After L’s chiro appointment this afternoon we decided to have an early dinner at a sushi/japanese restaurant that was a few doors down from the chiropractor’s office. When we got there, we found that they opened at 5:00, and it was only a quarter of four.

No problem – we’d do some shopping for groceries at the nearby Raley’s. Shopping was uneventful, and the sun had gone behind the hills and thus the temperature was dropping to the chilly side of pleasant, so we felt ok about leaving the groceries in the trunk while we had dinner. We were still a few minutes early, so we jaywalked across Craig St and checked out Blockbuster Video to see if they had any cheap DVDs that we wanted for sale.

They didn’t, but they did have “Series 7” available to rent. I was looking forward to seeing this in the theatres, but perhaps inevitably it appeared to have gone “straight to video”. See http://www.series7movie.com/ for more info, but basically, its premise is that you are watching a TV “marathon” of several consequitive episodes of a fictional reality TV program. Set in the near future, people are randomly selected to hunt each other down until only one is left alive.

If it had been made 5 years ago it would have been funny and amusing satire on the subject of reality TV shows such as “COPS” and MTV’s “The Real World”. It is scary that instead, it is almost indistinguishable from them. The few episodes that I have seen of “Survivor” and “The Mole” – all developed more recently since when “Series 7” was conceived – differ only in that, in this reality, the people on these shows don’t actually have to kill each other.

But back to dinner… we pigged out on sushi in a contented way, and rolled ourselves home, grateful that we had already done the shopping.

Today the men from Tints USA came and installed the window film. They did this by applying the film to the inside of the windows. We selected a strong 80% rejection strength on the East and West facing windows, and a lighter film to the South and North facing windows. It took them about 3 hours – and then they had to come back after they left because they left a whole bunch of stuff behind on our kitchen table.

Now the natural light in the house is noticeably reduced, and has a bronze tint. We can pull the slat blinds all the way instead of leaving them angled, and I think we’ll be a lot more comfortable in Summer.

Stan and Jeanne wanted to take us out to dinner tonight. We arranged to meet at the Regent Resort in Summerlin (Now called the JW Marriott, it got bought I think) for the buffet.

We figured we’d catch a movie at the nearby Suncoast prior to dinner, so after checking out the movie schedules in the paper, we find that _Gosford Park_ is showing at 4:00pm. Excellent!

Seeing it was such a nice day we went for a walk around the neighbourhood to see the progress being made by the builders on the nearby “Bradley Ranch II” housing development. The first bunch of houses were up, and interestingly some of them were at the point where the wiring had been put in but the drywall hadn’t gone up. So we could see where they were running the CAT5e by default. Yes indeedy, this particular housing development has data wiring as an option. Same builder, different development, 12 months later. They are offering the thing they wouldn’t do for us when we were trying to get some non-standard wiring options.

In the same model house as ours, it appears that they are putting one cat5e drop into 3 of the 4 bedrooms (why?) and interestingly, another one in the media bay in the living room. Hmm. I guess they’re not stupid after all. Digital Convergence Ready.

Oh well. Ours is way better, especially now with the added network ports.

We drove to the movie by way of Meadows Mall to look for slippers for me, a baking dish (as specified by Alton Brown of “Good Eats” infamy: www.altonbrown.com) and possibly a sweater for Lisa. And coffee. Here’s the score:

• Macys did not have a backing pan of the requisite specifications (heavy, non-stick, shiny, upright handles, big enough for two burners, turned out edges for crimping foil) so that acquisition was left for another time.
• No store in the mall had sheepskin slippers, therefore these would be acquired via the web (www.llbean.com).
• The Coffee Beanery in the mall *did* have coffee.
• On the out through Macys for a second time, and Lisa found a sweater while Colin bopped to the unlikely jazz-fusion playing on the muzak speakers.

Back to the car and off to see Gosford Park at the Suncoast.

It was about 2 hr 15 min in length, so we have to scramble a little to get back to the car and drive down the road to the nearby Regent/Marriott, where we said we would meet Stan and Jeanne at 6:30.

Walking in from the parking garage, we spied Stan. “Guess what?” he asked rhetorically. “The buffet is closed for remodeling!”

So instead we checked out an Irish Pub that was located elsewhere in the casino complex. It has pretty good food, interesting beer, and a butter toffee pudding to die for.

I’m getting a real buzz out of sitting here in the living room, with my laptop, writing this entry and listening to Dream Theater’s new album on the big living room surround sound speakers. And I’m connected to the Internet through the new network port. Heh…

Several interesting things happened today:

Firstly, the man from USA Tints showed up to give us a quote on adding a UV/Heat repelling film to the windows in the house. Our friendly neighbours across the street had had this done, and apparently it really improved heat retention during the Winter, and kept glare and heat down in the Summer. Seeing as we’d had real trouble in our offices (East-facing windows) last year in the Summer, we thought we’d get a quote – cost and feasibility.

Sonny showed up at 8:30 (I wondered why had “Sorry” written in italic script on the breast of his shirt, but apparently I was mis-reading) and turned out to be a nice chap, ignoring both the Kami the Cat (who had to help) and the making of breakfast (which could not be interrupted).

It seems that the window treatment thing will be quite feasible, so we made an appointment for next Wednesday for “the guys” to do the installation. Sonny said it would take 3 hours.

The second thing that happened was my secret order of geekwear from ThinkGeek was delivered. I had been dropping hints of “a present” for Lisa and she was very curious so it was with some enjoyment I presented her with a black T-shirt decorated with

SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 records selected

OK, so it’s a geek joke. The other item in the order was a sweatshirt for me decorated with the chemical molecular structure of caffeine. What can I say? I’m a geek.

