jleyrer::blog

Munich/Füssen, Day 4 (March 27th, 2009)

May 13, 2009 – 8:12 pm

Day 4 began in a bit of a rush. We planned to take a ~2 hour train ride down to Füssen near the German/Austrian border to check out Neuschwanstein Castle and managed to stick to that plan, but were a bit sluggish after the previous night’s festivities. As such, Karol decided to stay back and eventually went to the Olympic Park and BMW Museum while Adam and I pressed on to Fussen.

Adam and I went to Hauptbahnhof to buy our tickets (which turned out to be only good for one-way travel… oops!) and had about half an hour to kill, so we went to get food. We ended up finding the perfect hangover meal: pizza and pasta. It really hit the spot.

The train ride was pretty nice. It was a bit crowded at first but most of the other riders got off within a few stops. I fought off the temptation to take a power nap because I really wanted to see the Bavarian countryside leading into the Alps. I’m glad I did, because it was pretty impressive.

I was a bit parched when we arrived at the train station in Füssen, so I picked up a bottle of water from the magazine stand inside. I forgot to look at the label before making my purchase and discovered mid- first swig that I got “table” water, which means “carbonated”. That is a slight shock when you are expecting plain ol’ bottled mineral water, but I drank it anyway.

Out of the train station, we got our first look at Füssen – very quaint, yet resort-y at the same time.

We had to take a bus to get to where the castle tours kick off, which was about a 10 minute ride. When we got there, we found out that all the castle tours were done for the day. This wasn’t a big deal, since we’d read earlier that the tour of Neuschwanstein Castle’s interior was only about 15 minutes long and was not really worth it anyway. So, we left the information booth and started our walk to the castle.

I started snapping pictures as soon as we got on the winding road that leads to the castle, and it dawned on me that the castle still looked like it was really far away and, well… on the side of a friggin’ mountain.

So we walked. Uphill. Forever. The snow had mostly melted and we did have shoes on, but this path was precisely the grade and degree of difficulty referred to in every parent’s famous line: “When I was a kid we walked X miles to school, barefoot, in the snow, and uphill both ways.” As draining as this walk was for us, we had a good laugh at the thought of the poor suckers who had to haul up all the building materials for this castle in the first place, without trucks.

Once we made it to the top, we stopped to soak up the view and snap a few more pictures before heading in to the castle’s courtyard.

Inside the courtyard, there wasn’t really much to do except take pictures of the backside of the castle and a bridge way off in the distance (the castle’s “backyard”). So I did.

Having seen the castle, Adam and I headed back down to the town. This leg of the journey was MUCH easier than the climb, that is for sure. After waiting a while for the bus, we made it back to the train station and decided it was imperative that we eat before spending the next 2+ hours on the train back to Munich. We hauled ass to the first suitable thing we could find, which was a Mediterranean place a few blocks from the train station. Gyros in hand, we ran back to the train and boarded with a few minutes to spare. Seeing as how the next train didn’t leave for another 2 hours, we really didn’t want to miss this one.

On the way back to Munich, a train conductor came around checking tickets. I thought we were fine for the whole round trip using the tickets we bought back in Munich, but they turned out to be only one way. Adam was holding the tickets, and when the guy came around to check and pointed out that ours were invalid, Adam rattled off a fine piece of social engineering (read: feigned tourist ignorance) and after a while of talking in circles the conductor just gave up and left us alone.

Back in Munich, we went back to the hostel to meet up for a bierhall crawl which tours a few of Munich’s breweries and gets you pretty sloppy. For the third night in a row, there weren’t enough people interested so it was cancelled. So naturally, we had some Augustiners while trying to hatch another plan. What we eventually came up with was, as you probably could’ve guessed, to go back to Schwabinger 7.

A return trip was not in the cards on this night though. That’s because AC/DC played an outdoor show at the Olympic Park and it had just let out before we left the hostel. Let me tell you, the Germans love their AC/DC. And they love to go out and party after AC/DC shows. This made going to any rock-oriented bars that night pretty much futile. Scwhabinger was packed, and we were kinda out of energy anyways. Soooo, back to the hostel for some more half-liters of Augustiner!

