It's getting cold out these days. I think I fried a hard drive after applying too many amps to an external HD case, but we'll see. Made some sesame chicken last night, watched Lost (it's tempting to wait for the eventual DVD Season 1 Boxed Set because of all the commercials), and started Return of the Jedi. I also sold an extra Powermate to Tony. Replacing the DC board on the other iBook should be pretty easy because of pbfixit. Just gotta find the time. Gonna watch the presidential debate tonight. I also found out I live in Congressional District 9. That whole voting thing's coming up soon, and now I'm leaning Independent.

Leah's Birthday dinner by Christie and Judy was fabulous; Lamb and a great mixed green salad with baby bellos and other good things with Hello Dolly's for dessert. Very good. I did miss Veronica Mars, which is on UPN at 8pm, but dinner conversation was good. Their laptop is now back up to speed, and all that's left is the music transfer, again, but this should be easier with the USB 2.0/FireWire 2.5" 40 GB hard drive I've got now, except that the USB isn't enough to power it so I've got to find a 5V DC adapter over 500 mA that fits. FireWire works like a charm.

Dinner went well last night, Leah helped a lot with the chopping. We went and made the Beef in Puff Pastry, Potato Latkes, and Zucchini stuffed tomatoes. Good stuff. I'm about to hit some of it for lunch right now. I successfully reinstalled and upgraded her laptop, there's all the other stuff I need to install and get working before I can release it back to the household. Lost on Wednesday.

Friday night party at Leah's was interesting. A handful of ultimate players showed up, and some didn't even stay, but I left early instead of making new friends with people I had no clue of how or who they were. Only got through A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back on Saturday, and never got around to Return, at least not yet. Got some sushi to Break the Fast with some Jews Saturday night, and I went to mass on Sunday morning. Installed a new 80 GB hard drive on Leah's laptop and restore factory settings (exciting). I also managed to take my iBook apart for the DC board with hopes to replace another iBook's broken one. No programming done on the weekend which is a surprisingly short amount of time. October's right around the corner, and I've only got 1 DVD on preorder, which makes for a good thing. Went over to Bryan's to catch some football and hang out with Whitney, in town for the holidays, and chilled with Nemesis over at Lorra's for the evening. Cooking dinner for Leah tonight (it's her birthday tomorrow), another birthday dinner tomorrow night (not by me), and that's it for plans.

Late night at work yesterday, late for me anyway. Not enough sleep either the night before. So I'm looking forward to the weekend, which starts in a few short measly hours. Stars Wars viewing at my place tomorrow starting around noon or so. Come if you're interested, just let me know. Otherwise, maybe I'll actually try and do some programming, or attempt to do some programming. Like that's actually going to happen. But got another idea to throw onto the list of things to someday program.

Go figure, my home networking problem was/is a loose power cord into my pretty old cable modem. With all this upgrading going on, digital city action, I'm wondering when I should get around to upgrading to digital cable and the rest of the stuff along side it. I did read that HD isn't coming till next year at the earliest. Which sucks. But would rock if it comes in time for Alias or the Superbowl. So back on email. Did some more networking stuff for 332 W. Dickens (Leah's apartment). Got to do some cord cleanup tonight in prep for their party tomorrow night. Lost was good last night, as was Veronica Mars. I'll try and keep up on Lost, especially since it's in HD and looks pretty spectacular.

Lost. Not just the premiere tonight, but the lack of email. I can't ssh into my home box right now, not sure why, I'll have to figure it out tonight. Last night it seemed like I needed to enable ping to successfully get any internet action. So who knows what the actual problem is. Kaze was good last night, some very interesting combinations of sushi and toppings. Small and not too expensive. Might have to try it again when their seasonal specials change. Good to see a smattering of Kaze alums though. I think I'm going to turn sake into my drink of choice. I got some Pride of the Village for dinner last night, and it's pretty good.

Got the Gesoff/Freemen household set up with a wireless network and an ethernet hub so they can use laptops on the couch and additional computers at the desk. I'm currently loaning them the hub and Airport Extreme (they were sorta extras after I upgraded to a switch and I got a couple Airport Expresses). So that was pretty cool, as even I get to be online when I'm over there, which I am. Some bad news though, my digital photo frame fell off my piano, and the glass chipped, but amazingly enough, the guts were just fine. And since I want to hang it on the wall, I think I need to upgrade the case to something beyond foam board, and move up to some sort of wood. We'll see what I can do with balsa.

