Checksum Arcanius

“Who can rock a rhyme like this? Bring it to you every time like this? Who can rock a rhyme like this? Step, Step Up. Step, Step Up, Step Up.” –Linkin Park, Hyrbrid Theory EP, “Step Up”

Linkin Park continues to amaze me with their abilities to draw me into their music. Every album I hear grows on me until it is an obsession, and I still enjoy the material I’ve heard for over a year. I do hope they remix Meteora, although I don’t know how they could make most of the songs any better. Nevertheless, I have faith: Reanimation did amazing things to the best songs on Hybrid Theory and incredible things to the rest.

I got some more photos up, but I have discovered that I am some combination of:
1) too lazy to add captions to all of them and integrate them into popup windows,
2) too interested in finding a better way to put up a large number of photos with captions and automagical resizing, and
3) too corrupted by the way I put up photos during the road trip.
So I simply stuffed all the new photos into This Directory…

Right now I’m evaluating phpWebSite, maintained by Appalachian State University for a more robost and full-featured replacement for greymatter, due in part to reason #2 above.

Nothing like a little bit of physical activity to lift the spirits. The family snowshoeing trip was much fun. I have some pictures that I am working on now, they should be up later today.

I recently downloaded Mozilla Firebird 0.7 – it is an excellent web browser, and I am weighing it against IE as a replacement. It is nice to once again have a viable alternative to the MS domination.

Last night, I didn’t go to sleep until after 5:00 am. I woke up today at 2:00 pm. Most fo the day’s light is already gone, and I still haven’t done anything. Clearly this is not ideal. I propose a plan of action to ameliorate the situation, which involves a ban on my laptop while I am not seated at a table or desk (ie, not in the bed with me, although I have pretty much mastered using my pillows to prop me up on my right side just I can type and read the screen). This way, bed is actaully a place to sleep, not a place to play another hour of Counterstrike or another hour of chat or anything else.

I feel like listening to surround sound music, watching football, eating a nice breakfast, and generally doing something with what little of the day I have left. We may be going snowshoeing soon, that should be a good change of pace, but it is awful late int eh day to be starting something outside.

Today, I slept in late, then didn’t do much until evening, when I got surround sound set up in the living room by connecting the dvd player to the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum in my desktop (“oasis”) with an optical audio cable, and by bringing down my 4.1 speakers and setting them up around the room. After some tweaking, the Audigy started decoding the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and output it to the speakers. There was a small, but noticeable delay in the sound – something which I think would be fixed if we were to use the dvd player on the computer. That remains to be seen. We watched the original Italian Job, a not-very-good movie.

Had a big dinner party today, with Scott, Maneesh & Parents, Joel & Family, Amy & Parents, and some ppl from church. Food was good, company was great, had a great time.

Had a great Christmas. Hung with the family the entire day, opened the socks first, as we do, then to the presents. I got, among other things, a big book on FreeBSD, a Best of REM CD, and some very nice clothes from my mom. Played some CS, went on a walk, ate some good food, had a lot of candy, watched Winged Migration (my gift to my Dad) and generally had a great time.

Yesterday, I finished the bulk of my shopping. Now all that is left is misundry items for non-family members, and of course, wrapping. On the way back from Seattle, I stopped by the church where a live nativity was being held. It was interesting… mostly because there was one movement invovled in the entire program, so I’m not sure why it was live. But then a hand bell choir performed, some very good songs including Carol Of The Bells and George Winston’s Joy. I then left to go to Jeana’s party, where a teacher from long ago, Sarah, was. We talked cordially despite my breakdowns and mistreatments of her during my junior year :-/. There were also lts of other people there that I hadn’t seen in a long time. We all reconnected, and some of us stayed at Jeana’s until 1:00. I picked up the album I am now listening too, and decided that One Step Closer wasn’t the right song to start with – its very screechy, but the rest are enjoyable after you get into the paradigm of the string quartet tribute.