Roadtrip!!

Yeah... this is what usually happens when I start a new blog. I just get into a certain routine after having the blog for a while. Things don't seem interesting enough to write about them after a while.

Anyway, this past weekend I took Mindy with me down to Provo, UT to see my sister and her little guy friend. We left Rexburg around 11AM and headed down the roads in my non-air-conditioned Civic. Mindy wanted to stop by one of her friends' pad in Ogden for a bit, so we did. After we left there, the traffic down to Provo was horrible. I think we rolled up to my sister's apartment around 5:30 or 6. As we were waiting for Paul, my sister's guy friend, to get home from work, we watched Nanny McPhee or something like that. Interesting movie, I must say.

Once Paul returned home, we had a nice little barbeque and then went inside to watch a movie. I only slept 4 hours the night before, so I was pretty tired (especially after driving for that long in that heat and in that traffic). I was trying to stay awake, but Mindy gave me permission to go to sleep. About 10 seconds later I was out for the count. I woke up when the movie finished. Brandi and Paul left to go on a walk (it was about midnight at this time) whilst Mindy and I just cuddled.

Eventually, Paul and Brandi came back and we all walked over to my sister's pad to drop off Mindy and my sister. I went back to Paul's place and crashed on his couch...this was about 2AM. Around 8 o'clock, I woke up, took a shower, and headed on over to my car. I cleaned it out a bit, listened to a little music, and played some guitar. I think it was about 9:30 or so when my sister came outside. I called her over and she said that Mindy was awake. My sister told Mindy that I was in the car, so she came out. We drove around for a while, trying to find some place that sounded appetizing to get some grub. In the end, we settled on Denny's. We had a fabulous breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and hashbrowns. mmmmmm....

When we hopped back into the car, Mindy called her mom to chat for a bit. Apparently the folks we visited in Ogden called Mindy's mom right after we left. It appears that they like me. hehe.. Then Mindy's mom asked if Mindy had met my sister yet. That's when things got interesting. Mindy said something like, "Actually, no (I didn't meet her). You love me, right mom? You're not going to get mad at me, are you?" "Mindy... What did you do?" "We went down to Vegas instead." "Mindy! Did you elope?!" hehe.. Mindy played around a bit more, but eventually gave in. It was absolutely hilarious. Keep in mind that all of this happened AFTER Mindy's mom had just talked about how much the folks in Ogden raved about me. hah... fantastic. Later on, Mindy told me that her mom played the same trick on her grandpa. I think he was prepared to come out after me and kick my trash. At least before Mindy's mom told him that it was just a joke, that is.

After breakfast we all went to a little river thingy and dinked around a bit. I thought it was fun. We also went to the mall before coming back. I was looking into getting some sandals because I am sick and tired of wearing shoes all the time. I left my most favorite sandals in Romania. I had been using them for like 7 or 8 years, it seems. Maybe even longer. Anyway, we headed back up to Rexburg after hitting up the mall. The drive back up was much more pleasant--it only took 4 hours to get back.

And life as usual resumed.

Reinstalling SuSE 10.1

Welp, I was getting somewhat bored with my computer, so I decided that I would reinstall SuSE today. I finally got my dual-layer 32-bit/64-bit SuSE 10.1 DVD, so now I don't need to switch CDs every few minutes. That will be nice. Anyway, this time I plan to document the quirks that I run into as I attempt to get my laptop back to the state it was in before all of this mumbo jumbo.

First off, I was able to install SuSE earlier today.. Everything seemed to be going well up until I should have logged in the first time. The login screen never came--it just showed the 'busy' cursor for a few minutes. Then I restarted the computer and it did the same thing. Then I decided to reinstall again... just because I could. The same thing happened, even though I chose the GNOME setup that time (whereas I chose to use KDE the first time). Eventually it dawned on me that the 3D acceleration drivers I used before required that I share some of my real RAM with my video card. I thought it might be a good idea to try disabling that business and seeing how things went on only the dedicated video RAM. It worked. I logged into a great-looking GNOME setup and played around for a bit. I noticed that my synaptics touch pad thinger (mouse) wasn't responding too well, and I'm not really a big fan of GNOME to begin with. So I'm in the process of reinstalling SuSE for the third time today--this time with KDE. We'll see how things go this time.

