Jayson's Weblog

It's a boy

Machu Picchu - November 2007

Home, home on the range...

Or in Jersey City. I'm sitting back in the casa nuevo enjoying the beginning of bachelor weekend. Yep, all computer all the time. But wait, that's not all! The computer she is not lonely as the new HDTV can keep it company. We just had the HDTV service turned on this morning. I guess it says something about how bored I am that I've already flipped off the HDTV and came to the site and turned on comments and posted a new message. Yes, I'm ready to fight spam. I think spam may win, but I have to try as I hate seeing my own static comments.

Anyway, I decided that HDTV wasn't so great after I realized that I'd spent the last 40 minutes watching American Idol. Yeah, it was crystal clear and I still have my teenage infatuation with Paula Abdul, but dammit there must be more to HDTV!

Happy Halloween!

I'm sure everyone was wondering what we were up to for Halloween. We were off to Richard and Terrie's 2nd Annual Halloween Party. This time, you could hardly find a person without a costume. Impressive work, guys. Tülay and I worked hard on ours....

And a closeup so you can admire my makeup. =)

And here is part of the crowd we could capture. Yes, I was in character all night. Why not?! =)

When Spam Attacks

The site is suffering from a variety of ailments so I've shut down comments for now while I clean up the spam from the bots that finally found me here.

**UPDATE**
Okay, I cleaned all the spam, but haven't turned on comments. Nice that they found my site while I was on vacation and packed in about 450 comments of gambling, porn, and other such stuff. I guess it was just a matter of time before some bot found my site. I've left comments off for now until I figure out how to stem the tide.

Still Kickin'

We made it back from Berlin and are back in Prague for our flight tomorrow. Berlin was absolutely amazing (Prague, too)! We heard it described as a sister city to Manhattan...and while we think it has a bit to go before it's there, it certainly has a lot of similarities. Today we ventured out to Kutna Hora about an hour out of Prague to visit the Ossuary. More on that later with our many pictures. =)

These boots were made for walkin'

We're in Prague right now and loving it! I really haven't seen a more beautiful city, it's just not fair. We leave for Berlin tomorrow and are very excited but have yet to even open the guidebook to make a plan. Hope everyone is jealous and let me know if you want anything. =)

MIA

Yes, everyone. I know the post below has pictures missing. I'm not sure what happened. My best guess is that my service provider restored the hard drive from a backup and lost the pictures. But now that I write that it doesn't make sense since they saved the post... Hmm, regardless, I'll have to check it this weekend.

Montreal, We Came, We Saw...

From the top of Mount Royal...the mountain that the city is named after. Get it? Montreal? =)

Mmm-mmmm! After a short discussion about the quality of cheese in a local farmer's market we learned that the best local dish is poutine. Made with cheese, french fries, and gravy! Actually, the conversation about the cheese went like this.

[him with a french accent]
"Have you ever heard of poutine?"

[me]
"Like the Russian president?"

[him frustrated with the stupid amerikan]
"No, it is the popular local dish here."

20 minutes later we were eating it watching the World Cup game between Germany and Portugal...

Tülay with two numbered balls that were involved in a Brazilian drum parade that went from stage to stage. We still don't know what the balls stood for.

Hit the road, Jack!

Two well-needed vacations are planned now. One coming up in two weeks to go to Montreal for the Jazz festival and then later we'll go to Istanbul via Prague.

Superglue works

Yesterday, part of my daily chores required me to repair a cup. I glanced at the chipped piece and immediately thought of the superglue stashed somewhere by Tülay. As is usual with superglue, it was supershut because it had dried up into the nozzle. So, not wanting to ruin a knife by getting superglue on it, I quickly bit off the dried tip with my teeth and examined the nozzle. Bad. I tried to open my jaw and realized that my front teeth were stuck together. I wouldn't exactly say I felt panic...more like heightened anxiety and a slow realization of what I had done. A quick bit of jaw wigglework and I got my teeth apart. Naturally tried to rid myself of this stuff in my mouth by reflexively pushing it off my teeth with my tongue. This was bad, too. My tongue got stuck to my upper teeth. I quickly ripped my tongue off and scampered to the sink. Three gallons of water washed into my mouth did nothing so I grabbed a napkin to try to wipe it off. So it's 10:30 am and I'm standing over a sink with a paper towel superglued to my front tooth. Not exactly a great start to a morning.

Here I sit 24 hours later still running my tongue over my tooth and feeling the roughness of the glue. The bits of napkin are gone and I've scratched most of it off, but it has been winning the war so far.

Finally fixed the Mac

My heart just wasn't in it. I did post on the Apple forums and the best they could suggest was to reinstall. Nice. Great that a standard update can completely fubar my machine. I suspect the typical Mac user would have to take it in to get it fixed. Well, maybe not, I guess a large portion of Windows users reinstall their operating system to fix problems, too.

A decent side effect is that I'm back to the defaults again which is refreshing after using my heavily modified version for several years. I did retain all my files and the subsequent updating was uneventful. I still maintain that I will leave the world of the Mac once this notebook dies or is outdated. I can't believe I still have arguments with people who think the Mac is faster than a PC or even better in a design area. The power of advertising has not weakened. I bought the laptop as a toy and am happy I did, it's great for me. But it's much more expensive in initial cost and as I realized later in simple upkeep. Every little program which we are used to getting for free on a PC is pay software for a Mac. With a Windows PC (or linux) you can surf around and find a few free programs to do what you are tryin g to accomplish. With a Mac, you have to pay, pay, pay. Very annoying.

Video killed the radio star...

Karaoke night was a total hit! So much fun, I really can't remember how many songs I sang. Everyone found something to belt out at full volume. I guess since I set the standards so low that it was easy to seize the microphone and improve the environment.

The Enemy

This season sucks. Why can't we declare a war on allergies? I barely want to crawl out of bed. Claritin is the only thing that works and the effect is to dry me out until it's not physically possible for my nose to run. So, I counteract this by drinking four liters of water every day. I can't wait to get past this.

Break out the tussin... Part 2

The Mac? She is broken. This is probably the most broken it has been since I bought it. It boots, but only into single user mode. What did I do to so trash my wonderful laptop? I just updated it to the latest security patch from their website. As I've learned, this problem is not uncommon. How to fix it is much more complex.

I've learned much about to to boot in new and exciting ways to try to get it past the Apple logo and the spinning gear of death. But not, as of yet, how to get it to work completely. My best guess is that it loaded a new version of the kernel but failed to load the new versions of the kernel extensions. This is where most people would take their powerbook into the Mac specialists...and also where I tried. But it appears that they are fully booked for the next seven days and in order to set an appointment in advance I need to purchase their ProCare support product. So, it will be cheaper and faster to figure this out on my own.

Looks like I need to borrow my neighbor's Mac to boot from so I can complete the upgrade that was screwy on my laptop. I hope his is working. I have to buy a firewire cable to connect and boot from his machine, but it's a small price to pay since I can then use it for future issues.

I really don't think I'll buy a Mac again after this one loses its magic smoke. I enjoy it as a tinker toy, but even that has lost it's appeal. Next time I'll get a faster PC and install Linux.