My parents recently gave me their Tivo since they were switching to Insight’s DVR. I’m already using Insight’s as well (dual HD tuner) so I don’t need the Tivo for its recording capabilities. Instead, I have installed Galleon and now have mp3s, among other things, in my family room.

The introduction of yet another device into the entertainment center finally forced me to spend some time really configuring the remote I purchased a few years ago. We now have everything driven from the one remote, with macro buttons to quickly do things like watch a dvd, watch cable, and listen to music.

A couple days ago, in an effort to clean out some of the comment spam my blog has been experiencing I deleted quite a few comments and accidently took a few legitamate ones with them. Sorry Scott, I know at least one of yours was accidently wiped out.

Following David’s lead, Happy Holidays everyone.

We have also been able to get our house decorated.

The tape drive I purchased back in 2001 finally came in handy today. I was able to restore my important data (code, documents, etc) from 10 days ago (would have been more recent if I had seen the drive acting flaky a week earlier) and photos from a bit further back. Luckily I have many of the missing photos still on the hard drives of my laptop and desktop machines. So, all in all, I really only lost a lot of music I spent a few days ripping. Whew, what a relief.

At the time I purchased the tape drive, it was around $300 and I questioned the necessity of the device – that was a pretty expensive purchase for me at the time, being a student and all. Today, without it, I would have been willing to pay a LOT more than $300 to get my photos and data back.

Over the next few weeks I plan on getting a better backup solution in place. I was extremely lucky this time, as I became lazy and my backup machine offline for a few months. It was less than a couple weeks ago that I started getting it back online and performing backups. I NEVER want to experience that aweful feeling ever again.

My fileserver at home just lost its storage drive. Shit.

All of you that have a DVR at home, set it to record a show called Random/1 on A&E and give it a try. Ana and I think it’s a pretty amazing, real-life show. Go to the website and look around to get an idea of what it’s about.

Last weekend was Jay’s bachelor weekend of sorts. It started with some LAN games on Friday night, followed on Saturday by paintball, a tool shower, and more LAN games. Talk about exhausted on Sunday.

That was my first time playing paintball and it was awesome! I’m very glad I decided to buy the gear and look forward to playing again.

Where the hell did November go??

Here it is, the first of December, and we have snow on the ground! My coworkers and I (those of us in the “POD”) have our window blinds open and christmas music playing loudly. Currently playing: Bing Crosby singing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing/It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.

note: the POD is a group of 4 cubicles arranged in a square, a nice collaboration environment.

Currently playing: Frosty the Snowman

Well I can’t believe it has been a few weeks since my last post. Not a whole lot has happened, but it sure has been busy. Work is busier and more hectic than ever before – there’s so much to do, and so little time

Congrats to Jay and Katherine on the purchase of their house (large picture alert..). Ana and I have been helping them out with odds and ends – painting and other random new home chores.

Two weekends ago I watched my telescope crash to the deck out back. I had attached it to the mount and started balancing it, when it just rolled right off the mount and hit the floor. I couldn’t believe it, histarical is probably the word to best describe it. The tube got several good sized dents, which made me sick, but the optics appear to have survived just fine. A couple days after the incident I purchased an automotive dent removal kit that worked wonders on the tube. Thank goodness.

Today I discovered that Civilization 4 was released, so after work I headed over to Best Buy to pick up a copy. I’m not much of a gamer, Civ games are the only ones I’ve ever really consistently purchased ASAP. My hardware isn’t anywhere near spectacular but it met minimum requirements on everything and met recommended on most; the game runs like shit. I’m not anywhere near the only one though, people who have spent much much much more on their gaming machines are having the same problems I am. Hopefully a patch will be released soon.

That’s it really. Like I said, not much new stuff going on.