The installation has finished, and now I'm working on getting my wireless to function. I had previously acquired the appropriate 64-bit drivers, so those weren't hard to get back. I installed the ndiswrapper package that came with SuSE 10.1, extracted the drivers, and installed them. My laptop locked up the first time I tried to modprobe the ndiswrapper system, but it works ok now. I can see the wireless network here on campus but I can't do anything with it yet.

I suppose my time is up for now, but I will continue this post later.

The Teton Dam

Yesterday Mindy and I went to check out the Teton dam since it began to rain. We had previously planned on playing a game called trackball, but I don't think it would have been any fun at all if it were raining the whole time. Mindy had never been to the Teton dam before, so I figured it might be a good activity.

I was surprised to find out that my little Honda Civic could make it all the way down to the bottom and then back up the steep road that goes down to the bottom of the valley. Mindy and I just played around near the water for a while, skipping stones and talking... Eventually we decided that it was time to go back to Rexburg.

We stopped by Jamba Juice to get some tasty beverages, after which we went up to Mindy's place to get the trackball game. The rain had cleared out pretty well, and the sun started to shine again. We finally got to play trackball. heh... so yeah, we walked on down to the park where we wanted to play.

Right as we entered the park, we saw a couple laying on a blanket having what seemed to be a very enjoyable time together. Both Mindy and I just thought, "GET A ROOM!!!" Anyhow, we sat under a tree not too far away from them to enjoy the company and the beverages. At a certain point in time, we both looked over at the couple on the blanket. Come to find out that we're both quite familiar with the two individuals. We just laughed at them for a while and then took off to the other side of the park to play. I found it to be a rather humorous situation, personally.

Trackball is actually pretty fun, if you have the wind going the direction you have to throw anyway. Each player has a little whatchamacallit that looks like a lacrosse, only it has a much shorter handle. One player will lob a plastic ball towards another player, and they are to catch the ball in the whatchamacallit. The process continues indefinitely. It's great fun. I found that I'm not very good at the lobbing part, no matter which direction the wind is blowing. Mindy is pretty dang good at trackball, and I kinda feel bad that my nerdiness overpowers my physical activity now. hah

After playing trackball for a while, we found another pleasant tree to chill under. We talked about a lot of things. Life is absolutely beautiful with Mindy in my arms. Ahh..

Super Computer

One of my good friends recently purchased a super nice computer system which should last him quite some time. He and I go back a couple years, and we devised a plan as to how I would set up his supercomputer when he got it a year and a half or so ago. This past weekend we carried out our plans. Saturday morning I woke up early and took my road trip up to Montana to take care of business.

I arrived at my friend's house around 10AM and work immediately commenced. Before I get too far into the details of the weekend, let me share a few of the vital specs of his computer:

Processor: AMD Athlon64 x2 4200+ (2.2Ghz) with liquid cooling
System Memory: 2GB DDR
Video: nVidia GeForce 7600 GS (512MB RAM)
Hard Drive: 2x 160GB SATA-II (320GB total)
Optical Media: 2x DVD+/-RW drives
Network: Wireless RaLink 2500 series
Monitor: 2x 19" Viewsonic LCD
Speakers: 5.1 Creative Surround Sound

Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to work on it. I'll have to post some pictures of my friend's computer sometime. Ok, now on to the details of setting up his system.

My friend wanted to have both Windows and Linux on his system. We spent quite a bit of time around each other. Being the Linux nut that I am, he heard so much about Linux and wanted to get his fix. But he also wanted Windows for games and whatnot. Understandable. So we began the day trying to install Windows XP SP2 on his box. That was thoroughly painful, as usual. Installing a single driver, rebooting, installing another driver, rebooting, installing yet another driver, and once again rebooting. You'd think that the actual installation of Windows XP on a system such as his would be quite speedy. No, no... Microsoft never ceases to amaze me with the speed of Windows--or the lack thereof. It took at least an hour to get through all of the initial booting, setting up the partitions in a fashion that Windows could handle, installing drivers, and finally minimal essential software. Very rediculous. One of the best parts was that Windows somehow installed itself on the second hard drive...because of this (or some other unknown cause) Windows could not boot itself up. We had to use another bootCD in order to boot Windows. I assumed that GRUB (a Linux bootloader) would be able to circumvent this problem.

