Before I jump into the Way Back Machine, I just got done redoing all my LJ style pages with a new layout, using valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS. I tested it in both the latest Mozilla and IE6, and it should look almost identical in both which covers just about everyone I hope. If it looks crappy in something else, and you think it's something I can fix, and not caused by your crappy browser, let me know. :D
Way back at the beginning of May I was at sis' apartment for like a week or so. I ended up downloading around 26 gigs of stuff using the campus network before I left. Yum.
Mom and Dad started looking at cottages again, and Friday, May 9th, I went with them to look at two places about 10 minutes from here on a lake. They went up north to our current cottages after that. That same Friday night, there was a GIANT lightning/thunderstorm. Around 3:30AM or so I was up talking to Keith on AIM even though he had to be up at 5:30 to go to work at BK. :D Anyway, every time a giant lightning bolt would hit, I was seeing if he'd seent hem over at his house. :P I think he went to bed for a hour or something, and I went to bed and turned off my computer and the ICS box both just in case. Saturday I turned them back on... surge protectors on the power and phone line both are fine... ICS box won't connect at 56K anymore. Basically, since then it's been connecting at 21.6 Kbps all the time and rarely higher. Sometimes 19.2, a few times 24, once 32... otherwise... 21.6 for the last 3+ weeks. I'm not pleased at all.
That weekend was bleh. I think it basically rained and was nasty all weekend. That Sunday (the 11th) we went and looked at the one cottage near here again but this time we took everyone... Dad, Mom, myself, Nicole, Russell, Nate, and Melissa so everyone could see it. Then we came back here and celebrated Mother's Day... I got mom a hilarious card (:D) and a Toby Keith CD she wanted that has a duet with him and Willie Nelson. Nate got her a painted plaster deer candle holder thingy. I think sis got her Sand and Sable powder.
Monday the 12th, my parents put a bid on the place. And for your viewing pleasure, you can see it here. I believe we bid slightly under what they were asking for. What the page doesn't say is that it's not only ont he lake... but has around 400ft of frontage... which is *huge* for basically anywhere here in MI. It's actually three lots together and I scanned a plat map which can be seen here with the three lots outlined in red. The lot in the lower-left that looks like a chunk out of what we plan to buy is empty. The road ends right at us, private drive past that point. The pie-shape right above this property and across the road from it all the way to the right where it hits the giant field is actually all owned by the neighbor, not really seven seperate lots. Hooked up for cable (Please let me be able to get a cable modem!), and soon to have public sewer system put around the lake which is going to cause a lot of old unused places to disappear because they won't want to pay the taxes on the sewer system. South of the three lots we'd buy is another square junk, and that's the last lot on that side of the lake, and at the end of his lot is where the no-wake zone starts, so we'll be right near the the division between the quiet and noisy ends of the lake. On Tuesday the 13th I believe, the guy that owns it accepted our bid which is contingent ons elling our two cottages up north. :) The house itself is bleh, but assuming we sell our places up north and get it, we'll gut the entire thing, the roof will disappear, a second story will be added, the roofline is going to face the other way, and numerous other huge changes. I'll scan the blueprints tomorrow maybe.
Wednesday the 14th... MATRIX RELOADED!!! I had talked to Keith the night before about going, and had been scoping tickets for a few days previous. We grabbed the truck and drove into Lansing that afternoon. Stopped by Mom's work and bugged her/got money. :P Walked with her to the Credit Union and back. Then went downt o B&N to get tasty beverages. Keith got the latest 2600. Then off to the theater with no time to spare! When I had called earlier they had 160 tickets for the 10PM showing on the 14th... when we got there, they had 5 left. :D So we got our two, came back here to the house, played Diablo 2 all afternoon/evening... then headed back to Lansing for Matrix 2 goodness which I posted about already over here.
I don't recall doing anything on Thursday or Friday... I think I was working on starting to convert my LJ style to XHTML.
Saturday I got up, and was going to go do "Walk for Life" for cancer people, but by the time I woke up, talked to sis about meeting there, etc... my parents had me working on sorting out some financing stuff for buying the new place instead so that by the time I finished, it was 2:40PM and too late to go do the walk before 3PM... I would have gotten there right when it ended. The parents put the palces up north up for Sale that day also.
