Fuzzy Couch

Home remodel

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:27:00 +0000

Back in February, right after our ski trip to Cascade, we received a phone call from our family in Lincoln that our home had water in it again! I'd installed 3 sump pumps (Main, battery-powered backup, and water-powered backup for the backup), but this time the water wasn't coming from the outside. During a particularly cold day, the water inside the washing machine froze, and broke something inside of it that apparently didn't have enough "give". When the ice thawed, water came in through this broken part in the washer, filled its cavity, and then spilled out onto the laundry room floor. It continued flowing into the family room and onto flooding the kitchen. It soaked through the floor, the sub-floor, and into the basement. Drywall, ceilings, flooring, roughly 65% of our home was ruined.

The good news, was that our insurance covered the damage AND that we had already been saving up to do a Kitchen remodel for a few years (we actually started saving while we were living in Kissimmee, originally we wanted to remodel that kitchen).

Jantina posted a bunch of photos on Shutterfly, but these are a few before-and-after photos for the kitchen. All of the other rooms were basically put back the way they were before the damage, and we spent extra to complete the Kitchen remodel.

The old sink, faucet, counter top, cabinets, and flooring compared to new.

The flooring: we upgraded from carpeting in the family room and laminate in the kitchen to continuous hardwood throughout both. We removed the soffit and took the cabinets all the way to the ceiling. We also removed the wall on the left, and added a wall on the right.

One of the many "scary" pictures where things got a lot worse before they started to get better.

We still have items on our to-do list; we need to purchase hardware for the cabinets, replace/upgrade the appliances, and add the backsplash. We are thrilled to have walls, ceilings, and floors again!

Web comics to explore

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:36:00 +0000

A few Web comics that look promising and that I intend to check out when I have time (via Whitechapel):

After-School Agent [link]
Astral Airlines [link]
The Disappointment, the Truth and a Few Cups of Coffee [link]
The Immortal and the Iron Crutch [link]
Team Mummy, Ch. 1 [link]
Seeds of Orcus [link]
Beleth's Library of Eclecticism [link]
Witch Doctor [link]
The Dreamland Chronicles [link]
Kukuburi [link]
Night [link]
The Laroquod Experiment [link]
Metaphysical Neuroma [link]
Wide Awake [link]
Sin Titulo [link]

'Honoring' Blagojevich, Ryan

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:07:00 +0000

Our April Fool's Day joke at the Journal-Courier got mentioned in today's Chicago Tribune and that story was picked up in a briefs package in USA Today.

Some reader comments included:

“Congratulations to whoever came up with the wonderful April Fool’s joke on the front page of the Jacksonville paper.”

“Why are Blagojevich and Ryan on the front page of the newspaper? I don’t like that at all.”

“Neat April Fool logo. I wonder how many people noticed.”

“I really enjoyed the pictures of (JJ-C Editor Ted) Roth and (former publisher John) Power on the front page this morning.”

SND30

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:45:00 +0000

I was invited to be a judge at the Society for News Design's 30th annual competition. It was held in Syracuse, N.Y., at the beginning of February. It was a great experience, getting to work and talk with so many talented designers, photographers, editors, art directors, etc. I wish I could have talked to people even more.

The winners were posted a while back, but as of today, I think, all the images are now included. http://tinyurl.com/d7ffbf

Lincoln, IL, on CNN

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:50:00 +0000

Wow, pretty cool to see your home town on CNN.com: CNN Video on Lincoln, IL

Cascade

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:19:00 +0000

We just got back from skiing Cascade! My parents, Amie and Katie's families (minus Ethan) drove up from Lincoln and Jantina and I drove down from Minneapolis to meet them at the resort.

We actually stayed at Kalahari, an indoor waterpark and resort, about 15 minutes from Cascade. The resort was much nicer than anticipated. We had 3 rooms, a master with kitchen in the middle with two "hotel-like" rooms connected on each side. Nice HD panels in each room. We set up the XBOX on one of the smaller ones while the larger was left for viewing Super Bowl 43. Kalahari has go-karts, water slides, rock-climbing, lazer tag, and all kinds of activities inside, though I spent most of my time on the slopes.

