In my quest for power the ultimate in geekdom, I bought myself a “home theatre” system. Nothing enormous. Just a nice $180 300 watt system from RCA (tax included). Now I can watch either DVD player, VCR, or listen to radio without resorting to swapping cables and stuff. I ended up with yet another remote control (I feel like Susan in Coupling), which was supposedly universal, but didn’t even have DVD player codes. So now there’s a remote for the TV, the Sampo (my multiregion DVD player), the Phillips (my combo DVD/VCR) and now the RCA. All of the batteries work in them, however (joke only for fans of Coupling).

Now, I really dislike the radio. They never play music that I like and then talk and talk and talk all the time. So I love Rhapsody. I can play streaming music of groups that I like, and they even have a “radio” feature that will stream 10 groups that you like plus similar music. So far I’ve made a BritPop station (The Clash, Oasis, Pulp, Blur, Franz Ferdinand, etc), a Swing station (based upon Cherry Poppin’ Daddies & Squirrel Nut Zippers – it plays Reel Big Fish a lot and I think I’ll like them), a Motown station (I was surprised that Rhapsody didn’t have one of those already!) and a station of my usual groups (PSB, Chumbawamba, Rusted Root, etc). I’ll set up others for other moods, I’m sure.

So, um, you’re probably wondering why I’ve started talking about all this while I’m writing about my new Home Theatre? Ah, you see, it all goes back to that FM transmitter thingy that I bought when the Evil Geek Women forced me to buy my wireless network. If I have that FM transmitter hooked to my computer and play Rhapsody, I can just get a signal into the living room where the Home Theatre system is set up. Even better, with my new wireless network, I can have the laptop in the living room and streaming music from Rhapsody and onto the tranmitter. Sweet! So now I can listen to the radio, but it’ll be music that I like. And no talking! Woohoo!

(In other Geek news, I’ll have to admit that Judi was right – I’ve been enjoying Diablo II. If only my Spring Break were longer – I’ve got fun things I want to do still!)

No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This has become a 4-letter word to most educators in the nation. Another typical unfunded/poorly funded mandate from people who have NO idea what it’s like out there “in the trenches.” But I’m not going to spend a long time ranting and raving about Proficiency Tests or OGTs or other results of standardization. I’m going to talk about Professional Development instead. Yes, I can feel you getting bored already. You have no idea how boring it was.

I am a silly woman… Today was a training session about TIPS, the latest and greatest thing that SchoolNet (a loosely attached arm of the Ohio Department of Education) has come up with to make sure our teachers are Highly Qualified (a requirement of NCLB). Rather than the Novice Training (some of which was, indeed for novices, but some of which even *I* don’t do and I’m pretty damn good with computers) or the impractical Practitioner Training that they’d set up, they’re now going to train schools how to do their own Professional Development which will help teachers become Highly Qualified. They call these HQPD (Highly Qualified Professional Development). There will be a number of training sessions throughout the year. But today’s was in Piqua, which is very close. And today’s was held during my Spring Break, so I wouldn’t need a substitute in order to attend. So I went.

I am a silly woman… It was a gorgeous Spring day today… I had lots of fun goof-off things I could have done. But I spent 7 hours of my life being bored by a bunch of jargon and impractical examples. The only good bits were lunch (where I got to complain to my fellow county techs and the two SchoolNet guys that deal with us) and the times when we discussed things in our small groups. Those were the minority of the time. The point of the HQPD that we’re developing is to make teachers better teachers and get kids more engaged. So why not lead by example? I think the SchoolNet folks were somewhat frustrated with the “Tell Don’t Show” method they had to use.

Such a silly woman… I’m now trying to decide if it was better for me to have wasted a Spring Break day for this rather than wasting time to write up detailed sub plans for a sub who may or may not do what I request and may or may not prevent my equipment from being broken into a zillion bits (it’s happened before). Actually, one of the folks at the workshop today was a former sub of mine. (He was actually a decent sub.)

Well, tomorrow I have the time to sit around and goof off. Can’t even go anywhere and spend my money because my car is in for a check up/oil change. (I’m sure Miriam, the car, will find a way to allow me to spend more money that I’d like – hey, she’s 10 years old.)

So, I’m still suffering from the boredom of today’s workshop, so I had to make an icon for other occasions in my life.

The majority of my remembered dreams are about family and friends. But I sometimes go through spats of dreaming about TV shows. Last night/this morning was one of those.

