If you haven't noticed my absence here... well... :P to you.

If you have, it's not been your imagination. I've just been consumed by other things and don't have the time for LJ that I used to. (Not having an office has contributed greatly to this.) I've not even been reading my friends page.

This may or may not be a permanent situation. We'll see. I'm considering my options.

All in all, I'm doing well. Rumors of my demise are (as always) greatly exaggerated. In the meantime, I *do* microblog on http://twitter.com/jachee and possibly on http://tempeszt.tumblr.com

But really, for the time being, I'm living up to my name, and am wholly an ex-blogger.

Ugh... Stupid Daylight Savings Time.


I guess it's bedtime...

So far, being 30 hasn't been bad. It feels about like 29 did. Thanks to everyone who wished me well.

I've found myself with some time on my hands at work, and thought it'd be a good idea to update.

I'd like to upgrade my computers at home. My Mac is on the list of systems that won't run Leopard. My PC won't run the recent graphics update for EVE. The G4 could be brought into modern times for about $250. The PC will probably have to be replaced. It's really done me a good service, being I bought and assembled it in 2002 for ~$650 and only needed modest upgrades as time has trudged on. I've put together a wishcart on newegg for a replacement system for around $530 shipped. I'd love to run the latest incarnation of Fedora on it as the primary OS, but I'll probably run Ubuntu on it for playing EVE.

I've been playing my acoustic guitar a lot lately. I've gotten to where I can string a series of chords together fairly well, I think. I still have to fudge things in the B and F family sometimes, but G,C,D,E,and A type chords are fairly easy with minimal thought. I recently purchased and installed a set of Elixir strings on my Electric guitar so that I can try new things. Alas, its intonation is shot all to hell, and the best way to fix that, according to timemachinego (who I trust) is to take it to a pro.

Car-wise, I need to finish up prepping and repainting the MR2 wheels that synphreak gave me, so that I can put tires on them and put them on the CRX. It's also going to need a new clutch soon. Fortunately, synphreak and dingodingo have offered to help in that endeavor.

Looking forward to 2008, work-wise, I'm going to very rapidly acquire my MCT cert, and begin the trek toward CCNP. I've begun studying for the BSCI test.

I've also been tracking my finances using an interesting site called Moneytrackin'. It has helped me to visualize where my money goes each month. A major goal of mine is to bring my net worth into the black for good. Step one of The Motley Fool's investment strategy is to get rid of any debts. So, that's where I'm going to try to route all my extra money. Once that's done, I plan to start saving, and hopefully investing.

So there's this careercruising.com thing going around (if not on your friends page, then on mine.)

I decided to check it out, and see how far off my current career is from their suggestions, (based on 2 sets of questions) Cut so I can show the variety of each set of questions's results:

( First Series (39 Questions) Results: )

After the first set of questions is finished, there's the option to answer a lengthy second set of questions to narrow things down and/or re-order the jobs. The questions tended (in my opinion) to relate more directly to the actual work environment rather than what one would prefer to do.

( Second Series (56 questions) Results: )

A lot of interesting stuff in there. Alas, most of the second set's top 10 require a degree to even consider. Among the interesting things is how often Management type jobs appear. Maybe management is like math, one of those things that I'm good at, but don't particularly like the idea of it.

So, I've finally come into the 21st century way of watching TV: Time-shifted. A friend had a spare TiVo lying around (I don't need four) a few months ago, and I expressed interest in it. It's a series 2, 80-hour model. I had to get a USB Ethernet adapter to get it onto the home network, but that wasn't a big deal. A few reboots, downloads and connections later, it was up and working.

A TiVo without any pre-recorded programs is simply a pausable, rewindable TV buffer. That's not very exciting in and of itself. So, I browsed around and set up several programs as Season Passes™. Mostly stuff princessmargo and I watch already. However, part of the point is to be able to find new stuff.

So, if you have one, what's on your TiVo this season?

I'm missing out on this:



for the second year in a row.

... but I just made a very yummy Semi-homemade dish.I call it (for lack of trying to find something better) Easy Mexironi.

Well, it was mostly pre-packaged, but it ended up very tasty:

( Here goes: )

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Life is going well.

More later.

Any questions?

Prompted by the random comment on my last entry, I updated my 101 in 1001 list. It's hard to believe this thing is nearing the end. Sadly, only a few of the unfinished tasks are feasible to finish in the given timeframe. All the ones that don't get finished will go on the next list.

I've probably not put forth as much conscious effort toward this as I had first envisioned, but some of the goals were pretty lofty ones.

So, any suggestions for additions to the new list?

SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS MOVIE!

7 . 4 . 7

It's Mint to Be! Behold! I planted 2 different kinds of spearmint (the one in the foreground is destined for birdofparadox) as well as applemint, lemonmint, and lemon balm.

I'd say that this is a post about gardening, but it's really just a flowerbed that I'm working with. One of the few communal water spouts is on the outside wall of our apartment. It has a habit of being leaky, making the flowerbed outside our bedroom window a swampy mess. I mentioned this to princessmargo's mom, and she insisted on helping me in getting turned into something nice.

So, we went to a garden center in Oxford, and I picked out several plants that will do well in a shady, soggy area, and give us some ground-cover, as well. I picked out 3 different kinds of spearmint, applemint, lemonmint, and lemon balm. They love moist-to-wet soil, and prefer shade to sun. They'll get some sun in the afternoons, but for the most part, it's a shady spot in which they're planted.

