Sunday through Friday (or: How I learned to stop caring and bomb the HP)

Below is the log of some of my personal time during the last 5 days. It’s in no way everything I have done.
Update: I forgot to mention my iPod is broken
Sunday:
After having an enjoyable time at my Dad’s place in Otaki, I return home to realise I left my USB thumb drive in my Dad’s computer. I have my IM program and PGP private key on there.

Monday:
I finally spring into action fixing an old computer for a family — it’s an HP Pavillion 4404 (404 not being a good omen). Try to install Windows 98 SE on there, it works. Download drivers for the HP from their website. When I install them, they don’t take hold, and a driver for the video card is missing 😛 That’s not gonna work… Off to MysteryMovieMonday… the world’s most disturbing movie Visitor Q is shown… when it is over, everyone is glad.

Tuesday:
Time for another attempt at this HP. Use the crappy “system restore” CDs which basically factory-fresh the operating system. Try to install Windows 98SE over the top — wrong! I need a Windows 98 SE Update disk… :P. I go to my church cell group (for the uninitiated, bible study group)

Wednesday:
My iPod was being stupid just before I went to work — it didn’t copy the playlists across, probably because it was full. There is lag between docking and windows suddenly recognising it. I was late for work, and got impatient. I removed the iPod from the dock and accidently dropped it on the floor.

DO’H!. I reset the iPod and it went into a perpeptual reset cycle — apple logo, file error icon, reset, apple logo, file error icon, etc. I left it in my dock and went to work iPodless.

I call my Dad and get him to send me my thumb drive. I am getting paid to tutor my friend Bevan in CSS tonight. I get home late and I don’t want to touch the stupid HP.

Thursday:
Tried to get the iPod working before work, No good. Actually, having the iPod in the dock crashes WinXP during boot-up. Weird. Boot up without the iPod, then try to dock the iPod — Windows hard-resets. WTF?

I have lunch with Bevan, and he borrows my Designing with Web Standards book. We pop into Dymocks and I see a copy of The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea, mastermind behind CSS Zen Garden. I buy it 🙂

That night, I had borrowed the Win98 -> Win98SE upgrade CD from work and start it installing… then it bluescreens… 😛 Need to system restore from CD again. SE is no longer an option. I go to Curry. After a restore, I just try to install IE6. It starts installing, but for some reason, it says at the end that it didn’t work properly, and leaves Win98 borked beyond repair, needing another system restore from CD. Something doesn’t want this machine updated 😛 Then the computer spontaniously turns off — the power supply overheated… ARGH. I go to bed.

Friday:
I get my USB thumb drive; Dad has posted it to me. Yay! Zen of CSS Design is pretty awesome, and written really well, but in an interesting style. It looks at the different Zen Garden submissions and pulling out tidbits of design and css wisdom from them, in a very logical and well thought out order. Maybe I’ll write more about that later…

Feed the Firefoxes!

On Saturday my friend Matthew and I trapsed down to Wellington Zoo and got to feed the Red Pandas. The chinese name for the red panda literally translates to “Firefox”, which co-incidently happens to be the name of our favorite web browser. Yes, we’re geeks and proud — get the heck over it! 😉

The Red Panda Encounter at Wellington Zoo cost us NZD$60 each, and was worth every cent 🙂 We spent what seemed like ages in the enclosure with the red pandas, along with the really helpful keeper who was telling us nearly everything there is to know about these cute critters. They’re an endangered species, and there is an international breeding program going on. What was really interesting was that the breeding program is administrated, and the decisions for which animals get to breed together is influenced heavily by DNA sampling and trying to keep genetic variance in the population… wow…

It was quite strange, as the first red panda that came up to us would come and eat some food, then climb back into the tree and then climb back down and eat some more. And it was eating the food right out of our hands!

Wellington Zoo has (I believe) five Red Pandas, all of which are extremely cute and cuddly. That said, we didn’t get to cuddle them 😉 Actually, towards the end, Matthew asked if we could pet them, and the keeper said sure, if they’ll let you. I tried, but they kinda shy away a little. They are quite timid and secretive creatures. Apparently they don’t have much of a personality, when compared to other mammals like cats, dogs or chimps.

Anyway, a stackload of photos were taken. Check them out, and feel free to leave comments 🙂

Things I’m Loving Right Now!

This isn’t your standard link dump… I’m gonna talk about things both online and offline that I’m loving…

  • GodCast.org — Creative Commons licenced podcasts with christian content, especially The Living Word and Rev Tim’s Podcast
  • Flickr — Finding cool photos that get your creative juices flowing has never been so easy, and never so fun!
  • Picasa — Makes performing simple photo improvements fast and easy… if only it would integrate with Flickr…
  • Walking around Wellington — especially to places I’ve never walked, such as the Interisland Ferry Terminal. I’m doing the 10,000 step program, so reaching 10,000 steps before I go to bed is a real motivator… and taking the new camera makes it fun too 🙂 … walking to the ferry terminal that day got me up above 20,000 steps for the first time!
  • Getting Things Done — or more specifically the methodology outlined in the book Getting Things Done (slashdot review)… being organised and completing tasks is a motivator!

New Favorite Movie

It’s probably a bit early, but Garden State is probably my new favorite movie. Directed by and starring Zach Braff, known by most of you as JD from Scrubs, this movie talks to me deeply. Being shut off from your feelings and then discovering them by chance all over again. And falling in love.

I long to fall in love, and when I do, the hopeless romantic in me hopes it’s something like Garden State… It’s probably the warm fuzzy feeling in my chest talking, but I hope I fall in love with someone who’s as equally crazy, if not more crazy than I am.

And ladies, I’m leaving my mind open, so if you’re reading this and you’re interested in the Brettmeister, and you’re not as crazy as Sam, it’s cool, come see me anyway! 😉 I may be crazy, but I’m not insane! Well, at least not clinically… 😉

Overall, I thought the movie was awesome. If you see any movie this holiday season, see The Incredibles (when it finally opens in NZ), and then see Garden State.

On a side note, shout outs to Virgil, who I bumped to on the street — hope to see you again soon sometime matey 🙂

I feel so fresh, so clean, clean…

Reinstalling your system from scratch is something I like to do every 6 months or so, mainly because I install so much crap I download, and pretty soon stuff gets unstable, as Windows is prone to do. I’ve done fresh installs so many times I’ve got the method down pat. I started the process last night at 9pm because for some reason, I couldn’t get Half-life 2 to even start, and it turned out it was Gtray, which is a nice bit of ware, except for some reason had bugged out on me. Oh well, I’ll just use the Firefox Gmail Notifier extension.

Anyway, doing a fresh install inevitebly wipes something you kick yourself about, but this is the territory.

I lost my iTunes database (which in retrospect I could probably have rescued from my iPod), and thus lost my star-ratings, playcounts, copy-to-iPod checkbox settings and smart playlists. The up side of this is my playlists page on my iPod aren’t so cluttered anymore, and my iPod tracks have rotated slightly, so my iPod feels fresh and clean clean on the inside 😀

I also lost my OPML of my RSS subscriptions for FeedDemon. This isn’t so bad, cos I’ve shared it with a few people recently, and hopefully they still have it… ^_^; If you’ve got my OPML, please give it back to me 🙂

Also, I’m taking a whole lot of leave for the christmas break… I’m planning on blowing a few days solely on Shoutbox…

Maybe I’ll get me a laptop or something so I can work on stuff while I’m in the Hawke’s Bay with my mum. Mmm… maybe I’ll get get a iBook or Powerbook or something… wanting to learn MacOS for a while 🙂