Once the first installation of Windows was complete and we had a backup of the installation, we proceeded to install SuSE 10.1 x86_64. This installation was painless. Everything worked extremely well. The hardest part about getting Linux to function properly was figuring out why his wireless adapter wouldn't connect to his router. It took a bit of time, but eventually we found the solution online (this solution also applied to my laptop, so I have great wireless in Linux now). As I was getting certain multimedia applications installed on Linux (since they're not included with SuSE for copyright reasons), we watched Hitch on the second monitor. It was great. Eventually Linux appeared to be set up and running perfectly. That was about the time we reboot Linux for the second time (once during installation, if I remember correctly).

Come to find out that not even GRUB could boot Windows. We were greatly frustrated, and my friend began to understand slightly more why I like Linux more than Windows. We decided to swap the hard drives around so that the drive with Windows already on it would be the primary master. I warned him that it would mean reinstalling Windows because it wouldn't know where to find itself after swapping the drives around. He was down with that, so that's what we did. We ran through the whole bloody process again. At least this time we knew what to expect when Windows complained about drivers--we'd already experienced it only hours before.

This installation of Windows went a bit more smoothly, but it also meant that we'd have to do something to get Linux back to an operational stage (firstly, get the GRUB boot menu back). I believe it was the first time I rebooted the computer after the second Windows installation that we got a "NTLDR is missing" error. Blasted Windows. I solved that problem, but then it started complaining about an invalid boot.ini file. Rubbish.

All we needed to do for Linux was pop the first install CD back in and run a rescue utility. It examined the existing installation and modified configuration files according to the drive swap. Linux was back up and running within 5 or 10 minutes. Windows, on the other hand, continues to complain at boot about the invalid boot.ini file.

And once again, my contempt for Windows has been reaffirmed. The only reasons I keep Windows around is for Adobe Creative Suite 2 and a game here or there. Even Google Earth runs natively on Linux (as of yesterday).

The Picnic

Yesterday I was once again privileged to enjoy Mindy's company for a few hours. First, we met up for a religious meeting that is held each Tuesday on our campus. Afterwards, I walked her to her apartment so that she could change into more appropriate clothes for the following activity. I went to my place and changed as well and picked her up again. We stopped by the store to get some supplies and made our way out to "R" mountain.

"R" mountain is actually a butte (or something along those lines) with a huge white "R" painted on it (signifying "Rexburg" I suppose). It was quite a hike up there in the blistering heat, but we made it to the top. I feel bad, though, because Mindy isn't exactly the world's biggest fan of heights. That didn't even occur to me when I invited her to hike it with me. Blast.

Anyway, once we made it to the top, we had a nice little "picnic" of sorts. Then we just sat there for a while, enjoying the wonders of nature and each others' company. I feel like we had some pretty good conversations again. I really enjoyed spending the time with her.

The hike down was pretty interesting because it was rocky and slippery most of the way. Thankfully, we both made it down alive and we came back into Rexburg. I have been a bad influence on her the past few nights--I kept her out too late. She had some homework to take care of, and we both figured it would be a wise decision for her to do that instead of being a rebel with me. Pretty satisfying day in my opinion.

Is It Real?!?

Ok, I have to say that I had suspicions of what I last posted about being a dream. Honestly! I was not quite sure that it had actually happened, since it's not exactly an everyday occurrence. Somehow it just seemed like one of those dreams that are so pleasant when you experience them but that are also just temporary. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a dream now, but there are still suspicions lingering (it all just seems too good to be true!)...

So last night, I had the opportunity to see Mindy again. At first, it appeared as though it was all my imagination driving me crazy. Nothing seemed to really be different than before the previous night's dream. Then we started talking a bit and we talked about a few things we had discussed the night before (or in the previous dream). That's what comforted me--that she was conscious of the evening before (perhaps it wasn't just in my head after all).

We went for a nice stroll again, and we ended up at the campus stadium. We hiked up to the very top and just chilled for a while. It was nice to be able to just chat as we did. She started to get shivers, so I started thinking of things that we could do to warm up a bit. Mindy loves to dance. It is her most favorite thing to do, according to another conversation that we had. With that in mind, I asked if she wanted to dance a bit. Heh...you should have seen the confused look on her face. It was classic! Anyway, when she saw that I was serious, she agreed to dance a bit. Now, you all have to understand that I do not know how to dance worth beans. Lucky for me, Mindy knows how and actually likes to teach people how to dance. I'm afraid I may be a lost cause though. Mindy tried to teach me how to do a simple waltz on top of the stadium...aahh brotha. Let me tell you... As simple as it may seem, it sure did confuse me. Perhaps I just need a little more practice (I hope).

