journaling: enabled

Yesterday it took about 3-4 moves forward and back to get situated to get out of my parking spot at the end of the work day. This irritated me for two reasons… 1) people shouldn’t park so close to you that you have that problem and 2) the person behind me had their @$$ end in a no parking zone. I had an ounce of sympathy yesterday. Today my patience evaporated. The dipsh*t who parked behind me had fully half of their car in the no parking zone … *plus* … they were only 3 inches behind me, leaving *no* room to maneuver out. So, I stopped in to visit Public Safety to find out who tickets for that no parking zone. They say RFPD … they were nice enough to give them a call. RFPD came out and ticketed the person behind me. They were lucky they didn’t get towed … Liz happened to have parked in front of me so I was able to move her car and get me space to get out. So, I moved Liz’s car and the person behind me got a ticket.

w00t! I got a PVR-150 for Christmas from the in-laws! I installed it on Monday night after we got back home. Unfortunately it didn’t work quite as smoothly as “drop it in and it will just work”. It was recognized but there were some issues with drivers and whatnot, which required upgrading to the latest and greatest ivtv (version 0.4.1), which re-worked where the card firmwares are kept, so I had to update those as well. Even after that there was some funkiness which required clearing out all the card settings and re-creating them (in mythtvsetup). Thankfully that worked! Yay. I now have a MythTV box with two tuners and therefore can record two shows at once!
In other news, we needed a trailer this past weekend to bring back a mattress set from DeForest (not to be confused with DeWoods or DeBushes). This required making a pit stop up at a neighbor of my parents on Friday. Unfortunately it was icy on Friday. My truck decided it wanted to play in the snow, but it neglected to consult me on the matter before taking advantage of a nice ditch full just south of Wheeler. Thank goodness for 4WD … put it in 4-low and backed our butts out of there… no problem.

Well this was a pretty good weekend. I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have liked, but I had fun. Saturday we hung out with my old roomie and his wife down in Mt. Horeb. We got to see where he works. He decided to show us a since demo that he uses in his class… a vacuum bazooka. Very cool. Not exactly lethal to us with the ammunition we were using (ping-pong balls), but it was quite lethal to the (Ken-type) doll he was shooting at (blew off the head and a leg).
Today was pretty uneventful. We took delivery of my in-laws’ new mattress; they got a Tempurpedic set like ours and hung around until they got back and the Packers game was done. Drive home was uneventful … stopped at Happy Wok in Eau Claire for yummy cashew chicken. Got home and shoveled the driveway. Watched MythBusters with Liz and learned that diving into water is actually a rather effective way to avoid getting killed by bullets. Now it’s time fore bed, so ttfn!

Well that was great fun! Liz and I went out with her brother and her brother’s significant other last night. We went here. We got Liz quite drunk (I was DD … no drinking) on a pair of midori sours and a chocolate martini. I’d like to give a special thanks to Sonja for her special attention.

Yes … it’s not your imagination. It’s another LJ post within a week of the previous one from yours truly! I’m glad this week is a short one at work, but at the same time it’s kinda depressing how much there is to do. The break between semesters is approaching, which means a lot of things will need to get done in the near future.
Tonight I moved the MythTV box back downstairs. Amazingly enough, the only glitch in starting it back up was that the cable for the IR sensor for the tuner card didn’t get plugged in tightly enough. I’d like to see about getting an extension for it since that’s the limiting factor in where I can locate the computer relative to the TV.
I also installed daapd on trinity (my primary server). My hope was to somehow integrate it into MythTV somehow. My problem is that MythMusic pretty much sucks. Yes, it plays music. Yes, with enough effort, I can find the music I want to play. However, I don’t have a keyboard hooked up to my box, which means that I can’t create playlists. What would be *really* nice is if someone wrote a module for creating playlists via the web. I might try to hack one together, but it won’t be nicely integrated with MythWeb since I don’t have experience with object-oriented PHP programming. If someone knows of an existing project that does this or something similar, it would be greatly appreciated if you let me know.
I’m debating whether to take my truck in for service soon. I had it serviced in June and among other things they replaced the pitman arm and front tie-rods. Since then, the steering has been a little odd (loose). I took it to a local mechanic a few months ago and he determined that the pitman arm isn’t fitting well with the shaft. This probably means that the shaft needs replacing, which probably isn’t cheap (hence, why I’ve held off). However, predictable steering would be really nice to have on crappy roads (which we’ve had a taste of recently).
Have you ever looked forward to getting a bill? Oddly enough, I’m looking forward to getting our next heating bill. I want to know if the work we put in installing insulation and windows has actually started paying off. Additionally, we’ve been tending to keep the thermostat set lower as well by about 5 degrees. This means more wearing of sweatshirts, but that’s cheaper than paying for gas.
Well, I think I’m going to hit the hay now… it’s been a challenge to get enough sleep lately. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up some this weekend.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. This has been a busy weekend. As liz4jc4ever indicated, we painted the living room. Three coats of primer. Oofdah.
Today we pretty much completed our Christmas shopping. All I have left is to get Liz’s stuff.
BTW, does anybody know if there’s a way to get an RSS feed of one’s LJ or at least programatically figure out when there’s been an update? I’d like to program a note on my website that would indicate when I’ve updated my LJ.

