Well it's Christmas Eve, and barring the uber slow EVDO connection I'll be doing a little work in a few minutes, when Perforce (cough, shitty app, cough) finishes getting latest.

I wanted to do an entry about our Christmas vacation so far though. The flight out was fine, Nicole being Ascent is a nice thing! We didn't wait in line to drop our bags, well it was a shorty line, but still. And then we boarded first with the babies and old people. That's always fun!

Sadly Frontier wasn't on it's game for the Summit/Ascent member courtesy points. We go no purple 'priority' stickers on our bags, and the flight attendent never came around to see if Nicole wanted her free DirectTV. bummer.

Otherwise however, it was a good flight, more than i had hoped for this close to christmas. It was booked solid, but everyone was quiet, the baby on the opposite side of the aisle never squacked once, the person in front of me kept their seat upright, the person behind me never kicked the seat. it was glorious!

The forever and 30 minutes drive to the in-laws wasn't too bad, DC traffic wasn't in FULL force, but was thick for sure, weak!

We've been at their place for a few days, the verdict. Sprint cards, not the greatest. We had hoped they'd save the day since the in-laws live in some part of the US that hasn't actually been discovered yet, where posers still play polo and fox hunt to kill time. Where Sprint hasn't managed to stretch their 'nationwide' network. Oh well.

We managed to get out of the house yesterday, that was a plus, in-law's oldest had a date, so in-law and in-laws youngest were accompanying to the movies (to sit elsewhere of course). So Nicole and I got a get out of jail free card. We went to see I am Legend. Good flick. I highly recommend it. Will Smith does another bang up job. He can sure pick the roles that will keep his name associated with 'block buster'.

Next on the agenda, Christmas, then... well I think that's about it until we fly home. I have to get Quicken PC, transfered to Quicken Mac at some point for my Mother-in-law, and i really want to sneak away to catch AVP-R some time this week, otherwise it should be a relaxing week, sprinkled with some work (gotta be billable).

It's been a busy three weeks. I'm home now, finally! I've been in Mountain View CA for the last two weeks, working on some really cool shit (I talk about it here). Originally I was planning to come home only one of the two weekends I'd be away, but N's accident, then her christmas party, warrented me coming home both weekends. Well those events, and my not being able to stand being away from her that long!

Plus having moved into a new house, two days before my flight, well, being home on a weekend, was good, since we had more than enough work to do to get the house put together, lot's of shit, needed a home.

Nicole did a bang up job in my absence getting curtains hung, paintings put up, clothes put away, etc.

I'll be working from home for the remainder of this project so that will be nice. I love being onsite, it's fun, and the ethnic food options in the Valley are numerous and tasty, but as they say, "home is where the heart is" and my heart was in Denver with my wife.

Oh by the way, right now, we're having a party in our new house for her birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY LOVE!!!!!!!

Now that we've got some pictures I'll write about the new place. We're under contract on a cool townhouse in Denver. I can't wait to get the hell out of Highlands Ranch. If it's not the idiocy of soccer moms in SUVs it's the parents who speed through the school zone.. hello I don't have kids, I don't care if they die, I obey the law, 25mph!!!!

I'm glad we experienced yuppy ville and all it had to offer (mostly things that annoy us), but it's time to go. Go be with people who

don't think bringing kids to the bar is a good idea, who just want to relax and enjoy themselves, not be surrounded by screamers. Can you tell I can't wait!?

It'll be an adjustment for sure, we're moving from about 1600ish sq ft to about 1450ish.

We're losing a designated guest room, and a basement. We are gaining a bitchin' rooftop deck though, with views of the city.

We're the end unit, so that's a plus. eventually the pool will be right across from us, but not for at least a year or so.

Possibly the biggest adjustment will be for Nicole. Her pottery studio is going from studio, to corner of the garage. We'll make it as comfortable and usable as we can, so hopefully it'll work.

The kitchen is nice too! Well the whole damn place is nice, but the kitchen really 'works' for me. Our current one is great, and huge. Maybe even a little too huge since the triangle is a little wide. This one is I think just right.

As much as I want to close in a week, I know we won't. So in all likely hood we'll be moving 12/1.