I called people to go to Animania but no one else would go... Keith was working I think, and Wes was at a friends house in another city. So I ended up going all by lonesome. They played four awesome series which I talked about already here. I got home around 1AM and finished that post at 2:46AM apparently, and then off to bed.
Sunday I slept in as per usual, got up around 3PM, parents were due home at 3:30PM from our cottages up north, and I spent time cleaning up the house before they got home. They got home, we made dinner and ate, bro went over to his girlfriend's briefly while I installed Office XP and Norton SystemWorks 2003 on the family computer downstairs in the den while I waited fo him to come back, then him and I played Diablo 2 on the LAN from just before 7PM until 10:30PM or so. Then my parents were going to bed so we stopped. I turned on Cartoon Network to see the Adult Swim Sunday Line-up. I started cleaning up my own computer in the meantime and didn't sign back on until 1:20AM or so. Talked to #geoshell about executable packer programs and the overhead they create and whether it's worth it to use them or not, as well as about the latest beta of Proxomitron (personal web filter), where to get it, and it's new settings. It was 2AM at this point, so I went to bed.
Monday the 19th! We basically stripped our kitchen bare.I got up around 1:45PM, dad had gotten home early and was mowing, so I ended up spending my time moving all shoes and boots to their appropriate rooms/locations fromt he rug in the kitchen, emptied out cupboards into boxes, moved our decorative cast iron stove from the kitchen to the living room, etc. Basically, everything out of the kitchen and into other rooms. Spent a bit of time telling a few people about our moving situation, spent a little time helping explain to emi what should happen when you pay off a car loan (i.e. about getting a signed paper saying the loan institution no longer has a lien/security interest in the vehicle so that you can sell it since you own it completely after that...) Which prompted me to find my title and release paper since I paid off my car a little over a month ago and I wanted to make sure the two were together. Talked to #geoshell about the nxPro theme for Windows XP and it's new version. I love nxPro, and use it exlucisvely with the patched uxtheme.dll. I was offline from 4PM until 5:43 as per usual on weekdays so faxes can come in on this line. Mom got home from work, her and dad left to go shopping, then called me to come meet them. All three of us went to the Top Buffet (Chinese) in Charlotte for dinner. I got sent to Meijer's to take back bottles and cans and get gas in mom's car. Mmm, $15.60 that made me NotBroke™ again briefly. Got home at 8:20PM, just in time for my weekly Symposium meeting on Realms of Despair at 8:30. That usually lasts a good hour for every proposal to be discussed, sometimes longer. Then it was Adult Swim on CN! While I watched that, I worked on converting my livejournal to XHTML 1.0 Strict from HTML 4.01 Strict some more. I finally got fed up with that and went to lay down to read which I was up doing until 5AM or so.
Woke up at 8AM Tuesday despite that and talked to Mom a bit and got breakfast, and then went back to bed. She was going to the Awards Assembly at the school. Woke back up around 2:30PM, Keith showed up, so we started playing Diablo 2. Around 4:30PM, Mom got home early, and I was supposed to have made this salad stuff we were having for dinner but I hadn't yet since I hadn't expected her to be home early, so Keith and I paused our game and helped make the salad stuff. It was ready around 5:15PM, and Keith and I quit our game... he had to rush home to get clothes for the band concert that night at 6PM. We ate, and left around 5:45PM to go to the Spring Concert. We were at the concert from 6PM until 8PM or so. Then we went home and tore out our kitchen counters. Had to un-fasten all the screws underneath and break the counter up to get it outside as it's one huge piece basically. Around 9PM, we got done with that. I talked briefly to a few people about CGI, and converting my page as I mentioned. Wes showed up and I was talking to him and making CD's and such for him until 10PM when he went home. I was then volunteered to move the fridge, and clean behind it and inside the access panel in the back. After that, I wrote up Minutes notes to post in appropriate places to let people know what was decided during the meeting the previous night. A friend invited me to play Trivia on IRC which I did for a long time then. I caught the end of Adult Swim (sometime around 12:45-1:30), and went to bed knowing I'd have to get up early the next morning.
