One of the great things about Firefox is the ability to add functionality through extensions. I just wanted to highlight a few of my favorites.

FaviconizeTab
I recently discovered this one via Geek in Heels and love it. I always have Gmail, Facebook, Google Reader, and Flickr up, so this really helps to reduce clutter in my tabs.

Web Developer
I downloaded this one years ago and it still proves useful. It provides a toolbar that lets you do things such as disable javascript, remove CSS, highlight images, resize the browser window, etc., which are all useful when working on websites. You can see it in the above screenshot, as well.

WiseStamp
This is a neat one that appends a signature to my outgoing email. It works with a variety of web-based email clients, such as Gmail, and allows you to include links to all your social media profiles, as well as your RSS feed. So, my signature currently looks like this:

For the Firefox users out there, what are your favorite extensions?

It’s going to be a long night of installing Windows updates and ripping CDs.

At least I got the thing online. While I was waiting for the UPS guy, I was thinking to myself, “How am I going to run an ethernet cable from the living room (where the router is) to the spare bedroom?” I was imagining going out and buying some massively long cable and something that involved staples and the ceiling. And then I happened to remember something that I had noticed when I was inspecting the apartment when I moved in.

There’s a hole in the wall between the living room and the bedroom.

So that’s what that was for! So I spent a good hour or two trying to force a cable through it, while trying not to get it stuck between the walls.

After exposing the wires from pulling too hard on it and jamming a few wooden skewers through it (and my hand), I finally got it through! Yay!

Now I just have to wait for the surge protector to come, cause right now my monitor is only on if the light switch is on. Hehe.

I decided that I needed one around. Mainly, so I can have a stable environment to play the Sims when the Pets expansion pack comes out in two months, but also to have access to my music and photos through TiVo at all times. Because right now, I can only get to it if my laptop is not on stand-by, and if it’s not on stand-by, then I have it in my hands, so I might as well listen to music or whatever that way. I basically just need some sort of stable computer, since Tera is kind of on the fritz and my other laptop is my work computer.

I went the lazy route and bought one through Dell instead of just building my own. I’m the worst geek ever.

I ended up getting an XPS 400. Here’s the highlight of the specs for the curious:
* Intel Pentium D Processor 820 (2.8GHz) w/ Dual Core Technology
* 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
* NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE
* 250GB SATA II Hard Drive (7200RPM)
* 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
* 19 in 1907FPCFlat Panel Display
* Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

Anyway, it should be here next week. I need to somehow get a copy of the first Nightlife expansion disc for the Sims, because I’m fairly certain that I accidentally threw mine away. I didn’t find it in the move, anyway. It’ll be nice to have a working DVD burner again. And a faster one. (Tera’s was 1X…WOOHOO!) Now I just need to figure out how to fit both it and my sewing machine on my desk….

My Tom Petty / Strokes tickets came in the mail today. I think I stared at them for about 10 minutes.

Let me know what you think of the whole “events” thing on the main page. I’m thinking of integrating it somehow with blog posts and photos in some sort of calendar-type arrangement. I haven’t really thought about it that much.

I keep screwing up.

I haven’t gotten it burned yet, but I’m definitely on the right track.

Since tmpgenc wouldn’t open my avi file (and since the other program I had put a watermark across the entire video), I had to find another program that would that could convert it to mpeg-1 (or mpeg-2 without audio if possible since I already have my audio file). Took me awhile to do that.

Finally found one, just got done making my mpeg-1 file, which I am now converting to mpeg-2. Then hopefully I can burn. What a process.

.avi file -> MPEG4 Direct Maker -> .mpg file
.avi file -> tmpgenc -> .ac3 file (audio)
.mpg file -> tmpgenc -> .m2v file (video)
.ac3 and .m2v files -> DVD Author -> VIDEO_TS folder
VIDEO_TS folder -> Nero -> DVD (yay!!)

This has taken over 24 hours.

Time: Last night.

Okay, I had two files that I was going to burn onto a DVD. One was already in DVD format, with the whole VIDEO_TS folder and everything. The other was an .avi file. Okay, this shouldn’t be too bad, right?

First things first, I have to convert the DIVX file to an mpeg. Load up TMPGEnc. My trial has expired. Okay. Go to the other computer. Download it. Copy .avi file over to that hard drive.

Ugh. It won’t open the file. Says it can’t or it’s unsupported. Google. Need some random codec to use instead of the DIVX codec. Whatever. Okay. Installed. File loads. Great. Set it up to make an .mpg file and go back to my laptop.

Two hours later, it is done. Good. Load the first file into TMPGEnc DVD Author. Wonderful. That works. Load newly made mpeg. No go. Audio is all wrong. Needs to be the same thing as the other file, which of course was made with a different program. No problems. I still have that program. Make audio. Now need separate video file.

Go back to desktop computer. Set it up to make an .m2v file. Go to bed.

Time: Today

Yep, the .m2v file finished overnight. Good. Load it into DVD Author along with audio file and other DVD file. Yay it works. Make menus. Start to make new DVD file.

