I have no idea what happened, but my Nokia decided to die this past weekend. Not completely dead, but it has decided to just turn itself off after being on 10-15 minutes. I have charged the battery overnight, pulled the battery out and reinstalled, and even today performed a factory reset on it. Nothing helps. This did not follow any particular impact event or anything, so I just don't know what happened. Since my desired Palm Pre does not arrive until later this year (one rumour says early August), I needed to find something to keep me going.

The beauty of using GSM is that I can just pop my SIM card in another phone. The only working old phone I have left, though, is a very beat up and scratched up Cingular 2125 (HTC Faraday). The joystick doesn't work very well. I think I have already opened it up once a long time ago to try and clean it out and make it work better, but I can't remember. So I am going to try again.

And to make it feel newer, today I installed a hacked version of Windows Mobile 6.1 (it came with 5.0) in it. I had checked on doing this before and didn't find anything. But today I found out it runs the same firmware as a similar phone and was able to install that. I really only gained some minor functionality, but it at least looks nicer now.

Someone has a real first experience with the now-on-the-market "Big ass Table" from Microsoft:

http://kinesismomentum.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/skin-deep-usability/

Kinda funny, and kinda sad. And who the hell has ever heard of the colour rhodamine? (Apparently not even my spell checker.)

While I am over my cold, I have yet to make it back to the gym. Partly my shoulder was really still hurting. It's getting better again, but I still hurt each morning, mostly. I have an appointment with an RMT on Friday to work on it. She's kind of expensive, but conveniently located. Thank you insurance for paying for it (My previous employer didn't cover massage). Though at her rate, I'll only get 5.5 sessions covered for the year before I max out my benefit. If it helps, it will be worth it.

I also have a new pillow an order. I have particular demands in the pillow department and use a specific one from Temper-Pedic that no one seems to carry in stock around here (I had bought this one at the Relax the Back Store in San Jose). So I had to order it. Hopefully replacing the 3+ year old thing will help too.

Oh, and I'm going to the Toronto zoo on Saturday (never been) with James & Dustin, weather permitting.

I hate that this cold has interrupted my recently renewed motivation for going to the gym and working out. I've had to take the past week off. And now today I was going to go for a swim, but my shoulder/neck is acting up again. I called the massage therapist that does appointments in my condo building, but she hasn't called back. Hopefully she'll be able to help.

Speaking of swimming. I gave up on doing laps here at the condo because the pool is just to small. It gets frustrating having to turn around every 5 strokes or so. I just went out on an exploratory mission and think that the Trinity Community Rec Centre should do nicely. It's not quite so conveniently across the street like when I was living in Campbell, but it's the best I've got, without exploring expensive gym memberships. And since my condo gym is quite sufficient for basic work outs, I don't want to go that route. I would have gone swimming right then, but their lap hours on Saturday are only 12-2. I showed up at 11. And then I got hungry. And then I decided my neck hurts to much.

I plan on going once a week. That summer I did that back in Cali did amazing things for my body's fitness level. (That was in addition to the regular workouts). I'm trying to do something about the 13-15 lbs I've put on since moving to Toronto. Summer's coming and damn it, I'm going to explore the island beach this year.

Thursday I briefly sampled the scene of the Canadian Music Fest '09. I went out to "Wrongbar" to see the band Plushgun. I only discovered them the middle of last week after clicking a link I saw on 365gay.com. The song they talk about in that article, Dancing in a Minefield, is really good. I also like what I think is their headlining track for the album, Just Impolite.

I just happened to check if they were coming to Toronto anytime soon, and that's when I found out they were going to be here playing at a bar as part of the Fest. I wanted to go out to see them with skycaptain76, but he wasn't going to be able to make it after work in time, they were the first band of the night at the venue. As it is they started 30 minutes late, wouldn't even let us inside the bar until after 9:00 (when the show was supposed to start) and then had major issues with the sound system all too frequently. I still had fun. You could tell the band wasn't too happy about the sound situation either, but they just kept going.

Yesterday we bought a new coffee maker. We got one of those Keurig machines that uses the K'cups which are similar to the T-disc things we used with our Tassimo coffee maker. But this one has an extra accessory for it that lets you use any ground coffee you buy to make the cup of coffee (And they have more variety of the pre-pack cups available than Tassimo).

I now have another niece. That now makes one child for each of my 3 siblings. You'd think they were all worried that the species is going to end or something. What with the reproducing and all. :-P

No pictures yet, apparently my brother forgot to take the camera to the hospital and my mom hasn't had a chance to make it yet as she is recovering from a minor bit of food poisoning from last night. They haven't even picked out which of their 4 name choices they are going with.

I think Priscilla is a good choice.

Credit to my friend Eric on Facebook for linking to this.

Sometimes it's healthy to step back and gain a little perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Well, this past weekend was pretty stressful. It started off Friday night when I couldn't get to sleep. I finally ended up taking a Klonopin and then falling asleep around 3 AM. The problem with taking the medicine that late is that I feel kind of drowsy for a long time the next day. It was compounded by the fact that I was woken up at 7:30 AM and had things to take care of before skycaptain76 went off to work. I read for a while and then decided around 11:30 AM to take a short nap to get me through the rest of the day. But then I slept until 4:30 PM.

