On Tuesday Dan and I went out to do a little Geocaching. Our second stop for the day was on the Bitterroot River, a little south of Hubbart Dam, near Marion, MT. I had forgotten to get camera batteries, so Dan remarked, “Since you don’t have your camera, we’re probably going to see a moose.” It’s almost a guarantee, if I don’t have my camera, we’re going to see wildlife. It always happens. After about a minute of walking up the trail we hear, “Sploosh, sploosh, sploosh, sploosh”. Moose. Yep, a huge moose bull is just dopety doh’ing down the creek (yes, I know it’s called the Bitterroot River, but seriously, it’s a bleedin’ creek). Figures.

We found the cache easily enough, we got to see the dam off in the distance, and we didn’t get eaten alive by mosquitoes (vicious little effers that they are!), and we made it back to the car and were ready to head to cache number three. Then Dan got us stuck in the dirt. Dan, of course, can get any car stuck, anytime, anywhere. It always happens. After I got us out, yes, I got us unstuck (OK, he pushed, but it was my genius that provided the proper traction) we headed down to the highway and on to the next cache. Figures.

Cache number three and four were located eight and a half miles up Haskill Mountain at a long-since-gone wildfire lookout. It was a bumpy, sometimes scary drive up, but the views were excellent, and we were excited to find the cache at the top of the mountain. When I opened the rear door to get my camera (we stopped and got batteries), I heard hissing. Punctured tire. It always happens. Dan’s key is new and never worked to open the trunk (where the spare was, of course); we were pretty much SOL, so we went and got the cache, anyway. We found the cache, took some pictures that I’ll post later, and booked it back to the car. The tire wasn’t flat yet, so we sailed down the mountain, constantly checking the tire, and finally made it. We weren’t driving on the rim until Kila School, but we could handle that. Just to give it a try, Dan tried his key in the trunk, and… it worked. We get more flat tires than anyone I have ever met. Figures.

What, did you think I was done? Oh no…

We found our four caches for the day, got our tire switched and headed home to get some chow and log our cache finds. Oddly enough, when I sat down at the computer, the power was off. So was the power to everything else. I checked the power strip, and sure enough, one of the cats must have stepped on the power button. “Alright then, I’ll just turn the power back on and reboot.” Here’s the problem: Sometimes when the power goes out, and a computer is shut down improperly, the processes open at the time of the improper shutdown become corrupted. And then little works. Figures.

After two days of running every diagnose and fix function I could think of, I finally gave up and prepared for a System Recovery which resets the computer back to its original factory settings. System Restore (which resets the computer back to a restore point) was corrupted, so I couldn’t think of anything else. Ah, but wait! The recovery discs I made when we got the computer can also perform a System Restore! D’oh! Why did I forget about that. I popped the disc in, ba-da-bing, two minutes later everything is as it should be. I wasted a whole lotta time backing up files, passwords, bookmarks, game saves, etc., when all it needed was a two minute fix. Figures.

Things aren’t all bad. I finally got a KVM Switch, so I have both computers up and running. One of the USB ports on the old computer doesn’t seem to be working, though. I’ll have to check that out. But it’s still up and running enough that I can do things-I-probably-shouldn’t-tell-you-about, that I can’t do on Vista. Stupid DRM. Arrrrgh!

Most exciting for me is that I finally got my hot, li’l hands on a Wii Fit. I did a half hour of exercise with it yesterday, and I’m um… Well, I’m a little out of shape. And I’m a little sore today. But I’m still motivated, and it is fun.

Anyway, that’s the dilly. I’m off to continue organizing computer discs and um… that stuff I-probably-shouldn’t-tell-you-about.

Today’s Geekasm comes to you via Think Geek, it’s the Optimus Maximus Keyboard.

Yep. Time to take a second mortgage on your home or break into your kid’s college fund. With the singing of angels and a ray of sunlight parting the clouds, the fabled Optimus Maximus Keyboard has descended from Russia design studio Art Lebedev like an orgasm of geekiness. As you should know by now this amazing keyboard features a tiny screen on each key… that’s 113 screens in all. What can you do with these tiny screens you ask? Well each key can change it’s image dynamically depending on what you doing. Hold down SHIFT and all keys go uppercase. Run Photoshop and you can set it so each hotkey has an image representing it’s function. Set a key to monitor your CPU usage or display what iTunes track you are currently playing. You can make a key into a tiny clock with moving hands and play animated gif files or even quicktime movies. Of course all this futuristic technology is going to cost you a pretty penny… but we figure you’ll just expense the Optimus and tout it’s “incredible increased efficiency when using PowerPoint hotkeys” in your expense report summary.

Product Features
* Revolutionary Keyboard Features a tiny OLED screen on each key. 113 screens total.
* Each key can be individually programmed to perform a series of functions, open an application or run an Applescript (Mac only)
* Various System Monitor functions can dynamically display on a key including CPU usage, CPU temperature, Network Speed, and Memory Usage
* Play a GIF animation or Quicktime movie on a Key
* Paint images across all keys at once in your image editor of choice
* Key sets can be linked to an application, so whenever you open that app the appropriate keys come up
* Powerful layer function allows you to combine existing key sets in different ways
* Use any language with the appropriate key images including Cyrillic, Ancient Greek, Georgian, Arabic, Quenya, and Hiragana.
* Display notes, numerals, special symbols, HTML codes, math functions or any other special symbol.
* Any key (or to be exact, a unit consisting of a cap, a microchip and a display) can be easily removed by hands to be cleaned or replaced
* Built in USB hub
* SD Card Slot for Storing keyboard Settings

What the hey, it’s only $1589.99. Pocket change. Right?

