So it’s been a good and busy weekend, just like I expected. Several things have happened in the last days, so I’ll just touch upon them here tonight.

For starters, I’ve been playing around with the new Flickr Uploadr. They officially released the 3.0 version of Uploadr last week, and I’ve been playing with it pretty much since its official release. There are several reports of strange behavior, but I’ve yet to discover anything major (short of a strange bug-like problem with the login and granting of permissions which has to happen the first time it’s used) wrong with it.

To be quite honest, there are things I prefer about the old version; however, there are some significant things in the new version that truly trump the old one. For instance, I can do all my uploading in one batch now. This is mostly since I don’t have to add all the pictures in a batch to a single group anymore. The UI allows me to do some very nice things (namely specify which pictures go to which set(s), rather than the entire batch to a single set). Overall, I’m quite pleased with it, although it’s taking a little getting used to in regards to actually doing the titles and descriptions in this version. I have gotten so accustomed to the web form where that operation was performed that it’s a little strange to be doing it right within the Uploadr now.

I might have to peruse and download an update to the Uploadr sometime this week, but I’m pretty happy with the additions. Go Flickr!

I spent most of Saturday doing two different things. For starters, I finally took some of the captured video from the last few months and burned it to DVD. Not as a backup, but as a ‘finished’ DVD. So I managed to clean out somewhere on the order of 8GB of video, so I should have enough room for doing some small capture projects this week without issue.

While the DVD material was being encoded and burned, I spent some significant time down in the basement doing ‘phase two’ of the voice, video, data wiring. I started out by finishing the voice distribution termination for the wire pulled to the basement. This now means that all the jacks I installed both upstairs and downstairs over the last year or so are functioning (for voice service). That’s a nice project to have completed. I then bundled, routed, and cut to length all of the data and video cables running to the box. They’re not yet terminated at the box, but the cable is all nicely routed to it.

As a random note, tonight’s picture is an example of why I needed to get that voice termination done — so this length of POTS wire could be removed (which it now has).

I need to do some more clean-up type stuff (I have to get a few more cable ‘hangers’ (they’re just PVC conduit straps), but the basement looks much neater now that there’s not bunches of unterminated cable hanging from the ceiling. It’s like the project is actually getting somewhere now! 🙂

Once I do some more work down there, I intend to take some pictures of the finished work. That likely won’t be for some time, though.

Saturday evening I sat down and watched the Celtic Woman Christmas special that I’d captured from PBS. It was quite good, as I expected. Lots of very unique harmonies and basically all the stuff I’ve become accustomed to hearing from the Celtic Woman group. They’re quite talented, and after hearing stuff like that I return to strange dreams of becoming a professional vocalist. 🙂 It’s pretty awesome to hear stuff done like that and dream to be anywhere close to that good. 🙂

Today (Sunday) was quite busy as well. After church and our return home, I took a nap. Beth brought Kirstin up to nap with me, so [Kirstin] and I were both napping for a time. We went back in to town again this afternoon to do the annual Christmas caroling expedition, which was once again a good time. It was especially nice since there was a larger group of guys. And afterwards there was to be a potluck. Can’t go wrong with a potluck!

By the time we got home (just after 8PM), Kirstin was well alseep. So tired that she didn’t wake up when removed from the carseat, didn’t wake up when taken out of her snowsuit, and didn’t wake up when she was put in her sleep sack and put to bed. It’s tough being a baby, you know. 🙂

And so that’s basically how the weekend has gone. I’m trying to get a few things done tonight so that we can hopefully get the Christmas letter and all that good stuff out the door by, say, Wednesday. That’d be nice. Since most of our postal activity will be within the region, everything we send out should be delivered within two days…

Anyway, all that said, I’m about to head for bed…so until next time…

“Black holes are where God divided by zero.”
– Steven Wright

–MZ