In addition, you probably found a couple extras in your feed reader this morning: Turns out my update to WordPress 2.9 was apparently not quite as trouble-free as I assumed. Somehow, an addon interefered with the ability of FeedBurner to grab my RSS feed, so the guest post from Krizzlybear as well as my own post on the 22nd were not updated in FeedBurner.

I was able to get a chance to do some troubleshooting Christmas Eve, and after disabling all addons (except Akismet and WordPerfect Stats), then pinging the site from FeedBurner, those articles appeared in my feed, and, I trust, in yours. So there you go: Two more gifts from the Aerie this Christmas Day!

We’re all having a wonderful time here on Kaua’i: Alie can’t get enough of the beach, but was persuaded to accompany the rest of us as we went in search of shave ice this afternoon. And while I was considerably under the weather Thursday morning as a cold snuck up on me, I was recovered enough by midafternoon to go as well (although I had ice cream instead of shave ice: I wasn’t too sure how well the syrups would do for my somewhat sore throat, and Kona coffee ice cream is not something to be passed up).

Christmas Dinner will be a luau at the Sheraton resort a couple miles away; we’re all looking forward to the wonderful buffet as well as the traditional dancing that will be presented.

Finally, as a further gift to all my wonderful friends and readers, here’s a video I took on Tuesday at a small blowhole across the street from our vacation house:

Kaua’i Blowhole 

Merry Christmas from the Land of Aloha is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

 

It’s supposed to snow in Rapid today or tomorrow. On Kaua’i, it’ll be in the low to mid 70s, and no rain in the forecast. 

 
As the tee-shirts say, "Life is Good!"
 
Aloha!

Aloha From Kaua’i! is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

 

About 3 minutes ago, I was reading Darren Rowse’s latest update at ProBlogger. While my blogging empire isn’t as expansive as Darren’s doesn’t exist, I dimly recalled stating this was going to be a more personal blog. Maybe, just maybe, I should start writing some of those more personal posts. So on a lazy Labor Day (happy holiday to my American and Canadian readers!), I think I’ll do just that.

The Blog

A few weeks ago, I undertook a significant redesign, and, in the process, I learned quite a bit more about the Thesis theme I use. I’m quite satisfied with the look of the site now, but of course, I’m an inveterate tweaker. Sometimes, the tiniest changes give me the greatest pleasure. For example, I’m very happy with how the subscription area looks now.

Speaking of subscriptions, I should note the Aerie turned two a few weeks ago (August 17, to be precise).  So for you numbers oriented people, here’s what two years (and a few weeks) of blogging have generated:

• 366 posts (not counting this one)
• 13 categories (down from a LOT more, when I was blogging exclusively about World of Warcraft)
• 284 tags (up a LOT, since I converted a lot of WoW categories to tags; I may further refine those soon)
• 2,063 comments (thank you!)
• 9,292 spam comments caught by Akismet
• Roughly 100 spam attempts per day blocked by Bad Behavior ¹
• ~800 RSS subscribers ²
• ~360 Twitter followers ³

The spam got so bad a couple weeks ago, I finally started blocking IP addresses via my .htaccess file; since then, I think the Bad Behavior numbers have jumped up a lot, but the number of comments I’ve actually had to delete via Akismet has dropped by a roughly corresponding number.

World of Warcraft

Yep, still playing, as evidenced by the WoW page here. (The link is in the top level menu.) Quite a few new achievements being reported, including finally getting Osprey credit for Stratholme! (I was there again to finish up my Argent Dawn rep, for the Argent Crusader title.)

In July, we were running 25-mans regularly, but some drama caused by one jerk (yeah, I said it) caused most of the Oroborus members to leave our merger with Closed. My friends and I stayed in Closed, and at least we’re getting some 10-man stuff done (which, sadly, is more than The Oroborus is doing at the moment), but we’re really disappointed not to be running 25-man Ulduar and ToC.