When we got back we saw “Boston” and “Irish”, who never stopped drinking long enough the previous night to actually go to bed. So, they were going on almost 30 hours of pure boozin’. Insane.

That pretty much wraps it up for Day 4.

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2009 NHL Playoff Predictions, Round 1

April 15, 2009 – 1:21 pm

Since I won’t have time before tonight’s games start to do write-ups of each series like I did last year, I am just going to throw my predictions out there.

Eastern Conference:

1. Boston Bruins vs. 8. Montreal Canadiens: Boston in 6

2. Washington Capitals vs. 7. New York Rangers: Washington in 5

3. New Jersey Devils vs. 6. Carolina Hurrincanes: New Jersey in 7

4. Pittsburgh Penguins vs. 5. Philadelphia Flyers: Philadelphia in 6

Western Conference:

1. San Jose Sharks vs. 8. Anaheim Ducks: San Jose in 5

2. Detroit Red Wings vs. 7. Columbus Blue Jackets: Detroit in 6

3. Vancouver Canucks vs. 6. St. Louis Blues: St. Louis in 7

4. Chicago Blackhawks vs. 5. Calgary Flames: Chicago in 7

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Munich: Day 3 (March 26, 2009)

April 9, 2009 – 1:18 pm

Day 3 began with a Third Reich tour that kicked off near the Rathaus. It was led by a British guy who had moved to Munich a year earlier and (appropriately) knew a lot about the Third Reich.

The tour’s first stop was next to the former Sterneckerbraukeller where Adolf Hitler was sent by the Army in September of 1919 to spy on the German Workers’ Party (DAP). Here, he ultimately ended up giving his first political speech, in reaction to what one of the DAP members said onstage about the need for Bavaria to secede from Germany and join Austria. This building now hosts a company that sells and repairs Apple products.

Next, we moved on to the private dining hall at the Hofbrauhaus where Hitler delivered many speeches.

According to our guide, the stage and backdrop are the same today as they were during Hitler’s rise to power. As our guide led us downstairs, he stopped us to mention something interesting about the ceiling of the Hofbrauhaus’ main dining room. Hofbrauhaus doesn’t like to advertise this, but at one point in time its ceiling was covered in swastikas that got painted over sometime after the war. Well, the paint they used was cheap and over time has gradually faded so that it is a noticeably different color than the paint surrounding it. The guide told us not to make too big a deal of it since doing so annoys the Hofbrauhaus employees. I was able to take a picture anyway.

Next we headed to the site where Hitler’s infamous Beer Hall Putsch ended, near Odeonsplatz. Odeonsplatz, bordered on the west by the Felderrnhalle, was the site where Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor and was host to many S.S. induction ceremonies and Putsch anniversary celebrations.

From the south side of Felderrnhalle:

After a coffee/restroom break at a coffee shop on the edge of Odeonsplatz, we continued on to the former S.A. headquarters, which is now a bank.

After hearing a bit about the S.A. and how their role in the NSDAP changed over time, we continued on to our final stop of the tour, Königsplatz.

Königsplatz is currently surrounded by Munich’s gallery and museum quarter, but during the Third Reich it served as a site for the Nazi party’s mass rallies. Just to the south of Königsplatz is the Führerbau, which was home to Adolf Hitler’s office and was where the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938. Today, it is the Munich School of Music and Theater.

At the conclusion of the tour, Karol went back to take a shower while Adam and I went back to the Augustiner beer hall for dinner and yes, beer. This time I opted for some “Brewer’s” Goulash, and was I ever happy with that decision. It was a big mess of stewed beef, goulash gravy, and chopped up potatoes and carrots. I didn’t get a picture of this one, likely because I was too busy stuffing my face.

After an hour or so, Karol met up with us and we each put down a few more rounds of beers and soft pretzels.

