You can't keep me out Hotmail

Beth and I are up in Syracuse for the next week for Thanksgiving. We had a very smooth travel day today with no real flight delays, just a busy Philadelphia tarmac. We've drank some Yuengling eaten some great pizza and some homemade ravioli chili/soup, and drank some more Yuengling.

My Mom wanted to see my new computer so I showed it off for a bit and we looked back through our honeymoon photos from Italy. I hadn't looked at them as a group in a long time, it was great to reminisce.

My uncle and I worked to get Beth and my laptops working on his secure WIFI. After I caught up on emails and messageboards I surfed over to Daniel Parnell's blog. He is the author of the HTTPMail plugin for the MAIL program for Macs. Basically it's a plugin to allow you to access your Hotmail account through Apple's Mail program. Hotmail wants you to always log into their website to check your mail so you can see their ads. I understand this and I realize that I am not paying for their email service, but I hate their website and I am obsessive about checking my email. On my powerbook I was using Entourage but I don't have Office installed on my new macbook yet and I had heard that Apple had upgraded their mail program so I wanted to give it a try again.

ANYHOW..... David Parnell has finished version 1 of HTTPMail for Leopard and it's available on his blog site here.

I just installed the plugin and so far it is working perfectly! I love it, and also the new Mail program doubles as a RSS reader so I've moved all my subscriptions. We'll see if Mail works as well as NetNewsWire.

I pledge my allegiance to Apple

IT ARRIVED!!

Oh yea!! I am the proud owner of a little white Macbook!

I'd go on and on about how much I love it and how awesome it is, but I'd rather go back and continue playing with it! I've got a bunch of stuff to transfer from my Powerbook as well....

Looking forward to riding Sewanee tomorrow. I'm bringing the Ventana b/c I haven't been haven't been giving it it's quality time lately. I'll probably ride the Soma for our ride to Chickasaw.

Spending money

I finally pulled the trigger on a new laptop. I'm going to be moving out of 2003 and into 2007! My 1g Ti Powerbook is getting replaced with a Dual 2.2g Macbook. It's really amazing where things have come and how cheap it all is. $1299 for a dual 2.2g laptop that can hold 4g of ram. I maxed out the ram through Other World Computing for a measly $137!! Take that Apple! Can you believe Apple charges $850 for 4g of ram?! $850!!!!! It's as though Apple is saying "We don't want to bother with putting more ram in your system, so we'll just price ourselves out of that service." oh well... I don't mind doing it myself and saving $713. Next on the shopping list is a LCD widescreen monitor. I've been shopping around a ton lately but I think I'll wait until ater Xmas to make a purchase. I imagine prices will drop some more by then.

Last night was another night of polo. The overall mood was different and everyone put more emphasis on style and technique. Sharpe coached us from the sidelines and gave tips. My first team (Thad, Neal and Dan H.) worked a lot on teamwork and spacing around the court. We concentrated on hanging onto the ball and control and passing and tried less slapping and big clears. Unfortunately Thad had a brake incident and had to retire his bike. Everyone decided to call it then and make it an early night. We only played three games this go around but they were all fun. I managed to stay upright a lot better and use my mallet more for balance. I even scored three times which is a personal best by far! I'm generally lucky to get 1 score per night.

This past weekend was our return trip to Austin, TX for the Stitch show. This trip Beth and I revisited a few areas of town like South Congress. We weren't as pro-active to do the sight-seeing activities as we were last year so it was a much more relaxed trip overall. The Stitch organizers planned a pre-party the night before which was fun. We didn't know many people and I didn't know anyone, but after about half an hour we had made some friends and had some good conversation. Keg beer was supplied as well as free water from some company I can't even remember. Obviously I partook more of the keg than the water. The show was in the Austin Convention Center this year. We had fears of crazy, unorganized load-ins but it all went very smoothly. We were setup in no time and then Beth had a chance to browse the other vendor's booths which she never had time for last year. The show was a definite success but overall I don't think they will host it in the Convention center again next year. The room was a bit too large and much brighter than last year. It was hard to feel the some vibe as last year. We sold more than last year which was Beth's goal for the show so I'm sure we will be making the trip again next year. You can view photos of our trip on Beth's flickr site.

Random things I learned while in Austin: Shiner bock tastes better with a lime, we never figure out how to get anywhere until we are about to leave town, I still don't think service roads are a good way to get on and off the interstate, hotel internet service always sucks and is slow, just about every city we travel to seems to have a lot more casual cyclists
than you ever see in Nashville.