In other news:

Work starts back up soon, one meeting next week and then officially back to a regular schedule the following week. I think we have Fridays off this season.

Got the annoying clicking noise the rear wheel(s) of my car were making fixed… it took three tries, but we got it done. Now I hear every click and creak the car makes when I hit bumps and stuff… still need to do whatever needs to be done about the little ding in the windshield.

And we’ve been using our game consoles a lot over the break… picked up the X-Men Origins: Wolverine for xBox 360 and Fat Princess for PS3 … and I might dig into our most recent purchase, Mini Ninjas during this last week off. Fall TV season be damned, we’re playing our video games!

Right now, sitting at the desk at the Y, all I can really think about is seeing Star Trek. I’ve heard so many good things about it… sure, some classic trek fans have their issues, but it’s trying to reboot the Star Trek world, not continue it. With a bunch of the Fringe team behind the writing and production, it has to be good.
update: Star Trek didn’t happen tonight, but we did a lot of research into how to set up a clothesline for Patti for Mother’s Day. Hopefully we’ll fit Star Trek in, tomorrow.

Good things coming up: more days off, mini-vacations, new Fable II downloadable content, macbook

In the bummer zone: Garmin announced more delays for the Nuvifone. The android phones are looking more and more attractive, even though they don’t have turn-by-turn directions, yet. Unfortunately, the only android phone even rumored for Verizon has a crappy-looking keyboard. If I didn’t think I’d miss the real keyboard, I’d already have broken down and gone with the iPhone. In the meantime, my phone is surviving… only shutting itself off once or twice a day.

Sometime in late September, Sarah and I took a trip up to Wisconsin to see a play at an outdoor theater. We booked a hotel stay with the tickets and then planned a couple little adventures around the show. We saw [most of] the Mount Horeb trolls and had a wonderful dinner there. We visited the House on the Rock and took two of the three tours. I really got a kick out of the 60s/70s vibe to all the rugs and appliances and the various collections were really awesome… There was also a life-size whale & giant squid battle that reminded me of Childhood’s End [and the They Might Be Giants Apollo 18 album cover], but the little plaque said nothing of taking its influence from the book. We saw the show at the outdoor theater… in the rain. It was very wet, but the show was funny. There were some near-spills due to wet stage and a complete false start, due to a downpour about a minute into the first scene. We also picked up some meat on a detour on the way home from a favorite butcher of the family. It was a mini-vacation, it was a lot fun and I still don’t know how I failed to mention it here at all.

I went through the pictures last night and picked out some decent ones and added them to my flickr. As I logged in to flickr, I shuddered at the thought of it becoming a Microsoft-owned and controlled site. The Microhoo merger seems like an all around bad idea to me. Maybe I’m still upset about Microsoft taking over HoTMaiL. I certainly stopped using it for anything but junk after that and it’s pretty close to unusable, now, with all the crazy Windows Live crap they turned it into. Yahoo didn’t ruin flickr. Hopefully, if that merger happens, Microsoft won’t either… but their online track record is pretty bad.

Before going through the pictures, though, I watched the game. I formally apologize to all of my friends back east who care about sports and to the Patriots for watching the game. I was completely aware that every Patriots game I watch turns into a loss for them, but I really wanted to see if there were any really funny commercials. In my defense, they were still in the lead when I paused it for dinner. So they may have lost while I was eating and not while I was actually watching… but I did return to the TV and watch the rest of the game. So it’s most likely my fault. Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your perfect season.

Thankfully this happened early Saturday morning, so I was completely distracted by the fact that I was going to see They Might Be Giants. It was a great show and brought back a lot of memories of some good times. Unfortunately, driving to a show in Chicago is worse than driving to a show in Boston. We learned our lesson though (took an hour to find parking). Next time, we’ll take the train in from O’Hare or go out early and make a day-long event out of it. They almost wouldn’t let Sarah in because she had her Diana camera with her. But she convinced them that it wasn’t going to take any high quality videos of the band, that it was basically a toy, and they let her in. The venue was cool, nice balcony seats and a few benches throughout the floor area. We were there a little too late to snag a seat for ourselves… again, lesson learned. It was a real treat to see them with the horn section. I do kinda miss the Eric and Graham/Hal days, but the Dans are good, there’s no denying it. The banter was as witty as ever.