Two hours later, it is done. Good. Make sure it works. Load up WinDVD. Oh, great. The file I just made (the m2v file) freezes after about 10 seconds. I check the actual m2v file. Freezes. Check the avi file. Freezes. It was just working before I started all this!!

Google. Need DiVX codec. I have that already. Thinks. Removes other random codec. Ah, avi file doesn’t freeze now. Good.

Go back to desktop. Remove codec. Oh yeah, now I can’t load the file. But if I have that codec installed, the m2v file freezes. What to do?

Right now I’m converting my avi file to an mpeg-1 file and seeing if that will load up on TMPGEnc without that other random codec. We will see in another two hours.

I’m using this time I have to backup all the crap on my hard drive. Yeah. Three DVD-RWs just for my mp3s. There’s nothing like watching DVDs burn at 1x. Whee. My sole source of entertainment at the moment is the constant stream of techno emitting from my speakers. And Lydia chewing my arm off.

Gonna go out tonight with the girls for a change. Should be fun. I’m broke, so I’m DD. Whee.

I was getting ready to go to bed, so I got myself a glass of milk and went into the living room to drink it. Tera was on the coffee table and taking up most of it, so I went to move her a bit, and somehow spilled milk on her. She’s okay, but her screen has streaks on it. I need to give her a bath now.

Anyway, it’s the last day of class. I decided I should make an effort and go so I can figure out what will be on the finals. Like I think that will help me. I have just come to realize that, with the expection of one class, my grades are abysmal. They can’t be helped. Of course, in one class, everyone’s grades are bad, but still. I need to start going to counseling again. Or move. Or both.

I also need to find a new job in the next week or so. If anyone knows of anything that’s open, please let me know. I might just go to a temp agency and see if they can find me something for the next couple months. I need something full time and that pays decently. The more money I can save up, the better.

Hopefully summer break (and maybe the time off I will probably be taking after that) will help me. I really, really hope so.

Here’s some new maps of the Knoxville area:

Out of all the APs, I’ve found:
41 are encrypted.
165 are not encrypted.
linksys is the most popular SSID with 44 occurances.
default is the second most popular with 13 (not counting nomad, UT’s wireless network).
6 is the most popular channel with 81 occurances.
1 is the second most popular with 35.
5 is the least popular with 1 occurance.

I get back from class today and open Tera up, like I always do. Except she doesn’t return from standby mode. She won’t do anything. She just sits there. Hitting the power button doesn’t do anything. I don’t know what to do. I can’t afford to ship her off again.

Tera came today. They replaced her LCD cover because it was cracking, so I will have to get new stickers for her. She looks so new.

Her sub is much better now. I can now enjoy my music without external speakers. Yay!

Put the pics I took with the stealth cam over spring break up in the gallery.

Stupid UPS. I believe they have some sort of conspiracy. Ten MINUTES after I left for class, they attempted to deliver Tera. BAH. I can just see them, all “Okay, she’s left home. Let’s go.” Grr.. Now I have to wait till tomorrow, when I am sure they will wait till 4:35 right after I have left for work to stop by.

Heading back to Knoxville tomorrow. I need to get some stuff worked out and see what is going on in my life. I may be moving this summer. I don’t know yet.

Tera got shipped today, UPS style. So I should get her in a few days. Unfortunately, I left my AC adapter and wireless card back in Clarksville, so I’m depending on my mom to get those shipped out to me.

I am optimistic about the future. What is meant to be will be.

I turned her off for awhile and then restarted her and now pcmcia works again. ???? I mean, I’m not complaining, but what is going on? People ask me how I know Tera is a female. THIS IS HOW.

I got to work today, pulled out my laptop, went to go sign on aim, and nothing. First, I thought maybe campus wireless was down. Nope. There were no lights blinking on my wireless card. I did a few things to try to get it to work and nothing. I rebooted. Nothing. So then I notice that neither Windows or Linux is detecting pcmcia on the laptop. Wonderful. So, I suppose now in addition to getting the headphone jack and the subwoofer fixed, I need to get my pcmcia slot fixed also. Just great. I highly doubt I will ever buy a Sager again. I seriously did not pay that much money to have something on this thing break every freaking month. Ugggh!

My neck pain has only gotten worse, so I was wandering around the apartment yesterday, wanting to go to Wal-mart to get a pain reliever but thinking I am perhaps not well enough to drive since I couldn’t move all that much. I went and stared inside my medicine cabinet. I had a few allergy pills and a bottle of Midol. The Midol says that it helps relieve backaches and headaches. I figured since my neck is located between my back and my head, I should try it. So I took two. After awhile, I could move my head. It didn’t stop the pain completely, but it at least allowed me to get some homework done. And I still haven’t done my 494 lab (which is now due on Friday).

Anyway, I also got the new photo gallery done. Now I just need to come up with a design for the site, redo the front page with some php magic, and then get everything else to match it.

