Lots of Monkeys

The pictures currently being exhibited are from last year’s near catastrophe happy occasion, Julie and Dan’s wedding in Niagara Falls.

Just bits and pieces of Niagara Falls.

I thought that people would be interested in seeing something other than the falls.

After some prodding from the RSS community, (thanks for the shove, Rick!) I’ve finally updated WordPress on the server so that the feeds work. It was working for some, and then not for others, but now that it’s updated hopefully it just works. That, and some vulnerabilities were patched up.

Either way, let me know. At least nothing on the surface appears to be broken.

But what lies beneath. . .

I got off the plane in New York, since Homer was going to drive me across the border. I’d been out of the country a couple of times, but that was the border town of Tijuana.

I didn’t really count those excursions. They didn’t even check my license on the way back.

Hell, in San Diego, some people do their groceries across the border.

That was years ago, and I was pretty sure that getting back into the States from Canada was going to take more than a polite recitation of my US address. I had my birth certificate with me, of course. I removed it from its plastic sleeve and handed it to the border guard with my DC Driver’s License.

It was a photocopy, and the guard asked me about it. I explained that it was the original despite being a photocopy, and that the seal was in the lower right corner, very faint.

He eventually handed it back to me after an interminable fifteen seconds.

Then the guard looked at Homer’s legitimate, United States passport for what seemed like five minutes, due to the ridiculously out of date photograph.

Eyeing the fragile xerox, I realized how tenuous my link to the United States seemed. If anything were to happen to a thirty year old sheet of paper, there’d be nothing to prove my citizenship. I replaced it in the sleeve and put it back in my bag.

Now, nearly a year later, in the depths of my illogical mind, I have worst case scenario daydreams of me attempting to prove my US citzenship. Ridiculous nightmares that include DHS officers asking me, “Papiere, bitte.”

So now, I’m filling out my passport forms and setting up an appointment to get the process started.

Well, that’s it.

I am now the proud owner of “No Television.”

I previously owned two televisions, and they would just sit in their respective places, gather dust and languish in disuse. It is a liberating experience, because the lairs that they previously occupied are now “empty” and a good reason to start rethinking the use of said spaces.

The bedroom television was a relatively small fourteen inch television that got little to no use at all. It was hooked up to a DVD player, and now I don’t know what to do with it. On the one hand, it is a DVD player. On the other, it lacks a lot of integrated features that my four five other DVD players have.

Features like:

• – is also a laptop
• – is also a desktop computer
• – plays PlayStation 2 games
• – plays XBox games

Whatever happens, I think I have DVD watching covered.

The one that was previously in the family room was the one I used more often. Mainly for playing games, but also used more often because it was easier to connect my laptop to. This way, I could edit footage that I had shot with my camcorder, and also watch television shows that were given to me by Internet Fairies.

(In a completely unrelated note, I think that Opera integrated bittorrent into their browser. I’m just saying.)

But now, I sold both televisions into slavery to a good home, where they can spend the rest of their days showing all eighteen hours of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

May their electron guns shoot at human retinas through vaguely shielded sheets of glass for years to come.