Ok, I’ll do the Friday Five before shutting off the computer.
1. Do you wear any jewelry? What kind?
I wear two rings. On my left hand is my wedding ring and on my right is a ring Michele gave me on my first Father’s Day.
2. How often do you wear it?
I don’t take them off.
3. Do you have any piercings? If so, where?
No. I’m not a piercing guy.
4. Do you have any tattoos? If so, where?
Yes, one. On my chest is Michele’s name and her symbol.
5. What are your plans for the weekend?
The only plans are dinner and a movie on Saturday night since the kids will be spending the night at my parents house.
Star Trek
It appears that Referrer Risk is DOA. I’m glad people had fun with it. Mister P. did a great job and was able to get us to 2nd place. Thank you Mister P.
Today on Slashdot I read about a new Star Trek episode based on the original series called Starship Exeter. I downloaded the movie from a mirror and checked out a few clips. I didn’t want to watch it on the computer, I wanted to watch it on TV. So I converted the .mov files to .mpeg files and then burned the show as a VCD.
I was then able to watch an episode of Star Trek from the comfort of bed. The episode wasn’t bad either. It had many of the classic scenes from The Original Series like a red shirt getting killed and shirts getting ripped during a fight.
Book news:
I finished Masters of Deception and The Skystone this week. Both were pretty good. My hacking & phreaking took place before the events in Masters of Deception. The Skystone was great book melding Roman history with Arthurian legend. I was bummed to find that the next book in the series was not at the library. I picked up Big Fish by Thomas Perry instead.
I’m listening to Henry Rollins on Loveline now. It’s a rerun, but it’s worth listening to anyways.
Enough for now.
Click Here
Help me dominate the world. Click here.
Brewing Despair
I was all ready to brew some beer today. I got out the gear I had recently purchased and started going over everything. Everything seemed in order, except the spigots that fit into the fermentation buckets. Take a look.
The damn spigots are missing. I went through everything three times. THey simply forgot to send them to me. I can’t brew without them, the wort would spill out of the gaping hole. I could try to rig up a plug of some sort, but brewing is a finicky business. Patching the hole with duct tape would lead to some odd flavors.
The store is out in Riverside and I should be able to pick them up tomorrow. Why aren’t they open today!!!
Happy 2003
I trust that everyone had a fun New Year’s Eve and now awaken ready for a new year.
We had a little get together and celebrated the New Year with the kids at 9PM – Midnight on the East Coast. We had shot off some fireworks earlier in the night and watched the Dick Clark Dropping of the Ball countdown at 9PM. The kids were excited and happy with all the fun and games.
We cleaned and cleaned until about 11:45PM before trying to get ready for Midnight. Soon after, we hopped into bed, tired from the long day.
Currently, I’m typing this from linux. Yesterday I got the Romtec Trios II installed. I booted up to the linux drive that I hadn’t booted in months. It did not like my new video card at all. After messing around a bit with Mandrake 8.2, I finally decided I needed to install Mandrake 9.0 and wait for the release of Ximian Desktop for 9.0. Currently, Ximian only supports 8.2.
Right now I’m trying to get SMB browsing up on the box so I can grab files from Michele’s computer. I miss Red Carpet, it makes things so much easier with dependencies.
YAPP
Yet Another Photo Post…
Yes, I know it’s something o’clcok in the morning. I just got home from playing poker. The nicotine of two cigars and the mental adrenaline of driving 40 miles home have got me a bit wired. I’d just stare at the ceiling if I got into bed now.
I played poker at Brad’s Place. I had a good time. It was fun to get away from the usual things, meet some new people and drink beers.
We do play for money, but the buy-in is $20 so it’s not that much to win or lose.
Here is a picture of the biggest pot of the night. It was the last hand and people were going for broke. The game was 7 card – Pass the Trash – Hi/Lo.
We played at nice tables with real chips. Brad even hung nice lamps over the tables.
This is the final pot. The greens were $2, blues $1, reds 25¢, whites 10¢. The final pot was over $70 and split between Brad & Dave. Nice.
Here’s my cashflow during the evening.
While I like to play poker, I’m not a good player. I tend to stay in much longer than I should and it drains my chips. I won several good hands, but lost too many others. I walked away down $20 but it was a good time.
I hope I get a chance to play again soon.
Time for bed now…
Protege
Zoe finished the single player game of Super Smash Brothers today.
Zoe & Mira in front of the ‘Congrats’ screen
I’m so proud.
22 minutes
I’ve got 22 minutes to write this up before leaving to pick up Michele at the airport.
Here are a few photos from Christmas Eve. We had a small party for our friends with children to help pass the time until bed for the children.
We decided to make both ham and turkey for dinner. You are looking at a 15 pound turkey and a 12 pound ham. I used the Alton Brown recipe for brining and cooking the turkey. I made a Coca-Cola ham glaze for the ham.
Here I am with my Dad cutting the ham. Note the sweet electric knife I picked up earlier in the day.
In the middle of the party, the washer stopped working. Michele had been washing so new blankets for the the first time and the lint from them blocked up the pumps. In the middle of the party we drained the washer, disassembled the pump, removed the lint, and put it all back together. What a pain in the ass.
The offending ball of lint.
After the guests left, the presents came out. Here is the tree just before we went to bed.
The next morning, Santa had come! He ate cookies, drank milk and left presents for the girls.
More stories & pics later, I gotta run.
Apple
I just read an interesting article about the future of the Apple Mac OS.
The Mac OS on a x86 platform would surely put some competition into the computer industry.
Time for me to begin cleaning the house. Michele’s plane lands at 5ish in 8 short hours. Last night I was working on some text and pictures and I accidently hit the reset button on the case. Ouch. You’ll have to wait for later to see it all.
Rest…
It’s about 6:15 and I’m sitting on the couch with the laptop. Zoe is playing on the new Gamecube and Mira is watching, eating cookies. We had a busy day with lunch at Philipe’s downtown and the afternoon at the Natural History Museum. Mom, Dad, and Matt met us for lunch and were with us for the rest of the day. The girls have been here recently, but we saw a few new exhibits at the museum. There were special exhibits on Dogs and Baseball. We also checked out the regular animals and history of California halls.
The girls had a great time, but all the walking took it out of them and they both fell asleep in the car as I drove home.
I haven’t updated in a while. The party on Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Michele’s trip have made my free time a scarce thing. Michele went on a short trip to Cincinnati for her 20th high school reunion and she left on Dec. 26th at 6AM. I’ve been with the girls since.
I did get away for a bit while the girls were with my parents and Matt, Martin, and I went to go see LotR: The Two Towers at the Cineramadome. We even enjoyed Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles for dinner afterwards. I made my first visit to Amoeba Records. Pretty cool place. I picked up a Flaming Lips CD and a Fatboy Slim CD.
Gotta go, Zoe says it’s my turn on the Gamecube. More later.