WordPress is up and running! Go figure, the one item in the config file that says “99% chance you don’t have to change this” needed to be changed to get the install to run.
Have to say, it’s pretty impressive to say the least, I could easily spend the whole night just with the configurations.
Yes, once again, Cindy is way behind the times. How long has TiVo been out and about by now?
I am honestly not really a big TV watcher. When my ex left, he took the TV, and I went for well over a year without one, and really didn’t feel a loss. When I worked at the non-profit in DC during that time, one of my coworkers found out that I didn’t have a TV, and seriously, you would have thought I was living without hot water or electricity or something.
Most of the day I just have CNBC on - not exactly “OMG, did you SEE what was on during Power Lunch today??!” type programming, it’s a combination of inoffensive background noise and the fact that I like being able to keep tabs on what is going on with the markets. It’s more of a function of the fact that I *can* have it on vs. I *must* have it on. I can count on one hand the number of evening programs I actually watch.
Enter TiVo. I have an inherited TiVo that belonged to my brother’s roommate (he upgraded or something) and I have to say, it’s pretty damn cool. It’s like a VCR on steroids, cause it will start mucking around and looking for things it thinks you might like. Granted, there are still apparently some leftover things from said roommate that it picks up, but it’s nice on a weekend afternoon when you just want to go brain dead for a while and watch TV and discover that you’ve got half a dozen things recorded that you didn’t even ask for out there just waiting for your perusal.
To be honest, it’s probably not something I’d ever have gone out and bought on my own, but damn, it’s spiffy. I can see how it quickly becomes one of those “how did I ever live without it” pieces of electronics.
Every time I go to the townhouse I think to myself, “Grab the small dark wood bookshelf.” Every time I manage to forget. Today, I got it out of the room it was in and as far as the hallway and got distracted. It’s still sitting in the hallway.
Perhaps tomorrow when I go to let the painters in I will actually remember to put it IN THE CAR.
OK, highly unlikely, but here’s hoping.
Dinner tonight: Pan seared scallops with a quick simmer in meuniere sauce. MMmmmmmm, good.
Another question for the local geeks: Any recommendations for laptop repair in the area? Specifically replacing a DVD/CD drive.
1. Any semi-decent voice recognition software out there that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg? Doesn’t have to be perfect by any means, just something along the lines of dictation software with a crappy transcriptionist will be OK, I can edit later. I’m not looking for super cheap, just not insanely expensive.)
2. Are there are any “good” headphone/mike combos out there that would work for a laptop? (I’m hoping the networked gamers that read can help me.) Really looking for something that will eliminate or at least minimize feedback issues. (Again, basically looking for middle of the road priced products.)
3. When the hell did the Daleks come back on Dr. Who??!? I thought they offed the last one last season! (Guess what is on TV at the moment?) Nevermind, I watched the rest of it and I get it now. :)
Well, apparently heat makes DSL crap out or some such nonsense as my connection has gone down again. Tried to get online w/the cable company to see about ordering their services and of course, the order site is down on Tuesdays and Thursdays… So, I’m stuck on dialup at the moment, and just couldn’t be more thrilled about it.
Note to self: Ask how long the work will take before dropping off the car so you are not surprised when they say four hours. (Which I shouldn’t have been anyway.) But hey, it’s worth it, I’ll have a car in proper alignment and passing inspection.
I love how when I call my ISP they tell me I can check system status online. Chances are if I am calling, it’s because I can’t get online.
I have a small birdbath on the back deck to replace the “plastic table birdbath” that was created one day when a storm flipped it over. The new birdbath is just an oversized shallow pasta plate that seemed to be perfect and easy to keep clean, etc. I have yet to see a bird venture near the damn thing. Little flying ingrates.
The dog, who was soooo not happy with my packing up on Saturday morning, apparently got over it. It took him at least 5 minutes yesterday when I got back in before he noticed I was even back, and I got an “Oh, HI! Were you gone?!” greeting…
Colonial Beach is truly the land that time forgot. If you ever want to get away from pretty much everything for a couple days, this is a good place for it. My motel door had an actual real metal key.
Floyd Landis now qualifies as tough in my eyes. He’s getting his hip replaced after the Tour de France, and isn’t taking any pain medication in the meantime. I get a hangnail and it’s “Where is the advil and wine?!”
OK, so the DC Metro area is about to float away, so if I no longer update, it’s because I am halfway down the Potomac River. Flash floods all weekend, now we have a coastal flood warning for the river, and apparently there are tons of roads underwater around here. Was out running errands earlier and there were definitely some roads that could become impassable at the rate things are going.
The sun also just came out for a while, and there was steam pouring off the wet deck - somewhat disconcerting at first glance.