Enjoying my day off, so far. The tentative plan was to catch up on all the TV shows we’re behind on. We’ll see what really happens once Sarah gets up and we get motivated (or don’t ). Got another Adventure Ed overnight this week (and next week). There’s pictures from last week’s trip on the gallery (mostly taken by the kids). There’s more staff lined up for this week, so I should be able to take more myself.

There was also a threat of canceling the Adventure Ed overnight for one of the schools because of some new electronic filing system that all trips have to go through and some CPS paperwork and legal department bull… but I guess they finally worked it all out today. We got the go ahead this afternoon. We were on the verge of coming up with some sort of concelation day for all the kids who had signed up. They were still signed out of their classes and stuff, so they were technically ours for the day, but we probably would’ve been restricted to school property. I’m glad that didn’t end up happening. The high ropes experience is really a key element in my mind.

Psyched that I got the mophoblogging going again. I was doing that stuff back in early 2005 (via Livejournal). I’m pretty sure moblogs and that term existed then, but I wonder if I could’ve coined mophoblogging, or snagged a related domain name or something.

Feeling a little hungry, I think… waiting for Sarah to come home. Maybe I’ll watch TV.

Tuesday evening, I met up with Erika and Shane. We took a little shopping trip to pick up a remote controlled dragonfly (like this one). Then we headed back to Webster and went to Friendly’s for some dinner and ice cream. I love their peanut butter sauce. I had kinda forgotten how much.

Wednesday morning, I headed out to the Mazda dealership, where we bought the car, for an oil change and tire rotation. I had Kristin with me and we took a walk to Honey Dew Donuts while we were waiting for the work to be done. Honey Dew is the same as I remember it… good competition for Dunkin’, even if it is just in a small regional market. Kristin and I also visited Steve at Toad Hall, and I got my dose of Wormtown music and gossip and such. We also swung through Woonsocket, while we were killing time and I went to Hava Java, where they still remembered my order (six months later). I took a few pictures of a local landmark while we were in the area. That evening, we swung out to the Hockomock Teen Center and saw all the kids who weren’t there on my last visit.

I had no specific plans for Thursday morning until Erika called and asked for a ride to Worcester. She needed a CAT scan because she had sneezed and then gotten a sudden headache and problems with vision and tracking with her left eye. I left her at the huge new “Medical City” in the early afternoon. She was there until 7PM, and they sent her home, but another killer sneeze has made all the pain come back since then. I dunno what her plan is, the big shiny hospital seems useless, from my point of view. On my way out of Worcester, I stopped by a new shiny diner, fairly close to where I used to live. It had a 50s theme and was fairly good.

Name Me?

I ended the night with the only official plans I had for the day – a visit to Sara, my old roommate, and Tyler, the cat. Tyler was as cute sexy as ever and there’s a new kitten, who is being called bit until he gets a permanent name. We watched some awesome TV and had some awesome sandwiches and were entertained by the cats.

This morning, I grabbed a coffee with Mark at Victoria Station in Putnam and then tooled around Webster, chatting with some other local artists and talking about upcoming Webster-Dudley events. Now, I’m trying to decide what to do until I pick up Sarah at 11PM in Providence tonight. I’ve got plenty of options, but no idea which one makes the most sense.

Fish tank computer is going slowly. Booting off an external drive is proving more difficult than it seemed. It wouldn’t be an issue, except that I’m trying to preserve the Windows XP OS from the Gateway. I believe Linux would happily boot off a USB drive. I don’t think the machine is quite powerful enough to attempt OS X x86. I attempted a few portable XP installations, with no luck, and I think I’m going to give in and go eSATA instead. Otherwise, it’s in good shape. It runs, and the tray fits into the frame and acrylic piece that I cut to shape (which snapped into two pieces, but we’ll solve that with the silicone sealant). We decided that a blue light was necessary, so I picked one up, and then found that there are blue lights in one of the fans and the power button and the external hard drive enclosure. The machine might need a blue-themed name, when it gets finished.

The Serenity screening was very fun, it was definitely a different experience on a big screen. I knew the fan base was extreme and had obviously accomplished some great things, but the Done the Impossible documentary was pretty informative and really pointed out just how special they all are. We got a couple of Sarah’s friends hooked on the show and have been watching Firefly from the beginning with them.

