Hold on, what?

Troopers release driver after seizing thousands in cash on I-80

So, apparently, the Highway Patrol can confiscate all of your money because, "I believe that the money was going to California to purchase narcotics." And then, "The driver will now have to prove his story in court if he wants to get it back."

I may be new to the law enforcement thing, but I was under the impression that transporting a large amount of money was not illegal in and of itself. Even if you have a criminal record, and even if a drug dog says the money smells like drugs, it seems a bit unfair to take "nearly $200,000 in cash" away from someone and then make them go to court to prove that they weren't going to use it to buy drugs.

And even if they did intend to buy drugs with it, how does that make it illegal to have the money? If you suspect someone is going to buy drugs you can just take away their money and tell them "prove you weren't going to buy drugs"? How do you prove you weren't going to do something exactly?

I don't think I can agree with this type of preemptive, based-on-suspicion law enforcement.

St. Valentine's Day

Those that know me probably also know that I've been fighting off a really strong infection of mononucleosis over the last 3+ weeks. I've had mono at least twice before, but this time was the worst of the three. Not only did it make me rather tired, but it also decided to make my tonsils and throat swell up to the point that I could hardly swallow my own spit. Thanks to a visit to the Student Health Center I was able to get a prescription of prednisone which, when combined with ibuprofen, was able to bring the swelling under control. So, I've spent the last 3 weeks tired and on steroids in order to be able to function. I had grown tired of this arrangement by about day 4.

I woke up on Saturday morning and my throat didn't hurt! There was still a small amount of swelling, but I could swallow and I felt like I had energy! I was really excited about this. Since the Heartless Siren has been recovering from her surgery and I was dealing with mono it was looking like Valentine's Day was going to be a bit underwhelming this year.

It still wasn't incredibly exciting, since I had had no energy to plan anything out ahead of time. I promised to cook dinner, figuring that would expend all my energy reserves. I also needed to do laundry. So the day started by me going shopping to buy ingredients for dinner. Then I swung by Campus Craft and Floral to pick up the roses I had ordered. I got to Heartless Siren's house and presented her with the flowers and then snuck off to the kitchen for a few minutes to put ingredients away for later. I also opened up a couple of boxes of Conversation Hearts and removed the white ones (HS thinks they're gross, but loves the other colors). After putting the meat in the fridge marinating I gave HS the bowl of conversation hearts and we headed back to my house so I could do laundry while we caught up on TV shows we had missed during January.

After enjoying episodes of Chuck, 30 Rock, and The Office my laundry was done and now it was time to head back to HS's house for dinner. I sent her to the living room to listen to music and read while I cooked dinner: New York cut steaks marinated for 6 hours in Italian dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli, freshly baked French bread rolls, 2 candles, and for dessert, hot-out-of-the-oven brownie pudding. I will congratulate myself on having all the food finish with perfect timing to put it on the table, and it tasted incredible, I was quite pleased.

Then I read a few chapters of Harry Potter to HS, and once my throat was dried out we watched Enchanted. Despite our recovering from surgery/illness it was a very nice day overall.

My New Toy, or N810 Unboxing

Now that The Heartless Siren is out of the hospital and recovering I have things to post about on this blog that I haven't already posted in my personal blog. Since I spent 2 of the last 5 weeks with The Heartless Siren in the hospital I didn't have much to say about anything, and the week before that was spent taking care of her at home, and the past 2 weeks have been spent being sick with Mono and taking care of her at home again.

During those 2 weeks I found a really good deal on a new toy that I decided I needed. The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet (4 different links there). I was able to get it shipped for $210.

Here are some of the highlights about why I wanted it:
- 800x480 resolution screen with automatic brightness adjust according to ambient light
- Full web browser with Javascript and Flash 9 support (based on Mozilla)
- Open Source architecture with lots of completely free applications available and active development community
- Built off of Debian Linux = rock solid stable performance
- Includes a Xterm with download of OpenSSH (Now I can login to my servers and fix problem from almost anywhere!)
- Wireless G Network, GPS, Mic, Camera, Expandable Memory, VOIP
- This one I don't use yet, but probably when I get a new phone and plan: Bluetooth phone tethering for internet access via phone from anywhere
- Small: the device is the size of an index card and about a centimeter thick


Now, like any good nerd I documented the unboxing:







After some theme customizing, let's find The Board:





I got the N810 on Thursday and so far have very few (and very minor) complaints:

1. The main thing is that some of the built-in functionality (chat, email) I've replaced with community applications which are better designed with better options, and (thus far) I haven't found a good way of either removing the built-in apps or remapping their quick-link buttons to the 3rd party apps.
2. The bundled GPS software (Wayfinder) wants you to buy a subscription with them in order to get on-the-fly Routing and turn-by-turn navigation: 1-month: ~$14, 12-month: ~$110, 36-month: ~$120. Now, if you get the 3-year then it's like $3.33 a month, not too bad for updates on maps and lots of types of points-of-interest, but still. No navigation out-of-the-box (you do get a 7-day trial)? Sadly the really nice free app Maemo-mapper does not currently support on-the-fly routing (you can download routes into it, but can't calculate new ones on-the-fly, w/o internet connection, the above mentioned Bluetooth phone link could make this a non-issue).
3. The included car cradle is not ready-to-go, you still need to buy a mount either for your dashboard, cupholder, or windshield.

Other than those 3 minor annoyance I absolutely love it. Now I just need to go drive around and play with the GPS sometime. The bundled Wayfinder's most serious flaw, in my opinion, is address entering: In order to look up the address say: 551 N 200 W, Provo, UT You have to enter the Street field as: N 200 W, then the House Number field as 551, and then the city as Provo, and state Utah. Why can't I just type "551 N 200 W, Provo, UT"?! Maemo-mapper allows me to enter addresses in this manner. And it took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to get addresses in Utah to work properly because of that silliness. But that gripe is squarely directed at Wayfinder.