2005 March Archive at Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Monthly Archive for March, 2005

Mar 1st 2005

first day of skiing

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This morning I woke up early today on account of the time change. Here in Winter Park it is two hours behind the eastern time zone. It gets light much earlier here than in Atlanta.

I skipped a shower opting to get one after I go skiing. Instead I got dressed and had a bowl of cereal. It was fairly cold but I packed along my wonderful slippers so my feet were nice and comfortable.

Because it’s two hours later in Atlanta, I tried calling Jen at her office but she wasn’t there so I tried her cell phone. She answered. Jen is staying home sick today. She didn’t sound very good and I hope she gets better. I can’t wait to see her.

Mom & Jim got up and took a shower. Eventually we were all ready and prepared to head out. I packed my camera gear in the backpack and got suited up. The negative part about skiing is that you have to lug around so much equipment.

We grabbed our equipment and went outside to catch the shuttle bus. The bus was late so we had to wait a little while. When it came, we loaded our skis onto the external ski rack and boarded the bus.

After a few stops we arrived at the Winter Park base ski area. We disembarked and headed over to the ticket office to get some plastic ties to tie our lift tickets to our jackets.

We then rented a storage locker to store our shoes and changed into our ski boots. Once that was taken care of we headed outside and parted ways with Mom who was not going to be skiing.

Jim and I took the Zephyr Express quad lift up to the mid-mountain area and slowly proceeded down some greens. We took our time and eventually made it to another part of the mountain. As we perused the map to find the best route back to the lodge, a lady standing nearby suggested that we take the Olympia lift over to the middle and then ski down a green instead of going around as we would have to walk a lot.

We did this and made it back down to the base. Jim wasn’t feeling too hot and wanted to sit out for a while. We parted ways and I went off to ski by myself.

I spent the next couple of hours skiing down blues - mostly around the Vasquez ridge area. The weather today wasn’t optimal but it wasn’t bad either. There were light snow showers and it was cloudy so visibility wasn’t that great.

(Cherise Cat run)

(Snow coming down around the lift)

Around 12:15pm (MDT) I called up Mom to see about meeting up for lunch. Shortly after that I headed back down to the base and met up with Mom & Jim for lunch.

Normally around this time would mean large crowds at lunch time but given that it’s before spring break and during the middle of the week, there wasn’t that many people around.

I had a BLT on a croissant. It hit the spot and sated my hunger. I was a little sore from skiing but wanted to go back for more.

After lunch I parted ways with Mom & Jim and headed out. Before going back to the slopes I stopped by the guest services deck to inquire about the ‘SlopeTracker‘ service they offer. ‘SlopeTracker’ is a service in which you rent a small GPS unit and carry it with you on the slopes. At the end of the day, they download all of the data and provide you with a map & report of all your daily activity. I wanted to know what the report looked like so I got to see an example of the report they create. It looked really cool and I want to get one tomorrow. The lady in guest services warned me that a large group is going to be renting them tomorrow so I should get there early.

I continued skiing and made my way to the back side of the mountain to where the Parsenn bowl is. This was some of the best snow I’ve had in a long time. It was silky smooth and powdery. I spent quite a while going down the runs in this area.

The weather today was cloudy with light snow showers. I used the 50mm lens to get some decent shots of the trees with the snow blowing in the foreground.

Around 3pm or so I made my way back to the bottom of the mountain. Along the way I had to go on a rope pull to get to the mid-mountain area which connects with the bottom where I started. It was a pain to use the rope pull.

I went down the blue ‘Hughes’ run to get me to the bottom of the mountain. I found a nice place to sit and changed out of my ski boots and into my hiking boots. It feels so nice to wear ‘regular’ clothes after wearing the large ski boots all day.

While I was getting ready I received a call from a lady at Rich’s Macy’s. She was the bridal registry coordinator lady and informed me that Jen and I qualified for a bonus ‘vegetable dish’ because we had an order for an 8-piece setting. She told me that the corporate office was challenging this citing that they had no record of us receiving the dishes. We have had nothing but problems with Rich’s-Macys for our registry and I strongly advise against using them. They weren’t helpful at all and at one point decided that they were going to cancel all of the orders that people placed for us because they were out of stock (after the fact). When Jen attempted to contact them about these problems they were not helpful and made us get everyone who bought us something to call them to re-place the order. It was a huge mess. I told the lady that I would have Jen call her since Jen knew more about what we have & don’t have.

I took the shuttle bus back to the condo and took a shower. My lower face felt raw and I can’t decide if it is from the cold or if I got sun burnt. The skin wasn’t red.

After the shower I sat in the living room with Mom and worked on processing photos from today. Mom went over the menu book and we decided to go out for pizza tonight. We got ready and headed out.

The pizza place was pretty cool. They had dollar bills all over the walls - totaling around $15,000 in $1 bills. I had a tasty pizza with pepperoni, bacon, sun dried tomatoes, red peppers, and garlic. It was good! I didn’t eat the thick crust but the waitress suggested that I put honey on it and try the crust that way. It was really good!

After dinner we went back to the condo and watched television. I used my laptop to work on my journal. I also attempted to play Warcraft 3 since I have not played that game in a long time. I decided that real-time strategies are not for me unless I have a cheat for unlimited resources.

Mar 2nd 2005

phenomenal day of skiing

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Just like yesterday morning I woke up and had a bowl of cereal. After I got ready for the day I sat in the living room and played a little NeverWinter Nights. It wasn’t that hard with only the touchpad. I haven’t played in a long time so it took some getting used to.

I also spent a considerable amount of time planning out a ski route to take today which will give me maximum coverage on all of the blue runs throughout the mountain.

I left the condo by myself a little early today. I wanted to get to the Winter Park base area early enough to get the GPS unit before they all get rented out.