Right now, we’re stuck on Mimiron in Ulduar, and the Faction Champions in 10-man ToC. (I don’t think we’ve downed Freya yet, either.) The Faction Champions fight sucks. In fact, I could probably devote an entire rant to how much I hate that fight and the concepts behind it. Suffice to say, there a LOT of reasons I don’t like PvP, and almost every single one of them is embodied in that fight.

So that’s where Osprey is. Oh…I also bought another 24 mounts, so he could get his Albino Drake. Why? Because I could! 

Kestrel has run some Naxx-25 and gotten a few pieces of gear, so he’s doing okay. Falken, my level 80 rogue, got into Heroic Gundrak twice this weekend, as well as Drak’Tharon Keep once, and got some nice legs out of the former on Sunday. He’s my jewelcrafter, and has started to get back in the money making business. I’m holding steady at 10K gold, down from around 14K, but much of that loss is due to buy materials for crafting and selling.

I’ve also been playing my Druid, Owlhawk, and have him up to level 36. More recently, my second rogue, Talons, has been getting some playing time. Since he’s my enchanter, I thought it might be good to get him to 80 before the expansion.

Almost forgot: Yesterday, I finally respecced Osprey’s off-spec from Discipline, which I used once about a week after dual-specs came out, to Shadow. I then did the Tournament dailies, in his Holy gear. In fact, I haven’t even re-glyphed him for Shadow yet. (By the way, thanks to the bubblicious one for her Shadow spec, which I shamelessly copied. (She was the only person I could recall, at the moment, who has a SPriest.)

So, let me just say: Playing Shadow is so damned easy, it should be considered an exploit. I mean, SERIOUSLY! As Holy, I can kill anything; I have no problem soloing any Northrend content. It just takes a while to kill stuff. As Shadow, undergeared, unenchanted, unglyphed (Prayer of Healing?) and ungemmed (okay, I do have some Int & SP ‘chants and gems, but my +Hit is 86, alright?), my DoTs were killing stuff before I could initiate a second Mind Sear. Redonkulous!

Workshop Renovation

We’ve lived in our house for 21 years. In that time, I’ve always had some kind of work bench in the garage, but over the years, accumulated junk has rendered access to that corner pretty much impossible. In mid-August, my son Bryan and I built a garden shed for Mrs. Kestrel, and she was able to move some of said junk (okay, maybe that stuff wasn’t junk) from the garage. We had an understanding that once her shed was up, I would be able to clean out the garage and reestablish my workshop.

I intend to do a more in-depth post in a week or so (with before and after pics!), but suffice to say, except for one storage unit on order from Sears, the project is about 95 percent done. I still need to complete some organization of tools, but we moved a few large trash bins of stuff out of the garage and reorganized much of the rest. Huge props to Mrs. K for her help in going through all the cra…stuff in the garage, and helping with moving larger pieces of gear. We can still park both cars in there (something we never sacrifice is the ability to keep the vehicles out of the elements!), and I can actually get to all of my tools without fear of having a ton of junk burying me alive.

Sports

The baseball pennant races are in full swing, and my beloved Dodgers are clinging to what once seemed an insurmountable lead in the NL West. As the LA Times noted today, the team really needs an identity. While Manny Ramirez is seen by many as the face of the franchise, I see him more as a hired gun. I appreciate his contributions (not including his 50-game suspension earlier in the season), but it seems he did a lot more at the end of last season than he’s done this year.

The Dodgers really need a clubhouse leader to emerge, to energize the team and point them to the postseason. Joe Torre’s done a fantastic job as manager since arriving in Los Angeles, and I hope he stays several more years. But the real work gets done on the field, and it seems to me it’s been a long time since the Dodgers have had a galvanizing force on the field. I thought catcher Russell Martin might be that force, but apparently that isn’t the case. Except for Manny, the Dodgers are generally a faceless team, and faceless teams don’t win World Series.

