On Friday night I made some more spinach lasagne, and this time I was able to hold off for a few moments before scarfing it down to take some pictures:

I think this was my best batch yet, yummie!

Yesterday we headed over to ‘s place for his housewarming party. I had a really nice time, had lots to drink. At one point people wanted to play Poker, but that turned into Uno and Go Fish, then throwing chips around the basement.

See here for all the pictures.

Today was spent doing cleaning around the house. Right now I’m waiting for the kitchen floor to dry, then I’m going to make some spaghetti sauce. Mmmm.

*wanders off*

My system is getting to a usable state again! Tonight I got alsa working. I seriously need a crash course in kernels and modules, it can’t be as complicated as I seem to make it out to be in my head, and yet just when I think I have something figured out I’m thrown a curve ball and things don’t work anywhere close to the way I expected.

I spent the better part of the evening reconstructing our budget from a 2 month old backup. Ugh, what a pain that was. Never again! I am going to make sure to keep recent backups of that silly file.

I definately missed my computer, but I got a lot of reading done in the week without it. Read through Linux For Non-Geeks, which I mentioned in another entry. I read Succeeding With Open Source, which was an interesting guide to evaluating the maturity of Open Source projects, with a focus on implementation in business. I read parts of, and scanned through other bits of Open Source Licensing, an impressively interesting look at the legal aspects of Open Source, written in a knowledgable, yet down-to-earth way that interested me, but definately not a book you can just sit down and read (at least I can’t). During the failed Philly Chix meeting I started reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which is a classic of course, and gave me some interesting things to ponder about the Open Source world. And just for some variety, I *finally* finished Gulag: A History, I’d been working on this book for a few months because it was pretty tough to get through, and quite repeditive (because the history, not some fault of the author).

Now that my system is back up I need to think of a nice big project to work on. Perhaps a Perl project of some sort, my Perl skills are getting rusty, and since I never was very good at Perl anyway, that’s a horrible thing. I wish there was more time in a day %)

Oh, I took a picture of our new little algae eater, that we purchased because the empty fishtank was depressing:

It doesn’t have a name, probably won’t have a name. But we joke that he’s like the Cleaner on Black Books.

I’m tired now. Tomorrow is Friday yay!

Work was relatively uneventful. I learned that they’re going to keep me until early-mid November. Apparently one woman wants to take a vacation, and another is going for a surgery, so they made sure to schedule all of it so that they could keep me the whole time, since training someone else would take time and I’d probably take another assignment if they let me go. It’s nice to stay with the same company for 2 months, and I’m not treated as “The Temp” like that assignment I had while living in Rochester, I really feel like I’m part of the team there.

Still, I am tired when I come home. Homemade tortillas and biscuits aren’t so fun to make when I’m exhausted when I come home, and neither is attending meetings in Philadelphia! Because of my workstation being down this past week I wasn’t able to plan very well for the Philly Chix meeting, but I did get the word out and was determined to make it this time. I planned for a meeting in the city, at 30th Street station, but neglected to bug people enough about it to make sure someone would show up. I took the 6:03 train down Thursday night, sat at 30th Street Station until 8:30 waiting for someone to show up. They never did. I took the 8:45 train home. I wasn’t upset really, it’s my fault for not being able to plan better. And the trip down to the city gave me a chance to read about 100 pages into The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which I had brought down with the rest of the new Philly Chix books. It was fun to read in a different location, on the train, at the station. I was really tired when I came home, but the night wasn’t a total loss.

My computer… All we have spare are 20 gig drives, and who wants just a 20 gig for a system? Michael suggested doing raid0, and I told him to go ahead %) I fear that an attempt by me for such a thing would take forever, and I might not have a usable system anytime soon (which is important for the LAN party in two weeks!) So in his spare time this week he’s started setting it up. Last night I got to start building packages on it. There are still a few kinks to work out with X, so I’m using Michael’s computer right now, but hopefully it’ll be fixed soon.