9AM on Wednesday the 21st the counter guys came, and we helped get the new counters in here. I had a brief respite while they adjusted them a bit to come up here and make a skin for GeoShell, the windows replacement shell I use... made it a mere 22 pixels tall. Once the counters were secure, the rest of the day until after 1PM was spent putting the kitchen back together. I was volunteered to be under the sink as we put it back int he fasten it in the back underneath. I almost didn't back out from underneath the sink... thank <deity> I'm flexible and with no small amount of contortion work, and numerous amused people taking pictures of the struggle, I was free again! I spent a good deal of time getting the legs back on the cast iron stove appropriately since they hadn't been on correctly before that. Mom went to Meijer's to get a few things for the "new" kitchen. She got back and we worked a bit more. Around 3PM they laid down to take a nap and I was up here for about a half-hour to work on my stuff when sis called because her car died up in Grand Rapids. I had to wake up Mom and Dad then, and everyone was scrambling around trying to decide what we'd do about it. Around 4:30PM the concensus was that I was going to be sent up there with mom's car, pick her up, drive back here, and let her drive back up there. In the end, my parents rented her a car through Tuesday the 27th. It was about 5 after 5 by then, and I started getting ready to leave. Mom and Dad and I went to meet some family friends, Dick and Patty, at the cottage they were looking at on Narrow Lake and to show them the place we have the bid on down the road from there. We goofed off there at the new place for a bit. Around 6:20PM we all left. We went to Meijer's then and got a ton of Michelina's dinners (26 to be exact, yum!), corn on the cob, charcoal, extra hamburger, lighter fluid, etc. Came home, dad fired up the grill. I took care of the groceries and such while he did that. Had very tasty burgers (the Ground Chuck from Meijer's and Omaha Steak Company burgers we had here already) off the grill and corn on the cob shortly after that. It was about 8:30PM by the time I got up here again. Worked on my site some more, watched Adult Swim, and was actually in bed by 12:30... early for me. :P
Thursday is a blank right now.
Friday the 23rd was bro's Senior Prom. I spent a good deal of time cleaning the basement and preparing snack foods. They all went to dinner, prom, bowling, and then came back here. So we had Keith, his girlfriend Jenni, Tony, Sara, Amanda, my brother Nate, his girlfriend Melissa, Karl, Wes, etc all over here. Played pool, arcade and pinball games, several people played Euchre, etc. Ate snacks. Around 3:30AM they all left.
Only to get up at 4:30AM to get ready to go down to the school to get on buses at 5:30AM. And off the band went to Indy! Saturday they played in the Indy 500 parade, and stupid ESPN gave them (or rather, Keith and a flash of a few other people) and whopping 10 seconds or so of airtime introduced as "And here comes another band." before moving on to a bunch of people with flags. Stupid ESPN. I remember I got up around 2PM that day. Talked to Bink about cheesecake. Mmm. Otherwise, I don't recall what I did. Parents went up north Saturday morning but I stayed here and gorged myself on allt he multitudes of left over snack foods from Friday night.
Sunday the 25th... I don't recall what I did either. The band played on the Indy 500 track. And were home around 7:30PM. I propogated ZMatrix to more people. Sent this link to several people. Then there's this one. In the Matrix 2 world, there's a transcript of the game dialog put into order with Reloaded... reveals some things, raises other questions... here. One more... zhixel pointed out on IRC... Lee Meriwether's fine ass circa 1966 here. Talked to Kira for a bit.
Monday the 26th! Woke up at 2PM. Watched the Star Trek Original Series Marathon on TNN... whoo! Go Labor Day festivities! Ate a lot of mozerella sticks with ranch dressing. Parents sent me into Charlotte to pick up pizza at Little Caesar's. Stopped by BK and bugged Keith since he was working and got free pop. He got out shortly after, came back here. Had pizza for dinner. Then Wes showed up for the fun of it. Then Karl showed up too to give me a spool of CD-R's to burn him all of Inu Yasha on. 26 CD's for the series, 2 more for the movie. Whee! Everyone talked to Tony and told him there was a party in my room. :P I burned Diablo 2 + Expansion CD's for Keith. Then everyone got kicked out so Mom and Dad could go to bed. Talked to Keith on AIM to get D2 installed on his home computer. Got it installed finally, but his video drivers were borked so he started the 18.5M download to update them and went to bed around 3:15AM.
Tuesday the 27th... I have no idea what I did this day... I may have helped Mom paint this day... I painted the mailbox post white, and we got about half the front porch painted. I'm pretty sure that's what we did. Or else that was a previous day, and I helped fix the riding mower and mowed the front yard. Keith and I played a TCP/IP D2 game after midnight. Didn't work so well with my modem troubles though. We gave up eventually.
