Tvindy

Cliff Notes for My Trip

I should say something about my recent car trip to Oregon and back. I'm thinking I'll podcast some of the more interesting bits, but here is a brief overview.

• I drove from Indiana to Oregon to pick up the stuff I had left there in storage over the summer.
• As usual, I e-mailed Snowball to see if I could stop by her place for a visit. Unfortunately, she never wrote back or called my cell, so I had to just keep going.
• I made it from Muncie, IN to Eugene, OR in just 35 hours, 57 minutes, and 35 seconds of driving time. This doesn't include 24 hours of motel time.
• I got a speeding ticket in Utah.
• It cost me more than $1100 to fix an oil leak in Oregon.
• After leaving Eugene, I headed south along the coast and hung a left at San Francisco.
• Total mileage for the trip was 5572 miles. I filled up the gas tank 18 times.

Roadtrip Pics

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This year was much better than last year.

To celebrate, I've put up an album of some of the better pictures I took on my roadtrip.

I'm Back!

I made it back to Muncie this evening. That's all I have time to post today, since I'm a bit tired. More to come soon.

Almost Ready

I'm nearly ready to set off for Oregon to attend the Eugene Blogger Get-Together. My car is fueled up. I've got air in the tires and oil in the engine. I've got maps in the glove compartment and two new audiobooks in my iPod. Now I just need a bit of sleep, and off I go. I'm really excited about this trip, since my odometer is about to turn over at 100,000 miles, which should invalidate all those pesky warranties.

Podcasting Nightmare

I'm still learning the ins and outs of podcasting. The three episodes I've already done have each had their own unique technical problems, but tonight I encountered a worst-case scenario. After spending over an hour speaking to Geoff and Jenny of Mulubinba Moments, the recording program I use crashed as it was saving the sound file, and the whole interview was lost. It was a great interview too, and now it's been lost to the world, including the part where Jenny and Geoff send their greetings to Snowball and Bakerina, who will now never know that they have been greeted. Fortunately, Geoff and Jenny have agreed to let me do the whole thing over again.

Before that however, I will be traveling back to Oregon in the next couple of days to bring back the stuff I left there in storage, including my computer. That means I'll be able to podcast from my own home without all the constraints imposed by having to ninjacast all the time. I'll also look into more secure ways of protecting the recording. Losing an entire interview is a mistake I only intend to make once.

Happy Birthday to me

My birthday was today. I wasn't in Muncie for my last birthday, so I haven't had a cake for two years. I've kind of tired of Baskin Robbins cakes. They may be fun, but the frosting they use is just plain disgusting. This year I asked my mother to make me a rum cake, something she has only done once before, when I was very small. Fortunately, she remembered the recipe and recreated it for me on this, my 18th birthday. (Yes, I know. I'm eighteen every year.) The cake was a masterpiece and nearly made up for my parents' lack of ability to choose cool gifts. This year they bought me a vacuum cleaner!