My Week This Week in Review

This week has been a busy one, but busy in a good way. On Monday, I went over to the Apple Store to buy a replacement for my aging Dell laptop. The replacement comes in the form of a PowerBook G4 12” with SuperDrive (1.33 GHz) — this system seems to combine an ideal set of tradeoffs between power and size, providing a system that is quite fast but fits in my briefcase so that I can carry it around easily. Mega thanks go to Kevin, who provided me with information about his experience using the 12” PB. While I was there, I took advantage of the substantially discounted .Mac subscription, the $99 off printer rebate (to get the HP 5850 wireless printer for only $50) and the available “Incase” case that is designed to be thin enough to fit in another case… my briefcase.

On Wednesday, of course, I spent the morning in Kirkwood watching the KMOX broadcast mentioned in my previous post. As I commented on that post, it was an amazing event. Bill Sammon autographed a copy of his book Misunderestimated for me, and Charles Brennon autographed the receipt (not wanting to sign someone else's book). While waiting for Mr. Sammon to finish signing the book I got a chance to talk to both him and Mr. Brennon for a short while. I stood in line and posed a question during the broadcast, which afterward caused Mr. Brennon to come over and talk to me for a second again (he seems just as nice in person as he does on the radio). The broadcast will be shown on TV on C-SPAN 2 on Sunday, June 20 (I'm not sure of the time yet) — if you're interested, I'm the person posing the very last question, assuming it makes the cut for C-SPAN.

Thursday, I spent the afternoon adding a wireless router to my office network. While a Wireless Access Point (WAP) would have made a lot more sense, I needed another switch, and a Linksys Wireless router includes a switch in addition to a WAP for the same price as just the Linksys WAP. The Linksys Wireless 54G Router installs pretty easily into an existing routed network. Just plug a standard ethernet cable coming from the other router into the fourth port of the router, disable the DHCP server on the wireless router and change its IP address so that it doesn't conflict with the wired router… and presto!

Today, I did a house call for a client — cleaning up her computer and returning her son's computer which had been dropped off to me for repairs earlier this week. Everything went well, and AdAware blasted a record (from my experience) 735 adware, malware and spyware programs from her computer. That should help a lot.

While I was there I also looked up available broadband services for her. She's about 11,000 feet from the DSL CO, meaning she can get SBC Yahoo! DSL, although it might not be the fastest. I then checked on Charter Pipeline, which was also available. At that point, I noticed that Pipeline's speed had been upped from 2 Mbps to 3 Mbps and decided to give Charter a call when I finished.

Before doing that I followed up on a speed test I had run yesterday and confirmed that my modem was only running at 765 Kbps instead of the promised 2 Mbps. So, I checked my modem's status page and it turned out I had been reprovisioned back down to the now non-existant 765 Kbps plan that costs $3 more than the faster plan I thought I should have. That explains why my bill didn't drop $3 starting in March like it was suppose to. Fortunately, the rep I got at Charter fixed my account settings, reprovisioned the modem and supposedly prorated my bill. Broadband Reports' Speed Test and CNet's Speed Test both seem to confirm that everything is now up to snuff. An extra megabit over my previous 2 Mbps connection is a real treat!

Tonight I took it easy, just doing a few minor projects like moving some of the final data off my old server and onto ServerForest. Then I watched a part of the Reagan memorial at the Reagan Library on C-SPAN. I found Michael Reagan's eulogy especially touching. I was also impressed by the Biblically strong sounding pastor of the Reagans. It is unusual to hear a prayer “in Jesus name” and speeches including many references to Christ from even pastors, if they are given the opportunity to do a big public event. This pastor did those things, and that was certainly nice for a change.

So, that's my week. I type this as I lay on my bed, getting ready to turn off the PB and call it a night. How was your week?

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I will be going to the Kirkwood Civic Center for something rather fun. Charlie Brennan, of KMOX radio St. Louis (AM 1120, which can be heard around most of the country when conditions are right at night), will be broadcasting live there and a local pancake place, Chris's Pancakes, will be providing breakfast as well.

CSPAN is coming to St. Louis and you are invited! CSPAN will tape a broadcast of KMOX's “The Morning Meeting” with Charles Brennan on June 9, 2004 from 9 to 11 a.m. The program will originate from the Kirkwood Civic Center in Kirkwoood, MO. The featured guest will be bestselling author Bill Sammon of Fox News and the Washington Times. Please join us by calling 314-444-1842. Admission is free. Food provided by Chirs' Pancakes and Dining.

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

A Year of Mac

It dawned on me the other day that I ordered my first modern Mac, the Ruby iMac G3/400, off of eBay one year ago yesterday (June 5). Over the last year I have had the enjoyable pleasure of getting to know another UNIX-like operating system, and I must admit, I've really come to like it.

The Ruby iMac is a neat machine, certainly it was a bargain for $999 in 2000 when it was new, considering that even then it came standard with Firewire, a NIC, 128 megs of ram, a 12 gig hard disk, a slot loading CD drive, Harmon-Kardon built-in speakers, and a 15” CRT monitor. While the eMac offers a much more modern replacement for the old iMac G3, its white case opaque with super larger tray loading DVD drive door just doesn't seem as bold and exciting as the system that is often said to have saved Apple. While design doesn't make a system, it can make it more interesting.

