My craving for spicy food started friday morning when some guys in #goddess were talking about getting together to watch movies and stuff on saturday night.. they mentioned getting chips and salsa, mmm chips and salsa. So when we went to that little party on friday night I was quite happy that they had chips and salsa, but it obviously wasnt enough. Saturday it rained, all day, and it was very cold. So we decided just to stay in, but around 11 pm I started to get the munchies. So I went out to the 24 grocery store and picked up a bag of christmas colored tortilla chips and some natural salsa… as well as some Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream %d Then on sunday I realized I STILL wanted spicy food, but was reluctant to dive into the chips and salsa again so we gave in and bought Indian food, YUMMIE!

All this weekend was spent trying to get my onboard lan card to work in linux, since it’s sorta silly to have two nic cards if one will do… No luck. It was so insane, we ended up reinstalling debian, recompiling the kernal several times, installing different distros, and of course made sure the card worked by trying it in windows (it does work). So my computer was pretty much down all day sunday, which sorta sucked, but I did get online on Myk’s computer long enough to make the topic in #13thHour “happy birthday tsukiyo” (a fellow chatter) and make an ecard for her, and of course check my email %) So no luck with the nic card.. it’s very frustrating. See, the problem was that we had a pci nic card in there, but we started seeing collisions. Now there should not be collisions on our network! We found out that it probably was not software related (since I had the same setup on my old box, with no trouble, all that has changed is hardware), and it’s the same nic card we had before, so we suspected the trouble was that somewhere along the line having two nic cards, even though one was turned off by the bios AND didnt have drivers. We suspected this because there was no other logical explaination %) So there supposedly is a linux driver for this, we consulted the PLUG list to see if we could get help, but alas nothing seems to work. We are thinking that it’s possible the driver is looking in the wrong place for it or something, it’s just a big pain, and the weekend was too short. I am afraid of doing anything myself (not that i *could* screw up too much at this point…) so I have to wait for Myk… Hey I’ve only been using Linux for about 10 months (9 of those with Redhat), Debian for a month, I might be able to compile a kernal myself, but I’m still a bit of a n00b ;)

I am a bad person, I dont recycle. We don’t get paper newspapers so I dont have to worry about throwing those out, and we do use most of the junk mail we get as paper for the fireplace (oh joy in burning junkmail). But as for bottles and stuff, even soda bottles, we throw them out. I think this is entirely due to the lack of bottle deposit in PA. In New York and Maine, and all states with a bottle deposit, not only was it easy to recycle (just bring them to the grocery store) but you also got money back! Why don’t they have bottle deposit in all states? It’s a very good idea, I am the perfect example. I suppose I really should find a recycling dropoff place around here, recycling really is good, and it’s only inexcusable laziness that prevents me from taking part.

So I need to go get my driver’s license so I am considered a full resident of PA and all that. I know I am supposed to do that within 60 days of moving here, but I was reluctant to do that, mostly because I’d just have to get it reissued on my 21st birthday (they have a different style license if you are under 21. So I figured I’d wait til I turned 21… that was a month and a half ago. It’s very simple to transfer a license from another state to here, just go in with Social Security card, old license, birth certificate, and at least 2 things proving new residency here (utlitiy bills with my name, or lease, or tax stuff…), then fill out all sorts of terrible paperwork, and take an eye exam. None of this is hard except the eye exam. I haven’t been to the eye doctor in over 4 years, and the other day I noticed I was squinting at the television.. my vision has gotten pretty bad. So just go to the eye doctor and get new glasses right? Oh Catch 22! One of the biggest reasons for getting insurance is so we could pay for the eye exam and new glasses (we can afford it out of pocket, but it IS expensive, insurance would help)… but one of the things I need in order to get on Myk’s insurance is a driver’s license with my current PA address on it, that matches Myk’s, DOH! I suppose I could TRY to pass the eye exam at the DMV, as it shouldnt be too terrible.. *sigh* I suppose if I fail the eye exam there I could just go to the eye doctor and go back to the DMV after that, I shouldn’t worry about it too much.

