KaiSchaller.com

I’m giving the WordPress iPhone/iPod touch app a try. Not the easiest thing in the world to type on a touchscreen keyboard…

In other news I can apparently type 101 WPM (on an ergonomic keyboard.) I’m a happy camper.

I signed up with Mint.com — a free money management site — to get a more detailed picture of my financial situation. By default they provide you with various different alerts, such as when a large amount clears your account, if you have a low balance, etc.

I had to chuckle at the alert I saw today when I logged in. How quickly things change when you don’t live with your girlfriend’s parents anymore:

I’m happy to say that the move to our new apartment was a complete success. The AT&T U-verse techs ran into a little bit of trouble, but everything has been resolved and is running smoothly (as is evidenced by my writing this post.)

I’ll probably try to post a few pictures once we get everything cleaned up, but I might just open them up to my flickr contacts for the sake of privacy.

Okay, listen: I tried to give Vista a chance, I really did. And if you think about it, it’s not even really Vista’s fault (although maybe it is…) that I plan on going back to XP. Mostly I blame Creative, who can’t seem to get their act together to release a decent set of sound card drivers. I ended up tracking down a set of “unofficial” drivers provided by daniel_k which gave me much better results, but still not perfect.

Time to head back to the OS where everything actually worked.

I was greatly surprised when my PC contracted a virus, even more so when I couldn’t easily remove it.

Instead of spending several hours trying to get things back to normal (and afterward not even being sure that everything had been cleaned properly) I decided to reinstall the OS. Instead of re-installing Windows XP I decided to force Windows Vista on myself.

Before the cries of disbelief and rage start being flung my way, let me explain that there is only one reason I am doing this: it will make me use my Mac more.

I just received an e-mail from YouTube that said the following:

“This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by VAN MORRISON / EXILE PRODUCTIONS / EXILE PUBLISHING claiming that this material is infringing:

Hamburg Street Performers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Yj9c66jZE“

Since the video is no longer viewable (“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by VAN MORRISON / EXILE PRODUCTIONS / EXILE PUBLISHING”) I’ll have to summarize its content for you. While I was in Hamburg, Germany I happened across a couple of street performers (one on guitar/drums, the other on upright bass) that were playing various songs. I took a short video of them with my digital camera and uploaded it to YouTube, where it has sat for almost a year. The song they were singing was a Van Morrison tune — regardless, I find this very surprising.

Not being able to take video on a public street without someone claiming copyright is a little too Big Brother for my taste.

It looks like I just missed the rain. The above image is a picture I took from the front porch just before I went on my semi-regular walk around the neighborhood. The days here have been lovely lately.

My best friend is getting married on Saturday. I can’t believe we’re all grown up… but I’ll continue to enjoy the fact that we’re all still young adults!

With the promise of a new apartment looming on the horizon, Jill and I have been whipped into a furniture-buying frenzy. Neither of us have much actual furniture, so we’re essentially furnishing most of the new apartment from scratch. Some things we have acquired thus far:

• Reclining black leather sofa
• Dining room table with stools
• Glass and black metal TV stand

We’re going to make a trip up to at least one of the Illinois IKEAs this weekend, and maybe both depending on if all of our items are in stock at the one in Schaumburg. Things that we will likely purchase at IKEA:

• Bed frame
• Headboard with hidden storage shelves
• Coffee table
• Dresser

Luckily Jill’s parents offered to pick up the IKEA tab, which will be incredibly helpful when you factor in all the other costs of moving. A big thank you to them, and hopefully I’ll be able to post some pictures when the time comes!

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, but I’ve been a bit busy. The story: my Internet connection was recently upgraded to 10mbps/1mbps (down/up). Without further adieu, some screenshots:

I’m officially writing my first post of WordPress 2.5. Happy Cog definitely helped tighten the admin interface, and gave it that “clean” look. I haven’t noticed much difference in functionality, but then again, I don’t usually go past the usual simple write-and-post process.

The reason for writing this post is that I wanted to share with you something incredible that happened over the weekend. Don’t get too excited; it’s not that great, but made my jaw drop nonetheless.

I went home to St. Joseph to give my mom her birthday present — a new MacBook. She’s been putting up with a clumsy Gateway laptop for a while now, and the problems were starting to mount. After continually singing the praises of OS X, my dad and I both chipped in to buy her a Mac to alleviate these problems.

One recurring theme was that her printer would just stop working for her with the Gateway. Lo and behold, we plug it into the MacBook and it’s ready to go in 3 seconds flat; printed a test page and it worked great.

Since she still needed to use the Gateway for her office, it was time to figure out what was going wrong. After some basic troubleshooting I uninstalled the printer software and drivers in order to start from scratch. We plugged the printer in to the USB port and the New Hardware Wizard appeared, as expected. Also expected was the “No drivers were found” message that appeared on the next screen as well as the “Would you like to search online for drivers?” prompt.

Now get ready…

For the first time in my many, many years of using Windows XP, the internet search for drivers actually worked. Printed a test page and all was well.

Mind blown. The end.