I married the most wonderful woman in the space-time continuum one year ago today 😀 One year and two hours, but who’s counting? 😉

It has been a wonderful year since. We celebrated our first anniversary with a little road trip to Santa Claus, IN. We went to a place called Holiday World. It was a pretty awesome place which reminded me a bit of Opryland. It’s a smaller park with nothing more than wooden roller coasters (actually, one was made of steel but still had merely straight dips and curves…no loops). They also had a pretty awesome water park integrated into it.

I definitely had a very wonderful time, and somehow kept the sun from pwning me. Vive le sunscreen! lol. It seems like I did get a little tan, though…maybe I’m not as white as a vampire anymore.

I got Ruthie a nice starfish holly double pendant from Swarovski, the same place I got her heart pendant wedding gift a year ago. She certainly seems to love the heck out of it 🙂

Unfortunately, while we were gone it seems the Cubbies started losing big to the Rockies. Meh. Same ol’. Maybe next year 😉 I do hope that stories of Joe Girardi possibly becoming manager next season are true. With the departure of Pinella at season’s end, obviously there are going to be changes of some kind. It’d be nice if those changes included Girardi; he’s been to the World Series and is a former Cub. Can’t go wrong there.

Wow, July is full of a lot of birthdays. We celebrated my dad’s birthday this past week, countzero2k7‘s was this week, Daniel’s is tomorrow, and Lucas Meacham’s is Tuesday. The later was celebrated yesterday. I think it was really the first 1st birthday party that I’ve been to since my own brother‘s way back in the day. There wasn’t a much diving into cake as I would’ve figured. In fact, he seemed kind of hesitant 😀

The quality of the video is kinda “meh”. I was experimenting with my new phone a bit. Apparently, it does 720p far better than it does QVGA:

(Lucas Meacham’s First Birthday Cake)

In other news, it’s still hot 😐 High 90s and plenty of humidity. Boo.

Ruthie’s coming back from Louisville today. Yay! 😀 She was up there for a dinner theatre presentation that she was going to with her mom. I don’t like musicals much, so she goes up for all of the those, and I go up with her for all of the plays.

Here’s an interesting one for ya. Apparently, Britain is now moving away from the direction that we’re going with that whole health care thing:

Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care

I shudder to think how much my paycheck is going to shrink this coming January with the expiration of the “evil” Bush tax cuts and the anticipated increases in premiums for insurance, what with a program that was supposedly going to “help” with them 😐

It’s definitely one of “those” Alabama summers. We’re having nothing but days in the 90s, with humidity in at least the 80% range. Quite miserable. Ruthie is training for a marathon she’s running with Keith in October in Chicago, and found she had to segment out her 7 mile run yesterday. Running while trying to breathe in what is effectively water is no fun at all.

I’m getting a new phone, supposedly this week. We’ll see. I pre-ordered a Motorola Droid X from Best Buy late last month. I am kind of ambivalent that I will be getting it the day of the release (the 15th, this week!). If it’s a popular phone, I’m betting supplies will be as spare as they were (and still are) with the likes of the HTC Incredible. Anyhoo, this is my first jaunt into the world of Android, so I’ll probably post a review when I’ve had some time to try it out and hack the snot out of it 😀

We saw Despicable Me on Friday. It was a cute movie. We didn’t see it in 3D, which is certainly quite fine with me; I tend to get headaches either because of the glasses or because of something with the rendering. I really don’t know which. The only movie that didn’t happen with was Avatar. Before the movie, we gave Cheddar’s a whirl; it was both of our first times there and we loved it.

I’m currently reading a Star Trek novel, something I hadn’t done in a while before my last couple of novels. It takes place in Archer’s era, during the Romulan War. What’s most interesting is how they have to step back in technology on newer starships (Daedelus-class ships, like what the Archon presumably was). It essentially gives some reason in the storyline why Kirk’s Enterprise (from the original series and original timeline) looked the way it did. A rather unique Romulan weapon necessitated this reversion. It sort of reminded me of why the Soviet Union used vacuum tubes for decades in their aircraft long after solid state became big; to escape the ravages of an EMP in a nuclear attack. Anyway, it was a rather interesting element of a very engrossing plot. If you’re a Trekkie, I’d highly recommend it.

Cubs keep suckin’ it, but that’s just normal 😀 They actually had a pretty good game against the Dodgers yesterday, but I’m not being lulled into a false sense of a streak here. If they’re not .500 by the All-Star Break, then I’m pretty sure all bets are off.

My mom actually *GASP* got a laptop 😮 It’s a hand-me-down from my brother. I refitted it with a new optical drive and RAM and gave it to her, in better shape than it was when Keith had it in its prime. It’s such an old lappy, though, that it’s pretty much nothing more than a netbook as far as caliber of power goes. Celeron M with 2GB of 766MHz DDR and an integrated Intel vid card. It’s running XP, of course. Good enough for email and basic stuff.