Ok, I am gonna go reply to some emails and get some stuff done *wanders off*

Patrick Doyle – A Walk In The Park

Ah, I feel much better today %) The party last night was pretty nice. There were only 6 of us there, the couple having the birthday, a couple they are friends with, and Myk and I. We had snacky food and ice cream cake, it was fun %) I barely finished one glass of Chouffe as I was still recovering from my hangover, and drinking more beer was really the last thing I wanted to do. It was nice getting out though, Ian and Jessica (the couple who had the birthday) are really nice people, and their friends seemed nice too. I sometimes feel intimidated by their intelligence though, they both went to college and she is an electrical engineer while he is a KDE developer who telecommutes to his comfy software engineer job. I keep telling myself I shouldn’t feel intimidated by them, there is no way I could be as smart as they are, i’m younger than them, I never went to college, and my general experience in everything is much less then theirs. I shouldnt get depressed. I just feel so stupid when they tell some physics joke and I totally don’t understand it.

We didnt get lost getting to their house either! Yeah, if GPS was made for anyone it was made for people like Myk and me. We get lost with or without directions. I am by far the worst navigator ever. I was very happy that we did ok this time.

So we found out something interesting about Myk’s benefits from work yesterday. Turns out this his company, JDS Uniphase, has a “Domestic Parter” part of their benefits package. A domestic partner apparently can be covered by the medical insurance that Myk pays for! The conditions were things like living together for over 6 months, having some bills and such in both our names… and I can only imagine that the company is required to do this because of some “gay rights laws” but it works great for Myk and I! Previously he was told that the only way I could be covered under his benefits was if we were married, and neither of us are ready for that. So this is really good, I’ll finally have medical insurance! %)

It’s raining out, I like rain.

So I finally got my Books section of my website all done. It’s all linked up to barnes and noble so people can buy the books by clicking on links at my site. I get 5% commission if they buy %) and the best part about it is I can get commissions for even my purchases! Of course they dont send you a check until you get up to $25 in commissions… so $500 in total sales, but I figure I spend about $50 every 2 months on books, so in 20 months… plus if other people actually click on the links on my site, yay! Hehe. I also added product links up on wallaceandgromit.net for wallace and gromit related things at barnes and noble… yay capitalism.

Speaking of Barnes and Noble, sometimes they do really weird things. I clicked the option for free shipping, so all the books should have shipped together as they were available. But then yesterday I get ONE book shipped via UPS… The order sheet said the rest would be shipped separately. So I double-check to make sure I was not charged for shipping. Then go to the barnes and noble website to check on my order status to make sure it all was being shipped, and it says on my whole order that it was “no shipped” SO I go look at details, and most of the rest of my order (5 more of the 7 books) have been shipped the normal way, via US Postal Service. What of the last book? “The shipping date is unavailable at this time. Please check back shortly for updated information. We apologize for the inconvenience.” The hell? I have no idea what they are doing… I mean as long as I get the books eventually and I am not charged for shipping I guess it’s fine, but they are totally messed up.

Have I mentioned lately how much I like debian? The other day I wanted to install flash on Mozilla, apt-get install flashplugin … today I wanted to install java on netscape, apt-get install netscape-java-477 … on redhat this would have required many more steps, I am very happy %)

I think we are going to stay in the rest of this weekend, I have no want to leave… and I still have no desire to drink, which is probably a good thing. I do however have an intense craving for Indian food again, this is definitely a bad thing %) We are trying to save money! Hehe.

So Myk is still unsure about what’s going on with his job… supposedly they are supposed to find out next week who will be let go come March. We’re seriously considering moving out of this area if things don’t work out. Maybe north… or west. I miss New England a lot, if Myk could find a job up there I’d make sure he jumped on the opportunity. It’s really not because I have family there either… I’d be happy if I lived in Colorado too %) I just like snow, and the north, and happy trees, and I despise the city. We are too close to the city here. I mean I guess I could live and be happy here, but there are much better places…

I guess I am gonna go find something to eat noew *wanders off*

So did you really think that Myk could bring home a case of Chouffe and we wouldnt try it? Ahahaha. We decided to have “one bottle” which amounts to about four glasses of beer, so two each. After that I was pretty toasted. Toasted enough apparently to encourage the opening of a second bottle. Yep. Four glasses of Chouffe, considering even the strongest american beers only have about 4% alcohol.. and this Belgian stuff was 8%, that’s like drinking 8 normal beers… plus it would take longer to actually drink 8 beers, so like 8 beers in half the time it would usually take to drink that many. Uh can you tell I am hung over yet? LOL My head is killing me. I don’t even remember going to bed, or the movie we were watching ending. Myk said he woke up on the couch (doesnt remember falling asleep there), found my glasses in front of the TV and I was in bed. I probably turned off the VCR and took my glasses off to rub my eyes or something and started to fall asleep on the floor then decided I should go to bed. But that’s just a theory %)

I still feel sick too, I never actually threw up (at least I don’t remember throwing up and there are no signs that I did). I just need to not think about getting sick and I wont, yay happy thoughts.

Ugh I think I am going to be sick.

After Myk woke up on the couch he had trouble falling asleep. By the time he thought he should do something about this (take tylenol pm like he usually does) it was about 5:30 (around the time i got up to take some advil)… so he had barely any sleep and it was 3 hours before work, not to mention the monster hangover… Do I even need to say that at the moment he is in the bedroom sleeping? Hehe. Yeah, he called in sick. Which is ok since this is only the second time this year he has done so.

I think I am going to go lie down, hopefully I’ll feel all better by the time the party starts tonight %)

Mediaeval Baebes – Aria (with Delerium)

I changed the look of my site here, I wanted to make all my sites sorta look the same, this one looks much more like princessleia.com now.

Nut of the week? Well that award has to go to Mr. Charles K. Johnson he believes the world is flat:

The Flat-Out Truth

“Not the Bible but Johnson’s own common sense allowed him to see through the globe myth while he was still in grade school. He contends that sensible people all over the world, not just Bible believers, realize that the earth really is flat.” Yeah, he’s a christian. %)

French’s yellow mustard no icky crust cap is nice, but unfortunately it’s not perfect, doh.

I’ve been working on my Books page and it is all nice and arranged now so it is easy to navigate %) I have it set up so you can browse the reviews by author or title. I’ve been thinking lately about all the books I’ve read in the past few years and how sad it is that I do not have reviews, and I have tons of time to read so I think I am going to read a few books over again. i’d really nice to read the Homecoming series by Orson Scott Card again (unfortunately I don’t have book 1, doh!), and the first two discworld books… Anyway, this afternoon I am going to try to get the whole “gimmie money” part of the Books page done (Barnes and Noble Affiliate program). Yay for capitalism. What can I say, Barnes and Noble rocks, they have saved me lots of money, and they arent evil like Amazon %)

I did get a little work with PHP done yesterday. I thought about making an easy way to post updates to my site using php, but then remembered that that would mean I’d have to have a site on the web to edit my site.. which means unless very carefully password protected someone could easily find that page and mess with my site. That’d suck. So for now I will just do little php things. I already have the little counter on my page… and yesterday in the top part that has a quote I made it so each time you go to the page you get a different quote (well probably, there are 15 of them there currently and it randomly selects one when you go to the site).

I spoke to my Aunt Elaine last night. She called me on her cellphone because she gets free evening and weekend long distance on it… and of course she just happened to call right when I was sitting down to eat dinner %( I didn’t want to be rude, and I definately didn’t want to pay for a call back (I hate the phone as it is, I dont want to pay for it!) so I ended up talking to her and stuff while Myk ate dinner and mine got coldish (we had Boca Burgers). It’s always nice talking to her, she tells me all about all the current family gossip (ugh) and she’s just all around nice to talk to since we are so much alike. Apparently half the family is not talking to the other half about something, who knows the whole story but it’s just a big mess. In any event I’ll just stay with my Aunt Elaine while up there and try to stay out of the middle of everything %) It should be a fun trip, and we are planning to see Star Wars Episode 2 in the IMAX while we are up there, yay! Speaking of Episode 2, no, I don’t have the DVD yet, and yes, I know it came out this week, I’ll probably ask my ma to get it for my for christmas or something.

Tomorrow night we are going to a birthday party for a couple we know. They just got married a few weeks ago, and they have the same birthday, so they are celebrating with a double birthday party %) It should be fun, and Myk went out and picked up some La Chouffe (8% alcohol yay) .. a case of the huge magnum bottles (50.8 oz each), whee! %) Anyway it’ll be fun to go to a little party with some of our friends.

I am going to go take a walk now *wanders off*

-@Time- hmmm, if the aryan group had its own KDE program, would it be called KKKK

hehe

blue plastic wrap is leet … and the same price as clear plastic wrap (at least where i shop), yay!

Foo Fighters – Walking After You

So it has recently come to my attention that Eminem has a movie?! AND it was at the top of the box office this past weekend!? What is wrong with this world? Waaaay too many wiggers and posers out there, and I hate them all %) Including my little sis, arg! 13 years old, lives in MAINE, loves rap, and “talks like black girls talk” … I will never get over my disappointment. Yes, I live under a rock.

I don’t look 14 in that pic I have here do I? A person in #goddess said I did… I tend not to believe him, but I *did* get ID’ed for the last Rated R movie I went to. *shrugs* Then again I have seen some 14 year olds who look older than I am, gah.

Clockbot (the win2k print/scan server) is still off today. Apparently there was some sort of IDE error when Myk tried to boot him up the other night %s He hasnt had a chance to look at it. Last night he got home around 8ish (he had a dr’s appointment).. so we didnt eat til about 8:30, then of course we had barely any food in the house so I went grocery shopping. Finally I came home around 10ish and decided I wanted to monopolize Myk’s time by cuddling and watching a movie with him, so it wasnt til midnight that he was able to get on his computer (besides the time I spent grocery shopping). So hopefully tonight he will get clockbot running so I can mess around with printing again tomorrow. I think today I am gonna mess around a bit with PHP, it’d be really nice to utilize more php on my website, and since I stopped messing with it for about a month I’ve forgotton a bunch of what I knew, doh %( I should really stop messing around (like writing in my weblog and chatting, DOH!) and get more work done so all my time spent on the computer is not completely wasted.

I love Debian!

apt-get is the greatest things ever %)

Ok, going to get some work done noew *wanders off*

Peter Murphy – Cuts You Up

So this day was almost completely full of disappointments. For one it turns out that 21″ flatscreen monitor seems to have some problems with color… something that the PLUG post neglected to mention. The guy selling it said it could “probably be fixed with realignment or something” Heh, well I really don’t have $300 to spend on “probably” I am very demanding on my monitor, and there is no way I am paying for a monitor with messed up color.

I played with printer settings on my computer for almost 2 hours today, very frustrated that nothing was working. Then I wandered over to the printer computer. It wasn’t on. AHHH!!!! I guess it was my own stupid fault for not checking a problem that obvious, but it’s rare that clockbot is turned off %( I forgot that Myk removed a harddrive from it last night, he must just have left it off, doh!!! So I was frustrated again and quit that.

SO I decided “hey how about I install my apache server and php4 so I can get some work done with php” (I would do it on the webserver, but I dont like messing with things there, besides I dont have root access so I wouldnt be able to mess around with mysql there). So I install apache, then install php4. Then spend a little over an hour figuring out what I did wrong and why it wasnt working %) Eventually I found it was just I added something in the wrong place of the httpd.conf file, and it was all fixed. So now I have Apache and PHP running nicely on my system, and the best part is I can run apache and it doesnt hurt preformance! In fact, I can run TONS of stuff and it doesnt hurt too much, which of course is no help considering how absent-minded I am. I have 9 virtual desktops, and sometimes I *forget* about things I have running, at one point today I had gimp and idle xmms running as well as mpg123 and mozilla, and opera, and all my chat sessions…. you get the point %) Since these things dont slow down my system anymore I forget they are running. *Huggles her computer*

It’s only 4:30, I think I am going to do an overhaul of my Books.html on my website, it really needs it… I actually sent someone I sorta know from a chat room (the chat room where we chat with people IRL.. I am sorta shy so I dont often chat there), and he was interested in my reviews! Of course the page is a mess, and I felt bad. So since at least one person is interested in that page it’s worth fixing. I feel really good today, despite my failures I really did get a bit acomplished, if only everyday could be so sucessful %)

Barenaked Ladies – Powder Blue

Why don’t I use xanga’s nice little amazon linked “now listening to” thing? AMAZON IS EVIL!!! They sued Barnes And Noble over “patented” click and buy ordering, which allows a company to hold credit card information and such in a database on the website so the buyer does not need to retype everything every time. Now sure, I am sure amazon just did this to try and hurt one of their biggest competitors, but they hurt all businesses on the net! Luckily the lawsuit failed %) But still…

NoAmazon.com for more information.

So I was going crazy yesterday afternoon trying to get printing set up in my box… I guess I can say I made some progress because I know some of the things “not to do” I still have yet to download that deb package for printtool… only as a last desperate resort %) I dont want to cheat! Hehe.

I dont want to get too excited about this yet… but a guy posted to the PLUG list about having a 21″ flat-screen monitor that he wanted to get rid of, and he’s trying to sell it for $300. We’re going to make him an offer, Myk said he’d pay for half of it if I’d dip into my savings to pay for the rest, no problem!!! 21″ would kick ass %) especially compared to the old Compaq 13″ one I have now. Hopefully we were the first to respond to this… we were disappointed early this summer when we thought we were the first to respond to someone selling a Sparc 10 only to find out someone else got to it first %( *hopes she gets this monitor* if not we will keep sorta looking, I can survive with this little one for now %)

After I got frustrated to the point of giving up on printing yesterday I took a short walk. Which turned out not to be so relaxing because I couldnt stop thinking about things I had to worry about, I am such a worrier. Then I got home, completely unrelaxed, and still not in the mood to mess around with samba, so I wandered around checking out some deb packages through apt-cache search. I found this one for xmms which is “tux dancing” … but it turned out to be really lame %( Then I downloaded xsnow and xpenguins, which I had had in the past, just never had a chance to download… I know there is an xfishtank too, but it’s sorta lame.. anyone know of others? %) Here’s a link to a screeny shot of penguins and snow on my desktop if you wanna see it %):

xpenguins and xsnow

I also spent some time and redid my user apps menu, I am using the “base” theme on my desktop, the menu doesnt look so great in that theme but the rest of the desktop does so I can handle it.

user_apps.menu
Last night we had some perogies and veggies for dinner, each had a bottle of yummie Lindemen’s Kriek, and then sat down and watched the second movie on our new mst3k tape, “Teenage Caveman” … it was pretty funny, especially since the teenager was like… 30, hehe. Speaking of Lindenmen’s, we broke our “we should not go out to dinner much anymore” rule again and went out for an expensive dinner at the Drafting Room. It was really good tho %D! I was able to try some of the Peach Lindemen’s, it was really good, where the cherry is very cherry, the peach was subtle, really a nice taste. I think next time we get a case we’re going to try to get half peach and half cherry %)

So I think I am going to go attempt to once again tackle this printing problem, wish me luck! *wanders off*

