a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in
Today Kelly and I went to see Cloverfield. It was good, though be sure to bring motion-sickness pills. And maybe ibuprofen. I think I will enjoy watching it again on a smaller screen, but even with the constant shaking camera, it was a good movie.
Today I also watched this interesting History Channel show “Life After People‘, which followed nature’s resurgence if, hypothetically, every human vanished tomorrow. The CG wasn’t movie quality, but it was still pretty cool.
Anybody looking for a last-minute gift idea to buy me? You can buy me this life-sized Cylon Centurion!
That’s right, a Cylon complete with the eerie red eyes and audible hum sound.
I have no idea where I’d put such a thing.
Perhaps I’d place Fred (I’d call him Fred) in the living room where it would creep Kelly and I out as we shuffle downstairs each morning for our coffee?
Maybe Fred would find a good spot right outside the front door to scare off petitioners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, meter readers, and postal workers?
Either way, you would be assured that your $7,900 wouldn’t be wasted.
Yup, it’s happened again, I’m blogslacking. Here’s a recap of the past couple weeks:
Work, beer, turkey, pie, more work, and more beer.
For a more detailed breakdown, it’s been a little like this: I took some time off around the Thanksgiving holiday and spent a lot of time doing things around the house, like finally getting some shelving assembled in my office, thus making it a bit more organized and manageable. I also finally got my printer and scanner hooked back up. Not sure what I have to print or scan, but whatever, they’re both there and ready to go after 2+ years since the move to the house.
Spent Turkeyday at my folks house, which was very fun and very filling. I ate too much dinner, and then ate too much pie (which is to be expected I suppose). Kelly made a delicious apple pie, that pretty much every member of the family had seconds of. Yum. Me == fat.
The day after Kelly and I met Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog at Mash Tun for some dinner and beers.
After that, the work week broke down like this:
Monday: beers at Moon & Sixpence with Snooks.
Tuesday: home with Kelly watching movies and getting caught up on TV shows, like Heroes.
Wednesday: went to Kells for a couple beers after work… finally ventured downstairs to the ‘cigar’ area (meaning, I could have a smoke down there, pretty neat area, watched a bit of the Liverpool match on the plasma TV down there)… and then met Kelly at Moon after getting off the MAX for a beer before heading home for dinner and more TV watching.
Thursday: met Travis at Moon (yup, back there again).
Friday: Kelly was downtown when I got off work, so I met her at Huber’s, then we went to Kells (she wanted to see the downstairs ‘cigar bar’ that I visited on Wednesday), then we went to Shanghai Tunnel for a bit before taking the MAX homeward… stopping at Moon (yes, again, 4th time this week, urgh!) before going home.
Over the weekend Kelly and I watched several movies, one of which was the horrible adaptation of the brilliant Ray Bradbury short story A Sound of Thunder, which, while having some (and I emphasize some) interesting bits, it was overall a terrible film. Read the original story here (the only one I could find).
Later that night we watched the Transformers movie. Perhaps it’s just that I hold a special place in my heart for cars transforming into robots, but I thought the movie was pretty fun.
We also started watching the HBO series Rome, which was very interesting.
Lastly, we finished watching the first series of Jekyll (starring the brilliant James Nesbitt), and got caught up on Heroes. Jekyll was great, and Heroes is I think a bit slower this year than the last, but still excellent.
Tonight I met up with Snooks at Kennedy School for some dinner, and we later moved on to another local pub, the Concordia Ale House, where I had both the delicious Terminal Gravity Strong Ale, as well as an Oktoberfest Marzen style lager by a brewery who’s name I now forget. Fun times, and was home before 11.
The week was pretty busy with work, though I did manage to go out some. Spent time with Snooks on Monday at Kennedy School, and my brother Travis at Moon & Sixpence on Thursday.
Friday I was pretty exhausted and Kelly had class, so I came home and relaxed. Had a couple beers, but ended up going to bed pretty early, though Kelly and I did finish watching the first season of Heroes, which was fantastic. What a great show. Now I’ve got the first four or so episodes of season 2 recorded to do a mini-marathon with. Brilliant!
On Saturday I woke up unusually early for me on a weekend, 7:30am (just as Kelly was headed to class) and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I just got up and got a lot of little things done around the house. It was pretty easy to do, it was pissing it down outside, just a miserable rainy day.
