 |
|
|
Today was my 34th birthday. It was uneventful and lovely. My sisters and my nephew came over last nite. We went out for dinner and played cards late into the night. This morning my sweetie made breakfast, sausage and potato fritatta and a lovely french toast casserole. After lunch my one sister left and the other sister and I took my nephew to the pool at our development. Dinner was one of my favorite dishes Shawn makes, chicken enchiladas. As always there were some lovely gifts from my sweetie, a new Blue Snowball Microphone and two more Stitch pieces for my collection. He really does spoil me.  
[2 Comments]
This is the mantra I repeated to myself over and over for the past week in respect my weekend project, and to be honest it was true… Today, I tackled the task of building my own PC for the first time. I know it’s lame that a person who professes to be as big a geek as I do has never built a PC, but I switched to Macs right about the time that PC building became popular. I have of course upgraded plenty of PCs in my life (I was a PC technician for quite some time) and figured that doing a complete build could not be that much harder, and I have to say that was a good assumption. But why would I want to build a PC? Especially since I’m such a Mac boy? About a month or so ago, I was beyond fed up with my networking issues [Why Me, Straightened Out?], a few frustrated calls to Pinoyboy, and he suggested that I take more control over my network and install an IPCop box. IPCop is a Linux Install that provides a Firewall, DNS Services, DHCP Server etc. It replaces all the functions of my Linksys router. The install was super easy and thanks to Pinoyboy’s help, I even got some Firewall rules written. The nicest part of the IPCop install is that since it’s a very specialized Linux OS, the system requirements are very modest. I pulled out my now 7 year old Gateway out of the closet and used it to install the OS and it ran without issue. The only problem? The Gateway PC is a full-sized tower and it was LOUD, very loud, so I decided that I wanted a new, very small system. I figured that since the system requirements for IPCop were modest, I could do this on the cheap and I decided to build a Bare-Bones system myself. After many hours of discussion with Pinoyboy, he helped me sort thru all the stuff I don’t know about PCs anymore, such as what processors go with what motherboards, what chips were good value and what I truly needed for this machine. I decided on a case that was about the size of two reams of paper, all black with a hidden floppy and DVD drive. This was important to me because I wanted to harvest what I could from the Gateway. Here’s the case I selected… The total cost of the box was 202 dollars before shipping. I went with an AMD Sempron 64 2600+ Palermo 1.6GHz for the processor, 512 MB of Corsair memory. I harvested the 10GB HD, CD burner, Floppy and NIC from the Gateway. The build went well, the only issues I had were that I’d never applied thermal paste before and the cabling for the HD was so tight that I bent a pin on the hard disk. After that was sorted I spent about a total of an hour putting the machine together. The IPCop setup was a bit more time, as I did a back up and a restore and it was fine except the one NIC had changed. Once I had that sorted, everything was fine. The unit is super quiet and boots so fast. Another nice bonus is that it fits on TOP of the Mac Pro! I saw this while out with my sister. She was trying on bathing suits “Hygienic Liner for Fitting Purposes” Another reason I’m glad I’m male.
It turned out to be a fantastic weekend, Friday we spent the day with John and his boyfriend who both got iPhones on Friday while we were there. His boyfriend was a WONDERFUL tour guide and I had Mongolian BBQ for the first time. Dinner was at Gates BBQ and we stuffed ourselves with a Meat Plate! Saturday I went to dim sum for the first time. It was interesting and although I enjoyed watching everyone eat, there was not much I could eat (damn mushroom allergy), but I did enjoy the Pineapple Buns. OOOOMI! We were joined by John’s friend Maiko, who is so much fun to be around! We spent the rest of the day hanging out at Panera and John’s place. We eventually headed to the Nelson-Atkins Museum and eventually dinner at a lovely Mexican place. Sunday was to be our last day and it was a day of mixed emotions. We decided to do Lidia’s Kansas City for brunch and had not only a great meal but a fantastic time together. We all ate and laughed and even podcasted a little. Saying good bye to John and Maiko was hard, but nothing compared to saying goodbye to Pinoyboy. It’s so hard to have such a good friend who lives so far away :(. I want to thank him and everyone else for such a wonderful weekend, that was not nearly long enough.  Our last day in P-Town was a perfect vacation day I spent some time helping my friend Mike with his MacBook and Shawn and I had a lovely dinner at a place called Level for our last meal in P-town. I had too many martinis which tickled Shawn to death as I was very giddy and silly after the 3rd one. We went and had a last ice cream cone and headed back to the room to pack and sleep. Monday, we made excellent time back from the Cape and were back home by 8 pm. All in all a nice vacation but now back to the grind (’til Thursday that is!). Short and simple… It was fun, but I’m ready to head home. One more day to go. I am looking forward to Kansas City and seeing Pinoyboy and John and Brad, but I’m ready to sleep in my own bed for a few nites. Yesterday, was quite possibly the best day of the vacation so far. It was what Shawn dubbed “Petey Day”. Basically, I got to choose where we went and what we did and he would just go along with it. It worked out really well. I had only one goal for the day, to buy these shoes:  We got up and had breakfast and then spent the remainder of the morning sitting in the garden at our B&B. We just had a great time laying back and chatting (and I did some blogging :)). We headed out for lunch and to find the shoes. We ate at a nice place called the Mayflower and found my shoes at a place up the street. They are sooo comfy. We also stopped off to pick up tickets to a show at the Art House. Once our tickets were purchased, we headed off to the “Tea” dance. I did not know what to expect but it turned out to be a big party on the deck at one of the hotels. We headed there to meet up with Evilbuddha and his friends as we were invited back to their place for a BBQ after the tea dance. The BBQ was fantastic. All of Evilbuddha’s friends made us feel so welcome and treated us not at all like outsiders but like