Silly Flash Games:
The following links are not from Pukka, but I’m adding them to this post anyway:
One of the many lovely gifts that Ariesna and I received for our wedding was a Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G router.1 Since a wireless router is useless without something to connect to it; I went out and picked up a Linksys WPC54GS Wireless-G Notebook Adapter. Since I was still kind of dazed from the whole wedding/honey-night experience; I didn’t stop to check whether the router had SpeedBooster and if I could get the card online for much cheaper than I could in the store.2 I had cash in my pocket and techno-lust burning in my heart. I bought the card, took it home and immediately started mucking about with my laptop to try to get it to work. In a previous fit of whimsey, I had wiped M$ Windows from my laptop and replaced it with SuSE 9.0 Pro. Since APT is such a wonderful thing, I used it to keep SuSE updated; rather I used it to update SuSE on the laptop whenever I booted it up to use it. So the first thing I tried doing in my quest to get wireless networking running on my laptop was to run APT and grab all the latest stuff for SuSE 9.0.
For the first time ever, APT let me down and in doing so it let me down badly. Something in my xserver configuration (or maybe the startup scripts) got hosed. I fiddled with it for a couple of days, but had no luck in correcting the problem. I could work around it, but not fix it. Once I got to that point, I tried to load some missing software I needed to get the wireless card to work, but the software was not listed in the APT repositories I was using. This is especially problematic as the CD-ROM in this laptop tends to be very flakey, so I couldn’t hope to go back to my original CDs and load it from there. In the meantime, I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu (Hoary 5.04). I did this planning on borrowing the modular CD-ROM drive of a co-worker with the same ancient Dell laptop to replace SuSE on my laptop (if all else failed). Tonight, I was home alone and annoyed that I still didn’t have my wireless network up & running. So I ran over to Best Buy, picked up a spindle of CD-Rs, burned Ubuntu to disc and tried installing it.
Much to my utter amazement and total surprise, my laptop decided that it liked this burned CD and allowed me to install Ubuntu without error. It took several hours to do it, but eventually I was looking at an incredibly ugly Ubuntu desktop. This struck me as odd, but then I realized it was displaying at 800×600 when my laptop’s native resolution is 1024×768. So a bit of googling later and a quick run of: sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and I was looking at the very pretty version of Ubuntu’s desktop. About an hour later, after following these directions in the NdisWrapper wiki, and I have wireless networking running on my laptop. Now I just need to look into a 2nd battery for the laptop so I can have be a bit further away from the wall socket than my power cord lets me go. Still, it’s so very nice not having to sit in my lousy desk chair to do some work on the computer. It’ll be even nicer when I can put the funds together to build a MythTV box for the living room to watch all my anime with. 🙂
Updated 2005-05-27, 19:55 GMT-06:00: I noticed a typo in the dpkg-reconfigure command above, so I’ve edited this post to correct it.
1 Yes, I do realize that considering this a lovely gift puts me completely and forever in the “geek” category,
2 The answers to those questions were: No and Yes.
After we finally left town for our honey-night1, Ariesna nodded off and went to sleep for most of the drive. Once we got to Davenport, I got a bit too caught up in looking for street names and went past the place we were staying… a couple of times. *sigh* I’m convinced I’ve got less direction sense than a rock. I can learn an area so I know where I’m going but it takes me a fairly long time and even after years of living in this area; I tend to turn down a street only to be surprised when it joins up with a different street I’m already familiar with. All this is building up to say that I ended up having to tell Ariesna where we were staying before we found the place2. I did so want it to be a complete surprise. *sigh*
Any hoo, the place we stayed at is called Fulton’s Landing. It’s a late 19th century house that has been beautifully maintained and is decorated with many a wonderful antique. When we finally arrived, Ariesna & I walked inside but found ourselves faced with a small problem. There was no sign of the proprietor! After a bit of shouting hello and ringing the doorbell, I went back outside and started walking around the grounds to see if I could find somebody. Later Ariesna confided in me that just after I’d gone searching that she found a small note saying that our hostess could be found painting the front porch.
After locating Pat, our gracious and charming host, we headed back to where Ariesna was waiting and then up to our room. Ariesna was thrilled and while I did find it to be a lovely room; it was a bit pink for me. We freshened ourselves up a bit and then went to a nearby Japanese restaurant that we are familiar with from previous visits to the area. Their yummy rolls weren’t as good as the ones we’d had back in Kansas City once upon a time, but the Hawaiian rolls were fantastic3! Then she had the Shrimp Tempura and I had the Chicken Katsu. Both dishes were delicious and much larger than I remembered from previous visits. After eaching our fill, we headed back to Fulton’s Landing.
Just a brief side note for the single folks who read this blog: when you get married some day; make sure to eat a good breakfast and/or hide some sort of energy bar in your pocket/purse for later. That way you don’t starve as your wedding guests are likely to keep you so busy that the serving staff will remove your food before you get a chance to eat any of it!