We hadn't skied Cascade before, but we really liked that the runs were fairly close together and the lifts were well organized. Taylor likes to go straight down, and as he passed me he would yell things like "Super Sonic Speeed!". The 9 year old was always the first one down! Noah did really well too. At the top of one particularly steep run he asked, "Grandpa, is this a blue square or black diamond?", My Dad said he'd tell him at the bottom. Noah was happy to find out that he had successfully navigated his first black diamond :-)

We all had a great time! Here is a photobook Mom put together from the trip.

Snowy Minneapolis

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:29:00 +0000

Editor's Note: This is the 1,000th post on FuzzyCouch.com.

Its been pretty busy. We had a great break back in Lincoln celebrating Christmas and New Years, spent a lot of time playing games like Agricola and N+ with the family. We are back in very snowy Minneapolis now. It is pretty, though.

I helped David with a project over the break. I helped him with a "clean sweep" of his office. We started at 7 a.m. the Friday after New Year's and cleaned and organized until 11 that night. Put a bunch of stuff in a sale pile, cleaned everything, and setup a new desk ... it looks awesome now!

Jantina's ongoing project has been on converting our DVD collection to computer hard drive. Once that is done we'll be able to select any movie and stream it to any TV over the network. It works out really well (except for subtitles on foreign movies like "Hero." Haven't figured that out yet).

CES and Macworld were last week. The only thing I'm really looking forward to are the new OLED displays, though it will be some time before they are affordable in larger sizes.

Electronic Gaming Monthly is closing. I've subscribed for nearly 20 years and they are closing the magazine and the editors are dispersing. I've been adding them all to my Twitter following list so I can see where they land.

Guido's movies: 2009

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:47:00 +0000

This is a list of the movies that Guido — and usually Julie — have been watching, for the first time, in 2009.

ORDER — TITLE (YEAR RELEASED) — FORMAT — DATE COMPLETED

"National Treasure: Book of Secrets" (2007) - Online - 01/01
"Burn Notice" season one (2007) - DVR - 01/03
"To Kill A Mockingbird" (1962) - TV - 01/09
"The Wire" season five (2008) - DVD - 01/14
"Ghost Town" (2008) - DVD - 01/15
"The House Bunny" (2008) - DVD - 01/17
"Frost/Nixon" (2008) - Theater - 01/25
"Secret Diary of a Call Girl" (2007) - DVD - 01/26
"Doctor Strange" (2007) - DVD - 01/27
"Wanted" (2008) - DVD - 02/01
"The Incredible Hulk" (2008) - DVD - 02/03
"Run, Fatboy, Run" (2007) - DVD - 02/10
"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (2008) - DVD - 02/10
"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" (2008) - DVD - 02/22
"The Visitor" (2008) - DVD - 02/23
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" (2008) - DVD - 02/26
"Coraline 3-D" (2009) - Theater - 03/02
"Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) - Theater - 03/02
"Watchmen" (2009) - Theater - 03/08
"State of Play" (2003) - DVD - 03/09
"Hamlet 2" (2008) - DVD - 03/10
"Flash of Genius" (2008) - DVD - 03/15
"Local Hero" (1983) - DVD - 03/16
"Zack and Miri Make A Porno" (2008) - DVD - 03/22
"Vicky Christina Barcelona" (2008) - DVD - 03/25
"Låt den Rätte Komma In" aka "Let the Right One In" (2008) - DVD - 03/30
"Enchanted" (2007) - Online - 04/06
"Hot Rod" (2007) - TV - 04/10
"Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter" (2009) - DVD - 04/14
"Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit ..." (2006) - TV - 04/16
"Knowing" (2009) - Theater - 04/18
"Mosters vs. Aliens" (2009) - Theater - 04/19
"Ghost Rider" (2007) - TV - 04/21
"3:10 to Yuma" (2007) - TV - 04/28
"No Country for Old Men" (2007) - TV - 05/05
"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" (2009) - Theater - 05/10
"Torchwood" season 1 (2006) - DVD - 05/10
"Star Trek" (2009) - Theater - 05/11
"The Hoax" (2006) - TV- 05/17
"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" (2008) - TV - 05/17
"Rachel Getting Married" (2008) - DVD- 05/18
"Pineapple Express" (2008) - DVD - 05/19
"Taken" (2008) - DVD - 05/24
"Valkyrie" (2008) - DVD - 05/24
"Eagle vs Shark" (2007) - TV - 05/29
"Weeds" season 3 (2007) - DVD - 05/30
"Serpico" (1973) - DVD - 05/31
"Up" (2009) - Theater - 06/01
"Across the Universe" (2007) - TV - 06/02
"You Don't Mess with the Zohan" (2008) - TV - 06/04
"Taxi Driver" (1976) - TV - 06/07
"Nina's Heavenly Delights" (2006) - TV - 06/08
"Drag Me To Hell" (2009) - Theater - 06/08

* Movies on TV count if unedited.———

In 2003: 28 (est.)
In 2004: 73 films
In 2005: 62 films
In 2006: 72 films
In 2007: 65 films
In 2008: 66 films

Movies and Video Games 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:46:00 +0000

This is the post I'll use to track my movie watching and video game playing for 2009.

Video Games:

Supreme Commander (Xbox 360)
Call of Duty: World at War (Rented)
Resistance 2 (Rented)
Motorstorm Pacific Rift (Rented)
flOw
Lost Cities
Metal Gear Solid 4 (Rented)
flOwer
Soul Caliber IV
Tomb Raider Underworld
Lego Indiana Jones
Red Alert 3
Peggle
Pinball FX
Space Invaders Extreme
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

Current Video Game Collection

XO Laptop

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:54:00 +0000

My family donated to three charities for Christmas this year. One was the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) ... aka the XO Laptop ... and we added ourselves to the Google Map.

Game on the snow

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:40:00 +0000

The Ultimate games I played in Monday were more on top of a crust of ice than in the snow. After a while, though, we had broken much of it up.

It was about 3 or 4 degrees, with little wind in Downers Grove. The 19 people that came to play seemed to have prepared and mostly stayed warm.

All but four of us went to a local bakery/restaurant, The Omega, for lunch. Then Mike Lommler, who went with me, helped me find the address in Lincolnwood where I had to run an errand. From there, though the terrible traffic tried to keep us from it, we headed home.

Street View and Ice Storm

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:49:00 +0000

Guido pointed out that Google Maps "Street View" is also being populated for Lincoln Ill. (in addition to Jacksonville Ill.)

How cool is this? They captured my wife's Halloween decorations last October:

The ice storm yesterday was pretty crazy. Our tree's branches (normally 6 feet or better off the ground) were nearly touching the ground they were so heavy with ice. Our neighbors lost half a tree, and these huge branches have snapped off all over town. Power was out until 2:00, the power company told us 35,000 homes were without power yesterday morning.

I have three sump pumps to keep out the water. The main had no electricity, the backup's battery had died, but the water-powered sump kept us dry! (I just added that one this year and it is pretty cool that it uses water pressure and needs no power.)

Also the cell towers must have been iced-over as well because I didn't get normal cell reception again until 4:30 yesterday!

MySpace app

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:36:00 +0000

The iPhone MySpace app was seriously lacking with no support for MySpace blogs ... until last night. The updated app adds blog support. I'll probably be checking in on MySpace more now.

Since the iPhone app "sanitizes" MySpace, the site is much more enjoyable to use.

Now, if people would only use their real names.

Julie and I got a bunch of CDs cheapish. We got:
-- Duffy "Rockferry"
-- Chris Conell "Carry On"
-- Ryan Adams "Easy Tiger"
-- The Decemberists "The Crane Wife"
-- Rogue Wave "Asleep At Heaven's Gate"
-- Alejandro Escovedo "Real Animal"

And I also recently got:
-- Kings of Leon "Youth and Young Manhood"

Lightsaber fund

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:46:00 +0000

Star Wars fan buys lightsaber for $240,000 at Hollywood memorabilia auction. [link]

Street View missed me

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:48:00 +0000

Google rolled out a major expansion of their Street View for Google Maps today, but they didn't go down my street, or past my workplace, or past the former home of our art gallery. This view is just one block away from our house. For some reason, parts of some main streets in town were missed. And the entire northeast section of town is not included. They seem to have skipped big parts of the downtown.

