Happy B-Day To Me, part 1

A decent tax refund plus a birthday can only mean one thing: I've talked myself into buying something.

The digital camera I have now is really handy. It's one of those sub-compact things that I literally carry around in my pocket. It's great for light traveling, but the picture quality and options leaves quite a bit to be desired.

So I decided to upgrade to a Nikon D60.


After a couple of hours with this camera and an instructional DVD (I had no idea how to use this thing), I'm really impressed. I think this will get a heck of a lot of use.

Food

Goddangit. (as Bloyd would say)

In an attempt to try and spend less money on eating out and trying to get better food into my system, I've seemed to slip beyond just eating at home and fallen directly into obsessing about cooking.

I blame Alton Brown. Now I can't imagine cooking with table salt--kosher salt is the only thing allowed. I've already bought more items from the produce department in the last two months than all last year. I've even started buying hardware at a restaurant supply store. (hey, stuff is a heck of a lot cheaper there than anywhere else)

I've managed to meet one of my goals--I'm definitely eating better foods. And I can really feel it. I've got more energy, I'm more alert and it's much easier to maintain my weight.

But not so much on the other goal. I *could* definitely eat (and eat well) on less than what I used to spend on burgers every night, but I'm not doing that right now. Like tonight--I spent an extra couple of bucks buying a brick of real parmesan cheese and threw away that pre-shredded stuff in the can. It's good, but it ain't cheap.

So, here's tonight's dinner. Risotto. Oh man, talk about rich and creamy. Add a few peas and prosciutto and a few glasses of wine. I'm happy.

Dead trees

As many of you know, one of my addictions (so to speak) is books. I don't even want to know what I spent at Amazon and Barnes & Noble last year.

But in an effort to reign-in spending a bit, I started looking for alternatives. The electronic books just aren't up to my standards yet. (although the new Kindle is getting closer--there just needs to be a better selection of books)

There are a couple of used book stores near me, but their selection is very hit-or-miss.

So I signed-up for SwapTree.com last month. Basically you list what books you are willing to trade and then what books you want. After that, the website periodically matches your want/have list with other people's and sends "trade invites". If you accept, you just mail your book to the other person and they do the same. Easy stuff. No "transaction fees" or anything stupid like that.

It's worked really well so far. It's not instant gratification, but I've got like 5 or 6 "new" books for something like $15 worth of shipping costs.

Yet another reason

I hope everyone is having a good Valentine's Day.


(this seemed appropriate for most of my readers)

That being said, I wanted to pass along a little more evidence on the argument for gay marriage. Unfortunately this is a perfect example of how the argument of "there are equally effective existing laws" isn't accurate.

Thank goodness that none of the hospitals I've stayed in have been this uncaring.

Nerd Porn, update

Ok, a quick update and I'm done with this project.

The last bit I planned to do was get the NAS connected to my printer so I could print anywhere in the house. That also meant that it would be moved out of the living room into the office. (so that even since it doesn't look much like a PC, it still doesn't leave the impression that my house decor is post-modern geek chic)

So, to put the NAS in the office and keep it connected to the network, I found a cheap Linksys WRT54G v8 on CraigsList and loaded DD-WRT on it. (DD-WRT is awesome--you take a cheap router and this update gives it the same capabilities of a >$500 router) I configured it as a repeater bridge so that it would connect to my other router via wireless and give me hard-wired connections in the office for the NAS and any other network devices I want.


Here you can see the final setup. The NAS sits behind my monitor while the laptop is running dual-screen with Hulu playing while I work.


(note: no, I'm *not* watching Fox News--that's The Daily Show)