This year we decided to buy a big household present for everyone rather than a lot of stuff (of course, Mere still makes out, but…) so the big add was a combination of an HD TV for the living room, and a  HD TiVo and a Blu-Ray player to go with it.

This is changing the ‘viewing experience’ quite a bit here.

First, there’s remembering where the heck ( Read more... )

Some time ago, Susan’s aunt gave us an old PC that was too wimpy for her use, and I set it up as a house server under Ubuntu Linux, but I’ve just had a myriad of problems with it.  The burner doesn’t work.  The Samba setup is damaged beyond repair and you can’t connect to it.  I have a bunch of house server stuff on it (Joomla, Wordpress and ( Read more... )

No, this isn’t an advertisement as such.  Both the US and UK versions of Amazon are running DVD sales, and I’m listing out my ooh-that-would-be-interesting list for my purposes (and your edification, in case you have similar interests).

Note that I have multi-region / NTSC and PAL reading DVD players in the house, and that the UK PAL stuff won’t be ( Read more... )

I recently started (with the help of Roxio’s Easy VHS to DVD) my long-awaited digital coversion efforts, starting with the VHS tapes, and have been making a lot of headway in the process.

Some of the stuff that I’m running into in the tapes are things I no longer care so much about, and those get dumped.  Others (more than I expected!) can now be ( Read more... )

I was off work all of last week, trying to keep my foot out of action and let it heal.  Not sure how much got accomplished on that part, but the swelling is gone, and I’ve thoroughly gotten sick to death of the Bactrim side-effects.

The podiatrist a week ago  and my family were pretty firm on the ‘Jim, you are going to stay off that *&!@ foot or ( Read more... )

Special note for Gretchen Roper: I think you’ve been looking for this one.

Check out WBArchive.com - the Warner Bros folks decided to make a bunch of films available as DVDs directly from their website that haven’t been available.

Susan was kind of forced into a Day Away From Home Today; Mere WANTED MOMMY, both for the roller-skating training at a local rink, and to take her to Susan’s aunt’s house in Elgin so Mere could Have Her Long Awaited Beauté treatment - hair highlights,  manicure and pedicure (all on Auntie’s tab, not ours).  It is to gack loudly at the froofiness ( Read more... )

I have been having a LOT of problems with my eyes recently in regard to reading things, and set up an appointment a while back with the eye doc that the rest of the family sees.  (I’m the only one who didn’t need glasses to function; Susan had LASIK surgery a while back, and does fine without them now…) The eye doc, who is apparently a very very ( Read more... )

Today was Mere’s ‘family’ birthday party out at her great-aunt Marlyce’s house in Elgin, and we moved the time up somewhat because of the weather; it was getting slick and messy from sleet and snow.   And also, it looks like Mere is coming down with a cold.  She came home, and moaned and crashed very early.  Susan looked tired too, so it was an ( Read more... )

Oh, there’s some things I’d like to get, but we’re really short on money today.   Susan is out right now at Home Depot; Mere’s bed is broken, and Susan has to get some plywood to put it together again.  That trumps a lot. And nobody in the house is about to fight huge lines and crowds, period.  We’re too *ah* laid up from leg / foot stuff to do it ( Read more... )