Geek

I am sitting on the floor of the new music studio in the basement. I was told today by our contractor that all that’s left to do is install the doors on Monday and it’ll be all done. Earl and I are putting in the few ceiling tiles that haven’t been put in yet and laying down carpet. By the end of the weekend I will have moved most of my stuff in here.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been pulling wire through the walls over the past couple of weeks. I’m typing this blog entry on one of the new network connections. This is very exciting to a geek like me.

I can’t wait to play show and tell with pictures soon. 🙂

I’ve upgraded my blogging software. If something acts a little wonky, please drop me a line and let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.

This new version of MovableType should make the commenting process a little less painful for my gentle readers. If I don’t know who you are, I’ll have to approve you once or twice. Once I know who you are you’ll get through without my having to look down your shorts first. Unless you want me to.

Oh, I’ve also fixed my online status button for AOL/.Mac chatting. Just click that little button on the right side of the page for more information. If you want to say hello over IM, that’s the instant messenger I use the most. Yahoo! makes me nervous for some reason. If you’re using AOL, you can chat with any .Mac subscriber without jumping through hoops, you just need to put in the entire .Mac e-mail address for the AOL screen name. Technology is cool like that.

Gaming Sunday.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I originally had plans to go visit my sister and my dad and stepmother in Syracuse today. However, Mother Nature decided that we needed to have everything coated in ice and snow, so we thought it’d be best if we stayed at home and treat today as one of those winter-time January Sundays.

We’ve spent the entire day playing “Project Gotham Racing 3” on our Xbox360.

I’ve become quite good at not dropping f-bombs while racing the streets of New York in my Astin Martin or my Corvette. Earl, on the other hand, drops blue words like candy. Always the humorist, Tom puts his ears back when he hears the profanity. His latest exclaimation was “Where the fsck is the seat belt?”, referring to the fact that he had ripped the steering wheel controller right off the table it was clamped to and had tried to pound the pedal assembly through the floor.

I am very grateful that I decided to buy the Xbox360 instead of the new Wii for our household Christmas present this year, because I’m positive that a Wii controller would have sailed through one of the family room windows or the screen of the television within the first 48 hours of playing.

We’ve always been proud of the way we’ve decorated our house, including the family room. I can’t wait to see what the new gamer chairs we have our eyes on add to the ambience.

As I just crossed across the room to go to the restroom, Earl promptly barked out “Don’t cross in front of me! I’ll hit ya!” Now that’s the love I always talk about.

I was chatting with my sister and getting ready to do some web site work on my PowerBook when all of a sudden “it” happened. The fan in my PowerBook kicked on and started making a really funky noise.

It sounded crunchy.

Panicked, I abruptly ended the conversation with my sister and powered down the PowerBook, hoping it would stop making this awful noise I was hearing.

My heart sank.

I love my PowerBook. I have had many computers over the past 25 years and I have to say that my PowerBook G4 has been my favorite. I can’t imagine replacing it. I can’t imagine getting rid of it. I shall get it fixed, it shall be as new and we shall be as one once again.

I turned into a Mac fanboy a couple of years ago. Back when I was a system administrator I was all about Linux and FreeBSD. I tolerated Windows on the desktop. I couldn’t stand the Mac I had to support, as it was running something called System 7. Mac OS X turned my opinion of Apple around and I haven’t looked back.

I don’t think I could ever part with my PowerBook. Ever. It’s my little computer baby.

I’m backing up my files now, with a fan blowing on it to keep it cool, thus keeping the internal fan from kicking on, and then I’m going to shut it down and work on the studio Mac Mini until I can find a way to get it fixed. But in the end, I will not be without my PowerBook. Ever.

I guess I should be working when I’m at work, and I do manage to be productive, but today I’m guilty of a little bit of chatting while I should be working. I guess it’s harmless since it was very quiet at work today, but I could easily see me falling into the habit of chat, chat, chatting away over IM while I’m troubleshooting a customer’s internet issue at the same time.

I was also quite chatty at my appointment with the local community college today. I met with one of the representatives from the Office of Adult Student Services (or something close to that) in an effort to get everything in order so that I can return to college in January. The meeting went splendidly and I found myself to be quite talkative, especially when they were asking why I chose to be a Civil Engineer focusing on transportation. I used my standard, “I want to make traffic!” line before explaining what I felt I could contribute to the motoring public, besides my terrorizing cell phone using drivers and assorted hand gestures out the sunroof of my rice burner. I’ve been surprisingly motivated about my education decisions but today I really got excited about the whole propsect of getting my degree. It’s a matter of three words now: “I can’t wait!”.

Cue Nu Shooz.

