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Niagara Falls – Arrival, Aviary

My friend Stephen and I took a trip up to Niagara Falls, Canada over the 4th of July weekend. We left midday on Thursday, stopped in my old stomping grounds of Seneca Falls to fill up with gas and say hello to an old friend, and arrived around 11PM in Canada. We checked into Ambiance By The Falls then went downtown and found Hard Rock Cafe where we had some late night snacks and drinks before heading back.

Friday started out with a trip to Bird Kingdom. I’m afraid of birds, but have been trying to get over the fear – so, aviary!


The one on the left is a very scary looking hornbill, that I think was following me around…


…and this is me being scared of turning my back on said scary hornbill

Network configured

I have my new network set up at the house. Michael gave me a static IP of my own (and a pretty reversal coming soon!), so I now manage my own network at the house. I’ve developed into quite a capable sysadmin over the past year, and running my own firewall and network will allow me to further develop those skills – plus I won’t need to nag Michael every time I need a port opened. Since I needed my network and machines configured for work anyway, I spent a bunch of evenings this week setting it up.

I have a zillion things to blog about and piles of pictures to share. My trip to Niagara Falls with Stephen, going on a Wine and Cheese train ride with Michael, my trip up to HOPE with my friend Mike from New Jersey. Hopefully will have downtime soon to get to writing about all these things…

I was listening…

…to a show on NPR and somehow in the conversation it came up that people only write in diaries when they’re sad. I was never one to write in diaries, and in my blog I find that I do the complete opposite. I haven’t been the best at posting lately, and although I’ve been busy and going on trips with close friends a lot over these past few months it hasn’t succeeded in completely masking the deep sorrow and feeling of loss over the failure of my marriage.

After months of self exploration of all kinds, heartache, lies and honesty, and a couples therapist, Michael and I have decided to try again. I moved back into the house this week (financial and “I need grounding” decision), and I’m leaving soon to finish moving the last of the furniture. I’m hopeful about this new attempt, much that was once buried has been flushed into the open and I feel we owe it to each other to give it another go.

Things will be different this time around.

New, irresponsible, shiny

I was at the mall with a friend yesterday helping him buy some jewelry as a gift for his cousin. It dawned on me that I’ve developed the girly love of shiny things over the years, and that I didn’t have enough. So I splurged on something I’d seen last year and had filled me with geek girl glee.

pink heart swarowski crystal

Oh so pretty.

New PrincessLeia.com Design!

My friend Jay promised me a bit ago to put his mad design skills to use on a new design for PrincessLeia.com. He came through today as expected and after work I excitedly wrote up the template html, which I installed this evening.

The result? See for yourself:

A-ma-zing!!! Thank you Jay!

It’s about time I had a professional design it rather than relying on my own paltry design skills :)

Simcoe Street in Niagara Falls, Canada

While browsing the tourist maps I noticed Simcoe Street! Since my little kitten is named Simcoe, I had to go exploring. So I dragged Stephen through the suburbs so I could walk down the entirety of Simcoe street and take pictures.

Lyz at Simcoe Street

Simcoe Street Simcoe Street

Simcoe Street Simcoe Street

Simcoe Street Simcoe Street

Ubuntu at Best Buy: Package Details

I learned this morning via #ubuntu-us that they’re now selling Ubuntu at Best Buy, and couldn’t help myself: during my lunch break I swung out to Best Buy to drop $20 on a copy.

It wasn’t easy to find, I spent about 10 minutes searching through their software section, past their big Microsoft Windows Vista and Office displays. I finally found it on the bottom shelf with lots of other miscellaneous software.

Ubuntu at Best Buy

What did I get for $21.19 (after tax)?

Spiffy packaging!

An Ubuntu Hardy, 8.04, CD, and a small quickstart booklet:

The booklet came with a Registration Number, interesting (I whited it out here).

It’s very exciting to see Ubuntu carried on the shelf by a mainstream store like this, even if it is on the bottom shelf right now.

DONE: Peter Murphy, Wall-E, Pancakes and Beer; TODO: HOPE, Brew @ Zoo

I just returned from Niagara Falls, Canada on Sunday night, I have tons of pictures and lots to say, but before that I’ll catch up on other, non-linuxy, things I’ve been up to the past week or so.

Last Sunday night I took Michael out for an early birthday outing to see Peter Murphy at the Troc in Philadelphia. The concert was amazing! One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. I discovered Peter Murphy back in 2002 when I was browsing Michael’s mp3 collection on our network. Love at first listen. My favorite song ever is Socrates the Python. So when the opportunity to see him live on his own (rather than touring with the Bauhaus and NIN as he did last year) at the Troc was something we really couldn’t pass up.

