August. Already. Awesome. Anyway. Headed out to Tracy's last night, stayed in to stay cool, ventured out to pick up some Popeye's for dinner while watching Hell's Kitchen. I'll admit it, I'm sucked in. I want to know what happens now, who makes it, who gets kicked off next week. Does this mean I'll ever go to whoever gets to run the restaurant in Las Vegas? No, probably not, especially since Red Rock is off strip. I wonder what the market is for raw footage from the show? Would anyone want to buy the uncensored versions of reality shows? The version without the dramafying editing techniques, whole stories, and complete pictures? Anyway, I'll be tuning in next week as well. Puck is up around 99,924 miles, and I hope to get a picture when it break 100k, which is pretty exciting for me anyway. Finally got around to upgrading the MacBook as well last night, so dealing with system restores, software updates, and setup. Still have to get it to make a portable home directory and get fink on it. Staying in again tonight, making some Lemon Chicken, watching Flightplan.

As planned, watched Flightplan and made Lemon Chicken for dinner. DVR is having some issues recording, although, I'm not sure if it's issues with the feed or not, just some occasional breakup. Not good. Very annoying. At least it was on Starz-HD. Hopefully this won't happen when the building switches cable providers. I'm so looking forward to that. October just seems so far away. The MacBook is currently, or at least now should be finished creating a portable home directory, which means my new machine should be good to go. Just need to install Parallels Desktop and Windows XP on it, bring it in to work to get Outlook sync'ed up, and I can actually do more work at home. Hmmm, guess I shouldn't be that excited about it. Will be nice when the weather finally breaks tonight, and I'm guessing it's gonna make for some spectacular storms. I've read some good things about Real World:Irving Park, so I'm looking forward to seeing that place at some point in the near future. And, I'm hoping to see the ladies of casual ultimate at some point as well, as I have a surprise for them. Which I might spoil if I ever get the photo posting from the cell phone working again. Or I just upload them to the gallery from an actual computer. One or the other.

Another relatively quiet night, back out at Tracy's. Her mom made corned beef & cabbage. Good stuff. Finally figured out what the problem was with tMac, not a good power strip. When plugged directly into the wall socket, it slept and woke just fine. So, I'll be bringing one of mine over tonight. Trish and Kevin, her friends from St. Louis are coming up for a quick trip, would you believe IKEA's closet store to them is in Bolingbrook? So we're having dinner with them. Also bringing over an additional keyboard, since the one I gave to Tracy kind of sticks along the left side, like the Tab key. Driving home last night was awesome. The roughly 45 minute drive home had continuous flashes of lightning. Very impressive. Never really got bad directly around me, but always seemed to be close. Very very cool. Wish I could have stopped, taken photos, and just watched. It was awesome. Also thankful for the storm because it's much more pleasant to be outside. Oh, and congrats to Puck, who's sitting at 100,001 miles. First time for me. Only took 10 years, pretty much all of the time spent in a city taking public transportation. Those miles are just going home or ultimate related. That's pretty much it, with additional mileage because of girls. Very satisfying. Getting closer to getting the MacBook setup, which I'm now calling Carbon. Portable Home Directories work a whole lot better over 100 BASE-T Ethernet than 802.11b/g. A whole lot better.

Headed out to the Russells for the weekend, dogsitting Marla. Should be fun. Haven't dogsat for a while. Bringing carbon along to work with. Had some issues downloading, had to throw out some old preferences (saving files to the Comic Life resources folder? odd). Also noticed I've driven to work 4 out of 5 days this week. That's a lot, especially for me. Also figured out that 100,000 miles/10 years for Puck is actually pretty low. Makes sense though since I've been a city dweller for the past 11 years or so (counting life at Northwestern) and often prefer taking public transportation than anything else. Not sure what Tracy and I might do this weekend, might be some farmer's market action if we can find some, could be some dim sum on Sunday, might see some tall ships too. But I think I'll want to stay away from downtown due to Lolla going on this weekend. Lots of people down there. Lots of hip people.