One of the things I finally did was buy the new Radiohead album In Rainbows, which in case you’ve been living in a cave (or don’t care for Radiohead) is being sold directly by the band now that they’re out of their recording contract with the big labels. Reports have been good regarding the sale, despite the fact that it’s a “name your price” sale. I opted for the box set route (which is VERY expensive) because I want the physical CD, though I wouldn’t have probably done it had my friend JB not gone in on it with me for the vinyl that I have no use for. It’s a really good album, and if you like Radiohead, I suggest going and buying the digital download for whatever you feel it’s worth to you, $2 or $20, if for no other reason than to ‘stick it to the man’ and prove that big labels have become largely irrelevant in an age of cheap recording options and virtually free distribution and promotion options.
Sunday was another largely lazy day, Kelly had some schoolmates coming over to do some studying, so I went and picked up pizza for them from a spot down the street and then hid out in my office for a few hours surfing the net. Later Kelly and I watched the last couple episodes of the 3rd season of Doctor Who, which was also really good (if you’re into that sort of thing, like I am). It was a good, relaxing weekend.
Haven’t written in a few days. I intended to, but I couldn’t. I broked the internets! 🙂
It all started Saturday, which was truely a day to myself. I didn’t leave the house except for some grocery shopping (translated: I bought beer and some meat to grill). I spent most of the day tinkering around my home office, backing up data, updating software, and researching some new computer equipment to buy. Fun stuff, yeah? Yeah, well it was for me. And, it was nice to spend a day doing practically nothing. Not seeing anybody, not going anywhere, just hanging out by myself. Well, me and the cat I guess.
The research was for a new WiFi access point. I have been running on a dinosaur, the original Apple Airport (known as the Graphite model) since around the year of our lord 2000 AD. It was old, slow, and though it worked, I’ve recently been using the wireless a lot more (what with the new laptop) and it’s shocking how long it takes to transfer a large file over that old, slow WiFi connection. I also wanted to move to a WiFi router, something new that could take the place of my old WiFi access point and my old ethernet switch. One power plug instead of two, one or two less cables snaking along the wall, etc. This, after loads of research, lead me to the newly released Apple Airport Extreme (1 gigabit ethernet version).
While out grocery shopping Saturday I tried to visit the nearest Mac store and buy one, but they’d closed. Oh well. I spent the night surfing the net and watching season 3 of Black Books, a very funny / snarky English comedy series.
Sunday however, I was able to purchase my new toy. So I got home with it in the afternoon and set in getting it all hooked up. One thing I knew was going to happen in all of this was that my current setup was going to break a lot… my old setup was such that my broadband modem fed into my Linux server, which then fed to my ethernet switch, which then fed into my old WiFi access point. Long story short, a LOT of configuration was done on my Linux server to get all this working… and I had to undo it all, and do a lot of new stuff, to get everything back up and running.
I had however underestimated how much of a pain some of it would be. Getting my network up and running and getting my computers online was really easy. That part only took 10 minutes. What was more troublesome was getting my Linux server happy again, and then discovering some things that meant some larger changes to my setup (new nameservers, routing for my domain name, port forwarding, blah blah blah). What that all means is that Circusgeek was offline for a couple few days until everything got sorted out. Which, as far as I can tell, happened today sometime. Now I’m finally able to post to my blog again. Hence, the long-winded post. 🙂
Now that it’s all running, things are faster and I’m happier overall. More than anything, I’m just glad to have everything running again. What a pain in the ass!
In a recent commercial from for the Falcon XR8 Ute, Ford has created a manly man’s dream world. The paper delivery isn’t a newspaper, but a burrito, a group of men chase after a beer truck called "Mr. Frothy", most of the stores in the town have large signs that read "Tools". Oh, and the theater is running "BEER: The Musical". I’d watch that. 🙂 Click here to read more and watch the video.
Today we had some tech (and apparently sales… keep reading) folks come out from Comcast to fix some cable troubles. Our ancient, old-school analog cable has been having troubles with some channels. It’s not a new problem, it just took Kelly and I a long time to finally call Comcast about it. Channels 2 through 13 were having some ghosting issues, and two other higher channels had insanely low audio volumes, to a point where we’d have to crank up the receiver and then remember to turn it down before changing channels again.
