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.
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.
Today I went shopping with Ben after a late start. After Ben and I parted ways, I went a few places with Scott to get things for Ben. Got a few gifts, but there are still many to be gotten, and then wrapping. Its fun. After shopping, I came home and helped pull together dinner. Its the best dinner I’ve had in months, if not a year. The salmon, the salad (which I made), the rice, the shrimp (which I cooked), the blueberries (which I ate a lot of) – everything was excellent. It helped that I was hungry, but that really just left enough room for starberry ice cream (all natural and irresistable!). A fabulous day overall.
I also played a little bit of Counterstrike and made the Inernet connection in the laundry room more permanent. I have some screenshots of my CS ownage here!
Bringing along my Senao 200mW PCMCIA 802.11b Wireless LAN card paid off big time today – I fired it up today and quickly found an open access point with a broadband connection. New pictures are uploaded, Click Here to access them. They are sorted by the date on which they were shot and each photo has a name that describes, somewhat, what the photo is and where it was taken.
The neighbors seem to have changed their wiresless configuration somehow; the result is that I am stuck with dialup speeds at my place of residence until I move to the UW probally. Still, any sort of access is better than none at all, and I can always go the Creighton’s or Amy’s or the office when I need speed.
Today, I woke up, went to the school where I met Amy and we got materials for tomorrow’s power tools workshop, then we looked for the place that a friend of mine works for (unsuccessfully), then we went to her house and wrote grants, revamped the TRC forums, and a multitude of other things. We spent a total of 13 hours straight together. Craziness!
Had a good couple of chats with Kat at Tulane. She’s fun.
Woke up mid morning, had breakfast, went to office where I discovered I don’t know how to reset the counter on Xerox’s J7 cartridge. Its the current $400 question. Next, I ordered and picked up Domino’s Pizza, went to the school, met with Amy, Deborah Bach and a photographer (I don’t remember her name, I think it starts with a J though) from the PI. We talked, she interviewed for an hour and a half, many pictures were taken, and tomorrow we should see a good article about the TRC. After this, I got a case for my phone and a case for my camera, then went home, started dinner, chatted, ate dinner, and now I’m getting ready for sleep. Not too exciting, but I did get some useful things done.
WirelessSetup1
The binder supported by thread and duct tape with the 18 dB antenna pointed at my neighbor’s house. The WET-11 is in the corner, cover off and directly connected to the pigtail instead of having the RP-SMA go-between.
WirelessSetup2
The string supporting the binder is tied to a drawer in my Brother’s bedroom. Blackbrick, my old laptop (P90) is on the floor, as possible future WET-11 replacement. The borken RP-SMA pigtail is in the picture somewhere, as is my brother’s old LaCie external CD-RW drive.