Phase One of this week’s computer upgrade project is complete. I gutted the old Gateway that Frank, Sarah’s little brother, had been using and put in a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and hard drive. It took a little more work than I expected, due to the fact that gateway’s choice of case didn’t have all the right holes on the back for the motherboard ports… so some creative sawing was necessary. All that’s really left to do on that machine is add some front audio ports so frank can plug in his headset for his games.

Phase Two involves all the hardware we pulled out of the Gateway and a fish tank full of mineral oil. I’m following the specs detailed by Puget Custom Computers on this page. Fish tank and oil and random parts are all ordered and on their way. I’ll have to go to Home Depot to get the sheet of acrylic and all the necessary sealant. Wish me luck!

Sarah’s family took me to Medieval times for my birthday. I had never been before, but I had gone to Medieval Manor quite a few times when I was younger. I couldn’t help but compare them, especially since wenches (and man-wenches) served food to you without silverware and there was the castle themed waiting area. Obviously, though, Medieval Times is family oriented and more of a big-production kind of show, while Medieval Manor was comedy, adult-oriented and in a small, more initimate setting. It was definitely fun, though, and not a bad meal, either. We had a good time laughing at our knight, who was having a sorta bad day. The jousting and swordplay was all pretty cool, but from certain angles, it was painfully obvious how fake the hits were… occasionally, someone actually got a hit in, or some sand in the eyes. We also felt some pity for the guy who carried a pot and a pitchfork around and picked up the horse poo during the show. We figured he must be the new guy.

The Dell is still working great. I experimented a little, trying to get OS X to run on it, on a spare hard drive I have, and had some mild success. The hard part is proper drivers for all the network, sound, video and such. I was pretty close on all of those things, but then had a bunch of random application crashes… so I put the whole thing on hold for now, until I find the right info from the various forums. The native resolution makes everything even smaller and harder to read than it is in Windows, but it was still fun to see this thing boot up the Mac OS. If I could get it working well, I’d probably use it quite a bit. If only Paint Shop Pro had a mac version…

And now I’m enjoying my long weekend (except for front desk work tomorrow night at the Y)… there’s some local school holiday on Monday and we don’t do groups on Fridays, so it’s like a mini-vacation. I can catch up on my TV and maybe read some of the class material or whatever, I really appreciate weekends again.

If I ever get the service, I’m sure I’ll be pleased with it, it seems like there are more HD channels than I had on cable, especially considering the local channels, but I can’t believe how much hassle and extra money this has taken, compared to one phone call and a minute or two wait time for the cable box to reset and Zero extra cash for installation or service.

I’m just ranting. Everything else is going really well. Work’s just starting to get rolling. I got some of those replacement parts for the Dell, but not enough to get started on it without giving up the use of the laptop until the rest come. We may be getting lots of snow dumped on us, but at least I’m inside for now… maybe some shoveling later… but, I’m and dry and comfortable and I think I’ll go eat a bagel and relax.

Wednesday, the HD DVR gets installed downstairs. That one day of HD service in Woonsocket was really good. It left an impression on me and now I really want to see a nice HD signal on that super TV again. I’ll have to get into the listings and see if any of my favorite shows are on in HD. I seem to remember Universal HD having some Sci-Fi program, like Battlestar Galactica, in HD, or something. And I know I found plenty to keep me interested on my one day with it.

The wii continues to be fun. There is that trap that comes with all video game consoles, of course… that you need to buy or rent new games to renew your interest and get your money’s worth. The new game this week has been Elebits. I was skeptical, at first, since it looked far too cute to be fun, but it turns out to be one of the greatest new games that I’ve played on the wii. It really makes good use of the Wii-mote and doesn’t ramp up and get to difficult for at least 6 or 7 levels, depending on how awake I am. I even re-played a bunch of levels on the second Wii, downstairs, and it was still fun… so good re-play value.

The webserver got a processor upgrade. I noticed that this site and Wormtown.org were moving a little faster (most noticable on Wormtown.org), so I asked. I figured since that would make backups and such a little faster, I’d upgrade the code for the site. It was a little tedious, but it wasn’t terrible. More new features and code tweaks than I expected between versions 2.0.3 and 2.1, but no really big complaints.