Dogsitting Marla this weekend was great. She never woke us up in the morning, which was awesome. And makes me much more likely to do it again. She didn't yak, or have any problems whatsoever. Great dog. Managed to get Windows XP installed via Parallels Desktop on Carbon. All set up. It's awesome. Seems faster than my work computer. So these means I'll have work email available all the time I'm on my laptop. All the time. With no speed issues or anything. It's awesome. I am however having issues install iWork '06, not sure why. Not that worried about it since I hardly use it. Still, the MacBook is an absolute joy, it positively screams, and it gets nice and toasty. Tracy and I wandered around a bit, checking in on some shops, having lunch at Silver Cloud, going into the too trendy Akira Chicago, getting some sweet things at Sweet Thang. We ended up grilling some pork chops for dinner. Friday night I got some Pizza Hut delivered, because I can't get it at my place because the store that used to deliver shut down, and I had a craving. Sunday we went down to Chinatown for dim sum at Phoenix with her family and her sister-in-law's parents. We checked out some other stores, and I picked up some sake related things, a couple wooden drink boxes and one of those fancy bottles with a spot for ice to keep it cold. More couch time before heading back to my place before heading out to Sai Cafe for dinner. Good to see Bryan, his brother David and friend, Akira, Joe and Kevin. Good fish, as usual. Tracy and I passed on Ricky Bobby because they were headed to the late show and I wanted to get to sleep. We watched a couple episodes of Entourage before knocking off. Full weekend.

Not too much going on. Got some Mexican food and watched Hell's Kitchen last night with Tracy. Oh, I guess I could comment on WWDC 2006. Nothing too surprising. Good to see the Intel transition's complete. Leopard, at least what they've shown, doesn't look that shockingly good. The only thing I might be excited for is the Mail.app stuff. And I still haven't really started using it yet. Everything else I saw was eh. Time Machine looks interesting, and I'm curious what they'll be using on the back end, but there's no sense of diffs, which I'd like. I'm definitely a little wary that Steve Jobs didn't give the whole keynote, and did it team style There's been questions on some forums about his health, that that's not a good thing for Apple. Of course, I'm starting to think that Mac OS X is in a pretty good place, at least for me. Doesn't seem like I'm missing anything right now. So yeah, that's that. Tonight headed out to Grant Park for Chicago Outdoor Film Festival, watching American Graffiti.

Last night was pretty awesome. Great weather, got decent seats, a nice bottle of wine, some cheese, sandwiches from Jimmy John's, and a great movie. All in all pretty much perfect. Maybe just need a better blanket/cushion for the hard ground, but otherwise, just great. The wine sticks worked beautifully with the stainless steel goblets. Surprised they went into the ground as easily as they did. Even got a couple comments on them. Surprised more people didn't have them. Then again, it ain't Ravinia. Splurged and cabbed it home after the movie last night. Oh, and the movie, it was really good. I kept expecting some slow spots, or too much character development, but that's just about the perfect drive-in, movie in the park, movie. Just really good. Tonight put together a file cabinet/ottoman and set up my labeler, and jump started the GTD process. Relatively random thought, but if art imitates life, who was the inspiration for the recent events on Entourage? Which actor got dumped from a big budget franchise because of the star's image problems due to involvement with unbecoming projects? Anyway, food for thought. Definitely need to pick up some laundry detergent, self explanatory. Had Roll Bounce on in the background, as well as a couple episodes of Windfall. Oh, and Megamillions is up to $23 Million on Friday.

Boy, when you wait until the last possible moment to do an dose, there aint' much to write about the next day. Got the newest version of XCode installed. Should probably do something with that. I should also probably leave iChat running the background, since Carbon's got a built in iSight. Had an issue with my ankle a couple days back, bugging me big time, like something was out of place. Tried the whole moving it around, hoping that whatever was out of place would snap back into place, cause that's worked for me before. But after a good night's rest, it was fine. Go figure. Only got a couple more episodes of Las Vegas to watch on the PSP before I move on to something else, either Firefly or maybe the 2nd season of Veronica Mars which comes out on DVD next Tuesday. Then we'll also see how fast Carbon is at transcoding video.