H/T: Squirl

Just messin’ around… I don’t think this is great, by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s something about it that I like.

I’ve got killer heart burn again.

I picked up one of the most horrid, trashy books at the recommendation of a bookstore clerk: Bedlam, Bath and Beyond. I can’t put it down.

Every time I get angry at Lost and vow to never watch it again, they drag me back in.

I hope to never give Hewlett Packard another dime again.

I’m sooo ready for spring!

Remember how I said that my new USB drink chiller/warmer is the suck? The cooling part doesn’t work very well, but the warmer warms, and it means it.

When it comes to the presidential election, my only wish is that Huckabee goes down in flames.

And that’s all I got…

Have a great weekend!!!

So, I haven’t put up a significant post in a while, some would say ever, and I really haven’t posted any photos in a while.

I’m currently trudging through a pile of magazines that seems endless. Maybe I should seek help for my magazine addiction. I’m about two chapters into The Golden Compass, and I’m finding that I really like it, but then another magazine says, “No, read ME!”

Christmas was alright, and I slept through New Years. New Years has just never been that exciting to me. Dan and I each received a ten dollar gift card to Borders, which I used online to get Wordpress for Dummies and DragonArt. I am sorely unimpressed with DHL’s delivery service. I ordered both books separately (which is a whole ‘nother story), and the first book arrived about 10 days late, while the second book came two days before the first one was due to arrive. Why one book needed to go from Arizona to Ohio to Utah to Montana, while the other only went from Arizona to Montana, I’ll never know.

I had the distinct pleasure of restoring our computer to factory settings. The sfc /scannow command yielded a lovely corrupt file it couldn’t repair which was causing software to stop running. I tried every possible fix I could find online, which included a system restore to a point saved on December 29. That was a mistake which caused I-don’t-know-how-many registry errors. If I try to look on the bright side, it’s almost like getting a new computer all over again. Wait, there’s all that advertising to remove, Windows Vista security to turn off, patches to install, yada yada. There is no bright side. None at’all.

Ah well, it’s done now. And I always have cats to entertain me.

I’ve had this Dendrobium for several years, and it blooms every year. This year it has three bloom spikes, and I expect them to last for several more months.

Can I write a blog post using Dragon Naturally Speaking?

Why yes, yes I can. And let me tell you, it is awesome!

I think this is the height of laziness.

I think I’m going to lose my geek-cred here, but my electronics thumb has turned black. I can’t connect my Nintendo DS through the Wi-Fi; the Wii no longer remains connected (even though I have Wii Connect 24 turned on). Our internet connection is intermittent; if I ever want to use my webcam I have to close all other applications that might want to use it (this is new — before, I could have Yahoo and Skype open and use the webcam). My scanner doesn’t want to scan, and the printer takes it’s own sweet time, that is, if it’s in the mood to print. And… our DVR decided it doesn’t want to record anymore.

I’m sure I can fix everything if I just sit down and figure everything out, but it’s so overwhelming. All I want for Christmas is for someone to come and make everything all better.

On the plus side, I did get The Legend of Zelda installed and running on my calculator. WooHoo!

I had to futz for half an hour or so…
But I think my smiley’s are working again!

Let me know if they slow down loading time since that was the whole reason for switching my template. I don’t want it to take two weeks for this page to load.

This is a silly post, I know. Aquazone wouldn’t run on our old computer, even with a nice graphics card, and other updates — the processor was just too slow. Being a fish geek, I was pleased when AZ was able to run on the new beast, so I’ve been playing around with the settings.

I started out with 15 Sardines. My Black-Tip Shark has eaten eleven of them already! I find myself sitting here waiting for the screen saver to kick in just to watch the shark feast!

I got an email yesterday from some e-postcard site that looked legit when I went to the homepage. The gist of the email was, “a family member has sent you an e-postcard.” Being that I get e-cards all the time, I didn’t think anything of it, I checked out the main site, and decided to look at the card meant for me.

Problem.

The link to my oh-so-very special postcard just for me started an automatic download of a trojan horse.

Great.

Avast (my anti-virus software) seems to do a pretty good job. I got a warning before the download was complete, and Avast deleted the file. But I’m still nervous about it. A full scan by Avast and Ad-aware have been run and I didn’t see anything too hinky when I ran Hijack-This. It still makes me nervous.

Doh!

My new baby. She’s a three-in-one: Scanner, Copier and Printer. And actually, she’s kind of a dual printer. In addition to 8×11 paper, there is also a slot for 4×6 photo paper, so it’s a printer and a photo printer. Knowwhatimeanvern? She is a Christmas gift from my plus-one, Dan. I got this present early because Dan wanted me to pick it out. He loves me lots and lots!

Anyway, ain’t she pretty? I think I’ll call her Gertie!