Later on, we decided to give Schwabinger 7 another try since it seemed like it would be a cool place if we could get there before it hit capacity. So we did, and this time was a lot better. We managed to get seats up at the bar and had a good time chatting with the bartenders. Our battle stations manned, we settled in for a night of cheap drinkin’ (relative to other places we’d been). The verdict afterwards was that Schwabinger 7 was easily the coolest bar we found while in Munich.

After finishing up at Schwabinger 7, we headed back to the hostel for some much needed rest. Well ok, maybe we visited the hostel bar one more time before bed…

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Munich: Day 2 (March 25, 2009)

April 3, 2009 – 5:51 pm

Day 2 began with the sounds of construction. Though I admit we slept in later than we probably should have (almost noon), adjusting to a new time zone is even harder when someone is pounding nails right outside your door. By now, most everyone else in our 8-bed room had already gotten up and left, so I figured there was no time like the present.

After getting cleaned up, Karol and I headed out to stroll around town for a while. Adam was nowhere to be seen, so we took off without him. We all had working cell phones so I figured we’d meet up eventually. We stayed mostly south and west of the Hauptbahnhof, which is an area I hadn’t explored the last time I was in Munich. Along the way we passed some pretty cool-looking buildings like this church:

Before long we were thirsty/hungry and happened upon the Hacker-Pschorr Bier Hall. This beer hall is MASSIVE, though it was virtually empty since we were there so early. Karol and I promptly ordered beers (of course!); he had pumpkin soup with pretzels and I had a goulash soup that was truly awesome.

Also, it’s worth noting that Hacker-Pschorr has the largest bathroom I’ve ever seen and probably will ever see in my lifetime. It’s square footage dwarfs the dining rooms of most restaurants in Chicago. No, I don’t have pictures.

From Hacker-Pschorr, we slowly made our way back to the hostel. Unfortunately, it was snowing at the time.

In front of the hostel, we just happened to run into Adam who had woken up only about a half hour earlier. By now it was late afternoon and we headed into the hostel bar, armed with Karol’s computer, in order to look up things to do that night. We found a handful of bars up on Munich’s north side that sounded interesting and after hanging out for a few hours, decided to check them out.

First up was Schwabinger 7. Though the atmosphere in there was cool, it was totally packed and we really couldn’t make it very far into the place. Note to anyone who visits this bar: Watch out for the last step on the way in! I was the first one in the door and got almost up to the bar before stumbling over this hidden step. I recovered though, with minimal laughter from Karol who was right behind me. Adam must not have seen this because he did the same thing, except he went down… hard. I think he face planted into the base of the bar, knocking into a girl sitting unsuspectingly nearby. That was about it for our first Schwabinger experience.

We moved on to bar #2 (I don’t remember its name) hoping it would be a little less crowded. It was. Though the description we found said it was a rock music bar, it had a lounge atmosphere and they were blasting jazz. It wasn’t a bad place, but it wasn’t really what we were looking for at that point. We stayed for a drink, though, and Karol opted for a shot of absinthe complete with melted sugar.

We left in search of bars #3 and #4 which, in hindsight, was a terrible idea. We walked for what seemed like forever in a cold rain/snow mix and could not find either of these damn places. Finally, we called it quits. Since we had fun at the hostel bar the night before, we retreated to there.

Back at the hostel bar, we met three Irish folks (2 girls / 1 guy) and a drunken asshole from Boston, who we just referred to as “Boston”. We didn’t last as long as we did the night before, but put in a good showing nonetheless.

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Munich: Day 1 (March 24, 2009)

April 3, 2009 – 5:50 pm

The next several posts are a daily account of my recent trip to Germany with my friends Karol and Adam. The trip spanned nine days (March 24 – April 1), and in those nine days we visited Munich, Füssen (day-trip), and Berlin. These posts are an elaboration of the notes I jotted down by hand each day.

