Jeff Billimek’s Journal

A cold and dreary day greeted us this morning as we checked out of the hotel and made our way to ‘Lou Mitchell’s‘ for breakfast. I was in a semi grumpy/whinny mood this morning mostly due to the cold and drizzly weather. I didn’t pack correctly and was cold.

Half-way to the restaurant I decided that we should take a taxi (I’m pretty cheap sometimes) instead of walking through the rain without an umbrella.

Jen and I had a wonderful breakfast (as always) at Lou Mitchell’s. I think we both had waffles with strawberries. We had to be pretty creative in how we packed since we had more stuff to bring back.

After breakfast we took the train to the airport. It was a long train ride and I listened to my iPod and read the ‘Digital Photographer’ magazine.

We ended up missing our original-planned flight and had to wait an hour till the next flight. Our seats were in the exit rows and the flight itself was uneventful.

When we got to Atlanta, Jen and I wanted to go out for some dinner at a place with outdoor seating. We drove to ‘Soho‘ in Vinings but found out that they are not open on Sunday. Instead we went to ‘Garrisons‘ in the same vicinity.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside today - much nicer than the weather in Chicago. Sitting outside for dinner with a bottle of wine was a real nice treat and a nice way to end the weekend. Overall the trip to Chicago wasn’t that stellar (probably because of the lackluster weather) so this was a nice upbeat way to end the weekend.

(Jen looked really good today)

Jen and I both had steaks for dinner but they weren’t that great. However the atmosphere and conditions were quite pleasant and it was a positive dining experience as a result.

(Jen took this photo of me)

I had some time this evening after we got home so I played with the brand-new version of Windows XP for 64-bit processors. The newly-built desktop downstairs happens to be an Athlon 64 so I was really curious about the x64 edition of Windows XP. It was just released and I had a copy.

Because I planned ahead, I loaded it all on a completely separate HD in order to minimize problems with the existing install. The differenced between the non-64-bit version of XP and the 64-bit version were pretty much lost on me. The only thing I had to watch out for was that all device drivers needed to be special 64-bit versions. For nearly everything this was not a problem. However, the HP PSC 1315xi printer drivers aren’t available for x64 at this time.

I think I want to eventually migrate over to Windows XP ‘x64′ but not until more driver support is published. The bottom line is that I had a great time learning about this and that’s always a good thing.

I was up pretty late last night playing World of Warcraft so I had a hard time waking up at the same time as Jen.

She still managed to drag me out of bed and convinced me to go shopping with her. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. We had a fine time shopping.

We went over to Costco near perimeter mall and did some shopping. Yesterday Jen stopped by and looked at bikes. I need a bike and have had my eye on a full-fledged mountain bike from Costco. When Jen went yesterday she saw another bike called a ‘comfort bike’ which is a hybrid between a mountain bike and a street bike.

I looked at them closely and together we decided that the comfort bike was the best choice. It still had shocks but a more comfy seat and easier handlebars. We also got a helmet for me. With that, we’re all ready to go bike riding now.

After Costco we headed to T.J. Maxx and Marshal’s to look at the fancy ‘Color of Benetton’ luggage that Jen wants. It looked pretty cool. I think Jen wanted to make sure I like it too before she buys it.

Next we went to CompUSA so I could buy a 4GB Hitachi CompactFlash microdrive. Service there was horrible. I couldn’t find anyone to help me and even when I found someone, they were impossibly slow. All I wanted to do was purchase something and they made it so hard. I don’t understand how a retailer can make it so hard for someone to give them money.

While I was waiting around for help in CompUSA, Jen went next-door to Target and bought some Murphy’s oil soap as well as a bucket (we don’t own a bucket).

After we got home, Jen began to do some major cleaning. She used the Murphy’s oil to clean ALL of the hardwood floors. She did a really thorough cleaning the floors.

