Author: Josh

I just don’t like Evites. From my recent five minutes of research, there is no immediate indication that Evite spams. Even still, that’s a fist-full of lit firecrackers in my opinion. Ticketmaster currently owns Evite. Ticketmaster was notorious for price gouging in the past decade or so – why wouldn’t they sell Evite along with a database chock full of e-mail addresses? That list of e-mail addresses is a Faberge egg just waiting to be cashed in.

I received an Evite today. I only received it because I had neglected to setup a server-side filter to immediately delete Evites. With a snap-o-the-fingers, problem’s solved now.

People with MSSW after their name scare me. They don’t scare as much as say… this tune.

I just got back from a lengthy interview with a social worker from Big Brothers Big Sisters. Your humble narrator is going to be a Big Brother (henceforth known as a “Big”). It was a complete background interview. It was kind of neat, but kind of scary in the same breath. I was on trial – I was proving who I was. I was more nervous during this interview than I was at my last job interview. I don’t have anything to hide, I was just afraid that I might answer a question incorrectly or in a way that would exclude me in the matching criteria.

I was asked some tough questions that I thought I would never be asked. I had to voice opinions on certain issues that I hadn’t really taken into consideration. It was really interesting. I’m still thinking about some of the questions that were asked.

Philip’s ‘girlfriend’ (who we’re yet to meet) inspired me to become a Big. As noted in the first annual Janicek Christmas Newsletter, I’m moving forward in my efforts to be more active in the community. I’m really excited as well as nervous about this new undertaking. I’m excited about the enlightenment I will gain. I’m excited about making an impact.

I’m going to a mentoring coaching session later this month. After that, I don’t know what happens. In the meantime, BBBS will be running a criminal and driving record background check on me. I’m clean, but I’m sure it’ll be a while before I get matched with a Little.

In other news… I don’t think there is any other news. Work is consuming my brain cells. I’m tired and sleep like a rock at nights. I’m still walking to work, though I rode the trusty Shadow yesterday and today.

Tracy and her boyfriend came into Austin yesterday evening. We met them at the Iron Cactus last night. No social or political issues were solved, we just caught up.

I bought a Sunrider soft top for the Jeep for Elise – well, she paid for it with the money she’s earned working for us, but I pushed the bid button on eBay. Now we have a huge box in the living room. We’re waiting until we go see my parents later this month so I can install it. The weather is so nice right now, I wish we could install it now.

The Archos MP3 player came loaded with several instances of the Nimda virus. Guess that happens when you buy used computer hardware. I wonder if it was malicious. Oh well, hence having anti-virus software.

That’s news for now. I need to start thinking about organizing my life. After that, I’ll probably play with whichever cat is at my disposal, drink some milk and go to bed. I have a lot of ‘side projects’ that need to be tended to before I actually become a Big. As a personal goal, I need to work on my time management. I’m timely by nature, but it’s been a while since I’ve really had to delegate what I do in my spare time. ‘Side projects’ sounds cool. Sounds like I’m in a really big heavy metal band and working with another band on an album. Okay, that’s retarded.

I’m tired now and am yet to talk to Elise about my interview.

This past weekend wasn’t as fruitful as I had hoped.

Elise and I drove downtown on Saturday afternoon and headed to Spamarama. We approached the gate to find out that there was a $5.00 per person admission fee. We evaluated the ongoing festivities from beyond the chain link fence and decided that we could have more fun with a roll of duct tape and a set of chop sticks. Well, we didn’t decide that at the time, but now that I think about it, think of all the things you could do with duct tape and wooden sticks.

We decided on a late lunch at the Texas Chili Parlor. We had always wanted to try that place out. Not-so-great chili and horrible service. I had a large bowl of the XX Red and Elise had a small bowl of the Mild Red. The bus boy took our drink orders, our waitress took our orders. Elise had to go to the bar to fill our drinks for us. We never saw our waitress until she wanted money. Nobody came and apologized for the crappy service, but they did comp the combined six Cokes we had (the chili was hot!)

We drove around campus for a while and headed home. Before we got home, we rented a 8 Mile, Road to Perdition and One Hour Photo – we had a coupon (kyew-pon): rent up to three movies for $1.00. Elise says koo-pon, I say kyew-pon. 8 Mile was okay – even though I like Eminem, I would have felt let-down had I paid full price for the rental. One Hour Photo was interesting.

We were going to go to a party that night, but 10 p.m. snuck up on us and we were too tired to do anything. We must be getting old.

We woke up early on Sunday. Elise went to church and I played a hacked copy of Ghost Recon that came loaded on the Archos. Elise came home and we went to Rudy’s for a late lunch. We ate out too much this weekend, but we were determined to have a good meal out. Rudy’s has yet to fail.

We drove out to the overlook by the 360 bridge and walked around for bit. We watched a guy repel off of the eastern side of the highway cut out.

Next we drove down South Lamar and stopped at Austin Found. We browsed that junk for half an hour or so. We kept thinking we would come across something interesting. Nope. It reminded me of a rundown lot you’d see in downtown Houston.

To end our day, we drove home and then walked to the driving range. On our way we picked up a dozen or so golf balls. I stashed them in my pockets. We bought our bucket of balls and then I added our found lot. We saved one ball and had a putting contest. We tied at 2 each.

As we headed home, Elise marched on the side of Staggerbrush Road, twirling her putter like a baton. That was funny. I was a ninja as I cut the heads off my victims with my 7 and 9 iron katanas. Those weeds won’t mess with us again.

We went home and watched Road to Perdition and ate popcorn.

We decided to try out Johnny Carino’s last night. We agreed that we’ll stick to the Olive Garden if we’re ever in the mood for faster Italian food.

We were rushed to a tiny two top table at the back of one of the wings of the franchise, our waitress mumbleasked what we wanted to drink and disappeared into the dimmed mood lights. She brought our drinks along with a bag of bread and a plate of cheap olive oil and burned garlic flakes.

I opted for soup and salad. Elise ordered the cheese tortellini. Elise’s food was okay – lukewarm and bland. She doctored her plate with crushed red pepper flakes. My soup had a subtle fresh-from-a-tin-can taste. My shrimp & artichoke Caesar was nothing to write home about. Now that I think about it, our $26.01 dinner outing tasted not much unlike banquet food.

The best part was our waitress, Christia brought the debit card receipt. I signed my wavy signature and took a glance at what was occupying my left hand… a gnarled pen cap. Our waitress gave me a pen that she had apparently mistaken for her chew toy. I hate thinking about being the root of someone’s termination, so I didn’t complain to a manager. I’m still debating with myself whether or not I should call up ol’ Mr. Carino and chewing on his ear some. I might just do that this afternoon. Maybe I could get a free meal out of it.

Prior to our outing I downloaded approximately 15gb of MP3s to the Archos. I think it took around 15-20 minutes. Pretty cool.

I don’t know what we’re doing today. It’s already 11 a.m. I think we’ll try the rodeo or Spamarama. Tonight we’ll probably go to a large party that Marshall’s co-hosting.

Yes, yes… I’m good. I got my computer working again. Came home for lunch, determined to get it working – and I did.

I’m back to where I want it to be… 25gb boot drive with XP, 30gb MP3 drive, 655mb of SDRAM, USB 2.0 card (with the Intellimouse using one of the ports).

Everything looks good right now. Too bad I left the Archos at work… I’ll have to see if it works when I get home tonight.

Solution to hard drive problem: Plug everything in how you want it… reboot computer and press F1 to load BIOS utility. Save new BIOS.

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I thought I was cool. I plugged in the Archos and XP read it as an external drive. Yeehaw. I went to transfer the existing music from the Archos onto my secondary hard drive. Oops… where did my secondary hard drive go?

I unplugged the Archos and restarted my computer. Still no ‘D’ drive (that’s my 30gb MP3 drive). I immediately started taking my computer apart. Once things were cleared out, I realized that the EIDE ribbon from the motherboard to the D drive had been disconnected. I’m thinking that happened when I installed the 128mb of RAM.

Well, since I had gutted my computer, it didn’t work when I tried to reboot. “Primary Hard Disk Error” That’s all I get now. I sat there, on the floor for two hours, trying to put humpty dumpty back together again. I’m sure Elise will have to go to church on my behalf next Sunday due to the profanities that were yelled by yours truly.

I took out the USB 2.0 card, the 128mb of RAM and my 30gb hard drive. Still no luck. My instincts were to call in the big guns – my Mom. I tinkered around with my computer for a while, I tried every combination of jumper settings on the hard drives, ribbon and power source seatings. I e-mailed Mom this morning – she suggested that I do what I’ve already done. The one thing I haven’t really looked deeply into is the BIOS settings.

I’m saving my larynx today so I can have air with which to cuss tonight. I’m really hoping my hard drive(s) aren’t fried.

The moral of the story: I really don’t know. I guess it would be: “If the lamp doesn’t turn on, check to see if it’s plugged in before you take the whole damn thing apart.”