- – -

My plane landed in Munich at around noon on Tuesday, March 24. Unfortunately, I have a really hard time falling asleep on airplanes (yes, Karol and I hit the bar before departure) so I only got maybe 45 minutes of naptime in on the 8.5 hour overnight flight. I was tired but I wasn’t too worried, because hey – I’m in Germany afterall! After Karol and I met up with Adam near the entrance of our terminal, our first priority was to find food. Being the adventurers we are, we turned to the first thing we saw upon stepping out of Terminal 2’s door: Burger King. I know, I know… but we had a train ride ahead of us and didn’t feel like waiting any longer. Unfortunately for Karol, who is vegan, BK probably wasn’t the most attractive of choices. Seeing as how we spent over half of this trip in Bavaria where the staples are meat and potatoes soaked in meat-derived sauces, Karol pretty consistently got the shaft when it came to dining choices.

Anyway, we pulled some Euros out of the ATM (”Geldautomat”) and jumped on a train headed to Munich’s central train station, Hauptbahnhof – conveniently located less than a block from our hostel.

We emerged from the train station completely disoriented, so Adam flagged down a couple walking by and asked them where we needed to go. They courteously laughed at us, and then pointed us back in the direction from which we came.

We made it to the hostel and checked in. Next, the plan was to drop our stuff off and head out for beers. Adam was assigned to a different room than Karol and me, and when he met us in the lobby, he had a Japanese kid named “Shu” with him. Shu was only in Munich for the night and was alone so we decided it was in his best interests to come out and get sloppy drunk with us, despite his warnings that Japanese people typically can’t handle mass quantities of alcohol as well as us white folks. Right then and there I knew this was going to get ugly.

The first stop was the Augustiner Bier Hall. Not sure if the etiquette was to wait to be seated or not, we hovered near the door for a few minutes. It became apparent that no one was going to seat us so we plopped down at a table along one of the walls. First order of business: One delicious LITER of Helles (Lagerbier Hell).

Karol went with the same, I think, and Adam opted for the Dunkel. Shu scaled it back a notch and went with a half-liter of helles. Though I wasn’t really that hungry, I eventually started eating some of the food we had coming to our table in waves. This included a bunch of soft pretzels w/ mustard, bratwurst-style sausages, some sort of sliced white sausage in a vinegar/oil sauce w/ onions, and a pork dish that had a tasty potato dumpling on the side (which we referred to exclusively as “potato ball” for the remainder of the trip).

Though Shu said he couldn’t drink very much, he made up for it in his eating abilities. That kid devoured everything that came within three feet of his mouth. Of course we had to talk about the Japanese competitive eater who set the hot dog eating record all those years in a row, which Shu thought was pretty funny.

After a few more liters, we noticed that none of us had seen Shu in at least 20 minutes. The possibility of a colossal dine-and-dash was ruled out when we saw that his bag was still on the bench next to Adam. Uh oh. A few minutes later, he emerged from the direction of the bathrooms with that unmistakable “I just puked” look on his face. I don’t know if it was the food or the beer (or both) but Shu had just spent the last half hour giving back some of Munich’s finest food and beer to Augustiner via its toilets. This, of course, didn’t stop him from ordering more food (and eating it all) and beer. I think he made a total of three bathroom trips to perform what the competitive eating scene calls a “Reversal of Fortune”.

Once we squared up, it was on to the Hofbrauhaus. Not as cozy as Augustiner, Hofbrau is probably the biggest tourist trap of all of Munich’s major beer halls. We didn’t stay there long, but it was long enough for the liters we previously drank at Augustiner to catch up with Karol and Shu. Still not looking so hot, Shu bowed out and we never saw him again. Karol went into a zone where he didn’t say much and just kind of stared around the room. Once my beer and Adam’s Jager-Coke were gone, we decided to check out an English-style pub a few streets over. I don’t remember how we knew to go to this place. It’s possible that alcohol affects short term memory. Karol was adamant about finishing his beer at Hofbrauhaus, so we agreed that he would meet us at the next place when he was finished.