Eventually the chilliness of the evening breeze became a bit too much, so we walked back to Mindy's place. Once there, we happened upon our good buddies Matt and Kara. They seemed to be having a jolly time together, but Mindy and I thought it more appropriate not to interrupt their bliss for too long, so we took off again. This time we went to a nice park thinger away from all of the city lights and looked at the stars until the cold became too much again. We got to see a fabulous shooting star or possibly even a meteor. That was Mindy's first time to see a shooting star, and it was probably the most amazing one I've ever seen. It was rather large and not exactly fast-moving. There wasn't a tail on it until after we both saw it. Then the tail grew to be pretty long until it all disappeared. It was fantastic!

That is about the time that we walked back to Mindy's pad and said good night. I also seem to remember setting up a time and place for us to meet a bit later today. I suppose that if Mindy is actually there then all of my suspicions of these experiences will be put to rest. I will then accept the idea that it's not just my whacky imagination playing sick and drawn-out tricks on my mind. For all I know I'm actually just dozing off at work right now and dreaming that I am writing all of this. Weird.

Yes, I am a happy man.

Prerequisite reading: A Surprise Date, The Follow-Up Date

It appears that the dates that Matt and I went on with Kara and Mindy have good effects! Mindy was gone most of this past weekend at a wedding. She returned home last night and said that we (Matt and I) could come over and hang out if we wanted to. I figured that it would be good to give her a little bit of time to unwind after all the travelling she had been through, but she didn't seem to need it.

So we went over to their pad and right as the door opened and we stepped inside, Mindy comes up to me and hugs me! I was like, "Wow...that's cool. I can deal with that." It was a little unexpected but definitely welcomed. Anyway, we had some good times playing card games and making cookies and whatnot. They even let me use their 'scrumptious'-smelling soap that they bought from Bath and Body Works on our first date. Amazing.

The card games were getting a bit involved, so we decided to move it outdoors. Mindy's knees were bothering her from sitting down as long as she had been that day, so we went for a nice stroll around campus. I quite enjoyed it. Eventually, the others (Matt, Kara, Cyndra, and Athena) decided to join us in a pleasant walk, but we were devious and decided to go our own way.

Mindy and I took a nice walk in the gardens on campus and we found a nice spot to chill. We talked about a lot of things, but eventually we started talking about more serious matters. All I have to say about that to the world is, "Yes, I am a happy man." As we walked back to Mindy's place we had a nice, cosy chat. I repeat, "Yes, I am a happy man."

When I got home, I came across Matt at his computer. He seemed to be having a blast! He was chatting with Kara online and things seemed to be going well with them. Matt was a little confused when he decided to go back to our apartment, but his little conversation with Kara afterwards cleared things up quite a bit. I guess the actual condition of their relationship is still pending, but it's looking pretty good. I'm sure Matt would join me in proclaiming, "Yes, I am a happy man."

And this is what becomes of a surprise date for all but one involved. Grand, isn't it?

Crazy Firefox Propoganda

Heh... A certain individual (who will remain nameless beyond Rug Burns) enlightened me as to the existence of this grand video clip. I think you should all partake and enjoy.

Enjoy. Yes.

In case you don't think to click on the title of this post, here's the link: link.

I Went Fishing

My brother took me out fishing with him on Wednesday. The picture is of my brother fishing on a really sketchy log... It was a really cool little hike that we had to make to get to our spot. The sad thing was that we didn't really catch any fish. Neither of us really likes to eat fish, so we would just catch-and-release anyway.

This is the first time that I was fishing since I was probably like 7 years old. Wow.

Google AdSense

So, I recently started this blog thing, right? To my surprise, the "dashboard" or control panel has a special spot for one to add Google Ads to their blog with great ease! I, after having heard of others' successes with Google Ads, decided to give it a go. My very first post (which has been removed already) mentioned how I would be joining the c h a o s of bloggerdom. Google Ads saw the 'C' word in the previous sentence and put ads about hurricanes and natural disasters all over my page!! It wasn't until I removed that post that the ads changed to something about blogs.

Over in my links you'll notice that I have one to a blog called "Rug Burns." All of the Google Ads on his page are about burns and first aid. It doesn't matter what he posts on his blog--the ads always seem to talk about the title of his blog.

Very strange. Let's see if my ads change now that I've mentioned his title in this post. :D