There's some info on the Google Maps blog.

From the movies playing at the Illinois Theater (I can't make out the movies at the other two theaters), it is after Sept. 21, 2007. The new Steak n Shake is not started. The new Wal-Mart is in the process of being built.

I have yet to check if any of Lincoln has been photographed.

New computer arrived via UPS today. I hooked it up really quick during my lunch break today and it's running quietly and smoothly so far. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to migrate data, and start installing needed applications.

Julie surprised me by buying a Playstation 2, which also arrived via UPS today. She hooked up and started playing "SingStar." I think she got a quiz game, too. I might have to try to get something like SoulCalibur or ... I don't know what.

We went to see "Role Models" Sunday, since Ultimate got cancelled.

I signed up for a gym membership last night. Now I need to make myself go enough to make it worthwhile.

Wicked Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:31:00 +0000

Jantina subscribes to Gourmet magazine, and found a new restaurant downtown Minneapolis: Hell's Kitchen. On Saturday we woke up early and drove downtown for Breakfast. We walked inside, the walls were completely red with black trim, strange art on the walls, and the waitresses were in pajamas. It had a very unique atmosphere. I had the caramel-pecan roll and Jantina was a fan of the homemade peanut butter.

Sunday we were downtown again, we went to the Orpheum to see Wicked. It was fun, very cute, definitely humorous in parts. "Popular" was my favorite song and performance. The Wizard of Oz was never one of my favorites, but the cameos/new back-stories for some of the characters and props were clever.

First night at the gym

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:38:00 +0000

I'm trying a free week at the local gym. Julie has been going there for a while, going to exercise classes and using the treadmills or elliptical machines. Now that we're down to one day a week of Ultimate, I thought I'd try going to the gym this winter.

Monday was my first night. I was just going to get familiar with the weight machines, but, after I started doing that, Julie got done with her class and told me I should try the Boot Camp class that was about to start. So I did.

About 20 minutes into the class, I got flush. I didn't see myself, despite all the mirrors, but that's what they were telling me. The teacher got me a wet towel and I took a break for a bit then rejoined the class. I turned white again, got a little nauseous, and was fairly close to passing out. The teacher got me a Gatorade and I tried to cool down.

Before I left the gym I had thrown up. Evidently, I had not eaten much Monday. What I had eaten, a couple volcano tacos, I had eaten recently. My blood-sugar level must have been pretty low.

I went back to the gym late Wednesday, about an hour before they close. I got in about 45 minutes on the elliptical cross-trainer machine. I kept my heart rate around 160 for most of that and the machine said I had run about 4.5 miles. And I'm not sore today. Cool. Oh, and I didn't throw up. Bonus.

Computer No. 3

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:00:00 +0000

I tried many times over the past few days to find or configure a system I liked so that I could take advantage of one of the deals for Cyber Monday or Black Friday, but I kept running into dead ends.

The one I was most excited about had a quad core processor, 4GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive, but I finally figured out it only came with 64-bit Windows Vista, which would cause me more problems that I could handle.

So I started looking on Ebay and found a system with the following:

2.4 gHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB of DDR2 RAM
160GB hard drive (everthing's eSATA now, right?)
CDRW/DVDRW drive
Media card reader
6 rear USB 2.o ports
3 front USB 2.0 ports
Windows XP Professional
Keyboard, mouse, power cord, manuals and software discs

I paid $284 with IL sales tax and free shipping. What do you think? Maybe this one will last me 11 years, like the one Troy got me in 1997 or 1998?

