Okay, so, it’s gotten to the point where I generally eschew mainstream media because, usually, if everybody else likes it, it’s probably crap. Take the television show “Friends” for example. Oh, I’m sorry, did you like it? You’re excused from reading my blog, because you like crap. Sorry.

No, I’m kidding, you can still read my blog, even if you like crap. We all have some things we’re embarrassed to admit that we like. I’m about to share some of mine. There are certain popular, mainstream artists that, despite my best efforts, I have to appreciate some of their work.
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I got nothin’. Seriously. Stop reading this, because it won’t edify you at all.

Not that anything here is going to edify you. So nevermind that.

How about some cool eye/ear candy? We all like that junk, right? You know you want some. C’mon kids…
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Dadgum, I haven’t posted in like, forever.

Seriously, I wonder if I can get back into the posting groove. Thing is, I don’t always have anything interesting to say, and when I do, it’s hard to like, put it into a form that makes sense to anybody other than myself. Does that make sense? (Hah)

But…life rolls on. 1.0 (Kat) is two, going on three. 2.0 (Matthew) is one, as of July. Both of them are growing up too fast. Kat is more and more articulate daily, and seems to commit an awful lot of brain space to learning song lyrics. Matthew is trying out a few more words (I think “kitty” is the latest), and walking confidently.

Amanda’s taking Aikido now. We explored that option to try to get her more dojo time, since the women’s Judo class at the gym went kaput. Turns out she likes Aikido even more than Judo, which is good, because it means we both get to go play more often. One a week Judo was making me an unhappy puppy.

Speaking of Judo, I finally got my silly green belt. Go me. Only took two years, heh. Partially because I’m just a fat, slow, klutz. Partially, I think, because it’s just easy to fall through the cracks out my gym, especially if you’re an adult student. Just comes with the territory of a non-profit community club, I suppose. No biggie, I just go there for the fun, not the belt.

Not so much else to speak of. Just wanted to break the silence (again), and maybe I’ll think of something else to say in the future. Thank goodness for RSS feeds, eh?

Til later.

Holy snap, I’m blogging. Did somebody die or something? Nah. I just wanna rant.

Yesterday we got an unprecedented three day weekend, thanks to the school deciding to give us MLK day off for some reason. That was cool. Unfortunately, an ice storm decided to blow in over the weekend, so we pretty much spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday holed up in the house. Yeah, that kinda sucked. The only foray I made was down to the gas station at the end of the road to get some bottled water, tissues (the kids are coming off of colds) and birthday candles.

Birthday candles?

Yes, Monday was Kat’s second birthday. I swear that it doesn’t feel like two years. She’s now officially two years old, which is a good thing, because she’s been acting like a two year old for the past four months or so now. (Her favorite phrase is “no, I don’t want _____ .”) We celebrated her birthday in the evening with cake and ice cream, which she flatly refused to partake of (the kid isn’t right). She also screamed when we turned the lights off to light the candles. Oi. We have a brand new Radio Flyer tricycle for her, but we decided to give it to her once the ice melts, so she can actually use it when we bring it out. (Momma does not want her riding around indoors).

So…this morning I finally was headed off to work. Slight problem though. The car’s side mirrors are coated in ice. And not a thin coat either. Thick enough that I couldn’t make any headway with the scraper for fear of damaging the mirror. My only recourse was to get the hair dryer and run it out to the car with an extension cord. Of course, for that I need an extension cord. I have two, actually. One’s in the trunk of our other car (which is currently sidelined — that’s another blog post), and the other resides in the shed. I went for the one in the car trunk first, thinking it’d be easier to get. Silly me. The trunk of the car was layered in ice, about 3/8ths of an inch thick, I reckon. There was no way I was getting to the lock before the thaw. That left the shed.

Unfortunately, the lock on the shed was also encased in ice. I was able to de-ice the keyhole with some WD-40 (God bless the inventor of that stuff), but the actual bars of the lock were encased in ice. So, back inside I went and put the kettle on the stove. Once I got it boiling, I took the kettle outside, poured it over the lock and then sprayed it down with WD-40. Took the kettle back inside and then tried to get the shed open. Well, the lock popped open easily enough, but the shed doors were still covered in ice and weren’t budging. I alternated between pulling, pushing, slamming my weight into the door and chipping at ice with a rock for about 5 minutes and eventually got the doors open. Fortunately, the extension cable was in there.

