It was the highest of tech, it was the lowest of tech.

What a fun weekend. A little dabbling in technology, a little trip to the past…

Friday and Saturday were largely taken up with computer upgrades. My trusty Linksys router had started to behave poorly, often going offline and requiring a power-cycle reset to start passing traffic again. I found this less than ideal, and so went shopping for a replacement. I had been contemplating going wireless for quite some time, and since I was in the market for a new router anyway, I selected an 802.11g model from D-link to replace the ailing Linksys. I also bought a new 160gb hard drive from Western Digital, since the 120gb drive in my computer had gotten rather full. (One of the problems with never actually throwing anything away, I guess.) I looked at the PCI Wifi cards available, but they were out of stock on the one I really wanted.

I got home with the new purchases and proceeded to set up the new hard drive, and started a move of data from the old drive to the new one. While that was running, I pulled the old router off and set the new one up. Everything went fairly smoothly, and we were back up and running in no time.

Saturday was mostly a quiet day, with grocery shopping and the like done in the morning. In the afternoon we went over to Micro Center to get a Wifi card for kitanzi‘s computer. Once I got it up and running, we were finally able to get rid of the cable that has been laying across the walkway into the room where the computers are for the last 2 years! Yay. (I was amused to discover that someone nearby is running an unsecured WAP.)

Sunday, we went once again to the Georgia Renaissance Festival. This was supposed to be a team-building exercise with people from Kitanzi’s workplace, but they weren’t due to meet until 2pm. Having checked in advance that the free tickets she’d be getting from work were in fact good for any day, we went ahead and showed up at 10:30 when the gates opened, planning to pocket the freebies for another day.

Good thing. We had a good time in the morning strolling around, catching various acts that we’d missed the first time we visited (with maedbh7, a month ago), and browsing the shops. Kit found a lovely velvet corset that was surprisingly inexpensive, and we oohed and ahhed over a number of lovely things that were, alas, unsurprisingly very expensive.

One of the expensive things that I looked at was a rapier. Last time I got the spiffy hat, so I’m slowly starting to put a good outfit together. I was impressed by the sales technique of the guy in the sword shop. He just looked at me and said ‘You need a sword to complete that outfit, sir. Are you left or right handed?’ He then proceeded to fit me with a baldric and scabbard, selected a nice silver handled sword and pointed me at the mirror. I had to admit that the look was nice, but at $300, it was a bit out of my impulse-buy range. I told him I’d think about it and regretfully left.

Before lunch, aside from shopping, we also watched the Sturdy Beggar’s Mud Show, which was a fun sort of “funny once” event that mostly revolved around getting very, very dirty in a giant mud puddle, interspersed with bawdy jokes.

Hack and Slash was a bit more sophisticated comedy, and obviously well practiced. We were reminded a bit of Blackadder, with the whole “clever servant bilking a blundering master” shtick. I would probably catch that one again.

Since everyone was to meet from Kit’s work at 2pm by the main gates, we went out at about five until 2 to wait for them to arrive. And waited. And waited. And waited. At 2:30, Kit called the person who was supposed to be getting the tickets and found out that she was at least 20 minutes away. Frustrated, we went back in to gather up some lunch, then back out to wait some more. Not a single person showed up until 3pm, making me wonder about the organization of this whole affair. More surprisingly, after dispersing the tickets to the various assembled folks, everyone split up and went off to do their own thing. Gonna build an odd sort of teamwork with that exercise.

Still, that left us free to do as we wanted, so we went back in and immediately ran into Michael Starr from the Lost Boys, who alerted us that their next show was starting in 10 minutes. Since they are easily our favourite performers at the Festival, we went down to get good seats immediately. They had a slightly short set, but it was a lot of fun, and I got a lot of pictures.

When that show was over, we headed back to the weapons shop, as they were going to have a raffle at 4:30. When I got there, the guy who I’d talked to earlier asked me if I was ready to buy yet. I told him that I’d really like to, but it was just a bit out of my price range today. He said “Well, I’ll tell you what, how do you feel about the black or brass handled swords? I have too many of those, so I’d be willing to make a deal on one.” “Ok, so what would the whole kit run me in that one.” He thought about it for a moment and said “$165.” Sold! (I had been thinking to myself that if he’d come down around $200, I’d pounce on it, so I’m glad I kept quiet and let him name the first price.)

The raffle/auction was a lot of fun, although I didn’t come away with anything, having already spent my money for the day. I would have gotten one of the freebies they were tossing down from the top of their little ship building at the end, but a guy in front of me made a great basketball rebound grab of the box that was heading right towards my hands. Oh well. 🙂

We contemplated staying for the pub sing, but we were tired and dusty and ready to go, so we headed for the exit.

On the way home, we swung by deidrecorwyn, my ex, because she had told me she had some books of mine to return, and I had a birthday present for her besides. When we got into her neighborhood, she wasn’t home yet, so we went up to the Barnes and Noble down the street, had some cheesecake and browsed through the books, and then went down to the Love Shack to browse the toys until she called to tell me she was home. We went and exchanged stuff, and talked about our day at the Festival, and then wandered home to eat the barbecue pork roast that had been cooking in the crockpot all day.

It was a fun, full day, and I was good tired when we went to bed that night. I hope we have as much fun next time we go!