$1.839

OK, so HD rocks.

Enterprise was shown tonight in HD, and the experience was… spectacular! The difference in filmed material is not as dramatic as with live sporting events, but it’s still quite amazing.

If only there were more HD programming!

On another front, I filled up today. With oil reaching a 20 year high yesterday (above $42/barrel), and the liklihood of more terrorism in the oil producing countries, I fully expect the price of gas to get to over $2.50 here in the Midwest.

Today, I spent all day continuing the TV antenna installation project I began yesterday. Two hundred feet of RG-6 and rotor cable later, the antenna is up, connected to the big screen, and functioning.

Way too much work — I hope it works as well as I think it will.

Now to figure out where all the stations are….. 🙂

$1.869

I’ve been trying like crazy to get this site indexed by Google. That’s the only way that I’m gonna get anyone to find the genealogical work I’m doing, and hopefully help someone out with some of the work I’m doing.

I’ve fallen flat on my face, however, with the Google “machinery”. I’ve tried submitting this site, and tried submitting the genealogy site… and nothing happens. The only reason Google has any record of this site is from something that I used to link to which showed up in someone else’s logs. Since I stopped linking to that, Google has stopped crawling my site.

However, in scanning my web server log, I noticed that Yahoo has walked my site, and has found the photos, the work in progress…. everything! Dunno how they got to me, and I don’t really care.

Perhaps I’ll start using Yahoo again as my search engine of choice! 🙂

[San Francisco, CA]

Today, Alfred Chaung gave his keynote speech for eWorld. Prior to his speech, the stage was full of lights, noise, lightning, smoke and five big screens. At the appointed moment, the center screen shattered, and Alfred strolled out to the hooting and hollering of the 2800 or so attendees.

Enjoyable? Well, yeah. I would’ve been much better impressed with more content and less theatrics!

The rest of the sessions today were about average. BEA’s push for SOA and Liquid Computing ring no bell with me, and that is what their push for the forseeable future will be. For my day-to-day world, neither play much, and will be year or two away. It’s fun to see the future, but only when I get to play in it!

[San Francisco, CA]

Tonight, I added a photo search feature (it’s at the bottom of this page). It’s not pretty, but it works. I’ll pretty it up later!

I’ve got to enter keywords for each of the photos on the site in order for it to work, so be patient as I get that completed. It’ll take a week or two to get that all squared away.

I’m just thrilled about getting this functionality in place. It’s been a goal of mine for a while, but the task seemed daunting. As often happens with me, I got curious about something, and that led to something else, and that led to a solution.

Anyway, enjoy!

[San Francisco, CA]

Just visiting, however. I’m out here for BEA’s eWorld — first timer.

I’m looking forward to the beginning of the conference — it looks like it’ll really be informative, and full of good stuff.

Kinda reminds of a decade ago when I came to Phoenix and SF for IBM’s OS/2 Technical Interchange. Those were some of the best conferences I’ve ever attended! Loads of good, useful technical sessions, and some really good “playing” after hours. BEA can only hope to do so well with theirs!

Flights were uninteresting (albeit delayed coming out of Denver), with me using the time to get through a couple of packets of source annotations for my family tree. I’ve got a few more to go through — I’ll probably get those done tonight.

I’m discovering as I walk around the streets of San Francisco (ok, so I just had to work in the title of that old show somehow!) that I may be morphing away from being such an enjoyer of the big city life. In past trips — wherever they were — I enjoyed walking around, riding the mass transit, and getting myself into all kinds of new places. This trip, though, I just want to hang out in the room, watch tv, and work.

Blecch. What a waste of time, eh?!

$1.899

The entertainment center demolition is complete, and the pieces are here. I think making a little one from a big one will be an easier chore than what I thought. A little “clean demolition”, some glue, screws and nails, and I think I’ll have it ready sometime over the weekend.

Verra cool!

$1.849

The new TV arrived tonight. Wow — is it ever big!

It has a ton of inputs, and I’m having a great time playing with it.

New news on the entertainment center — I’m going up tomorrow to pull some magic on it. We’re sawing it in half. Basically, we’re gonna salvage the component cabinet from it, use that with the new set, and use what’s left of the cabinetry as scrap wood, etc.

I can’t believe we’re gonna chop it up — it’s been good, it has had some good stories around it, but it’s time for it to become a Transformer, and change into something else!

Well, since we didn’t get the entertainment center out of the old house yesterday, Beck and I decided to visit Best Buy and investigate a new TV, rather than buy a new cabinet for the old one.

We started looking at 46″ sets, and wound up with a great Mitsubishi 55″ Widescreen HDTV. It’s huge! The downside is that we can’t get it until tomorrow. Oh well! It’s a nice Mother’s Day gift…. I guess that means I’ll have to get Beck something for Father’s Day! 🙂

Beck’s Mom and Dad came over for dinner tonight. Great time, as always. I enjoy having them over, and really get a kick out of talking with them.

On another front, I think I’ve about got the code ready for publishing Grandma’s photos. Woo-hoo!

Today was the day we were to remove the entertainment center from the basement of the old house.

It didn’t exactly happen that way.

We made all kinds of attempts to get it out of the basement, and it just wouldn’t go….. so we left it. Aside from cutting it in half, there’s no way to get it out.

Ah, well, entertainment center, ye served us well!