So I run the cable out from the house and to the car, and I get the hair dryer going and start thawing out the side mirrors, chipping with the ice scraper at the same time. Worked pretty well, though it took a little while to get the ice thin enough to where I could scrape it off. Did one mirror, then walked around to the other side and did the next. People with garages are blessed people indeed. Of course, I must admit that if I had a garage, I’d probably have it so full of junk that no cars would be able to fit inside.

So finally the mirrors are de-iced and I’m off. Roads are pretty good, actually. Even the bridges were free of ice, which was surely a blessing. Because I was cold and grumpy and hungry, I treated myself to a coffee and McGriddle from McD’s on the way into the school. I think McGriddles are a pretty shining example of God’s common grace upon a fallen world. Crazy delicious. Anyhow. Made it to work safely, though nearly an hour late.

I had to park in a different location, because all the close spots were taken (since I was running late). Inside the car, I had to fumble with my gloves and keys and stuff and all of the things that I had to take in. Finally I’ve got everything and I get out of the car, lock the locks, kick the door shut and realize that a familiar weight in my pocket is not there. I peer into the car and see my keys sitting happily on the passenger side seat. I must have forgotten to put them in my pocket while fumbling with my gloves and whatnot. Sonuva…

So…fun morning.

So…I’ve had laptop envy for a long time. Part of it stems from the fact that I like to “stay connected”, and feel somewhat out of sorts when I’m away from Internet access for a protracted period of time. I suppose you could call it something ugly like an addiction, but I rationalize that it’s just because I happen to have a lifestyle that is tightly coupled with technology. You wouldn’t want to go a long time without telephone access, right? I feel the same way about the Internet. No, I don’t expect you to buy that. I’m probably just addicted.

Anyhow, up ’til now I’ve just had to deal, because laptops is expensive, and the budget just didn’t have room for one. Nothing to be done for it, so I just tried to suck it up and keep my whining to a minimum. I guess I didn’t do so great a job.

So last week, Amanda surprised me with an early Christmas gift. She conspired with my parents and my aunt and they all went in on a shiny new Dell laptop. I must say that I was certainly not expecting it, but I’m very pleased to have it. They decided to give it to me early so I’d have time to set it up before Christmas. You see, we’ll be traveling to Georgia (again), and stranded without reliable Internet access (again). That is, we would be…until now.

It’s a nice little machine. AMD Turion processor. A gig of RAM (though the video card shares a bit of it). DVD-ROM/CD-R drive. Built in wifi. Pretty much everything I need.

Obviously the first step was to remove Windows XP, similar to how you have to remove the protective plastic film from a TV screen after you buy it or something. I was going to install Ubuntu Linux, but, unfortunately, the Ubuntu LiveCD couldn’t read the SATA drive in the laptop. Neither could the Gentoo LiveCD. The Gentoo “minimal” installer CD could read it, however. So Gentoo it was, even though I’d originally planned to go with Ubuntu. Turns out that the support for the particular SATA chipset was only in the very recent kernels.

So install had to be done the “manual” way (downloading tarballs/snapshots, mounting and formatting the disks, chrooting into the new install and finishing the setup that way), but it wasn’t too bad. The “native” wifi drivers for my card were a joke, but ndiswrapper worked like a charm. Seriously. Just a few configuration commands and it automagically did the rest.

I plan to do a write up of all of the stuff I learned during install, in case somebody else needs the help for installing Linux on this machine/chipset. I’ll do that, uh…later.

Anyhow, here’s a pic. Currently running Openbox and Perlpanel for the “desktop”, with Gkrellm in the corner, and that’s about it. I tend to lean minimalistic for GUIs, so I don’t know if I’m gonna fool with Gnome or KDE. We’ll see.

So, stay tuned for a more technical overview (if you’re interested), and here’s to hoping for some (ahem) open wifi routers in my listening range when we’re staying with Amanda’s mom in Georgia.