Week's done. Finally. Really. Don't know why this one seemed to drag on for a bit. But it did. And I'm glad it's over. Except I'm on call this weekend. Got some things done last night while calibrating the battery on Carbon. It lasted a good 3.5 hours before dying. I haven't had a laptop, err, portable computer, that could last that long in a good while. Nice to have. It does disappoint me that updated MacBooks could be out as early as September, but that was just too far away from Bryan's now invalid discount. Been trying to get email2gallery working again, but failing. Issues with Procmail on Mac OS X Server. Or more specifically, it's issues with procmail and cyrus that's causing the problems. I think I just need to figure out which user to run procmail under. Gonna try and do a Chicago Architectural Boat Tour tomorrow with Tracy and the parents, some dinner too. Not sure what to do on Sunday though. Supposedly something with her brother who's returning to North Carolina. Me, I'm just hoping to catch up on sleep this weekend. Could use it, as always.

So the whole email2gallery thing has proven to be too much of a hassle for me to figure out, since I worked on it last Thursday and Friday to no avail. My guess is that because I'm using fetchmail for a couple different accounts, cyrus/bin/deliver was failing for some reason, couldn't find account information. Maybe I'll take another look at it someday, but for now, I need to figure out a different way to get photos emailed from my phone onto my website. Friday night wanted to do some laundry, but didn't. Made beef stew instead. Opened my windows as well, but had to open all of them in order to get a breeze. There's a definite wind pattern to the interior of my place, straight in from the east and out the windows in the bedrooms. Not necessarily ideal, but it works. Ended up doing laundry Saturday morning instead, and spent the day with Tracy and my parents. Should have gotten tickets for the Architecture Tour well in advance, since there weren't any available day of when we went. Instead, we saw Little Miss Sunshine before mass at Holy Name Cathedral and dinner at Lawry's The Prime Rib. Sunday Tracy and I headed out to her house before heading back in with her family to have dinner at Woo Chon. Good, as usual, but a little difference. Only got to cook the Galbi, not the Bulgogi, and the Bibimbap was not all that warm. The Japchae was good as usual. I did get to order for the table though. That was interesting. Service was a little slow, but they were swamped, and we managed to get a free beer and an additional pancake (which I forget what that is called).

Pretty much sat on the couch, played with Carbon, and watched The Final Option last night. Another average night on the couch when Tracy's working. I did finally uploaded photos from my cell phone to the computer, iSynced it all up, got some more music from the iTunes Music Store (Dashboard Confessional, Jack Johnson's Curious George soundtrack, Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado). Also found the episode of Kitchen Confidential (tv show) that I was missing on bittorrent. Finished up Las Vegas (tv show) Season 2 on the bus, played some more Tekken: Dark Resurrection on the PSP, I can play Tekken for ages. Did some transcoding this morning after the torrent completed, and wow, seriously, the MacBook is fast. Really fast. Awesome. Also realized that I should add a mobile Gallery remote client to my list of projects, cause that'd be easier than trying to figure out how to get email2gallery working for me. Well, probably not, but more interesting. Planning on a furniture move around, probably this weekend, maybe sooner.

Using Instant Handbrake to convert DVDs for use on the PSP is so easy. And so fast. It's awesome. And with the newest firmware (2.80) on the PSP, I don't have to do any weird naming stuff, or have to use ffmpegx to name the files so I know what to watch on the PSP. Conversion is about real time, and then just have to drop in the Video folder on the memory stick for the PSP. Awesome. Seriously. Awesome. I've currently got Kitchen Confidential (tv show) on there now, but I'm not sure if I want to be the guy on the bus who's laughing out loud watching something in his lap. Probably not the best idea in the world. But after Kitchen, I'll move on to Firefly. And then who knows what, because it's so easy. As I was figuring that out, I watched Red Eye, which was entertaining and short, and then I went for a run. Yes. Off the couch, outside. But technology was present, as I used my Nike+iPod to track myself. And whoops, all my runs before? Not nearly the 3 miles I hoped I was doing. That was rough. But at least I started. Again. I do need to pick up new running headphones. Used to have a good cheap set for running, but managed to give those away. After getting Arby's for lunch, decided to eat a little healthier for dinner with a salad and grilled chicken. Another one of those precooked prepackaged meals, ready to eat. Watched a bit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, put scheduled Broken Flowers on the DVR. Not a bad night.

