Confused, and wondering, I forgot about it. Until last night, when Christine brought it home.

I opened the bag to find a bunch of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit schwag.  Trish knows it’s one of our favorite shows, and also knows that both my wife and I have crushes on Mariska Hargitay who plays a Detective on the show.

My gift also includes an autographed photo of the entire cast, and one just from Mariska.

Mariska Hargitay - it says "To Mike Happy Birthday"

My friends rule. Thanks for calling in the favor, Trish!  Great gift!  I’ll certainly frame both of the pictures, and hang them up in our place!

You may have noticed that the “music” section of the website’s gone.   You’re not dillusional, it really is gone.   I took it down, while I redo it.   I started typing up the lyrics to all of the songs I’ve written.

It was misleading before, since there were only 12 songs up there, that were the 12 most recent.   In actuality, I think I’ve written well over a thousand.   I’ll know for sure, once I’m done typing them all.

As it stands now, they’re in various manila folders and hanging file folders on the floor in our office at home.   I’ve typed up about 30 so far, and haven’t had time to keep going, with all the other things going on.   I’ll get there, I promise.

Other than that, status quo.   Websites are still going well, working a redesign for MovieSnobs that’s about 70% done.   Rock Band 2 still kicks ass.   Christine still loves her job.

Life is good.   Nay, life is great.   And “Chuck” comes back tonight, and I love that show.   Now, if I can fix my internet at home, and get onto XBox Live to see what this big update today was, I’ll be happy.   Hopefully it’s the Netflix integration, which’d rule, since I just signed back up last week.   Online streaming is pretty bad-ass.

I went through this morning, and upgraded all my WordPress installs, which is always a fun (yet daunting) task.

I began repurposing the old media tower last night, into a home web-server. Not that I plan on using it, but just because I want to see if I can do it, from the ground up.

Trying to run Fedora 9 as my OS, having a bit of trouble with DNS and internal routing though. Going to work on that this weekend.   Am also planning on trying Ubuntu as my server OS, as well.   I like Fedora, but apparently Ubuntu’s all the rage right now.

I started off on Friday night, by finishing the install of the CMS software, for one of my design clients. I’m not sure exactly what his intent is for the site, but the CMS software I installed is a social networking application (similar to MySpace, Facebook, etc). Once he gets back in town we’ll discuss what he’s looking to do with the site, and how much resources he’s looking to throw at it, to make it what he wants.

My office was closed yesterday, due to July 4th, so I spent the majority of the day, working with Christine working on one of our new projects. We’re building a site about Salem Massachusetts (where we live). Sort of an informational site for tourists. Where to go, where to eat, what tours to take, how much money to anticipate spending, etc. We figured with all the tourism that happens around our house from May through November, it would be helpful to have a site where people can get information about the area. It hasn’t launched yet, but we spent a lot of time yesterday working on it. I spent my day re-writing the code for the listings page, and managed to work in some clauses into my queries that will allow sortable tables (something I previously didn’t know how to do), so I’m psyched about that. I’ll post a link to the site, once it’s complete, and will add it to my Design Portfolio (up top there).

That’s all I’ve got for now. That, and be sure you watch Burn Notice tonight at 10PM. The pilot was just okay, but I think the show’s going to get a lot better in time.

“Hell’s Kitchen” – a great reality show about a top level chef screaming at morons who can’t make entrees for his high end clients.
“Psych” – a relatively new show, only going into season two, but very funny.   Our main character’s not psychic, but he pretends to be, so he can work with the local police, of which is dad used to be one, to help solve crime.   Very funny.
“Rescue Me” – arguably one of the, if not the, best tv shows to come out in recent years.   Every previous show that Denis Leary’s done has gotten axed before its first season ended.   “Rescue Me” is now in its fourth season, and is highly regarded in the industry, and has won numerous awards across the board.   If you’ve never seen “Rescue Me”, crawl out from the rock you’re living under, and turn on FX Wednesday nights at 10PM EST.

While I miss the”Numb3rs”, “Law & Order: SVU”, “ER”, “The Office”, etc, of the regular season, the summer months have some benefits, as well.   Not only is it gorgeous in the Boston area, weatherwise, but tv isn’t completely terrible.