I think this may have been my first time to have a proper dream about The Tomorrow People. This was a British TV series that I loved as a kid (and still enjoy, especially as the DVDs have been coming out). The only two characters that I recall from the dream were Elizabeth and John (the two main TPs – Liz being my absolute favorite, with John as second favorite). They were undercover in a shabby hotel room and investigating something that I don’t remember. Elizabeth got out to the place to do the investigation, but when John tried to teleport there (the Tomorrow People have special powers – telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, telephones, etc) he couldn’t. At first he thought Liz was playing a prank on him and preventing him from jaunting (their lingo for teleportation), but then he took ill and ended up nearly unconscious on the bed. And, unfortunately, I remember nothing else from the dream… Oh yeah, except that there was one line that Liz had that I thought was a perfect line and had intended to capture as a .wav for my LJ. Disappointed to wake up and discover that line is lost forever…

In another first, Monk made its debut in my dreams this morning. At the start of the dream, funnily enough, I was writing in my LJ about the Tomorrow People dream and that I’d also had a Monk dream. (Which I don’t believe I actually had yet – my brain is so odd!) So as I start describing it in the LJ, the dream develops into an actual story. This dream had all of the principle characters. Monk and the police were working on a case while Sharona had a boyfriend du jour… And so who was playing the boyfriend du jour? OK, I’ll admit it – it was Sylvester McCoy. I once again don’t remember much about the case going on, but at the end, Monk had found the murderer and when it was time to haul him off, everyone got onto a stage coach (including some relatives of the murderer, one of whom was played by Judy Cornwell (Maddy in Paradise Towers)) which Sylv’s character then drove off through the desert. (And when did San Francisco become a flat desert?)

Ah, my freaky, freaky brain. Got to admit, I get a lot of entertainment out of my odd dreams. (Hope you folks do too!)

Things are a success. With just a bit of prodding, I got my (well, the school’s) laptop hooked to my network. And now I can watch TV while I work on the computer! (Oh wait, I could do that before… But now, I can watch my big screen TV rather than an itty bitty picture on my monitor.)

Now to install Rhapsody on this puppy and hook it up to the FM thingy I got and see if I can project to a nearby radio. Fun with technology! 🙂

Thanks to yesterday’s shopping excursion with Evil Tech Women, I could now set up my own Wireless LAN. I worked some today but after lunch, I decided to set things up rather than go back. (Hooray for Spring Break!)

Isn’t it funny how a semi-trained network administrator can have troubles setting up her own network and yet her father and her friends have no trouble at all?

So, what happened? Well, the problem happened with instruction 1.B.iii. No WAN light lit up. Hmmm… Well, I went through steps 1.B.i and 1.B.ii again (as step 1.B.iii said to should things not work) but still no go. I went on ahead with steps 1.C, 1.D, and 2-5, but still no deal. My computer saw the new router, but the router and the modem didn’t like each other. Grrrrrr.

I called Road Runner and got a Time Warner desk jockey who was more interested in trying to sell me Digital Cable than in finding out the problem. He then connected me to a Road Runner national help desk dude who was a bit more helpful (or at least a bit more knowledgeable), and we decided to try a new Cat-5 cable.

So it’s off to my next door neighbor’s to steal borrow a spare Cat-5 cable. But, alas, it wasn’t the cable.

I took a bit of a break to clean out my car (it’s a gorgeous day and Leo’s got open windows to lay by) but when I was done, the modem and router still weren’t talking to each other. I decide to call D-Link. Before I even finished a round of Rummikub on the computer, I had a tech. I think he knew what my problem was before I even finished the description. Turns out my lovely modem doesn’t work on a 100Mbps network, just a 10Mbps one. *sigh* Within a minute of the phone call I could see Google and download my e-mail. YAY!

I haven’t tried the wireless bit yet – though that part of the router was on almost immediately. If all goes well, you’ll see another update today from the laptop. 🙂

Well, thanks to elsaf and judiang I spent over $250 at Best Buy today. First, I finally decided to buy a wireless network for myself. Elsa got us into wireless, having a 802.11b network first, then upgrading to 802.11g more recently. She helped Judi start her home wireless network, and the two of them are almost insufferably smug about them having wireless and me still being in the twentieth century (“Stone Age,” as Judi just called it as she watches me type this up). This lot costs about $140, but I’ll be getting $30 back in rebates, thankfully.

Of course, next, Judi worked me over until I spent $40 on Diablo II and the expansion pack (plus a strategy guide!) Gah! Evil Geek Women!

The other two items that I bought were trinalin and trinalin alone. I needed another surge protector since my UPS is currently unreliable. And I decided to finally try an FM adaptor thingy that converts music from MP3 and CD players into an FM signal which can be picked up on radios. I’m going to try it at home to see if I can pick up Rhapsody music in another room. It was $50.

So of the $250 that I spent, only $70 was my own inspiration, the rest was because of Evil Geek Women!

(Personally, I’m rather excited to try this all out – since it’s Spring Break this week, I figured I’d have a bit more time to devote to setting up a wireless network and playing around with Diablo II etc.)

In the Elsa Visit news, we had pancakes today for a late breakfast and we’ll have a late lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant. Mmmmmm! I’ll be getting Pad Thai, I just know it. Then, sad sad, we’ll have to go our separate ways. Elsa will drive Judi to the airport and I’ll drive home. It’s been a wonderful weekend and I’m so grateful to have two WONDERFUL (Evil Geek Women) friends!