Picked up a bunch of manilla folders and hanging file folders. That's right, I'm continuing on the GTD path, slowly but surely. Finally implemented a tickler file, which I'll try and keep up with. Also finally created a reference archive box. Definitely loving my labeler, coming in handy. Did some of that while watching Owning Mahowny. Kitchen Confidential (tv show) is so much better when you watch it in order. Oh, and mark the calendars, as May 12, 2007 is the day Tracy and I will be getting married. Got the church and the reception booked. Officially. So that's good. Still need to take a look at the florist and find a DJ. So, expect a countdown timer or something on the site as well. We're headed to Jazzin' at the Shedd tonight, which is hopefully different than First Fridays at the MCA. But we'll see. Air & Water show this weekend, which will be fun just for the sound of jets flying around the city.

Jazzin' at the Shedd was fun. The aquarium is more fun with a drink in hand. Oh, and scratch 7 & 7's from my list of drinks to drink, and just stick to Gin and Tonics. I'm guessing you need to get there pretty early to get a primo outdoor seat. Or stay late to get a spot on the rail. Not as pretentious as First Fridays. But again, seeing all those fish made me crave sushi, so we hopped in a cab over to Sai for dinner. That was good. Also, their green tea creme brulee is great, almost as good as the ice cream, but not quite. Anyway, Tracy's making dinner tonight, finally watching the season finale of Hell's Kitchen. Cleaning, maybe some redecorating, over the weekend. Forgot to mention I got a haircut yesterday. My usual stylist, Dee, left Salonique, so I ended up going to Mabel. Just as good. Oh, and I also managed to hit my head on the corner of the monitor. Hard enough that I was actually bleeding. I thought it was gonna just bleed and bleed, but it wasn't too bad.

Fairly subdued Friday night, just hanging out, Tracy did some grocery shopping and came back with great flowers that were really cheap, some pork chops that we did a mustard cumin rub with, and artichokes that she made with peas as well as some sauteed mushrooms. We ate while watching the season finale of Hell's Kitchen. Finished up with an episode of Entourage before turning in, since she had to work the weekend. Saturday, my parents came into town, we did some cleaning before heading to church and dinner at Pizza D.O.C.. And wow, that place is awesome. While my parents didn't care that much for the authentic northern Italian style pizza, they loved the salad and appetizers. And authentic is the right word for it. I actually want to complete my learning Italian tapes and go back, since our waitress was the same nationality of the restaurant. Awesome. Anyway, finally got around to watching Two for the Money, which wasn't nearly as bad as Russell made it out to be, and yes, the end of his football career is sickening. Also worked on my first ever AppleScript, Mark all as read (recursive), as I imported old email into Mail.app. Sunday, just couch time, watching Zathura, The Aristocrats, A Night at the Roxbury, and Supercross.

Ha, funny how that's so close to Monday. Anyway, went running last night. At the gym, since I still haven't gotten my headphones yet. But figured out that I need to calibrate my Nike+iPod, I think I'll trust the treadmill, but maybe not. I went farther according to the doohickey, and I feel like trusting the watchamacallit. Got a gyro for dinner, because of those pictures I found on the internet, about greasy food in Chicago. Did some more email importing, only got a a couple years left. That's about it. Oh, I screwed up transcoding episode 11 of Kitchen Confidential, so I'm trying to redownload the torrent, cause I threw away the one I previously downoaded. Annoying. Times like this I wish I had Time Machine. Made some calls, checking out a photographer on Saturday. Should probably make some more calls and see if we can crash some weddings this weekend to check out DJs or something. Headed out to RWIP for dinner with Russell and Bryan. Headed out tommorrow to see Tracy.

RWIP really is all that. I mean, wow. I don't think pictures do it justice. Granted, 5 guys living together, just moved in, it's not party ready, but hopefully it will be, cause that place is begging for one. It's a place that needs webcams, and payment. There is a nice spot under the stairs for a confessional. Seriously. That place rocks. And who knew there's nice, open, neighborhoods in the city? With big houses and wide streets with plenty of parking close to public transportation? Just more wow. I'm in love with the place. Anyway, dinner at McNamara's around the corner from there. Pretty good Irish pub type. Decent fish and chips. Then watched people play Guitar Hero. I can see how it's a great party game. Then caught the Irving Park bus home. That was fun. Some guy decided to take a Jewel-Osco shopping cart home with him. And there was the end of the Cubs night game, so it took a wee bit longer that it could have. But overall, RWIP is super easy to get to and from, with no problems. Awesome, awesome house.

