Tada!

I'd say about half of my readers have already heard about this, but some may not have (never got ahold of Jeff while I was in Vernon), and others haven't actually seen it, so a quick entry is warranted. Besides, if anything I've done lately is important enough to record this would be the one.

Nina and I are finally engaged! I managed to take her by surprise, which I was rather proud of, since it was a well-known fact that it was going to happen "at some point." It wasn't an exceedingly romantic proposal, because then she would have seen it coming too soon, but I think she liked it.

Oh, and here's the ring. I designed it myself at Sarah Byrnes Goldsmith; everyone there was incredible, and Sarah did a great job putting the ring together. We're thinking July 2009 for the date, but obviously nothing is set in stone yet.

Snowned!

So far we've had two winter storms of appreciable size here in Poughkeepsietown. The first one hit basically the entire northeastern United States, so I doubt it's news to anyone that reads this, but I enjoyed that one. That's pretty much the best kind of storm, the one that drops nearly a foot of snow in a day and moves on. No horrific sheets of ice on the road, no frozen rain putting holes in your face, just a crap-ton of snow. Added bonus, the complex has private snow removal crews, and they do a very nice job. We of course have to clean our cars off, but pretty much everything else is taken care of.

Last night's storm was significantly crappier. There was maybe an inch or two of snow and then a bunch of freezing rain, which turned into that gross grainy snow that is almost strong enough to support your weight but instead just makes walking brutally awkward. And it makes a crappy snowball. On the upshot, it showed me how good my car is at defrosting itself. I just turned it on, activated front and rear defrosting, and cleared off Nina's car. By the time hers was done, I just went over and brushed off my entire car. Even the side windows were completely melted clean. Good stuff. I also cleaned off Mr. McDonald's car this time, cuz he's really old. It would take him like half an hour just to get the windshield. So that was my good deed for the day.

And now I have to go, because the Patriots' game is coming up.

Heroes: Turns Out It's Good

Back when Heroes came out, we (the sci-fi crowd) were all pretty interested, so we excitedly queued up for the first Sci-Fi Night after the first episode aired. We all wanted to like it, but unfortunately, the first episode wasn't very good. The attempt to cram something like twelve character expositions, beginnings of backstories, the first hint at a bad guy, and way too many hints towards the "we are all connected" storyline didn't work out so well. It just came across too heavy-handed. Afterwards, I started hearing that it was pretty good, but my natural inclination to stick to my snap judgments kept me from giving it another chance.

Then Nina threw it on the Netflix queue, just for the hell of it (I love Netflix). We started at the second episode, which is easily ten times better than the first one, right now we've got discs three and four en route, and the show just keeps getting better and better. Besides the fact that almost all the people in the show are either superheroes or supervillains, the pacing is absolutely perfect. They make you wait for the awesome, but they don't make you wait too long. It is, after all, a comic book show when it comes right down to it, and comic books are all about the awesome. The characters have to come to terms with their abilities, but we don't need montages to see them develop.

I know most of you have probably already seen the show, but if you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it.

Little VMWare USB Tip

Don't know how many of you will find this relevant, but I seem to have finally figured out the easiest way to get USB passthrough working with VMWare. With some devices, like my Logitech Harmony remote, this is easy, as linux doesn't know what the hell to do with the thing. Once you plug it in, you just go to VMWare's menu and choose VM->Removable Devices->USB Devices->. Tada.

The problem occurs with things Linux does know how to use, like USB mass storage devices, aka keydrives. Linux can grab and attach these as SCSI disks, which makes grabbing them with VMWare more difficult. You can go through the usual steps, and your VM will see a plug event, but it never actually gets the device. My solution is to do the attach, wait for the plug event to fire, then, unplug and replug the keydrive. Now the device will actually show up in your VM. I think it's something about how VMWare does the attach; so that the drive is "claimed" already when you replug it, and Linux lets VMWare take it.

Now the warning: for all I know this won't work for anyone, or keep working as the Linux kernel and/or VMWare are updated, but if you are having trouble getting USB passthrough to work, this could work for you.