Had “The Dark Knight” Trilogy just kind of running in the background while doing my usual chores and other stuff; but you just have to stop and watch when Heath Ledger comes on as “The Joker.” That man was genius in that part. Especially that part where someone calls him crazy, and, real quiet like he says “No. No I’m not.” You can totally believe he believes he isn’t.

The other day, during the snow “storm” we had, I was out on the deck taking pictures (of course) and I heard a loud THUMP from the back of the property. And, sure enough, on our walk today, the Dog and I came across a downed tree cutting across our walking trail. It was one of those really long/tall skinny (about 13 inches thick or so) trees and I guess the weight of all that wet snow was a bit much for it. Snap. Thump. That’s two down and 50+ to go.

Tried booting into Windows 7 today. Forgot that I completely replaced all my drives with new, larger, formatted for Linux, hard drives. Of course Windows couldn’t find the data/documents directory and a bunch of other stuff. Aaarrrgggghhh! What a pain in the ass Windows is! If not for having to boot into Windows to check my banking I’d get rid of it completely. I’m quite happy with Linux Mint and a Windows 7 VM when I need it. (And if I could find a decent blogging program I’d get rid of the VM!)

Anywho, just got back from picking my Schweetie up at the Ferry Landing. Made a quick stop by Mickey D’s cause she didn’t feel like waiting to make something. Which is her prerogative! I’m finishing up here before heading off to lay down and read a bit.

Since I posted. I think I’ve been kind of busy; but can’t really remember. That tends to happen more and more when your advancing in years. (Or so I’ve been told.)

What have I been doing? Oh, “things” around the house. Making runs for SWMBO to get her son his Christmas Present. Getting my Christmas present for her. Stuff. Old Guy Stuff. And all my usual chores.

Weather has sucked. Rains off and on. Feels cold out there. Supposed to be a chance of snow today but it never happened. Too warm for that but too cold to get outside. Sucks.

The company I was dealing with for SWMBO’s present contacted me a  couple of days ago and offered to ship my purchase overnight at their expense if I’d still order what I had. Sure. Didn’t really expect it to get here but it did! I was pleasantly surprised. Still doesn’t forgive their lax Customer Support as far as waiting so long to even inform me that there was a problem; but makes me more inclined to order from them again.

So, SWMBO got her Quilt Kit for Christmas. She likes it. (Which is good considering she picked it out of the catalog.)

Had the Renter and his son, SWMBO’s Son and girlfriend, and us for dinner. Which was excellent. Ham, mashed taters, veggies,yams and a gallon of Martinelli’s. Still plenty of ham left for cold ham sandwiches too. (Which is almost as good as left over Turkey.)

SWMBO’s Son got me a model USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Refit model. His girlfriend got me a”Don’t Blink” Weeping Angel T-Shirt. SWMBO keeps giving me hugs and kisses; so my Christmas went pretty good. They’re in the big room watching “White Christmas” (which I’ve had enough of) so I’m in my room doing this and watching (sort of) “Battle Los Angeles.”

Installed Apache2, MySQL, PHP5 and am playing with running a website. Just put up “piwigo gallery” and am playing with that. Lots of fun and I enjoy learning things.

All in all: Nice Christmas.

Took about 30 minutes to get it all set up, loaded, and up and running. I have a slow Internet connection so most of that time was spent downloading the system. But it installed and booted up right nicely.

So I installed the media center thingie and another version that just boots to a desktop GUI. The media center one (I just cannot remember the name of the program but it used to be called XBMC, I think) finds all my media drives no problem and the video output (through hdmi) is fairly decent. Problem is that then I can’t use the TV as a monitor while watching a movie. I don’t always want everything to play full screen.

The other flavor of linuxPi is okay if limited. It browses the Internet. It has a mail program that I haven’t tried; but, if it keeps mail on the “hard drive” then it really won’t be any  good. Haven’t checked to see what else is available for the Pi. Yet. (I’ve only had the thing 3 hours!)

UPS guy that delivered the Pi was asking me about CB radio’s and keeping in touch in this area. Possible but limited by the terrain. So I talked to him for a few minutes about maybe getting his Ham Radio license and a 2-meter radio and doing the same thing through local repeaters. I kind of doubt that he will, but you never know. I may have created another Ham.

Not much else going on. Had my Doctor’s appointment yesterday; everything’s where it should be and in fairly good working order for an Old Guy. They gave me a flue shot and pneunovax shot which made me feel pretty punkie later in the afternoon so I didn’t go to the Extra Class class. Still had a bit of upset stomach when I woke up this morning.

Made a run to ACE Hardware and bought 2 boxes of led bulbs. Buy to get one free so I went home with 6 bulbs total. Already used 4 of them in the kitchen and they do a pretty good job of lighting the place up. Will probably go get some more. Package says that 1 bulb, used 3 hours a day, costs $1.77/year to run. Not bad. They may be on longer than 3 hours during the winter, but, during summer they’ll probably not be turned on for weeks at a time.

I think, with the Pi, that I’m going to get a bigger SD card and see if I can get it set up for controlling my yeasu 857d and run a program like fldigi. And a logging program. If I get it all to working well maybe I can spread it around to other Hams.

Checked in to the 900 MHz Net just before the MCARC Wednesday 2-meter Chat Net. Both went well.