So pretty much my whole day Saturday was wasted. Which really sucked because I had a lot of things I needed to get done. We had purchased a 1 TB SATA hard drive to replace our 230 GB PATA hard drive in our Media Center PC. That sort of thing never goes as planned and I knew it would take a long time which is why I wanted to get started early on Saturday. But that didn't happen, obviously.

Shortly after I started I got a call from Charles saying he wanted to meet me for dinner after work. This was fine but I had only managed to get so far as to dust out the inside of the computer. (Which was quite a feat on its own).

So on Sunday began the big effort. We had already backed up the hard drive to our external drive on Saturday. The trouble began with the fact that the only copy of Windows Vista we had was a digital download (legitimate, from Microsoft) that was an upgrade only and so we had to install XP before we could upgrade. But then it turns out to restore from backup we had to boot from the installer disk and just run the restore. But the digital download upgrade doesn't come with a boot disk. We ended up having to use bit torrent to get a full disk image of Windows Vista to boot off of so we could restore. Downloading that took the rest of the day which meant Sunday was gone.

Charles did manage to get it restored today, mostly. He ran into some minor snags. But it was all compounded by the fact that this weekend we got three orders in, after having had no orders for a couple weeks. Ahhh, when it rains it pours, doesn't it?

I have some updated pictures and video of Mushu climbing about in my Christmas tree from. These were all taken early January.

Check them out.

Valentine's day yesterday was low-key. We just went out shopping for a new coffee maker. We have been using a Tassimo since right after we arrived in Canada because it is so damn easy. But the coffee selection is very limited, and expensive of you move beyond the Maxwell House brand. And after awhile you realize just how wasteful the thing is, throwing away the little pods.

The ideal coffee maker for us would take whole beans, grind them, and them brew them in quantities as little as one or two cups. Many mornings all skycaptain76 has time for is one cup, so it is annoying to have to brew a whole pot for that. That was what was great about the Tassimo. We went to some coffee shop that had this special machine that did exactly what all that, but it is a commercial machine. If they had a consumer version, that would be great. The closest we found yesterday is the Cuisinart Cup-o-Matic. But it doesn't grind the beans. It takes pre-ground or those "pods" (similar to the T-discs we use now, I guess.) While we could buy pre-ground, that isn't as good. And buying a separate grinder completely takes away from the fast and easy aspect.

Today our friends from Waterloo are coming to the city and we are going to hang out. I want to take them to this new coffee shop on Bloor & Bathurst that looks like it might sell coffee makers. I can turn socializing into productive shopping!

I am going to try being better at keeping up-to-date with my journal. Right, ha ha.

Anyway, about the last two weekends. Two weekends ago, we went to the Royal Ontario Museum to go see the diamond exhibit that is there for a temporary time. I was surprisingly disappointed. Don't get me wrong, they had quite a few diamonds and there was some very impressive pieces. But perhaps I have been spoiled by trips to other museums in the past. The Houston Museum of natural history has a very nice exhibit, and I had the wonderful opportunity to go to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC when I was in high school. They had some amazing stones, including the Hope diamond on exhibit.

This exhibit did have the biggest diamond I have ever seen. Trouble is, I don't remember what it was called. It was a yellow diamond, that's mostly all I remember about it. I guess the strange thing for me with diamonds, is when they get that big they don't cut many facets into it. It actually ends up not sparkling as much. And while it is impressive for what it is, simply because it is so big, to me something is lost in the beauty aspect. I did get to see a black diamond, something I had never seen before. Perhaps unsurprisingly they weren't "that" pretty. But it was really cool to get to see one, since, at least for me they have been so rare.

We did something interesting last weekend, though I'm having trouble remembering it right now. Oh yes! We had gone to menagerie pet shop to get some food for Mushu. On the way there on Carlton Street we had passed some kind of Park. It turns out this is a "plant" conservatory. (I can't think of the more correct term for it). It was like a giant greenhouse with different sections that could land varied in range of humidity and temperature. It was interesting getting to see the different plants, they had some unusual cacti that I had never seen. I suppose part of what was nice about the visit was the fact that it was warm inside and so cold outside.

This Monday is "family Day". What that means is this is a three day weekend! I didn't even realize it until someone mentioned something just a couple days ago. I'm looking forward to it as we have some catching up to do on some projects, and I could use an extra day off.

<geek>

I am in the process of switching my brothercarl.com to a new hosting provider. It has been with 1and1 for a long time. Ever since they started doing consumer hosting and gave away 3 years for free. It's not that I am unhappy, but I am moving it to Network Solutions because, well, because I work for them and I can save $10/month by using my free hosting perk, lol. So far it's going ok, I am just waiting for the domain to transfer registrars. My biggest worry was having down time for my email, but the cool thing is I can actually set up the mailboxes before the domain is transferred, so when the switch happens they will just start getting filled up.