Because of my lack of computer, I got bored with just reading and working, and decided to pick up my stupid old laptop again and play around with it. I got Linux For Non-Geeks (Which should be called “Fedora and Gnome for Non-Geeks”) from O’Reilly for the Philly Chix recently. It came with a couple Fedora Core 1 cds, and I figured, hey, I want to play with computers, how about I try to install Fedora on this laptop for fun? Instead of using the Core 1 cds, I grabbed the Core 2 cds I got with another Philly Chix book recently, and loaded them up on the laptop. The laptop wouldn’t have internet, since I decided that the pcmcia slot was the thing that was broken on it, but I could mess around with it anyway. I used the Linux for Non-Geeks book to get me started with it, so I could see how well the book does, and I was impressed with how simply it explained everything. It still just targets basic users of a system, who’d just want to install basic things like browser, office suites, etc. My laptop went through the install ok, it detected a bunch, but not my soundcard. It compiled support for USB into my kernel (we all know how those fat Fedora kernels are) so for fun I decided to try and see if it’d see my digital camera. Success! It even had gtkam installed, which I had never tried before. It’s a nice little program, I might use it on my workstation in the future, since command line gphoto2 is so dull. Then I rebooted my laptop, kernel panics. You can’t be serious! So it’s probably something other than the pcmcia that makes my laptop go all crazy. I can boot into Fedora sometimes, but kernel panics are bad, and no doubt it’ll corrupt my filesystem by these random reboots again. It’s an old laptop, and the problem isn’t anything removable (like drives or slots) so it’s something that wouldn’t be economically feasible to
fix.

Michael got a lot of stuff done this weekend, which he describes here. Right now he’s out with some friends, so I get the house to myself, whee! Actually, mostly I just spent this alone time paying bills, doing laundry, and catching up on reading people’s journals. I’d say it’s been a pretty good weekend overall.

“Mew”

*mumble*

“Meow”

“I’m sleeping!”

“Meow”

“Go away!”

*sniff and thwap nose*

*mumble* “Want to sleep”

“Meeeooow!”

“OK, I’m up!”

Damn kitty alarm clock. You know what he does once I’m up? Sleeps on my lap, that’s where he is right now.

I’m writing this in notepad. Why? Because the harddrive that linux on is toast. In fact, since lilo is on that failing harddrive I won’t even be able to boot into windows when it finally goes. I have semi-recent backups luckily. I wouldn’t be so annoyed/upset by this if:

1) the drive was more than 3 years old
2) the drive wasn’t Western Digital (I expect better from them than 3 years life)
3) my laptop hadn’t died just recently
4) I had more time to deal with this

I just want things to work. For once I don’t want Linux to be a bitch or Windows to be a bitch, or my hardware to start acting up!

Bah.

Work was busy this week. On Thursday the girl on the “first phone” was out sick and I ended up getting most of the calls, as well as the extra load of stores to call because she was out. I was exhausted when I came home, and glad that I made up the spinach lasagne[1] *before* going to work that morning.

Along with a busy work week, we did some socializing as well. Went to PLUG on Wednesday night, was doing a presentation on MythTV. Our friend b2s showed up too, as well as mct, Nita, and waltman. I also got to meet , who is part of that friend group of sorts that Michael and I belong to, just never got to meet him outside of IRC (and never much spoke to him there either).

Friday night we ended up going to ‘s place for “Movie Night” this time b2s and Baerana came too, which was fun. We had pizza and drank beer and watched dvds of Futurama. I was sleepy by 10:30, damn busy week making me fall asleep early! I wish we could have stayed longer, but I was just too tired.

This weekend… gosh I don’t know. I’d be happy just snuggling in a blanket and reading all day today, but there is probably work around the house that needs to be done.

*wanders off*

[1] Which turned out great, if I do say so myself. I use the recipe from the no-boil noodles package, don’t put the ground beef in, and mix 10oz spinach with the ricotta cheese mixture. I can make it up in the morning, refrigerate it, and put it in the oven to cook when I need to, works out nicely.