College football kicked off this weekend, and I spent all of Saturday with the television on one game or another. Kudos to BYU for knocking off Oklahoma; I thought they could do it and it was nice to see my hunch proved right. I also caught the last quarter of UCLA’s season opener against San Diego State. The Bruins looked pretty good, considering how they imploded after their season-opening upset of Tennessee last year. We play Tennessee again next Saturday, and while I expect we’ll get beat, the Vols better not be complacent.⁴

I’m hopeful UCLA will improve on last year’s 4-8 debacle, and end up in a bowl game at season’s end. Doubt they’ll play in January, but on or after Christmas Day would be nice. I look forward to watching the game from Kauai!

Next weekend (well, Thursday), the NFL season starts. I don’t have much hope that the Kansas City Chiefs will be significantly better than last year: Their offensive line is pretty, well, offensive. However, I think there’s a chance the St. Louis Rams could shake things up a bit in the NFC West. That said, I’m picking them to lose to Seattle on Sunday, but I expect the game to be close.

I’m not a fan of either of the more popular teams here in South Dakota: the Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings. The Broncos don’t have much hope of surpassing the San Diego Chargers (my choice for the Super Bowl), and I don’t think they’ll even be in contention for a wildcard spot. The Vikes, on the other hand, have Super Bowl aspirations with Bret Favre at quarterback. However, both Green Bay and Chicago will have a lot to say about who wins the NFC Central. If nothing else, that race should be an exciting one, which is good, since those are the games I’m most likely to see on Sundays.

Finally, our minor league hockey team here in Rapid City is about to start its second season. Bryan and I went to a game in December when he was here for Christmas, and I think I’ll try to get to a couple games this season. Might even get Mrs. K to come along! 

Personal

Mrs K is leaving at oh-dark-thirty Wednesday to visit her best friend in San Jose; she’ll be gone for 10 or 12 days. When she gets back, we’ll be going to see "Mamma Mia!" in a touring production here in town. Mrs K saw the London production several years ago, and we both thoroughly enjoyed the movie version last summer. Yes, we’re ABBA fans, but then, we’re old enough to be!

I’m continuing to work on lowering my weight, but the traveling and then all the company we’ve had this summer has compromised that a bit. However, I’m down 11 pounds from when I consciously started working on it in April. With daily weighing, as well as knowing when I abuse my diet, I’m confident I won’t gain that back. At some point, I want to devote a more in-depth post to this; right now, I just want to acknowledge there are several blogging friends out there who have inspired me, and I will definitely recognize them in that upcoming article.

It looks like we’ll be heading down to the St. Louis area in late October (Halloween is the target date, right now). And last night I was informed our route will take us through Des Moines this time, so Mrs K can visit a large quilting festival there. I’ve no idea what I’ll do that morning. Any Iowans want to meet up in Des Moines for a couple hours around the 28th?

Finally, as I hinted above, we’re going to celebrate Christmas in Kauai this year with the family. We’ve already paid a deposit on a large house to rent for 10 days, and our tentative plans are to leave here on the 21st, then fly back on New Year’s Eve, getting home about midday on January 1. Mrs K’s brother and his wife will also join us after Christmas for a few days. Alie is already pretty excited about that (I think because she gets to see both of her uncles again; Uncle Bryan is almost as silly as Grandpa!).

So…for not having much to say, I’m glad I was able to squeeze it into such a small article! *snicker*  As always, I’m interested in your thoughts: Feel free to share in the Comments!

The State of the Kestrel and of the Aerie is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

 

Alrighty then…now that’s out of the way, what’s the point? The point is, in about 20 hours, Mrs. Kestrel and I will start driving mostly west and some south to California, before we fly to Honolulu on Sunday.

Our itinerary will take us to Evanston WY tomorrow (just NE of the Utah state line), then diagonally through Utah on Thursday, to Las Vegas. On Friday, we’ll drive across the Golden State (the not-so-golden parts: mostly desert) to Los Osos on the Central Coast (just north of San Luis Obispo), where we’ll spend the night at my mother-in-law’s.

Saturday, the three of us will drive down to Los Angeles (Palos Verde Estates, for those familiar with the LA area), to my brother-in-law’s house. Looking forward to some of Bill’s home-brewed beer and homemade wine! Saturday night, Mrs. K, her mom, and I are meeting friends for dinner: The woman who introduced us 36 years ago, and her husband. I’m hoping for Mexican food.