I was really wiped out from a lack of sleep and all of the shopping today so I took a nap while Jen cleaned. Jen woke me up and informed me that the TiVo was acting funny. I went downstairs, pulled out the laptop and logged in to take a peek. A quick look through the kernel logfile showed a ton of drive seek errors. Not a good sign.

I rebooted the TiVo and attempted to do a file system check (fsck) but that didn’t help. All signs pointed to the HD being completely dead. Indeed, the TiVo got stuck in a reboot loop because it never successfully exited the fsck program. It was time to operate.

Jen and I made an emergency trip to CompUSA in order to purchase a new brain for the TiVo: A shiny-new 200GB HD. Once again, we had poor customer service from CompUSA. I really don’t like shopping there (or Best Buy) but when I cant wait for something mail-order I must endure higher prices and bad service.

It would have been easy to load the stock image from the old backup drive but I never like to do things the easy way. Instead I thought this would be a fun opportunity to upgrade the TiVo to the new 4.x software. Unfortunately I haven’t been keeping up with the TiVo hacking scene and needed to get caught up.

After wading through the message boards over at dealdatabase.com I finally collected enough info. I really don’t enjoy reading the forums at dealdatabase because a lot of the regulars there have this awful attitude towards new people and take the mantra that everyone should learn how to do everything from scratch on their own with no help. I think part of the idea is that they want to keep TiVo hacking away from the masses and make the techniques as unavailable as possible. Perhaps if more people knew how to do it, then their incredibly time-consuming niche expertise wouldn’t be that ‘great’ anymore - I’m not sure of the motivation.

I took a break from the TiVo hacking to spend some time with Criag online in WoW. We made plans to play together tonight and I was looking forward to it because I don’t get to play that often. However, Craig was busy doing his own thing so I puttered around and tried to wrap up some solo quests but we never actually managed to hook up - not sure why.

I logged off early and went back to the TiVo hacking task. I was actually up really late working on it and didn’t get it quite done. I went to bed really late but without a working TiVo. It was pretty frustrating.

I had a frustrating dream last night. Actually it was more like a nightmare. In the dream I was going through some sort of drive-through nursery to buy a house plant.

When I pulled up to buy the plant, the mid-eastern-looking guy said, ‘Can you please show me your golf club?’ ‘Why do I need to show you a golf club?’ I replied. ‘You must show proof that you possess a golf club in order to buy plants’, the guy explained. ‘That doesn’t make any sense! I don’t have a golf club; I just want to buy this plant.’ I shot back.

The guy then proceeded to tell me, ‘Due to heightened security from terrorists, the Department of Homeland Security has deemed it necessary that you can only buy plants if you have golf clubs because only law-abiding citizens who play golf have a need for plants. The only other use for plants is to do terrorist activities.’ This made absolutely no sense and was idiotic at best. I tried to reason with the guy that there were tons of legitimate uses for plants, no possible nefarious uses of plants by terrorists, and it is incredibly easy for a terrorist to show a golf club to buy a plant in the first place! The guy wouldn’t budge and did not sell me the plant.

I woke up feeling very frustrated and pissed off at the state of fear and irrationality we all live in now.

When I got home from work Jen and I headed out to the Silver Comet trail to go bike riding. This was our first time to ride bikes on the trail as we’ve only walked before.

It was a lot of fun and I really like my new bike. Jen and I traded bikes on the way back and hers wasn’t as fun as mine. She has a mountain bike and the seat felt as hard and uncomfortable as a rock. She, on the other hand, loved my bike. We need to get her a new seat ASAP.

I managed to talk Carole into letting me work from home today. That was very nice and I’m so grateful to Carole for the flexibility.

Jen and I made plans to meet for lunch near her office. I got lost on the way up there and the lunch ended up taking a long time since it took me so long to get up there.

While I was getting lost somewhere off Riverside Drive, John S. paged me to activate a component in the integration environment. I took care of it as soon as I got home.

Jen and I went to lunch at Rolly Polly. I love that place and wish there was one near my workplace.

