Ryan Carmelo Briones

Weeee! A coworker score us some free Bengals tickets for this weekends game! We're going to be in Section 344, Row 22, Seats 12 and 13. The last time I went to a football game was Christmas a couple of years ago when the Bucs when we're actually winning. :) Anyway, we're excited, I guess because we're doing our first real Cincinnati person thing. That's it!

Confused? Me too. Actually, I'm writing this because I've had a heck of a time installing everything that Ruby on Rails needs to get going on on my MacBook Pro. Thank God for HowtoInstallOnOSXTiger and HowtoInstallOnOSXTigerUsingDarwinPorts from the Rails wiki, or I probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere with this. There are some key observations that I have made that are not yet included in those HowTos:

• The HowTo "UsingDarwinPorts" does includes the "server" variant when install mysql, but the "OnOSXTiger" does not. I also installed MySQL5 since they put it as their GA production release and it has some new features I may want to mess with. So I used
  
$ sudo port install mysql5 +server

  when I installed MySQL
  


• 
  As far as I can tell almost everything installed with MySQL5 using DarwinPorts has a "5" appended to the normal file name, so "mysql" client becomes "mysql5" and "mysql_config" becomes "mysql_config5"
  


• 
  When doing gem install mysql I was presented with a few versions to choose from. I chose 2.7, since it was the latest, but after all the different iterations of switches and whatnot trying to make it work it turns out I was doing the right thing from the beginning, with the exception of not doing this first:
  
$ sudo gcc_select 4.0

  This, apparently, is crucial, more specifically I'm assuming MySQL5 requires it. The DarwinPort I installed probably had this already setup in the config file. Some gems I hear need gcc 3.9 in order to work, so be looking at for that. Also I used the switch --with-mysql-config=/opt/local/bin/mysql_config5 noting the "5" at the end again.
  

After all that everything went smoothly. All that's left is to put it to work! hehe. I do love my Mac, though. :)

Sounds important, huh? It just means that I'm writing to say that Stephanie has finially decided to write in the blog that I set up for her a month ago! I can't complain. I didn't write in my blog for almost that entire time.. :) Anyway, be sure to check it out:

http://www.brionesandco.com/stephanie/

Well. I guess a post about this has been a long time coming. I really wanted to be all "writer-like" and write some serialized posts on our journal from Georgia to Kentucky to really capture the details about our trip and what not. Such is life, I guess.



To start off, I'd really like to thank all the people who helped us and who gave us a really great send off.

• Tiffany Meyers, a co-worker at Goodwill, who is always up for partying it seems! Luckily I was able to get away before being forced to sing karaoke that night! :)


• The rest of the Goodwill staff who really had great things to say and we're very supportive the last month of my employment.


• The wonderful people who allowed us to be a part of their Monday night bible study from Christ Community Church. You guys are like family to us and we will truely never forget you.


• The Core Staff who helped us create some memorable experiences and took us in as one of their own at at time when we really needed it.


• Last but not least, Sandy and Mark Ellingson who were always more that gracious to us and were instrumental in many aspects of this latest move.

This brings us to Thursday. Here are the highlights:

• Budget doesn't assist in connecting the tow dolly due to liability purposes


• Mark and I got 98% loaded by 11am! Yay! Unfortunatly I was on the virge of puking...


• Picked up some lunch and dropped off cable box, noticed that one of wheels of my Rav4 was half way off the tow dolly. Yikes!


• Drive through Atlanta to stop at IKEA and pick up our new bed. Got stuck on a blocked off, no outlet street. IKEA Didn't have the mattress we wanted. Atlanta traffic leaving. Sigh.


• 30 miles south of Chattanooga, TN on I-75N: Passenger-side tow-dolly tire goes completely flat. Thank God for 24 road side assistance. Scorn the devil for Arbys.


• Get to Chattanooga, TN. Sleep.

And then Friday's Highlights:

• Wake up. Muscules want to die. Eat waffles. Mmmm.


• Drive a really long time. Use a lot of gas.


• 20 miles south of I-275, the interstate closest to our new apartment, on I-75N, blow SECOND tire on driver-side of tow-dolly. God, why?


• 5:45pm, Arrive at Apartment. Run to get paperwork signed before office closes at 6pm.


• Half of the truck unpacked, but only 25% of the work done.


• Eat at Macaroni Grill. Free taramisu because our server sucked.


• Put together bed until 1:30am. Go get some drinkage. Get to bed around 3:45am

Then Saturday's, the last day in our "move process":

• Wake up. Muscules a bit better.


• Finish unloading truck


• Get new cell phones! I got a MOTO Q, Stephanie MOTO RAZR v3m. mmmm...

So, yeah. That pretty much explains most of it. I'm going to put up some pictures as soon as I can. You'll notice a couple new pictures uploaded from my MOTO Q below already. :) But we're here. We're starting to settle in. Amanda and Alex have been great hanging out with us and trying to help us get acclamated to the area. I found good pizza called Dewey's that's in the awesome place called Newport on the Levee. Come and visit!

we're here and connected. we've got new cell phones on Verizon. we'll still have our Sprint phones for a undetermined amount of time. more soon on the move. thanks for all the prayers and support.