I'm Working Towards My Blackbelt in Geek-Fu
Happy Valentine's Day (I'm looking at you, Heather)
The last time I wrote a personal Rambling was back in November, so I've got some summarizing to do.
Thanksgiving: Mom and the family from New Mexico came to visit.
Christmas: Mom and the family from New Mexico came to visit.
New Years: nada
I got some nice gifts for Christmas. Heather got me a leather jacket, and I used money from Ginny along with some of my own to finally buy a surround sound system for the living room. I got a shirt I wanted from my parents as well as a cool pair of pants. I also got some books I'd been wanting to read from Jenifer and from my Dad & Teresa. Since then, I've already finished reading them. I also received a cool hat from Holly. For me, this Christmas was clothing and book day. Just to make it clear, I'm not complaining. I probably tend to spend my money on "toys" throughout the year, so getting clothing for Christmas helps balance that out...
On the topic of toys, I still absolutely love my iPod. It is just so nice to have something small enough to carry around with me everywhere that can provide nuggets of entertainment in the form of Podcasts or music. There are a few things that, while minor, bother me a bit about how media files are managed by iTunes/the iPod:
1. Podcasts. Whenever you download a Podcast via it's feed the audio file is properly marked as a podcast and is organized in the podcast section on the iPod and is kept out of the music shuffle. However, if for some reason I need to download a Podcast manually and add it to the iPod there is no easy way to perform this same organization. I can mark it as a podcast, but I feel I should also be able to say it goes with a certain podcast feed and that it should not be included with music when I listen to shuffled music.
2. Managing Multiple Synching Locations. It seems that Apple does not understand that I would like to sync my iPod with more than one computer and synchronize different things. I was surprised to find that the synchronize settings are carried with the iPod, instead of being configurable by each installation of iTunes. Ideally I would like to sync my music at home and my calendar at work. However, this is not easily done given the current configuration. It is worth noting that none of this would be a problem if Apple let me do a complete synchronize (uploading songs off of the iPod into iTunes).
I spent a day and a half of the weekend before last cleaning out and organizing our garage. I have a few projects I've been wanting to do that require a workspace that I haven't been able to start because our garage was so trashed. I really didn't have a good place with a clean workspace that I could use. I ended up spending $80 for a couple of plastic shelving units that allowed me to organize a bunch of stuff that was just lying around. The week before I had finally brought all of our books inside and put them on our bookshelves. I moved my workbench to a location that minimizes the possibility of random crap getting stacked on it, and hopefully now that I have a location to work at I will finally get around to my projects. I also finally organized my tools into my tool chest, and that made the work I did this weekend much easier.
This weekend I finally wired up the shelving unit that I posted pictures for in this post. I wired up a power outlet, and an ethernet/cable outlet on the same level as the shelf. This greatly improves the look of this shelf as I no longer have wires dangling off the front edge. As always, Heather helped by telling me when I had flipped the right breaker and feeding cable up to me as I was pulling it through the attic. The next person who buys this house is going to either think that it is awesome that the house is wired for ethernet/cable/power or be utterly confused as to what the hell the previous owner was doing.
I'm such a big Geek, and I love it.
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