power.

a battery backup has been purchased. whee! now watch it not be used.

this is my 301st post, according to blogspot. i'm surprised it lasted this long.

[update 3:37pm] i am surprised at how simple it actually was to install, including the friendly monitoring software. although i am now out of usb ports o.O

misunderstandings.

thanks to his research for school and youtube, i have finally seen the jon stewart clip where alaskan senator ted stevens now-infamously mixed metaphors regarding an attempt to describe what net neutrality is all about. everyone has jumped on his "the interent isn't a truck that you just dump stuff on...it's a series of tubes." i can understand why. it really is a wonderful sound bite.

but it's also not the most disturbing thing about that clip. the man is obviously elderly, obviously confused, and obviously misinformed. but i can understand why you'd attempt to describe the internet as tubes, mostly because a more common metaphor is to talk about pipes (all sexual innuendo aside).

the real horrifying quote, the one where he really displays his complete and utter ignorance and why we should be afraid of him is later on. growing, apparently, increasingly more frustrated with his inabilty to make his point, he says, "why...why just last friday one of my staffers sent...sent me interent. and i didn't get it until today!"

one of his staffers...sent him internet. the whole internet? that might explain why he's so flustered.

maybe he should be training his brain. no internet or tubes involved. oh. and believe people when they say sudoku is addictive. believe them.

counting down.

4 weeks until vacation! woo!

recovery.

my computer is back. i guess it just needed a little rest. when we tried it again in his office about 4:30 yesterday afternoon, it happily powered up, and has been behaving ever since.

i may try to convince him that we need to drive back to compusa today and get me a battery backup all the same. i am not sure luck can be counted a friend any more than lightning can.

in other news, i think i may need a new laptop. i have discovered that a P-II 300 and 64MB RAM are not enough to browse any reasonably demanding website anymore *cough*. hmm. maybe an ibook? o:)

lightning is not your friend.

we had to run to compusa last night because he needed some parts for work. they're currently having a "warehouse sale" which includes things like old non-hd plasma tvs and all of their remaining ppc macs.

one of the displays was of battery backups with a sign on it that said, "lightning is not your friend!" we laughed and thought it was a cute gimmick and said, wow, it must suck for everyone who lost power in those storms earlier this week.

so we get the stuff we need, which doesn't include a battery backup, and we go home. on the way home, it starts to rain heavily and there's thunder and lightning. it was pretty spectacular. but we get home safe and turn on the computers and start doing all of the time-wasting crap you do on computers, blissfully ignoring the storm outside. our power company seems to be a lot better, or at least, have a lot more redundancy built into its network than the one that services the philadelphia area, and we almost never lose power. at most, we have a few brownouts in storms like these, and everything is on surge protectors anyway.

well, we actually did lose power for a few seconds around 10:30pm or so, i guess. naturally, my computer shuts off. oh well, i think to myself, it was time i went to bed anyway. so i played a little brain training...er...brain age. i don't know why i always think of it with its japanese name o.O and i go to bed.

the computer doesn't turn on this morning.

i am currently typing this on my 7-year-old laptop left over from college and trying not to kick myself for not buying that UPS last night, or at least actually turning off and unplugging my machine when the lightning got close. it's just one of those things, i guess. whenever you play it safe, it turns out to have been totally unnecessary, but then the moment you get lulled into a sense of security, wham. hmf. we're hoping it's just the power supply, but to be honest, i wouldn't mind a new motherboard. the northbridge fan on mine is dying and either abit or paypal or both need to both suffer sever injuries with something preferably blunt and rusty for charging my credit card but not shipping the replacement fan. sigh.

so remember, kids: lightning is not your friend. and it's not you computer's friend either.

plumbing.

mmm. first home repairs. he sort of broke the faucet in the kitchen sink, so we went out and bought a new one. it's really quite daunting to be standing in front of a wall of kitchen sink faucets, especially when you have no idea if you have a one, three, or four hole sink installation. the price range is also quite ridiculous, ranging from about $35 all the way up to close to $500. and does brand really matter? what do you get for a $450 faucet that you don't get for a $45 faucet?

in the end, we settled on a swoopy kohler model (to coordinate with all the other moen faucets in the house ;) with a hand spray thing, since we had determined before hand that there was a hole and a pipe for one. his dad came over to install it. the last time my dad tried his hand at plumbing, he put everything back together backwards. one thing i did learn is that our old faucet had copper pipes connecting it to the water supply, while this new (more expensive) one had nice braided flexible stainless steel ones. the latter are apparently preferable, as we have them on our washing machine as well, and everyone said they were.

the new faucet is the perfect height to fill my watering can.

vacation and acquisitions.

we spent last weekend up in rochester with my sister again, just like we did last year. this time, the rest of the family came up too. except for having to sleep on an air mattress, it was actually pretty relaxaing. mom and dad bought us lots of food. monday after they left, we all went out and spent 6 hours on the boat. we only caught one fish this year, another king salmon at something like 22 pounds. we also didn't get nearly as many pictures, partly because the camera battery died while we were still out in the middle of lake ontario, but also because with my parents and little brother up, we didn't have a free day to go visit wineries this year (he's not old enough to drink yet. legally, at least).

however, due to this vacation, the two of us are now proud owners of Nintendo's DS Lite handheld game thingy. last wednesday was his birthday, and we didn't really get to celebrate it, and on top of that, he had to stay in my sister's apartment sunday doing homework while my brother was out on the boat, mom and my sister were shopping for clothes, and dad and i were shopping for wine. so when we got back, he decided he'd had enough of homework, and he wanted to go shopping too. at an EB store in a mall, he got to play a demo of metroid prime hunters and decided right there and then that was what he was going to spend his birthday money on.

so how did we end up with two of them? i'm still not sure. he's been in a funny mood recently, where apparently i need to acquire things that i'm ambivalent about. when we found the deal on the lcd screens, he insisted i had to get one if he was getting one. when i wanted to return mine, i was not, apparently, allowed to go back to using my CRT. no, we had to run out to compusa and get me a new one.

monday morning after breakfast, he left with my brother, and returned with two DS lites. so now i have one. whee! i've barely even had a chance to play it yet, but it looks pretty fun. it's going to be really interesting, i think, when we get the new console from nintendo (i still haven't resigned myself to the new name), and we'll both be able to hook our DS lites up independently and download content or use them for multiplayer games (i have also been informed, by the way, that we will be getting the new console. this is not an option).

it is, i have to admit, a very pretty little device. i would have been willing to wait around for the console launch to get one, or until nintendo decided to ship other colors over here. it's going to take me some to get used to it, but i am glad the time was taken to make sure left-handers can play some of these games ^_^ otherwise, that would have been a pretty big waste of money. i wonder if the wiimote will also allow hand switching. hmm. even though i haven't had much chance to play, i do like the idea of "pick up and play" games. and everyone else seemed to be having fun with it (while they played brain age or tetris on my ds lite, i read through my sister's copy of harry potter 6).

i think i will go play some tetris now, in fact.

i give up.

third year in a row. i buy cilantro, transplant it, and then it bolts and dies. supermarket for me from now on.

in other news, the basil, rosemary, sage, and tomatoes are doing nicely. i'm still nursing my parsley back to health after it was attacked by a vicious caterpillar.

hope everyone had a good fourth. everyone who had it as a holiday, that is ;)