The one Troy got me is my second computer and that's the one I'm using now. It's got:

500 mHz Pentium III processor
767MB SDRAM (3 x 256)
30 GB hard drive (Ultra ATA)
160 GB hard drive (Ultra ATA)
Windows XP Professional SP3
DVD RW
CD-RW
Floppy drive
Zip drive
5 USB 2.0 ports
2 USB 1.0 ports

My first computer was an Apple IIe, by the way. I guess I have a precedent of going long stretches without buying a new computer.

Thanksgiving update

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Made it through a week in Vegas! I had a conference for work hosted at Bally's / Paris Sunday through Friday. Jantina and I used our Marriott timeshare to get a two-bedroom and her Mom and Wayne came down from Oregon to vacation with Jantina while I was working (and to hang out in the evenings too). As soon as we landed we headed to In-N-Out for burgers and fries. We were starving because the flight times, combined with timezone changes, forced us to skip a meal. We both had a lot of fun site-seeing, shopping and eating.

By the end of the week Tillman and Jenna flew in and spent the remainder of our time in Vegas with us. Since my conference was wrapped up, we were able to stay up late and "party" (in the most conservative use of that word, haha). Matt taught me how to play Craps, and apparently I was a hot roller and made people lots of money... the players started tipping me :-) That was fun, they also gave Tillman and I nicknames, "Yellow" (because I was wearing a yellow t-shirt), and "Jacket" (because Matt was wearing a suit jacket over his T-shirt). Not overly creative, but these other players were pretty toasty I think. Besides, it made our team name "Yellow Jacket"... probably a coincidence, but it did remind me of the old pro-wrestling WWF team "Killer Bees"! Our physiques don't compare exactly, but it was fun nonetheless.

At dinner Saturday night (at craftsteak), the T-1000 (a.k.a Robert Patrick) sat at a table next to us, that was pretty cool. Jantina didn't want to make a big scene, so she simply texted me that he was sitting behind me. He had some huge body guards and an entourage of ladies at his table. We assume he was in town for the big UFC fight, it generated a ton of traffic at the MGM that night.

Shortly after we returned from the Las Vegas trip, we drove to Lincoln for Thanksgiving celebrations. On the drive down, we popped in on the Whites in Des Moines for dinner, saw their assembled Ikea furniture (that we helped them load in Minneapolis a while back) and played with Luci and Cameron. It made for a great break to the long drive and was great fun!

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving Travis and Grace, David and Darin, and I had a small LAN party to play Supreme Commander. Travis and I won!

On Thanksgiving we spent the day at my mom's visiting with family and having a huge traditional meal. We found time to play some XBOX (N+, Bomberman, Castle Crashers) and board games (Puerto Rico!) throughout the visit too.

On the drive back to Minneapolis last night there was ton of holiday traffic and the snow brought the roads to a stand still in many locations. Iowa was the worst, can they not use salt on their roads ?! So many cars in ditches, but the roads were immediately better once we hit Minnesota. I understand now why Matt Janet always drives through Wisconsin in the winter, the Iowa department of transportation leaves a lot to be desired!

We've nearly completed our Christmas shopping. Just a few small things left to pick up. That's when we'll be back in Lincoln too, the week between Christmas and New Years.

Places to eat:
Koi Las Vegas
craftsteak Las Vegas
In-N-Out Las Vegas
Gallagher's Las Vegas
Papa Murphy's Des Moines

Leaf already

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:51:00 +0000

I made a new iPhone or iPod Touch Webclip icon for the new m.tivo.com page if anyone wants to use it on their . The png icon is here.

Have you seen keyboardr yet? It pulls up results for google, google blog search, google image search and Wikipedia as you type.

My dad told me he saw Brett working at a neighbor's house, helping clean out gutters and/or raking leaves. Brett was working at this same neighbor's during that recent Clean Up Lincoln day.

Speaking of raking leaves, I finally got our yard mostly done yesterday. The sun was out and kept me warm for a while, but then disappeared behind clouds, making it quite chilly. I used Josh's electric mulching mower and the bagging attachment, dumping them from the bag to a 40 gallon plastic bag in our trash can.

I first tried using some smaller bags we had, but that proved to be a royal pain.