Sunday morning, we trek to LAX for our flight to Oahu. The five of us are renting a house in the Kaelua area for a week.¹

We don’t have any firm plans, but dinner with my wife’s uncle and a snorkeling trip to Haunauma Bay are on the agenda. I will also lobby strongly for dinner at the Kona Brewing Company brewpub (in fact, that will be my suggestion for dinner with Uncle Bob).

We return to Los Angeles on Sunday the 28th. The next day, Mrs. K and I will take Mom to her chemo appointment at UCLA Medical Center (and I’m hoping to visit the Student Store at my alma mater) before driving back up to Los Osos. We’ll stay there a couple days, then start the drive home on Thursday, October 2.

I’ll have the new MacBook Pro with me (more on that shortly), although I’m not planning on blogging. However, I hope to be twitting via the iPod Touch or the Mac. I’ll also try to check e-mail (the house we’re renting has wi-fi) and respond to comments here. However, opening the laptop will not be a major concern! Mai-tais and mahi-mahi will be.

A small consideration was the ability to play WoW; however, since that wasn’t a major factor, I ended up with the lower-priced MacBook Pro. It’s still 1.5 lb lighter than my Windows laptop, has the same 2GB of RAM (upgradeable to 4GB), and an nVidia GeForce video card.

I went to the local Apple authorized seller, but they had none in stock. I wasn’t about to pay $75 for them to have one overnighted. Instead, I drove up to Best Buy. I was in and out in about 5 minutes.

Say what you will about Apple, but their packaging is outstanding. I’m not one to get all gushy about the "out of box" experience, but it’s sure a LOT easier to unpack and set up any Apple product than it is a similar non-Apple item. (Note to Steve Jobs: License the MagSafe connector technology to everyone, make tons of money, and establish a standard for powering portable devices.)

It took almost no time for the Mac to boot up, set itself up and get my user info. I almost hate to say it, but I like the requirement to use one’s account password to install applications.

It took another 30 minutes, give or take (I wasn’t paying a lot of attention) for the Mac to update its software­–OS X, iTunes, Safari, and a couple other things. Then I downloaded Firefox.

A few differences between Mac and PC:

• Mac "delete" = PC "backspace"; there is no Insert/Delete key.
• Windows can only be resized from the bottom left corner, or the Max/Min buttons; I miss being able to resize from any edge
• Control key (and, I suspect, the alt/option key) doesn’t do the same as on a PC. Command-C and Command-V are the copy/insert functions.
• I love the Dock.
• Application menus are not on the apps themselves; instead, there is a contextual menu bar at the top of the screen. By contextual, I mean it changes depending on which window has focus. Took me a bit of getting used to, but I like it.

I had to deauthorize all my computers in Apple Store, in order to authorize the Mac for my iPod. Not a huge deal; I think it was authorized on my old work laptop and my son’s MacBook, in addition to my old laptop and my desktop. Might have been authorized on my old work desktop too. Not one of those things you’d remember to do, I think.

Now all I need is to figure out how to get my MS Office 2007 on to the Mac. I know I can run a Windows emulator; that may be a project going forward. I also know my son can probably provide a (legal–he’s an MS employee) key for me. Not sure he can get the software though. Will e-mail him to find out.

I also got Adium chat client for the Mac. It’s good, but Pidgin is still more laptop-friendly in terms of screen real estate. (I think Spaces may help there, but I haven’t had time to check that out.) I was very pleased to realize TweetDeck works under OS X as well.
I almost forgot to mention that the keyboard is very comfortable, and I love the way the touchpad works with two-finger scrolling as well as expand/contract. Very intuitive!

One thing I do need to find is a good list of keyboard shortcuts, until I get used to the different special keys on the Mac.

All in all, I’m very happy with the MacBook. Definitely looking forward to playing with it more on the trip.

And so until next month, mahalo for stopping by the Aerie, and aloha!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Hawai’i Calls! is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie