David's stuff

The Brinks man came this morning since we have a Brinks system preinstalled in our home. Unfortunately, they install everything except the power supply so it's just been sitting there doing nothing for the 2 months since we moved in. The man had told me on the telephone that we'd be able to turn the system on before he left, but when he arrived it became clear to me that nothing of the sort would be true. He brought in his sales binder and gave us a 20 minute printout of a powerpoint presentation about the history of Brinks, its customers, and some details of its monitoring facility in which I had no interest. After all this, I told him I had "just one question"--"can my system be monitored if I don't have a telephone line form the local telephone company?" We have our phone service through Vonage which comes over our internet connection. This question derailed the rest of the discussion. I also learned that the monitoring would cost $30+ per month, which was far higher than I was already prepared not to pay--a no brainer in my opinion. Hopefully the technician will be out later this week to bring an AC/DC converter so we can actually turn it on and have it make loud noises.

I have succumbed to the dark side. I have installed Windows 2000 on a machine here at the house. The machine is an AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz, which keeps freezing up under linux with Mythtv. Plus, I've got a few things for which I need Windows, such as the cd3o Eric got me. I can also use some of my non-Linux friendly hardware like my ATI All-In-Wonder.

wednesday when we Libby came home there were two random dogs wandering in our driveway. Since then, a golden retriever and a cocker spaniel have been staying at our home, briefly. We have put an ad in the paper, called the shelters, and posted signs, but no one has called about the pups. I hope we hear from someone soon!

I guess it's time I start working on my taxes.

We're down to four dogs: Lily, Lego, Arwen, and Tink. We spent the weekend driving pups around, doing home visits, and enjoying the nice weather.

We just released a new version of our software at work following good plans they'd laid out. All of us worked together to design, implement, test, and deploy. It's wonderful to with such a nice and professional group of people.

We had a wonderful weekend with the grandparents and were quite sad to see them leave. We played bridge, ate mousse pie, and toured a bit of Durham. We then joined Lucy and her family in Greensboro for a wonderfic birthday celebration at Kabuto.

Libby had accidentally set her Windows 2000 machine to the year 2054. The symptoms were many applications crashing, having errors, and generally failing. By simply setting the date we could crash: PuTTY, OpenOffice, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Virus Scan, and ZoneAlarm. Pretty impressive. Maybe it's a good idea for someone who writes viruses! Wonder how different operating systems might handle this situation.

I made Chocolate Mousse pie tonight!

Last night, I ran wires from the server closet into the guest bedroom for television and telephone. Now when Libby's grandparents are here this weekend, they'll be able to watch TV and talk on our Vonage phone line.

Also, I put a bunch of new pictures up in our gallery of: Sally, January, February, and our trip to Greensboro.

Tonight we went shopping and clenaed up the house in preparation for Libby's grandparent's visit next weekend.

This morning we dropped off Bebe in Greensboro, then had a wonderful visit with Libby's aunt Peg, and cousins Lucy and Joey. Lucy and Joey's parents were out of town for a bit of relaxation time. We enjoyed an afternoon of bowling, chatting, and a wonderful dinner at Bonefish Grill.

Today I installed a ceiling fan in our family room. We also caulked the previously installed coach llights and outdoor speakers. Finally, we ferried dachshunds around an overnight guest.

My first week of work is now complete. It was wonderful and I can't wait for more. I worked about 45 hours total, and I'm exhausted. I do have a few tidbits to do this weekend and make it up to 50 hours.

Today we sent Fritz to his new home. He will be moving to Maine. It's always very sad to see them go, and we miss his cheery personality already, but that's the only way we can help more!

Spent more time at work today building a new computer and installing Debian. I also found a new repository of packages for use with debian "Stable". Backports provides packages of newer software to work with the stable base provided by Debian. I pulled KDE 3.2 (actually, this wan't from backports). I got Mozilla Firebird from backports and the flash plugin!