Sometimes I feel like I haven’t done something right but I don’t know what it is. Liz was grumpy tonight and it was very frustrating for me. Tonight I decided to do the video portfolio for one of the former Dance Theatre members. She’s applying to grad school at UW-Milwaukee and wanted a portfolio DVD. So that’s finally done. I think it turned out excellent all things considered. The video quality isn’t the greatest, but this is basically 2nd generation video. I didn’t import the stuff off the DV tape and re-do the audio again … I just ripped it off the DVD I made of the concert, so it had already been compressed once.

I made Mac & Cheese for dinner tonight since we apparently are out of chicken nuggets. Liz was making up some lasagna for Friday night so the kitchen was pretty busy … meaning easy = good. Unfortunately I think I put too much cheese in (yes, there is such a thing). I felt like I didn’t help enough with the lasagna making, but I was also doing dishes at the time … something hampered by a minor injury from last night (in the future, I’ll be a little more careful where the end of my fingers are when peeling potatoes).

Work was uneventful today. I’m not sure I got a lot accomplished, but I definitely got a few items off my to-do list. I’ll get to deal with some more tomorrow since I’m stuck in the office being “on-call”. I’m going to try and finish what needs to be done on my end for converting our inventory database. Hopefully I’ll also get to spend some time on porting our internal documentation to Twiki. Also on the to-do list is to write a little app for “resetting” the local iMovie storage on computer lab workstations.

Friday should be interesting. I’m off from work, but I certainly won’t be “sitting on my butt”. We’re doing our first major home-improvement project. We’re replacing 3 windows and adding insulation to the attic. Hopefully the expense is at least somewhat worthwhile. Given projected heating cost increases, it shouldn’t be difficult to recoup some of the cost. Also, as Liz mentioned in a post a little while back, the current plan is to sell and buy a new home this spring. Some “requirements” off the top of the head…

Well, this has a been a busy weekend. Saturday I went into work for a while then headed to Woodbury to get speakers, an amp and an iPod interface installed in the truck. It took the installer about 6-1/2 hrs to do it. Ugh. I was expecting 3 or maybe 4. It’s all installed now, but doesn’t sound quite as nice as I had hoped. I’m thinking some subs will be needed but that will have to wait until I can afford them. I also discovered it’s rather difficult to kill that many hours in Tamarack Village without a set of wheels. I went into Circuit City and didn’t see anything interesting, though I deliberately avoided looking at DVDs/CDs. I went into CompUSA and the only things that interested me were some nice UPSes (I could use one for the MythTV box) and some gigabit ethernet switches (which at the moment would be pointless since I only have 1 computer with a gigabit NIC). Oh yeah … also some nice LCD displays (drool). Spent an hour or two at Borders looking at books and music. Decided that it might be good to get “The Book of Postfix” and “The CSS Cookbook” … perhaps Christmas ideas, but the cookbook I’d like sooner ‘cuz it has some neat CSS recipes. I spent the remainder of the time at Ultimate Electronics (where the truck was) … got to watch Star Wars Episode 4 on a $24,000 entertainment system. It sounded rather nice.
Sunday was spent at work. Upgraded some more technology-enhanced classroom Macs to MacOS X with Nicky’s assistance. Oh yeah… had to deal with SSL certificate crisis. Apparently MacOS X 10.2 doesn’t trust Starfield Technologies as a SSL certificate issuer. I had to remedy that in short order so incoming freshmen could use the Mac labs to activate their login accounts. Managed to get it working with about 10 minutes left before they started showing up. I hate it when things get down to the wire like that. Since we took my truck into work, I managed to figure out how to play the music I want on the iPod through the stereo. The stereo can control the iPod, but it can’t show the menus so it’s difficult to figure out what’s going on. I finally discovered that it will continue wherever the iPod left off when it was playing standalone. So, I can bring up a playlist and start it playing and plug it in to listen. I was worried for a bit that I had wasted $100, but now I’m happy.
Today was also spent at work. I started out the day tired, and ended up exhausted. Replaced computers in some TECs … again with Nicky’s assistance. Did a bunch of other things that I can’t remember … long day.
Tomorrow I get to man the helpdesk from 8-10am. That should be interesting given all that it’s the last day before classes start. I’m looking forward to Thursday … I have the day off from work to take care of Liz since she’s having some dental-type surgery done. Thankfully no plans for this weekend, so more relaxation then hopefully. Ni-ni.

I am planning on upgrading the sound in my truck. The stereo is fine. Just need to add a bit of oomph…
plan:
one 4-channel amp
one pair of 4″ speakers (2-way?) – for front under dash
one pair of 6″x9″ speakers (3-way? 2-way?) – for rear, in speaker boxes

Debating whether I’m further ahead to figure out what I want and order it online, then have someone install it (who? I’d like a pro who isn’t going to f*ck up the electrical system) or get the whole shebang from Best Buy/Circuit City/Ultimate Electronics and have them install it. Stopped at the new Best Buy in Oakdale … nice place, but the sales people are still the same old Best Buy peeps that you have to drag over to the display and ask questions of. Their display was tuned such that they assumed you would get a subwoofer for your setup, so I don’t know how good the base was in the setup I pick’d (Pioneer 4″ [TS-G1040R], Sony 6×9 [XS-V6941H I think], Alpine Amp? [MRP-F240 I think]). I think I will pay a visit to Circuit City, since they’ve always worked well with me in the past.
Oh … vehicle is a 1994 Toyota 4Runner.

I wonder how long this will stay up or whether it will sell.