I also saw Wall-E, and Pixar didn’t disappoint. Cute, deep, visually satisfying and original. Probably the best movie I’ve see this year. So I went with my friend Mike from NJ. Prior to the movie we wrapped up our respective rough days by hitting Michael’s Deli in KoP. I think I’ve blogged about it before, they’re a jewish deli and diner with a surprisingly fantastic beer selection. So dinner last night? I had a couple Monk’s Flemish Sours and some pancakes, Mike went with Chimay and some French toast. Mmmm breakfast and beer at 8:30PM.

Over that past weekend I also got Blinker, my 2000 Pontiac Grand Am GT, transferred to me officially. She now has a PA plate, the title in my name, and Wednesday morning I dropped her off for inspection… which she failed. A worn out tie rod and a bad break like were her downfall, so I got them replaced, tossed in an oil change and walked out with a significantly lighter wallet but a passed inspection. So the car was ready for my trip to Niagara Falls! I also finally received my PA title in the mail today from Harrisburg, so she’s all super officially mine now :)

And since I can’t seem to stay in town lately, I decided to head with Mike from NJ to HOPE, the 2600 convention, in NYC in 2 weeks. I just received the tickets in the mail late last week. I’ll be staying in Jersey Friday night, and crashing with friends in NYC following a LinuxChix-ish get together at 9PM at the Ninja. Should be a lot of fun, I’ve wanted to go to HOPE for several years and finally decided to make it a priority this year since it’s the last one (gasp!).

Aaaand the weekend after HOPE I’ll be going to the Brew at the Zoo. Last year’s event was a blast at the Norristown Zoo, but I was so excited to learn they’re having a change of venue this year – and moving it to the Philadelphia Zoo! Awesome! The PHILLY zoo in the evening with just adults and microbrews! I should snag some tickets, and some fellow drinkers and a designated driver. Volunteers?

The only trouble with my inability to stay in town lately is gas prices. Now I’m not one to complain about them, and this isn’t a complaint, but I think $4 is officially the mark where I really start noticing the expense. I’ve really had to cut back on other things to afford to drive to all the places I want to drive to, but I really have no place to complain, I have no commute so pretty much all the driving I do is optional/fun.

Finally, I’m moving out of Nita’s this month. I am thoroughly thankful for her for offering me space here, she’s really a great friend, but it’s been almost 5 months and it’s time for me to move on. I need to be somewhere bigger than a room where I am comfortable, I think I’ve done all the healing I can under these circumstances and need a change of living arrangement. More on that later though, I have a lot of thinking to do, wish me luck!

Ubuntu Classroom Needs Volunteers

Ubuntu Classroom

Now that all of us have “recovered” from the busy Hardy release, we’re prepared to get back to work on the Classroom Project.

The idea of the Classroom Project is to provide a place for teams and individuals to:

  1. Host their classes
  2. Promote their classes

Classes range from teaching users how to use Ubuntu to teaching them how to contribute back to the project.

The Classroom team itself focuses on a variety of tasks that are required for managing the joining of expert teachers and students, such as contacting interested teams, doing marketing and confirming that conflicts don’t come up. This is where you come in. Following our last meeting (meeting minutes here) we’re having a discussion on the mailing list regarding the defining of tasks, and have created a volunteers page aggregating these tasks, along with a place to sign up:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Classroom/Volunteer

Please join us! Or drop a note to our mailing list if you’re part of a project that wants to get involved in holding classes with us.

Ubuntu Pennsylvania MythTV Seminar

Last year Matt Mossholder held a very successful MythTV seminar using Mythbuntu for the Ubuntu Pennsylvania team. Due to the great interest in the community and much remorse from folks who missed the first session, we hosted a second session on June 21st.

The session went very well, with approx a dozen people in attendance, several with their machines ready to either install or solve problems with their existing installs (I brought along my roommate’s box, which had a remote issue that I haven’t had a chance, or inclination, to look at). The session began with a presentation and then moved into discussion and building and fix-ups. I went home with a fixed remote and a very happy roommate!

Details from the session: MythTV Seminar and Installations by Matt Mossholder

The two presentation documents from the seminar can be found on Matt’s site:

Our host, The ATS Group once again provided a fantastic location with a conference room, plenty of power and internet access, and this time around sprung for pizza and other refreshments!

And finally, WRT the radio program Alex and I appeared on a few weeks ago the company I work for has done a very flattering press release promoting it: LinuxForce Systems Administrator Elizabeth Bevilacqua Interviewed. *grin, blush*