My internet connection went out last night around midnight. Bellsouth was supposed to be doing some sort of “enhancement” and “transition” which required changing the way you login. Anyway, they sent everyone out an email a few weeks ago and claimed that when this happened, it would only be down for “1-2 minutes.” I can only suppose this is what they were doing last night, but I waited for an hour and a half for my connection to come back before I finally just went to bed. I, then, of course, got a ton of IMs on my phone from people wondering where I had gone to. Yeah, sometimes the IM forwarding can be kind of annoying.

I have done a lot of contemplating on my life recently. I may or may not write more about this later, but it has made me realize a lot of things about myself, both good and bad. But that’s a whole nother post in itself, and I have to get ready for class soon.

I received my 120 GB hard drive today and I immediately went out and got myself a #10 Torx screwdriver so that I could install it.

So using this screwdriver and after a little bit of struggling (that thing was on there good!), the case came off.

Then I removed the 20 GB hard drive that was currently in there. I stuck both the old drive and the new drive into a PC.

After that, I put in the mfstools cd that came with my Hacking TiVo book and booted up the computer. However, it was showing that my TiVo drive was only 10 GB. After doing a little research on this, I found out it was locked. I had to get a DOS boot disk and copy over qunlock.exe to unlock the drive. After doing all that, I was finally good to go. So with a little Linux magic, everything on the old drive was copied over to the new one.

Then after about two hours, it was done. I took out the new drive and put it back into my TiVo.

And now my TiVo has 120 gigs!

I went to Wal-Mart yesterday to get some groceries and a few other things. I need some DVD-RWs so I can do some backups so that if my hard drive is to crash again, I won’t lose everything. However, Wal-Mart (at least the one closest to me) doesn’t seem to sell them. I stood there for like twenty minutes staring at the CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD-Rs, DVD+Rs, DVD+RWs, and whatever else, but did not see a single DVD-RW. I did get some CD-Rs though so I could copy all my cds for use in my car. Then I don’t have to worry about them all getting stolen again.

Got some bad news today. I am not going to get the box set that I ordered. Apparently they were out of stock. And since it’s out-of-print, it makes it extremely hard to find. Especially for that cheap ($30). They go for about $60 on Ebay and Amazon has some used ones for $100+. Don’t really want to pay that much, so I’m trying to decide what to do.

As you may or may not have noticed, my comments are down and I don’t expect them to be back up. I suppose I will find another comment system to use, but it makes me sad to lose all of the ones that I had. Not that I can see them right now anyway. Hmm.

My new hard drive for TiVo will be here tomorrow. I need to go buy a #10 Torx screwdriver so that I can open up the case. All I have is a #15. Wal-Mart didn’t have one.

Now, in addition to all my other classes on Tuesday, I have to go to an extra one for 365 so I can learn how to do our project. You’d think we could just cover that stuff in class or something. Or have a lab on something we talk about in class. Instead, I have to stick around campus for another three hours on Tuesdays, thus putting my days from 9:40 am to 8:00 pm. Anyway, the project does sound halfway interesting anyway. We’re going to be working with XML and Java. Which really ties in nicely with 494.

I still haven’t found any motivation to get wireless working in Linux. Heh. I downloaded this program to display lyrics along with my mp3s and it’s got a karaoke function that displays a line of a song at a time. And the karaoke files are made by the users, so I’ve been making some of those. Yeah, I probably need to be working on my 494 lab instead. It’s due Thursday.

My best friend called me with some exciting news tonight. She is engaged. There is no wedding date yet (and probably won’t be for awhile), but she was excited nonetheless.

I need to see if I can find someone to work for me on the 6th. Since Brina is coming down, she will probably get here about the time that I have to go into work. Or while I’m at work. Plus we are planning the party for that night. And I would prefer to not have to rush home and all that.

I need to go grocery shopping tonight. When I finally got out of class today, I called Little Caesar’s, cause I had a pretty big craving for a baby pan pan and some crazy bread. Well, guess what? They don’t MAKE baby pan pans anymore. And they were “out of deep dish.” So I went home and made grilled cheese sandwiches with month old bread. I’m surprised the bread has kept as well as it has actually. It has a sell-by date of January 3. But it wasn’t green and it wasn’t hard, so I used it.

I moved all the parts in my crappy desktop over to another one, so I could get my files off (again). At least now I have a desktop that halfway works, so when I get TiVo’s new hard drive I can get that all set up. Now I just need to finish cleaning the apartment. I halfway started yesterday, but then got into the computer thing and now it is ten times as messy since I have desk drawers and random computer parts all over the living room.

I also need to clean up my mp3s. I have like 6 or 7 copies of some songs due to streamripping several stations, copying old files over, ripping cds, and downloading. So while I’d like to say I have the 1722 mp3s that winamp says I have, I really don’t, because half of them are duplicates.

Classes are going well. Besides the fact that I can’t seem to force myself to go to bed early enough to want to stay awake through them.

It’s really cold here. I don’t like it. Needs to warm up. My electric bill was crazy this month.