I’m also not getting any email comments, so it’s taking me a while to go back and find things that were left - so if you’re expecting a response from me, I’m still going through the comment list to see what I missed.
CNBC is talking about Warren Buffet’s $37B gift to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - they’re trying to put that much money into perspective - the one I liked the best was, “It’s a big ol’ truckload of money” :) They’re also talking about how a charitable group deals with such a large donation - first I’d say make sure you actually GET it - there have been a few instances of large donations being pledged and the donors not coming through with what they promised.
So - if you could run your own charitable foundation, to help whoever or whatever you wanted - what would it be? As for me, I think it would end up helping random people/organizations in need - no stated target group, just help where it’s needed.
Well, I think the time has come for a new ISP… Speakeasy has been great, except for the fact that they shouldn’t have sold me this service at this address to begin with last year, and while we had it working decently for a while, it’s degraded quite a bit over the past couple months and there isn’t anything they can do. I’m anywhere between 19,000 and 20,800 feet from the central line/circuit/switch/whatever (depending on what test they run), and you’re not supposed to be more than 18,000 feet from it…
Yesterday they repro’d the line and it seemed to help, but now we’ve got a storm coming through and of course, it’s dead again, and I am currently on a hijacked wireless connection.
So, DSL would seem to be out of the equation since they’re all going to be on the same backbone, so it would be the same problem with a different company.
I’ve poked around on google some tonight, but can’t find a decent directory of broadband providers for the area, all I can think of is cable internet through Cox and fiber optic through Verizon. What other options am I not thinking of?
Edit: Oh, it’s definitely time. I’m running on a hijacked connection with near no signal, and it’s still faster than the DSL was running when it was up…
My DSL is acting up again. I’d asked them to put the circuit in safe mode a couple weeks back and that seemed to take care of the problem, now I’m wondering if someone dropped it out of safe mode again.
Looking outside, the only way I can describe today’s weather is gross. Not inspiring at all.
And the thing is, I need to get over to Target and to the gym… And frankly, I don’t want to leave the house. I wonder how many laps around the house is 6 miles?
Hmm, I’m starting to think the router is going wonky on me… Wireless works, wired doesn’t, and now the wireless seems to be cutting in and out…
Any recommendations?
Woohoo, working internet and wireless again!
Covad rocks. My DSL crapped out at the end of last week, gave Speakeasy a call as it’s usually just a matter of kicking a box somewhere and all is well. No luck this time, so they have to send a Covad tech out (they are the local backbone)
So, he stops by today - turns out the modem is no longer functioning properly. (It’s 4 years old, apparently they don’t even make that model anymore, the tech said it definitely lived it’s full life.) Of course, I feel like a total moron because it’s my hardware that’s busted and he came out for something that really wasn’t his problem at all. He assured me it was OK and it’s pretty hard to tell that it’s the modem if you don’t have an extra DSL modem just sitting around. The new modem will be arriving by 10:30 tomorrow morning.
But - while he was here, he put a netsplit at the point where the phone line hits the house, pulled the DSL straight to the office, and now I don’t have to use filters on the rest of the phone jacks! Totally above and beyond, and when we get the replacement phone for the kitchen, we don’t have to worry about the filter causing it not to stay on the wall properly. :)
I swear, the option to “Hide extensions for known file types” in MS Windows needs to GO AWAY.
Zone Alarm was the culprit and once I added the computers to the trusted zone of the others, I NOW HAVE A NETWORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It had randomly crossed my mind last night as I went to bed, and probably would have forgotten it today if you hadn’t mentioned it,
I have hit the pre-vacation Zen spot of “I don’t give a damn!” Happened around 3 this afternoon. I no longer give a rat’s ass if I have to pass off the last of my calls or not. Plus, I work here at home tomorrow, so I get to sleep in a little too.
I’ve gotten a list of free wifi hot-spots at the beach. Seems that all of Manteo is covered. I can hit the brewery, the gardens and then check my email if I want. :-D
OK, so I’m a reasonably intelligent woman who is fairly technically adept. Which of course means, that there is no way in hell I have been able to get the laptop and desktop to be able to see each other on the network here.
Well, not completely, the desktop seems to recognize the fact that the laptop is in the same workgroup, just can’t actually *get* to it, but the laptop can’t even get permission to see anything on the workgroup. What I don’t like about XP home is that you don’t seem to be able to lay out network permissions of “Computer X on Workgroup Y has access to these folders” - or if there is, I haven’t been able to find it just yet.
So, you can guess what I’ll be wasting my time on this evening instead of doing laundry. :)
All working now! Many thanks to
XP is all up to date, and as much as I would LOVE to stay up all night getting the rest of the software installed, I’d best go to bed.