Arrr arrr arrr arrr… more power! I just added another 128mb of SDRAM to the box of circuits, bringing me to 655mb of RAM. I just got back from Discount Electronics where I purchased a 2-port USB 2.0 PCI card. I think they’ll be seeing a lot of me in there. I bought the USB 2.0 card for the Archos which came in today. A lot of geeking out will be going on this evening… so can’t write long. The RAM came with the Archos in the auction that I won. Windows XP took the PCI card like nothing ever changed. I even put the Intellimouse on the USB. I can’t wait to see how quickly I can transfer MP3s to the jukebox.

Elise and I started reading Thoreau’s Walden to each other last night. My high school English/Latin teacher would be proud. He probably wouldn’t be impressed with how stupid I sound while reading aloud. It’s been a while since I’ve read classic literature. We’re only on page 42 right now, but have already found words by which to live, and I will leave you with just that:

“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”

Okay, back to being a geek now.*

* Like quoting Thoreau and talking all that 2-port USB 2.0 PCI crap wasn’t geeky enough.

After eating on Saturday evening, we walked to the pond to see the hog tracks. We found a couple trees that are being beaten alive by woodpeckers.

Elise and I stayed up to watch another worthless episode of Saturday Night Live.

Sunday… hmmm, we woke up and had omelets. Elise put Que to rest. Que was her cat that we had to put to sleep a couple years ago. We had her cremated and finally spread her ashes by the live oak tree in my parents’ front yard.

I took the box that once contained Que’s ashes and made a jewelry box for Elise.

The drive home to Austin was nice. For once, in a great while, coming home from my parents’ house wasn’t painstaking. I didn’t have the inclination to seek psychiatric help on Monday morning. I really like coming back to Austin. I think back to the days of when we would drive back to Temple, knowing that I had to work at that other place… I get all watery in the glazzies just typing about it.

Anyway – the week has been fast and furious, as usually. As I type this, it is hailing harder than I have seen hail fall in Texas. I’m pretty sure we’ll have hail damage to both the trust Shadow and the Jeep.

I bought Janicek.org and Janicek.net today. I’m still ripping CDs. I’m pretty much done ripping all of my CDs. I’m yet to start on Elise’s CDs. Hopefully the Archos will be tomorrow – I have gigs and gigs of MP3s waiting on it.

I just setup my first peer-to-peer wireless network using two 802.11b Dlink wireless adapters.

I’m at my parents’ house right now. Mom wanted a wireless network because she didn’t want to run wires. I spent approximately an hour on the phone with Dlink tech support. That was a waste. Had I played around with the configuration utility a little longer, I could have figured things out on my own. Oh well, at least I know how to configure a wireless LAN now!

Elise and I got in around 8:30 last night. We had dinner and chatted for a little while. I tried setting up the network late last night, but couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning, grabbed the .243 and headed to the pond to see if I could rub out a wild hog or two. No luck. It was nice to be out in the crisp morning air. The pond was steaming, the sun was rising and the moon was setting. It was really pretty outside. I was tempted to go wake Elise up so she could take pictures, but I know she likes her beauty sleep.

I walked back to the house and washed the Jeep. I picked up the paper for Mom and Dad (we’re in the country, so you actually have to walk to the road to get the mail/newspaper). I went and played with the dogs for a few minutes. I felt like I could use that military slogan: “We do more before 8 a.m. …” Well, considering it was Saturday, I would have usually slept in a few more hours. Having said that, I took a nap.

Everyone is in the kitchen, making dinner right now. Guess I should help.

I also won an eBay auction for the 20gb Archos Jukebox Recorder last night. I really didn’t think I would win with the amount that I had set for my proxy bid. If this MP3 player is the condition that the seller claims, I got a damn good deal. More than half the price of an iPod, and $100 less than the other player that I had been considering. But wait… that’s not all! I get everything that comes with the jukebox (carrying case, batteries, USB 2.0 cable, AC adapter, mini to RCA cable), I also got 128mb of SDRAM, Sony MDR-CD60 digital reference headphones and a Sony CPA-9C cassette adapter in the deal.

I told Elise that I really wanted a good, hard drive-based MP3 player. Of course, they’re all really expensive. She didn’t want to spend that much money because she knew that I wanted to put an MP3 player in the Jeep as well. I did a little more research on portable MP3 players and decided that the Jukebox Recorder 20 was the one that I wanted because you can use a cassette adapter. Good thing we kept the tape deck in the Jeep.

I used money we had set aside in our Paypal account to pay for a large portion of the Archos. I’m currently selling my video capture card as well. We’re doing pretty darn well with getting rid of something if we want something new.

