Why, for the love of all that is holy, is the grease from cooked pepperoni so vibrantly red?
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There is now an HP LaserJet 4000 sitting in my basement, hooked up to the print server via parallel cable. It came with two extra boxes of toner, which was good. The toner in the printer had a damaged roller, which was printing lines down the side of the paper. Swapped out the toner, and all was good. Soon, it will have an ebayed JetDirect card, thereby removing any issues between Vista, Samba, and the little technology demons that like to mess with my network. :)

The Epson Photo Stylus 780 is pronounced dead after many, many long years of faithful service. It’ll be going to GoodWill for their electronics recycling service.
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I’ve been irritated with the way Firefox works under Ubuntu, but then, it’s always been that way. It’s always had issues. It figures, now that I don’t have problems with putting the laptop to sleep or into hibernate, that Firefox would crash literally half of the time I resume from either situation. I’ve tried installing Firefox 3.5 (Shiretoko), and it only crashes a third of the time. However, page load times are ridiculously long. This version of Ubuntu doesn’t seem to play nice with Skype, either. I’ve thought about trying OpenSuse, like George has recommended so many times, and I’ve thought of testing the release candidate for Windows 7. I’ve heard good things about the latter from , and have more Windows-only devices than I’d like to admit, so I think I’m going to take that route.

All my servers are still Linux, so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning the “cause” or anything. I am interested in the price point that Microsoft will offer for those upgrading from the free RC to the full-blown version.
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We’ve had nearly a week without Hunter or Aidan, and it’s been pretty quiet, overall. Becoming Mr. Mom while is at class has been a little rough, as Cian does not like her being gone for extended periods of time. It would have been far more rough had all three been here, of course. We pick Hunter up from his grandmother’s after gets out of class today, and we pick Aidan up from his dad and stepmom tomorrow. The dentist and doctor appointments are about to begin en masse again, but I’ve got a few good books to bring to read in between “No! Put that down!” and “Stop hitting your brother!” and “Do you want a time out?”
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I had an eye doctor appointment yesterday. It turns out that not only did DOC sell me shoddy frames and then close their Frandor location, they warped the right lens when they made it. My new doctor found little ripples caused by compression, which is usually applied at the time of lens manufacture. So, my prescription’s only gotten a little bit worse, and I’ve picked out new frames. Rather, gave me quite a bit of help in picking out new frames. Apparently, she’s not down with my idea of Nerd Chic. Heh. Then again, it was fun to pick out the ridiculous ones and say “Aw, c’mon, these are great!”

Anyone out there using Liferea as an RSS reader? Ever had it lose your back list of unread entires? Is it too much to ask for a feed reader to handle more than three thousand back entries? And how come the Twitter feed entries aren’t saved? *flails* Google Reader cuts you off at a thousand entries, and won’t pass user names and passwords for protected entries (such as LJ). Am I demanding too much of RSS? Shouldn’t this be local archiving so I can catch up at my leisure?
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I’d forgotten that Rhythmbox has Last.fm integration. Looks like I’m back on that horse again. Once I entered my data, the copy of my playlist that I’d allowed it to keep was uploaded with the quickness. One part awesome, one part scary. My profile. I’ve embedded the Big Brother Music List into my user profile. :)
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Anybody have an example of typical LLC bylaws that I could have or borrow for a while?
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We completely cleaned Aidan’s and Hunter’s rooms yesterday. and Matt did most of the work, while I distracted the baby and kept him company. We moved Aidan’s bed to eliminate a hiding spot used for nefarious diaper activities, and have our fingers crossed. Hunter’s room has been completely revamped. His desk now faces a wall, instead of a window, for decreased distraction potential. His television is not viewable from his desk, either. Now, if only he can keep it in a state where everything he owns is not destroyed.
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Ha, I was right! The voice for Wreck-Gar in Transformers: Animated is Weird Al! Definitely a good follow-up to Eric Idle (1986 movie)… not to mention he got to say “Dare to be stupid!” I giggled a lot when I heard that. There’s so many wonderful nods to the original series.

Aidan used a Twizzler to spread something on my laptop’s monitor. Streaks of something that’s stubbornly resisting my thumbnail. I’m up now, hoping to go to sleep soon. Energy drinks are helping me stay up when the baby is, because caffeine alone doesn’t seem to be doing the job. Cian’s just fallen asleep, but he seems to know whenever I get the covers over me and get settled in. He wakes up after having summarily ejected his pacifier from his mouth, or has gotten his blanket over his face (which he hates), or has persistent evil gas bubbles working through his tiny, tiny digestive system.

I’ve acquired a bluetooth mouse for my laptop, and it works well on odd surfaces. Even the arm of my recliner. It’s a little small, but I’m getting used to it. I’ve had good luck with Microsoft peripherals in the past (almost as good as Logitech), so we’ll see how this one holds up.

Whoop, he’s awake again. I knew it. :) Pacifier has been applied.

We had our first Pampered Chef party at our house today. We were both hosts and consultants, with the way that it worked out. Almost all of our guests had to cancel, but we’re leaving the show open for web ordering for the whole week.

All right, he’s been asleep for a little bit now. I’m going to try and get some shut-eye.

Yeah, I’ve been gone for a couple of weeks. There’s some news, and there’s some reasons, and there’s some mixing of the two. Yeah, vague, I know. Some of it’s purposeful. If you want clarification, feel free to hit me up on IM. I probably won’t be clarifying in the comments here, and there are good reasons for that.

I’m no longer working for Great Lakes Comnet/CoreNetworks. I was not expecting it, nor did I leave the company of my own volition. Legally, that’s all I can say.

I am looking for new employment, and have been for two weeks.

I can’t say how much I’ll check back on my backlogged friends’ page. I’ve been without reliable computer since I returned the work laptop. I’ve got Puppy Linux running on Nikki’s old laptop, and it works fine until I get Pidgin running. Then it kernel panics. Soooo.. putting Debian on a G3 tower, and I’ll be finding out what its max ram is. I’ll make that my workstation until I find something better.

Yeah, even (or especially) when stress levels get high, and life throws changes my way, I geek out with old equipment. Sue me. :)

Hunter’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese was a complete success and an absolute blast. He’s 8 years old now, and has earned/been gifted with enough money that he’s purchased his own Playstation 2. We’ve got a deal going about behaving and doing well at school, and earning money by doing it. Seems to be working well.

Cian, the baby in the oven, is kicking like a crazy person. I’ve felt him, and talked to him, and generally been embarrassingly cute about everything.

Stress is a bit high, so my temper is a bit short. I’m really working on it, and I’m really working on fighting depression. Maybe I need to throw in a few more reallys. Really.

Totally.