people they had always known. They were so nice and so fantastic to be around. I was really very very sad that we had to leave to go to the show. Thank you guys so much! After we left Evilbuddha’s soiree we headed to see Miss Richfield 1981 in Fall On Your Knees. The show was hilarious. Miss Richfield 1981 is a drag queen from Richfield, MN. She pulled people out of the audience and ripped them apart in two very funny very witty skits. Another nice leisurely walk back to the room and another nice day of vacation came to an end. Day One of my vacation to P-town was uneventful but lovely. The 8 hour drive took 10 hours, but the ride wasn’t too bad, especially since I got to chat with Pinoyboy via BeeJive on the iPhone. We got here about 5pm, checked into our Bed and Breakfast, which is really nice an comfortable, complete with live in doggie, Colby, who of course loves my hubby. Once checked in we headed to Commercial Street and checked out the sites. We had dinner at a place called the Way Downtown. I had a yummy Lemon Chicken with Artichokes and Rice. After dinner, we strolled back to our hotel to freshen up and while our friends headed to the local leather bar, we decided to just stroll the street, holding hands and popping in and out of the local shops (which are open til 11p). We even got ice cream. It was lovely. Thursday morning, we got up and headed to the pool at the Boatslip. I had a good chuckle because out of the four of us, I was the only one trying NOT to get any color. I don’t tan. I burn. I go from whiter than white to red, painful red and right back to white again. My skin never stops at golden or tan, it’s just not worth it. So I was the ONLY person at the pool in a tee-shirt, but I was NOT the only person there playing with my Nintendo DS. Also the iPhone served well as a great iPod I never had to take out of my pocket thanks to the pinch-to-pause/fast forward button on the headphones. After a few hours of sun, we were exhausted and headed back to the room to get showered and changed. Poor Shawn got sooo much color on his head and face and decided he needed a cap, so we were off up and down the main drag in search for a hat, which he finally found. We stopped off for a snack at the Post Office CafĂ© and were lucky enough to meet up with Evilbuddha who just happened to be up here with his friends as well. Later in the evening, we headed out for dinner this time at the Lobster Pot, where I had some amazing scallops for dinner. We met up with our friends at a place called the Macho Bar where while we were packed in like sardines, they had a “biggest bulge” contest. Everyone but me seemed to be having a great time, I swear sometimes I think there is something wrong with me. I just don’t feel like I fit in, but then again when do I ever? After that bar, we headed to another bar, and after my third beer, I was so sleepy that I just conked out the minute I hit the bed :). Okay, I know that I said I didn’t want one, but after I touched it, I changed my mind. I know this review is long overdue but I did get my iPhone and I have to say… I love it. It’s simply amazing. I got it last Friday afternoon on our way to my parents house. Activation was very simple and luckily for me it did not take much time at all, although it did take a bit of time for the number to full port, which thanks to Pinoyboy’s explanation I did not have to fret over that aspect. The phone is just crazy fun to use. Everything works as I expected (good and bad). What I love most about the interface however are the little things. There are so many little animations and such that just simply don’t need to be there, but are. For example, the trash icon that appears in several different apps, click on it and a dialog box pops up and asks Delete Photo or Cancel, click Delete Photo and the trash can lid opens, sucks the screen into the trash can and then the lid closes. It’s fantastic. The phone part of the iPhone is great. I find it to be loud and clear and easy to place calls, sometimes tho, too easy. Once you use it for a few days you get used to touching the RIGHT hand side of the contact not the left and that cuts down on misdials. Safari also is amazing. I don’t find EDGE to be all that slow (especially since I’ve used my Sidekick for the past year and it is EDGE). I do love the fact that it fully renders the page. The zooming in and out is nice and simple and very user friendly, I find myself using the browser even more than I did on my Sidekick and that’s saying something. The iPod functions do indeed make this the best iPod ever. I love CoverFlow and the screen art when you play is just amazing. What I like most about the iPod functions are the way the new headphones interact with the iPhone. There is a small rectangle on the right ear bud wire that has a microphone for when you use the headphones to talk on the phone, but it can also be “pinched”. The pinch answers or hangs up the phone in phone mode but in iPod mode, a single pinch pauses the iPod and a quick double pinch fast fowards a song. The pinch to pause comes in really handy at work. The things that I don’t care for are short and are more a list of things I either miss from my Sidekick or that Apple just needs to add to the interface. One huge thing I miss from my Sidekick is the fact that the track ball glows when you have a message. This was great as I often don’t hear my phone ring with a text message or email notification but a quick glance across the room showed me that there was something waiting. I’d love a small little spot to the right of the ear slot that glowed when I got a message. As far as the interface goes, my wishes are pretty much in line with the rest of the blogosphere. I would like to be able to blind copy someone in an email, a cut, copy, paste function would be a great addition to the interface as well. My typing is getting better, but Apple’s not joking when they say to trust the auto correction. It works well, even tho as an anal retentive control freak… trusting the phone is not easy To sum up a crazy long post that I know at least one of my favorite people in the world will deem TLDR, I have ZERO regrets getting the phone and I’m sure it will give me plenty of joy, until the next big thing comes out |
|
We did… NOTHING. Well almost nothing. We got up and had breakfast and then went back to bed. I got caught up on all my online stuff that I needed to get done, I even worked on the photo section a bit. Mid afternoon we headed out to have some lunch do some shopping. We went to a jewelry/watch store and I picked out a bracelet that Shawn bought me. I’m not usually a bracelet person but I like this one a lot.