Today I got a UPS package from the fambly containing a buttload of candy for Easter in addition to my birthday booty. I opened the package right away because I smelled food through the wrapper and didn’t want it to go to waste if it was baked goods, etc. I was trying to be good and not open my gifts until my ACTUAL birthday, but I figured any presents would be wrapped. This was a faulty assumption, as the presents were “wrapped” in a bag from the Apple store. As I am the only person in my family who is a Mac user, I knew they didn’t reuse a bag lying around… :) But still trying to be a good boy, I didn’t open the bag, even though I could pretty much see through it. :) After talking to my parents on the phone, though, they said I should just go ahead and open it. So I did.

My parents got me an Airport Express, the audio cables for it, and a little USB remote control gizmo… I had asked for the Airport Express as my current access point is 802.11b, which isn’t a problem as far as getting to the outside world (since 11Mbps is much faster than my cable modem), but any internal transfers dragged pretty bad. While my current condition prevented me from setting things up as I really wanted, I set it up rube style just to play…

First off, my current router/access point sucks (Thanks, Belkin!), as there is no way to disable it’s wireless capabilities… So I am currently squandering a channel for no good reason… I think my dad still has my old SMC wired router, if so I’ll ask him to bring it up next time they visit so I can ditch the Belkin POS. Anyway, I couldn’t easily get to any Cat-5, so I just stole a connection from my Mac workstation, which is being phased out anyway.. Hooked it up to the Belkin, plugged it into AC, and fired up the Airport Setup gizmo on my Powerbook… It saw the device lickity-split, and the configuration was a breeze.. Within no time flat it was setup and ready to go… The software even detected the firmware was out of date and updated it for me (after asking me, of course).

So that was pretty painless… Then, after went to bed I decided to really risk life and limb and see if I could hook it up to my stereo to test the AirTunes feature. I opened up the box of cables, took the RCA cables (it will take some real reorganization behind my stereo to use the TOSLink cable, and I’m not up for that yet). Anyway, I hooked up the cable, fired up iTunes, and enabled AirTunes in the preferences (which was probably on by default at some point and I turned it off). The Airport Express showed up in the drop down at the bottom of iTunes and right away I was able to play music through it.. So this also replaces my old Slimp3 player, which I haven’t been using since I don’t leave any computer on 24/7 anymore. I’ll miss the display of the Slimp3 player, but it simply isn’t realistic in our current apartment.

I haven’t played around with the remote or anything yet… But all in all I had some nice geeky fun tonight, and it’s not even my birthday yet!

Greatest Picture Evar.

Several people, including my sister , asked for a new picture of my leg now that it’s had a few weeks to heal:

I’m almost fully convinced at this point that I could replace my entire CD collection with a few Stephen Lynch cd’s and the Team America soundtrack.

Stumbled across this cool article that provides instructions on using the RSS Import plugin for Azureus to automatically download content as it appears on Torrent Trackers. You just tell the RSS plugin what feeds to monitor, and you give it some regular expressions as rules to download the files, and it just runs as part of Azureus, downloading files as they match your RegEx. It’s pretty neat!

Not a whole hell of a lot going on these days… I’m starting to get pretty stir crazy, I’ve got to find some personal programming project to work on… Or something to keep my mind busy.. All the little surgical tape gizmos that were covering my incision (and the staple holes) came off today after my shower… There is one spot that is still a little raw so I slapped a band-aid over it.. I’ll get some pics up of the scar as soon as I charge my camera battery.

So far my medical expenses are in the neighborhood of \$28,000, hopefully insurance will cover most of that, though. :) I had to fill out an “Accident Questionnaire” today stating that this wasn’t a worker’s comp. eligible accident. I have to go to Physical Therapy for the first time on Monday…. Going to probably have to take a cab there, which sucks, because it is like two blocks away but there is a giant hill between here and there, so I can’t even think about crutching my way there.

and I went out for lunch to Bugaboo Creek today.. Other than the trip to McDonalds the day of my Doctor’s appointment (in a failed attempt at scoring a Shamrock Shake), this was my first real excursion into the real world since my accident at the beginning of the month. I held up okay, although I had to shift around in my seat at the restaurant a bit as my leg got tired of certain positions. It felt great to get out of the house, though, and we picked a gorgeous day at that.

When convalescing on the couch with a broken knee, it might not be the best idea to blast Ministry, which you know gets you all whipped up…

I was looking at the bookshelf yesterday and noticed that has a book entitled “The Price of Freedom”. It seems like a long book, which is odd, because we all know that Freedom costs \$1.05. What else could it talk about?

From :

1. What is your favorite movie of all time? My Blue Heaven
2. How often do you watch this movie? Several times a year
3. What’s your favorite line out of the whole movie? “What the frig is this?”
4. Who’s your favorite character from this movie? Vincent Antonelli
5. What scene do you love the most? In the hotel room….

So I have learned what happens when you break your leg and are out of work on disability for 2 months:

You apparently get promoted to Senior Software Engineer and get a 20% raise…