Call me weird, but I like the feeling of finishing a book.  I mean I love reading, I don’t read just to finish books, but I still like the feeling.

This one was recommended by a coworker, it’s hard science fiction, which I enjoy, but it’s part one of a trilogy.  A.  Lengthy.  Trilogy.

I’m only one chapter through it, but so far it isn’t bad, but you have to be a pretty big fan of hard science fiction (which is very different from science fiction, think more textbook like):  The Reality Dysfunction

I love this phone, but I guess if you’ve seen my Twitter posts, you’d know that by now.

Got work tomorrow morning.

I miss the West Coast.

I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.

I did see some amazing things though and the people of Iceland love their geothermal energy for electricity and heat, it’s amazing.  The entire country’s population is around ~370k, how weird is that, considering Boston proper is ~620k currently (and that’s not counting everything around it, which is pretty much Boston too).

The cheese and food here, I love it.  Had some dried shark, salted cod, fermented shark, whale steak, reindeer burgers, atlantic char, lamb patte… so much other stuff.  Totally stuffed.

That’s it for now, see you in GMT-5 soon.  I wonder where I’m traveling to next…

Not that big of a deal, we just want to relax, have great food, and maybe take a couple pictures of the waterfalls there.

I’ve heard that the people there are pretty mean, will let you know how it goes.

My contacts are all up to date in one place, my Thunderbird Address Book (which was migrated from my Windows/Outlook Address Book… 10 years ago?).  I keep that in sync with my Google Contacts (for Gmail and other Google services) and manually update a SyncML server to keep those contacts in sync with my cell phone’s contacts (I switch phones often enough and SIM cards have too many limits for storage).

So yesterday I switched over from using SyncML (ovi.com, funambol, etc) to sync my contacts online to using Google’s Exchange Servers.  I’ve been using that connection to sync my Google Calendar to my phone for a long while now (I live by my Google Calendar) and I’ve been syncing my Thunderbird Address Book to my Google Contacts using the add-on by Zindus.  All along I had to manually keep my cell phone in sync, which worked great because it kept my Notes on my cell phone in sync too.  But manual changes are for savages.

Now my information just needs to be updated in one place and a sync initiated manually once…

Thunderbird -> Google Contacts -> Cell Phone

I’m pretty anal, so I’ve only kept the syncing one-way, when I could just as easily allow changes to propagate both ways (i.e. I add/update a contact on my cell phone which then syncs backwards to my Thunderbird).

There are a couple of snags though.  Zindus stores addresses in Google Contacts using an XML format (since addresses are stored free-form on Google).  This looks pretty ugly, but I’m OK with that.  I am experiencing a bug though where the street address isn’t stored, I’ve emailed their developer, hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Another snag is that I had to change my phone numbers to not have dashes and add the long-distance code to every number (i.e. 555-555-5555 to 15555555555).  This shouldn’t affect anybody else though, just because the application I use on my desktop to send/receive texts (via bluetooth, cause I hate pulling my phone out of my pocket every time I get a text) requires that phone number format, otherwise the number doesn’t match up to the name in my phone’s address book.

And I really wish Google Voice and Google Wave would use my Google Apps Contacts instead of my Google Account Contacts, which were empty until I started using those two services (I don’t have a gmail address, but a Google Apps email address; same thing, but my own domain).

After all that headache, I now have all my contacts on my phone.  Their home, fax, cell, work numbers, their home/work address, their screen names, birthdays, any other notes I have of them, etc etc.  Feels good.

Getting a replacement card next-day-ed to me, now to get my new card number memorized… pain.  I’ll miss you old credit card number and expiration date and CVC code.

Wouldn’t be that big of a pain if I didn’t get a replacement sent to me for the same card two weeks ago.  It was fine, just a really run down looking piece of plastic, really overused and faded and was just embarrassing to use (ask my sister, she’ll agree).  Got the new one memorized and changed my information for it online (bills, Amazon, etc).  Now to do it all over again.

Had New Years Eve dinner at L’Astral which happened to be situated at the top of the hotel we were staying in, which was a bonus in that weather.  Let me see if I can describe the situation, rather than try and describe the beauty…

Imagine a 5-star restaurant, situated on the top floor of skyscraper hotel, located in the middle of the city, on top of a hill, gazing out into the snow falling on a white city.  And did I mention this is a revolving restaurant?  The entire 360° view.

Coming back to Boston’s grey snow was… strenuous.  But I did have a nice little surprise when I got back here on New Year’s Day, my computer’s hard drive crashed while I was away.  Now I sit here, waiting for my new drive to be delivered (hopefully by tomorrow), so that I can spend time restoring everything that was lost.  Good thing I’m super crazy about backups (an online backup was created the night before the crash, so nothing lost, except time).

New Year’s Resolution?  Don’t let this even-numbered year bring me down, the hell with you even-numbered year curse!

Actually, I don’t make resolutions, personally I think they’re stupid, why does it have to be a new year to start change?  I made one once, I think 5 or 10 years ago, something like “more running, less cursing”, mainly because people wouldn’t stop asking me what my resolution was.  I’ve actually kept up with it.  I think I’ll start saying “wtf” and “effing” less too, yes, I actually speak (and spell out) those words in the quotes.

But I’ve been told the whole even-numbered year curse is a self-fulfilling prophecy or at the very least something that I actively seek out in many situations (much like getting your fortune told, the brain makes connections where there are none), so I’m going to just ignore it.  Don’t know why it took so long for me to think that, I don’t even believe in curses…

I’ve never been to that bookstore personally, since Inman Square is a drive and Porter Square books is really close to my place, but hey, Inman has Christina’s Ice-cream, so I’ll try and stop by Lorem Ipsum this weekend and see what all the hoopla is all about.