Last night, all three of us were quite tired, so we went to bed early. Apparently Erin wasn’t feeling well, so she didn’t get to sleep until midnight, which is unfortunate, because William woke up at 6:00 and wanted to watch TV…I got up with him until I had to get ready for work, so at least Erin got those extra few minutes of sleep. The plan is for William and I to go out shopping tonight (to pick up those couple of gifts that I have planned, but haven’t bought yet) so that Erin can have some quiet time to relax and maybe get over the cold that she’s been battling.

So, not much new with us anyway.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Now for my favourite part of the show! ….what’s that say?” - Krusty

I spent some time in the basement yesterday, and got the speaker wire all strung up in the appropriate places. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to get around to for a long time, but it always seemed like there was something better to do. Now all I have to do is mount the speakers and the projector, and paint the screen on the wall, and the theater room will be open for business. Ok, not business per se, but it’ll be usable anyway.

I don’t have much else to say. We’re in the middle of the last full workweek until next year, and I’m quite looking forward to some time off to recharge the batteries, and get things organized the way we want them at home. It’s insanely nice to have a central location for our tools, so that when I need a drill for something, I know where it is. We didn’t really have that at the old place, so that’s been a positive change. Even if not all of the tools are unpacked yet. I think we’re going to find that the storage in the kitchen will take some getting used to as well - I think we have slightly less cupboard space now than we used to, but the storage space that we do have is laid out a lot nicer (I think) Dual sinks is a nice change too - we’ve never had that in all the time that Erin and I have been together.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Excuse me, Lisa, but I couldn’t help but overhear your nerdly predicament. Maybe I can be of assistance with the dancing and the twisting and the [singing] kung fu fighting. Deedle-deedle dee dee doo.” - Professor Frink

I really wanted a burger for supper last night. I don’t know why, but I really really wanted a big juicy burger, with all the associated toppings. So, we went to Fuddruckers, and I got to have a really really big juicy burger with all the associated toppings.

We ordered a hotdog for William, but the girl at the counter thought we wanted the hotdog meal, so instead of just a hotdog, he got a hotdog, fries, drink, cookie and free tokens at Ruckers (a local arcade/amusement type place located in the same parking lot.) After making a complete tour of the games at Ruckers, we decided that William might like this one particular game where you aim a big air powered ball gun at a giant clown, and try to knock all his teeth out, one at a time. I did the aiming, and William did the shooting. He thought it was great fun (and it was) but it was over too soon.

After supper, I made some more progress on my quest for Christmas shopping excellence (apparently I have a legendary status to live up to…) and knocked another gift off of my list. Only one small problem - the thing I want to get won’t be available until a couple of days after Christmas. Fortunately, we’ll be exchanging gifts at new years instead of Christmas, so I should be able to pull it off. I hope that the person who this particular gift is for doesn’t go out and buy it for themself after realizing that they didn’t get it for Christmas though.

So, now I’ve got my shopping mostly done - have to go out and pick up a couple of things still, but at least I know what I’m getting. There’s a distinction between my Christmas shopping and Erin and my Christmas shopping though, so we still have some thinking to do. We did get an early start on some gifts (we got at least one gift on Halloween, if I recall correctly) but there is always more to do.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I told you officer, I’m not ‘hepped up’ on ‘goofballs’!” - Ned Flanders

We had a relatively low key weekend. We got some more unpacking done, and some Christmas shopping done. Erin has had a bad cold, so she spent a lot of time sleeping it off. Other than that, not a lot of newsworthy happenings.

Here we are two weeks from Christmas, and I haven’t even thought about what to get some people. Usually by now I’d be done my shopping completely, or at the very least only have a few small things to pick up. Not this year. With the move and everything, I guess I kind of got distracted from it. I guess I’ve still got time though.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “We must fear that which we do not understand” - Homer

I saw the news item that Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 had been released into the wild. I think Thunderbird is a great application, and I’ve been using it at home for a while now. I installed whatever version was current when the new laptop was purchased, and hadn’t upgraded since, because I didn’t see any compelling reason to.

So, I upgraded.

Whoops. Apparently after the upgrade, my pop3 server connection no longer worked. I couldn’t get mail. I could send mail, and I could see all of my old mail, but trying to get new mail just timed out. They have mail/settings importers built into it for Outlook, Eudora, etc. etc. etc. but can’t seem to import prior versions properly. After browsing the “support” forums, and being unsurprised at the surly attitudes of people “helping” others out, I downloaded an older version, uninstalled 1.0 and everything is working fine again.

Now, support isn’t fun, and it isn’t easy, but basically telling anyone who’s having a problem that they’re an idiot instead of asking for more information is a pretty stupid approach to take. Seeing a question like “I upgraded from 0.8 to 1.0 and now Thunderbird won’t download mail from my pop3 account” responded to by “you probably typed your password wrong” is just plain silly.

Buried in the avalanche of unhelpfulness, I did find one post that at least gave me hope, it had advice for how to turn on logging. I did that, and got a message about a timeout, but I didn’t have time to follow up on it. I’ll have to try again once things have settled down from the move and Christmas and stuff.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Hey German boy, go back to Germania!” - Nelzon Muntz

Erin’s Mom flew back to Calgary yesterday, so last night was our first night in the new house without company. Not that we did anything different than we did for the previous seven nights :)

I had a good news/bad news/good news thing happen to me today. Yesterday, I ordered a new PC from NCIX.com. The machine that this server runs on is an old creaky P200, so it seemed to make sense to upgrade at some point. With the transition to the new house, it made sense to do it now. Anyway, I placed the order, and was looking forward to it’s arrival either late this week, or early next. This morning, I saw an article that mentioned that the platform I had just built my PC around was likely going to be on End of Life at the end of the year. I expected it at some point in the next 12 months - probably in the 6-12 month range even. Less than 30 days though? That’s a swift response to my new purchase. After seeing that, I got to my email, where I had a notice from NCIX saying that my credit card payment had been declined because the address didn’t match up. Reprieve! I tricked the obsolescence fairy into obsoleting a platform that I will now not purchase :) The downside is that now I have to redo all of my research for the new platform.

So, that’s where I’m at right now.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Well it’s not your original bear of course mm-hey, but it’s programmed to be just as cuddly.” - Professor Frink

Just as I arrived at the bus depot this morning, it started raining. Maybe rain isn’t the right word. It was like I was being showered with slush. Slushing, I’ll call it. It wasn’t hard/solid enough to be called hail, but it wasn’t liquid enough to be called rain either. It certainly wasn’t snow. Maybe it was a thixotropic precipitation. I dunno

Erin and I managed to get a couple of boxes unpacked and put away last night. I also got a child lock installed in one of the drawers, but it doesn’t work properly. It’s one of those magnetic ones, where you pass a “key” over the outside of the drawer, and supposedly the latch releases. Worked great until I put the screws into the drawer. I think we just need a stronger magnetic key, which is a shame. Otherwise, it seems like quite a slick little device.

Not much planned for the weekend, other than expected unpacking/organizing. Oh, and Darren’s birthday thing. Otherwise, it should be a fairly low-key weekend