Pixel came in to work today, having been freaked out by yesterday's earthquake. His owner says that makes him an official cat herder.

It's great to work in a place where I'm not the only person to dress up for Halloween. Britney, Fresno Barbie, and our own personal Merchant Demon.

The One Laptop Per Child team pushed out another software release yesterday called Ship 1 build. This is what is supposed to be on the laptops for testing at the factory in Shanghai. I pieced together the proper downloads on to a USB stick and rebooted to autoinstall the update. The firmware went in OK, but the system software was corrupted. After a few more tries, I switched to a new USB stick and finished the install as well as updating the second laptop. The new release now shows a web browser start page for a bundled content library. I also loaded a bunch of new software add-ons from the developer's site. I noticed for the first time that the media player shows visualizations when playing audio. And both the mesh and wifi networking seem much more robust. Alas, the battery charging and battery level gauge are still busted.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Made my first trip back to Craven Tire after their sale to Mr. Tire for a last-minute state inspection. They've promised not to change, but I'm already noticing one: the magazines suck. They have this great waiting area with wi-fi, TV, comfy seats, and (used to be) a great selection of magazines. Now, if you don't want to read about your car or the news, you're screwed. Fortunately, there was entertainment for me since the NBA season starts tonight so that's all over the Sports section. In other news, the service seems the same, except I miss my old reception dude, who had a great sense of humor that really put you at ease while you wait. But it's still a quick in-and-out as long as you call ahead. Except for the fact that my car was done a half an hour before the reception guy noticed it. The same reception guy who called me at 7:30 this morning to tell me my husband had FAXed the corporate office asking for a state inspection. Considering he woke me up, it took me a few minutes to process all the errors in the statement and come up with what he was attempting to communicate. But the place seems to be mostly still decent. As long as you bring your own reading material.

I'm From New York, USA. and iiM New, to Thiis,

iiF you wanna Know more about Me Just I.M. me on AIM :

FreshMax 2 Def or D0m1noEffect --hardbody207

Eirik brought up a rave Chris had mentioned earlier. Silly Eirik, if he wanted to go he shouldn't have brought it up 2 hours in advanced~ Oh well, seeing as day of tickets are more expensive we tried to explore other avenues, but the raaaveee sooo appealingggggg

Okay, we folded. 220 of our combined money gone, thanks to Monster Massive 2007. This event was extremely better and HUGER than LoveFest2007, which was spectacular in itself in June. I'd have taken pictures but no bags allowed and I didn't wanna lose my phone....AHHHH I can't wait till New Year's! So much funnn

-- Teehee

There is a special place in geek hell for the Installation Wizard.


Click next.

I'm up late tonight testing the new, near final Trial-3 software of the XO laptop. I flashed the laptop memory with my trusty 1gb "red brick" usb drive. With a few additional tweaks, this is what will be burned into the first wave of 100,000 mass production laptops to fulfill the Give 1 Get 1 offer and some developing countries such as Uruguay and Peru. The wifi seems to be working much better in this build, but a bug still persists with the NiMH battery not charging fully. I've never been able to run the laptop on battery power for much more than two hours.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

AIM--sickVW4u2c

It's a busy night in the virtual neighborhood.

The colorful stick figure icons on screen are of XO laptop hardware and software being tested all over the world. I had a nice chat with a computer enthusiast in Austria tonight who was running the emulator on his PC.

- mike lee - wheaton, md