Digital Impulses

Halloween 2007

Today was a pretty cool Halloween, as Halloween celebrations go.  It started off with a nice brunch at work, where some of my co-workers had blown up a print-out of the face of one of my friends and that was hilarious.

After work, I came home and waited for my son and his girlfriend to arrive, and then we sat around playing XBox Live until it was dark out and the rest of my family arrived to take the kids trick-or-treating.

David and his kids arrived later and Isa and Mom took turns watching Sebastian while David took the kids trick-or-treating.

The trick-or-treating was a lot of fun, as I just love walking around my neighborhood and watching the kids in their costumes, asking for candies and treats, getting scared.  It is truly one of my favorite days of the year. The kids in the family had a really great time and in the end, that is what it's all about.

I love Halloween.

Clothes for "The Interview"

This evening after work, I called my brother for some fashion advice and we went to some stores at mall to buy slacks, a shirt and some other things for my very important interview tomorrow.

We started at Macy's and ended up at Nordstrom's at the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach.  The clothes at Nordstrom's are very expensive, but worth every penny, as I have never worn a more comfortable pair of slacks and shirt in my life.  At over $250 for both (including a $45 dollar alteration at the Del Amo Tailor), I think it was a wise investment, considering  how important the interview is for me.

1st Options purchased at OptionsXpress

Just completed my 1st purchase at OptionsXpress.  I purchased a single contract of GOOG.  Now to see how it goes.  This is a little nerve-wracking, but exciting at the same time. 

There is potential to make some money here.

A court date postponed

So I took a day off from work this morning to attend a court session with the wife and son regarding an issue that took place a couple of months back.

On Sunday, we got a letter delivered in the mail, stating that the court date had been re-scheduled from this morning to December 19th. Not being 100% sure that it was OK not to show up for court today, we trooped down to Torrance and stood in line for 20 minutes.

At the window, we were informed by a very bored-looking and hard to hear young lady that the court date had indeed been re-scheduled for for 12/19/07 and that we should return at that date. So, leave we did, with the promise to return in a few weeks to get this resolved.

Reyna goes to Tijuana
After returning from Court, the wife decided that she would use the remainder of her day off to drive to Tijuana with a friend of hers to see some family and do some shopping for the teenager's 18th birthday.

Go to Tijuana she did, returning home late in the evening after a rather short, only 20-minute wait at the Border to enter the United States.

A trip to the Manhattan Beach Apple Store: Buying Leoaprd OS X 10.5

Just got back from picking up a copy of Leopard OS X 10.5 from the Apple Store in Manhattan Village Mall.  I decided to take the plunge on some very positive reviews from Leo Laporte on the TWiT Netcast network.

I bought the single-user, $129.00 copy and will be installing it either tomorrow or the day after, with Thursday being most likely, as tomorrow is Halloween and I will be going trick-or-treating with the kids and my siblings after work.

I am really looking forward to putting Leopard through it's paces.

Installing 2GB of RAM on my Mac Mini

On Monday afternoon after work, I drove up to my house just as the UPS delivery guy was getting in his truck to leave after delivering the 2 GB of RAM that I bad bought from Crucial.com.

So today, after breakfast with my son at IHOP, I came home and decided to dedicate some time to installing the RAM into my Mac Mini. I carefully looked up some of the tutorials on-line and finally settled on one that seemed to be fairly recent and had plenty of pictures.

It took about 20 minutes and in the end, was not as painful as I had imagined it.  I did end up breaking a couple of tabs on one of the sides of the Mini, but after everything was said and done, the Mini seemed to re-assemble without too much of a problem.

The whole process consists of about 10 steps, roughly outlined as follows:

1. Use thin paint scraping spatulas from Home Depot to coax the cover off of the Mac after flipping it over.
2. Locate and remove the Airport Wireless antenna from one of the corners.
3. Locate and remove 4 screws, one from each corner.
4. Unplug a very tine cable from one of the side of the Mini, the side that has the giant watch battery on it.  The small cable is located to the right of the watch battery.
5. After the screws are removed, lift the chassis off of the Mini to expose the RAM slots.
6. Remove the existing RAM by pushing on the clips.
7. Insert the new RAM.
8. Replace the Mini chassis.
9. Re-connect the small cable.
10. Replace the 4 screws.
11. Replace the Airport Wireless Antenna.
12. Connect the Mini back up, boot, check RAM quantity by going to "About this Mac" on the Finder menu. you should see your new amount of RAM listed here. 
    
    If all is well, then you can:
    
13. Disconnect all of the cables.
14. Replace the cover on the Mini.
15. Reconnect everything and enjoy your new RAM!

Some of the steps take some patience, but if you take your time and are careful, it should all proceed normally without too much trouble.

After the RAM surgery, I played around around with the Mini for a while, putting it through its paces.  Man, it is, understandably MUCH smoother.  This is an upgrade I should have done a while ago.

Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer: 5,000 miles

My wife's new SUV, the Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer we got for her on August 23rd has just reached 5,000 miles this morning and as such we can surmise the following:

• 5,000 miles in 67 days equals
• 74.63 miles a day on average, or
• 522 miles a week on average, or
• 2,238.9 miles a month on average, or
• 27,239 miles a year.

So, at this pace, this truck is going to have over 27,000 miles in it's first year.  Wow, that's actually a little depressing.

Options Xpress account funded

Just a quick note to record an important fact:

I just got home from the credit union after completing a Wire Transfer to OptionsXpress for one thousand dollars to fund my Options trading account.

The window to complete a Wire Transfer is 11:00 A.M., so the wire transfer itself will be completed tomorrow morning and then I should theoretically be able to start trading in Options on Wednesday morning.

Nervous, but excited.  This sure is an interesting time in myt life.

Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer: 5,000 mile service completed.

My son AJ took his mom's truck to South Bay Ford this morning for the 5,000 mile service to be done on it. 

It was completed without incident, with our service contract popping up in the system and thus this service was no cost and everything was right with the world.

Uneventful Sunday, Red Sox win 2nd WS Title in 4 years

Aside from breakfast with my Mom and sister Isa at Piggies, I did nothing today, just lounging around the house and my home office, waiting for my son and his girlfriend to come to the house so we could watch Game 4 of the 2007 World Series.

Red Sox do it again: 2nd World Series sweep in 4 years

From the AP:

Red Sox 4, Rockies 3

DENVER (AP) -- Perched high above his raucous teammates, David Ortiz sprayed bottles of bubbly in every direction, dousing everyone in sight, including himself.Then it was time to deliver a message."When you wear Red Sox on your shirt," he hollered from atop a clubhouse table, "you're good at something."There's a new monster, and this one's in Boston, too.

Overwhelming in every way, the Red Sox swept to their second title in four years Sunday night. Jon Lester, Mike Lowell & Co. left little room for drama with a 4-3 win over the Colorado Rockies in Game 4.

Then again, no NL team could have blocked Boston this October. This was hardly a repeat from 2004, when the Red Sox ended their 86-year championship drought by beating St. Louis. Boston is a major league bully these days, playing in rarefied air before crowds who demand to win.

"It doesn't get old," manager Terry Francona said. Gone are those pleading, pathetic days when the Red Sox were practically begging to win a title. They've got this down pat now.At this rate, New England fans might get spoiled.

Francona's team has become a perfect counterpart to coach Bill Belichick's bruisers on the Patriots.After trailing Cleveland 3-1 in the AL Championship Series, the Red Sox won seven straight games and won their seventh World Series crown.