The Geekess

Coupleness News

Yesterday our six-month wedding anniversary. It's been a good six months with Jamey. :)

My family gave us our first (new) Christmas ornaments today. (Jamey's dad gave us his Christmas decorations when he moved to Illinois.) We received some red and white glass bulbs and a glass snowman that says "Our first Christmas". It feels odd to say this is our "first Christmas", as if our last four Christmases as a couple doesn't count.

Christmas 2007

Christmas was good. We spent the day with my family in Rainier. My friend David happened to be in Rainier to visit his parents, so he stopped by for a chat. I haven't seen him since the wedding because we've both been so busy with work. Christmas is a good excuse to pick up communications with people I've lost touch with.

Jamey and I both received lot of Christmas gifts. My favorite Christmas gifts were a Japanese tea set and arm warmers for cold weather biking. Jamey decided to find a wacky USB device to give me. He passed up the USB pole dancer and the humping dog at Fry's Electronics. Instead he bought me a USB Hello Kitty that is supposed to light and move as you type on your keyboard.

The rub is that it probably doesn't work under Linux and it's up to me to write a driver. ;) The box doesn't have a Windows logo on it, so it's probably not a certified Windows driver. That makes it likely that it will pretend to be a HID device. Yet another entry for the unusual HID device list. I predict much reverse engineering, possibly with a Windows laptop and USB snoop, or a Linux laptop with qemu and usbmon. It will be a fun challenge, and a cute set of patches.

Thoughts on Future Christmases

Jamey and I had a big discussion about Christmas a couple days ago. Jamey doesn't like all the expectations around Christmas, and hates letting people down. He says he doesn't need all the presents he gets. I personally don't like all the commercialism around Christmas. I like giving gifts, but I wouldn't mind only getting a few special gifts each year. We both agreed that we love the smell of christmas trees, but having a big christmas tree with just a few gifts below it would look silly.

So I thought up a solution for our problem. I plan on buying a pine or fir seedling from the Portland Nursery. I'll keep it in a container and trim it back every year so it says small. (The Portland Nursery website lists the pine species that will grow well in containers and how much they grow, so I don't get stuck with something that will get out of hand.) When Christmas comes, we'll bring the tree in for three days and decorate it. If Mike doesn't trust it on his nice hardwood floors, we'll keep it outside for the first couple years.

I have a picture of me with my new glasses, but I haven't downloaded it from Jamey's camera yet. So you get a text-only post instead. :)

Christmas was good and bad at the same time. I got a bunch of kitchen stuff and a techie book I wanted (Linux Device Drivers). Unfortunately, I had a cold for a week and food poisoning for an entire day. The food poisoning was from the Vietnamese restaurant near campus, so I've lost faith in a favorite haunt.

We moved my grandma over the break; she's out of a trashy trailer park and into a nice senior housing development now. She's even got HUD support, so she only has to pay $143 a month for her place. I'm jealous because she has a 1 bedroom with a dishwasher and washer/dryer hook-ups.

We added Jamey as a roommate to my apartment today. They charge a $50 roommate fee, which sucks. They also noticed that my rent hadn't gone up like it was supposed in July. I've been saving $50 a month because of that computer glitch. Now we're paying $600 a month for our studio. That's including utilities, but not internet. The rent is going to go up in July again, so it's not inconceivable that I'll be paying $650 by summer.

Since our rent is so stinkin' high, I started looking around campus at non-university housing. I called a couple old-style apartment buildings, and two places had 1 bedrooms for $550. With the rent increase in July and utilities factored in, that makes a 1 bedroom about the same price as my studio. It would be at least 100 more square feet, and I wouldn't have to worry about student status anymore.

There's an apartment available for viewing on Monday, and Jamey and I are going to take a look at it. I'd hate to move at the start of a new term, but I'd rather jump on a new deal than wait for spring break or summer and miss a good deal.

Current mood: planning