This particular model was a later iMac, sometimes referred to as an iMac DV, although the DV title was dropped by that time (partially, I suspect, since it didn't have a DVD drive). It is referred to unofficially as the Indigo series and officially as the “iMac (Summer 2000).” You can read more about it here.

It's kind of a shame that the colorful computer trend died off. The iMac was really a fun concept and even today the Ruby iMac looks almost more like a piece of modern art than simply a computer.

Wow

I knew the National Council of Churches was an extremely liberal group that has been promoting ecumenism with non-Christian religions to the point of minimizing the necessity of Christ, but I still was surprised to see just who one of their member groups is. I thought all of their members were the (fading) mainline denominations like the UCC (my old denomination, ABC and PCUSA… but they have the Amercian Swedenborgians in there too! Mary Baker Eddy would probably be hurt that they didn't want a few scientists to go along with the mystics.

Nothing like adding a weird sect/cult to your group to help in the credibility department! Yes sir! That's sort of like the other thing the NCC seems to be up to: spamming my e-mail box. They subscribed my webadmin address from my church to their daily newsletter without my requesting it.

Color Me Skeptical About This...

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Thanks go to Kevin.

QOTW #5: Tea and Coffee

Assuming you like at least one of them, which is your favorite tea or coffee? What kind?

Personally, I really enjoy both, but I'd probably miss coffee the most if I had to give one up. Plain, old black coffee (or with a little cream) would be the variety I would probably hate giving up the most, although I also enjoy a Latte from Starbucks or an I.C. Mocha from St. Louis Bread Co. (a.k.a. Panera Bread) as well as various other varieties.

On the other hand, at dinner, at a restaurant, I will usually order iced tea. No sugar and no lemon. Despite my preference for plain old tea, I usually prefer tea with sugar and lemon if it is bottled tea (unless it is really good bottled tea, such as the unsweetened Nestea I finished a little while ago). Arizona Tea Co. has a good bottled sweetened tea. I also occasionally enjoy peach or lemon tea, such as that offered by Lipton (either bottled or mix) or Snapple. But overall, I'd rather have plain old tea.

In fact, if I had the opportunity to drink as much tea or coffee, and those where the only two things I could drink, I'd probably drink more tea than coffee. Yet, I'd miss coffee more, weird, huh?

Ozark Photo #1

Christopher asked about when I was going to post some photos. Well, I haven't really picked out my favorites yet, but I thought I should post at least one, considering how much I've talked about them.

This is Lake Taneycomo during the afternoon, not too far from Table Rock Dam. I'm standing at the bottom of an Army Corp of Engineers boat ramp taking the picture. It was really pretty hot that day, so the fog seems to be caused by the really cold water of Lake Taneycomo (it comes from the bottom of Table Rock, more than 250 ft. below the surface) reacting with that hot air to create a refreshingly cool fog.

Weather or Not

The Ozarks last week were delightful. And the weather was nearly perfect — there were a few rain drops on the last day, but otherwise it was really great weather for a trip. Unlike, the case in St. Louis, as Pressed has attested to. I did run into some of that weather on the way back on Thursday night, getting caught in a storm bad enough that most people were taking cover at the gas stations along the road (the only shelter in the area).

Today, we had another bad storm pass through the area. Whereas the worst had passed north or south of St. Charles/St. Peters the last few times, leaving St. Louis and outer St. Charles county with the hail and such, this time we weren't so fortunate. This one took out a nice sized chunk of several trees in the neighborhood and also gave us a dose of pea sized hail. Nothing like the stuff from last April, but still hail all the same. Fortunately, that did not put a damper on the family barbecue, which was inside anyway.

Photomania on Memorial Day Weekend

1,227. That's the number of photos from my Ozark trip. 997 of those were taken by me, the remainder were taken by my mother who also was on the trip (originally, a close family friend was going to come to, but she couldn't come due to a brief hospitalization — thus why the trip was delayed for a few days). I'll take my photos and combine them with the ones I got off the cards I borrowed from my mother to create a slideshow, perhaps in DVD format, of the whole trip. I did that for our Christmas trip, although I've never actually burned it to the DVD… I need to do that.

The new photo card reader did a good job of downloading the photos. Even thought I took some time browsing through the photos, I got done in plenty of time to get to the family memorial day barbecue dinner. That was a lot of fun too — we had very nice BBQ burgers marinated in Sweet Baby Rays Award Winning BBQ sauce and Maull's Sweet-n-Spicy BBQ sauce, pea salad (which was surprisingly good despite my normal dislike of peas), a berry jell-o salad, beans, and chips. Plus some delicious deserts, which always helps.

Afterward, the remaining family members — myself, my cousins and my parents (my uncle left after dinner) — sat down and tried out “Cranium.” That was pretty fun, it certainly is a game that provides ample opportunity for laughs. Probably the most humorous parts where when someone was blatantly ignoring the rules. For instance… well, you'd just have to be there.

All in all a great day. Did any of y'all do anything special for the holiday, or are you waiting until tomorrow?

Apology

I should apologize for whining in my one post yesterday. I realize it really isn't that big of deal. I suspect it wouldn't have seemed nearly as bad if it had not been the first thing I saw when I opened my e-mail after returning from my trip. I am still sad to see the way it happened as well as the realization that this brings to an end my ability to help in an area I've spent a lot of time in, but it isn't life or death or anything like that. It really isn't even the worst thing I'm facing, so I don't know why I made such a big deal about it.

At any rate, I'm sorry. I should have handled that better.