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Due to the fact that my brother (whom I hadn’t seen in nearly 2 years) couldn’t get Christmas Week off I have spent Christmas day by myself for the first time ever. I kind of expected it to be a little weird spending such a major holiday sitting around in my apartment but really it wasn’t that bad. I watched some TV, read some books, and made a rather fantastic healthy/veggie lasagna that turned out so well I thought I’d post the recipe here.

I always seem to forget how much I like the flavor and texture of cooked carrots, especially when combined with tomatoes.

It’s certainly not professional quality stuff, but given it was a last minute plan I was rather pleased with the outcome.

Click the link for the recipe.

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So my good buddy Rob has hooked me up with some hosting– hooray for ianknox.net/ianknox.com no longer being hosted on my desktop at home. There’s still a few old entries I need to copy over to the new instance but on the whole it’s doing what it should.

Thanks rob, you are the man!

From the CNN website this morning:

KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) — Hundreds of protesters brandishing swords and sticks gathered outside Khartoum’s presidential palace Friday to vent their anger against a British teacher jailed for allowing children to name a teddy bear “Mohammed.”

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

You’d think the people of Sudan would have more important things to worry about than a fucking teddy bear– You know like maybe trying to stop the Darfuri genocide that’s claimed at least 200,000 lives and displaced some 2.5 million more.

I’m not sure if I want to go cry or kick someone’s ass. Actually, I think either response would be appropriate.

I realize I’ve been a bit remiss in updating lately but I’m not going to be making apologies for it– Life has been just too full of stuff to spend much time re-hashing it here. However I do realize that there are friends of mine that really don’t get to know what’s going on with me unless I write it down here so this is the short version of my summer.

Theatre work:

• I split with the Tantalus Theatre Group. I think their work is awesome and very important, but it just wasn’t where I wanted my acting career to go right now.
• I’ve been taking acting classes in the Meisner program at Act One Studios. It’s been great, it feels really awesome to get back into a classroom and be able to work without the pressures of eventually turning what you’re doing into a production.
• I’ve been doing a lot more auditions– sadly it’s a slow time of year for that but still, I’m getting out there.

Personal stuff:

• I finished my second Chicago Marathon. The weather was so hot (90+ degrees, fucking global warming) that they actually canceled the marathon 1/2 way through so I was forced to walk the last 8-10 miles. I’m not sure I’m interested in doing a third one after that experience, but we’ll see.
• I completed by new bike project which involved a lot of work but it’s finally finished. A Fukaya Japanese track bike with nearly full Suntour Superbe Pro components. It’s freaking sweet, pity it’s too nice to ride in the crappy weather we’ve been having lately, but hey that’s why I have three bikes.
• I’m single again. It always sucks when a relationship ends and I miss her a lot some days, but I think ultimately it’s for the best. *sigh*
• I opened an IRA account for retirement. Christ I feel like such an adult.
• I’ll be back in NC visiting the family Dec 19-23. This means I’ll actually be hanging out by my self on X-mas day, which will feel weird I’m sure, but it was the only way I could see my brother whom I haven’t set eyes on in two years.

Geek stuff:

• I moved this blog to my home computer when I left Tantalus (I had been piggy-backing with their hosting account). Some time soon I’ll go buy my own cheap-o hosting but for now I’ll have to live with it as is. The bastards at RCN block port 80 so this is being served on 81, hence the odd looking URL above– But hey at least it works.
• I’m really in love with the EEEPC from ASUS. If I had a spare 400 bucks floating around I’d be all over it. Who knows, maybe for my birthday. Maybe by then the 8g model with a 7 inch screen and the same size case will be out.
• I just ordered a new phone. My trusty old Sony Ericsson T637 is dying the rapid death of battery failure so I decided to go with a Blackberry Pearl (in red) with an unlimited data plan. I will be on teh internets AT ALL TIMES! (yes I’m a geek, deal with it)
• I’ve pretty much completely phased out Windows on my desktop computers in favor of Ubuntu. It’s still not perfect, but as linux on the desktop goes, it’s the best I’ve used so far.

Well that’s all the news that leaps to mind right away– I’ll update this post later if I realize that I forgot something.

Pardon the temporary move, my hosting with Tantalus us no more since I’ve left the company and for now this blog will have to live on my desktop at home. Sadly RCN won’t let me run anything on port 80, hence the wonky looking URL above.

Some time soon I plan to move to my own hosting account elsewhere, but for now this will have to do the trick.

Until the marathon.

AIEEEEEEEEEE!

I’m extremely excited and a little bit terrified.  I haven’t trained anywhere nearly as hard as I did last year, but hopefully a full summer of 20+ miles a day on my bike and generally good healthy habits will get me through.  I did my best 20 mile run so far last Saturday and came in at 2:51:12, which puts me on pace for about a 3:45-ish marathon, which is exactly what I finished at last year.  Considering I’ve probably only done about 1/4 the training I’ll be pretty pleased if I can pull off the same time or better.

Sitting on my desk is a Garmin Forerunner 301. It is a wrist mounted GPS/heart rate monitor that will accurately track all of my biking and running distances, speeds, locations, and heart rates and it will do so by just turning it on and telling it whether I’m biking or running. This is extremely cool.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m in gadget love.

The only question remaining? Why the heck aren’t I out using it?

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but I never got around to it.  I made a map of Chicago vegetarian restaurants that I either enjoy or have heard good things about from people I trust.  If you have any suggestions drop them in the comments section and I’ll try to add them.

Wonder where I’ve been? Well me too sometimes, but for the last two months I’ve been rehearsing six days a week with Quest Theatre Ensemble in preparation for Sword in the Stone. It’s been a really great experience getting to work with the Quest folk and I think we’ve got a really fun show as a result. We open this Friday so come on out and see some theatre!

I just found a Linksys NSLU2 at a local thrift shop yesterday for $5.00.  I can’t wait until I have time to tinker because, as you can see from the wikipedia page, it supports all kinds of fun linux bits.  My local music storage partition has filled up recently and this seems like a perfect chance to buy a nice big USB2 drive and offload all of that storage.  I’m seeing DAAP, SSH, Web, Music playing, and maybe streaming radio in my future, depending on processor abilities.  Really after spending some time browsing the NSLU2-Linux wiki the possibilities are pretty endless.
Gogo Embedded Linux! (gawd I am such a geek)