Meanwhile, back on the homefront...

The tree is gone. I came home today and the tree cutters were just cleaning up. In addition, we got our permanent power connection this week. No meter, though. That must be coming a little later.

Next up is the fence. Looks like the gate won't be repaired, but that the fence will. Sounds fine to me. We never used the gate much anyway... nothing to keep from getting out of the yard. Also up is the gutters surrounding the electrical mast. Right now, water's just running down the side of the house, onto the meter housing and then down to the ground. Not a good situation at all. We need to find some way to cap the ends of the cut gutter and then shunt water away from the mast, into either side of the gutters. Also, I really really need to clean the gutters. They're beyond nasty. Perhaps I could convince the landlord to find someone to do it for us. I doubt it... they're spending enough on this house right now as is.

Once we get the fence and gutter fixed, I'll post pictures of the progress since Dec. 27th. Fun stuff.

Kill your TV ads.

I'm so proud. I didn't watch the Superbowel this year. (Yes, that was a deliberate misspelling). Instead, I spent the morning catching up shows on the TiVo (Junkyard Wars, in particular). I caught two movies this afternoon - the forgettable cult classic The Wild One, and the somewhat interesting The War Room. I'm glad The War Room was only 96 minutes long. I don't know how much more James Carville I could've taken. I spend a lot of time watching TV, but the difference is that I'm watching TV shows, not TV ads. I've had the TiVo for about 13 months now, and in that time I'll admit that I've lost out on a bit of American pop culture. But, I still stop for the VW ads.

Speaking of TiVo, I'm heavily debating getting a TurboNet adapter. I want to get it so that I can dump my phone line once and for all. That's a cool $30 month that I won't have to spend for something I rarely use. Problem is, I've heard varied reports of success over at the AVS Forums. I'm going to have to keep researching. For those interested, I have a Series 1 Philips HDR212 TiVo, which is still stock.

Another exciting work week starts up tomorrow. Woo! At least I have this to keep me entertained until then. :-)

They're baaaaack!

Our landlords are back in the states, after being in Korea for the last three weeks. They came by today and surveyed the damage at the house. They even relit the pilot light on the furnace. We'll see how long that'll last. I wish I would have seen how they did that, so I can do it myself next time it goes out (I'm sure there'll be a next time).

Overall, things are getting better here. Even without the furnace, we used space heaters around the house and they did a great job of heating the place. Sure, it takes a while to get the place heated up, but once it's warm, it's warm. And, the cat loved laying in front of the oil-filled radiator out in the living room.

DCLU came by on Thursday and did their inspection of the electrical work. Now it's only a matter of time before City Light comes out and puts a meter on the house. It sure is nice not to be metered :-)

Nicole and I are looking at getting another cat, a friend of sorts, for Asha. I hope they get along. We saw a couple real cute cats at the shelter today.

Went out to see Two Towers on Friday night. Oh my God. That was incredible.... much better than Fellowship. I still have yet to see Harry Potter, but I hear it's good. I spent this three-day weekend catching up on TV watching, and managed to catch Disc 3 of Band of Brothers, and Bringing Out the Dead. Band of Brothers is great. If you liked Saving Private Ryan, go rent Band of Brothers, or catch it on HBO (if you haven't already). Oh, I also spent a small amount of the weekend working on my friend's XP box, just doing a little preventative maintenance on it - defrag, chkdsk, virus scan, etc.

Back to regular life....

Our flight out of SFO was delayed Friday night by about an hour and a half. Alaska called me while we were out at Alcatraz. No biggie. We caught the flight, and made it back here okay. But, now it's back to normal life and all of the crap that comes with it.

The pilot light had gone out on the furnace. At a rate of $234, we called a tech to come out and relight it for us. Well, it's out again this morning, and I'm not calling anybody to relight it. I'll just go find a decent portable heater and make do until the landlord gets back. I can't afford to dump any more money into this money pit of a house. I'm stretched thin as it is.

The guy who relit the pilot light yesterday told us of the condition of the furnace: it's 27 years old, it's possible that there's a rusted out heat exchanger tube, and we should get a new furnace. Oh, and the kicker is the estimated efficiency of the furnace - 60%. Most modern furnaces nowadays have an efficiency rating of 80-90%.

Well, at least we have electricity, right?

Weird... that's a funny magazine!

Nicole and I made it into a picture on Wired News about the line atmosphere at the keynote. Go to http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,57117,00.html and click on the picture of the two boys with laptops (it's on the left). Nicole's there taking a nap on my leg. It looks like she might be doing something else, but she's not, so buggar off!

If you're goin' to San Francisco....

...make sure to visit MacWorld Conference & Expo.

Nicole and I went to Steve Jobs's keynote yesterday. It was incredible. I've been keeping up with the keynotes for the past couple of years, and this one was a biggie. I won't bore you with all the details, as there are plenty of sites out there that will do that already.

The only thing that sucked about the keynote was waiting in line for it, however I did get to meet some very interesting people. And, true to the power of wireless networking and Rendezvous, an ad-hoc Rendezvous network sprung up and I was chatting with other people in line that were on the "iChat over Rendezvous" network. That was very cool. We got into line at about 4:30am, with about 50 people in front of us. The seats we got in the Esplanade weren't too great, but they weren't too bad, either.

I must get a 12" PowerBook. I've been saying for a long time that I wanted a 12" iBook, but that I'd hold off until it had a G4. Well, now the PowerBook's here, and it's beautiful. The 17" PowerBook is massive, but also very well designed. It definitely is a desktop replacement machine.

Today starts the Users' Conference at MacWorld, and Nicole and I are going to a few of the scheduled talks. Apart from that, we're going to try to do a little sightseeing, and visit SFMOMA today or tomorrow. Time to go look and see if MUNI has a trip planner.

Ah, sweet relief....

The cable's been reconnected. What a wondrous day. This means no more dialup Internet, or antenna for TV. I'm very happy.

There's still the matter of fixing the gutters, fixing the fence, and removing the tree, but apart from that we're moving right along. The electrician is almost done with his work, and soon we'll get our permanent electrical connection from Seattle City Light.

Nicole and I are off to San Francisco on Monday night for Macworld. I can't wait, although some of the rumors I've read have not been very encouraging. If Nicole's Sidekick works fine from within Moscone center, we'll probably update this journal in real time. Neat-o, eh?