I’m feeling pretty lazy today, but it’s a nice change from the past 3 weeks. The business trip went fantastic, installation went much smoother than any of us imagined it would.

The weather’s pretty crappy right now, 10 degrees (F) with a wind chill of -10 thanks to the 40mph winds. It’s supposed to get clear tonight, which I was excited about; but not if it’s that cold. My telescope has been outside just once in the past 3-4 weeks because of the weather.

Last weekend I purchased a pair of 802.11g wireless cards to upgrade our wireless network here at home. Prior to this, our linksys cards had software that managed the wireless connections – and it did a very poor job at it. With the new cards, I haven’t had my connection drop once! Not to mention the speed boost. Very pleased.

Next up is to track down a cheap scanner to replace my malfunctioning one. That sounds like an easy task until you realize everyone thinks you want a scanner/printer/fax/copier/dishwasher combination.

One of my Christmas presents from Ana, the Radio Shark, was delivered yesterday. This is one cool piece of hardware, you can definitely tell the company designs it for Apple machines. I’ve tried it out a couple times and it’s great. The software leaves much to be desired, but hopefully they’ll be able to update it in the future.

Tonight we’re having both families over for New Year’s. We’ve gone and purchased a set of folding chairs to help the seating situation, and rented a couple nintendo games (Mario Tennis and Mario Kart) to keep us occupied. Lots of cleaning to do now, but it should be a fun evening at home.

Last night my cat was walking around the house and Ana noticed some tinsel hanging off his tail. Except when she went to go pull it off, she found that it was hanging out of his butt! Doh, stupid cat eating the tinsel!

A while back I posted about software called Plone. At that time I didn’t have a use for it, but that has changed. I am setting up a Plone for my astronomy stuff and have just finished moving my observation logs over from Wiki.

If you want to get an idea of how I’m using it, check
http://home.ejinnovations.com:8080/astronomyplone.

New observation logs are located at
http://home.ejinnovations.com:8080/astronomyplone/Members/eajhnsn1/observations/

It has been a while since I’ve last posted, not a whole lot has been going on. Last night after work, Ana and I went to a few stores and purchased all the necessary Christmas decorations we’d need today. We also picked up our Christmas tree and decorated it before heading to bed last night.

Today has been very busy but now all of the outdoor lights and decorations are up, and there are only a few remaining things to be done inside. Tonight is LRS’ annual Christmas Party so we’re getting all cleaned up for that.

The rest of the month looks to be pretty full. Next weekend we are hosting Ana’s work’s Christmas Party (just her division, not all 500+ in her building!). The weekend after that we are heading to the Illinois Symphony Orchestra for their Holiday Pops concert with my family. Should be very enjoyable.

Pics of the decorated house coming soon.

He’s been on our porch every day now, just quietly curled up on our cushions. He’s there in the morning when we leave for work and in the evening when we arrive home. After some discussion, we’ve decided to start feeding him. We’ve sort of adopted him as our “Outdoor Kitty”, to quoute Ana. When we took a bowl of food out to him tonight, he took to it very quickly and immediately started purring.

Ana’s already planning an outoor bed for him, a counter part to these.

Awaiting the start of Game 4, hopefully the cardinals will show up to play. They’ve been very flat these past three games, it’s pretty depressing to watch. They still have a chance, but it’s probably just as big as my chance to catch a glimpse of the lunar eclipse tonight through the heavy cloudcover. Sucks indeed.

Here I sit, watching the player introductions for Game 1 of the 2004 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Saint Louis Cardinals. It should be one hell of a series, quite fitting that these two clubs meet for the 100th Fall Classic. My prediction is the Cardinals taking it in 6, although it wouldn’t be suprising if it goes the full 7 games.

I originally had plans tonight to go to a dinner theater at an Illinois Winery with Ana. Plans changed when the game time was announced, so Ana took her mother instead of me.

At some point during the game I have to go outside and get some pictures of the moon for my project, it’s very clear outside and the moon is in the Waxing Gibbous phase. Crossing fingers that I’ll get some good shots.

GO CARDINALS!

As many of you may recall, we had major trouble this spring and summer getting Construx out to fix the sump line as they agreed to before us purchasing. Well we’ve got a lot of rain today. The basement is dry, but we have a small river out back going to the drain at the end of the street. About 30 seconds after I hear the sump pump going, I see a nice fountain popping up in the back yard.

I’ve gone out and discovered the pvc sump line has pulled apart a couple inches at a joint, it’s quite apparent they didn’t use any glue on the joint. I’m not sure I can describe how angry I am right now.

As mentioned earlier, I had purchased the wrong type of circuit breaker. Today we went back to the store and got the right one. An hour later, all the computers downstairs were plugged into their very own 20 amp circuit!

Within the next few weeks I hope to get to wiring the two remaining circuits.

In other news, we picked up a cheapo 20″ tv for our bedroom, I got tired of trying to see our small 13″ one from across the room without my glasses. We found the name, Konka, to be pretty funny so we’ve voked to never call it a TV… it’s Konka.