Firefox 1.5
If you haven't already seen, Firefox 1.5 has been released: getfirefox.com.
So far, it's working great and is noticeably faster.
Thankgoodness for Thanksgiving
Five days off is something I should do more often, even if I did work from home for part of it.
Thanksgiving Week/Weekend was busy but lots of fun. We saw family every day.
1) Wednesday: Dinner with my grandpa and then church with my parents
2) Thursday: Morning at our friend Greg's parents for the yearly Thanksgiving Morning open house/get together; afternoon/evening at Mickey and Bill's for The Big Meal (tm)
3) Friday: Harry Potter at noon then Beer Tasting Dinner at 1776 (local restaurant) with 12 people (half family, half friends).
4) Saturday: Surprise birthday party for one of 
helloheather's aunts. Lots of fun there, saw all the younger second-cousins (held cute Carter for so long my arms are still sore 
Later in the evening, Christmas Tree pickup thanks to hilhas1 and gonj and a viewing of "Searching for Bobby Fischer."
5) Sunday: cleaned the gutters in the rain (yay! I'm very happy I got them done); saw the Bears win their 7th in a row (double yay!); and then had birthday dinner with Grandpa and my family.
Wheew. What an exhausting weekend.
Old and New
Until this afternoon, the drive my OS was on was an old (Feb 1999) 10 GB IBM drive. I had less than 1 GB free and was in dire need of a new drive. I had 4 drives in the case, and the contents of one was recently moved to an external USB drive, so, I finally got around to ghosting it and removing the old 10 GB drive.
What a difference in speed that makes. It's been night and day.
For a long time, it took my computer a really really long time to fully boot. On the order of 5 minutes including everything it had to do after login. Because my computer is on 24/7 I didn't really worry about it. But applications were slow to load and slow to run. I figured it was mostly due to the fact that I'm running a P-III, 700MHz /slccket/ in an ABit motherboard at least 6 years old. And while the machine is still being very limited by this setup, it sure boots and runs a lot better with a newer HD
1 inch of snow and other bits of fun
As many of you probably read, we had a great weekend this past weekend. "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" proved itself excellent yet again. If you're in Chicago over a weekend, go see this show.
I'm off today, Thursday, and Friday, yet I worked from home from a couple hours. Even better: I'm not offically supposed to be able to work from home. Chump City, population me!
Apparently last night we had a bit of snow, the first stuff that really stuck around. It's mostly melted now but still, it was nice to see.
Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving.
Photos from Atlanta
I finally uploaded some photos from the weekend in Atlanta: http://www.bernhard.us/photos/atlanta05
Wherein life changes forever…
As some of you may already have seen, by way of helloheather's post here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/helloheather/299545.html, we are expecting a baby!
Expecting it to do what, you might ask? Well, you know, baby stuff. What they do. Grow and whatnot. To be honest, I don't know much about them. But this comic sure puts the mind at ease...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/10/17
Anyway, the baby is healthy and everything is good (according to the doctor. my rather freaked out mind says otherwise! ) . I got to see the heart beating last night on the ultrasound. It was surreal and grounding at the same time. I still haven't quite wrapped my mind around the whole thing. But, surprise surprise, I've already got pictures!
(click photo for larger view)
The baby is due at the end of June (June 26th is what the doctor said) putting Heather at 8.5 weeks pregnant. She is doing fine with the only real "problem" being that she is now always cold. Normally she's the warmest person in the room but this baby seems to be sucking all the heat from her.
“Batman Begins”
While in Atlanta, we watched "Batman Begins" on Andy's amazing entertainment system. I did see it in the theater but seeing it again reminded me of one of the reasons I like the film so much: the musical score.