Inside the pub it was dark and quiet. They had a specialty drink that had a bunch of tropical stuff (I think?) and nutmeg. Pretty tasty, actually. After Karol got there, we hung around for another 15-20 minutes and then made our way back to the hostel.

It turns out that the bar in our hostel is a pretty happening place among Munich’s younger nightlife crowd. The bar was packed when we got back. We ended up staying there for the rest of the night and closed down the bar at 4am.

Day 1 in the books!

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What I Love About Detroit

February 26, 2009 – 4:02 pm

A few days ago, my Twitter friend/Detroit Red Wings PR Extraordinaire Shannon Paul tweeted a request asking her friends/followers to submit “Things I Love About Detroit” lists for inclusion in the Detroit Startup Weekend blog. Having spent the majority of my life in that area, I thought it would be fun to look back on what stands out, in my mind, as my favorite things unique to the city. This may read more as a “Things I Miss About Detroit Since Moving To Chicago” list but for the most part, these are the things I can’t get enough of when go back to visit.

So, in no particular order, here goes.

National Coney Island/Phoenix Coney Island

One word: CONEYS. Best post-bar food ever. Sure, other places have chili dogs but I’ve yet to go anywhere that’s even come close to the perfection Coney Island has achieved. Or, if you’re in the mood for something “healthy” there’s the Hani – a warm pita filled with chicken, lettuce, tomato, cheese and sauce. (Phoenix Coney Island calls this the Geno). Either way, you can’t go wrong.

The Abundance of Inexpensive Canadian Beer

Detroit’s proximity to Canada makes Canadian beer an easy find. In fact, it’s an oddity for a bar/party store to not carry Labatt or Molson, and there are usually several varieties of both. This is not the case in Chicago. Here you will very rarely see a bar serving up Labatt, while Molson is virtually non-existent. If you are lucky enough to come across some Canadian brews in Chicago, it’s almost always priced like any other fussy import.

“Hockeytown”

Detroit is serious about hockey. I’ve never been anywhere, outside of Canada, where people cared more about their professional hockey teams(s) or were more involved, in some form, with hockey themselves.

Detroit has a very well-established amateur hockey community. When I was younger, I was fortunate enough to play in organized leagues. However, for me and everyone else I played with (and our friends), it didn’t stop there. When the weather was warm I’d spend the majority of my after-school time playing street hockey until a break for dinner, and then it was back out to the street until dark. When it was cold enough, the game moved out to one of the several ponds in my city. It didn’t matter if some of the kids could barely stand up on skates, they were out there doing it. It seemed like we never had a shortage of guys, especially on the weekends when there would be several games going on at the same time on our pond.

Then there’s the Red Wings. No other team has been as consistently good over the past ten years but even if that weren’t the case, they’d still have one of the most loyal fan bases around. People simply can’t get enough. This is evident every time I go to the Joe Louis Arena and feel like I just made about 20,000 new friends for the night. Maybe it’s just that the beers are bigger at the JLA than they tend to be elsewhere, but compared to other arenas I’ve been to it seems that the average person at the Joe is much more genuinely excited to be at the game.

Saint Andrews Hall/The Shelter

These are the venues I first started going to regularly to see shows. I always thought that St. Andrews was the perfect size venue – intimate enough to get a good view from wherever you’re positioned, but big enough that the acts you want to see don’t sell out immediately. Between 1995 and the early-2000’s I saw more concerts there than I can keep track of and almost as many in its basement, The Shelter. Places like these spoil the experience of having to go see a band you like in a much larger venue, where the sound quality sucks and you’re lucky if you can even make out individual band members.

Better Made Potato Chips

Better Made potato chips are made locally and unfortunately don’t make it very far from Detroit. I prefer them to the major brands such as Lay’s because they’re a not as greasy and are slightly cheaper. My personal favorite are the Red Hot BBQ flavor. The seasoning they put on these are equal parts spice and crack cocaine. The latter ingredient explains why I cannot stop eating them once I open a bag.

Friends/Family

Most of my family lives in the metro Detroit area, so it’s always nice to get back and see everyone from time to time. Though many of my friends have moved on to other places, a handful still remain in the area. I’ve been gone for almost six years, but these are the folks I still consider to be my best, lifelong friends – the kind of people that would do anything for me if I needed them to.

FM Radio

Unbelievably, the FM radio situation in Chicago is a disaster. It’s been over two years since I’ve listened to it. The reason is that while there are plenty of talk, hip hop/R&B, and oldies stations, there is really only one quasi-rock station – Q101. This is a station that has no qualms about going from something tolerable to diving into a 90’s pop-rock black hole with no warning whatsoever. The day I swore it off was the day they came out of a commercial and launched into a string of Spin Doctors, Nickelback, and 4 Non-Blondes. No thanks.

Detroit, on the other hand, has plenty of good options. There’s the ever-reliable classic rock station, 94.7 – WCSX. Though I have to live vicariously through a podcast subscription, 94.7 just got even better with the addition of Deminski and Doyle in the mornings. Then there’s 89X (88.7), which delivers a lot of new, slightly more obscure (at times) music for when you’re tired of the same old thing. 101.1 – WRIF is what a rock station should be. Sure, they play some songs from time to time that warrant a flip to one of the other aforementioned stations, but for the most part the selection is good.

I’m sure other stations have come and gone since I lived there, but those three stick out in my mind.

The Pizza

Jet’s Pizza / Nona’s Pizza – Detroit-style square deep dish pizza is my favorite pizza, hands down. This is something I never fully appreciated until I left. After I moved to Chicago and started making my way around to all the famous Chicago-style pizza joints everyone raves about, I started to miss Jet’s more and more. In Chicago, you basically have two choices: the infamous and obnoxious deep dish that looks like a cake filled with cheese and doused in sauce, or a brittle thin-crust round pizza that is inexplicably cut up into square pieces. If you told me that, for the rest of my pizza-eating life, I was only allowed to order Jet’s square pizza and Nona’s round, I would be perfectly happy with that.

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Zappos Is Awesome

January 20, 2009 – 7:54 pm

If you aren’t familiar with Zappos, they are an online footwear and clothing retailer. A few things differentiate Zappos from most of their competitors: a huge selection, free shipping both ways (which in my case has always been upgraded to overnight shipping, free of charge), and a return policy that lets you send items back up to a year after you purchased them.

However, if you ask any of Zappos’ repeat customers what makes the company stand out in their minds from the rest, most will say it’s their customer service. As of late last week, I totally agree.

I’ve been battling the Michigan/Chicago winters for the past 8 years or so without a decent pair of boots, so naturally I decided that now was the time to get some. I had a pair of Sorels when I was a kid that I absolutely loved so I wanted to go with that brand again. Unfortunately, this late in the season it’s almost impossible to get the style I want in sizes 10-12 due to the high demand.

I checked Zappos.com and they were completely sold out of my size. I selected the option to have them contact me when a pair of 11s came in, and also tried a few other sites only to find that they were all out too. Bummer, but like I said – I’ve made it this long without boots, so I could probably wait a little longer.

Bootless, I (publicly) sent the following to Zappos CEO and co-founder Tony Hsieh’s Twitter account: “Rats! I was all set to order some boots but you’re out of my size. I’ll just have to be patient.” I wasn’t expecting a reply but 18 hours later I got a direct message from Tony asking me to email him the details of what I wanted so he could forward it on to his VP of Merchandising, Steve Hill. I sent this email at 3:01PM on Thursday. At 3:02, Tony sent it along to Steve (I was cc’d) and at 3:30 Steve emailed to tell me that his buyer for all things Sorel, Bill Johnson, would be in touch with me. At 3:33, he was. Over the weekend, Bill let me know that Sorel was completely sold out of my size for the season, and that I shouldn’t expect them to have any more until next fall. At this point however, he offered to start contacting other retailers on my behalf in order to hunt them down. I declined, since I could just as easily do this myself and figured he probably had more important things to do than track down a single pair of boots that I could’ve already had if I didn’t wait through two months of snow before deciding to pull the trigger.

Just to ensure there were no hard feelings, Zappos even sent me a 20% off coupon code to use on a future purchase.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never dealt with a company of this size (1500+ employees, $1+ billion in sales in 2008)  that treats one sub-$100 purchase with such importance – especially that high up the company’s organizational food chain. Having made only five or six purchases from them in the past three years, I think I’m hardly what Zappos would consider a high-priority customer. Nevertheless, they went the extra mile or two to try to make me happy.

I guess I wrote this because I think it’s important, with all the e-commerce choices out there, to relay these experiences so that someone who’s trying to decide where to spend their hard earned money has no trouble finding information that will help them make the right decision. I am certainly vocal when it comes to horrible customer service experiences (as past posts to this blog will reveal) but I also want to give credit where it’s due.

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Unibody Macbook Pro RAM Madness

January 16, 2009 – 11:40 pm

The day after Thanksgiving, I took advantage of some great Internet deals and got myself a new unibody Macbook Pro. I opted for one with only 2GB of RAM and also ordered two 2GB sticks of Crucial RAM from Newegg, since it’s much cheaper to buy and install them yourself as opposed to buying a Mac with 4GB already installed.

I got everything a few days later, swapped out the RAM, started transferring everything over from my old machine and about ten minutes into the transfer my new computer froze. After restarting a few times and having the same thing happen each time, I knew something wasn’t right. I searched around a bit and found some articles similar to this one that pointed the finger at my third-party RAM. I was not happy, to say the least. However, I also found cases where people were experiencing this same problem with factory installed memory. Regardless of where the RAM came from, the thing everyone with issues had in common was that they had 4GB installed. Then again, there were reports from people who had 4 gigs installed (factory or third party) that were having no problems at all.

Right around the same time, three of my coworkers and I all got the same model Macbook Pros at work with 4GB of Crucial memory installed in them. Two of us had no problems (I was one of the lucky ones) while the other two were experiencing the same issue as I was at home. The temporary solution, which I had also previously resorted to, was to put one of the original 1GB Hynix (factory) DIMMs in with one of the Crucial DIMMs resulting in a total of 3GB of RAM. Not ideal, but at least it worked.

If you’ve swapped memory on one of the new Pros, you may have noticed that the harness holding the DIMMs in place is not the sturdiest thing in the world. Given how random this problem seemed to be, I started to think that the way the sticks were seated might be a factor. I opened up my personal machine and put the other 2GB stick back in, only this time the two DIMMs were in opposite slots than they were the first time around. I was careful to only push them down far enough so they’d click in, not applying any more pressure than necessary. I started the machine back up and let it sit for an hour or so. Much to my surprise it was still going strong. Now, nearly a day and a half later I haven’t had any recurrences of the problem. Coincidentally, my coworker that was also having issues did the same thing a few days earlier (without telling us) and hasn’t had a system freeze since.

So anyway if you are experiencing this issue, try reseating the DIMMs. It might not work for you, but it’s worth a shot.

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

2009 NHL Winter Classic

January 7, 2009 – 8:54 pm

If you’ve talked to me within the past few weeks, I probably gushed about the fact that I was going to the NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley Field. Well, I did and it was awesome. I took some pictures, which you can check out here. Great weather (relatively speaking), a rekindled rivalry, and a win for the Red Wings. What more could you ask for?!

Posted in Entertainment, Sports | 2 Comments »

Introducing Baby Tyler

September 26, 2008 – 10:19 pm

Late last evening, my sister and brother in-law had a baby boy, Tyler Matthew Halliday. He came out with a full head of hair and weighed in at 8lbs. 5oz. I couldn’t be happier for the two of them, and I can’t wait to get back and see the little guy!

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