I haven't written in a few days. I've been tinkering, as is common when you get a new piece of computer hardware. You try to get things set back up the way you like. For the most part things worked fine "out of the box" and doing the software installs went pretty quickly via the broadband internet connection. The main thing I have had difficulty with is trying to understand network routers and firewalls. I won't go into the technical details.
Michelle and I saw Spiderman on DVD this weekend. We both thought it was pretty good. I liked the character development, drama, and special effects. The DVD had a few good spots where I could hear the rear audio channels kick in, especially when Norman Osborn is hearing the insane voices of the Green Goblin. Normally there aren't many movies where having rear speakers makes significant difference.
Overall it was a very vanilla weekend. YMCA workout, lawn mowing (one last time before winter), Mass. I did some Christmas shopping this weekend at Circuit City and Michelle went to A.C.Moore craft store to find some art projects for Claire. We had some takeout Chinese for dinner and after the boys went to bed I took the girls to Blakes Ice Cream for some dessert. Tonight Michelle and I plan on watching Mr. Deeds after the girls go down.
[Update: I'm not normally an Adam Sandler fan, but Michelle and I both enjoyed the new Mr. Deeds. It was interesting to watch it after having seen the Frank Capra original last month. Adam Sandler is no Gary Cooper but he still pulled off the honest, small town common man pretty well. It didn't have the potty humor that I think Sandler is known for, as in his movie Big Daddy. The movie was enjoyable enough that Michelle wants me to let her know when the TiVo captures the original version again.]
It's that time of year again. We had a bunch of ladybugs all over the house. Michelle encouraged Claire to hold one. At first Claire was grossed out at the thought of letting a bug crawl on her hand, but after she got used to it, she was walking all around the outside of the house looking for ladybugs.
Now that water is flowing in the brook around our house, I found a low spot near the banks that you can easily reach to watch and listen to the babbling of the brook. I took the kids down to go and see it. Because of the drought we had most of the summer, I didn't know it was there until this weekend. Now that the leaves are thinning out, you can see a lot further into the conservation land that surrounds the property.
When I brought home the Chinese food tonight, a major point of excitement for Claire was that it has Chinese mustard. It's a strange form of bonding Claire and I have had recently. We both try to bravely dip bites of our entrees in the sauce and challenge each other. We typically have a glass of water nearby for when we go too far. Chinese mustard definitely clears the sinus passages. It's a delayed effect, but at least it doesn't burn your mouth up like hot mexican spices.
We noticed that a new coffee shop is opening in February on Route 101A called J. Beaners. Will Quikava have some competition? Michelle is looking forward to it.
Among my Christmas purchases at Circuit City this weekend was a Gameboy Advance for Abby. As I've mentioned before, Abby has a temperment for computers that Claire doesn't have. I think this is the sort of thing she'll enjoy. Hopefully it'll keep her from bothering Claire in the back seat of long rides in the van. If nothing else, perhaps buying it will help keep up the price of my ARM stock. ARM is the processor used in the new Gameboy. I bought 500 shares of it last month after it nosedived upon releasing third quarter results. ARM also happens to be the processor being used in the very newest Palm Pilots. Yes, ARM is a major competitor to my employer, ARC. So what?!
This weekend I installed Real Player for Mac on the laptop. It was kind of cool to be able to listen to EWTN and Catholic Answers via the laptop through it's wireless internet link. I no longer have to try to get those shows through shortwave radio. So far the RealPlayer hasn't been as annoying as I've seen it be on the Windows platform in terms of ads and pressure to buy more content. I'm sure it won't be long though. Whenever you download the RealPlayer, they really make you work to find the free version. It's like fine print on their webpage.
I found an interesting benchmark for web pages. Called GetContentSize, it analyzes what percentage of a web page is the text content and what percentage is the HTML bloat. It was interesting to me because of my interest in making pages load fast even for dialup modems. Most websites you go to have single percentage point in content. The rest is all the window dressing markup for layout, colors, fonts, etc. I tried both BilikFamily.com and the boring version. Even ordinary BilikFamily.com has more "content per byte" than your average news site. Now whether that content is worth reading...