Just upgraded Wordpress version 2. Will be replacing the default theme in the near future.

Here are my quantifiable New Years resolutions (listed in Fibonacci sequence):

• Zero credit card balance by Dec. 31


• Post one entry per week to cmerrill.com


• Write one handwritten letter each month


• Buy two new CDs per month


• Be able to run three miles in 25.5 minutes


• Leave the state five times


• Spend eight days in Paris, France


• Read 13 books


• Prepare/cook 21 meals per month


• Produce and upload 34 minutes of audio/video content

And I think I will try to follow these qualitative goals from the BBC (thanks, Freddy!).

The printer I got for Christmas (thanks mom and dad!) came with software for stitching together panoramas. It works better than the stitching in Photoshop CS (maybe it's improved in CS2). Here's downtown Portland from the east side of the Willamette river.

My brothers and I got our parents a Mac mini for Christmas. They weren't quite sure what to make of it when they unwrapped it: Watch the video.

The plane carrying me from Atlanta to Boston began its descent over NYC. I was on the wrong side of the plane for the best view but took a photo anyway.

iMovie and Quicktime don't like the movies created by my Sony camera, but now I have a program that does (thanks, Steve!). Here's a video I took on the bus before a baseball game this summer.

Note: To Armand -- Your text message got cut off, but all the original content on the site is available under a Creative Commons license.

After carefully considering all of your comments, I finally got my new bed.

I got to IKEA shortly after they opened so I could avoid the crowds and to make sure I would have time to put my purchase together before going on holiday tomorrow morning.

After returning home, I moved my existing furniture out of the way and opened the flat-pack box. I was immediately intimidated by the large number of pieces so I went up the street to Manuel's Tavern for lunch.

Fully recharged, I set about the initial stages of assembly. I inserted small wooden pegs into their designated holes per the first page of the instructions. Step two was inserting screws to securely fasten the pieces together. As anyone who has assembled IKEA furniture knows, they use a special hexagonal tool for their fasteners. Well, my box didn't come with one. At this point I uttered the first of what would become many non broadcast-friendly words.

Fortunately I had saved the tool from my last IKEA purchase, and was able to proceed.

It wasn't too much farther along, perhaps page two or three of the instructions, that I began to realize IKEA doesn't kid around when they recommend two people. Trying to hold a six-foot-long piece of lumber steady while you manually screw another piece onto the end is a frustrating experience to say the least -- but I had plenty more than "the least" to say.

The next surprise was that some of the holes required for assembly didn't exist. Fortunately, again, I had a power drill to drive the screws into the proper locations without too much of a fuss. But then I came across a hex fastener that was too big for the IKEA standard tool. I was lucky enough to have a piece that worked in a set of bits that came with the drill.

About five hours after unpacking the pieces (including the lunch break), I was finally done with the assembly. Looking back, it doesn't seem like it was too bad a process, but there were at least three points where I wouldn't have been able to continue if not for already having certain tools on hand. Anyway, here's the finished product:

As you can see its not the HEIMDAL or ANEBODA. Although ANEBODA received more votes, it was out of stock, so I went with the next best cheaper option. The DALSELV , though, combines the best features of the other options. The wood frame is inviting and the headboard facilitates the use of handcuffs.

I just signed up for a beginning Spanish class at Emory. Ninety minutes a week for nine weeks starting in January.

I was driving to the coffee shop yesterday afternoon. I was going to work on some stuff online. My computer was in my shoulder bag on the passenger seat. A traffic light turned and I had to stop rather swiftly. Inertia, however, ruled the day and my shoulder bag rolled from the seat onto the floor.

I ordered a coffee and sat down. I opened the lid of my laptop and it awoke from sleep quite normally. About a minute later, I got the BBOD in Safari. It's not uncommon, so I launched iChat while waiting it out. The iChat icon bounced in the dock a couple of times, then froze mid-bounce. I tried to open the force quit menu, but there was no response. I held the power button to do a hard shut down.

When I powered back up, the Apple logo and spinner appeared. But then nothing happened. So I waited. And waited. Still spinning. I waited a couple more minutes. Nothing.

I shut the machine down and slowly resigned myself to the fact that I would soon be the owner of a new laptop.

I tried using target-disk mode to mount the drive on a desktop machine, but it wasn't recognized. I tried booting from an OS install CD so I could try to run disk utility, but it launched right into the installer. I calculated how long it would take me to pay off my credit card with a new computer purchase added.

Mike mentioned the possibility that there might be a loose connection between the drive and motherboard, which raised my spirits a little. This morning I got up and immediately drove to the Apple store to visit the genius bar.

I signed in and waited my turn. I passed the time fiddling with Motion -- which is a pretty sweet application, but I digress.

Finally my name was called and I pulled the laptop out of my bag and explained my predicament. The genius hit the power button and held down the keys to enable verbose mode. I watched as the boot process commenced and then was pleasantly surprised to see the login screen.

Classic tech support story... when you bring it in, the problem goes away. Despite appearances, he advised reformatting and reinstalling the OS. We booted the machine one more time at the store; no problem. I shut down and came home.

I had just backed up my Users folder (which contains the most important files on my drive) within the past week or so, but I booted once again and copied the System and Library folders to an external drive, then began the process of reinstalling the OS.

I'm back up and running, but I still have to finish getting everything set up. There are preferences to restore and other things to make sure are set, but for the most part, I'm back in action.

The morals of the story are a) put fragile items on the floor of your car when traveling (there's less of a fall that way), and b) back up your stuff because you never know when something may happen.