Mid-week update (and free boxes!)

I know, it's been a minute since I posted last. With all the moving and various things happening, it's been a little crazy around here, still. Pete and Brandon are officially moved in - that went down on Saturday. The whole day was really a series of failures, but we managed. All in all it went pretty well I suppose, no major disasters. It looks like Pete has officially claimed that he's unpacked, and the lack of boxes around the house would point to that being true. It's good to have everything settled in, more or less.

After moving stuff on Saturday, Molly and I went to Grand Rapids to see the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra concert called "Hot Hot Hot: A Night at the Copa". It was all Latin dance music from the symphony, and about half the songs featured an actual pair of dancers doing their thing. It was pretty awesome. The last song they played was a Latin-flavored medley of I Will Survive, Last Dance, and YMCA. How could that possibly not be awesome?

Molly informed me of something awesome today - that you can get free boxes through the USPS and eBay. A friend of mine at work told me that you could get free boxes from the actual post office, but I couldn't figure out where they were giving them away (and the post office scares me a little too). But Molly tipped me off that you can just order them for free from USPS.com. They have flat-rate and standard boxes in 6 different sizes. And they are free! So I ordered 10 of each, and they'll be here in 7 to 10 days. Sweet!

Today I got a second packet of information from Rosenbaum Eye and Laser regarding my upcoming LASIK correction. It was exactly the same as the first one - new prescription and all. Awesome, that makes me feel good that you guys are poking at my eyes and you're sending me packets of information twice.

The season premiere of Lost was on last night. Man that show is awesome. That's all I got there.

One of my more recent projects is I'm trying to get this Boxee software to work. The idea is you have this running on a computer of some fashion that's hooked to your TV. Boxee not only lets you connect to movies, pictures, and audio that's stored on any computer on your local network, it also connects to the internet and lets you access all the free streaming shows available places like ABC, NBC, and hulu.com (in addition to being a MythTV frontend, which doesn't help me...yet). It's also got a social spin on it, so you can see what your friends have watched, and recommend things to them, etc etc. Sounds pretty awesome.

I don't really have anything exciting to say other than I'm working on it, and I'm not sure what I want to hook to the TV. I have an old laptop from Molly with a broken screen that would be perfect, but it appears to be way too slow to be usable (after I finally got Linux installed on it, which was a major pain). My actual laptop doesn't have an Intel processor, so that won't work. I have another computer that would work, but it's a desktop, and I'm not terribly excited about having (another) desktop next to the TV. I want an AppleTV, but I not only can't really afford it, also they are due to upgrade them soon and I don't want to be left behind. What to do, what to do.

One more thing, I finally got my DTV Converter box coupons (i.e. gift cards) in the mail the other day. I did hook it up to my PC monitor and it does work fine, which is awesome. Originally I was thinking I could hook it to my cable and that would work, but upon further review, that's not true at all. I need to get a cheap set of rabbit ears and it will be good to go (right now I have a tiny wire, which isn't awesome, but does work). I don't really plan on watching much/any TV through it, but it's mostly the sweetness factor of it being hooked to my monitor.