After lunch we stopped next-door at the Sport’s Authority to purchase a new bike seat for Jen’s bike.

The previous upgrade to the 4.x version of the TiVo software had some glitches. I think the mfs ‘image’ I used wasn’t the best. I wasn’t happy with the problems associated with the lack of background images in the menus so I did some more research and discovered that a newly-released ’superpatch’ for the 6.2 software enabled MRV (multi-room viewing), HMO (home media option), 30-second skip, and backdoors.

I decided that the 6.2 version of the TiVo software is the way to go since it is reported to have much faster guide & menu speeds as well as ‘folders’ in the now showing list and channel icons.

The upgrade this time went extremely smoothly thanks to a clean image and tools I found. I’m very happy with the TiVo now. I got most of the existing ‘hacks’ restored but there are a still tweaks that need to be made.

In the evening Jen and I had dinner and watched ‘Meet the Fockers‘ on DVD. It was pretty funny but I prefer the first one.

I stayed up pretty late tonight playing WoW. I got a lot done and was pretty pleased with the progress. It was fun because I made it through the entire Maraudon instance. I had wanted to get through that for some time now. The great thing about that is that my character can now use the Thrash Blade which kicks butt.

Jen went over to Katie’s house (with external HD in tow) to help Katie get set up on the new computer. Actually it isn’t completely new but it is Jen’s old computer that we gave to Katie. It’s much better than Katie’s old computer.

I spent literally all day long balancing our finances in MS Money. I had been slacking behind and needed to go through about two months worth of statements to get everything entered and balanced. It’s probably a very marginal gain doing this but I do like it and think it necessary to do. I think one day it will pay off to have such an accurate accounting over ever asset and liability.

We had some wonderful Tofu Rubens for dinner. My culinary world has opened up so much ever since I met Jen. She’s introduced me to so many wonderful new foods and dishes.

I’ve been trying to get out to Harrisburg to visit Mom-Mom since last Fall. I feel really bad that we’ve been going all over the place to other than to visit her.

Today we’re finally making it up to Harrisburg and she is very excited about it. Like most of our trips, we woke up early and headed to the airport. We had a lot of time before our flight so we stopped at the very first ‘Dwarf House’ chick-fil-a in Hapeville.

I’ve been there loads of times for lunch with co-workers but this was my first time for breakfast. Jen wasn’t too happy with her food and I didn’t have much of an opinion of mine.

When we got to the airport and checked in, we were shocked to see the security line longer than I’ve ever seen it before. The longest I’ve ever seen it was around Christmas of 2001 when security was super tight (it was shortly after 9-11).

I couldn’t figure it out. It was a Saturday morning (usually light) and a non-holiday weekend. All we could do was wait. The line took about an hour to get through and as a result we missed our flight to Harrisburg. I was pretty bummed because the next flight was three hours later.

Fortunately I had my laptop and a Netflix DVD (The Life Aquatic). We found a seat near a power outlet and watched the movie on my laptop. I really enjoyed the movie. It was a lot ‘different’ than anything I’ve seen in a while so it was a nice change of pace.

After the movie we got some lunch at the Burger King in the ‘D’ concourse near our gate. The food made Jen sick and she was pretty upset for eating it.

We made it on the next flight and the plane ride (a little 50-seater CRJ) to Harrisburg was uneventful.

Since the last time I’ve been in Harrisburg, they have renovated the airport and now it looks very nice. I as quite impressed. We got our rental car (it’s always easy with Avis) and headed to Mom-Mom’s house.

When we arrived, we sat in the living room and caught up. She was happy to see us. Later, her neighbor Brian came over (he’s around my age) and the four of us had spaghetti for dinner. It was really cool that Mom-Mom didn’t give Jen meaty things in her food. She did give me some really tasty sweet salami in my pasta salad. I enjoyed that thoroughly.

After dinner Mom-Mom did a much-too-thorough cleaning job in the dining room and kitchen while Jen, Brian, and I sat in the living room and talked. Brian seems to do a good job looking after her and I think it is a good thing.