And it suddenly appears, like it never wasn't there. Anyway, last night and tonight went to Tracy's. Last night had longanisa, a filipino sweet pork sausage, and then got some Cold Stone. I've moved away from Cake Batter and onto something lighter, like Sweet Cream. It's good with Twix. Tonight we tried to hit some golf balls, but the mosquitos were killer. I did manage to finish the bucket though. And I really need to take lessons. All I want is a nice consistent swing, but then I'm guessing that's what we all want. Dinner was at Palermo's, not a bad Italian joint, but coming off Pizza D.O.C., well, it was lacking.

Yeah, I know. I thought about predating it to Friday, but what's the point. We stayed in Friday, well, I stayed in Friday, Tracy went out with friends late that night. Saturday morning we went out early to check out A Picture Perfect as a possible wedding photographer. We had breakfast at Colonial Cafe before heading down to Orland Park since she had an appointment at David's Bridal. I tooled around Orland Park until she was finished. Then, dinner at Joe's Crab Shack before dropping by Bolingbrook Country Club to check it out during an actual reception. Not bad. Sunday was breakfast at home, since Tracy wanted a good griddle, and then did some walking around, went to FlavorFest, walked down Licoln to Halsted to Armitage. Got dinner at Homemade Pizza Co. Yeah, I know. But honestly, it was pretty good. Then we watched the Emmy Awards and Entourage.

The weather that is. Rained all day yesterday, looks like it could continue to rain today. Not sure if Tracy and I will end up at Grant Park for Ferris Beuller's Day Off tonight. Yes, I'd be seeing it in a park for the second time this summer. But it's good enough, and Tracy didn't get to go to the last one. Made longanisa again last night. So good. Had it for lunch today. Even more leftovers left over as well. So good. I wondered what it would be like if you used chicken or beef instead of pork. Something to try. Watched Harley Davidson and the Malboro Man last night, which was a favorite of Booter's back in the day. I think that might be the first time I've ever seen the whole thing. I tried watching Rent, but that deserves my full attention, instead of just having it on in the background. I was supposed to head out to Tracy's last night, but she had to work late. I forgot to mention that on Sunday, we stopped off at Escape, the high end consumer electronics store on Halsted. I got to see an OQO, which is absolutely tiny, along with some other subnotes, and some digital cameras, like the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T30 which I thought about getting, but actually seeing one it's a little too thick for my tastes. Also got to check out the Sony Ericsson P910i and Sony Ericsson M600i, both felt way to plasticky for my taste. Anyway, fun to actually see lots of gadgets and find out that I don't want any of them.
Update:No movie in the park, instead, movie in my living room.

Got some laundry done last night. Good to sneak that in this week. Did that while Tracy was making dinner (picnic sandwiches like turkey and asparagus and cheese warmed in the oven). Watched some No Reservations while finishing up dinner and laundry. Pretty uneventful and domesticated night. Finally got around to calling about my new cable setup from INNCOM. Still have to show up when they're onsite for the cable tv stuff, maybe tomorrow leave early from work, and I've got to get the MAC address for my cable modem to get the internet set up. I'm definitely curious to find out what service is going to be like. Should be interesting. Oh, went running this morning. That wasn't very exciting. Headed out to Tracy's tonight, might do some shopping.

September tomorrow. That's crazy. Hard to believe today's only Thursday, definitely feels like a Friday. Missed out on Bryan's birthday gathering at Piece last night. Probably could have made it with more prior notice though. Next time hopefully. But Tracy and I went shopping at Orland Square, got dinner at Harrison's, where I satisfied my craving of a BBQ Swiss grilled onion bacon burger. So good. Finally got some Windex wipes to clean the inside of Puck's windows, so I can see now. Definitely some nasty stuff that ends up on the inside of my windows. Strange. Might try and play some tennis tonight. Got to also take care of some new cable stuff at the condo. Would be nice if I could do it over the phone, but apparently I need to do it on-site. Kind of annoying.