Personal | Youseph Tanha

Vacation Over

Well, our vacation is over now and both Hannah and myself are back in Juneau. Back to work, Back to Normality for a little while as we try to pick up and put away the contents of our suitcases. We had such a good time though. I wish it was not over. Vacations are never long enough. We are already talking about our next one.

We spent our first week in Chicago at my brother’s house and had our early little Christmas there. It was really nice and I am so happy I got to see most of my family. It was so cool that we all were able to get together in Chicago like that. I hope we will be able to do something like this every year together.

After our week in Chicago, Hannah and I flew to Seattle and stayed with her family in Oak Harbor Washington. We both had a really good time. We had our little early Christmas with her family. Her sister and husband even came up to visit with us while we were their which was great. Actually it was Legendary!

While in Washington State we went and saw some friends. We saw our friend Adam at the Hidden Wave Board Shop while we were in Burlington. I have known Adam since high school. He is a really good friend of mine and I am glad we got to stop in and say hi. He and his shop are doing really well. I don’t ever remember seeing his store so full of merch before in my life!

We also got to see our friends Melanie and Scott for dinner one night. It’s amazing how entertaining Melanie can be with a plate of nachos.

Hannah and I also did some shopping while we were on our vacation. We picked up some new cloths and some new toys. We were saving up to do this because things in Juneau can be pricer then things in the lower 48 states.

But now we are back home. Our suitcases have exploded all over the apartment and we are slowly working to get everything put away in it’s place.

The Train Ride

Hannah and I left Juneau Alaska last Saturday to start off our well over due vacation together. We have had this trip planned for so long that Hannah had started counting down to the second from when it was time for use to leave.

So we left Juneau bright and early. Our flight made two stops on our way to Chicago. The first was in Sitka Alaska. It was a very short stop. They unloaded the people who wanted to get off at Sitka and loaded all the people who wanted to go to Seattle very quickly. The second stop was in Seattle Washington. Our layover in Seattle was only 2 hours long. But the time flew by because in Seattle we met up with my mom who flew with us from Seattle to Chicago.

So for the first leg of our vacation Hannah and I are currently in Illinois and having a blast with our family. Both my brothers, sister, nephew, and mom are here. We are all staying at my bother Reza’s new house in Aurora. (Party on Wayne! Party on Garth!)

The first day here we took it pretty easy. The house got some Christmas decorations put up and we played a little Ping Pong in the basement.

Today (well now Yesterday, but I have not been to bed yet so it feels like today) Abe, Tracy, Hannah and myself got up and took the commuter train from Aurora to the heart of Chicago to see the sights. With Abe as our tour guide we did some shopping and checked out the official Chicago Apple store. We also had dinner at the Hard Rock Café which was a lot of fun. They where playing great music videos the whole time we were there. Here is a picture of our Waiter.

We took the commuter train back to Aurora and drove from the train station back to my brothers house. We all shared our stories back at the house. Most everyone is in bed now. I should go too.

Netflix

When I first moved to Juneau Alaska I spent a lot of money on DVDs. It’s kind of crazy when you look at my DVD collection how big it is. I am sure other people have bigger collections then mine, but still. I think mine is pretty impressive.

After the first year of living here, and buying one to many DVDs that I know I will never watch again, I decided to get a Netflix account and have not looked back since. Having a Netflix account has saved me a lot of money by not buying, rather renting the movies I would normally buy. If I get a movie in the mail that I really end up enjoying then I will go out and buy it.

I also feel that having a Netflix account has exposed me to a lot of movie titles I would not normally see. Like indy films and just random goodness that you don’t find when walking into a store or a brick-and-morter movie rental place.

HardDrive Replacement

Hard Drive Two weeks ago I was sitting down at my PowerBook to do some work. Right away I noticed that my mouse and keyboard were not working. “This isn’t good” I thought to myself. My computer rarely gives me any trouble at all. Upon closer inspection I heard a noise that could sounded close to “the click of death” that pledged old . It’s the type of noise that would make a zit faced Geek Squad rep from Best Buy say “That not a good sound”. From That point i powered down my Powerbook was not able to get it to boot back up again. I would just keep getting that hard drive clicking noise.

It was upsetting at first that my hard drive might be dead but I was very great full that I do nightly backups on my system. (Thank you Silverkeeper)

I spent a good chunk of that first weekend trying to save my drive. With the help of some disk utility software I was able to get my computer to boot back up again. But it was not the same. The whole system was slow and eventlly a few days later the hard drive died.

Powerbook opened So, I ordered a new hard drive from newegg.com and four days later (it’s because I live in Juneau) I had it installed. Replacing the old hard drive was not as easy with the G4 Powerbook as it was with my G3Powerbook. With the G3 it was just a matter of lifting up the keyboard. With my G4 it required a lot more steps. Just look at this to see what I went through.

Jack-o-Lanterns

Happy Halloween everyone.

Halloween1 I love this holiday.This week week Hannah and I along with some friends picked out some pumpkins to make Jack-o-Lanterns. We made a mistake this year by waiting to long to by the pumpkins. By the time we went out to get them only one store in all of Juneau had some. As a result they where a little more pricey. Halloween2

But we brought the pumpkins back to the apartment to carve. I spent some time removing all the seeds and hollowing out the sides a bit. Hannah picked out a pattern and we went to down on it. The end result turned out very well.

The weather this year is a little warmer then it was last year around this time. I remember the Jack-O-Lanterns lasting weeks last year because it was so cold.

We finished up the night by placing the Jack-o-Lanterns outside, playing a little Guitar Hero 3 on our Wii, and watching some Firefly.