In case you weren’t aware, Michael rocks.

This weekend he installed a radiator in our bathroom! We have oil heat, with big old radiators in each room (as seen here). There were two in the living room, one of which was poorly placed, and in the bathroom there was an electric heater. Bah electric! We never turned it on because it took too long to heat up the bathroom to a reasonable level with it, so putting the extra living room radiator in there was logical.

I was weary about the whole project, but Michael made it work. Bought the needed piping and tools from the Home Depot, cleaned out the crawlspace in the basement (much dirt and dead mice, yuck), and by Sunday evening we had a working radiator in the bathroom.

I’m way impressed.

Besides that, I did some touch painting in the laundry room and bathroom this weekend. Also went to the theater with , his wife Kelly, and a friend of Kelly’s, Kelly and her friend went to see Shark Tale, and we went to go see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. What a fun movie! It was full of all sorts of geeky references, well put together, and just amusing at every turn. It’s the best movie I’ve seen in a theater since ROTK.

Also went over to Michael’s mother’s house on Sunday night. She made us dinner, and gave me gifts. I was so excited when I opened the big one, a Sunbeam Mixmaster! I used one when I made cookies while Michael and I stayed with her (between end of our lease and final settling of the house), and mentioned to her that I loved it. She remembered that and decided to get one for me. Now I’ll need to make more cookies %D

In the past few days we (ok, mostly Michael, what do I do around here besides cook and clean? Sheesh.) got the empty bedroom turned into something less empty. The television is now in there (instead of being in our bedroom), and two chairs and a side table, so it’s looking more and more like a real room. Very comfy for watching TV, and it’ll be better for when friends come over, no more need to pile on the bed or watch movies on the computer all the time.

Work is work. The music still drives me mad, and I thought the “adult contemporary” station was bad, the other day one of the women (the only one younger than me, at 21) got to turn on “her station” which was rap and hip hop. Come on now, we’re mostly a bunch of white women living in a comfy Philadelphia suburb! It was a long day.

All in all, things are good. I wish I had more reading time though, my “to read” pile is starting to grow…

Now to move along with talking about how great parts of my week were.

On Tuesday morning I drove myself into work. Michael had worked until 5:30am, so at 7:30 he wasn’t in the best shape to drive me in. Later that day I brought the car home, then went back to work. Michael picked me up around 4:30 as usual, and it was decided that we’d go out for dinner, because it was our 3 year anniversary and all. It was raining out pretty heavily, leftovers from hurricane Jeanne, but rain is nice.

Michael suggested the Woodside Inn, which we’d never been to, but it’s about a mile from our house and always looked enticing. I couldn’t find much about it online (all places on the planet should have a website dammit!). But we decided to check it out anyway. It’s a really big old farmhouse-looking place, and the staff is very friendly, the whole place feels comfortable, while preserving professionalism. It had an adequate salad bar, and the dinners we ordered were good. Then the dessert, oh the dessert. They change their available desserts often, so I was delighted (and torn!) to learn they had both chocolate and carrot cake! I ordered the chocolate and Michael ordered the carrot. This cake was amazing. The chocolate had the perfect balance of sweet and bitterness, so it wasn’t too rich, and wasn’t too sugary sweet. It’s definately in the top 5 chocolate cakes I’ve ever had, and I might go as far as to say it’s number 1. The carrot cake had the interesting quality of using coconut rather than walnuts, oh wow! I’m not a huge fan of walnuts, but i love carrot cake so I generally tolerate them, but with coconut… yum yum! Best of all, they sell whole cakes when you special order them, yay!

It really was good cake.