February is upon us; I dunno what I want for my birthday. The Dell laptop is getting less and less reliable/usable, and I think I’d like to replace it in the Spring with a MacBook Pro (when OS X 10.5 comes out)… so, Apple Gift Cards would be more than welcome, and there’s always the old Amazon wish lists (books, DVDs and games & tech/toys/expensive stuff). I’ve also been thinking about getting a real razor, but I’m sort of afraid of using a real blade and have no experience with anything beyond beard and mustache trimmers (Remington MB-300 Precision Titanium Mustache & Beard Trimmer). I like the idea of the self-cleaning ones, I guess. Anyway, that’s just sort of an afterthought, the apple gift cards and wish lists are always safe bets. If I think of anything else, I’ll try to add it to the Amazon list(s).

Speaking of Amazon, and Buy.com and Google… you may have noticed (unless you have Adblock, which you should) that there are some ads over in the sidebar [of the pages that have one]. While I do have a job, now, there’s no income yet; officially start work in a couple weeks. So, this is my silly attempt to make some money back from all the various webhosting costs over the years. Most of them are referral based, so if you’d like to help a friend out and you’re going to make a purchase through Amazon or Buy.com, anyway, I’d love it if you used my links to get to the site. The google links are pay-per-click, but I’m not allowed to ask people to click them… so, uhh, pretend I didn’t say anything about them.

I’m also officially a bum, and so is Sarah. So we get to spend oodles and oodles of time around each other, which is fun. Threadless laid her off… right after the sale ended, though they kept her through the holiday party and such, so we got a bunch of cool free shwag and a good time out of them before she left. We haven’t figured out their reasoning, they said she did nothing wrong, but they still had the temps on for a couple weeks after she left. My best theory is that it has something to do with their new VC partners, but we haven’t heard about any other lay-offs of part-time people, so there’s no real answer.

Anyway, that leaves us both as jobless bums. Sarah’s knitting a lot, though mostly gifts at this point, but there’s still some interest in trying to make a living out of it… we have to find some sort of small project that’s the cash cow to support the big projects, though. perhaps some other simple craft.

Meanwhile, I need to start getting in touch with all those prospects I made initial contact with around Thanksgiving, to see what the actual job possibilities are. Most of them had the same message back in November: call us next year. Well, it’s next year… so I gotta start getting on that. Otherwise, I’ll have to take some weird job in retail or something.

Speaking of retail, there’s a buttload of it out here. I don’t understand it. The population density is about the same out here as it was in New England, but there’s retail as far as the eye can see here… and it seems like retail struggled to stay open back east. I haven’t seen an empty abandoned strip mall, yet. I do have a new favorite store, Meijer. It’s like Wal-Mart or a Target… of the super variety (full grocery and department store)… but it seems somehow less evil. And they carry Apple Soda and Matt’s Real Cookies, my favorites. And they’re right down the street; everything is right down the street. Driving ten miles to a store is a foreign concept to Sarah’s family. The only things within ten miles of my place in Woonsocket, was the Bargain Outlet, Box Seats, a White Hen, Ye Olde Fish & Chips and a few Dunkin Donuts (which are seriously lacking, or perhaps in a more reasonable abundance, out here) … and about 10,000 triple decker apartment buildings full of people who don’t shop retail as much as people in the midwest do, apparently. I guess the East Coast megalopolis is just spread a little too thin or something.

I miss the east coast a bit, obviously I miss Mom and some other people, but life out here is good. I’m getting used to the differences in the landscape and the commerce and such. It doesn’t seem like anything here is any worse than out there, just different. I guess I missed out on a lot of goodbyes during the weekend that Sarah was out visiting. I spent some time in Dudley and made a final daytrip to NYC, which was a lot of fun, but sort preempted any trips to Worcester or Amherst or Northampton. Now that I’m here, it doesn’t seem like much of a loss, though.

So, what do you think? Got any employment opportunities I should check out, or know of some hidden talent I have that I could live on like Odd Todd? Lemme know how you all are, too.