Eventually Mom-Mom joined us and we continued to talk. She told Jen about her and Pop-Pop met. Later Brian left and we continued to talk and catch up. What more is there to do?

Jen and I turned in early and went to bed. We were actually pretty tired from the traveling and heavy dinner.

I felt like crap this morning and should have just called in sick. I was booked solid pretty much all day with important meetings and didn’t want to miss them so I went into work anyway.

This was a mistake and I couldn’t focus at all. My symptoms were flu like but medicine didn’t seem to help. After sitting through a meeting but not being able to contribute or keep up, I asked Carole if I could go home. She gave me permission and I drove home.

When I got home around 1:30pm, Jen was getting out of the shower. I went to bed and she went out to do some shopping.

About four hours later I woke up and did some puttering around the house. I was still not feeling too good. Jen came home a little while later and brought a lot of good medicine for me.

I had chicken noodle soup for dinner and together we watched the season Finale of ‘Desperate Housewives‘.

After our super-long security line experience last Saturday, Jen suggested that I check the Atlanta airport website for line info today. I did so and all morning up until we left the house at 7am, the website showed the security line as being ‘less than 10 minutes’.

Now the thing is, the website advertises the time estimates as ‘real-time updates’, so I had every reason to believe that it is accurate.

Misinformation is worse than no information at all. What we experienced this morning was misinformation. When we got to the airport, I was horrified to see that the security line was super long, just like last week!

It took about an hour to get through the security line. As a result, we missed our flight - and just barely too. As I walked up to the gate I saw them closing the door and it was too late. With the new ‘operation clockwork’ they close the door exactly ten minutes prior to departure with very few exceptions.

I guess if we got all panicky and ran and really rushed as soon as we got through security, we might have made it. I thought we had enough time. It sucks even more because we both would have been up front in first class on that 8:30am flight we missed.

So, we had to wait 2.5 hours until the next flight. Fortunately I had my laptop and a couple of DVD’s. Jen suggested that we watch an old anime called ‘A Wind Named Amnesia‘. I saw it about ten years ago with Craig when I was in high school. It was one of the first anime movie’s I’ve seen and I remember thinking it was good.

We went by Chick-Fil-A to get some breakfast and then found a couple of seats next to a power outlet and watched the movie. The movie wasn’t that good.

After the movie, it was time for our flight. We headed to the gate just as they started boarding zone 1. We were still on the standby list but a minute later were cleared into seats 1A and 1B (first class!).

The flight was pretty good. I read a little of my book and worked on my laptop. I actually did about an hour’s worth of coding for an exchangeval change request.

Jen watched the in-flight movie, ‘In Good Company‘ and then fell asleep. When she woke up near the completion of our flight, she was groggy and didn’t feel well.

In fact, as we deplaned, Jen felt really ill and had to use the restroom. She drank a lot of water the rest of the day and slowly recovered. We weren’t sure why got felt ill towards the end of the flight.

Larry, Amy, Tucker, Lily, and Cal picked us up in their black Yukon. We drove over to ‘Old Town‘ and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Being that it is a holiday weekend, the place was crowded and we had to wait about fifteen minutes for a table. The salsa was nice and spicy and I liked it a lot. I had the fish tacos.

During lunch we discussed the Austin trip and I mentioned that Katie wants to see Austin, and she used to be a nanny. Everyone was interested in the possibility of her going to help take care of the kids. Larry and Amy seemed very keen on the idea.

After lunch we went back to the house of Larry & Amy Billimek. Since the last time we were there they installed the new mahogany hardwood floors. They looked really nice and seemed quite smooth.

Cousin John was supposed to come over this afternoon with his girlfriend Michelle. They were on vacation down in Mexico and were going to stop by on their way back to Irvine.

We ordered some pizza and Jen & Amy went to go pick it up while Larry and I remained home with the kids. I helped Larry with the WiFi router because he was having signal strength problems with his laptop in the bedroom. I suggested that we disable encryption and enable MAC address filtering. That didn’t really help.