Okay, now that Friday is upon us, I guess I’ll go ahead and post an update on what we did last weekend.

Ummmmmm… Hang on, let me go ask Elise.

Okay, I’m back. That was funny. We both had to stare at each other with our heads tilted to collectively recollect what we did 5 days ago. I said “collectively recollect”.

Elise and I went to a coworkers house in Cedar Park after work. She had a birthday party. I didn’t get a sip of my scotch in before I was overwhelmed with eBay and website questions. The night progressed quickly while we listened to AC/DC tapes. Elise and I stayed up too late.

We woke up relatively early on Saturday. Before I hopped in the shower, I woke Elise up and told her she’d better get moving if she was going to make it to the sale at Kohl’s. Elise went to Kohl’s for undergarments. I can’t seem to bring myself to writing Elise and lingerie in the same sentence without feeling compelled to charge a membership fee for this site. Damn, I already did. Okay, now send me some money.

I stayed in and ripped CDs. Elise came home around noon. Philip came over. We went for pizza at the Austin Pizza Garden (again). Good pizza. Philip scanned my MP3 collection and I burned a few CDs for him.

We stayed in most of the afternoon. We walked to the driving range by our apartments late in the afternoon. That was fun. We looked like a couple goofs lobbing balls a few feet in front of us with what we thought was much style and grace. I really want to make that a weekend ritual. We just swung our clubs, talked, laughed at ourselves and swapped praise when one actually hit a ball correctly.

We stayed in on Saturday night seeing how we had spent $7.00 on a bucket of golf balls.

Elise got up on Sunday and went to church. I practiced my religion by hopping on the trusty Shadow and making a couple runs on Lime Creek Road. On the way, I met up with a guy and his girlfriend who were riding a Honda VFR. Made me want a sport bike (even more).

I came home and ripped some more CDs. Elise got home from church and we hopped on the bike again. We went to Best Buy to look at MP3 players. I don’t know why. We then rode around scenic parts of town before we stopped at Jo’s on S. Congress. There was a flock of people about. Good thing about having a motorcycle: ample parking. We did the trendy thing and both had an iced half caf coffee frappuccino mocha latte choco espressoccino something. I think I drink coffee once a year. I reckon coffee makes me a little nervous. mmmmhhhmmm.

We walked up and down Congress. We just window shopped and browsed. That was pretty much our weekend.

This week has consisted of work and doing stuff on the computers at home. I decided to ditch the home network. I took the 30gb hard drive out of Elise’s computer and stuck it in mine. I’m going to load it with MP3s. Hooowaahahahahaha.

Spring began three hours ago. I’m happy now.

Okay… I’m stupid. A few days ago I decided to network my two computers because I was doing some mad CD ripping and needed more hard disk space. I spent 3 days with networking burning in the back of my subdural blah blah. I sat down this evening and decided that come hell or high water I was going to get my two boxes of circuits talkin’ to one another.

I sat and configured. I sat some more and configured. I decided to check my device manager to find that there was an error in the onboard network adapter. I think to myself: “I’m not using an onboard network adapter” — duh… I installed a PCI network adapter when I networked the two computers a long time ago.

Ok – that was waaaaaaaay to geeky. Long story short, next time I have to double check the fundamentals. “Hmmmm, I wonder why the damn lamp won’t turn on…” Three hours later… “Maybe I should check to see if the lamp is plugged in.”

That’s all I can write right now… I now have an 30 GB networked hard drive and am in the process of moving all of my mp3s onto it so I can rip/download some more.

Building on the momentum generated by the February 2002 launch of the Covering the Uninsured educational and advertising campaign and Web site, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and some of the most influential organizations in the United States will cosponsor Cover the Uninsured Week. This unprecedented weeklong series of national and local activities will take place from Monday, March 10, through Sunday, March 16, 2003, in an effort to sensitize the public and opinion leaders to the plight of the more than 41 million Americans who lack health insurance.

Whereas, 41 million Americans do not have
health care coverage;

Whereas, eight out of 10 of the uninsured are
in working families that cannot afford health insurance
and are not eligible for public programs;

Whereas, uninsured Americans
live sicker and die younger because they are forced
to go without the health care they need;

Whereas, a slow economy, higher unemployment
and rising health costs mean that more Americans
are becoming uninsured in our community;

Therefore, we recognize the urgency of seeking
solutions to one of America’s greatest problems,
and hereby declare our support for
Cover the Uninsured Week
March 10-16, 2003.

Let’s Get America Covered.

Elise and I don’t have health insurance.