Wednesday was my birthday of course (thanks to everyone who commented, that was great to come home to!). I had mentioned my upcoming birthday to my co-workers, because I found out long ago that nothing good comes from hiding it, and I do so love birthdays. I didn’t think they’d do anything, since I’m only a temp (I’d been there about 3 weeks), but boy was I surprised! Around 10 am, the supervisors walked into the office with TWO cakes! One even said “Happy Birthday Elizabeth” on it! And they all signed a card for me, and got me a candle and little birthday plant as gifts. How lovely! I was pretty shocked and happy by all this. Yay %)! At the end of the day I had 2/3 of a cake to bring home, yay more cake.

Michael picked me up around 4:30 and we headed into Jenkintown (which took forever, stupid Philly traffic) to go to Hibachi (no website for them either, sheesh), which is our favorite sushi bar (and steakhouse of course). Yay sushi for my birthday dinner! The fish was wonderful as usual, nice and fresh and tastey. Had a Sapporo too, which is always a nice compliment to the meal. After dinner Michael took me out to Barnes & Noble so we could pick up the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD (yay!) and while we were there I also got THX 1138. It was such a great night.

A great couple of days!

Yesterday I only worked until 3 (Fridays are short days), and Michael picked me up and brought me back to his office. They have been moving to a smaller office, since their staff has shrunk a bit and they want to start doing the telecommuting thing more. Because of the move, they’re selling a bunch of extra furniture, including a couple chairs that should go nicely in our spare bedroom, a bunch of tables and things, we grabbed a nice side table, and a display/bookcase that we’ll be putting up here in our computer room. And best of all they’re selling it all to us for pretty cheap %)

This weekend I’m not sure what we’re doing. A couple friends suggested going to see Sky Captain, but we seem to be playing IRC tag and haven’t made real plans yet. And Michael’s mother wants to meet up sometime so she can give me my birthday present (which Michael says is good but won’t give me any clues). Oh and I need to do some cleaning, bleh.

*wanders off*

I’ve had a couple really kickass days, but I think I’ll save writing about those until tomorrow.

Last night we came home from my birthday dinner, and I went to check mail and things, and Michael turned on the light in Munch‘s fishtank. He called to me and said he “wasn’t sure Munch would make it through the night.” Eak! What?!

I came downstairs and looked into Munch’s tank, alas, he was not looking good, lurking near the bottom of the tank and looking all pale. Munch %(!!!

So I was sad. Since he’s come down with pop eye, Michael’s done a lot of work to keep his tank clean, even buying new food that wouldn’t leave the mess in the water like the old food. And we bought him medicine that we’d been putting in the water to treat it. Apparently it didn’t work, the pop eye infection got worse.

I went to bed and had dreams that I’d wake up and Munch would be all better.

When I got up this morning he was inside his castle, laying on his side, dead. He swam into his castle to die, that was the really what really made me start to cry.

So I dug a hole for him this morning before work, and we buried him in our back yard. I cried of course, and was about 15 minutes late for work, but they understood. Unfortunately the first thing I was asked upon arriving at work was: “How was your birthday sushi last night?”

I spent the day trying to reconcile my emotions. I’m hurt that my little fish Munch died, but I so guiltlessly ate a bunch of different fish last night. I mentioned it to Michael and we decided that life as an intelligent omnivore is cruel.

Today is my birthday. I’m 23. Yay! %)

I wish I had a time machine. Not to do anything profound, but so I could go back in time and kill Joan Osborne before recording that horrible “One of Us” song.

I never much liked the song, and I remember the Baptist church that my mother dragged us to tore the song apart when it was popular. I didn’t want to agree with the church about rock music being evil (I was giving christianity a chance at this point), if only because that’s what I listened to and I liked it, but I agreed that the Joan Osborne song was crap. My only consolation was that it was a stupid pop song and it’d go away soon.

And it did, until I started working at this temp job. My co-workers are a group of women whose mean age is about 30, and they listen to this “mix” station that plays soft rock. At first I didn’t mind so much, but then I noticed they played the some songs that I found particularly annoying EVERY SINGLE DAY. “One of Us” is one of them.

So is “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias, which is so horrible that I thought it was a spoof song at first. And Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” … DIEDIEDIE! Outkast’s “Hey Ya” is another horrible one, which apparently won awards? I can’t see how.

