Janicek.com

I’ve been iPodless for almost a week now. I called Apple last week. I finally got the box via DHL this morning. In the meantime, I had decided to take the iPod to the Apple store. After standing near the Genius Bar for almost an hour, my iPod was fixed by an employee who, after congratulating me on my iBook anniversary present, shook my hand, told me to have a nice day and to call him if I needed further help. I was upset that it took a while for someone to help me, but I can’t remember the last time I went to a retail electronics store where someone helped me from the time I entered the store until the time I left.

In other news – Elise spent most of the weekend at my parents’ house. My parents have a friend’s Ford Expedition for sale on their property (plain view from the highway). Elise called me on her way home Sunday and told me all about the truck. I immediately said no. After talking about it for a day now, we’re thinking about buying it assuming I get someone to buy my little truck. I’m easy to sell to.

I conked out on the couch last night. Elise stayed the night at my parents’ house after Christine’s baby shower. I tried to stay up and watch SNL. I woke up at 3 a.m., let the cat out and went to bed.

I woke up and started cooking dinner at 7:30 this morning. I thawed 2.5 lbs of baby back ribs, Elgin sausage and bone-in lamb loin chops. I cooked down a Coke/Dr. Pepper syrup marinade for the ribs. I added a little garlic, cayenne pepper, Tobasco and onion. I’ve marinating the loin chops in olive oil, worshesheshesheshister sauce, onion, garlic, creole mustard and Shiner Bock. All have been hanging out in the fridge all day. Should make for a good dinner.

I’m holding down the fort solo for the majority of the weekend. Elise went to work at 6 a.m. this morning then headed to Houston for Christine’s baby shower.

I got up around 8 and roamed about the house for a while. I then drove to the Apple store to scope things out. I picked up an AirPort Express because I’ve wanted to stream music from iTunes to the stereo in the living room. I had planned on buying an AirPort Express even before Elise bought the iBook for me. The last apartment we lived in before moving to Temple (and then back to Austin again) had quite a stereo rig. I ran approximately 75′ of RCA wire from the computer in the office to the stereo in the living room. Back then I used Winamp. The AirPort Express is awesome compared to the setup I used to have. Though it took a while to setup…

Seeing how “It just works” is one of Apple’s mantras, I assumed I could just plug the AE in and start streaming music. Uh uh. I have a WPA encrypted network. After a little research I learned that the AE can’t be used under WPA. I also have wireless access control enabled so the router picks up only the iBook’s MAC address. I had to disable WPA and add the AE’s MAC address in order for it to work (I can’t seem to figure out WEP on my router). So I can now stream music to the stereo from my Windows PC in the office and the iBook, wherever it may roam within the house).

The bad: I have to login to the router and disable WPA in order to stream music from iTunes to the living room. I’d leave it disabled all of the time but there are three other wireless networks in the immediate vicinity that the iBook picks up on.

After that 30 minute ordeal, I decided to pay a little mind to HartzVictims.org. I added a new module to aid victims and submitted a photo of Riley to the Hartz Victims Memorial Quilt.

Now I’m going to go flop down on the couch and watch season 5 of the Sopranos.

Elise and I were sitting on the couch tonight watching The Apprentice. The show ended and Elise asked asked “What was it that was supposed to piss George off?” I said “I don’t know”. She went on to remind me that at the end of last Thursday’s episode, the trailer told us to watch next week’s episode because something is going to make George really upset.

We watched tonight’s episode and nothing pissed George off.

That reminded me of why I don’t watch Fox’s The Next Great Champ. After the first episode of De La Hoya’s show, I was told to make sure to watch next week’s episode because “someone was going to the hospital”.

I watched the next week’s episode. Nobody went to the hospital. I haven’t watched the show since (not that it was very good for that matter).

Links of the day: CherryOS: Would you like to run Mac OS on your Windows PC?

I’m going to install the Google Desktop on my work computer tomorrow. Looks like a great tool to help me stay (or not worry about staying) organized.

Today has been an absolute shitty one so far. It all started at approximately 10:30 last night when I hit a deer on the way home from John & Christine’s. I’m getting to where I really don’t like deer. Much like what happened to John and me almost a year ago, a deer darted out from the bushes as I was driving down Slaughter Ln (aptly named street, huh?) towards the house at 50 mph. I saw the deer start running accross the street and I slammed on my breaks. It had been raining earlier that evening so my car slid right into the deer – dead on. It was an adolescent deer. I don’t know how fast I was going on impact, but the deer flipped end over end over end over end for about 30-40 feet. It then started to flop around very freakishly.

Elise is in the Jeep behind me, wondering what the hell I’m doing as she didn’t see the deer come out.

I was temporarily mesmerized by the whole ordeal. Then I thought “Shit – now I’m going to have to run over this effing deer a couple times to put it out of its misery. The damn thing finished its conniption and ran off.

So now the grill on my cool Toyota pickup is broken in two places and I have a huge deer-shaped dent in my bumper. Luckily the deer only caused cosmetic damage.

So I went to bed mad last night.

I woke up in a bad mood. It’s cold (to me – a mild cold front blew in this morning). I hate cold weather. My iPod is still screwed up. Everything at work has gone all shitty.

Today sucks.

My iPod ain’t workin’. When I try to start it, it hangs on the Apple logo. I reset it, it does the same thing. When it does start up and I play a song, it stops working at the end of a song. I make a few attempts at restarting it – see above… lather, rinse, repeat.

I’ll call Apple tomorrow and even though I’ll have to go through a troubleshooting walkthrough, I’ll have a new iPod shipped. That’ll be nice seeing how I had this iPod for a month or so before the 4th Generation iSkins were released (my iPod got nice and scratched up in that month).

More often than not, I’m associated with worldy scholars and philosophers. I have developed software to help locate unmapped stars in the universe. I compiled complex formulas to help in finding a cure for adolescent hypertension. I’ve sat on boards and contributed to numerous discussions regarding architectural developments to renovate a series of museums in Indonesia and Lubbock.

I’ve accomplished many things in my life so far. I’m also lucky because I still consider myself young. Part of being young entails not only being studious and well known in the world of academia, but also maintaining my cool. That can be pretty hard for your humble narrator.

Part of being cool is driving a 1993 Toyota pickup truck that weighs approximately 164 lbs. dry. In this truck I have a tape deck and a couple 6′ x 9’s tucked in the back that can hammer out some mad Phil Collins tunes.

I was driving home from Tae Kwon Do tonight (keep in mind, I’m a brilliant genious mastermind renowned scholar). I had, what we call in the halls of the university and the realm of advanced thought, a breath inhibiting booger. I’m a scholar so I know that everyone has had at least one of those boogers that keeps you from breathing correctly from one nostril.

After hypothesizing for a moment, I did what not only the layperson would do, but also us geniuses – I dug into my nasal orifice to remove said booger. Keep in mind that I was still quite sweaty from TKD class. Now that Fall has set in, it was also dark outside. I knew said booger had been removed because I could breathe equally through both nostrils. You know that feeling – pure relief.

A minute or so later, my eye started itching. Keep in mind, I am very, very, very smart. I am respected. I am consulted, on a regular basis by doctors, physicians, Ph.D.’s M.D.’s, doctors and those who practice medicine.

I went to scratch my itch and stuck that booger right in my eye. That hurt.

Link of the day

I setup an 802.11g wireless network at my parents’ house over the weekend. I did this so I could get online with my iBook. After I logged into my Mom’s router, I got to thinking: “I wonder how secure my wireless network is at home”.

We got home this evening and I tried logging into my router. I couldn’t. I forgot my password. After many tries, I was able to login. By default, my wireless network wasn’t password protected. Luckily I hadn’t shared any drives on my XP machine prior to last Thursday. That computer was off over the weekend which would have left any prying parties access to my network for approximately 24 hours. Since no drives had been shared since I bought the router in November, I’m not worried that any neighbors had gained access to my network last Friday. I have 2 other wireless networks that are available (if I had their passwords)…

So now everything is all safe and secure.

At Mom and Dads… I hooked up Mom’s D-Link 802.11G wireless router – the iBook picked up the signal without me having to do anything. Connecting the router to Mom’s DSL modem was the hard part. Once I was connected, I handed the iBook to Mom – dumb move… now I’m going to have to buy her one for the next holiday/birthday.

I just bought shares in Sirius because I heard this live on the radio on the way to work this morning. I’ve never really been a Stern fan, but I know in the past 20 years he’s had his way with the airwaves and has made a killing. Now he’s aiming at satellite because the FCC has turned him into a puppet in recent years.

I probably won’t ever buy into satellite but feel confident in this investment gamble.

I logged into my work computer via GoToMyPC.com and uploaded files for a sales presentation slotted for 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. I ‘worked’ and puchased shares all from the comfort of my couch (while watching the Godfather on SpikeTV). My wife got me a pretty cool anniversary present. And, I don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore (hopefully).

This past weekend consisted of me working and looking for a wireless mouse for the iBook. I drove back to Austin from work on Saturday and immediately went to CompUSA. I bought a Targus Bluetooth mouse that I found out only works on Windows. On Sunday I went back to CompUSA, returned the bluetooth mouse and settled on a Kensington Pocket Mouse Pro (that I’m still not happy with).

Elise worked all weekend.

Monday came too soon. John and Christine came over Monday night – I fried chicken legs and thighs. John gave me software for the iBook.

Hmmmm… what else… As I type this, I’m sitting in bed watching Conan on NBC, waiting for Good Charlotte to play.

I should’ve bought a laptop a long time ago.

This sucks. It’s Saturday. I’m at work (alone) and have a lot of work yet to do. It’s rainy and gloomy outside.