Weekend et. al.

Had a fairly laid back weekend…. Friday night I just stayed home with , who had a nasty cold (probably the same cold I had, although we had thought she had dodged that bullet). Saturday morning I decided to mount my Sirius radio in the car. It had been flopping around, kind of propped up in the ashtray while I waited for a nice mount to arrive in the mail (the radio came with a suction cup mount as well as velcro, but both those choices seemed ghetto). This mount required me taking the dashboard trim off, which was made easier by employing the dash trim removal tool I got with the new mount kit, but still sucked. I thought I could mount it without removing the car stereo, etc, but that was false hope. With the car stereo removed I was able to hide wires much easier, so they just pop out of the dashboard next to the mount. I also replaced the cigarette lighter adapter that came with the Sirius with some hard-wired power that tied into the car stereo’s wiring harness. I wired so the Sirius always has power, so that if I have to run out of the car quickly but want to finish what I am hearing I can pause the radio (it has a 45 minute live buffer) and shut the car off. I also moved the Sirius antenna from the trunk to the roof, as I was getting annoyed that the wires would move and get tugged whenever I opened the trunk. All in all it took me about 2 hours to finish the job, which includes running back up to the apartment to solder the power leads into the wiring harness, so it wasn’t that bad. The only downside of the experience was that it was pouring rain, so I did a lot of crawling around the inside of the car to avoid getting drenched.

Sunday we caught The Matador with the film club, which was pretty funny. A bunch of us are headed to Rochester after work on Friday for the first FUMN in ages… I’m really looking forward to that (but not particularly looking forward to the drive…).

Go Go Gadget Dock

I’ve heard people grumble about the OS X Dock’s behavior before, but today I had my first real problem with it, the “Finder” item in the dock removed itself from the dock and planted itself on the desktop, but it was completely non-functional and couldn’t be dragged back to the dock. Killing the dock fixed the problem.

Suprglu

pointed me at Suprglu, which is like a personal aggregator that combines all the various sites I post to (as configured by me).

If you get annoyed at keeping up with the various bits of info I post to different places (LiveJournal, del.icio.us, SNFC, etc), check out grahams.suprglu.com. Once I pick a new place to host my photos, I’ll add that to the mix as well.

Dental Happenings

I had my six-month cleaning at the dentist today, and it’s the first time in like, 10 years, where they didn’t find any cavities… It’s about time all this dental hygiene paid off… I was finally able to start flossing thanks to those Reach Access doohickeys, which now come in Mint flavor which rocks socks!

1-09-06

This weekend was fun… Flew the helicopter, convalesced, watched “New York Doll” (highly recommended). I’m feeling quite better, seem to have dodged the mega-congestion I usually get after the sore throat phase of colds, I’m only slightly congested today.. Got my first dose (aside from the radio tests he did last week) of Stern on Sirius on the ride in this AM, which was cool… George Takei is an awesome choice as an announcer, his voice is fantastic.

Plague-ridden

Last night before bed I noticed the beginnings of a sore throat, so I popped back some Cold-Eeze. Around 5:00am I woke up with a terrible sore throat, and got up to get some water as well as another lozenge. I went back to bed and tossed and turned but couldn’t fall back asleep, so around 6am I decided to just get up, shower, and get to work. I got to work at 7:15am, which I believe is a new record for me at Goodrich.

I cancelled my subscription to Audible subscription yesterday… I had the plan where you get 1 audiobook and 1 subscription a month (which I used for Car Talk), but I haven’t been listening to the audiobooks during my normal commute, so they’ve been piling up.. I still love their service, and will eventually buy books piecemeal once I plow through my backlog, but the subscription is a bit too much in this age of podcasts… Not to mention Howard Stern… :)

Yesterday I bought a Sirius Satellite Radio receiver for my car with my Christmas cash.. I hadn’t been listening to Howard very reliably during my commute because my commute was just long enough to get two blocks of commercials and one block of content, which was pretty frustrating… I had been eyeing Sirius for a year or two now, but Howard is definitely what pushed me over the edge.. The best part was after I installed it in my car, I turned on Howard 100 and they just so happened to be doing a studio gear test at that moment with most of the crew, so it was like a little preview show. I’ve heard rumblings that the show will still have commercials, which would disappoint me (and probably cause me to drop my subscription, if they were overbearing), but hopefully they won’t be there (or at least won’t be bad). I figured the price of the Sirius subscription is less than what I was paying each month for Audible, so it’s a bit easier to justify. The other reason, besides Howard, was that without listening to the Radio anymore I was discovering less new music, so hopefully this will rectify that as well.

Brokeback Mountain Chopper

I had been avoiding Brokeback Mountain because it seemed like it was a gimmick movie. All the press and attention I had heard had been focused on how great it was that it was a gay cowboy movie. But pickin’s for this past weekend’s film club were slim, and I had heard some really good reviews of the film, so I picked it for the club. Turns out it really was a great film.. It was tasteful, not over the top, and just a really well put together film and story. Heath Ledger is as good as everybody says he is, and even Donnie Darko did a good job…

Getting much better at flying the helicopter.. I’m able to hover it for 30 seconds or more without having to touch it down again… Back at work this morning, it’s slow going trying to get back into the swing of things after 11 days of vacation… =)

2005 Films In Review