Other than that, work is fine. Today was particularly busy because a woman called in sick, but busy is good. I’m just glad to be home to my music collection. *relaxes to some Jonn Serrie*

Unfortuately Michael isn’t here. He picked me up from work, we went grocery shopping, came home and ate dinner, and now he’s back at work. This working so much sucks, but the end result will be him having the ability to mostly work from home, which will be cool.

Hopefully he won’t have to work late tomorrow. Tomorrow is our 3 year anniversary, yay!

Now I’m going to go downstairs and make myself some hot chocolate and have a brownie while watching History Detectives. *glee*

I made my tomato sauce yesterday, and I didn’t mess it up! To amuse myself I took pictures throughout the process.

First I got together the canned/bottled ingredients.

Then I chopped up a really large onion, which ended up being a TON of onion, and I was a bit concerned that it was too much, so I didn’t add all of it, next time I’ll make sure to get an onion that’s a little smaller. I also chopped up two garlic cloves. After they were all chopped up I put them into the pot and cooked them up a bit with 3 Tablespoons of Vegetable oil.

Then I added 1 Bay Leaf, 1 teaspoon Oregano, 1/8 teaspoon Margoram, 1/4 teaspoon Thyme, 1/2 teaspoon Hot Red Pepper, 1/4 teaspoon Basil, and 1 pinch Sage. I mixed that all up nicely with the onions and garlic for a couple minutes. Then I added the two 28oz cans of peeled tomatoes.

I stirred and let that mix together and simmer for 5 minutes. Then I added the 2 28oz cans of tomato sauce (as seen on the ingredients picture, this is plain sauce of tomatoes sold for putting into more complex recipes such as this one). I let that simmer for an hour. Then I added the tomato paste and simmered for another hour. Then I added a tablespoon of grated parmesean cheese. I should have added 2 tablespoons of red wine at this point too, but it’s such a hassle to get wine, and I didn’t have the cash on me to walk down to the wine and spirits shop in town. Crazy PA, not allowing people to buy simple cooking wine in a grocery store, come on! Anyway, after adding the parmesean I let it simmer for another half hour.

Then the sauce was done!

It’s a bit more spicy than I remember, I might not add the hot red pepper next time, but I’ll have to see what Michael thinks. You mean he didn’t get to try it yet? Nope! Unfortunately he was stuck at work until almost midnight %(

So I made myself a salad and some garlic bread and pasta, and enjoyed a dinner all by myself around 7 pm last night.

Other than that, I did a lot of catching up on things. I upgraded firefox recently, and was very annoyed to discover that yet again it had issues. Now this time was the upgrade to 1.0 pre, so I should expect issues, but if I have to reinstall my extensions one more time I’m going to kill someone %) I ended up backing up my bookmarks deleting my .mozilla/firefox/ directory, restarting it, and reinstalling all my extensions. Then I learned that the new find function doesn’t work right. Bah! I loved the old popup window find option, why’d they need to go and change it? I still just use firefox as my rss reader though, so my normal surfing and searching with good old mozilla is fine.

I went to rip a cd yesterday, and was a bit annoyed to find that the cd skipped when I tried to play it. I tried to play it in other players in linux, still skipping. So I booted into windows, played on windows media player, still skipping. Oh no! Then I thought I’d try and rip it, but
I was in Windows, how do people rip things in Windows these days? A couple questions in a music channel I lurk in lead me to Exact Audio Copy, which is free to use, and pretty nice. I had to install LAME separately, but then the wizard makes it pretty straight forward. I was able to play the CD in EAC fine, no skipping, strange. So I ripped and encoded it. The program only crashed once, and I fear that really was because of a CD flaw (it kept crashing on the same track). Now it did take some time to do all this ripping and encoding, I don’t see what people mean when they say linux does it so slowly, if you want good quality music files it’s going to take a while no matter where you are *shrug*