So, I got an iPad. It is not an awful device, so far. The lack of Flash is not all that bothersome, to this point. Typing on it is a smidge awkward, but not too bad. I would definitely refrain from writing the great American novel it, though. I think once I get used to the spacing of the on screen keys, i will get a bit better with it.

Courtesy of an iTunes gift card so thoughtfully given to me by my mom in law, I bought a few apps for it. The coolest game I got is a racing game called Asphalt 5. I also got Worms HD, a star chart program which is quite full of spiffy, mahjong (I have yet to have owned a mobile device on which I didn’t have a mahjong game)…there is an iPad version of Scrabble similar to what I have on my iPhone, but I didn’t thunk that was worth the bucks for it. I installed the iPhone version of SimCity, but it seems that most non-ported iPhone apps look rather terrible when upscaled.

Surfing is very similar to a desktop experience, given the resolution of the screen; no need to head to mobile versions of sites on this puppy. For most sites, I also don’t feel the need to zoom in as I do on the iPhone.

What is majorly awesome, though, is the Kindle app…mainly because I bought some Kindle books already, on my old Kindle (which has now found an enthusiastic user in Ruthie). What I am really looking for is an iPad version of Stanza, another eBook reader that reads plain txt files, something that this iPad app doesn’t do.

There is supposedly a jailbreak on the way which I will certainly partake in. At least I will be able to multitask in that way until fall when the iPad gets the 4.0 OS.

All-in-all, not a bad device, so far. I wouldn’t mind checking out a ‘droid tablet, too, as they step up, but this has been a very nice first tablet in the meantime.

The Health Care Bill passed the Senate. It really makes no sense; they’ve taken out a Public Option and Medicare reform to compensate for the lack of a Public Option…and yet when I was waking up this morning, I heard that Obama wanted the Senate to “make sure the taxes are structured so that they don’t harm middle class workers” in regards to taxes and fees for so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans.

It’s a crock on two fronts. For one, he doesn’t give a damn about the middle class–his Marxist ideas will likely destroy the middle class and create a highly stratified society of haves and have-nots.

On another front, assuming that there is no Public Option or Medicare reform in lieu of a Public Option anymore, then why do they need taxation of “Cadillac” insurance plans anymore at all? What the hell are these taxes going to pay for, if there is no public insurance of any kind in this bill? I’m pretty sure that the taxes and fees were set in this bill with that in mind so, without it, where the hell is the money going to go? Do they still have those stupid government cooperatives in there? Do they have some other regulatory tools in there? Even if that were the case, why the tax increases on the plans for something regulatory? It just makes no sense. And of course, for it to make any sense, you have to troll through thousands of pages to find something that probably implicitly lays something out.

Of course, it stinks of a dirty Chicago politician. The next decades are really going to suck. People didn’t want this; a great majority of Americans did not want this bill–whether they wanted something more Conservative or more Liberal, NO ONE is happy with it. And, of course, they passed it anyway. Representative Democracy has failed us. And, pretty much predictably, no one seems to care. I hope that not only does the Congress pay for this in the coming elections, but also the Presidency. That’s pretty much our only hope, at this point.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The weekend is going by fairly well here. We had a wonderful little family get together on Thursday. It was certainly good seeing the bro, visiting from Chitown. My mom cooked a whole turkey–the past few thanksgivings has been just a gigantic turkey breast, but this time it was a whole bird. It was quite yummy; it was so juicy that it didn’t even need any gravy–though, I’m not much of a gravy dude, anyway.

Today was really cool, too. Ruthie had a Black Friday sojourn up to Opry Mills. I remained home and held down the fort…and shopped on Amazon instead 😉 hehe. She got in at about 5:30ish this morning. I mean, just…wow. lol. I did experience a smidge of Black Friday later today, though, when we went to MovieStop and checked out their sale. It wasn’t too awful, though, and we did get a few cool DVDs/Blu-rays. w00t.

Tomorrow is a 360 LAN. w00 h00! We haven’t had one of those in a while–since July, I think. Too long! We’ve all been busy here and there with something, I suppose. Should be a h00t.

I may be looking for punishment, but I’m attempting to install OS X onto my laptop. I’m using an iDeneb mix that supposedly works fairly frickin’ well on most computers. I think that it might even work on my eeePC, but I’m certainly not going to try that at this point–I want to have at least ONE working compy at all times. lol. Besides that, I don’t know that OS X would work all that well on that particular hardware combination, certainly not in comparison to Windows 7–which almost seems to be made for it.

I just got a new server this week, and I got it up and going in fairly short order. Something funky went on after I tweaked selinux; TTY errors which made me do a rescue of it. When I got it back up, though, it was all good and it has been running quite spiffily since. It’s a LAMP server where I also store files and media. I may make it an HTPC at some point, though certainly not until I can get a tv capture card for it. It’s amazing how quiet it runs; I can’t even tell it’s there, whereas the old server was getting to be like a jet engine.