The first thing I have to do is take a placement exam next Monday night so they can be assured that I can write and speak English goodly, in addition to subtracting addition while doing algebra on geometry. “A seamstress has four yards of fabric on bolt ‘a’, three yards of fabric on bolt ‘b’ and six yards of fabric on bolt ‘c’. How much material will be required to cover Debra Messing’s clavicle?” I say screw the dress and give the woman another donut.

I’m sure the experience will be loads of fun.

Desperation.

Originally uploaded by bluemarvel.

Earl is off testing his skill at poker tonight. Rick and Helen are safely back at home outside of Philadelphia. The wind is blowing and anything that was on our deck is now smashed and lying in the back lawn. The facial hair configuration has been finalized (Jimbo got it right, by the way). The dishwasher has been emptied, the laundry is ready to be folded. On-call is coming to an end in 10 hours and 41 minutes as of this exact moment that I’m typing, but who’s counting?

So what does one do after working hours and hours of overtime and watching lots of back-to-back episodes of “Bewitched” this evening?

Sing karaoke of course!

In this photo I am singing “Afternoon Delight” and trying not to sound like Will Farrell.

Always the inquisitive one, I decided to try out Microsoft Windows Live Writer to post a blog entry. Now I’m Mac fan at heart, but every once in a while I like to try some of the new stuff from Microsoft and see what it does. So here’s a blog entry using Microsoft Windows Live Writer.

I kind of wish my iLife would do the same in that it would allow me to interface with this blog that lives on jpnearl.com. Perhaps it would allow me to do that and I haven’t research it enough.  Hmmmm, the inquisitive geek kicks into curious mode.

I kind of pride myself on this one. I remember the W.T. Grants department store chain, more specifically, the one in Northern Lights Plaza north of Syracuse, N.Y. Grants went out of business in 1975 (when I was around seven years old), but I remember shopping there with my mom and my grandmother. I remember my mother playing her Christmas albums with the “Grants” logo on the label on the GE Wildcat record player that was able to hold up to six albums at once. The retail space gave way to several department stores afterwards, including Two Guys, Zayre and Ames. Today it’s a Staples.

Apparently the family that owns the Grants Vegetable Farm near Oneida Lake (and not too far from Northern Lights) was able to snag the old Grants department store sign for their barn. I’ve seen this sign up on the barn for years, today I finally snapped a picture of it.

What’s even a little scarier is that the founder of Grants, William Thomas Grant, was originally from the city of Bradford, Pa. I drove through Bradford, Pa. on my way home today, just so I could get some pictures of some old road signs. Perhaps I brought his ghost along for a ride.

Since I didn’t come home for lunch yesterday and because I had school last night, I am catching up on my daily blog reading this morning. It has been very interesting, and as usual, proves yet again that I am completely clueless about some things as I exist in my own little rosy world.

Apparently some bloggers are accused of plagarizing material from another blogger. They change the names, alter the location, and viola “the very same thing happened to them!”. Word for word! To me that’s just wrong. Now I will admit that I have found other blog entries quite inspiring over the years, inspiring enough for me to write a similar story of something equally as interesting/humorous/etc that happened to me. But the thought of lifting material from another blog without giving the original poster their props has never crossed my mind. I’ve borrowed pictures, I’ve lifted quotes once or twice, but I’ve always directed my gentle reader to whereever I lifted the stuff from.

I guess I’ve never thought of blogging as a competition. But then again, I’ve always lived in my own little existence.

I think I’m going to go ballistic about spam. Lately I’ve been getting several hundred e-mails a day offering me all sorts of pills, potions and other mists and assorted self improvement items. Then we have the wainkers telling me my Key Bank ATM card expired. Of course it did, I closed the account in 1988 when I moved to Massachusetts. It’s funny how these things catch up to you.

I’m thinking of relying solely on the .Mac e-mail account and getting rid of my jpnearl.com e-mail account for a month or two so that I can tell the spam to basically shove off. But then I feel like the spammers have actually won.

Do people really believe these spam messages or are they just out there now to annoy people? I can’t imagine anyone really believing that they can forward an e-mail and get paid by Microsoft for doing it. Hello? Where did Microsoft get your mailing address to send the check? Please people, think before you click. I blame AOL. They’re the ones that brought the internet to the masses with their caps lock nimrods and ridiculous abbreviations. Personally, I don’t believe a single person that says LOL to something I type. I find it hard to believe that they actually laughed out loud. They might have smiled, perhaps giggled, but if I was “LOL” funny I’d be doing stand-up as the warm up act for Rosie O’Donnell or something, not sitting here venting in a blog that probably no one reads.

Spam? Feed it to me, don’t send it to me.