I suppose an update is called for. This weekend my fiancee and I made a
trip up to Duluth for a little camping. We left Saturday afternoon from
Saint Paul and went to a little place called Snowflake, North of Arrowhead
Road on Rice Lake Road. It's actually a X-country skiing site that does
camping and disc golf during the non-snow season.

Even though it wasn't what I would call "backpacking", it was nice to simply
get outside, make a fire-cooked dinner, and toast marshmellows. Jake and
Meghan stopped up to share Smores' and conversation. It was a very nice
evening.

Last night, Tuesday, I finally managed to set up my computer. I sacrificed
a ceiling light in the basement for a grounded outlet. The circuit is
shared with the furnace and the television -- of all things, but with the
APC UPS 700 backup, I shouldn't see a whole lot of noise.

After getting a minimal setup, I plugged in the AT&T cable modem, only to
be presented the dreaded problem of not having a Windows or Macintosh
machine with which to register my account. Making the internet connection
is not a problem. I was able to receive an IP address. It's the stupid SAS
protocol-enabled registration client (that doesn't run in WINE) that needs
to be run to give me an account, password, and access to the rest of the
Net.

So, tonight I'll borrow the laptop from work, a Windoze 98 box, to do the
registration. Thereafter, I'll just plug my Linux box back in to the
network and be done with the prejudice registration application.

Why doesn't the world recognize that Windows and Macintosh are not the ONLY
operating systems in the world. I'd even agree to running Java on my machine
if people would quit using embedded IE to power their stupid proprietary
software! ARG!

Anyway, back to work!

^chewie