BeMused

For some reason, I can’t get anything below the “Asides” category (which I really need to rename) to show up in the sidebar. I’m not sure why the Categories, Archives, or various other stuff isn’t showing. I haven’t had time to really sit and suss out the problem yet, so it’s going to be rather blank over there for a bit.

Because of this, I thought I’d start filling in my Asides. It’s basically going to be like my Livejournal page was: Simply a place to post weird/funny/interesting tidbits I find around the web.

And if you have any ideas about the sidebar bit, I’d love to hear them.

This year was the first time in my 13 years of marriage (13 years as of the 27th!) that we didn’t spend Thanksgiving with either my family or the wife’s. It was just us and the kids for Thanksgiving this year. It was nice and quiet; we didn’t go out and get a huge turkey, just the breast of one. The normal casserole’s and side dishes, and of course, pumpkin pie for dessert.

I spent most of the weekend configuring and optimizing my wireless network. Having experienced the fact that not one but two of my neighbors have wide-open wireless networks, I wanted to lock it down as tight as possible. So now it’s WEP enabled, and requires a MAC address known to my router to get in. No pingbacks are allowed from outside the LAN either. Quite nice.

Aside from that (and eating leftovers), it was mostly sitting around enjoying the broadband, watching football, and not shopping. I don’t know what it’s like in other countries, but damn, the frenzy here on ‘Black Friday’ is just out of control. I prefer sitting home (or in the case of many people, sleeping in. We had a neighbor get up at 4am to be in line by 4:30…and that line stretched completely around the store!), and watching the news about the frenzy. Martin? What about your corner of the world? You guys get crazy there in Oslo? And how about you Sarah? Same sort of craziness?

Regardless, I hope that those of you that celebrated Thanksgiving had a nice and safe holiday.

About a year and a half ago, I discovered that I was able to get on my neighbor’s wireless network. Since then, I can’t bring myself to dial in anymore. Just way too slow, though the wife dials in all the time with her Windows laptop. Myself, if my PowerBook can’t get online through the wireless, I don’t get on.

Recently, I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about using the neighbor’s wireless. First I was just doing some news surfing and getting email and stuff. Recently, I was trying to work from home, and I had to move large Photoshop files back and forth, and I just know that was throttling his connection. So, I finally took the leap and signed up for broadband last night. Went to Best Buy, got a Linksys cable modem (plus an 80 dollar rebate for it), a D-Link Wireless router, as well as the broadband subscription.

I also plan on getting a VoIP service, and then dumping Verizon all together. I don’t think it’s right they can charge me for “services” such as touch-tone dialing and dial tone…

So, I’m finally entering the 21st Century! Only 5 years late…typical of me. I get that from my dad though. He bought an Apple IIe around when they first became available, something like 1983 or ‘84…and he held onto that same computer until around 1996! I think he’d have kept it even longer if his new secretary had been able to use it at all.

Still makes me laugh when he tries to use a mouse

Some time back (Sept. of ‘04 to be exact) I wrote how I was suffering from Gadget Lust. The top three gadgets I wanted were a Nikon D70, an iPod, and a Sony Clie. I got the D70 back in October of ‘o4, just one month after writing that entry. Well, now I can check the iPod off that list.

What makes this cool is I didn’t go out and buy it. It wasn’t a present, nor did I just “find” it. I actually won it! From work of all places. There was an executive from Harley-Davidson speaking on ethics, and I was interested in hearing him speak. Not necessarily about ethics, but just his experiences at Harley-Davidson. (everyone knows I love Harleys; one of these days, my other site will actually be complete!). At the end of the talk, they had a raffle, giving away an iPod. And my ticket was drawn!

w00t!

I’m starting to mess with Wordpress during the times at work when I’m waiting for various things to happen. So, naturally, you’ll see things looking a bit wonky around here. Step one is trying to get the Wordpress to Gallery plugin working, and we all know what wonderful luck I’ve had with that in the past.

I think computers just have it out for me.