I spent the weekend in the Gila National Forest with my son, brothers and my dad. My dad, Austin and I drove up. We left about 3 A.M. on Thursday morning. My brother Ben flew into Phoenix, met up with my other brother Joel, and they drove the RV from there.

Here’s a link to my photos.

My brother Ben also took some photos, they live here.

It was a blast.

We’ve been working on the store for a few weeks, and it’s now ready to go. Check it out! The store is powered by Zen Cart, which seems pretty nice.

Buy something for your Significant Other!

http://kiladesigns.com/

So, anyway, he was worried about having to buy a new battery. It’s kind of a bummer, but what do you do, if you haven’t bought AppleCare?

Well, I suggested that he go down to our Apple Store, since he was in town for a few days, over Thanksgiving.

Oh, BTW, Happy (belated) Turkey Day!

The guys at the Apple Store, who are usually pretty good, basically told him that since he hadn’t registered the MacBook, they couldn’t even look it up! And if it wasn’t in their system, they couldn’t help him.

So he decided to come home and register it. Of course, after registering, it showed as “out of warranty” — he knew it was pretty close, and most likely over a year old. Close indeed.

He left San Antonio late Saturday night, to travel back home, and today I got an interesting email from him:

“I cannot believe it!

Apple is going to send me a free replacement battery for [my wife's] Macbook. Only 15 minuets [sic] on the phone – troubleshooting the steps, and they confirmed that even though I am exactly 62 days past my warranty they will replace it for free. I am stunned.

Much thanks to Elroy at Mac Support…”

Awesome! He then went on to tell me that he had researched it, and J&R Electronics had the lowest price on the battery, and he was just about to click “Buy” when he decided to call Apple’s Support line.

I know he’s glad he did… once again, Apple Support comes through. Tell me how often Dell, HP or Gateway would do this for you.

We don’t know exactly what caused her to get sick, but she didn’t respond well to treatments, and even the feeding tube didn’t work.
It’s been a long time since I have lost a pet, and I didn’t realize how much I would miss her.

Here’s a collage for your desktop. (1920×1200, PNG, 2MB)

Here’s a photo album, in her remembrance.

I won’t tell you how old she is, only that she’s about 5 years younger than I am.

We went to my parent’s house for dinner & cake, and we brought the ice cream. Dinner was barbecue brisket, barbecued sausage, grilled veggies and fruit salad. Yum!
My youngest sister was there, too. We hadn’t gotten to see her in a few weeks. Her roommate came over, too. So did my brother Vincent’s ex- and her two boys.

It was a good time. My sister made her guacamole sauce recipe, and we pretty much filled up on that (and chips) before dinner.

After dinner my dad and I went to Wal-Mart and got a DVI-HDMI cable to hook my laptop up to his TV, and when we got back I showed everyone the new 20 minute iLife ’08 guided tour. I then showed them a couple of cool things that the new Numbers spreadsheet could do.
It made a good impression on both my sister and her roommate, and I think even my Dad was somewhat impressed.

My sister has been looking at getting a new laptop for college anyway, and we’ve talked about a Mac before, and she’d even used them a semester or two in school, but man, she was ready to buy one tonight. I’m going to help her custom configure one that will fit her needs.

I think her roommate wants one, now, too but she’s not ready for a new computer just yet.

I really need to get on commission with Apple.

We ordered the Family Pack of iLife 08 as soon as I knew it was out, so we already have it on all of our computers, but I held off ordering the Family Pack of iWork 08 until I had some time to play with the trial some. It’s got a lot of really neat features. I’m considering using it for my next big project, instead of NeoOffice (which is OpenOffice for the Mac).

Yay! It’s a boy! Congratulations to us!

In the morning, Jill and Austin dropped me off at my client’s and then checked out of the hotel and drove down to Galveston. They didn’t spend much time on the beach, but had a little bit of fun before they had to come pick me up.

We drove back that night, and didn’t get home until almost 1am.

The drive was pretty good, though. We’re currently listening to the fourth Harry Potter Audiobook, The Goblet Of Fire. Austin is especially enjoying the audiobooks. He really enjoys listening to all of the “extra” stuff that they didn’t show in the movie.

In fact, we took him to go see the fifth movie, Order Of The Phoenix, and he commented on how it was “alright” but he couldn’t wait to listen to the book, so he could find out all the extra stuff! I hope someday he’ll want to read the books himself. It’s amazing how far he’s come in such a short time — after all, last year at this time he couldn’t read very well, and would refuse.
Personally, I’m listening to a different audiobook, when I drive by myself. It’s called 7th Son, and it’s what’s called a PodioBook. It’s an audiobook that’s distributed via podcast. You ought to check it out, but be aware that it’s an “adult” novel… it has language and themes that are for adults, like many novels. Here’s the premise:

It chronicles the story of seven strangers who have been brought together after the recent assassination of the U.S. president. These men quickly discover they all appear to be the same man … with identical childhood memories.

Unwitting participants in a human cloning experiment, these “John Michael Smiths” have been assembled to catch the man who murdered the president. Their target? The man they were cloned from; the original John Michael Smith, code-named John Alpha.

Anyways, it’s really good. I turned the first book, Descent, into an iPod compatible audiobook, to make listening (and bookmarking) easier, using a program called Audiobook Builder.

ABB is a really cool program, but if you decide to use it here’s a warning… apparently, iPods have a problem with audiobooks longer than about 2 1/2 hours. So if you create one, split it into multiple parts. For instance, Harry Potter 4 turns out to be eight 2 1/2 hour parts, and one 58 minute part.

It’s great having chaptered parts, because you can skip backwards or forwards in the story if you need to. Also, with mostly evenly-spaced parts, you don’t have to worry about having too much or not enough of the book on your iPod at any one time. As you finish each part, you can simply uncheck it in iTunes and check the next part, and then re-sync your iPod (or iPhone, as the case may be!)

I had a friend over working on it with me, and he showed me fwcutter, a tool that makes it easy to install proprietary network cards using NDISWrapper. Basically, what NDISWrapper allows you to do is to use actual Windows drivers in an emulation mode in Linux.
Previously I had read directions on using fwcutter, here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185174 and had put off migrating my wife’s laptop, since I didn’t want to leave her with a laptop that had no wireless, until I figured out how to make it work.

Here’s what we did:

• Noticed that wireless networking wasn’t working, but wired worked perfectly, of course.
• Ran fwcutter.
• Clicked the checkbox. It said something like “Get firmware”.
• Waited for it to install.
• Used wireless networking.
• Seriously.

I was completely blown away.

We had to spend a little time configuring audio and the correct video driver, but all in all it wasn’t bad.

Here’s the link on the audio: Trev’s Travels. Ignore the part about the video, it didn’t work on the MX3215, but the audio part did.

Here’s the link on the correct instructions to get video working: OpenChrome.

Now I just need to get DVD video working correctly. The audio works fine, but the picture doesn’t show.

Anyways, I hope all of this helps someone out there who’s trying to configure their MX3215. My wife probably won’t start using it until tomorrow or so, we’ll see how it all goes.

The doctor says my wife’s about 9 weeks along, and he’ll narrow the date down as she progresses.

I’m excited! I mean, this is my first child. I’ve been raising our son since he was 6, and love him to pieces, but this one’s my actual first.

I MADE A BABY! (Obscure reference to the movie Willow).

We won’t find out if it’s a boy or a girl for some time, yet, and we don’t care either way, we just want it to be healthy.