The lifts open during the week at 9am so I got there just before then. To my great dismay all of the GPS units were already rented out. A large group of elderly skiers who call themselves ‘the Skimeisters’ had come before me and rented all of the GPS units.

I was told that if I come back in an hour they should have some batteries charged up and I can pick up a unit then. This messed up my whole game plan but I decided to just ski around the main area for an hour before I do m serious traversing.

For about an hour I skied down the nearby blue runs. I had a good time and then arranged to meet up with Mom and Jim around 10am. As it got closer to this time I made my way to the base of the mountain.

When I got back to the main lodge I was in luck to be able to rent a SlopeTracker GPS unit for $18. They told me to wear it in a pouch (that they provide) on my arm while I ski.

I met up with Mom and Jim in the lodge and sat with them for a little while before we parted ways and I set out to begin my ski adventure again.

This time I was ready to execute my well-thought-out ski plan to cover as much ground as possible. I started by making my way to the Vasquez ridge and went down all of the blue runs there (about 5-6 runs).

I had my camera with me and had been using the Sigma 15mm fisheye lens. I’ve been living with a problem that popped up last fall in Canada where the camera will think the les is not connected when the lens is focused all the way to infinity. The solution has been to turn the focusing ring slightly to the left in order to ‘jog’ the camera into thinking the lens is actually connected.

Today I noticed that the problem has grown much worse and there are only two or three focal-ranges that seem to work now and they aren’t very useful. This frustrated me greatly and I’m left with basically a broken lens. I tried everything including cleaning the terminals with no luck. The lens is out of warranty so I don’t know what to do.

While on one of the lift lines I called Jen to see how she’s doing. She is still pretty sick and doesn’t sound good at all. I really wish I could be home right now taking care of her. I also called Larry at work to see how he’s doing and also to complain to him about my stupid lens problems.

I finished up with the Vasquez ridge area around lunchtime and met Mom and Jim down in the lodge. This time I had a ham and cheese sandwich on a croissant roll. It was better than the BLT yesterday. While at lunch I adjusted the GPS unit and moved it out of the arm-band pouch and into the cell-phone pouch on my backpack. This was much more comfortable.

After lunch I went out skiing again. This time I made my way over to the Parsenn bowl area. The snow is so awesome over here. It’s all powdery and fluffy - I love it. I skied all over this area and snapped a lot of photos along the way.

(sort of a self-portrait due to the early-morning light)

The weather today was absolutely stellar. I couldn’t have asked for better weather and was so incredibly stoked. It was a deep blue sky with sunshine and warm weather all around. It was a perfect day of skiing and I loved every minute of it.

(It doesn’t get much better than this)

After I completed all of the runs over at the Parsenn bowl I moved over to the Mary Jane area to ski those blues. I was beginning to run out of time and the shadows were getting longer and longer.

(self-portrait with the fisheye lens but the sun was pretty bright so I was squnting)

I spent some more time playing with the Sigma 15mm fisheye lens and came up with a partial fix. The fisheye lens has such a large dept of field that I can still have it manually focused at 3ft and still have even far objects in focus as long as the aperture is sufficiently high. With the sunshine I was able to shoot at f/16 (at ISO 200) at a close focusing distance. It’s a bit of a hack but it works.

With my partially-working fisheye lens I began some fun photograph activities while skiing. I held the camera against my chest and skied down a steep blue pretty fast, snapping photos along the way. Because I’m shooting digital, I just fired off a ton of shots. It actually worked out quite well and I had several photos I was happy with.

I got a little more inventive and while I was blowing down a hill, I crouched down in the skis and shot some photos close to the ground which gave a cool effect being close to the snow.

Finally it was late enough that I had to start heading back as they were starting to shut down the lifts. I made my way back to the main resort area and was sad to see that the rope pull was shut off and so I had to hike up a short hill which is a very strenuous activity while on skis & in boots.

I skied down to the base and turned in the GPS unit. It takes them about 25 minutes to download and process the info so I went to the locker and changed into my hiking boots. It’s so nice going from ski boots to regular boots - quite a change.

The whole ‘SlopeTracker’ thing has been a highlight of my day so I was very excited to get the printed report. I had to wait around for a little while to get the printout (apparently I had an unusually large amount of data to download). When I finally got the printout it was pretty cool. The lady at the desk looked at it and said that I was pretty busy today!

It had a map of mountain with all of the lifts I went up (in order) as well as all of the runs I went down (in order too). At the bottom were fun stats like my calories burned, total distance skied, top speed, vertical footage, etc. On the back was an enumerated list of all the runs I did with similar stats broken down per run. I was very happy with it.

(front of the report)

(back of the report)

I caught the shuttle bus back to the condo. I was pretty tired out. My upper legs and abs hurt the most. When I got to the condo I changed and we all went out to dinner.

We went to a German restaurant and I had some bratwurst. It was a good & filling dinner. I was pretty wiped out but in that good-like-you-accomplished-something-sort-of-way.

Back at the condo in the evening I worked on the photos from today. I was pretty happy with a lot of the ones I took given the awesome weather and the different things I tried.

I took a shower, worked on my journal, and then finally went to bed.

Mar 3rd 2005

third day of skiing and return trip home

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I woke up a litter later today than I did the previous two mornings. I think the hard skiing yesterday wore me out and I could use the extra sleep.

Just like yesterday I took two Advil to ease the muscle pain and I took a multivitamin to help stave off any sickness. I had a bowl of cereal and then worked on my journal briefly on the laptop.

I didn’t have as much time this morning as I had the previous two days so I quickly packed up all of my things and got ready for a short day of skiing.

At 8:35am I went outside and waited for the shuttle bus. I caught the bus to the base mountain area and changed into my ski boots and put my hiking boots into a locker.

There were some pretty long lines for the ski list since it wasn’t open yet (the lifts open at 9am during the week). I made my way as soon as possible over to the Parsenn bowl area to see what it’s like in the morning.

