is a geek

Well, Christmas went great. On Friday, we visited Sartaj and wished her a happy birthday, Yay! That night, since we had to care for the new puppies, we decided to stay home Christmas Eve, wrap packages, and goto midnight Mass at our new church. It was pretty good. One thing of note, the priest asked that we not shake hands during the saying 'Hi' to our neighbors in order to avoid passing germs around. I wasn't all too dissappointed by this because there was a teenage girl hacking in my ear the entire time.

Christmas morning, we woke, let the dogs out, and dragged ourselves over to my parents for breakfast and presents. Everyone got what they want (I hope). We then headed back to our house for a little clean up and nap, and then back to my parents for dinner. This time, we brought our puppies with us. It is amazing how brave a puppy will act against a 100 pounf german shepard when it is on the other side of the door! We all had quite a few laughs at our dogs behaviors.

Dinner was great! I eventually just had to lay down on the carpet because my tummy was so full. It was sooooo full, that I even skipped out on a piece of pie! We did get to bring some home, though.

Sunday, we slept in till 10, and then did a little post-Christmas shopping. We were really looking for a artificial tree, and most places were completely sold out of the ones over 7ft. We were looking for a 9ft tree. I finally found one at walmart, but it was only 3ft wide. The 7ft and 9ft trees were the same width! I thought it looked a little silly. We ended up getting a 12ft pre-lit monster! Hopefully, it will fit in the room and look ok. The price was very good too! With a lot of help from Judy and Evan, we managed to get it home. The thing weighs ALOT! Later that night, I made another fried turkey for Christine's family. It was super yummie. We all watched Kill Bill 2 while eating (it was too much a pain to find a way to contain the puppies to the kitchen while we were eating in it).

Anywho, today I am at work. I was waiting for my coffee, and upon arrival to the office, I found the water was out. I heard a line broke from the cold weather. So, we headed over to Einstein's for bagels and coffee. Yum.

The rest of the week, I am working from home. Both Adam and David are out this week, so I figured I could do the exact same thing from home as I can from work.... as long as my cable still works.

Posted by chris at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Either comcast's setup can't handle the cold or some dumb butt in the area plugged his router in backwards. When my modem actually suceedes in getting a signal, my router picks up the ip 192.168.100.10 half the time. Hopefully, they will actually show up sometime today and figure it out. Comcast has been fairly good in this area, but the speed is sometimes lacking (especially on uploads). I can't wait for fiber!

Posted by chris at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We did it! I took a drive out to Gainsville late at night with Steven and Christine, but we got there at 7:30, found a perfect puppy and brought her home. Mark then brought his puppy home and they played all night. My cats were not too impressed. Then we gave them a bath (to make sure of fleas, etc..) and they played some more. Right now, I am waiting for Mark to return with the cage, so we can put them to bed for the night. Right now the dogs are playing tug of war with the rag we used to clean up their already frequent accidents... ugh!

Posted by chris at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

victim...! We are headed out tonite to go see them. GRIN!

Posted by chris at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On Saturday, we went to Petsmart to interview for the puppy. She was a real sweetheart and had everything we were looking for. Unfortunatly, she also had the same thing another 10+ applicants were looking for too. We chatted with the lady who was taking care of her, and felt comfortable we would be able to proved her a good home. The next day, we found out she had found a home with another family! We had failed our interview! Hopefully, we will be able to find another puppy of similiar size and disposition.

Posted by chris at 07:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We just finished watching the Return of the King Extended Edition. It was awesome! I can see why they cut a few of the extended scenes, but most of them were seamlessly intergrated into the film and added a sense of completness. Yawn! Time for bed. P.S. we found a white fuzzy blob we like and are considering going into negotiations with the dealership.

Posted by chris at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

UPS shows the LOTR - ROTK - EE as 'out for delivery'! I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonite. I'll have to pull out the hot chocolate and blanket, though, as it decided to act abunch more like winter all the sudden. I was wearing jeans and short sleaves on Sunday while doing yardwork and I was hot, and last night it dropped below freezing. Tonite it is supposed to be even colder!

Posted by chris at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

to the sound of Zephyr growling at Christine's bottom.

Posted by chris at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We finally got around to moving the plants infront of our house. They had put all the big ones infront of windows or along walkways. So, we rearranged a few (it was surprisingly easy cause the roots hadn't grown much) and also tidied up the yard abit. I noticed that the electric company had changed out our nifty digital meter with a analog on. This bothers me because I didn't know this till I happened to look at the meter and it means my house lost power. No wonder my server died a few weeks ago. Is it too much to ask to be notified before they premeditatedly cut power to your house? Is premeditatedly even a word? The world will never know!

