Beach in San Francisco

Saturday was a day trip up to Hopland, CA to visit the Real Goods store, by way of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I wasn’t all that interested in the destination, but the drive sure was nice. (Mental note: Don’t ever buy a Pontiac Grand Prix/G6. They are fine rental cars, but they are truly typical GM.) The return trip was by way of the Oakland side of the Bay, so it was more California interstate confusion than fun drive.

Sky Londa on Skyline Dr

View from the trail

Sunday was a nice day trip up Skyline Drive to Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Area and some hiking. At the one rest stop we drove through on Skyline Dr, there were lots of people standing around admiring a small, black car. Walking over and talking to the owner, it was an RX7 body with a Corvette engine and a transmission out of a Viper…Someone with too much money.

Another week of class started today, hopefully we’ll make it to a few more attractions evenings this week.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve got a DishNetwork 510 DVR. Sometime last night, new software was downloaded to it that brought a whole slew of new features, including DishNetwork’s long promised version of Tivo’s “SeasonPass“, entertainingly enough called “DishPass”.

(Is it any wonder EchoStar lost the legal/patent battle with Tivo?)

Also in the new features is generalized “Name Based Recording”, though I’m not sure how that differs from DishPass just yet.

I haven’t had anything to record since the update, but here’s hoping that nothing goes horribly wrong.

And, I’m fairly certain I recommended the Silblades to CK, since I had them on my 2001 Dakota in mid-2001 and still have them on the 97 Accord.

Slower, but still not neglected.

Boy, those console beeps sure are annoying. Good thing it’s a one liner to get rid of them.
(Pidgin is an open source, multiprotocol Instant Messaging Client.)

PepsiCo finally came up with a flavor of Mountain Dew that even I can’t drink: Game Fuel. Either PepsiCo is assuming that the Halo3 marketing blitz tie-in will sell it, or gamer freaks like the taste of artificial cherry flavored cough medicine…

Since Dad asked me not too long ago, now I can say I remember the last time I changed a headlight. The 97 Accord needed the passengers side one changed last week. $10 at Autozone later, and all is better.

If you are in the WILL viewing area, watch Prairie Fire and like it, you should take a look through the archives available on the recently new site. Lots of people over at WILL did quite a bit of work to get that videotape into electronic format.

Apparently I have something for installing DVRs in July. According to a previous entry, 3 years ago I ordered a DishDVR 510 and about a week ago, I called in to Dish Network to take advantage of their current Dish’n It Up promotion and get a “new” DVR. The box showed up and it’s another 510, looks like it’s a remanufactured unit. So, we got a new remote and a more recent hard drive for $49, assuming the promotion credit eventually goes through. Oh well, another 18 months of Dish programming…

Update (7/6/07): Can you tell which remote is the old one?

Sometimes, work makes me think. Other times, it just makes me want to scream.

12:48 [someoneelse] and you’re wishing for the return of blissful ignorance?
12:48 [me] yeah
12:49 [me] knowledge is power. and power corrupts. or something
12:49 [someoneelse] unfortunately, the ignorant sleep better