Looking for a gay-friendly travel destination?

If so, check out Orbitz's Gay and Lesbian Travel page. The fact that they have one is pretty amusing...in a slightly awesome kind of way.

On a side note, did you know that Gay Games VII will be held in Chicago this year? Go to their official site for more information.

Adventures in computer maintenance.

For the past few months, I have had to deal with a defective Bluetooth card in my notebook computer. The symptoms were random BSOD/crashing (especially with the Bluetooth radio and/or VPN client enabled), pop-up warnings about a USB device not functioning correctly, and a randomly repeating (highly annoying) warning tone.

After trying to reinstall my Bluetooth driver on two separate occasions, I called up Dell a month-and-a-half ago and asked for a new Bluetooth card. After letting the card sit in my room for the last month, I finally decided to install it. This was a good two-hour ordeal which involved disassembling the laptop's keyboard, display assembly, and palm rest. In any case, things seem to be working much better now. Here's a picture of my laptop disassembled:

This week's fortune.

Find release from your concerns and have a good time.

This week's fortunes.

You have a [sic] important new business developing.

Look around; happiness is trying to reach you.

This week's fortune.

Your love life will be happy and fulfilling.

Wrong address.

As I lay in bed a few minutes ago, the doorbell ring startled me. When I went to the door, I saw a couple of EMTs with a stretcher, and there was an ambulance in the background. As I opened the door, they realized that they were looking for number 12017, not 12107, on our street. They apologized and left.

My thoughts on this incident: it kinda sucks for the people at the other house to have help arrive five minutes later than it should have because of a misinterpreted address.

In case you're wondering, yes, we do get their mail from time to time...and they get ours.

I will soon be published!

I contributed to a paper that was presented at the Society for Experimental Mechanic's IMAC XXIV conference, which is currently taking place. Here are links to the abstract and to the conference site. I can't claim that much credit, as I was only the third author on this. In any case, I will officially be published whenever the conference proceedings are released, probably sometime later this year.