In other, more productive, news I also fixed a washing machine and a dryer and attempted to fix another dryer. The washing machine wouldn't aggitate, one dryer was loud as hell, and the other would turn but not dry. We replaced the dogs ( plastic commas ) for the washer and got new rollerblade wheels for the dryer. It's kinda scary how simple washers and dryers are. I had the dryer completly apart (the cats played in the barrel for awhile). I also found $2.50 in change! Yay! I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the other dryer, so I guess I will have to spend some more quality time w/ it. In case you are wondering why I have 2 dryers, the other one is my old dryer that I'm giving to my brother when he moves out.

On Saturday, I went to the optomitrist?!? for the first time with Christine. Having never experienced the wide range of tests before, I messed up on one and the doctor asked me if I've just been walking around in a blurry world all my life. Ooops! Anyways, I got the pupil dialtion drops and the eyes can't focus drops. This made the world a bright blur for 2-3 hours and gave me a horrible headache. Eventually, he determined I was slightly farsighted. He asked if I got headaches at work or if my eyes were dry after a stressfull day. I always assumed it was because of management! We tried to pick out frames for each other, but since I couldn't see Christine and she couldn't see w/o her glasses on, she picked mine, and she decided to use her own frames for her stuff.

Afterwards, we went to the pound to drop off some extra cat food we had. My cats refuse to eat wet food (they wait till it dries, then play with it). So, I figured the shelter could use it more. While we were there, I looked at bright fuzzy barking blobs. There were a few fuzzy blobs that were really cute, playfull, and a year old, but we were kinda looking for a much younger fuzzy blob so the cats wouldn't feel so threatened by it.

Posted by chris at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When I got home yesterday, I saw a Verizon truck in front of my house. I've been very interested in their fiber to the premises service (mainly because of the 15Mbs/3Mbs connection for $50). They have been slowly rolling it out, and Wylie is one of the first cities nationwide to get it. They have site where you can punch in your number and check for availability. It doesn't work for me because I only have a cell phone (no landline). Anywho, I went and chatted w/ the worker for awhile, learning about many things. I gave him my name and number so they can call my cell when the flip on the fiber. Yay!!

Posted by chris at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When we stopped by staples the other day, I noticed they had some Kodak premium satin inkjet photo paper for clearance for $2.50 for a 15 pack (normaly $10). So, I picked one up. Later that night, I noticed there was a $5 rebate on any purchase of Kodak premium or ultima paper. Grin! So, yesterday, I picked up the other 22 packs. Even if I can only get 1 or 2 rebates, it is still a good price for nice photo paper! Always visit the clearance sections of the store you visit!

Posted by chris at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We made some 13 layer dip last night. I just grabbed some stuff from the fridge and pantry until the pan was full. We ate about 1/30th of it. I guess I'll have leftovers for a month! While we were increasing in weight, we watched 'The Real Gilligan's Island' for awhile. We caught some of the previous episodes and it was midly entertaining. I was very happy when they got rid of the super biatchy Millionaire. Anyways, I'm not sure what they are going to do w/ the show now that they have it narrowed down to the final seven castaways. Ohh well.

Do you ever wonder what would happen if you acted like the guy on Office Space? I'm thinking about just not working so I see how long I can get paid for doing nothing. It feels like there are already a few people doing that considering how hard it is to get things done properly.

Posted by chris at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm finally receiving the first round of Christmas presents for my family from Amazon. Hopefully, everything will be here in time. I shipped most things using super saver shipping (free). Unfortunately, that means it is super low on the priority list. At the end of last month, I ordered the Super Extended Uncut ReDux Directors Collectors Unabridged 24DVD set version of LOTR Return of the King that is being released on the 14th. Amazon estimates that I should receive it between the 21st and the 24th. Importunely, we got notice that our office building will be closed the 24th and have a half day on the 23rd. Since UPS always delivers after 2pm, it will have to arrive on the 21st or 22nd, or I will have to wait awhile before I can get my grubby paws on it. I hate waiting!

Posted by chris at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Urgh... I spent over 30 minutes tearing up the house last night looking for my cordless drill so I could secure some bookselves to the wall. It turns out my brother had it in his car.

Posted by chris at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Towards the end of last week, I had a huge battle with the piece of crap know as Norton Personal Firewall and this weekend we setup our christmas trees, installed a gas log set in the fireplace and attempted to get a freezer.