More important than the album, the score works marvelously within the context of the movie. HZ [Hans Zimmer] and JNH [James Newton Howard] really understood the overall vision of the film because the music compliments the visuals flawlessly
http://www.soundtrack.net/soundtracks/database/?id=3991
I agree 100% with that assessment. The score works wonderfully with the film. Hans Zimmer knew exactly what Christopher Nolan wanted to do with "Batman Begins." Listening to the score brings me right back into the emotions of the characters. It's a score that begs to be played on a very large system, not just for the raw power of it but to draw out the more subtle elements as well.
In short: buy this score. It's fantastic.
“I know what you did Justine”
(click for a slightly larger view)
I found this pumpkin on Randolph St. today during my lunchtime walk. Written on it is the rather creepy phrase: "I know what you did Justine"
I wonder what someone thinks Justine did?
Charlotte Elizabeth
And before I forget, welcome to the world: Charlotte Elizabeth Hawley.
Congrats Aaron and Serena!
MIA
bernhard.us has been having some stability issues lately and, in response, I've been slacking on my blogging. Things have been rather busy and this trend is probably endless.
First off, happy belated birthday to davesanngel. Hope you had a great day.
I'm working on uploading photos from the Atlanta trip. I keep meaning to bring them to work to sort them, but have forgotten yet again.
Lauren had her first birthday this past week. Twench and whippetgirl had a friends party on Saturday. It was fun and Lauren seemed to have a great time.
Before the party on Saturday, helloheather and I worked for 5 hours on the leaves. We got 90% of it done and, even though the wind storm yesterday knocked down a bunch more leaves, I feel great at our accomplishment. Last year was so difficult because we let the leaves sit too long and then they were too wet to burn. But this year we've been on top of things and it is a wonderful feeling. Next Saturday should be about the same amount of work if we include cleaning out the gutters and after that, with most of the leaves down, we should have only minor work to complete. That is unless we have another massive windstorm day.
Yesterday, because we were both pretty sore from the yard work, we didn't do much of anything. After church it was a lot of TV watching and a few chores (laundry, dishes, vacuuming). I felt like a lazy slug
Hail Atlanta!
helloheather and I, along with our friend Joe, were in Atlanta, GA this past weekend visiting our mutual college friend Andy.
Andy is the regional manager of IBM's hosting facilities. He manages their facility in Miami and their two sites in Atlanta. Lots and lots of drool-worthy equipment. There's something inherntly geeky and cool about standing in just one cage in the data center with $20 million worth of equipment all around you.
So, we flew out eary on Friday morning, bummed around the office on Friday and eventually ended up at dinner at a nice italian place whose name escapes me at this point. I'm pretty bad with names. Saturday took us to Stone Mountain. Part theme park/Southern version of Wisconsin Dells, part "here are some heros of the Civil War, from, you know, the 'other' side," and part funnel cake, it was fun. We wandered everywhere, took a train ride around, and a gondola ride up, the mountain as well as a boat ride and DUCK ride on the lake. Andy had booked a comedy murder/mystery dinner at Agathas. Quite a large under-taking with probably 150 patrons and only two actors. Everyone was given different parts. I was, along with Joe and a group of about 20 others, a beggar. In the 3 intermissions we had to get together and pick a popular song and come up with new lyrics to describe a specific main character in the performance. Our group picked a do-wop hit and had some pretty clever lyrics. I wished I had saved the napkin they were written on
Sunday was a relaxing day of brunch at a cajun restaurant (I had a really good shrimp, lobster, crab omelet), a viewing of "Batman Begins" on Andy's amazing home entertainment system and a game of pool that featured an easy loss for yours truly.
Our flight out was delayed 2 hours for unknown reasons. We got bumped to a new gate and had to deal with almost no communication from the American Airlines staff. Oh and the Burger King in the airport doesn't have cashiers. They have 3 touch-screen kiosks for ordering food. It takes about 4x as long to order something due to the rather inefficient user interface.
Photos forthcoming.
Slackin’ since 1970
Tomorrow is a travel day and I probably won't be able to update then, so here's an early Happy Birthday to nugget. Hope you have a good day!