It took about twenty minutes to make it there but was well worth it. The day was sunny and beautiful again with a deep blue sky. The snow was fresh and only a few people have gone down so far.

(snowy trees)

I hung out here for a while and went down several of the blue runs. It was a lot of fun and I have to say that the snow over in this bowl was the best snow of the mountain. I even make my way down the face of the bowl with the powdery moguls. It was a lot of fun.

While I was on a list I called up Jen. She was home sick again but was feeling slightly better. I can’t wait to see her tonight. I also took many photos with my camera (mostly the 50mm fisheye).

(view of the chair-lift wheel)

Next I made my way back to the front face of the mountain and went down a few more blue runs until it was close to noon when I had to call it a day.

I went back down one last time and then changed back into my hiking boots. It’s so much nicer having regular boots on to walk around with instead of the bulky ski boots.

Mom and Jim picked me up near the entrance of the main lodge and we headed out. During the car ride back to Denver, I changed out of my ski clothes and into my airplane clothes in the back of the car. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do but I got it done.

On the way to the airport we stopped at the sporting good store so I could return the skis. We also had lunch at the nearby ‘roadhouse’ restaurant.

They dropped me off at the airport and I checked in and checked my bag with little trouble. The security lines at the Denver International airport were longer than I expected.

When I got to the ‘C’ concourse I went into a few shops to look for a fridge magnet souvenir for Jen. The only ones I could find were cheesy and nothing that I thought she would like.

I made my way to the gate and called Jen to check in on her. She was a little miffed that I didn’t call more often and seemed to be feeling less sick.

The flight back wasn’t too bad. I had an empty seat next to me and used my laptop for most of the flight. I worked on photo processing as well as little in my journal. They showed a movie called something like ‘The first sunset’. It was a decent movie to keep my occupied.

When we touched down in Atlanta I called Jen. She was already on her way to the airport. From touchdown to when I actually got off the plane it took 16 minutes. The walk from the gate to the baggage claim took 12 minutes. From the time I was at the baggage claim to when I got my bag took 14 minutes.

Jen showed up while I was waiting for my bag. She looked pretty sick so I was very grateful that she came to pick me up. I drove home. We were both hungry and Jen wanted to eat out so we stopped at the Orient Express for a late dinner. Jen had some great vegetable soup and I had some sushi. I love sushi!

We got home and I unpacked before going to bed since I have to go to work tomorrow.

Mar 4th 2005

revenge of the spammers

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I installed some new plugins into Movable Type which should help comment spam and as such have turned comments back on. I never really get any legitimate comments anyway but at least I feel better about having them turned on with protection instead of having them turned off altogether.

I’m still getting flooded with spam referrer attacks but it’s not that big of a deal since I don’t do much if anything with the referrers. I still have trackback completely turned off because I think it’s a stupid feature and the spammers attack that too.

Mar 5th 2005

airports and souvenirs

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This morning Jen and I went to Costco. We had a rebate check from all of Jen’s purchases last year so we had a pretty large budget and ended up buying a lot of stuff. I think our total bill was something like $300 and we didn’t even get any large items, it was just a lot of stuff that added-up.

After shopping at Costco this morning we had lunch at the nearby Roly Poly sandwich shop. I always get the same thing there and I love it.

It was a beautiful day outside today with large puffy clouds, a deep blue sky, and lots of sunshine. I can’t express how much I love days like today!

We picked up Scott from airport. He just flew in from Tokyo and was pretty tired. He bought a new IBM thinkbook laptop and had it shipped to us so we brought it along with us so Scott could try it out in the car on the drive to his parent’s house.

Jen’s Mother and Sister were out shopping so it was only her Dad at the house. We hung out with him and Jen’s Dad at their house and got caught up. it was a pretty fun time.

Eventually we departed and headed out to Katie’s house. Jen and I stopped by there to pick up our large boxes of china. We waited around for a little bit for Katie who eventually showed up.

She showed us some of the clothes she bought from her shopping expedition. This didn’t interest me too much since it was girly clothing type stuff.

Jen had the wonderful idea of going to the Mexican restaurant across the street for some margaritas and bean-cheese dip. The three of us headed to the restaurant, sat inside, and had a pitcher of margaritas.

When I came back from my ski trip, Jen gave me a hard time for not bringing her any type of souvenir. I’m really bad about getting souvenirs and don’t really think about it. Jen suggested that anything would have been better than nothing. While we were at the airport earlier today to pick up Scott, I snuck away from Jen and purchased an ‘Atlanta Airport’ magnet for Jen. I planned on giving it to her as an after-the-fact souvenir and had it in my back pocket the whole day.

While we were eating dinner with Katie, Jen told her sister about my souvenir fau pax. I cased the opportunity and said, ‘What are you talking about? I got you an Atlanta kitchen magnet!’ and produced the magnet out of my back packet. We all got a good laugh out of this.

Eventually we made it home and started unpacking the china we picked up from Katie’s house. To our horror we discovered that the order was not correct and that two of the place settings were blue instead of the original color we ordered. There is a lot of history behind this (I’ll go into more detail tomorrow) but basically Jen is at her limit and wants to return everything and go with another company not as incompetent as Rich’s Macy’s.

Mar 6th 2005

boycott Rich’s Macy’s

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Last night Jen had trouble sleeping and went downstairs to sleep in the living room. When I woke up it felt ‘empty’ to not have Jen in bed next to me.

One of my first activities this morning was to download iTunes and started playing with that. Scott gave it high marks and I wanted to see if it was as great as everyone raves about.

It was another nice day today so we drove over to the Silver Comet trail and walked a couple of miles. It was nice to get out and stretch our legs. I really want to get a bike as I think it would be a lot more fun to ride down the paved trail on bike rather than slow walking.

All of the walked worked up our appetite and we went to Mama Fu’s for lunch. I had the tofu Pad Thai and it was excellent.

I was pretty upset about the whole china fiasco and after we got home I decided to write up an itemized timeline of all the problems we’ve had with Rich’s Macy’s and our bridal registry. I figured this would help to have handy when we call them up to explain our ordeal.

Jen and I worked together and came up with the following:

Jennifer & Jeff Billimek started a bridal registry with the Town Center richs-macys and have had nothing but problems. Below is a timeline of events that transpired relating to this registry.

1) Select and register for china in late November

2) Jen’s mother & grandmother go to Town Center location to buy things on registry. Sales person advises them that Jen only cares about money - not only is this incorrect but it is incredibly unprofessional attitude on the part of sales person.

3) Jen’s mother purchases 4 sets of the 5-piece dinnerware but the purchase never shows up on the registry and she never gets any type of confirmation about her purchase and so she cancels her order after this frustration.

4) Received email indicating that the china is on backorder and that this is perfectly normal due to stores having limited supplies on-hand. Email stated that the order would be delayed one month.

5) One month later we receive email indicating that the china is still on backorder and it will be another month.

6) About another month goes by and Jen calls the town Center location to express concern about the delays and problems. They advise that there isn’t anything they can do but apologies and tell us that they are sending a $50 gift card for our trouble. We never received the gift card.

7) After yet another email indicating that the order is on backorder, Jen called the Macy’s national customer service (where the emails are originating from) to inquire about the inconsistencies with the order and the info we were getting. The customer service rep explained that they were having trouble with the vendor (Wedgwood?) and said that they were sending a $50 gift card for our trouble. We never received the gift card.

8) Family & Friends who bought china for us started to receive emails and letters indicating that their order would be canceled unless they call/email within a short period of time to insure that the order does not get canceled. At no point were we told that this could be happening, despite us following-up several times.

9) Jen called the national customer service dept. to explain the situation (once again). The lady she spoke with, Kay, was very helpful and called around to different locations to get the china shipped out to us. It is unclear why we were not able to get this type of help the other times we called.

10) Jeff’s mother who ordered one 5-piece set has her order canceled despite her sending an email requesting that it not be canceled.

11) We had to contact one of the people who ordered us a set of china because he never (to this day) received an email or letter indicating that his order would be canceled. WE had to contact him to have him call Richs Macys to ensure that the order not be canceled. Currently we have not received his order and do not know the status of his order.

12) In late February we finally started to receive china but the china came in a box with no packing slip or any other documentation. The china that did arrive was not all correct. Two of the sets were a different color than what we ordered.

13) Nita from the Town Center Richs Macys calls Jeff and explains that we qualify for a ‘bonus’ vegetable dish due to us having an 8-piece order (from Jen’s grandmother). However the corporate office is challenging this because they have no record of it being purchased and she needs some sort of proof of purchase. She requested that we produce some sort of proof of purchase.

14) Jen called the Town Center location on the morning of March 6th and left a message about our increasing and continued problems. We still have not heard anything back from them.

Clearly the problems we encountered & continue to encounter are completely unacceptable. We cannot express how incredibly frustrating and negative this entire experience has been with Richs Macys.

We drove over to the ‘Car Spa‘ place to get Jen’s car washed. We splurged and spent $40 for the ‘ultimate turbo 5000 GT super extreme wash’. It wasn’t that great and definitely not $40 worth of cleaning. I don’t think we’ll be patronizing The Car Spa again.

When we got back home I went downstairs to the study and watched Resident Evil (from Netflix). I didn’t care for Resident Evil and have no desire to see the sequel.

At the same time I worked on iTunes. I’m not sure I like iTunes that much. Unlike Windows Media Player 10, iTunes cannot automatically download album art for albums. It also forces you to use only one type of naming convention for files (track number, space, song title). This is customizable in Media Player.

By this time the afternoon was getting late and we had a date so we took a shower and got cleaned up. Around 7pm we met up with Katie and Chris for dinner at a pizza place in Vinings.

Dinner was a lot of fun. I had a ginger ale and the four of us split a pizza. Katie and Chris are just friends but it felt like a double date, of course I’m not known for being very observant so I could be wrong.

Our waiter was a lot of fun and made the dining experience memorable. Jen and I plan on going back there some time.

After dinner we drove over to a neavy Kroger to buy some candy to sneak into the movie. I got a bag of sour starburst and pebble-sized sweet tarts. Once at the movie theater we bought a large-size bottled water.

Together, we all watched ‘The Aviator‘. It was a very long movie. I had too much candy and felt a little sick afterwards. We got home pretty late and went straight to bed since it is a Sunday.

Mar 7th 2005

blue monday (New Order)

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Because it’s a Monday, Jen had off from work today, so she got to sleep in while I got up and went in to work.

It was a very busy day at work today. A few of us went to Willy’s for lunch.

The weather today was cold and rainy outside - I really hate this type of weather.

I ended up working late today. Actually Sameer and I did. We worked together on a special project.

Jen told me that she resolved the china problem with Rich’s Macy’s. She called up their customer service department and spoke with someone competent. She explained the whole situation and said that we want to return everything for cash so we can get our china elsewhere. The lady she spoke with seemed ok with this idea and took down Jen’s contact info and said that she will call back with some details.

Because I’m writing this a couple of weeks after the fact, what we ended up doing was keeping the china and getting them to send out two replacements for the 2 blue sets but we will still keep the blue sets. This seemed to make Jen the most happy so that’s what we’re doing.

Jen also did some shopping today and started working on our taxes using the online TurboTax service. They did a pretty good job putting all of the fat-client functionality into a web application.

When I got home Jen showed me some of the clothes she bought from her shopping expedition. The thing that stands out in my mind is a sexy outfit consisting of a frilly black undershirt and a business coat to go over it.

Together we went over some of the tax info and realized that my Roth IRA statement was showing my $10,000 withdraw (to help pay for the down payment on the house) as an early disbursement. This worried me because it wasn’t supposed to be considered early withdraw for tax purposes since I funded the entire Roth IRA account with after-tax dollars and specifically spoke with a Fidelity tax advisor before doing so. I made a note to follow-up on that later.

Later in the evening we watched ‘24‘ and Jen read her book while I worked on the laptop.

Mar 9th 2005

moving to wordpress

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Today I switched over from Movable Type to Wordpress. I did a lot of playing around with it on my alternate site and then later on the main billimek.com site under a different directory. Once I was satisfied that Wordpress was the way to go, I switched over.

I like Wordpress because it’s all pure PHP and seems a lot simpler for modification purposes. There is also a great spam plug-in called Spam Karma which uses a multi-tiered defense strategy against comment spam.

During my evaluation phase, I worked on modifying an already-existing theme and integrated my random banner thing along with several other small changes.

I’m not 100% sure I want to stay with this theme and that’s ok. The way templates are used means that it’s super easy to test out and switch to new themes with little work on the backend.

Mar 12th 2005

shopping and dinner with friends

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It was a pretty slow morning and I did some work on my laptop. Scott came over around 10am. He’s returning to Tokyo tomorrow and we’re spending some time today hanging out with him.

Scott, Jen, and I had our laptops out in the living room and were all on the network swapping DVD’s and music. We used the external HD to do most of the heavy transfers. Scott also lent us his Frisbee golf equipment as well as some rock climbing stuff. We had a nice time with him.

Later, the three of us went to lunch to Swapna. Katie and Jen’s mom joined us. The weather today was awesome and I was very happy that it was sunny and cool - perfect spring weather.

After lunch the three girls went girl shopping and Scott and I went boy shopping. We first went to REI near perimeter mall. Scott was in the market for some good hiking boots. After going through several different pairs of boots, Scott was unable to find anything that he liked.

Next we went to Fry’s Electronics. I’ve wanted to go there for quite some time so this was a real treat. It’s pretty cool inside. They have tons of electronics all over the place. There is a huge selection of computer equipment and other various items. We spent quite a while there.

I was shopping for a cheap USB 2.0 hub as well as a cheap Ethernet 10/100 hub but I couldn’t find anything. Scott bought some things - mostly for his iPod. It was getting late so we headed back to my side of town.

We met the girls at Longhorn steakhouse. They were there for some snacks and drinks. Jen, Scott, and I went back to our place and wrapped up the stuff with the DVD & music copying. Shortly after that Scott departed.

Jen cleaned up the house a little bit and then Ethan and Ellen came over. We showed them around the house since they have not been here before. Ethan showed us his website with photos of their house renovations. He is running his photo gallery under ‘Gallery2‘ which is currently in an alpha version. It looked pretty cool and I may try to upgrade my photo album to Gallery 2 as well.

The four of us went out for dinner. We went to the nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner. We had a great time eating and talking. The cheese dip and pitcher of margaritas were delicious. Jen and I weren’t terribly hungry so we shared an entrée.

After dinner we headed back to our place and played a game of clue. It wasn’t as fun as I remembered from when I was little. After breezing through that game we decided to play Trivial Pursuit.

After some Smirnoff & Beer, we had a great time playing Trivial Pursuit until the late hours of the night. Eventually we finished and they left around 2am. It was a fun evening.

Mar 13th 2005

a perfectly lazy sunday

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Today was a super leisurely day compared to yesterday.

I set up a new web mail server for Jen. Previously we were using the antiquated ‘Squirrelmail‘. After some recommendations from Scott, I settled on the ‘Horde‘ web email program. It’s pretty powerful and is probably overkill for our two-user use but it has a lot more features and is nicer looking.

It took a lot of tweaking to get things set up correctly but I was satisfied once it was all working correctly.

We also worked on doing laundry and went to the store to get some groceries. Jen made a wonderful lunch consisting of veggie rubens. It was delicious!

after lunch, Jen read her book and I played World of Warcraft downstairs for a couple of hours. I also watched ‘Saw‘. It was a decent movie.

Jen finished her book and got bored and wanted to do something. A thunderstorm passed through quickly and the air had that smell of rain. We got cleaned up and headed out for a nice dinner together at Houston’s. We had our favorite dishes and a bottle of wine.

We came back home, watched Troy and finished up the laundry.

Mar 14th 2005

distccd

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This past weekend Ethan mentioned something about ‘distccd‘ to do distributed compiles. This would be great for gentoo. I installed and configured ‘distccd’ today.

Getting it installed and configured on the linux box was effortless. All I had to do was emerge it and make some config file changes to portage so it would compile through distcc.

I thought that installing distccd on the two windows boxes would have been easy too since it’s a package for cygwin. It was easy to get it installed and the server running on the windows boxes, but the compiles failed.

This made me realize that more was involved to compile linux code on a windows box. I needed a cross compiler. Some research revealed that others already came up with a solution to this and I found a really helpful wiki page that gave instructions on how to build a gentoo linux cross compiler on the windows cygwin instllation. I played around with this but had a lot of trouble.

I didn’t want to spend too much time on this and found another package of binaries with a gentoo linux gcc cross compiler and distccd already all packaged up. Installing this was a piece of cake and by the end of the day I had everything set up to distribute my linux builds across three boxes. It’s really cool!

22510 Compile write.tmp.turing.22463.ii freeside[0] 22528 Compile lookuptool.tmp.turing.22447.ii freeside[1] 21987 Compile vorbis_met.tmp.turing.21878.ii localhost[0] 22423 Compile track.tmp.turing.22274.ii localhost[1] 22559 Compile localhost[3] 22566 Send watchdog.tmp.turing.22550.ii wintermute[0] 22510 Compile write.tmp.turing.22463.ii freeside[0] 22528 Compile lookuptool.tmp.turing.22447.ii freeside[1] 21987 Compile vorbis_met.tmp.turing.21878.ii localhost[0] 22423 Compile track.tmp.turing.22274.ii localhost[1] 22565 Compile localhost[2] 22566 Compile watchdog.tmp.turing.22550.ii wintermute[0] 22567 Send c_wrapper.tmp.turing.22558.ii wintermute[1] 22510 Compile write.tmp.turing.22463.ii freeside[0] 22528 Compile lookuptool.tmp.turing.22447.ii freeside[1] 21987 Compile vorbis_met.tmp.turing.21878.ii localhost[0] 22423 Compile track.tmp.turing.22274.ii localhost[1] 22566 Receive watchdog.tmp.turing.22550.ii wintermute[0] 22567 Send c_wrapper.tmp.turing.22558.ii wintermute[1]

If I’m feeling adventurous I may try to get distccd running on the tivo and xbox too, but since I’m married I probably won’t.

Mar 25th 2005

late-night flight to san diego

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We attempted to get on the 8:30pm flight to San Diego. There was no problem getting to the airport on time but when we arrived I saw that our flight was delayed from a departure time of 8:30pm to 9:05pm. Not too bad, about thirty minutes.

Jen and I waited at the gate and got some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream while we waited. I called up Larry to give him an update on the flight.

After they started boarding the flight, they paused the boarding process because of some potential engine trouble. After about fifteen minutes they deplaned all of the people who were already boarded because they had to power-down the plane to try to fix the problem.

This delayed our flight even more and now it was delayed to about 10:30pm. I called Larry and gave him another update. Because our arrival time moved from around 10pm to midnight, he suggested that we take a taxi to their house since it will be so late. He promised to call back while we were in flight and leave me a VM with directions to give to the cab driver.

While we waited, Jen and I played with our shiny-new ipods (iPod photo, 40GB). 5,000+ songs is a lot to go through on shuffle so I definitely see a need for some playlists.

The flight was pretty full and as a result Jen and I were seated in different parts of the plane. I was actually in the middle row in the middle seat. I tried sleeping on the flight but had some trouble doing so.

What was interesting is that I was listening to my ipod during the flight while I tried to sleep. I felt like I was in a lucid state in which a five minute song seemed to last an hour. The flight was about five hours long (due to the headwind).

We arrived safely in San Diego much later than originally planned - around midnight. To Jen and I it felt like 3am due to the time change. We were pretty tired.

I checked my voice mail and noted that Larry arranged for a car to pick us up. How cool! When we made our way to the main terminal I saw a guy in a suit holding a sign with my name on it. He led us to a town car and drove us to Larry’s house (about 40 minutes away).

When we arrived at the house, Amy was up waiting for us. As I was trying to pay the guy, she gave him a $100 and sent him on his way. It was really cool for them to have us driven out to their place.

Amy was pretty tired too and didn’t spend too much time on pleasantries. She showed us to our room. This time we are sleeping in Lily’s room on the Aerobed air mattress. It seems to work pretty well. Amy got everything set up for us which was awesome.
Jen and I were exhausted and crashed.

Mar 26th 2005

hiking in laguna followed by a great night out

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Sunlight streamed through the windows of Lily’s room and Jen and I woke up to a new day in ‘Sunny San Diego’. Sleeping on the AeroBed inflatable mattress wasn’t that bad but we were both pretty exhausted so that might have factored into things.

Larry and the kids were already awake and we greeted them in the living room. Larry showed us their renovated kitchen and the rest of the house. The floors are all concrete as they are about to have hardwood installed.

Jen and I made some coffee for her, had breakfast (smoothie). After this we each took a shower in Lily’s large bathroom and got ready for the day.

As Amy woke up, we got things situated and packed up for our trip to Laguna (Cleveland Natioanl Forest to be exact). Larry, Jen, Lily, Tucker, and I headed out in the Yukon. Amy and Cal remained behind. Jen sat in the back seat with the kids.

On the way out we stopped at the grocery store to get some sandwiches for lunch on the trail. The drive out there was about 1.5 hours long. Jen read her book and I chatted with Larry.

When we arrived, we got all ready to go. Tucker wanted to carry his kid-sized backpack (with sleeping bag) but Larry was able to convince him that he didn’t need it and would eventually not want to carry it anymore.

(Tucker climbing on a log)

I took a lot of photos, using the sigma 15mm fisheye and the canon 50mm lenses. I absolutely loved the deep blue sky and sunshine. It was a great day. It was, however, a little windy and this made it cold. We all wore sweatshirts (Larry provided) and this helped a lot.

About half-way through we stopped for lunch at a large rocky area in front of the large pond. The sandwiches were great (I had bacon on my ham & turkey sandwich).

After the nice lunch break we continued our hike. I had a problem with my Hitachi 4GB microdrive. The camera was taking pictures with no complaint and even displaying the histogram. There was some sort of problem writing to the microdrive and I wasn’t aware of it until I tried to review photos. At some point during the hike, the problem started. I’m glad I caught it in time. I switched out the 4GB Hitachi microdrive with my old 1GB IBM microdrive and everything worked smoothly. I am more than a little concerned about this though.

(Jen got this photo of my & Lily with her camera)

As we headed back to the car, some wispy clouds started to roll in and I took several photos of mostly sky with the intention to convert them to black & white.

The kids did awesome on the trail. We hiked about two miles total and they didn’t complain or want to be carried (with maybe one or two exceptions). I was pretty impressed they did so well. Not bad for four-year-olds.

We made it back to the car and drove to Larry’s home. Jen and I relaxed a bit and sat outside in the sunny back yard.

I also took the opportunity to examine the Hitachi 4GB microdrive. I got pretty worried when the CF Card reader wouldn’t recognize the drive because I didn’t want to lose the pictures I was able to take and I was worried that the drive might be broken.

Fortunately I was able to hook the camera up to the laptop and was able to read the pictures off the drive via the camera. I formatted the drive and will continue to use it but I’m going to be on guard.

