Monthly Archive for January, 2008

Hi everyone.  Sorry I’ve been away for so long.  Lots happening, so I’ll just get right to it.

Trip home for the holidays went well.  Like last year, it was a really crammed rushed trip.  There are a lot of things I try to squeeze in while back at home.  After seeing my family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I met up with friends just about every night after that, and worked on some things at my mother’s office to get her ready for the 2007 tax year.  It was nice to see everyone and for those that know about them, I didn’t get the dinosaur back this year, but I did wind up with the chicken, which I’ll take back on Christmas later in the year.  I’ll have to write an entry about the dinosaur and the chicken at some point, but for now, just know they’re "toys" and part of family tradition.

I came back home to Seattle a day before New Year’s Eve.  I was so tired from the trip that I went to sleep at 10:30 and didn’t even bother doing anything at midnight.  It just felt really good to sleep, and sleep on my own bed.  I needed the rest, as shortly after that my sister and her boyfriend flew out to visit.  Yes, I saw them while back home for Christmas, but they came out to see Seattle and to help me pick out new furniture.  Some of my things, such as my couch, are pretty beat up.  They were second-hand to begin with, either from family or from a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store back where I grew up.  It was time to go from the college-era furniture to "grown-up" stuff.

We found a nice couch and chair, tables for the living room, and a new dining table while we were out looking around.  We also picked up new pillows and a blanket, new lamps, new silverware and cookware, and a few other things.  I have a couple pieces of furniture from that (dining table and the cocktail/coffee table for the couch) but still waiting on the rest of it.  If I get some ambition (and interest from readers?) I might take pictures of it all once it’s all here.

We didn’t have much time, but we did squeeze in a few things while they were here.  We went to eat at The Cheesecake Factory, which they don’t have back in Michigan.  We also went to my favorite sushi place, HaNa, in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, which meant they had their first ride on public transit as we took the Sound Transit 545 Express bus there and back (we also took Metro route 43, but that was because we didn’t want to walk up the hill – plus it was free anyway after paying the Sound Transit fare).  It was cloudy/rainy while they were here, but thankfully on the way to the airport it was somewhat clear and they got a good view of the Cascade mountains to the east along with Mt. Rainier.  (Saying around here is if you can see Mt. Rainier, then it must be nice out.)

After they left I started on some spring cleaning to go with the new furniture.  I moved some older furniture down into the garage to reduce the clutter.  Of course, the garage is now cluttered.  When the couch and chair and things are delivered, I’ll call the Salvation Army so they can come get everything and do what they see fit with it all.  Yes, I could sell some of this, but I feel it’s better to donate it.

Given the stand near my living room TV is no longer needed there (new furniture coming to replace it) I moved it upstairs into my bedroom so it could replace an older entertainment center thing that I’ve had for a very long time.  It also provided an excuse to get a new TV for my bedroom, as a) the stand cannot safely hold a 25 inch tube TV on it, b) the home theater PC was also moving upstairs, and c) any new TV wouldn’t fit correctly into the older entertainment center.  I picked up a 32 inch Sharp Aquos (1080i) and I must say it’s really nice.  I also like that I have a PC in my bedroom again – not because I can use it (although I am for watching cable TV), but because I grew up with a PC humming next to me while I slept, and it’s always weird not having the humming noise – too quiet.

Ok enough about the furniture.  I’ve also had some computer equipment fun.  On my main laptop, I decided to finally format the thing and reinstall Windows Vista.  It wasn’t running that horribly, but I tend to install, uninstall, upgrade, roll back, try this, download that, and so on, and after a while, things tend to get goofy.  The cool part is because the majority of my personal files are stored on the Windows Home Server system, I didn’t have to capture much before wiping it.  Also, I wrote down a list of what I wanted to reinstall afterwards, which I did the majority of the same day I formatted.  I only have one thing left to reinstall, and that’s occurring while I write this.

And speaking of Windows Home Server, I had yet another hard drive wave goodbye.  This was another Maxtor hard drive, and thankfully the last one I have in service on any system.  Windows Home Server indicated the backup service failed (this is what does the backups of the machines on my network), and when I investigated I found that drive had a large number of bad blocks.  I promptly took it out of the drive pool and after it balanced storage I physically took it out of the PC.  Like before, I didn’t lose any files from it.  Let’s just hope this is the last hard drive issue I have for quite some time.

Last weekend some friends came over and we played Wii Sports, and this weekend we went bowling.  I discovered that while I’m pretty good at bowling on Wii Sports, I’ve become rusty at the actual game.  Back when I was in high school, a group of friends and I would go bowling all the time, to the point that I bought a bowling ball and shoes.  Yesterday I dug out Rolly (pronounced "roll" with letter E, roll-E, that’s my bowling ball) and we went to the bowling alley, and wow did I do terrible.  Thankfully bowling is like riding a bicycle, you don’t really forget, you just need to remember, and on my second game I was doing much better.  Third game became rough as I was getting wore out from throwing the ball over and over.  Back in high school, we bowled often enough that I became used to it, but I haven’t bowled in over a year so I’ve lost that.  Let’s just say that Advil is my friend.

Back in December I mentioned I was looking into DSL and had an order in place.  The line was installed and unfortunately given that I’m abut 14,000 feet (4267 meters) away from the phone company’s building I could only achieve 3 megabit down, which is too slow, especially for the cost of it.  I sent the equipment back and still have Comcast for high speed Internet… at least when it wants to be high speed.

Nothing else is coming to mind right now, and given it’s 10 minutes to 1 am, I figure it’s best I go to sleep.  Take care everyone.