The Comcast techs hooked up this nifty box that both played video / audio from the cable, as well as analyzed the frequency strengths, etc. I heard it for myself, apparently there was nothing wrong with the signal. It could have been the old VCR we had our cable run through to change channels. Dunno. However, the helpful fella started talking to me about digital cable, their PVR units, and even how I could get things working with my MythTV box upstairs (that for years I’d been using to record shows with, later burning them to DVD, sans commercials, for later viewing). After some brief consideration, I decided to go ahead and upgrade… mainly because for a year, we don’t really pay anything different than we have been paying. While I feel it was definately an upsell, I don’t feel cheated. I’ve been wanting digital for a while. I wanted the handy guide for navigating channels. I definately wanted a PVR hooked up to my TV directly for a change. The extra channels are nice and all, though I’m not too concerned about most of them (though now we have BBC America, and for 6 months free, HBO). Neat-o! Guess I’ll see in a year what I want to keep and what I don’t. Chances are I’ll get so used to the extra features that I’ll drop the premium bits (HBO) and keep the PVR & extra digital channels, and just pay the extra $10 a month or whatever it comes down to. Either that, or we’ll get our use out of it and drop it. Time will tell.
Here’s the part that makes this all kismet-like. I just read that the free channel guide my MythTV computer uses to get it’s channel data, is dropping it’s free service as of September 1st of this year. Apparently there has been some abuse of their free XML data (likely that the data was being stolen and re-sold). This could mean that in three months, unless something else crops up, MythTV boxes will become a lot less useful. This makes me very sad, and perhaps the company (Zap2It Labs) will offer some kind of paid subscription service (like you pay for with any other PVR service anyway), but for now, it makes my cable upgrade a timely one.
What a week! I've been swamped with work, social engagements, and a fascination with a new toy in the house.
On monday Kelly and I met our friend Miranda at Moon & Sixpence for some dinner, drinks, and some Irish folk music. Had a blast!
On tuesday, after some deliberation, Kelly picked up her new baby, a black MacBook (which she named Mozart). I rushed home to get to see / play with it for a bit before meeting Snooks at Kennedy School for a couple beers (and to hand off copies of the last few episodes of Battlestar Galactica that I burned to DVD… we both needed to see the massive cliffhanger season finale).
On wednesday, plans to meet some friends fell through, so I was able to get some yard work done, and have a relaxing night at home. After mowing the forest that was my lawn, and doing some other yard work, Kelly and I watched Battlestar. Man, what a cliffhanger, and to think we have to wait until 2008 to see the conclusion. It's just cruel.
Last night I met several friends at my old haunt, the Goose Hollow Inn, for some dinner and beers after work. Both my brothers met me there, and after we went to another old haunt, the ultimate 'dive bar', the Commodore, to shoot some pool. Fun night, and thanks to all who came out!
Today I worked from home so I could focus on all the code I need to clean up / rewrite from the first release of SuperSweetCo's new product. A lot of the CSS / HTML has been driving me crazy since I originally wrote it. Also, trying to write in a lot of the new design. After work, I spent some more time with Kelly's MacBook, getting a few applications installed, and moving some music into iTunes for her. Found a great app called Senuti that allowed me to move tracks from my iPod onto her Mac. The more I play with Kelly's Mac, the more I want one for myself. Later, Snooks and I went back to Kennedy School to talk about Battlestar, drink beer, and eat pizza, while the girls were out eating fancy cheese and sipping wine.
Tomorrow I'm going to spend most of the day migrating data from Kelly's old work laptop to her Mac. To make sure she doesn't lose anything when she hands her work laptop in on monday, her last day at StinkyCorp. While doing such work is usually a big pain, I doubt I'll mind much, since I'll get to play with Kelly's MacBook.
Went out this evening to Rose & Thistle with Miranda & Brian, and Mr. & Mrs. Ghost Dog. It had been a while since Kelly and I had gotten together with these kids, especially the Ghost Dogs. Had a great time catching up, chatting about all manner of things, from Lost, to Battlestar Galactica, to the headaches of driving in our local metro traffic hell. I have to mention the dish I had for dinner, the 'Charles Stuart (Chuck)', sort of a chicken & gravy pasty, with mashed potatos and veggies… very delicious. Near midnight Kelly and I caught our bus homeward, stopping at Binks for a final drink or two before walking home. Great night, and a perfect end to a productive weekend day. If only I had my millions, I'd be able to have this kind of day EVERY day. 🙂