Merry Christmas!

Having Christmas at our house this year is going to be a lot of fun... but it makes me feel all old and grown up.

I think I like Google Reader...

I've been using SharpReader for about two years now to aggregate my RSS feeds. It works very well, and I like the mail client-like interface. However, I'm fed up with trying to sync my feeds on multiple machines.

Enter Google Reader. I had used it a while ago and I wasn't very happy with the interface - its model didn't quite fit my workflow. However, I had heard that Google revamped the interface, so I decided to give it another shot.

Wow. I'm pretty impressed. I like the overall look and feel. I like the option to show only the item titles - which is what I was used to with the fat client. And one feature that's all web 2.0-ish and I think is pretty slick is the Shared Items. I added their HTML snippet to the sidebar. Check it out!

bunch of savages in this office...

I walked into work this morning and this is what my cube looked like. We recently uncovered a treasure trove of unused tradeshow swag - two boxes of magnetic clips with an old logo on it. Don and I built "Clamp Man" before I left yesterday - the donut-shaped thing on the far wall. I guess that inspired someone else to attach the rest of the two boxes to every magnetic surface in my cube.

Well played, sir. Well played.

Caps game

I was lucky enough to score free tickets from work on Monday to go see the Caps host Ottawa. This shot is of Washington's playing 6 on 4 with a minute left to go in the game. Ovechkin tied it up, and the Caps scored in overtime to win. It was a really exciting game, and we got to see all the action up close from our seats!

leaves

18 bags this weekend, and the trees aren't even close to being done dropping leaves!

mounting a Sirius antenna in a 2005 PT Cruiser Convertible

So Allison got a Sirius radio for her car recently. The instructions said that for convertibles, the best place to mount the antenna is on the roof of the trunk. With the PT Cruiser's near-vertical trunk, the reception left something to be desired. We tried mounting it on the center of the dashboard, which was so-so but still not great.

I scoured the Intertron for any other stories of people in the same situation. I found one post that said that the signal *should* travel through cloth convertible roofs. So, this is what I came up with. I mounted the antenna with double-sided tape in the middle of the "roll bar" behind the driver and passenger seat. The results have been impressive so far. Satellite reception is great, even with the top up!

mmm... beer

So this past summer at the Brickskeller I tried a Honey Basil Ale from Bison. It was scrumptious. I picked up some of their IPA from Total Beverage/Wine last week, and it's just as good.

Chalk me up as a fan.

walking on the streets of Bangkok

This is a video we took on our honeymoon of us walking down a street in Bangkok. Words can't begin to describe how hectic and crazy the city is. Watching it now a year later is bringing back memories of how it smelled too. The food from the street vendors smelled wonderful, but that was soon mixed with the more, uh, unpleasant scents of Bangkok after a rainstorm. :)

wings

Pictures of *real* wings we got at Brennan's in Buffalo.

Wings at Brennan's

Aug 23, 2006 - 5 Photos

football season!

It totally snuck up on me, but I'm stoked for the season to start on Thursday. It will be nice not having a grad school class for this football season... maybe I can pay some actual attention to my fantasy teams this year.

I'm not so optimistic for the Bills this year. I'm thinking that they'll be lucky to go 6-10. Hopefully Losman learns on the job *this* year, and they'll be able to turn it around next season.

Hm... hockey season starts soon too. :)

pics online

I started using Picasa Web Albums to throw up some pictures on the web.  Check it out.

sweet!

Allison is cool. A couple weeks ago, I kept talking about how cool the Nintendo DS was and how I wanted one. So, she went to Target to run some errands, and came back with not one, but 2 systems... so we could dork out together. Awesome.

Mario Kart DS is pretty slick. My only complaint so far... the DS doesn't support WPA, so I had to knock my wireless security back to WEP in order to get my ass kicked by 12 year olds at McDonalds on Mario Kart. Bleh. >:(

housewarming/anniversary party

Pics are online here. Thanks to everyone for coming... we had a great time!

last.fm

I signed up for last.fm recently. It's pretty interesting, although I'm still waiting for it to calculate my neighbors. Check out what I've been listening to at work here.

thank you Sabres!

I was obviously disappointed to see them lose Thursday night, but they went further than anyone expected them to this year.  They've given me more excitement in the playoffs this year than I've gotten from hockey in a *long* time.

