy... around 3.3lbs... and just about 9" long without the hood... around a foot long with the hood on. I'm surprised they let me in the game. Anyway, with the 300mm lens, plus the 1.4x converter, plus the 1.6x crop factor of the camera, the long end of the lens was 672mm. Very nice for closeups when you're sitting in the stands. In fact, #2444 where the guy is in the air catching the ball is a crop (not full sized image). That touchdown catch is about 120 yards away from where we were sitting... all the way on the other side of the field. Fun lens to play around with... shame it's $800!
After the game, I went over to Matt and Karin's for the guys' first group poker night. Brian bought a nice set of clay chips and a folding poker table top. $20 buy in for initial chips... playing limit Texas hold-em. Started with $20, high point was $46, low point was following the last hand (not a good hand, btw) and that was $15. It was fun even though I lost $5. Being up big most of the night makes it seem better I suppose.
My computer at home threw a drive in it's array. An array is basically multiple hard drives (2 in my case) put together so that Windows thinks it's one big disk. There are also performance benefits to setting up an array.
Anyway, one of the drives decided it wasn't part of the array anymore. And since there's no redundancy, that means the C: drive just disappears and nothing boots.
Of course I keep good backups of my data on an external hard drive and my work laptop, but you can only backup data, not programs. So, I replaced the drive (though it tests fine with the manufacturer's diagnostics software) and set up the array again with the new disk and the one remaining disk. Reinstalled Windows and all of my programs. You have no clue how many things you use until you have to reinstall all of them and then set up your preferences in them again.
So now it's back up and running. I could have not used an array like last time, but it's a lot faster performance and it only took a couple nights to reinstall everything. Since I have my data backed up regularly, I'll just take the chance again.
Matt and I went to USC's first football scrimmage this weekend. It wasn't the annual Spring Game (now named the Garnet and Black game). Just a small practice/scrimmage that was open to the public.
Lots of fun though... we still don't know who our QB will end up being... big question mark on the team. I will say that they were a lot more vocal... seemed really pumped up. Hopefully Spurrier's going to instill a little cockiness (no pun intended) in them. Holtz was a great motivational guy, but I think his routine was wearing thin with the players as evidenced by the behavior of a few the last month or so. Anyway, new coach, new era. Spurrier's a winner, that much is undeniable... here's hoping he's still a winner.
Here's a few pictures from the windy day at the stadium on Saturday:
