Tag: home

My study group all made it to Japan safe & sound. We did nearly lose some people along various stages of the way here, but in the end we arrived with our lives and health in tact. I don’t know these people well enough to say whether or not their sanity is in tact after the trip or if they’re always this crazy.

As this was the first time in my memory that I’ve flown; I think I should make a note of the following:

  • Flying is not as bad an experience as I had been fearing it might be.
  • Puddle-jumper planes suck for people over 5 foot 8 inches, due to low ceilings and no headroom when going down the aisle.
  • International flights are too damn long and my ears are still somewhat numb from the constant roar of the engines.
  • Turbulance sucks! Particularly when you’re watching the wing bounce.
  • Landings are not evil, but only because that means you can get off the plane soon.

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I didn’t sleep so good last night, not quite sure why. I went to bed late and was completely exhausted but partially woke up a couple of hours before the alarm clock went off. My wrist braces1 were bothering my hands, so I took them off and tried going back to sleep. That sort of worked but it wasn’t really good sleep, as I was still somewhat awake. Though that did allow me to somewhat realize that I was dreaming while I was doing so. Unfortunately, I either had no control over the dream or I did and just never cared to change it. Also, I had the distinct impression that this was not the first time I’ve had this particular dream, though I cannot recall any other time that I’ve woken from this dream.

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Over the weekend, I started visiting some MP3 blogs and downloading some of the free tracks out there for extra listening material on my iPod. Today over lunch, I booted my home computer into Windows; so I could transfer those tracks to the iPod1. However it seems I’ve been biten by a bug in the iTunes/iPod software.

See, iTunes wouldn’t launch with the iPod connected; it would start in the background but wouldn’t display the GUI (at least it wouldn’t do it quick enough to satisfy me). If I disconnected the iPod, launched iTunes, reconnected the iPod then iTunes would continue to run but would fail to see the iPod. I tried dinking around with this for a while (rebooting, disconnecting, reconnecting, checking for updates and whatnot) but didn’t get any closer to having iTunes recognize the iPod. Though at one point an error message did pop-up telling me I needed to reformat the iPod.

I started searching Apple’s website, as I remembered hearing that there was an issue like this back in April when the last update for iTunes/iPod was released. The most info I could find basically told me to backup, reformat the iPod and try again. *sigh*

That’s not something I really wanted to hear. I guess tonight I’ll be booting back into Linux; backing up the data from the iPod to DVD-Rs and then trying some more drastic measures to get the iPod working right again.

Oh and the other reason I’m upset with iTunes; is that I forgot to go buy some songs from them over the weekend and hence had zero chance to win a free Powerbook. *double sigh*

1 For the record, I am familiar with gtkPod but it gives me errors everytime I try and get it just to read from my iPod which makes me disinclined to use it to write to the iPod.

Like many an American when I go into my bathroom at home to take care of business; I frequently like to have something to occupy my mind while the rest of me is busy. Occasionally I’ll take whatever book I’m reading at the moment with me, but I don’t like to do that because I tend to get caught up in the book and don’t leave the bathroom until my legs are asleep. I’ve found that taking a magazine in with me works better, as I can finish my business and read through an article at the same time.

I used to subscribe to CPU Magazine but my subscription is running out now and I don’t plan on renewing it. I’ve known for a while that I can basically get all the same info that’s in the magazine before the magazine goes to print by surfing the web. That didn’t bother me so much when the magazine was newer but the last several issues were completely dull. Maybe that’s because the whole tech industry is getting to be boring; I don’t know. What I do know is if I’m going to read dull information; I sure as hell don’t want to pay for the privilege.

So what am I reading these days? Well, first off there’s American Bungalow. I really love this magazine as it’s full of great photographs of lovely houses nd has articles about restoration projects. And let’s face it after abut 11 years of apartment living; I’m being totally consumed by house-envy. This magazine doesn’t help me with that in any way, shape or form but it does give me these crazy & exciting ideas of what I want in a house and what I’ll do to a house once I finally buy one. The only downsides to this magazine are that it only comes out quarterly and it’s rather expensive (~$12). So I tend to buy it at our local B&N, so I can use our membership card for the discount. Plus by getting it at the store, I don’t have to worry about our mailman shredding it in our mailbox; which has happened more than a few times. *grumble, grumble*

The other magazine that I’ve just started reading is mental_floss. I heard about this one about a week ago while blog-hopping1 and it sounded interesting. So the next time Ariesna & I were in B&N; I bought a copy of it. Basically, the magazine is full of trivia and wacky/interesting information. So far it seems like it will be a fun mag and I’ll probably pick up the next issue when it comes out (since it only costs ~$5). If the next one is also fun; then I might end up subscribing to this one and hence will have plenty of bathroom reading handy. 😛

1 Blog-hopping (verb): The process by which a person reads an article one blog and then proceeds to follow links from the blog that they are currently reading to another blog.