Wheee, working wireless!
Hardwired part of the router is working, but the laptop can’t find any wireless networks around - starting to wonder if I have to be right next to it or something.
Also, it appears that the laptop came preloaded with Office 2003, which wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the specs…
The router is working! Took some wrangling, but the hardwired piece is finally working. I did get all the non-beach stuff out of the car (I don’t see the point in taking the rest out just to put it back in four days. It’s not like chips will go bad sitting in the car.
I only cleaned up part of the office, but it’s better than nothing, and now that I have the router functioning, I’m gonna go downstairs and play with my new laptop. :-D
All presentable with 5 minutes to spare. Go me! The laptop has been passed over and I now have a tote bag filled with probably several years worth of pay & leave statements. (I think Mom kept every swinging one of them.)
I do wish the animals wouldn’t look so bewildered when I clean. I HAVE done it before!!
I’ve picked out the laptop I am going to get - it was down to one of two Toshiba Satellites, and I realized one of them was the same one my Mom had for work, and that is one sweet machine, so it became the winner. It’s got a 17 inch screen which is truly obscene, but hell, you only get one go round in life. That, and if I’m using it for work, which I’m planning on, the bigger screen will be easier to read and such. Microcenter at least had it on display when I went browsing last week, hopefully they’ll actually have it in stock.
I’m feeling pretty damn good getting the kitchen & living room back under control - lets see if I can actually maintain that for more than 24 hours. :)
OK, I think I am the last person on the planet to get around to watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but that was what I did this evening, and damn, those are some awesome fight scenes in it. Also a good reminder to check potential nannies to be sure that they’re not disgruntled rejects from the local martial arts school, cause then you end up with a daughter that runs off to be with a bunch of damn hippies.
Some missionary-types came by this afternoon… I simply did not answer the door. I know, it’s completely juvenile, and I do feel bad for it, but to start with, opening the door to uninvited strangers is a bad idea, and really, right now, I don’t think anyone wants to talk to me about religion and faith, cause I’m a touch short on both for a variety of reasons, and it’s not particularly fair to inflict them on others who are just trying to spread the good word and all that. (“How did it go today, dear?” “The weird lady with the animals made me cry!”)
Tasha is sending me her old wireless router - she’s pretty sure it works, and she doesn’t have any use for it anymore, so that should be here by next weekend - I think a bit o’ electronics shopping is in my future next weekend. Can anyone out there tell me - are wireless routers usually wireless *only* or are they like a regular wired router, but have wireless capability on top of everything else?
Someone is shooting off bottle rockets down the street and they’re popping up over the trees outside my window. The weekend *of* the 4th, I don’t so much mind them. It’s when kids start shooting them of 15 minutes after the stands open for business each season that I get a tad annoyed.
Well that settles it. I have to get the house set for wireless
Somehow I have inadvertently locked so to someone’s wireless connection. So I can get my email, check LJ and be on IM down here in the living room.
Pretty cool. (And yes, technically I am stealing someone’s bandwidth…so add it to the list of reasons I’m going to hell.)
That and the fact that I am ready to convert to Catholicism solely from the description of Catholic heaven on the Simpsons this evening.
Yup, quite enthralled with the PDA right now. Does everything I need and then some. Has mp3 playback in it, so of course, the storage card is now half filled w/mp3’s. But it’s good to be able to crank up some tunes while I bop around the house getting things done. The internal speaker isn’t the best, but it’s certainly acceptable when you’re just cleaning up junk mail to music anyway. And I do so love crossing stuff off the to-do lists. :)
It has wireless & bluetooth in it, neither of which do me any good right now, but in theory once I have the wireless setup here, I should be able to use it somehow… Just have to figure out *how*.
Have had a nice productive morning, the living room now only looks like a small local post office threw up in it rather than a large regional processing center. Dishes are going, just need to get some laundry done so I have clean things to wear to work this week. Even *gasp* exercised.
OK, more to get done today, enough putzing around…
Bugger. Still can’t get any email off my domain. However, the barrage of adverts for viagra and cialis continue to roll in on my regular account, so at least I know that is working…
I am up so much later than I planned on…tomorrow is gonna be painful.
My voice is still fucked from Friday night - be interesting to see if it’s back to normal when I start calling people tomorrow…
Well, domain email is still busted, and I’ve obviously pissed off folks to the extent that I am not getting any replies to a couple emails I had sent this morning on my regular account as well.
Eh, whatever, things will work themselves out, right?
It just occurred to me that I am actually going to have to get up tomorrow morning before 9 AM. Shit, I got spoiled last week.
Mother’s Day flowers all arrived at their various destinations.
I’m still totally overtired from being out so late on Friday.
No fate but the fate you make for yourself.