Friday night at Mirai was good. Ate upstairs in the lounge, definitely good fish, but still, not quite the value, the fillingness of Sai. But definitely some good stuff, the Chef's special rolls are fantastic. Then an early night, trying to catch up on some sleep after a viewing of Face/Off (which Leah liked, surprisingly). Saturday I upgraded her new laptop to XP SP2, got some free photo software (Picasa and OfotoNow), and started transferring her Documents, Music, and Pictures from her account on my desktop. It's got a 1400x1050 14" LCD that's just, well, to die for. BBQ and party at Akira, Lorra, and Sarah's was fun. They've got an awesome place, with the best view of the city among all the people's places I've been in. Good time. Sunday, went to mass, saw Sky Captain with Bryan, and finally finished up the photo frame. It looks good. I think I need to hang it on the wall, which will require some additional engineering. Tomorrow night is Kaze Alumni night at Kaze at 8pm. Wednesday is the Lost premiere. Oh, I finished up Ninja by Eric V. Lustbader and moved on the the Miko, and will probably finish up with White Ninja. It's definitely been a while since I've read them. But it also has me craving a good quality ninja movie to watch.

I ended up at beach last night, a bit of a surprise. Good, but no cones. Then it was a 4 hour upgrade for Marc's powerbook. 10.3.5, with 9.2.2, all the most current software updates. That's a lot of optimization. But easy and straightforward. He made some grilled salmon and veggies as well. Tired though, not enough sleep. BBQ tomorrow night and beyond previous plans, nothing else extra. But definitely got some cleaning to do.

Tuesday Night dinner at Leah's, thrown together chicken and noodles, who knew milk makes all the difference in a tomato sauce? Some Scrubs watching with their new cable from ComCast, and trying to figure out what the problem is with their cable modem, it would get a DHCP served IP address, and it looked like UDP traffic went out fine, since I could resolve DNS, but no pings, no web requests, no nothing else. Hopefully it's all fixed now. Wednesday helped my Mom, or at least tried to help, put up the window treatments. Got em all up but 2. She also brought in Chop Suey Hut's Fried Chicken for dinner. I also got some stuff together for Marc's Mac OS X upgrade, which has been about 2 years in the planning, which finally happens tonight. I'm hoping things go smoothly. And I've started gluing back together the frame and stuff for the photo frame. Expect some pics sometime. Tomorrow is date night at Mirai, Saturday some setup for Leah's new computer, and maybe a viewing of Sky Captain on Sunday.

Picked up Leah from Midway last night. 25 minutes from my place to the airport. That was awesome. Otherwise, nothing new. Linux kernels these days can do so much more than when I used to play with them, back in 2000-2001. USB and bluetooth support all built in? Crazy. Twenty Bucks got delayed, indefinitely, so I've only got Star Wars coming next Tuesday. But that's a little exciting.

Things just didn't go according to plan. Ended up staying in the city Saturday, still trying to get the digital photo frame working, basically, getting vesa and frame buffer video support into the kernel, along with getting the pcmcia stuff working, along with a new kernel too, 2.4.19, so a lot of stuff there. Watched a bunch of movies while this was happening, Antitrust, Swordfish, Ocean's 11 and Italian Job (which is a bit scratched). Oh, and then a late viewing of It Could Happen to You. Eventually got all the stuff working, went out to Naperville Sunday morning, in time to see Machine win their semi, say hello to some peeps, and then headed up to Woodstock for an eventual dinner with the 'rents at Bistro Wasabi. And then even better news with the photo frame, got SVGAlib working properly which means zgv is working flawlessly. The only problem now is control. I've got to see if external keyboards work, and maybe even bluetooth. But soon. Leah comes back from her weekend in NY. And Sky Captain opens Friday.

So I guess the Evanston Public Library isn't having a book sale this weekend, it's now December 4-5. That's a long time away. Did some impulse grocery shopping, which means I came home with lots of unhealthy junk food. I cut a hole using my Dremel in my G4 desktop which allows for great airflow for the CPU fan. Which is good. And then I flashed my DVD-R drive to be region free and other updated goodies. Zgv now does look to be a quality image/screensaver for the laptop, and still working on the wireless card, apparently compilation of the driver requires the pcmcia-cs source. Headed out to Woodstock tomorrow, should be back Sunday to Naperville for a drop in. Might stop by an Apple store to get a USB 2.0 cable for Leah's iPod which she'll need for her computer.

