This entry shall start like all others "wow its been a long time since I've blah blah blah."
Now that that's out of the way.... Well its a new year, January was largely a waste of time. Outlook for February is about the same. Class has resumed and I'm making myself go as much as possible. I'd like to not only get done with my BS this semester, but maybe with a respectable GPA too. I think some of my classes have the potential to be pretty interesting and others are going to be incredibly boring. Its really weird to think that soon I might be done with school for a while and have a real job. I'm still undecided on a master's for now. Ideally I'll find a company to work for that will be flexible and pay for it. We'll see.
I also decided to let my apartment lease lapse in May. As much as I don't like the thought of moving back home for a while if I don't find a job, its probably for the best. I don't really want to be stuck in Carbondale much longer. I have no obligations right now and by then I might even pack up and move somewhere else just for a change of pace. I think 23 years in southern Illinois is over the maximum safe dosage anyway.
In other news I've recently picked a DirecTivo, 27" Sony Wega, and a new DVD player. They're all great but now I want to spend more time watching tv than I should. The crappy Apex DVD player rattled all the time and really ruined movies so I'm glad to be rid of it. The Wega's anamorphic mode and component inputs are such a step above composite, not to mention the fantastic picture quality. People always say how great Tivo's are but I didn't believe them because I didn't watch much tv anyway. They are right though, I can't believe people don't have them. Now there's actually stuff available to wath when I want to, I can skip commercials, and pause live tv. Season passes are great. I'd like to get an Avia dvd to tune to the tv though. I've started ebaying old hardware I have kicking around here to pay for it, surprising how much that stuff builds up.
I'm also about to make some changes to the blog software so that links in comments will be redirects and not direct to help combat people using blogs to increase their page rank on google. Its a shame its come to that because genuine comments often deserved to have their page rank helped a bit.
I've played around the m0n0wall lately which is a Freebsd (well a pared down Freebsd called m0n0bsd) made by the same guy. I have it booting on an old machine from a 16 meg compact flash card in a CF to IDE adapter. Its pretty nice. So far its more reliable and more functional than the Sonicwalls that I'm forced to use at work that are also way overpriced. Its in my list of links, try it out.
I met a pretty cool chick recently and I'm hoping that might go somewhere. Previously I decided that could wait until I was done with class and had a job but sometimes you meet someone special enough to make you think about exceptions to such rules :D
This whole weekend the frame relay circuit between Verizon and us has been flaky like 20-30% packet loss and it looks like its down completely now. Thanks Verizon, your service is stellar like always.
Yeah I think I know why I don't write here much, its really boring.
I've been meaning to read a ton of stuff lately but I've just been too busy with other things. I can't wait to get back to working only and having free time again. I have been tossing around an idea for a website that I'd like to start but I need to come up with a good domain name that isn't taken yet.....