Sorry for the lack of posting. There’s all the usual excuses of course but mostly I just haven’t felt much like posting.

We have a new family member. His name is Bundit, since I found him devouring my veggies over at the community garden shortly before Christmas. It’s weird because I had been sort of turning over in my mind the idea of getting another rabbit that week…funny how that works. Anyway, a few people asked if I put up “lost” signs. Uh, no. I was told he likely got out or was let out from a neighbor’s house nearby. The way I see it, at best the people are totally clueless about keeping rabbits–(Bundit had a brother, whom I also tried to nab but couldn’t find, that was eventually run over by a car)–and at worst they are complete morons. I’m told Bundit’s life was otherwise spent in a cage, which just sucks, and they have other animals around that could hurt them. Secondly, he is the sweetest rabbit EVER. So I kind of…forgot to put up signs, hey.

Seriously, could you give up a face like this?

The girls had a wonderful Christmas, and they definitely get the concept of Santa this year. My parents came for the holidays and gave us their old tree, and even though it’s old it looks ten times better than our old one. Storing it is a bit of a problem, however. We have no basement or attic. That only leaves our garage, which is crammed with other things (see below).

My efforts at the gym finally succeeded in getting me to drop a little weight, but it’s also netted me a really terrible habit of reading trashy celebrity magazines. Somehow it’s the only thing I can manage to read while I am hauling away on the ski machine. I’ve tried bringing reading worthy of attention and intellect, but they just don’t seem to be distracting enough, and I get tired. So I resort to the trash that makes me forget what a pain in the ass working out is. This has made me a veritable expert on all the latest celebrity scandals, but especially the trainwreck that is Britney. My sister called the other day and after I launched into a detailed summary of Britney’s latest meltdown, my sister paused for a moment, and said:

“You really need to get a job.”

Not that I haven’t tried. Shortly before Christmas I applied for a job with the Geek Squad. It’s an online form which, after devouring 20 minutes of your time, informs you at the end that they will scan your application for various deviancies and then pass it on to the local store. If they feel like it. Hello, black hole!

I have my own little Geek Precinct downstairs. Bruce kindly let me take over half the garage for a computer workshop, which I have tried not to let metastasize too much. I think there’s about twenty systems in various stages of repair down there now (that’s not much, is it?). Begging for systems on Craigslist got nowhere–the fact that at least three other guys decided to put out their computer begging bowls recently didn’t help–and I was having a hard time finding tech junk until I found my SECRET SOURCE. At my SECRET SOURCE which I suppose isn’t really a secret (but I’m still not telling!), I can get all the junk I could possibly want. I have had so much fun and learned so many new things about computer building and repair since my discovery. And, since I am essentially working with junk, I don’t have to freak about blowing up somebody’s $1k machine. It’s great.

(That Buddha isn’t normally there; I just set him there until I can take him over to the garden. But maybe he should be. To remind me of non-attachment…because most of the computers you see in the photos are being bastards at the moment).

More photos of The Geekery here.

I am still determined to get A+ certified, but when that will happen I don’t know. The study book is about 900 pages. It’s excellent for pressing flowers.

If you’re still reading and your eyes haven’t completely glazed over yet from all the computer crap, here’s a short list of new software I’ve tried out recently and liked:

Handy Recovery - had no luck with freeware; this is good at recovering things from really trashed drives
Ashampoo Burning Studio - none of the bloat and crashing of Roxio and Nero
Flickr Uploader 3.1 - lots of nifty new features
Avast antivirus - finally gave up on AVG for various reasons

The laptop is very nice but everything everybody has said about Vista is true. It sucks.

Lastly, Ubuntu projects are kind of on the back burner because I got really tired of fighting with the almost complete lack of wireless support.

It occurred to me I never did an update about the final outcome of all that marriage counseling we did about a year ago. It worked. We were able to reverse all the bad vibes that had been building up and it’s been largely smooth-sailing since then. I say “largely” because we had our first argument in about six months this week, but I think it’s because we’ve gotten lazy. Consider this official encouragement if anybody tells you marriage counseling is a waste of time. We did have to try three different counselors, but once we found the right one, it was all good.

I took over finances, which was one of the greatest sore spots between us. We’re the kind of people that only care about money when we don’t have any, yet somehow it just works better if I do the bills. (Right now I am looking to ebay just about anything I can get my hands on to buy us a glorious new timing belt for one of our cars….hmmmm…that bunny looks good…).

I can’t believe Colbert is back. Oh, how I missed you, baby.