Around 3pm we got changed for dinner. Jenny the baby sitter came over to take care of the kids so Larry, Amy, Jen, and I could go out. We left in Larry’s new convertible M3 BMW. We had the top down. It was a fun drive because Larry took it pretty fast on the corners. They live in a great area for fun driving because it is a long windy road to the highway from their house.

We went to La Jolla and shopped around for a bit. After shopping we went to dinner at a place called ‘Fresh‘. Larry brought along a bottle of Switchback Ridge Cabernet for the dinner.

Dinner was fabulous. We had tappas-like appetizers to begin with and finished the bottle of wine. We ordered another bottle of red wine. Dinner for the four of us was pretty expensive, around $220 but we split it. Jen and I had a great time at dinner.

After dinner we went to a bar called George’s and had a glass of wine followed by some sparking water that came in a cool-looking bottle. We had a terrific time hanging out with Larry and Amy. It was getting pretty late even for Pacific Time, so I started to drag a little.

Eventually we went home and all went to bed. It was a good day.

Mar 27th 2005

easter

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Like yesterday, Jen and I woke up to a beautiful sunny day outside. I think the sound of the kids playing woke us up but in retrospect I can’t be sure.

We had breakfast and then showered. Larry wanted help with securing his WiFi network so I set up his Linksys router to use WPA-AES security (802.11i I believe). It’s currently the ‘best’ form of encryption that we can use. I was shocked to see that my laptop couldn’t recognize AES so I immediately downloaded a new version of the WiFi drivers (Intel 2200 pro) to update my wireless card to a new version that would do AES.

While I was updating the WiFi drivers, I also updated some other drivers. Jen once pointed out that I can’t seem to do just one thing on the computer. I set out to do one task and end up multi-tasking and doing a lot of other things at the same time. I think this drives Jen a little nuts. I see where she is coming from.

Jen was occupied with her book while she was doing this. She was sitting outside in the sunshine reading. While all of this was going on, the Easter bunny showed up and the kids went wild.

After they went through all of their candy it was almost time for the easter egg hunt. Larry, Jen, and I went around the large back yard and hid about forty eggs. Once this was done, it was time for the easter egg hunt.

It was a lot of fun for the kids as well as us watching. I used my camera (on jpeg mode since Larry doesn’t like RAW) with Larry’s fine Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens to photograph the action. The kids move around fast and it’s pretty tough getting good shots of them. I also had trouble getting shots of their faces since they were always running towards the border of the yard (where the eggs are hidden). I think out of a couple hundred shots I ended up with a few decent ones.

There were three special eggs with a chunk of pyrite in them. Each of the kids ended up getting one and they were pretty excited about it.

I used Larry’s CF card and never got a chance to transfer any of the pictures to my laptop so I don’t have any photos of the event.

It was beautiful outside today. We had lunch outside and the lunch consisted of tasty sandwiches and a veggie melody of fresh corn & other stuff. It was really good. I also had some good iced tea too. It was a nice relaxing time and a perfect day to be outside.

Larry and I began work on the zipline project. A while back he bought a kit to run a zipline between two trees. It was a pretty cool concept.

We measured the distance between some trees and decided on a 70-foot span between two trees on the peripheral of the yard. Getting it set up took much longer than I thought it would.

It turned out that we were missing a critical item and had to go to the hardware store in order to get it. Larry and I went and took his M3. He drove and we went fast. It was pretty fun. It was great driving weather and we had the top down. Driving past the citrus orchards yielded a nice citrus-smell from the lemons, limes, and oranges.

Larry’s car is a manual transmission but it doesn’t have a clutch. The driver can shift wither either the stick or paddles on the steering wheel. When shifting, the car automatically engages the clutch. The car handles great as I found out when we took the twisting turns of the road at higher-than-normal speeds.

The first hardware store we went to was closed on Easter, so we went to Home Depot which was open. We got the part we needed and in no time were heading back to the house.

We got back and finished the zipline project. It took longer than expected and it definitely would have been very hard with one person, so I think Larry was glad that I could help.

Once it was all set up, we tested it out. Larry went first and then I went. It was a lot of fun sailing down the high zipline across the yard. Jen, who was outside with us, took a ride too. Her wedding band and engagement ring pinched her skin during the arduous ride and she ended up with a nasty blister on her hand. Amy also came out and had a ride too. Fun was had by all!

Next it was time for the kids to go. This was, after all, supposed to be a toy for the kids and not Larry - or something like that. Larry rigged up one of the swings so the kids could sit and ride. I took some photos while they rode down the zipline. Tucker and Lilly had a lot of fun but Cal really enjoyed it the most. When we took him out he threw a big fit and kept asking if it was time to ride again.

Later we had dinner. Amy grilled up some filets of beef marinated in red wine. It was very good. We also had a salad ad baked potato. Larry opened up a bottle of red wine for us to drink and over all it was a nice dinner. We ate in the dining room. The three kids sat on a bench at the table and were quite well behaved.

A little while after dinner, they put the kids to bed and we later went to bed too.

Mar 28th 2005

back to atlanta

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This morning began pretty slow despite it being our last day in Sunny San Diego. Larry took the day off from work today and took the kids to day care.

Jen and I began watching ‘The Incredibles‘. As we started the movie, an Asian guy came to deliver all of the wood for the hardwood floors. Larry (who was back from daycare) and I helped him unload all of the boxes from the flatbed truck. With the three of us doing this it didn’t take too long.

We all thought about what to do today before our flight and decided on lunch at the Prado and then a stroll around the Balboa park area. Jen and I changed into our airplane clothes and packed our bags. Jen didn’t finish the movie but wasn’t too upset about it since she wasn’t getting into it.

We all took separate cars and drove towards the San Diego Zoo area (where Balboa Park is). Larry and I got there later than Jen and Amy and met them inside the restaurant.

