So much going on

It has been a while since I did a personal post. Although, every time I try to do a personal post, it ends up pretty technical. Oh well, let's continue:

• I installed Debian "lenny" on my laptop. It has been a while since I used GNOME, and I have to say they have done a great job in making a Windows user feel at home while addressing some of the most annoying problems with the Windows user experience. But there are still significant barriers to the average user setting up a Debian laptop themselves - wireless comes to mind. After the initial installation, there wasn't even an interface for my network card. Thinkwiki helped me figure out that it was because the firmware for my wireless card has a license that prevents it from being distributed with Debian. So I had to go to some site, get the binary blobs, and stick them in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware. Then I had to figure out how to use wpa_supplicant. It turns out you can just stick some special options in /etc/network/interfaces and wpa_supplicant will do the right thing when you ifup the interface. This is cool, but it took me like an hour to get everything working, and I consider myself a very knowledgeable user. There are a couple network configurator things on my GNOME menu, but they don't appear to do anything. But I digress. The point is I have Debian on my laptop, and I have largely liked it. I still have occasional need for Windows on my laptop, though, so I have an NTFS partition that I will need to reinstall Windows on at some point.

• Related to the last item, I have become addicted to this "Battle for Wesnoth" game. So much fun.

• I got an email from Newegg this week - I had requested notification when they had more Wiis. So I bought one, and picked up Guitar Hero III for it at the same time. Should be here on Tuesday.

• I still need to call Comcast. The signal strength on the digital channels abruptly dropped 30-40%, so now my digital and HD channels are nothing but artifacts and stuttering audio. It's Comcastic!

• I finally booked my Vegas trip. I'm going the week after Independence Day and staying at the MGM Grand. Should be fun.

• On Friday my sister graduated from massage school, and I went to the ceremony and then to the afterparty at the Rendezvous. They have this cool basement room called The Grotto that you can rent out, and you get your own bartender. Anyway, there I discovered that I like gin and tonic. So my liquor shelf now sports bottles of tonic water (diet, of course) and I have a couple limes in the fridge. I'm glad I bought that gin now, since I have decided I really do not care for cognac. Still need to get some more amaretto, though. But I digress...

• Last night I went to an engagement party for Abbie's friend Jeff and his fianceé. Also fun.

• Today I did nothing but play "Battle for Wesnoth" and then fight with Unicode support in terminal emulators trying to type the previous line.

So that's what I've been up to.