Tonight I cooked one of my standard recipes and it turned out pretty good:

Ingredients:

• pasta (penne)
• 3 Italian sausages
• 1/2 head of garlic, thickly sliced
• 4 sun-dried tomatoes
• a bunch of asparagus, cut into 1.5 inch lengths
• olive oil, red chili flakes, oregano, wine or chicken stock

Algorithm:

• Put a big pot of water on to boil.
• Extract the sausage from the casings and dump into a large saute pan, on medium heat. (Your choice of saute pan should be governed by the fact that you will be adding the cooked pasta to it to toss with the sauce.)
• Potchki with the sausage with your favorite stirring tool to break it up into small pieces.
• Cover the saute pan and turn to low heat to render the fat out.
• Put the sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl with a few tablespoons of water/olive oil to cover and blast on high in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Put aside to continue soaking.
• Uncover the saute pan and if necessary, spoon off excess fat. You want to leave some in the pan of course, but if the sausages are a bit on the blubbery side this will be a necessary step. Use your judgment.
• chuck in the garlic to brown along with the sausage. Potchki some more.
• Whoops – forgot the chili flakes. Toss a sprinkle in now. Potchki. 
• If the water in the pasta pot is boiling, toss the penne into the pot.
• turn up the heat under the saute pan to medium.
• Toss the asparagus into the saute pan, and swish around. If you can scorch the asparagus a bit that’s good.
• I usually add a shake or two of oregano at this point.
• Take out the re-hydrated tomatoes, shake off the water/oil, and slice each into 8ths. Toss in the pan.
• Lots of brown bits forming in the pan? Good. Deglaze with a splash of wine or stock, potchki with the stirrer and get the pan shiny and the brown bits into the sauce.
• Add the rest of the stock and potchki a bit, then turn the heat down. You want to reduce and thicken the sauce to coincide with the pasta reaching al dente or whatever your desirable texture is.
• When the pasta is done, drain and add to the saute pan.
• Toss. Serve promptly.

I really wanted to like Bella Luna. For some time now we’ve been searching for a special restaurant, somewhere we could go for our anniversary every other year. Whilst living in Auckland, NZ, a place called “Four Steps To Heaven” fit that bill nicely, until it closed. In Marin, CA, there was “Frantoio”. So far we haven’t found anywhere in Las Vegas that could be said to fit the bill, but we both had suspicions that an Italian restaurant called “Bella Luna” might be it.

Alas, it was not to be.

Seeing as today *is* our 7th wedding anniversary, we hopped in the car and drove off to find the restaurant. After taking the wrong turn and deviating slightly from our intended path, we found the restaurant. Located in a unit in a corporate office park, it felt a little weird, but on the inside it felt a little more welcoming, despite the plaster tile ceiling. The decor was mainly yellow with blue glass accents.

Well – this isn’t a restaurant review, so I’ll just say that Lurch the waiter was a little disconcerting, and before we were halfway through our meal, all the other guests had left and we were alone in a pool of circling waiters. It *was* a Tuesday night, we didn’t expect a crowd, but the effect was a little… uncomfortable. I really didn’t enjoy the dish I’d ordered, although I thought Lisa’s order of risotto was pretty good.

It wasn’t really the food, or the service, or the decor. It just wasn’t *right*. So we’re still searching. Maybe by next anniversary we will have located a suitable venue.

Normal work day. After work, will try to get some music/singing done.

I have to thank Lise Solvang for reminding me about the Moomin books by Tove Jansen. It turned out that Lisa had never heard of them, and as they are a favorate part of my childhood, I order a few on Amazon.com: Comet In Moominland, Finn Family Moomintroll, MoominSummer Madness, and MoominValley MidWinter.

I’ve been reading a chapter to Lisa as a bedtime story, and we are both enjoying them very much.

Yesterday being Sunday I decided to do one of my pending house chores and run some more CAT5e cable through the walls. Yup, I know it’s hard to imagine how our house could need more network cable, but long-time readers may remember that when we designed our network in discussion with the contractor people, we deliberately omitted the living room from the list of rooms to get network outlets.

The reasoning went something like: We’re going to be watching TV and eating dinner in the living room, so who needs the Internet?

Well, since then, there’s been some developments. We’ve heard about: Tivo boxes record video signals on hard drives that get their TV schedule info through the ‘net; Hi-fi audio players that will sit in your audio rack and play MP3 files from computers on your local network; xboxes that will play film and game DVDs and download addition information over the ‘net – including the possibility of multi-player games…

Not that any of these devices are in our near future, as far as we know, but things happen fast these days and we wanted to be ready. Hindsight is usually pretty clear. Besides, it *would* be nice sometimes to sit on the couch in the living room and work on a laptop. The couches are comfy.

Anyway, after some measuring of the distances involved, and taking an inventory of all the left-over bits and pieces in my spare part boxes, I drove off to Home Depot and bought 500ft of CAT5 cable, a bunch of RJ-45 connectors and a crimping tool, and some wall-mounted faceplates with pluggable sockets.

I could go into more details here but I won’t. Consider then available on request.

I think I had to make a total of 5 trips into the ceiling cavity to run cables. This might possibly have been reduced to 4 had I known in advance that I would have to drill a new hole in a horizontal stud in order to feed the cable down one wall.

Anyway, now we have a new LAN port behind the couch, as well as one behind the TV in the media bay. Digital convergence can now arrive – we are ready!

Later:

Arm and leg muscles very sore. Clambering about in rafters resulting in aching limbs. Should have predicted this.

I tested the new LAN drops by moving my laptop from port to port and checking we had connectivity. We do. Looks like my beginner’s style of crimping RJ45 connectors is acceptable.

Trying to think of pun involving “crimping my style” but can’t make it work.