The only thing that bugs me is losing to Carolina.  Raleigh doesn't deserve a hockey team.  There are a few rabid fans, but let's face it, hockey is a northern sport.  They couldn't even sell out game 7 of the conference finals, while tickets in Buffalo to all 3 games sold out in 12 minutes!

2007 season is looking good for the Sabres as long as they can re-sign most of their free agents.  They've got a good core of young players, they should do well next year.

crazy delicious

So this past weekend in New York we hit up Magnolia and macked on some cupcakes. They were good, but maybe not worth the hype.

wow

What an opening episode for the Sopranos... Tony's not dead. He can't be... not with 19 episodes left!

dirt

While vacuuming today we decided to take off the floor registers.  Whoah.  Scary stuff.  One of the registers had about two inches of dirt in the ductwork underneath.  I also found rubber bands, cigar wrappers, washers, sticks, a piece of drywall, and a Lego spear.

Then we vacuumed under the fridge.  Even scarier.  The coils were enrobed in probably an inch or two of dust.

Did the previous owners just never clean anything?

posting from the Mac dashboard widget...

OS X!  OS X!  OS X!

now what?

So, I finished my master's degree.  It will feel a lot more official once I get my diploma.

Should I go to graduation?  It's a whole 2 months away... it seems it would be pretty anti-climactic.

done!

http://home.comcast.net/~amartone/cs699/

Comcast sucks

Ok, so we moved 2 weeks ago. The total distance from the old place to the new place as the crow flies is about a third of a mile. I brought my cable modem and Comcast-supplied cable box/DVR with me. They worked flawlessly at the old place, so I shouldn't have any problems, right?

Apparently not. My Internet connection constantly drops every 5 minutes or so, HBO and the on demand cable channels pixellate and skip around, and there is a lot of interference on the analog channels. Sounds like a bandwidth problem somewhere in the cabling, right?

I called on Monday, 1/16. The earliest they can send a tech out is Thursday, which seems like no big deal... we've still got a lot of unpacking to do. When the guy shows up, he finds some wear and tear on the cable coming in to the house, so he snips off that part, and removes some of the splitters running from the main cable input to the rest of the rooms to the house. After he does that, the interference on the analog channels, so I assume that everything else is working fine.

Later that night I watch HBO for the first time, and still see the pixellation. And my Internet connection is still constantly dropping. Problem not solved. >:(

So, I call them back. They send another guy out on Tuesday, 1/24. This guy was actually pretty competent, however after running a direct line from the cable tap (the green box in the backyard) into another cable box he had in his truck, we're still seeing pixellation on HBO. He says he needs to call the upstream network guys to come out, and they will be out Wednesday or Thursday.

Wednesday night I'm still having problems. Thursday night I come home and try to use the Internet connection, but lo and behold it's still dropping me every 5 minutes. So, I call them back, and sit on hold for a few minutes and listen to their commercials. (BTW, they want $40 for VOIP service??? What are they smoking? Do they realize Vonage is $25 a month???)

When I finally get through to someone, I ask if the main network guys have been out. He puts me on hold and tells me that they have. Ok... well... my Internet connection still sucks, how can we fix this? This is the third time that I've told someone that the exact same hardware I used in my old place is not working properly in the new one. The guy on the phone is pretty responsive, and apologizes, but he has to send ANOTHER tech out. Ok... it's not my equipment or cabling, it's YOUR NETWORK. So, he sent someone out to look at the cable tap today.

The tech calls me when he looks at it to inform me that it's a network problem, and he's called in the main network guys to do something about it. And it'll be 3-5 days before they get out to look at it.

Grr. Anger... rising. One other gem was that I received my first bill last night... the prorated charges for January and the bill for the entire month of February. When I asked the customer service rep about a possible refund, he said he couldn't do anything until the trouble ticket was closed. Ok, so I have to pay for unacceptable service... great.

I'm giving them one more shot. The next time I call it will be to check to see if it's been fixed in their records, and if I'm still getting dropped after that, it's time to sign up for DSL. I only wish there weren't trees all around blocking the sky so I could get a dish.

I hate Comcast. Verizon, please bring FiOS out to Reston soon. >:(

/rant

new house!

Move-in date is January 13th! Now, back to packing...