It's Snowing!!

Its snowing again here… though I don’t think we’re going to get near as much snow as they were saying a couple days ago. But who knows, we shall see.. We did get a good inch or two yesterday, though then it rained so a lot of it melted:( But, its snowing again pretty good, so maybe we’ll get another couple inches. Which would be super cool, as I love snow. It at least makes everything look pretty vs just being icky and cold and muddy.

On another note, our house is now decorated - or at least, its as decorated as its gonna get :) We have a nice little tree ontop of the old icebox, up and out of reach of Andros - which was the whole point… Some ornaments, lights and garland. What more do you need? At least the log cabin looks festive though, which is nice.

I made chicken noodle soup yesterday for the first time, and it realy turned out pretty darn good if I must say so myself, which is awesome, cause’ I basicly made it up as I went along. We’re going to have it again for lunch today, hopefully its at least as good as it was yesterday - soup usually is!

He Hates his Carseat:(

I really don’t understand why Andros dislikes his carseat so much… he screamed for most of the ride home from Lehman’s today, and it was just horrible :( While we were there he was great - happy as could be, just looking around at everything. But, just as soon as we got in the car he started just screamingi and screaming. I was really thinking we were kinda past that last week because he was so good in the car! But, obviously not. Well, I’m very pleased to say that we have finished our holiday

Anyways though, we went to Lehman’s and got all the rest of our holiday shopping done! Which is awesome… now I just have to start baking :D I think I’m going to make mostly buckeyes & chocolate covered pretzels this year, with just a couple batches of cookies. Supposedly Kevin wants to help… I’m somewhat suspicious on that count, but who knows.

I think tommorrow we’re going to go look for our tree… we just want a small one to go ontop of the icebox… I haven’t been keeping an eye out for one though, so I can’t think where theres any off the top of my head, hopefully either Dad or Kevin will have some ideas.

Finally!

Well, I really did not expect to spend all day long working on my grandpa's new iMac... but I did. About half the time was spent on technical support... because it didn't come with OS X pre-installed, I was trying to upgrade it. And, apparently the CD with Leopard that came with it is faulty. Which, was my guess after 15 minutes. But, of course, it took 2-3 hours on the phone for apple tech support to figure that out!!

But, after that it was (mostly) smooth sailing :D And, in anycase its up and running nicely now. iChat, Mail, Address Book, Safari - everythings working, with all of grandpa's stuff. And, I got him OpenOffice for writing his papers and such :) I chatted with my aunt for a big chunk of the day, while getting everything set up... we even did a three-way chat with her and her daughter, which was pretty cool.

I just really, really wish that I could figure out a way to video chat with everyone else... I still can't quite believe that there is absolutely no AIM vidoe chat client for linux...

Anyhow... I never really made it shopping while I was up there, so now I'm shopping (as usual) online! Probably cheaper this way, anyhow;)

Computers & Shopping Hurrah!

Ugh. So today we went up to visit my grandparents and get their new iMac set up. It came like a week ago, but between us being sick, them being sick and their trip down to the Biltmore, its just sat in a box since then... In anycase, I figured it'd take me about a half hour to get it all set up and then another half hour or so to show grandpa how to work it. I figured that sounded fairly reasonable. Don't you?

Well, it wasn't. For starters, I could not figure out how to install their cable modem (Motorola SB5101) from Time Warner on the Mac. I had the install disc, but it simply did not work. I read the instructions and it just was *not* working. I'm not sure if it was a windows-only disc somehow, or if I'm just totally stupid. Who knows. Of course, Motorola's site is totally unhelpful. Lots of info on how to install the damn thing for Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista... but not a word on OSX!!

The other big hang up was (is?), that they have been using AOL for the past several years, and there is apparently just no good way to get ones contacts, email and bookmarks off of AOL. I mean, I understand *WHY* AOL makes it soo hard to do so... but that doesn't mean I have to approve. Ugh. Mind you, its just made me all the more determined to figure it out, one way or another....

And, finally, I could not get it to upgrade to OSX Leopard. Since its so new it came with the install disc (although it wasn't pre-installed)... but, when I put it in the drive, and it started restarting the computer... it'd just lock up. I didn't share this with either grandpa or anyone else as I figured it'd just piss them off. I found it both bizzare and obnoxious, but don't know what I can do, really.

In anycase I'll probably be driving back up either tommorrow or the next day to finish up, and then go holiday shopping some more. We did manage to find gifts for both my brother and his fiance' and Kevin's sister and her family though.... Which basicly leaves just my mom, and his (Kevin's), mom & stepdad, and his grandparents... Hopefully we can make it over to Lehman's sometime here soon and figure them out

Ubuntu

Well... I had the bug the other day to play with Linux again - something I haven't really had the chance to do in going on two years now... So I went ahead and started the 3-day long process (yes, you read that right - 3 DAY process, I'm on dial-up. Still.) of downloading the newest version of Ubuntu (6.10) - After all, 3 days of no phone calls is better than waiting 4-6 weeks, right??

Anyhow. I finally got it downloaded, at which point, it occurred to me that I inexplicably did not have any blank CDs - so I ran to town, and bought 20. Got home, burnt it, got it installed. OK, all good so far.... only I couldn't figure out how to get wvdial to configure for the life of me, so I figured I'd just reboot to windows... and realized that my boot loader had gotten changed, and I was thus locked out. So I started trying to figure Grub out, gave up after a bit an figured I'd just throw College Linux back on, and all would be good, right? Wrong. Long story short, after (trying to) install various old Linux flavors I realized I'd somehow accidentally formatted my Windows partition... So I re-installed Ubuntu. And after a bit more effort... figured out wvdial. And am currently loving Ubuntu.

Now, when I say that, I really mean it. For the first time, I've successfully gotten my modem working, my sound card working... hell, even my iPod's up and running (I'm listening to it right now!!). In short, I really don't think I'll bother to re-install windows... I can't think what I need it for. Now, its always possible that at some point in the future I'll want/need it... but, for now, meh.

I think it all boils down to the fact that I've been living off of other people's computers for the past 1+ years. As a result, most everything I actually use on a day-to-day basis is online to one degree or another - pictures (smugmug), email (gmail), documents (google docs), and of course all my mp3's are on my iPod, so not even they have been lost this time around (and even if they hadn't been, my wonderful brother burned them all to CD when I formatted THAT in Spain!!)

Anyhow, its just a really strange feeling to be totally free of Windows for the first time, well, ever. And not the least bit worried/unhappy about it. As I think about it... my computer probably needed a good format anyhow - its been a good 4+ years after all.