One of my friends brought his machine over complaining about not being able to access secure websites. I offered to take a look at it. He didn't have much extra crud loading at startup and he was running an antivirus. He was concerned that he couldn't update his firewall software (which had expired a month before) becuase he couldn't get to secure websites. I tried checking the software to make sure it wasn't running and it said it wasn't. I also tried looking at the other settings for the firewall, but I couldn't because all of it was disabled. I tried using live update, windows update, updating ad-aware & spybot search and destroy, running online virus scan, etc... all to no avail. They all required https access. The I tried running live update again, and selected the option to upgrade firewall, which in turn took me to a secure website. Eventually, what I figured out, is that the firewall was running, not notifying of any blocking, and blocking all https access. When you tried upgrading it, it enabled https access so you could purchase their software. However, it also enabled its previously disabled settings menu, which I quickly used to disable the load on startup, and hide notifications of blocking. I, then didn't purchase the software, installed 34 critical updates, then service pack2, then everything else, and used SP2's built in firewall for free. If a company is going to disable software after it expires, it should atleast leave your machine in a usable state. GRRR

Christine and I spent a few minutes setting up our Christmas trees. I setup my 12inch pre-decorated fiber optic tree in 3 minutes and she spent an horrificaly long 5 minutes setting up her 14inch snow covered tree. Hopefully we will get a bigger one during the after Christmas sales!

We made a trip to Home Depot looking for gas logs for the fireplace. We found several choices split between 2 categories: Vented sets and Un-Vented sets. Supposedly, you can use the un-vented sets w/o your damper open, the vented ones require, well, a vent. The newspaper headlines immediately filled my imagination: 'Young couple dead from carbon monoxide poisoning'. Eik! So, we did some research, etc.. and decided on vent free. We did this because the marketing on the box indicated that they are 99.9% effecient while the vented ones are 9% effecient. Supposedly, our gas logs can comfortably heat up to 1500 sq ft. So, we got it home, and after another trip to the hardware store, hooked it up. If it was 1/2 inch wider, it wouldn't fit. One of the joys I had was trying to get the gas to the inlet on the logs. The overall tightness of the setup left me trying to make a 110 degree turn with an aluminum pipe in a 2 inch space. It wasn't fun. Anyways, we finally got it all hooked up, and everything seems to be working, but I still have my carbon monoxide detector (with new batteries) sitting right on the fireplace.

Friday, both us us left a little early from work to go check out the Sears outlet store. We were looking for a chest freezer to hold our free turkeys, and some other random bodies we are trying to store. We found the exact same one we were looking at before, for $40 cheaper. The sears outlet store consists of ~1K fridges, ~500 washers and driers, ~300 dishwashers and 4 chest freezers! We needed to act fast. So, we decided to go home, check the fine print on our coupons to see if we could use them, and trick someone into using their truck first thing Sat morning. The next morning, I called my mom. It was unsuccessfull. She insisted it wouldn't fit in the SUV. She instisted it even though I hadn't given her the dimensions. Hrmmm. We then called the Eldreds and he wasn't home. So we gave up. Later that afternoon, he gave us a call and told us to come get the truck. We pick it up, drive over to the store, and their is a couple signing the paperwork for the freezer we wanted!! Noo!! So, no freezer for us. However, we did get to go to Krystal's. They have teany tiny hamburgers. Yum!

Posted by chris at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was talking to Christine the other day about possibly purchasing another harddrive so we could have a backup of all our pictures. Usually, I save the pictures to my desktop, then transfer them over to my server and forget about or delete the ones on my desktop after I'm done. That means there is a great possibility that there exists only 1 copy of some of our images and they all are on one machine.... You can guess what almost happened. I got home after noticing that I couldn't get to my website anymore and the machine was off (this varies greatly from the usual 'on' state). I turned it back on and a loud grinding noise screamed at me. I cried. After I regained my senses, I ripped out its harddrive, slapped it in my desktop, installed an ext2 driver for WinXP, rebooted, and proceded to copy all the important stuff off the drive and to my other drive that contains most of the other single point of failure issues I have. After all was said and done, I found out it was the dvd drive making odd noises (with no cd/dvd in it!?!), and everything worked ok after I removed it. It was still very scary. Seriously, it was scary! Not like ghost go boo scary, but kinda like Barbra Streisand scary. So remember this: When the machine that has the only copy of the last 5 years of memories on it dies, the first thing you should do is cry.

Posted by chris at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)