I'm excited to see them already (about 3 hours after the photo was snapped) looking more healthy and happy. Perhaps I inherited a bit of my mom's talent with greenery.

I also briefly pruned back the rose bushes in the back yard, as well as mixing up a batch of fertilizer to distribute among the newly transplanted mint, and the rose bushes.

YAY! Got one! Circuit City had 4 left that weren't on vouchers. I got there at 10:05, walked right in, said "I want one of those and one of those" (spare Wiimote) they said "Give us some money", handed 'em my card, and boom. Mine!

Getting it online now.

According to Circuit City's Website They have Wii Consoles in stock. I plan on being there at 10am when they open, and attempting to snag one. I may, if I'm up early enough, head to target to see if I can ask their price scanners about available stock... North Jackson is listed as "Limited Availability." (Learned that trick online.) If that fails, According to GameStop/EBGames/Babbage's website several locations around the metroplex have "more on the way." Which I hope means tomorrow.

I also read, tonight, the article about the guy who did a 6-week experiment, in which he lost 9 lbs, 3inches in his waist, and over 2% off of his body fat rating with just 30 minutes of Wii Sports a day.

I installed a copy of Proximity. I had already paired my phone with my Mac, so that step was already done. I specified the phone in Proximity, then wrote the following scripts to update my Adium status based on my proximity. Credit where credit's due, rsayers helped me out with the base scripts to modify Adium's status, though I had to put the statements in the order below to achieve the desired effect. One snag I ran into, actually, was that it seems that the scripts have to be directly in my home directory and executable by all (chmod +x) for Proximity to be able to run them.

So, without further ado, the scripts:

( Here There be AppleScript )

I really like it so far, and it really helps my friends get an accurate picture of when I am or am not at my computer. Feel free to steal, modify, critique, or ignore this.

Taking a small break from week 2 of my new job here at New Horizons Computer Learning Center. I'm going to be teaching my first class next week. I'm pretty excited and just a bit nervous about it. So far, it's been a pretty sweet gig. Last week I observed a Windows™ Vista® class, and this week I'm preparing to teach A+ class next week. Last week, the latest I was at work was 4:35, and that was because I hung out afterward to talk to John, who was teaching the class.

I'm sure I've told most of you that I see in Real Life™ about it, but I'm going to gush more about it here, because I've been REALLY REALLY enjoying my Memorex 2GB USB 2.0 TravelDrive That I picked up in our local BestBuy for under half price ($29.99+tax). It's got portable versions of Firefox, PuTTY, WinSCP, VNC viewer, Skype, and a Wallpaper Changer that lets me plug into a PC wherever I am and it feels like home. Handy, considering that I don't really have an office at the new job. Just various workstations, depending on what I'm doing.

I also got a new phone. I'll be making a locked post shortly with the new (yes, again... :P) contact info. It's got bluetooth, so I picked up an adapter and was able to iSync my iCal to the phone, and populate my Address Book from it. I'm inching toward organization at a snail's pace. I'm also looking into Bluetooth proximity stuff to automagically change my Adium status based on wether my phone is in the room with my Mac or not. It's not turning out to be easy.

All-in-all, I'm doing well, though it'd be awesome if we could find princessmargoa job that doesn't suck. Speaking of her, our 18 monthiversary is this Friday! A year and a half! Seems like forever and no time all at the same time. If I'm lucky, Friday the 13th will also be the day my Federal Income Tax return gets deposited, and it's payday, to boot!

Why I've been offline lately This is the situation behind the switchplate in our bathroom. it's a mess at the best, and a beast at the least. The electrician should be here to fix this sometime this week.

Seems the people who ran the electrical connections in our apartment decided to use Aluminum conduit in the slab, instead of galvanized. Being that our apartment is on the bottom floor, and the complex is within spitting distance of a creek, we've been flooded in the past. The most notable being The Easter Flood of '79. As a result of the flooding, the aluminum pipes electrolyzed themselves into goo, thus leaving the wires running in prettymuch bare concrete.

If you look closely at the picture, you'll see that there are 6 connections happening in this lone double-switch box. the ones that go down are routed through what used to be the conduit. Unfortunnately, the blue wire on the bottom left (currently capped with a red wire nut, and disconnected) powers 6 outlets, and 2 lights, all spread out through "my" half of the bathroom and the computer room, including the outlet in the living room wherein the TV and cable-modem plug. It's apparently shorting to ground at some point and tripping the breaker for the circuit.

They're supposed to be coming in later this week (Yeah, the week I have off between jobs, that I had planned on staying home and playing video games and such.) to re-run the wiring that's underground in wire-molding. Unfortunately, this means that, in order to post this, I'm gleaning internet from one of my neighbors, using princessmargo's laptop in our room. (Thanks, belkin54g!)

So yeah, blargh... I'm bored. I have the box wired (because of said boredom) so that half the bathroom has a light/fan and the light in princessmargo's closet all work, but that still leaves me without other entertainment.

For reasons that are beyond the scope of a public entry, the move to Curaçao is off.

Life, for the most part, is going to remain the same, except I'm still looking for a better job.

( A Diagram )

Alas, I'm in the "Bad" category. Pop-a-lock's arrival eminent.