We did get back to Fulton’s Landing without any troubles and had a very pleasant evening relaxing… and doing those things that newlyweds do. The next morning, we had a marvelous breakfast with the other guests: a couple from Nebraska with their daughter from Brazil and a writer from England. Apparently, he writes a column called “The Best…” for The European; this has him gaunting around the world finding the best places to stay, best foods to eat and writing all about it for his clientelle. After listening to him talk for a few minutes, I’m became convinced that I’m in the wrong profession. 🙂 After breakfast, we checked out but Pat allowed us to leave our car parked there so we could go for a walk around the area. There are many gorgeous houses over there, a few of them for sale –and quite undoubtably out of my price range–. It ended up being a longer walk than we had really thought we were in for, with a good chunk leading us up-hill but it also very enjoyable. Particularly once we left the housing area and got back down by the river with the cool breeze coming in off the water. Hmm, that was soo nice.
Then it was time to retrieve the car and head for home, which we spent just quietly enjoying the day & each other’s company. Later in the evening, Ariesna’s parents came up and we unwrapped all the wedding loot. It was a good haul. Heck, there were even gifts in there that were aimed more towards me than they were towards the bride. Don’t misunderstand me, there were plenty of gifts that were definitely picked with the bride in mind! And of course, there was also a nice selection of checks and cold, hard cash as well. All in all, I think Ariesna & I should get married more often if it’s going to bring in this kind of loot.
1 Due to time & financial constraints, we didn’t get to do a full honeymoon right now but we hope to do one later. Since it was just a night away from home, I’m calling it our honey-night. 🙂
2 For the record, she’d already noticed the sign for the place a couple of times before I broke down and told her.
3 For those unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine, these rolls are actually types of sushi.
As mentioned previously, I signed up with Adagio Teas for their Link Reward offer. Over the weekend I received an email from one of their reps, thanking me for the link and saying that my reward was on the way. Privately, I was having doubts as my track record with freebies, trial offers and rebates is extremely poor.
Then today after a pretty average day at the office, I got home to find that my doormat was hiding something. The first thought in my head was “I wonder what eBay auction Ariesna won this time?” Much to my delight, my first thought was wrong and instead I was holding a package from Adagio! I hurried inside, tossed the groceries into the fridge and cracked open the box. I was most pleased to find that an 8oz tin of yunnan jig tea and one of Adagio’s IngenuiTEA teapots. After taking the IngenuiTEA out of the box and plastic wrapping, I could feel that the plastic it’s made of has a solid feel to it; so I don’t think I’ll be accidentally breaking it any time soon. Still, if I were going to purchase one of these things, I think I would prefer the main body be made of a heavy-duty glass. *shrug* I don’t know that glass would really work any better but it would give the IngenuiTEA a better heft and feeling of quality. Still, it looks to be a quality product and it’s definitely a very clever idea. You toss your loose tea leaves into the IngenuiTEA, fill it with hot water, wait for it to brew and then set it on top your cup. The IngenuiTEA will then drain your fresh cup of tea into the cup for you; while automatically straining out the leaves. If you’re still confused; go watch the flash video on their website and it’ll all make sense.
Adagio has this to say about their yunnan jig tea:
Black tea from the Yunnan region of China. Yunnan tea is easily identified by its luscious soft leaves, and a unique peppery taste. It is a very forgiving tea; will not taste bitter when over-steeped. Yunnan tea is arguably the most underrated of Chinese varieties. If you have yet to try it, we would recommend it highly. Our ‘Yunnan Jig’ would make a great introduction.
I found it slid smoothly across the palate. When it initially hits the tongue there’s an earthy flavor to it, but swirling it around in my mouth for a bit that flavor settles down to be more smoky than earthy. After swallowing the tea, there’s a slight but distinct hint of black pepper. The first cup I made was too hot, so I threw a bit of ice in it but the tea tasted… off once it was cold. It wasn’t just being watered down; it just didn’t taste right. On the 2nd cup, I was more careful on how hot I let the water get and this time drank the tea without ice. That worked considerably better and I’d definitely recommend this to anybody who enjoys drinking black tea.
So the final verdict? Adagio seems to be a very cool company with tasty tea and a nifty gadget for brewing the tea up. Does this mean CoffeeBear.net will become TeaBear.net? No, but I’ve no doubt I’ll be buying more tea from them once this sample runs out (some of those green teas and the flavored teas sounds really good.). 🙂
I just noticed that my contact form is currently busted, but as I’m at my day job; there’s nothing I can do about it for now. I’ll try to get it fixed either over my lunch hour or later tonight. In the meantime, if you absolutely must contact me the easiest way will be to post a comment to this entry. Thanks!
Update: I’m home for lunch and just tried to fix this but didn’t have any luck and it’s about time for me to head back to work. I’ll try working on this some more later tonight.
Update (08 April 2005, 1:47pm: I did try last night to get the contact form up and running again but didn’t have any luck; so that page is down until further notice. Currently, I’m looking at a different solution for having the page when I upgrade to WP 1.5 which shouldn’t be too far off.