Sorry about all of the downtime lately. I have been trying to install a router so that I can hook up the ReplayTV box. This has given me nothing but troubles, and so therefore I have removed it until after the holidays. I still believe there is something funky going on with my web server, but I’m keeping a close eye on it.

Not much has gone on this week. Kim left yesterday and headed back to Ohio. They are getting killed with snow right now, and I really hope the roads are ok for my drive tomorrow afternoon. I have burnt about 20 copies of NOW 2004 so far, and I’ll probably be making copies until I leave tomorrow morning. Hopefully some of you have been able to download it and are enjoying it.

Tonight I’m heading over to Doni & Phil’s for a little party. A group from the Brooksider go caroling every year, and their house is on the list of places to stop. I can’t stay real long though since I have hockey tonight at 9. In the meantime I’m burning CDs and packing my bags for tomorrow!

So yesterday at lunch I went out and got a new camera, the Nikon Coolpix 3200. The phone call in to get the gift card number worked just fine. I didn’t buy a memory card since I was trying to compare and they only had a few left. I’ve decided to get the gig card though, it is so cheap right now. I think I’m gonna go out and pick this up today. It’s one of the few cards they have left, maybe because it is the largest. Pretty nice to get this whole package for just over $300 (with a service plan and new batteries), especially when the card was worth around $300.

Last night I got all of the tracks for NOW 2004 finalized and normalized. The only thing left to do is finish the back cover. Hopefully it will all be done by the end of the weekend. Then I have to mass produce them, woohoo!

Last night we though about doing spinning, but found out Jeff wasn’t teaching the Monday class. We then decided to try and hook up the stereo in the car. This has been a never ending battle, but at least we actually have the stereo now. So I wired the two adapters together and connected the finished product to the car. Amazingly it worked, but now the problem is that the trim on the outside of the stereo is missing, so I can’t get it mounted very well. The mounting sleeve that came with the stereo does not hold it in place and it does not look very pretty. I guess that means I still need to find one more piece, this is so annoying. I will never buy another used CD player. Maybe I should just sell the stupid thing and go buy a new player.

Firefox version 1.0 released today. I strongly suggest that everyone switches over to this web browser from whatever else you are using. I haven’t touched internet explorer since downloading this program months ago, I love it!
Here is a link to download: Get Firefox!

I should have played hockey last night, but a cold just kept getting worse and worse as the day went on. We had some dinner, and then I passed out on the couch, never to wake up until 2AM. I guess I missed hockey, oh well there is always next week.

Oh yeah before I passed out I did try to install the stereo into the car, but I soon realized that I’m missing a wiring harness. The one I bought included one that was all stripped at the end. I am not going to wire this thing when I can easily buy a $15 harness. Still waiting on that circuit city card to arrive…

Kim’s brothers are coming to visit starting tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll be busy and having lots of fun!

Well I lied, the Chiefs didn’t go 0-4, barely. :)
I also lied and said that we were joining the Ski Club, well on second thought it seems as if we aren’t going to be doing that. They want a copy of our marriage certificate so we can get the couple rate. What a bunch of crap. We didn’t need a certificate for the gym, just had to pretend to be happily married, and actually the guy was really cool with our pretending. It is worth it for the savings. :)

Tonight I may head down to the Brooksider to watch this Texas Hold’em tournament that they have going on. I may actually try it out if I get ballsy enough. I honestly don’t have a clue about it, other than the combined 15 minutes of it I have seen on ESPN. Todd played last week and did pretty well apparently. Maybe I’ll just watch him for awhile…

In nerd news I finally got mysql installed on my machine. What does that mean to the non-nerds? Not much really. I can now have a database driven site though, which makes me happy. The first thing that I’m gonna be doing is putting all of the concert stuff into a database. It will be easier to maintain, and I can run cooler queries on it, to see all kinds of cool things like what venue I’ve seen the most shows at or what city I’ve seen the most shows at, etc. That’s about all I’ve been working on since Kim has left town. Hopefully you’ll be able to see some results soon…

So the window was replaced in the car, and I put the factory stereo back into the car. This ancient piece of hardware is equipped with a cassette tape player and no CD player. We picked up a few tapes from the flea market later in the day, just to have something to listen to.

McGonigles was skipped since we ran out of time. Instead we went to Gates for dinner. You have to have KC bbq if you come out here right? :)

Last night we went spinning since my hockey game was once again cancelled. We are playing tonight instead. Two nights of hockey in a row! So after spinning I attempted to fix the car speakers. I tried to take off the entire interior door panel but was unsuccessful when the door handle baffled my mind. I struggled with the window crank for awhile, and even woke up my dad for any pointers. After messing with it for a few more minutes I finally realized that you had to squeeze a ring together and then slide the ring away from the handle. This then allowed for the handle to come off of the post. I felt like I just solved the rubix cube, well until the handle gave me a fight. It then got too dark out and I was too frustrated to get anywhere. So what do we do? We have Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber come out today to fix it. Tweedle Dumb was the guy who originally came out to replace the window, and he brought along his partner Tweedle Dumber this time. Tweedle Dumb apologized for not hooking the speakers back up and started taking the screws out of the door panel. I figured he would have taken the window crank off and then showed me how to get the stupid handle off. Well he didn’t, he just took the screws out, and felt around inside the door. He said that he didn’t disconnect anything. I assured them both that the speakers worked before the window was replaced. Then Tweedle Dumber decides that it could have been when the CD player was installed that the wiring was messed up. The wiring wasn’t messed up, and why would it work with one and not the other. He then shrugs and says he doesn’t know anything about electronics, just windows. Haha, I tried not to laugh and told them that something must have gone wrong. Finally, after what seems like half of the day, Tweedle Dumb feels a loose connection and pushes the two pieces together. Click! Wow, it works now, amazing. It really only took less than half an hour, but I swear it was longer. At least I can now listen to my new CC Music Factory and Color Me Badd tapes through all of the speakers…

Sweet, my new phone came yesterday! I just spent an hour to program all of my numbers into the thing. Hopefully I can get a few years out of this thing. I think it’s the same phone that Liam has. I don’t have the bulky desktop charger anymore, my favorite thing about it so far. I’m gonna take it over to the sprint store (very close to our new office) and make sure my software is up to date. I’m also going to check out ebay for any cool accessories…

I’ve played hockey a couple times this week and ran a couple miles, just as always…

I just realized that my Nomad is broken the other day. It freezes on a startup screen and goes to a recovery screen. From there anything I do just gives me a harddrive error. Looks like it’s time to pay a visit to Circuit City. The only bad thing is that this particular Nomad is out of production, so they may not have a new one to replace it with. I’m keeping my fingers crossed…

Speaking of service plans, I realized that yesterday was the last day for my cell phones 3 year service plan. I took it into Best Buy to try and milk a new phone one more time. My current phone works, but it has trouble charging quite frequently and it also powers down at random times. The dorky guy in the store told me that they no longer service phones in the store and that I had to call a 1-800 number. I called right away and was on hold for 20 minutes. I then had to go play hockey. After the game, I called right back and was on hold the whole drive home. When I got home I had Kim listen to the annoying hold message until she was ready to blow up my phone. I then took the phone back and remained on hold for quite some time. Grand total I think we were on hold for close to an hour. Finally, someone picked up and after a half hour of questions, she said that they will be sending me a new phone. I should have it within 2 days as well! Woohoo! The worst part is entering my phone numbers back into the phone, but oh well, it’s worth it. Thanks Best Buy…

No update on my camera. The last time I called the girl who I talked to before was on vacation. I’m not sure I can convince anyone else that it’s their fault, so I’m gonna have to try and call this chick again sometime soon…

I put our pictures up from the wedding and from Deer Creek. I’ll have to get Kim to put captions below the wedding pics since I’m really bad with names, and I don’t know as many people as she does…

My webserver seems to be running abnormally slow, and I have no clue what the problem is. Does anyone have an extra PC they want to donate? :)

Well my IP address changed for the first time since I moved out here to KC, at least I think so. I don’t remember it changing any other time. Anyway, that caused downtime for all of my sites, since they are all still hosted on my home PC. Sorry about that…

We went to our first golf lesson last night. 2 hours of hitting balls, how exciting! Actually the instructor that is helping us out is really good, and by the end of the night I was hitting the ball longer and straighter than I ever have. That is quite a feat, especially since we were only using irons, something that I don’t think I’ve ever hit well. I’m talking like I’ve golfed a bunch, when in actuality I’ve only done it twice in my life. I did get a blister and that is hurting real bad today, but I actually enjoyed the time at the range last night. I think Kim is already planning for us to go to a range on our on Sunday. Hopefully I can remember everything I learned…