2 things. 1) Evanston Public Library is having their semi annual book sale, I think, this weekend. I'm hoping to pick up some Ludlum books myself. And 2) When did the nickle get redesigned? Or when did they release a new version? I just got one back from Whole Foods (trying out their hot bar for lunch), and see this shiny nickle, which is 2004 but Lewis & Clark on the back in some sort of ship. When did this happen?

Got a viewing of Resident Evil in last night. Well, it played in the background as I got SSHKeychain up and running. And I'm retracing my steps on getting a Orinoco WaveLAN Silver wireless card up and running under Debian 2.0 (I know, it's old). Now I really think I'm on the tail end of this cold, blowing my nose and coughing up stuff, finally. A couple more days I think. Time to get some more water.

So I felt the worse I've felt in a week with this nagging cough/cold thing yesterday, but I'm feeling much better today. I'm finally drinking tons, so that's probably helping. New blog I've found: CTA Tattler. Watched Sneakers with the girls and had some Green Tea as well last night. I'd like to get in a Resident Evil viewing before the weekend release of the sequel. Oh, I forgot to mention that I printed from my powerbook to the shared USB printer off my desktop the other day, and it was so easy. No install of drivers, or nothing, I don't think. Super easy.

Back to the grind. A nice 3 day weekend, fairly uneventful. Hero was good Friday night, as was dinner at Weber Grill. Saturday was more lounging around with a quick stop over at the Russell's to fix a networking problem. Dinner was with my parents and Leah at Angelina's Ristorante, and a face showing at Alison's gathering of ultimate folks at Lemmings. Then plenty of sleep, getting more than I have in a long long time. More lazy day Sunday, getting linux on the digital picture frame, dinner at the Gesoffs' by the Gesoffs', Leah's eggplant parmesan and Alison's salad. Stopped by their friend's place, Brian, and the more sleeping. Monday was yet another lazy day, capped off by beach, and some chicken/egg drop soup for dinner. I'm still battling whatever cold/cough thing I've got. Finally got some cough drops, my favorite from childhood, Luden's Wild Cherry. But I think they might be too much like candy. Maybe some beach on Thursday, maybe some heckling of CHC teams this weekend, but that's about it on the plans front.

Leah and I showed up for beach last night, and we left not too long after. Bjorn and Kevin were throwing, and Carlo showed up later. But no game. So Leah went out with her sister (and new roommate) and sister's friend for free drinks and apps. I went home to do some more iBook troubleshooting and get some soup. I'm still feeling under the weather, almost 5 days after I started feeling bad. And I've got this insatiable craving for soup. So no luck on the iBook, resetting the power manager at least go the green light to go on the AC adapter, but still no charging. A quick little research finds that some people had issues with it before, not charging, and got the DC board replaced while still under warranty. But it's old, an original (Dual USB) iBook, just like mine. Except I think mine's got a bad logic board, but it charges, which means I could either try and get it fixed, or cannibalize one of them for parts to get the other one working. We'll see. Nothing planned for the long weekend, maybe some more wedding present shopping, sleeping, and lounging.

So, the cough's worse, and I'm not feeling a whole lot better, but hey, I mean, it's great timing coming up on a three day weekend, that last of summer, right? Got a fitness consultation, free, from my gym. Interesting notes: 60 resting pulse, 104 active pulse, 122/80 blood pressure, 16.6% body fat percentage, which all means I could stand to lose like 5 lbs. We'll see if that happens. Beach maybe tonight, since there's a Pro Volleyball tourney coming through town. Hero and Weber Grill for sure tomorrow.

I hate this tail end of cold, with a head full of snot, a dry cough, and waiting for it all to pass. Enough with the pretty picture though. I now belong to the Multiplex East Lakeview Club, about 1 1/2 blocks from my place. Hopefully means I'll get into some sort of non ultimate related shape. It will be rather interesting, anyway. Might actually show up at beach tomorrow. Still got lots of computer stuff to do. Finished up Pattern Recognition and moved on to Generation X, which also means I need to pick up Microserfs sometime. After that, maybe back to some Tom Clancy, or maybe something a little more serious.