Wednesday the 28th... got up around 11AM, seems like Keith came over again and we played D2 until he had to go shortly before 1PM to go take one of his finals. I went outside and mowed the rest of the yard then and raked up some of the grass. Not sure when I did the rest of the afternoon besides got ready for Band Banquet. Went down to the school around 5:35PM I think. Had lots of food at the banquet. Watched the awards, watched the yearly video, etc. Left there kind of late. Played around here after that.
Thursday the 29th! I think Thursday is the day just about everyone came over... Keith, Tony, Wes, etc and brought their computers. We had a LAN game of D2 with Nate, Keith, wes, and I. Whee! We played until 4PM I think. Then people had to go to work and such. Not sure what I did the rest of the day/evening.
Friday the 30th! We played more D2 with people in the afternoon. Then several of the computers left the house. Keith and Tony went to pick up Keith's new car that he bought. Not sure what else in the afternoon. Got ready for Senior Night and went to that. Got to do fun stuff with Seniors and their families. Didn't leave that till late. DId random stuff. Watched the movie Four Rooms with mom and dad. More random stuff.
Saturday the 31st! Got up at 9:15AM or so when Wes got here. Tony showed up soon after, Keith around 9:35... then we went into Lansing to the computer show. Spent a little over 2 hours there. I bought a keyboard adapter, stereo cable extension, and a Dell/Logitech USB Optical Wheel Mouse. Keith bought a P2-350, 96M, 2.1G Dell system with built-in video/NIC/sound to leave over here and use as a Diablo 2 box. Went to WHite Castle and BK for food. Then we came back here and put XP Pro on it, Tony and Wes left, I burned more Inu Yasha CD's for Karl... around 3:15 we left and went to pick up Wes but he had left on his bike, so we went straight to Karl's open house. Tony, Wes, bro, Sara, Amanda, William, and other people were allthere already. Gave Karl his newly finished Inu Yasha CD set. Stayed there until after 4PM. Came back here, played with Keith's D2 box more. Then he left to go to work at 5PM. I messed with it more. Tony got a new cell hpone for graduation from his parents so for days now we've been bugging him on it with AIM since he has AIM on it. Talked to Tony about the computer he has over here to play D2 with. 10:15PM I left to go bug Keith at BK before he got off at 11. Party in the dining room after it's closed! Got free pop and strawberry cheesecake. Mmm. :P Someone pranked BK and said they were in the bathroom and there no toilet paper even thou they'd been closed for half an hour. Had to check just in case though. :P Left there around 11:15PM I think. Almost got run off the road by some arsehole in a mini-van who was int he left lane with their left-hand turn signal on, but who, when I was about to pass them, swerved over into the right lane, caused me to slam on my breaks to avoid going into a church lawn, at which point I laid on the horn and the did a giant almost u-turn and turned left anyway. I was pissed in a large way. Got home, watched National Lampoon's European Vacation with Mom and Dad. Talked to Sam for a bit and goofed off, then sleep at some point.
Sunday the 1st! GOt up around 11AM. Got dressed and headed down to the school around 12:30PM. Took pictures of graduation stuff. Was there for graduation at 1:30PM through like 3PM. Lots of pictures. Went to Jason's open house. Was there until 4:45PM or so. Then keith and I raced back into town to try to hit Sara's but we were too late... we thought hers was later. :| So then we came back here and played Diablo 2 some more from like 5PM until 10PM. Had burgers on the gril around 8PM. Then the seniors all disappeared to go to senior send-off... they're locking them up from 10PM until 6AM someplace to just goof off on graduation night. So actually, they'll be free in another hour or so.
And there's probably lots I've missed, I know, but it's now 4:45AM, and I'm going to bed. I spent some time earlier re-locating our ICS box to one of my closets so I don't hear it all the time. And I "borrowed" Tony's 21" (I think) monitor from his computer that's over to use on my own for a bit just as a treat/escape from my 15" :P No idea what tomorrow will be. Most of the sniors will probably be sleeping till afternoon. Maybe more D2! :D
Will post a *TON* of pictures later after I clean them up, of the new cottage, the property, etc... spring band concert... band banquet... senior night... graduation, etc. Not now though... tired now. Sleep must.
This EpicPost™ brought to you Medlir, the maker of fine Monkeys.
