Modern style

www.apartmenttherapy.com

Leap Day

I like to think of today as an extra day to goof off. Not that I wasn't going to anyway, but it's nice to think of a "stolen" day. Luckily, I'm off from work. All I have done today is transfer more music and pictures to this macbook, caught up on some podcast listening (classic tales podcast), did some laundry, and laid around.

Update: I just watched "Mr. Brooks" with Kevin Costner. Highly improbable story and I didn't understand the whole twist thing completely, but Costner and Demi Moore (yes, Demi Moore) were both very watchable. It is disturbing how you end up rooting for the serial killer a little bit. Blame Hannibal Lecter.

Oscars and file sharing (unrelated)

I watched the Oscars last night. It was a pretty painless awards show to watch this year. Some nice emotional wins (Marion Cotillard in her gorgeous Gaultier dress; Tilda Swinton, pale and very surprised looking; Diablo Cody, tearful and working her own artsy style; and the really excited Irish guy for the best song win). Seems like all the big winners were foreign actors. Where are the Americans?

I have finally been able to share files between my Dell and my Macbook wirelessly. My dell can see the macbook as a "network place." But my dell doesn't show up on my mac "network". Still somehow I can transfer files from the dell if I tell the dell to copy files to the mac. It will take hours to move everything over. Strangely enough, Yahoo Answers was more of a help than any of the Apple support web pages.

Urban Legends

http://www.snopes.com/

Die Hard 4

Live Free or Die Hard is the first Blu-ray disc I have played. The player takes a long time to load up, but the picture is undeniably excellent. The movie had good action scenes (bodies falling, Bruce Willis crashing a helicopter with a car, crashing a plane with a semi) and I finally got used to the Justin Long character (he was a little annoying at first). It took too long to find out why the bad guys were doing what they were doing. And the end is a little cliched. But Bruce Willis is likable as ever as John McClane.

No "bag o' crap" yet again! Curses to the woot-off!

I happened to be obsessively refreshing www.woot.com and there it was....the elusive "bag of crap" which is a package filled with mystery items that hopefully includes some expensive electronic gadget... for only one dollar plus $5 shipping. The plan is to buy the max of three items, hence pay only $8 for 3 mystery packages. I hit "I want one" and...the server is unavailable! How do they sell 4500 "BOCs" in like 7 seconds???

Inaccessible Woot-Off

Apparently there is a woot-off going on, however, I can't get to the site. I think their server is overloaded or something. Very disappointing. I have a woot checker "twobitarcade.com" that seems to have a connection, but even then I wouldn't be able to buy anything! :(

A Geeky Online Personality Test

The Serenity character personality test

(I am Simon Tam.)

The lights are off...and I'm home

The power went out for about a half an hour.  I am so addicted to television that I actually hooked up my Pinnacle HDTV tuner to my Dell to watch halting motion of Dave and Lois on Channel 3 news.  Fortunately, everything is back up and running.  Lights can go on, tv's can glow, I can charge this macbook....  You don't realize how dependent you are on electricity till it's gone.  I hope it doesn't go out again.  It was the fault of downed wires according to the PG&E power outage phone line, and it's still windy, so it may happen again!  By the way, I think non-corded phones should be able to function during a power outage.  That's why I still have my corded Conair slimline phone from 1990 in my room.  Just in case.

Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now...

http:/www.bathroomdiaries.com

Year of the Rat

Happy New Year! It's the year of the rat. I just realized I am a pig and not a rat! I always suspected and my mom wasn't sure either, but when I punch in my birthday, I barely miss being a rat by like 2 days.

Alas, I did not hit a $25,000 jackpot in Reno. Of course, betting pennies won't get you one.

I am going to attempt to install the new tv I got recently. This will take me hours since I am not mechanically or electronically handy. When you consider dvd player, cable box, and my wii, it's gonna take me a while.

I think I gained about 5 lbs over the past days of overindulging. I highly recommend the Atlantis buffet (especially the Mexican food side, which had excellent chile rellenos just sitting there which I didn't expect much of, but was surprisingly good.) Also, the Peppermill coffee shop has cheap eats with huge portions and prebuttered toast if you get breakfast. Also Safeway supermarket cakes are excellent. Foodie out.

Reno... here I come

Driving to Reno with my parents to gamble and stay at the Peppermill.  I finally get to use my new navigation thing, but it won't even power on!  Maybe if I keep pressing the power button.... it will explode or turn on.  I'm going because I took the week off from work and it's my b-day!  I am now 36 in this year of the rat.  I work with other "rats" so that means they are 12 years younger than me!  I think I am emotionally 10 years behind anyway!  So that means I'm 26... if I sat in a time machine.

mba (macbook air) update; masterpiece theatre question answered; super bowl

Well, the hard drive thing didn't work and I keep trying to link my dell to my mba to share files, but no go.  It must be something incredibly obvious.  I just finished watching "Masterpiece Classic" with a biopic of Jane Austen which was actually pretty good.  I even went to PBS.org to find out more info.  Apparently, Masterpiece Theatre is now split into Masterpiece Classic, Masterpiece Mystery!, and Masterpiece Contemporary.  I hope they will show the Edward Gorey animation at the beginning of Mystery! again.  I always liked those black and white drawings.  I watched the Super Bowl, the only football game I watch every year (usually).  It began well, the middle was boring (I opened up my mba), but the final quarter was really good.  I felt bad for Tom Brady.  He looked really stressed the whole time.  A lot of pressure to finish the "perfect" season.  But I do feel good for Eli Manning.  He really pulled through in the clutch.  My mba is starting to grow on me.  This full size keyboard is really nice to type on, and it's much lighter on my lap!

macbook air

I gave into new-gadget-lust when I ordered the macbook air. I received it yesterday. It's very pretty, very aluminum, very thin. I also like the full-size keyboard. The speed I thought would be way better than the dell I am actually using right now, but it actually seems a microsecond slower. I am trying to use this dell optical drive with the macbook wirelessly with no success (the air has no included optical drive, hence the thinness.) I didn't realize how I had designed everything (bookmarks, rss feeds, etc) around Mozilla Firefox. Mac has the included Safari browser which I am still trying to figure out. I am tempted to download firefox for the mac, but I think my mac is full of bundled software like garageband, ilife, ichat...all this stuff I have never heard of...so I don't want to load down my new computer with other stuff. I am going to try to connect my portable hard drive that suppposedly has my media files to the macbook. I have a feeling nothing will happen. But it is very pretty.