We're not selling our house in yuppy-ville, we'll be renting it out. We've never been landlords, so it'll be an adventure, but we're not prepared to try and sell in this market, plus we have the means to have a rental property so we might as well see if it works.

I can't wait, I hate packing, but I'm just not a patient person. Once the idea has been planted, sitting around on it, is not my style. Come on 12/1, hurry up and get here!

Twice since moving to CO, friends in CA have reported the crazy hot weather. Last year it was August calling from Corona and 114 at 7pm. This time it was John, IM'ing from Trabuca (that's fancy Orange County for those that don't know) to show me that it's 109.... one oh fuckin' nine!!!

Even our last "heat wave" earlier this year, when it was hotter than I'd like, it wasn't 109. It wasn't even close, maybe 100 at noon, in the middle of the asphalt jungle of Denver.

Sorry SoCal'ers you get no sympathy from me.. :) I tried to tell ya'll to come out this way, to more affordable housing, better climate, etc, etc, blah blah. Enjoy the heat :P

is Idiocracy, OMG what a damn funny movie.

Today was a total house bound day, we don't have kids so Easter doesn't do much for us, but everything is closed. Add to that a several inches of snow that have been falling the last few days, we had a lot of time today.

This was also our first Amazon Unbox attempt. TiVo has a deal with Amazon we got $15 worth of unbox money if we signed up. Since you only pay when you use it (as far as I could tell) we signed up and tried it out.

Thoughts on Unbox, then the flick.

It's no replacement for OnDemand or its kind. We clicked 'download' thinking it would work like a regular TiVo recording, it would show up and we could watch it as it downloaded. That might be how it works but for the next three hours as we watched recorded TV shows, no movie showed up.

I was actually about to email a complaint to Amazon the next night when I noticed it was in the "now Playing" section. 'bout damn time!

it's a neat idea, download speed not withstanding, you get the movie and it sits in TiVo (space permitting) until you hit play. The moment you hit play, a 24 hour timer starts counting down. After 24 hours the movie automagically returns to sender. Kinda cool. You can watch it as many time as you like in 24 hours, after that it's gone.

The Movie

The premise, while oddball for sure, is hilarious and reflected something N and I have often asked of each other. "What happens in the future since the smart folks don't seem to be breeding, and the morons are having more babies than rabbits do?"

Idiocracy attempts to give you a glimpse into that future. The sad part, it's almost believable, some parts that is.

I can't say I'd buy it since I can't imagine I'd be able to watch it more than once, and I can watch things over and over, I'm on my 4th viewing of the complete Babylon 5 series. I can say, it's worth a rental. Go out, pick it up laugh yer arse off and pray for our future.

They like me, they really like me!!!!

Well maybe they don't but who cares. I now have a voice beyond this blog. I've been welcomed into the MetroBlogging family over at the Denver Metblog

I'm excited to be able to get my voice out to a little wider audience, but don't worry this is still home.

Weekends are just too short. This fact, while universally known and accepted is further worsened by having to spend a good deal of said weekend working. Yes, working. The upside, thankfully. is that I get paid for it. Yes, that's right. $ Bay-bee.

I spent most of saturday working. I was able to get out for a little shopping trip to Target and yummy dinner with the wife. We hit up Thai Basil, which I highly recommend. Great food, greater service. Luckilly we missed the homecoming rush and were leaving as party 1 of 4 was arriving. 28 high school kids. ACK.

Sunday was a better. Still worked, but like I said above... $  so that's ok.

We decided that it was time to try our hands at furniture shopping again. We tried once before to put a couch in the basement, to no avail. The door and corridor to the basement are pretty darn small and tight. Rather than a full blown sofa we opted, this time for pieces. We picked up two end pieces of a larger sectional setup. Each is an armless chair but can be slid together for the sleeping or cuddling or whatever. So those arrive Tuesday.

We also hit up BigLOTs. Ah yeah discount shopping at it's best worst. Got some nice clothes and furniture and home decore... HA no. We got green beans for the dogs, a bag of cheetos for me, and some other small stuff. Our goal was a white table cloth for Nicoles upcoming pottery sale, mission failed. How hard is it to find a white table clothe? Hard.

Then back home for some TV and more work.

