We went to see “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”. It was quintessential Kevin Smith. It was funny and bawdy and offensive and wonderful. It was rated 18 here, which means that it is not a porno (which is 18-R and can only be sold in a licensed sex shop), but you must be 18 or older to attend. (And I am sure that they are as fastidious at stopping kids under 18 from entering a movie as they are about keeping under 18's from buying alcohol.) Anyway – I loved the movie! It made me laugh my ass off. Especially hearing MC Chris in there. Woo!

It's been a couple of weeks now, using my Dell with Ubuntu. I am still mostly happy about it. The only complaint, and this holds true with all laptops, except ThinkPads... I can't deal with the damned touch pad thingy. I always use the TrackPoint, and never learned how to type avoiding the touch pad. I am typing along and suddenly, I am at the start of a line or in a different window... Really, that annoys me. But, hey, really, it isn't bad otherwise. I even moved all of my financial stuff over here. I was doing everything in Excel, but OpenOffice has very nicely converted everything and it works great. I had some trouble talking to Dad in Skype, but honestly, I was having the exact same problem when I was running Skype on my Vista 64 system. It may be Dad's Skype that is wonky. But once I got the sound setup correctly - I had to actually enable the mic port in the OS – it worked great! I could see Dad's video, and I could see my own video. I will play around and see if we can get this working better.

Anyway... I am going to run now. It's a dreary, Sunday morning, but we need to get some stuff done around here.

Oooh! Cool! It's snowing and my gmail BusStop thingy shows a snowman... hehehe

I need to update my blog a lot more often...

So, I got really upset with the HP 2133 Mini Note... Quite simply, I wanted to get an activation code for SLED... I could not get it from HP. I argued, I yelled, I gave up. I took the laptop back to Curry's. They typically don't take back anything if it's been opened. I guess there is too much fraud. But – They called HP, and they were trying to talk to the tech support guys about it to see if HP would take it back... The manager is talking to them, and they are communicating, right up to the point he says “It's a 2133 Mini Note”. Suddenly, the guy at HP couldn't hear him at all and hung up on him. So, the manager of Curry's got pissed off and just decided to give us an exchange. So, I said “Screw it” and I got a Dell Inspiron 1318. It was preloaded with Windows, AND it came with handy preload CDs and everything, so if you toast your load, you don't have to beg for reload CDs or anything, you already have them. However, I have now wiped it and loaded Ubuntu on here. And it ROCKS! There were no problems, or gotchas. I just loaded it, and poof! Everything just worked! So, I am very happy with it. It works great! It isn't quite as small as I wanted, but, you know what, that is ok. It is a very cool laptop and I am quite happy with it! (And I am using it right now.)

So, we went to Leeds Castle today. It was really interesting... Ok, well, it was pretty interesting. The grounds were pretty. And there were tons of ducks. And geese. And swans. Ray suggests that I actually start figuring out what kind of birds I am taking pictures of, so instead of being “a goose that isn't a Canadian goose”, I can actually be a bit more specific.

Ray is currently watching “The Truth Behind the Moon Landings”... I am really surprised at the idiocy these folks spout forth. I am beginning to understand though – These folks want to feel special, like “I know something no one else knows!” How stupid people can be.

Anyway... Gonna go now...