Insignifica

Happy Hump Day!

Picture of the day!

Basil.

I've had my dental appointment, and I'm happy to say I'm the proud owner of a new crown that appears to fit very well.

LAV: "In God We Trust" goes up in Huntington Beach.

I got home from the dentist to find Roomba had lost his debris storage bin (his "ass", as I like to say), he had unplugged his base unit and moved it all the way behind the couch, and was sitting, out of power and assless, in the kitchen. Oh, that crazy Roomba...

As is often the case when I'll be passing within a few dozen miles of a casino, I got the itch to gamble on my road trip next month. Other than the Chumash Casino near Buellton, are there any other Indian Casinos near the 5 or 101 between Socal and the Bay Area?

Tuesday!

Picture of the day!

Katie and her bottle artwork. We all watched as she made this, and the layout looks roughly like a mathematical curve or foreign letter. There are more pictures here and here.

Back to the grind, and I'm pretty much caught up at work. I'm not off again on a weekday until 08/08/08, when I travel to Santa Cruz.

Liberal Atheist Vegetarian: Dog Fancy Punked by PETA.

If all goes well, I'll have my new crown tomorrow - last time, the dentist didn't like the fit, so we had to do the impression again, which involves numbing, packing your gums with string, and a bit more uncomfortableness). Here's to hoping for a good fit...

I need more sleep. I'm too old for my college-style 6 hours a night.

That's all I've got for ya. What's happening?

Good day, friends!

Picture of the day!

Tuolumne Meadows - click for bigger goodness. The whole Yosemite set is up now as well.

Yosemite was great, and a very good vacation. My last two posts have updates if you didn't read them. Some highlights from the last day there:

- Bear! I saw an adult black bear when I was returning to my cabin from brushing my teeth. Big mutha'. They chased it off, but we heard warning shots fired in the middle of the night, so it likely came back looking for more.

- When vacationing, try to schedule your return to not coincide with Friday afternoon LA traffic. It took almost as much time to get from Burbank to Santa Ana as it did to get from Yosemite to Burbank.

- People ignore all signs regarding feeding wildlife and climbing on the rocks.

While the trip was awesome, I dunno if I'll go back to Yosemite anytime soon - I love nature (and the geology there is amazing), but I've seen it, I don't have the need a lot of people do to see it again. I'm thinking next year's family vacation will be to San Diego. Yosemite isn't going anywhere.

Game night was great on Saturday, though a lot of people couldn't make it at the last minute. Still, good times with good friends.

Didn't exercise this morning, but the scale says I'm down about 4lbs, even after a week of vacation and vacation eating.

What's new with you? I've been out of the loop. Fill me in!

Hi there folks! It's just after 8pm on Thursday, and I'm actually typing this while online here at the Yosemite Lodge. The nice hotel lady gave me free access, so here I am in the lobby.

We just finished dinner at the Mountain Room Restaurant, a great place at the lodge that had fancy-style food but welcomes kids and folks in everyday Yosemite-walking clothes. Lots of vegan options, too (especially for a nice restaurant). If you're up here, I highly recommend it.

Today's our "no driving day", and that's a nice change. We took the bus to Yosemite Falls - beautiful. Katie was kinda cranky (and wanted to be carried), so once we finally got her back to the cabin I volunteered to stay there and give her a nap. Unfortunately, she never did nap, but she was great at dinner, so that's something. Also hopefully she'll be in bed by the time I get back, and get on a more normal sleep schedule.

Yosemite falls is beautiful, and staying here in the valley's nice because there's an amazing amount of geologic wonder in literally every direction. Weather's also been nice - warm, but clear.

Watching files move back and forth, I think I'll wait until I get home to upload my pictures to flickr - this connection would have me sitting here another half hour, at least, to get them all up.

We head home tomorrow, and hopefully Katie doesn't mind another car ride. We're hoping to get in before traffic time in LA, but we'll see if that works out. Updates and pictures as they're available - if you're just now reading this, note that I published yesterday's entry right below this one (though I just posted a couple minutes ago) and in the post before that one, my twitter updates are displayed (which I can do from my phone and the road). Seeya back in the SoCal!

Greetings from Camp Curry!

Not sure when I'll get around to posting this, but I'm typing just before 11PM on Wednesday. This is our second night in Yosemite - the first night was spent up at Crane Flat, in the northwestern part of the park. Tonight we're in Curry Village in Yosemite Valley, staying in one of the cabins. There's no internet access, and the bathrooms and showers are still outside in another building, but we've got beds, a desk, space for our stuff without worrying about bear lockers, and best of all, electricity.

During the night, both of our phones had died, and Crane Flat didn't have any electricity at all - not in the common building or in posts shared between camp sites. Not that the phones were too important there - they didn't work - but it was weird going through the day without knowing the time. Here we've actually got moderate cell coverage IN our cabin - I'm very surprised. I've been able to check email, post to twitter, and call my mom. Good stuff.

Yosemite's been beautiful, especially since unlike most of my National Park visits, the weather's actually seeming to cooperate. We spent a lot of the day in Tuolumne Meadows (about 20 miles north of the valley, but 65 or so miles driving), and it was fantastic - every vista looks like a postcard. We then made the drive back to camp, finished packing, and headed here, getting in just before 7 in the evening. We're literally up against a sheer rock face - it's daunting. This whole place is huge.

I'm feeling good after a shower and an hour or so of a sleeping baby (she didn't go to bed while camping until midnight, and I might have fallen asleep a few minutes before her). No TV here, so I'll get to read myself to sleep and hopefully get 8 or more hours, just in time for another day seeing the sites. More updates and pictures to come!

Hi everyone!

We're on vacation (well, we're leaving tomorrow, but we're off work, anyway), so updates are going to be few and far between, especially since we'll be in Yosemite. I'll do my best to upload photos if possible, and I'll be updating my twitter site (and in the box, below), assuming my phone works up there (I've heard it should). Have a fantastic week, friends!

Happy 7-11, friends!

Picture of the day!

A classic from the Katie collection, taken 2 years ago today. She's almost 4 times larger now.

Walked (and ran some of) 1.6 miles this morning. It's really muggy, though, so that made it less pleasant.

I have no iPhone. Not that I wouldn't enjoy one, but there aren't that many out there used, and in general I'm saving my money for things like debt and bills. They sure are shiny, though.

Speaking of technology, I'm still liking Ubuntu. Little things take a while to get used to, but in general it's awesome. While open source software has been around a long time, it's still amazing to me that whole operating systems and complex pieces of software are both free to own and free to be edited/changed/resold. I don't pirate any software anymore - I just use the free versions available. It's kinda nice.

This is my last work day before a week-long vacation. That doesn't suck. I likely won't have blog posts all week, but we'll see what happens (there's internet access at the lodge, says the rumor mill). Either way, have a great one!

Happy Thursday, and Happy Birthday Shannon!

Picture of the day!

Katie isn't big on staying on the trail.

Boy, this week is going quickly, especially for a work week before vacation. I'm not complaining, mind you, just remarking. It'll be nice having Monday off to get things finished (with the baby at daycare) before the trip, too.

My teeth are feeling pretty good - the temp crown is a little high, but not too bad now that I've had some time to get used to it.

No time for a walk this morning, though I did some pushups. I think I'm gonna have to start working out at night after the family goes to bed - it's tough because that's the only time I have to myself all day, but otherwise there's just no time. That said, 30 minutes a night would do me a lot of good, and I can do it in front of the TV.

I've joined GoodReads, a site for sharing book libraries and reviews. Not sure if I like it yet, but I do enjoy the social networking in general. It is making me realize that I don't read enough. See the above point regarding exercise for a reason why, though.

That's all I've got. Good day!

Hello and happy hump day!

Picture of the day!

A classic from Halloween 2006.

So, I was supposed to go in and get my crown for the work I had done last month. Alas, my dentist didn't like the way it fit, so they cleaned it all up, took new impressions, and put a new temp on. The procedure wasn't horrible (certainly not as bad as the root canal), but there's a lot of poking and numbing to be done, so I wasn't exactly pleased by the outcome. Alas, that's the breaks. Hopefully in two weeks we'll be all done.

Atheist? Curious what a bunch of atheists talk about over dinner? Join the Orange County Atheists Tonight, Wednesday, July 9 at 7:30PM at the International House of Pancakes at 18542 MacArthur Blvd in Irvine, near John Wayne Airport. Please RSVP here, and hope to see you there!

Ubuntu is working pretty well, though I'm having some power management issues. Of course, this laptop has always had power management issues (mostly related to not waking up after going to sleep). Right now it's turning off the screen after a few minutes of inactivity, but I can't get it back on. Time to check some forums...

I had to de-friend someone on twitter this week because this person had upwards of 75 posts a day, and my stupid web interface would just have this person's stuff. I know they're working on the basics right now, but it'd be nice to have a "temporarily unfollow" or "do not display updates from" a person.

Come say hello! Hello!

Happy Tuesday!

Picture of the day!

Katie in Sequoia, age 6mo.

Walked 1.4 miles today. Feeling good.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I'm kicking serious poker ass lately - I've been in the money in my last four tournaments (two single table, two 45 person), winning more than $100 total. There's a lot of luck involved, of course, but I'm playing well too.

I installed Ubuntu 8 yesterday on my laptop. The process started with an easy (but large) download, burning to a CD, and putting that CD into my laptop. Ubuntu lets you "test" the install, using the same CD as a "live" (bootable) disk. It was able to find all of my hardware (including my wireless card) with no help from me, so I decided to install. It automatically set up a new partition with my existing XP installation, allowing me to duel boot. Everything's working, just like that. For those of you who've installed (or tried to install) Linux before, that's just amazing. I've always contended that if someone like me can't easily install it, there's no way an average user would. Ubuntu is ready.

Not much else to talk about. What's happening where you're at?