Today, I listened to two old albums in a very different way. A few years ago, a bunch of us tried to get the necessary CD players and coordination to play the Flaming Lips four disc album the way it was meant to be played… but it proved a bit too difficult to really experience it as intended. So I was thrilled to find out that it wasn’t just a fluke or a phase for them, and that they’ve re-released a couple albums in 5.1 surround sound. Not only that, but the liner notes include these big long explanations of the entire concept and the mindset and the steps that led to this style of recording. They also included maps explaining what kind of stuff got mixed where and a little bit of why and how. It’s a lot of fun, and it makes me want to tweak my speaker set-up so that it’s just right.

So, does anyone want to come over and listen to this stuff? It’ll motivate me to clean and pack faster if I know company is coming, I think. It’ll be a listening party… I’m not sure when I might have time, but lemme know if you’re interested.

I’ve been fairly upbeat and happy lately, mostly due to the prospects of seeing Sarah very soon, scouting jobs out there and moving there… only a few things of have brought my mood down: Wendy’s getting my order wrong; Why even offer a vanilla frosty, if you’re gonna give me the chocolate every time? TV show season finales being all cliffhanger and no resolution; I understand wanting to hook us in for another season, but really, they’re sacrificing content just to set up the anticipation. And no one wanting to sublet my apartment… I really don’t want to move this furniture.

Threadless printed a Bananaphone design. As if that wasn’t enough reason to go buy from them… it’s inspired by They Might Be Giants. It’s mostly from Particle Man, with a small reference to Why Does the Sun Shine? It may have other references in it, too, I haven’t analyzed every little detail. I can’t wait to get it. I also just found out that this Bananaphone gem is being printed and released, soon.

I also seem to have gotten roped into quite a few TV shows, this fall. Some, I’ve been following for years, but there are a couple new ones, as well. I seem to have something to watch every night… sometimes a couple things. Glad I have the DVR.

I should be sleeping, I just wanted to update the site now that it works, again.

The last one simply proved that I watch too much sci-fi; Something about sneaking onto the an alien planet on the back of one of their ships. I remember that when I was on the back bumper, or whatever, of the ship, I was talking to someone, and looking at some sort of computer monitor mounted back there. Then I saw some little compartments and asked whoever I was talking to if the driver might see some kind of “Trunk Ajar” warning. I opened one of the little ones, and it was pressurized, and then the computer monitor went out. We flew into a hangar with a giant pool of water instead of a floor and I jumped off the ship into the water. I guess I managed to hide down there and avoid a couple close calls. I don’t remember how, but I got out and into the main building. There were aliens and humans there, but the humans seemed to be slaves or pets or something. The aliens did almost everything by telepathy or telekinesis, but it wasn’t a special skill of theirs because I immediately started developing telepathic abilities as soon as I started talking with people. I also used these new and developing abilities to learn the language on their computer consoles. Then came the funny part. I was reading about the schematics for the planned Alien version of the iPod. The main changes were the user interface being changed from the click wheel thing to some sort of telekinetic thing. I think I was either planning on using the iPod to somehow destroy them or somehow use the information about the conversion process from click-wheel to telepathic interface. I dunno, ’cause i woke up.

Before that one, I had a sorta funny one about death, or some sort of Beetlejuice-like waiting room… except cleaner and sort of like a bank. We were under the impression that getting out the door would mean that we were alive again… and there was some hints about getting out of the waiting room during some past encounter. This time around, we apparently hadn’t really died anyway. We had just gone there to try and convince someone to let our superhero friend come back to life. Our idea was that since he had died in costume, we could just leave the costume and the superhero dead and let the secret identity live. I dunno how that one that one ended either.

The first time I woke up, I remembered a dream unlike any I’ve had lately. It was a very strange dream that I don’t remember much from, but the two or three pieces of information I retained were weird. The first is that my Dad was dead. My dad’s been alive in a lot of my dreams, lately. Usually having something to do with cars. But this time it was him dead, or dying, and it had something to do with a car accident (which is probably how we all expected him to die someday). The only other thing I remember is some other woman being very angry that we occupied a surgeon for him when whoever she was there for needed one.

Waking up three times during the morning and remembering dreams probably isn’t the sign of the best sleep cycle ever. I didn’t happen to check the clock after any of them.

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New season starts in April. I can’t wait.