The tough part is keeping my mail history, but I am using IMAP so I am copying messages over from one mailbox to the other with Mail.app. So I will have my history.

My boss seems convinced we have a really good server-side spam filter so it will be interesting to see if my incoming spam messages go down. I'm inclined to believe him since I work in the email & hosting operations division that designed our email platform.

Anyway, I hope it all goes smoothly.

</geek>

I am experiencing another Facebook cascade the last couple of days. It's funny too, because I keep thinking about how many people I have come out to passively through FB. I predict this next wave to be even more interesting, in a sense. My friend Emily found me today and she is one of the first, I think, of my old church youth group crowd to find me. I anticipated a wave of additions after that, and so far I have not been wrong. One more then added me later in the day. Though he also went to ACU with me, so he is also connected to me through other people as I have already had lots of university people add me.

I was thinking earlier today what they must think about me. How many people will be thinking things like "Oh, he's gay? Well how about that." And how many will think "oh no, he's become lost. I should pray for him." I'm not even sure how I feel about that. In one sense I appreciate that they would be that concerned. But then I would be sad that they had not managed to move past the small town, fundamentalist, narrow minded-ness.

I think it was kishenehn awhile back that posted a poll asking if you would go back and be straight if given the choice. There was a time, not all that long ago, when I would have said yes. (I'm setting aside the consequences of giving up my husband). It would have been easier in so very many ways. But I think just a few years ago I changed my mind on that. Had I been straight I would have never had my eyes opened. I likely would have been one of those people voting yes on Prop 8. One of those people that is unable to be open minded enough to truly let other people live their likes and be fair about it. Maybe I would have had my eyes opened on some other way, but I know how I was and how even when I knew I was gay that I was against gay rights and such on the basis of dwelling more on what I thought was right for the world in the eyes of my religion, rather than making decisions based on respecting other people's viewpoints.

Hmm, Yeah, that's sorta what went through my mind this morning after seeing that FB friend request earlier today.

I want, want, want, a Palm Pre. It will be my next phone.

Engadget Preview

Excerpts:

"Unlike the iPhone (which is really its nearest competitor), webOS provides true multitasking, allowing you to switch between active apps. You don't have to close and reopen, just shuffle through your programs."

"Oh, and yes, it has copy and paste functions"

This thing pretty much addresses all my complaints of the iPhone and looks like it manages to keep up with all the good things of the iPhone.

I just want to give my endorsement for this movie. Much more intelligent than your typical High School comedy.

LOL!!!

Ho ho ho. Hurray, it's Christmas and as expected skycaptain76 is spending his one day off in Albion, the land of Fable 2. It was his main present as that is what he wanted so badly. He was kind of like a little kid in his anticipation as he held off just buying it so that it could be his Christmas present.

I gots me a watch as I had asked for. I haven't had one for a few years and had been wanting one for sometime. Thanks to this he saved me the agony of picking one out. He did a good job too as I like it. It is from Diesel. Maybe I can find a picture....

Umm, no. They apparently don't have it online easily found. Wait, new idea. Aha, here it is.

After all the snow and then rain yesterday, it seems somehow mixed up that now, on Christmas day, it is all sunny outside. What initially seemed like it would be a white Christmas is now a dirty, grey snow covered Christmas.

Nothing left planned for today. We had talked about going to see the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, but we heard it mostly sucks. So nothing going on now! Lazy day.

Either that was the shortest hibernation season ever or... well or I don't have a clue. Last week he started poking his head out every couple of days and eating ravenously. It's hard to find good information on this animal to explain the behaviour. I don't know if we disrupted the hibernation by letting him eat. We didn't coerce him into eating, just made food available in his terrarium.

Unlike before all this started he is not interested in getting out and running around. He just wants to bask for awhile. He started shedding too and I had to help him finish up today. Between the winter dryness and the fact I turned off his fogger because I thought he wasn't coming out the humidity level wasn't high enough for good shedding.

All I can do is wait and see how this plays out. It doesn't seem to mean anything bad.

I had been looking for something like this for some time now, an sshfs implementation for windows. Specifically a free one. I had already found a non-free one. This free one didn't show up obviously in a Google search. I found it because someone had linked to it from one obscure sight that I did get to from Google. So in case anyone else happens to have wanted something that lets you map a drive letter to a server over the ssh/scp protocol, here it is.

The Dokan Library plus sshfs module for Windows has the answer.

Oh, and in case you wanted this for Mac, I had already found MacFuse for doing the same thing, with Macfusion needed on top of it for a GUI front-end.

Both of these are considered pre-1.0, so keep that in mind. I believe both are based on the FUSE and sshfs projects from Linux (or at least inspired by). So thank you for that you Linux hackers of the world.

It would appear he finally did it. And by "he" I mean Mushu. And by "it" I mean hibernate. He didn't come out of his cave at all on Wednesday. He was out a bit on Thursday morning, but was completely uninterested in getting out of his terrarium. And then I haven't seen him since. He piled up his substrate pretty thick at the door of his cave. I don't know when I will see him again, but indications are not until spring sometime. :-(