We had fun at The Blue Nile. We loved the food – it was great. My favorite was the spicy lentils. The hottest was the spicy beans.

We got back home and watched the rest of The Tick. Then we watched Black Books. I converted judiang, but, alas, elsaf didn’t care much for the characters. Still, 50% success is better than none! 🙂

Now we’re watching season 1 of Coupling. And Elsa’s in the kitchen cleaning. And soon it’ll be bedtime – good, cuz I’m tired and my laptop needs recharging. 🙂

If you get a chance to see the stage version of The Lion King, I urge you to do it. The costuming was fabulous and the sets were amazing. They had a mix of puppetry and live action (often in the same costume) and, of course, the music is fabulous. And the best bit of all is that they replaced the “Hula” bit with something a little more “Charleston”-y. 😉 (I think judiang was a little disappointed there.)

I woke up late this morning – nearly 9am, though as we went to bed around 2am (time already adjusted), it wasn’t *late* late. We then left for the Chinese place in Windsor by 9:45. We had reservations for 10:45am. Going through the tunnel to Canada and then through customs was a breeze. And when we located the restaurant (Wah Court Inn, IIRC), it turns out that wasn’t the one we usually went to – but this one had parking, which was a plus. So we got there earlier than expected and were only the second customers there.

They had us pick a few Dim Sum items to order since they were going to wait a little for more customers to start bringing food around. It didn’t take long before the place began to fill and the Dim Sum items came around. And we ate and ate and ate – everything was wonderful and we all got our favorites. Heck, we love the sesame balls so much, we got a second order at the end of the brunch.

Since elsaf worked very hard yesterday to work her cullinary magic and Judi was still celebrating her birthday, I volunteered to pay for lunch. It was, as always, very reasonable ($47Can for all three of us). And after brunch, Elsa drove us back to the US of A. Of course, the line getting back into the US was much longer than the line going to Canada. It was, as always, Customs holding everything up. They even asked for all of our driver’s licenses. (Thankfully, the fellow didn’t ask us why we all had different state IDs.)

We were looking to have quite a bit of time between the restaurant and the musical, until we went through Customs, so by the time we got to the Masonic Temple Theatre, we were only 15 minutes earlier than our original intention. I paid Elsa the $45 that I owed her for tickets and bought a $10 program. And the thing that I fell in love with was a bean bag Simba – done in the costume style of the musical. So that was another $20. So, for $75, I got to see The Lion King. And it was worth it!

So what sort of themes did we learn in the musical? Well, that lions rule all the other critters, which they also eat, and that’s OK with the other critters since it’s all part of the Circle of Life. If the Circle of Life gets disrupted, however, by Hyenas and greedy Lions, the pride-land becomes a desert. But that’s OK if the right lion gets back in – things grow back again and everyone’s happy. 🙂

The show was done by 4pm, but we weren’t hungry yet. So we decided to come back to Elsa’s place. And the first thing that Judi and I did was check Kings of Chaos. And then it was time to check LJ. But now, it’s time to drag Judi’s lazy butt off to The Blue Nile for supper and more FUN! 🙂

I tell ya, elsaf is a marvel! She baked and cooked and cleaned and cooked and cleaned again until she dropped. And it was all worth it.

judiang arrived today, as I said, and then it was time for EATING! Elsa made us pizzas (I had pineapple and onion on mine) and for dessert we had the No Pudge Brownies I baked along side the homemade Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream that Elsa made. Judi and I then kicked *butt* on Kings of Chaos. It was fun!

For supper, Elsa outdid herself. We started with shrimp cocktail and caesar salad (homemade dressing). The second course was beet soup (with a bit of apple) – my first sampling of beets and beet soup. ‘Twas good! For the main course, we had stuffed mushrooms, roasted leg of lamb, spaetzl (little dumplings), cooked spinach (again, a first for me), and rolls (not from scratch, actually). Finally, for dessert was pineapple cake with pineapple & cream cheese icing, and, of course, the Bailey’s ice cream.

After watching Thursday’s Wonderfalls we washed the dishes (birthday girl washed – she insisted! I dried, and Elsa put away). Now it’s relaxation time for us while we watch the complete series of The Tick on DVD. Which is good cuz I’m tired! (I suspect Judi will insist upon drinks later… the fiend!)

We had perfect timing at the airport, but still missed each other the first time around… elsaf and I pulled up to the Northwest terminal and I got out. Elsa’s phone rang before I’d completely left the car (but I didn’t hear it). I went in door One and then judiang came out door Two. So then I found the baggage carousel, but they were done with her flight. I turned around, looking for Judi when she called to me. She’d already put her bag in Elsa’s car and was looking for me.

So, that all done, we arrived back at Elsa’s and she’s now making us PIZZA!