I went out to get the mail last night and found a used condom wrapper in the middle of my damn lawn. How the hell did that get there? I mean, are there illicit sex acts occurring in my yard that I’m not getting to participate in or something?

Regardless, picking up condom wrappers out of your yard is a humbling experience. You really don’t want to touch it, so you kind of get a stick… and push it around for a while until you realize you can’t pick it up with a single stick, so you cast about for a second stick… then you go into the garage and get a shovel…

It also makes you feel like you’re living in some sort of anarchic post-apocalyptic Blade Runner world. Come on, man - rubber wrapper in the suburban yard? Come on.

I guess I should be thankful it wasn’t like a used hypodermic needle or something. The worst I get is a dog turd in the middle of the sidewalk (that was last week) or a condom wrapper in my yard. Lots of shoveling going on around my place.

Next time I’ll take photos. I’m actually having some digital camera problems right now (the problem is that it fucking chews through batteries like a pack of hyenas through a herd of sick wildebeests) so I’m not taking a load of pictures of, well, anything. I plan on getting a new, more battery-friendly camera (hopefully more portable, too), at which time I’ll probably go apeshit with the photos and start taking pictures of random shit again.

After fighting shell extensions for my Junction Shell Extension project, I know what a pain it is. I can only imagine that this Sky Software “EZShellExtensions.Net” product will make that vastly easier. Of course, at $95 per developer, I’m not sure if it fits my $0 software budget, but if I really got into it, that might be the way to go.

We got the invoice for what the food will cost if we invite the full 125 people that we were going to and have all the hors d’oeuvres and such the way we want. It comes to somewhere between “Seasonal Pricing” and “$CALL,” so we’re looking at possible amendments to things.

We know we want that catering place because I don’t want shitty wedding food. I refuse to show up to my own reception and not want what’s at the buffet. I can do that at anyone else’s wedding (sorry, all you people whose weddings I’ve been to, but it’s true - I can’t do another “army pan of teriyaki chicken”). So some changes have to be made.

First, I think we’ll cut slightly back on the food. If we nix the butler-served hors d’oeuvres (you didn’t all actually want the spinach and artichoke dip on bruschetta or the crab cakes, did you?), that’ll save quite a bit, and there are some minor changes to the menu we might be able to do (selecting a different beef dish, for example) to reduce cost… but the largest way to reduce cost is to reduce head count.

As such, we’re going back over the list of potential invitees. Generally speaking, family is safe… but friends we haven’t seen in a looooong time, really distant relatives, people who haven’t actually met one of us already… probably not going to make the list. I had a lot of work people on the list, but I just can’t afford it, so if I work with you but you’re not a) someone I hang out with weekends; b) a really good friend from before I started Corillian; or c) in the wedding party… I don’t know you’ll be getting an invite. Sorry. It’s nothing personal.

Instead, what we’re toying with is a sort of open house deal where it’s a little less formal, possibly a week after the wedding (when we get back from vacation), and that’s where we’ll invite all the people we couldn’t get before.

Of course, that’s all still being discussed, so this whole point might be moot. We’ll see. Jenn’s going to run some more numbers and see how it all comes out.

I think the commercials from Staples with people using the “Easy Button” are funny. Even funnier is that you can buy an “Easy Button.”

Friday night I became aware that my phone, a Motorola V180, was able to send SMS messages (text messages), but I couldn’t receive them. An hour on the phone with Cingular got me to the Motorola help desk where I found out that there’s a known issue with the V180 software. They discovered this in December, but somehow they didn’t notify anyone and I don’t see it anywhere on their web site.

To determine if you have the affected software, dial *#9999# on your phone. That will show you the version number (look for “S/W Version”). The version on my phone right now is R365_G_0B.D2.2ER. The important bit there is the 0B.D2.2ER part - that’s the version. If you have 0B.D3.06R or better, you’re not affected by this problem. If you have less than that, you will have issues with SMS messages (both text and multimedia) as well as “other problems” that the service person didn’t bother listing off.

How do you fix it? Well, in this day and age, with a phone that has a USB link to it, you’d think you could just download the ROM from the web site, hook the phone up, and update the software yourself. Not so. You can either send your phone in and have them update the software for you and send it back; or you can have them send you a replacement, you can transfer your information over to the new one yourself, and then send in your affected phone. Either way, they have to do the update at the factory.

That’s one of the benefits of having this thing through work - I go talk to our telecomm guy and the problem solves itself.