Moody Blues – Dawn Is A Feeling

I started some work on trying to get printing to work here in Debian. See the dilemma is the print server is a Windows 2000 box (only because our scanner does not have linux drivers, so it NEEDS to run on windows, bleh, stupid cheap HP scanner), so I am trying to figure out a happy moderately simple way to get my Debian box to print to it. Now when I had Red Hat this was not a problem %) Redhat makes it very easy with their happy clicky printtool. A .deb package exists for this, so I considered going that route, but I dunno… %( Bleh there are a bunch of how-to’s online that I have been looking at, it’s all so confusing, most of them involve samba, and I know *nothing* about samba, yay! Heh. This is a good project for me tho, I’ll probably learn a lot through this %)

So I found out some bad news this afternoon. Eric’s boyfriend, who we met a few weeks ago when Eric was in town, has been diagnosed with MS. %(!!! This really gets me down… it seems MS strikes the coolest people. Ray was definitely cool, he was in college for a Biotech degree and everything, seemed really smart, and funny… and I know my best broski Eric really cares about him. Apparently the medication they put you on when diagnosed has been known to cause depression, that’s exactly what someone needs when they are diagnosed with an incurable disease % I guess he’s hanging in there, some good days and some bad. It is sad tho…

I ordered some books from bn.com today %)

Hearts In Atlantis – i’m not a huge Stephen King fan, and i never saw the movie, but people recommended this to me, and they have over-stock on this hard-cover edition, I’m getting it for $5.98
The Guns Of The South – As much as I am interested in “alternate history” novels I have never actually read any of Harry Turtledove’s books, amazingly enough… this seemed like a nice place to start, a time traveler goes back in time to the civil war and arms the soldiers with ak-47’s
Homebody – In an effort to broaden my Orson Scott Card collection I’m getting this book… I have yet to be disappointed by Card, and the last book I read of his (Treasure Box) was stellar.
Winter’s Heart – The 9th book in the Wheel of Time series, so I HAD to get it %)
Armor – This book by John Steakley got such rave reviews from a friend of mine I completely forget what it’s about, hehe, but I am sure it’ll be good.. and more scifi than fantasy, so a nice divergence from what I’ve been reading lately
When True Night Falls (coldfire trilogy #2) – I started reading the first book a couple days ago (recommended by the same person that recommended Armor), it’s quite good, so I figured I’d get the next book
Crown Of Shadows (coldfire trilogy #3) – And the third book %)

Myk asked for his thanksgiving vacation time today %) made plans for his Christmas vacation as well, yay! So for thanksgiving he is taking the day before (Wednesday the 27th) off, and the Monday following. We’ll probably drive home Sunday evening, and use Monday to rest… or might drive back Monday morning to avoid some of the holiday traffic *shrugs* I guess we’ll play it by ear %) For Christmas he is getting that whole week off! Which makes sense since Christmas is on a Wednesday, it would be silly to go to work on Monday after a weekend now wouldnt it? And working thursday and Friday after Christmas, bah! %) (they automatically get Christmas eve and Christmas off). It should be a nice couple of months, I love this time of year.

Anyway, I am gonna get going.. It’s after 4:30 (stupid Monday!!!) and I havent gotten as much done as I would have liked to today, AGAIN, doh. *wanders off*

Jimmy Eat World – No Sensitivity

So I started a livejournal, the entrys here and there will probably be identical after this %) I have friends in both places so it seems logical right? Anyway, I got the livejournal code so I could get a free account. I then contacted my ma’s old friend Ellie (they stopped being friends after the divorce I guess… heh) ’cause I knew she had a private livejournal to tell her I had one. She asked me if I had paid for the premium service and of course I didnt… I’ve been at xanga for months and I still dont pay for it, besides Livejournal doesnt have ads, not even on the free sites! So there was really no reason for me to pay for it. So she offered to give me 2 months (it’s like $5) I told her no, but she did it anyway, gah! Said I would really like it, ’cause I could customize stuff, and plus if she had questions with premium she said she would use me as a question answerer, hehee. But it is only two months, and if I want it longer than that I have to pay for it, so I’ll just become a normal free user after that. I played with it a bit this morning, it’s interesting, but I wouldnt pay for any online journals… sorry xanga, this is merely convenient for me, I could always put a journal on my own page %)