It's finally done...

it's finally done.  after 13 months (including a break of about 7 months) i've finally finished my bench.  last week i put the final coat of finish on it.  now i don't really have any need for a bench, but that doesn't really matter.  what matters is that it's done, and now i am using it as a side table to hold my drink while i write this post, and it's doing a great job.  here are some photos of it in different stages of development. now i guess i'll have to find something else to build.

software upgrades galore

man, i have spent too much time on software upgrades this month. here's the list:

• Upgraded the OS on my home server from snv_38 to snv_72. This upgrade removed support for Apache 2.0, so i had to upgrade from Apache 2.0 to 2.2. The new version of Apache also required that i recompile php.


• Upgraded SpamAssassin on my home server. This required installing a bunch of perl CPAN modules.


• Updated my version of unison to the latest version.


• Upgraded the photo software on my site, Coppermine.


• Upgraded the calendar software on my site, WebCalendar.


• Upgraded the blog software on my site, Movable Type, from 3.x to 4.x. This required changing the database backend from BerkeleyDB to MySQL. This also required installing a bunch of perl CPAN modules


• Updated my music collection to use ID3v2 tags instead of ID3v1 tags. This required installing ID3v2 and id3lib, updating my music management scripts to use ID3v2 and running a batch job to update all my music.

photo blast

so i finally got around to uploading a bunch of photos. when ronda and i made our wedding bands i forgot to bring my camera, doh! so we took photos with my cellphone. unfortunately to get those photos i needed some special software and a special cable. well, i finally got that junk and uploaded the pictures, so you can see them here. i also uploaded some more random pictures from my cell phone that were taken in 2005. lastly, i uploaded my xmas pictures, my dads xmas pictures, and some pictures from a day trip to big bear to visit friends.

new years redux

My new years eve was pretty chill. Ronda and I prepared some tasty Omaha steaks (which were a wedding present) for dinner along with potatos, green beans, and cheese cake. We had a bottle of red wine with our dinner and toasted to the new year. We then proceeded to play some video games on our new Wii and watch "The Frightened Woman", a strange 60s flick that involved some interesting sadism, domination, and erotic dancing. After that and a few more toasts we went to bed around 1:30am. The next morning I called my parents at 11:30am to wish them happy new years, the only problem was that they were still sleeping since they were out partying till 5:30am. Turns out they didn't mind me waking them up since they had to get up anyway to start getting ready for the next part that night. It's kinda funny when your parents are partying way more than you are.