Dinner was our first attempt at wok frying Tofu... we need to practice a bit...

And with that the weekend is over...

but wait! Rob sent this to me (that's him in the fly zoot suit)... Damned if I didn't ROTFLOL

Well we're home.

Maui was great! We're not really sure if we'll go back any time soon. It was fun, but not something we'd make a yearly habit out of.

We ended our stay, doing quite a bit. We hit up Haleakala crater. The intention was to do a little hiking but we got a litle nervous about the time. We didn't want to take any chances with bein late to the airport. We did hike a little ways in just to take some pictures. After that we headed over to the Tedeschi winery. The winery itself, not that impressive. They only offered four tastings, and were a popular top of the cruise ship crowd. HOWEVER, they make a totally kick ass Rasberry wine. We ordered two bottles, they'll be here next week. Last up on our whirlwind tour of the island, we hit up the Iao needle. It didn't look much like a needle and the park it was in was rather small and over run with feral kitties. Most of which actually had scowls on their cute little kitty faces, weird!

Now on to the new machine.... Before we left I ordered a new Mac Book Pro. Sweet! I know! I actually ordered it before leaving thinking it would take Apple a while to ship it. Heck, my refurbed (ie, already sitting in Cupertino) took two weeks to get to my house. Well the MBP made it in 3 days. I ordered it Friday night before we hit the sack, it was signed for by the maids on Wednesday morning. It came from Shanghai!!!! Wat to go Apple!!

As soon as we got home Saturday I set about getting it set up. At this point almost all of my Mac apps and settings are transfered. I went the old school way, fresh installs of all apps, vs the Migration tool path. Mostly because I didn't have a firewire cable.

I'm getting ready to get get started on setting p the PC, in the mac. Ordering a key for Parallels now, then off I go.

My impromptu review is as follows.
Hardware.

I went with a slightly modded configuration. I upped the Ram to 1gb, single stick. I'll get the second from NewEgg. I upped the HDD to the 100gb drive. i went 5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM since I don't do much high end stuff. I don't need a fast HDD to write code, write words, or download podcasts.

The heat issue... wel it's there for sure. This bad boy gets hot. Not unbearably so, but not comfy either.

The layout is ok. I know Apple doesn't put ports on the back, but two USB, one on each side, kinda weak. Not only because two is not enough with today's USB powered sushi, personal fans, and coffee warmers, but because one on each side makes you ahve to pick and choose what to plug in, and where. Ah well.

Software..
Well it's Apple OS X. Nothing new to me.

We're having our basement finished and one of the things we're getting is a server room. The section under the stairs is being walled and doored up for the servers. That's where the patch panels are already so it was an easy choice.

The framing is complete and we decided that before the dry wallers arrive we'd like to run some cat 5 and phone so we could have network drops and phone drop down in the game/writing room part of the basement.

Off to home Depot we went. I got a neat little crimper tool, a box of CAT 5e (500 ft), and some ends.

My first attempt was a crossover, that went well. Then I measured out what I needed for phone and network drops and got started. This morning. i installed and tested 2 network drops, and a phone drop. All worked. Yay! Me!

The dry wallers come tomorrow or something. Just in time. I can't wait to see the basement finished.

We've got a neighbor who are complete passive aggressive dicks!

They complained to the HOA and Animal control about Terrance barking. We bought a bark control collar and his barking has been curbed significantly. We put a note on their door (we rang the bell, and heard them inside, they wouldn't answer). They called animal control again. We sent a certified letter with our mobile numbers, house number, and email. They never picked up the letter at the post office.

Tonight we have a letter taped to the garage door, not the front door where we might have seen them, but the garage door.

Typed, and not signed, complaining that he barks all day long and they are not the only ones comlaining (they are, we've spoken to our other neighbors), they are just the ones coming forward. Hell of a way to come forward, a printed letter taped to the garage without names on it.

It's one thing to be passive aggressive but this is a bit ridiculous!

Nicole and I had California Closets (through Costco) come in and build us a nice home office. Took the guys about a day, 9-5. It looks awesome. The photo section has some pics of the process, I'll post more once we get everything re-settled. If feels nice. lots more desktop space, which was needed, and more shelf space near me for my books.

Good job California closets!!