From a Human Interface Device (HID) design standpoint, washers and dryers have a lot to be desired. Have you ever noticed that to start the washer you pull the dial, but to start the dryer you push it? This is on two separate machines, mind you. Front-loading dryers are just silly as well, because I always end up dropping at least one white item on the garage floor during the washer to dryer transition. I would like to see an all-in-one unit (does it exist already?) that both washes and dries clothes in one simple step. A LCD touch screen powered by an intuitive graphical user interface would control the entire process wherein you could enter your options, initiate the cycle and come back in a few hours to find freshly laundered and dried clothes.

I drove down to Key West for general entertainment and to also look at a few employment opportunities of interest. I was only going to stay for a few days but ended up going for a whole week. I had a great time spending time with my friend Nathan who lives on the island, though he ended up working through most of my visit. Fear not, however, as Key West is one of many places where I can find endless amusement for myself. I met some really nice people that I hung out with for a few nights, drank entirely way too much and found it very difficult to come back to Orlando afterward. The first day there Nathan and I went out on a snorkel sunset catamaran cruise that was just brilliant. We took pictures on the cruise, but I am still waiting for Nathan to e-mail them to me. I will be sure to post them as soon as I am in receipt.

My birthday is quickly approaching. Ugh. I do not even want to do anything for it this year, save receive a copy of The Ministry of Sound's The Annual 2005 Limited Edition 2-Disc plus DVD box set. I would enjoy that.

Thanks to my friend John I now have a decent pair of headlamps for my car. He gave me a set of 4000k Liteglow Xenon Super White bulbs after noting one of my headlights was dim. I figured it was just a matter of a faulty bulb, but it turned out that the connection itself was faulty. One of John's employees graciously installed a new wiring kit so I now have two, very nicely functioning headlights.

For the first time in several years, I am in the process of going through old boxes of stuff and actually getting rid of a lot of garbage I do not need to hang on to any more. Despite the excellent progress I have made as so far, I still have another few days of work to finish the project.

I just purchased a Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router at the amazing price of $27.14, after rebate and a gift certificate. My friend is donating a matching PCMCIA wireless NIC for my notebook. With those two additions, my home network will be nearly complete. The only thing missing still will be my new notebook, which I am not quite prepaired to finance. As soon as I have it built, my existing notebook will be converted into a wireless file server, backup drive and multimedia PC.

Tchoup Chop
I have my initial consultation appointment with the surgeon slated to perform my cholecystectomy tomorrow morning. As I have stated previously, my normally expected apprehension about this entire ordeal is suppressed as a result of the overshadowing pain and discomfort. I just want to get access to my full, unrestricted life back. I will know at the conclusion of this meeting the exact date, time and location of my procedure. I am going to request it is done on a Thursday or Friday to minimize the amount of time I have to take off from work. I have the paid days available to me, but I obviously prefer not to use too many of them all at once.

UPDATE: After talking with the doctor and reviewing the schedule of available surgical time slots, I set my cholecystectomy for Monday, 30 August 2004 at 0900.

Cleaning House
While Mount Sutro did not benefit from the upgrades and modifications I was planning, I did get a lot accomplished that will ready me for that project. I have decided to postpone working on the site until I am home recovering from the surgery. While during the first day or two I may be restricted to a bed, a better part of my recovery time I am expecting to use as the perfect opportunity to work on things here.

My format and reinstall, complete with Windows XP Service Pack 2, went without a hitch. In addition to the new features and bug fixes, I am finding my aging PC actually running a bit better than before. I also installed Microsoft Office 2003 replacing Office XP. I am ecstatic about a few of the new features added to office and the overall improvement in performance.

Laying Pipe
I decided to finally join the latter half of the twentieth century by purchasing DSL service for myself at home. I could no longer squeak by with a 56k dial-up connection or borrowing faster connections from friends or work when needed. My DSL service through Sprint but peered by EarthLink, should be up and running by Monday, 30 August 2004. There were a few reasons I went with this service over the popular Road Runner cable internet solution offered by resident evil Bright House Networks.

First, I loathe that company and although EarthLink technically falls under the same umbrella, it is enough a separate entity to appease me. Second, the amount of people that use this service in the area is high as I was concerned with the inherent bandwidth problems that can arise on a busy cable network connection. Third, the coaxial cable that runs in my house does a sub-par job at transmitting television data. I can not even imagine how spotty the internet connection would be over the same cables. Fourth, I did not want to have to pay for an installer to come (on their schedule, not mine) and request access to my computer. No, never. Finally, DSL seemed like a good idea when I calculated the local central office, LKBRFLXA, was only 2657.5 feet from my home.

My connection will peer over EarthLink, one of the many names for the once-abhorrent AOL Transit Data Network. I am not anticipating this being much of an issue since they have been forced to upgrade their systems to accommodate the nationwide growth there are experiencing. I am also going to pick-up a wireless router and PCMCIA NIC so I can forego physically running CAT-5 through the house.

Look for an update tomorrow on the surgery and, of course, as soon as my new network connection is established.

Today while I was at the Universal Studios Royal Pacific Resort and Hotel for work I noted my mobile telephone switch from saying it's usual "AT&T Wireless" to "Cingular" and then back again. Twice. I know Cingular purchased AT&T Wireless but I still thought this behaviour strange. Has anyone else reading experienced odd occurrences with these carriers lately?

UPDATE: FAQ from https://www.attwireless.com/ocs/faq/cingularfaq.html

Q: Why does my phone read "Cingular" when I'm roaming?
A: We've already opened up some coverage areas with Cingular through our expanded roaming agreement. If you see "Cingular" on your phone, it means you're being covered by their network.

For obvious reasons of confidentiality I have to be non-specific with this gripe. I cannot understand how a major international corporation (not my company) can actually conduct business when their own offices have inferior technological capabilities. Imagine a multi-billion dollar company like IBM, Microsoft, Disney or General Motors having trouble browsing the web on a regular basis. It would never work. Yet somehow this unnamed corporation continues to have issues with e-mail and pages implementing SSL (which is used for their protection, no less).

My favourite part: my organization gets to hear about these issues while this other company attempts to assign blame for their incompetence on us. Uh, I do not think so.

Argh!

I am starting a new web-based e-mail service called WGAFMail. That is, "Who Gives a Fuck Mail." I am so tired of reading about GMail on countless websites. I cannot really fathom what the big deal is still. Wooo… one gigabyte. If you need that much space to store e-mail messages, your mother did not teach you how to throw away things when you are done with them. I also do not understand why anyone who has their own domain name would want a third-party e-mail address so badly anyway. I have one for emergency use in case something on my server goes pear-shaped, but this obsession in the blogging community over GMail and the precious goddamn invites people crave so badly is ridiculous. Get over it already and resume writing interesting stories about your life, work and day to day experiences.