Nuked some stuff out of the gallery of pictures that was unnecessary.

Added a new “Food” gallery. Cause apparently I like taking pictures of what I’m about to eat. *shrug*

There may still be a bunch of broken thumbnails/pictures that I need to fix. Files with spaces in the name are the culprit.

Barton and I recently rented a self-storage unit, and have been seriously hammering away at all of the stuff we own that we don’t regularly use, to get it in boxes/totes and moved into the storage space. Some of the things getting packed away are items that we would love to have at our fingertips or on display – if we owned a house. But an 800-ish square foot apartment? Nope, there is just not enough room. We still have a long way to go though, and I expect the unit will be mostly full by the time we’re satisfied with our de-cluttering efforts. This will also make moving a slightly less monumental task.. I hope.

We also joined a local ham radio club this year – MARA (Michigan Amateur Radio Alliance). Interacting with those folks, and attending the monthly meetings has been a welcome break to the usual work-chores-sleep-work-chores-sleep monotony. We also joined the ARRL as well. I’ve been studying, off and on, to get ready to take the General License exam too, hopefully I will have that accomplished by sometime this coming spring.

If you have looked through my Tumblr (Warning: do not click on that link if you are at all sensitive to sexual content.. especially giantwtfomgbbqrobosex) at all, you’ve probably noticed I’ve had a huge resurgence in following Transformers/Transfandom this year. I’d hoped I might be able to attend Botcon 2012, but alas, it is now prohibitively expensive to go. Maybe 2013? Urgh. HOWEVER, I am still immensely looking forward to the second season of Transformers: Prime which premieres in February.

If you have waded through this massive update and are still with me… thank you… and…

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

In the last 2 years, I’ve driven 72,000 of those miles just to and from work.

I plan on buying a newer car within a year. But I am really going to miss this one when its gone.

Spent most of today cleaning, taking out trash, etc. I think the apartment looks the least cluttered since we moved into it in Dec 09. At this rate it should be both spartan and spotless by the time my vacation is over.

Pfffft. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Anyone who starts something with you – at any time – obviously doesn’t know you well. If they did, they’d have some respect for your ability to, at the very least, intimidate someone so that they end up looking over their shoulder for many, many moons. At the moment though, in the mood you’re obviously in, should someone refuse to back off, given the warning signs – well, let’s just say that they deserve what they get.

OMG, MASSIVE COMPUTER NERDINESS AHEAD. YOU ARE WARNED.

I did get a new computer. Basic specs:

* AMD Phenom II X2 545  3.0GHz (Dual Core) 45nm, AM3 6MB Cache

* MSI 760GM-E51, AMD 760G, Onboard Video, HDMI, GB LAN

* 8GB (4x2GB) PC8500 DDR3 1066 Dual Channel

* 500.0GB Hitachi 7200RPM SATA2, UDMA 300 8m cache

* LG 22x DVD Recorder Dual Layer +R/RW -R/RW

* A copy of Windows 7 Pro

I also bought a hard drive “toaster” for easy access to stuff on my old drives.

I installed Kubuntu 10 on the new box, and Virtualbox so I can haz mah Windoze. But, I goofed and installed the “Open Source Edition” of Virtualbox, so, heh, I can’t connect any USB drives/devices and have Windows be able to access them. What I really need Windows for in the first place, is to connect my Yaesu VX-7R radio so stored frequencies can be easily programmed. If anyone knows of any (OMG, FREE?) software for Linux that works the same as the ADMS-1G software, please give me a shout on teh twitters or via email. I did also try to use Wine to install the ADMS-1G software in Linux, but it won’t recognize that I AM installing it from the original source CD and thus bails out of the install process.

I haven’t exhausted all avenues with Virtualbox yet though, I haven’t tried the closed-source version, which I’m thinking would require I reinstall Windows which I really don’t want to do but I will if its the only option.

I came home yesterday after lunch and the computer was powered off, with that awesome tell-tale “burnt electronics” smell emanating from its general area.

I can order a new one for about the same price (heh, including Windows 7) as it would cost me to replace the borken parts of the current one. The choice seems fairly obvious.

This will also give me a chance to do that long-delayed update from Kubuntu 8 to Kubuntu 10. And give me an excuse to buy a new monitor. And an external HD dock. And install VirtualBox so I can have Windows as a guest OS instead of rebooting every time we need Windows for something.

I would say that her death was unexpected, except that in going through her things I saw that she was not taking very good care of herself; honestly, I’m not sure that she has ever been able to. She was smoking heavily, drinking. I had a conversation with another resident of her building that said she liked to come to the group dinners; she had a lot of food hoarded in her apartment, though it didn’t look like she’d been eating very well – in quality and quantity.

I hadn’t spoken to her since some time in 2007, after Barton and I moved to Lansing. I feel guilty for not keeping better contact with her, but, it was mostly to protect myself. My mom was diagnosed “paranoid schizophrenic” – I could write a book based on my experiences with just her throughout my life. In the least, I should probably see a therapist/psychologist.

Snooze