Given that it was a Monday, there were a lot of elderly people around. We had a very nice lunch and I think I ended up getting the steak tacos. It actually turned out to be a nice day outside.

Amy had a doctor’s appointment so she had to leave after lunch but Larry, Jen, and I remained behind and walked around the Balboa Park area. I’ve been there once before and had a good time.

We walked by the pond in front of the botanical garden house. I got a photo of a flowering lily in the pond.

Inside the ‘plant house’ area we saw a lot of plants and flowers. I had my 50mm lens on the camera and got a lot of pictures. I ended up getting one of Jen that I’m pretty happy with. I’m so happy with that little 50mm lens.

I also got some macros of the flowers and for being handheld they didn’t come out too bad.

Eventually it was time for us to go so Larry drove us over to the airport. We checked in only to find out that our flight was delayed a couple of hours due to bad weather in Atlanta. Our plane was already at the gate.

This is one thing I don’t understand. At this point in time it was around 5pm in Atlanta. It is true that they had some really bad weather over the weekend but all of the weather cleared out by last night at the latest. So the weather in San Diego is gorgeous and the weather in Atlanta is also currently gorgeous too, so why is our flight being delayed 2 hours due to weather?

Later I talked about this with some of my co-workers and the only conclusion that we could come up with was that the bad weather from the previous two days caused everything to get backed up and so our ‘weather’ delay was just a result of the system getting caught up despite the fact that there hasn’t been any bad weather in either location for about 20 hours.

It actually worked out pretty well for Jen and I. We found a nice seat next to a power outlet and watched ‘Seabiscuit‘ (I ripped it before we left) on my laptop in the terminal.

The movie made the time pass by very quickly and we didn’t mind at all. To make things even better to my great surprise we ended up with first class seats next to each other - score!

The flight back to Atlanta was quite pleasant given our seats but we did get in late. We went straight home and went to bed in our very comfortable bed.

Jen and I reflected on our experiences in San Diego this past weekend and decided that we’re going to wait quite a while to have kids.

Mar 29th 2005

tv returns

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I decided to go into work late today since it was such a late night last night. As a result I slept in as much as possible this morning.

Work was pretty uneventful today.

For quite a while Jen and I have been considering a purchase of a plasma TV to mount over the fireplace in the living room. The existing tube TV in the corner wasn’t working out and this seemed like a great solution. I was pretty hesitant to drop so much money on a TV but Jen convinced me.

Just before our trip to San Diego we went ahead and purchased a 42″ Panasonic plasma EDTV from Costco. It was about $2300 and I was very happy with it. I did a lot of research and decided that this was the one we wanted to get.

Coincidentally, the day we got it and set it up Larry called and told me that he was shopping for a plasma too. The next day, over IM, he told me about the model he’s been looking at. It’s also a 42″ Panasonic EDTV but it is a newer generation (more colors, more greyscale, a few other things), but doesn’t come with speakers or a stand (like ours did), and is $400 cheaper. We don’t need the stand or the speakers so this seemed like a better choice.

We decided to return ours since Costco has such a great return policy. So tonight Jen and I took the TV down and boxed it all up to return tomorrow.

While I was getting it boxed up, I set a piece of cardboard on the sofa and it happened to rest right over an open candle and started to catch on fire. This startled Jen a little bit.

Mar 30th 2005

mid-week family dinner

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After work today Jen and I headed up towards her parent’s house. On the way we stopped at Costco and returned the plasma TV with no problem. With that out of the way, I’m going to try to get a replacement as soon as possible.

Jen’s Mom and Aunt (who came in from Seattle) recently got back from a trip to London. Her Aunt Sandy will return to Seattle tomorrow so we’re having a dinner tonight before she goes.

Jen’s grandmother was there. Katie and her friend-who-is-a-boy Chris were also there too. Everyone gathered around and we looked at the pictures from their trip on the television by way of the video-out from the digital camera. It looked like a nice trip. I can’t wait to go to London too.

Dinner was great. We had lasagna, salad, and some other things. I think Jen enjoyed spending time with her family. After dinner we picked up some extra speakers that Scott lent us.

I was pretty tired most of the evening so I don’t think I was too much fun since I wasn’t that talkative.

Mar 31st 2005

TH-42PWD7UY

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Our great friend Lynne asked if I could pick up her ex-bf (Mike) from the airport. I’ve never seen or met him before and he’s never met me before so it should be an interesting experience finding him.

An internet retailer called Plasma Depot is actually located north of midtown in Atlanta. I called them up and ordered the Panasonic 42″ plasma EDTV (TH-42PWD7UY). I arranged to pick it up locally from their office/warehouse.

I skipped lunch today and went to the Plasma Depot place and got the TV with no trouble. It was interesting to see the office & warehouse for this website retailer since they don’t have a normal ’store’.

I had a late meeting that lasted until around 5:30pm so I wasn’t able to pick up Mike until 5:45pm. I had no trouble finding him at the airport because he sent an email indicating that he will have a red camelback backpack on him.

Since neither of us have met before it was a little awkward. It didn’t make things much better that we were both introverts so the conversation didn’t exactly flow like water.

It turns out that Mike is a helicopter pilot for the Air Force and recently got here from Guam. When we got to my house, he helped me unload the TV from the car and carry it upstairs to the living room.

I opened up the salsa & chips for us to munch on while we waited for Jen to get home. Since we had some time to kill, I also unpacked and set up the TV. It was a lot easier to do this time since I knew what to do and that the wall mount was already installed.

Jen got home and we talked a little bit. She was pretty happy with the TV since I didn’t mention to her that I picked it up today.

Eventually we headed up to Taco Mac and met up with Lynne, Terri, Tom, Lisa, and Alan. I’m sure it was pretty rough for Mike to meet all of these strangers. Lynne seemed happy to see him.

Later, Jen and I came back home and went to bed.