I had a very awesome idea for a BSG story. I might kick it around and possibly write it; it has literally been ages since I wrote anything in terms of stories…end of high school, really, I suppose. We’ll see if I can get the willpower going to write it 🙂 I think it’s an intriguing idea, but I don’t know if I can/will go anywhere with it.

Anyhoo, iDeneb is about finished cooking…time to go geek out a bit more on this Friday eve 🙂

Well, I think we are most assuredly in the heat of summer now. It has been in the middle-to-high 90s all week and will be again this coming week. The lowest it’ll be during the day is 93 on Wednesday. Yup. Time to sequester myself indoors for the next number of months. lol.

I played some Call of Duty: World at War yesterday. I got up to a 2nd Lt, finally. I progress very slowly when it comes to rank mainly because I don’t play too terribly much outside of LANs, unless my bro is on or something. Beyond that, I’m usually busying myself with WoW-ing or Spore-ing on the game front.

We had a yard sale yesterday. It didn’t go as well as the first, mainly because most of the stuff in this one consisted of leftovers from the other. But, it was still a profitable day. I put an old end table in it, but it didn’t sell–cheap, plastic 70s-type furniture that my folks actually had when I was a wee lad. It’ll probably go off to a consignment shop, along with a couple of other items.

It looks like things are all set for nearly everything in August, particularly given what we made in this yard sale.

I got new wheels this past week. I went to get my oil changed and they informed me that my wheels were “bent”. I’m sure it’s from some obscenely large pothole, like one that used to be outside Ruthie’s apartment (they’ve filled it in since, go figure). Anyhoo, my Ion will be fancied up with some alloy wheels sometime this week.

Outside of that, things have been fairly uneventful. Although, Happy Father’s Day to all of the pops out there!

Wow, it’s been muggy around these parts. It’s to the point where if you walk out to the mailbox, you’ll be completely drenched in condensation and sweat when you return to the door. Icky. But, it actually feels a lil good for a few moments after being in AC all day.

Ruthie’s down at the Cape for work. Lucky ducky. She gets to chill at the beach after she’s done, a lil bit in Orlando perhaps, and to top it all off she gets to see the shuttle launch on Saturday. She has our vid cam with her, so I totally can’t wait to see some footage 😀

Wedding plans are going along quite smoothly. I think nearly everything is taken care of, at this point. Only roughly a month and a half away! Invitations have gone out, I do believe. I have a couple lying around, if anyone wants an invite.

I replaced my MacBook Pro with a nice lil HP job I got off of w00t. I made a profit, at least compared to what I sold the MBP and bought the new one for. That’ll probably go in our lil wedding fund 🙂 Anyway, the big thing about this new lappy is a superior vid card. Also, it has two drive bays. I’m considering putting a 30GB SSD in there as a system drive. We’ll see 😀 I put Windows 7 on this puppy. It’s a very nice advancement for Windows, I think.

I’ve found some relatives on Facebook–I knew it was good for something besides status updates 😀 It was a pretty cool way of getting back in touch.

I’m babysitting the pugs this weekend. They’re a pleasure to look after; they don’t do much but lie around…unless they’re hungry, of course 😀

Anyhoo, I guess that’s about all for the past month. I’ll try to get better about posting again. Facebook has the appeal of lil one-liner updates, but there’s nothing like typing out a novel every once in a while 🙂

You’d have to have gone to Bob Jones and have at least hung out in Mrs. Thompson’s classroom to really understand this, but…

The Meat Ship

So, I’ve been a pretty busy lil bee of-late. Last weekend, we had our first wedding shower. It was with all of our local friends and family. This coming weekend, we’re having one in Louisville with Ruthie’s family. It should be a hoot. Today’s my Friday in honor of this shindig. w00t!

I’ve seen Star Trek two more times, once at Monaco again and then another time at the Space & Rocket Center. It was in Omnimax, so it was very underwhelming. The size was certainly there, but it was like watching the movie through a fish bowl. I got moderately nauseated…not enough to toss my cookies, but it got pretty touch-and-go there for a while.

This weekend Terminator Salvation comes out. Pretty decent summer for movies, me thinks.

Last weekend, Ruthie and I met up with the Pierces at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival. I’ll post some pics when I have some time. It was pretty cool, though it did rain. We got to see jousting and human chess before that, though, and wandered around a little bit when the rain settled for a while.

I’ve installed Windows Mobile 6.5 on my phone. It’s pretty frickin’ tight. I’m not using a stylus at all for the phone anymore. It still doesn’t quite have the polish of the iPhone interface, but it’s still pretty awesome. Windows Mobile 7 promises even more slickness, though that’s over a year away…I’ll probably be ready for a new phone by then, anyway 😉

WM 6.5 Screenshots for the Geeks Out There…