I still might use the blower's bag attachment to suck some leaves out of the shrubs. And I might weed whack the dying plants by the front walkway.

I tried the blueberry flavored Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats. They sounded good, but I'm going to stick with the original.

A couple of very busy months

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 02:50:00 +0000

I've been doing lots of travel recently. I spent early September in Dallas for training, then the last week of September in Santa Clara for a customer visit, last week in San Diego for a meeting, last weekend in Orlando (that one was non-work though), and now I'm in Lincoln before heading to Austin for another training session. I just learned that as soon as I get back, I'm going to Des Moines on the 5th ~~2 days (4th and 5th)~~. The week after that I'm going to Las Vegas!

On top of the travel schedule, work in Minneapolis has been extremely busy. I'm ready for things to slow down a bit, and it won't be long before we have Thanksgiving and Christmas break.. I'm really looking forward to those!

Places to eat:
Matt Tillman took me to Hamano Sushi in San Francisco, and a very unique liquid chocolate cafe too.
Matt Janet introduced me to Old Chicago recently.
While I was in Dallas, I went with a large group of co-workers to try Uncle Julio's.
Probably the most fun eating while we were in Orlando was the night we went to the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival though Carmela's was pretty good too.

Newspaper company woes

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:06:00 +0000

Copper just told me Gatehouse Media, the current owners of the State Journal-Register in Springfield and the Lincoln Courier, was delisted from the stock exchange because its price had been too low for too long. I think he said the last listed price was 17 cents. Ouch.

Touched

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:05:00 +0000

Julie surprised me with an iPod Touch for our anniversary. I'm trying to get familiar with it, but it's fun so far.

App suggestions?

We bought the latest Kings of Leon CD and we're listening to it now, in the car, on the way home from dinner with mom and dad.

We have a couple fun things planned for tomorrow including a visit to a farm and seeing some friends for games and stuff.

Fancy

noreply@blogger.com (guido) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:16:00 +0000

A couple weeks ago, Julie and I rescued a dog from the pound.

We saw her picture in the newspaper, and she reminded us of our dog Bindi. I stopped out at the pound to see her. The animal control workers said her name is Fancy, she's about 2 years old, and her owner needed to move and couldn't find anyone to take her.

She was a little standoffish, but started warming up to me when I have her some scritches. I called Julie and she said to go ahead and bring her home.

Fancy was covered in fleas -- maybe 150 or 200, I'm guessing. A bath got a bunch of them off her, but we quickly went to the vet to get anti-flea medication. That took care of the rest of them over the next several hours.

We started looking for a home for Fancy, but we got attached to her fast. Five days after we got her, we found a home for Fancy.

Chocolate Nibs

noreply@blogger.com (Troy) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:33:00 +0000

Last Saturday Jantina and I drove to the Whole Foods (its a bit of a drive, we don't go there often) and discovered they had a couple aged new york strips. I've not noticed aged beef in a grocery before, and was pretty excited. So we picked those up, and I also grabbed some dark chocolate that I saw on Diggnation, Kopali Cacao Nibs. It wasn't as good as they went on about, but not bad. I preferred the Dagoba bar that was displayed next to them.

On Wednesday, I opened my MacBook Pro and the screen didn't come on. The front light that usually indicates 'sleep mode' was glowing steadily. I tried several methods to wake it up, reboot, but it just wouldn't come alive. I made an appointment with the Apple store for that night, they confirmed that it was a bad logic board, that the part was in stock, and the repair queue is short. So I left it there and received it back Friday night. All covered under warranty, only cost me a couple days without my computer.

We tried a couple new places to eat too. Down in Orlando, Jenn introduced Jantina to Pei Wei, a spin-off of P.F. Changs. We discovered we had one here, pretty much just around the corner from our place. It was really good, and about 4 dollars cheaper than P.F. Changs per dish. We also re-tried Redstone one afternoon. It is still overpriced, but the patio out back was nice with the mild weather we were having. We usually hit up Jake's for the same reason, to sit outside, and it is more reasonably priced.

New places to Eat:
Pei Wei
RedStone
Jake's