I remembered an episode of ‘The Screen Savers‘ where they showed how to convert the Linksys WiFI router antennas into focused directional beams using cardboard, glue, and aluminum foil. I quickly found the website and printed out the directions and templates.

We spent some time outside in the large back yard with the kids. They are a lot of fun. It was nice outside and it was a great day to chase them around and throw the ball. They also had this fun toy to launch a helicopter type thing in the air.

Amy and Jennifer returned with the three pizzas and we ate. John canceled his visit because he was running slow or something, so we may see him tomorrow.

During dinner we discussed our trip to Napa Valley. Jen and I want to go to Napa for several days near the end of July and got some advice from Larry and Amy on what to see and where to stay.

They put the kids to bed, Jen read them a bed-time story. Later I helped Amy with the TiVo remote to allow it to control the receiver and also change inputs on the television.

It was getting late and we were tired, so Jen and I went to bed early.

At Jen’s request we went out for breakfast this morning to a place called ‘Milton’s‘. We went there the last time we visited and loved it. Jen was very excited to be going to Milton’s today.

Breakfast was great. I had a breakfast burrito and Jen had an order of French toast - they were both excellent. We really like having breakfast there and it was a treat for Larry and Amy to take us.

After breakfast we headed out to the beach. I was already wearing my beach clothing. We went to the same beach that we visited once before to see the sunset.

The weather was decent and Amy brought along a beach tarp thing to spread out so we didn’t get too wet from the sand. This was the same beach tarp that Jen and I sent out as a gift earlier.

We sat on the beach to soak up some sun. I had Larry’s 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens on my camera and took a lot of photos.

At one point Jen and I were walking along the beach and Larry snapped a paparazzi-type photo of us:

Eventually we left the beach and went back to the house. Jen and I changed (I think I took a quick shower). We packed up and soon were on the road. Much to Larry’s dismay we were not able to put the top down on his convertible. It turned out that our luggage in the trunk was somehow interfering with the automatic mechanism to stow the top of the car in the back.

We got to the airport earlier than usual since I was paranoid after the super-long lines in Atlanta on Friday. It was no problem for us to check in and make it to the gate area with about 50 minutes to spare.

While we were settled into our seats waiting for the flight, I looked around and noticed a young woman chatting with what looked to be a pilot in uniform. From the way he was acting and looking around, I presumed that she was his younger wife/girlfriend. I then got a bit cynical and mused that she was a buddy-pass holder and would get better seats then Jen and I. Of course that isn’t how it is supposed to work - or at least that’s what I thought.

Eventually the gate agents arrived and the pilot I saw earlier rushed up to speak with them. I didn’t think about it anymore after that point.

As they started to board the flight I was called up to the podium and the agent explained to me that there was only one seat in first class and if I wanted to split up from Jen. I knew Jen would appreciate sitting in first class so I agreed and got her a boarding pass for first class and one for myself in coach.

I had the entire row to myself in coach class and spent the entire flight working on my journal. I didn’t watch the in-flight movie ‘Because of Winn Dixie‘.

The flight was a big bizarre. The pilot seemed unusually afraid of turbulence and put on the seatbelt sign at the slightest bump and kept the sign on for about 45-minutes after that even though it was completely smooth. The result was that people were not able to use the restroom very much.

After we landed in Atlanta and began to deplane I noticed the buddy-pass girl from earlier was sitting up front in first class. After we got home I logged into the system and checked. Sure enough she was a buddy pass holder and was cleared into first class. It was because of this that Jen and I were split up. I was pretty upset.

Later, with the help of Casey, we checked detailed info in the system and found out a trail of what happened. It didn’t look legit. At the urgings of some of my co-workers I sent an email to the station manager and later got a response back that said something about the agent making a mistake on the clearing procedures. I don’t really buy that but I did all I can do. Fortunately this sort of thing doesn’t happen that often.