automaticable

I’m a couple days late, but Happy New Years!  2008 was our inaugural year for automaticable, and it has been a huge success.


Let’s look back with some stats:

• Total Posts: 147
• Total Comments: 376
• Total Visitors: 54,679
• Number of Visiting Countries: 154
• Number of Sites Linking Here: 364
• Busiest Traffic Day: Sept. 21 (10,285 views)

Here are some of the most popular posts from our first year:

• Lock Down Your Ubuntu Computer with A Bluetooth Cellphone and BlueProximity
• How-to: Enable Surround Sound on Ubuntu Hardy
• Organize Your ToDo List in Ubuntu with Remember The Milk and Tasque
• Electric Sheep: A Screen Saver That Learns (and is the best I’ve ever seen)
• How To: Host a Subversion Repository in Ubuntu Hardy
• Comcast Blocking DD-WRT?
• Void My Firefox Warranty?
• How-to: Mount a Network drive in Ubuntu
• Customize Your Dual-boot: GUI Frontend to GRUB
• Easy Subversion GUI for Nautilus and Ubuntu

And as the New Year is upon us, I’d also like to make some personal goals for myself.  I don’t believe in New Years resolutions, but I do have a few things I’d like to improve in the upcoming year:

• Run More: Last year I started excersing and running regularly, and even did a half-marathon in the Fall.  I’d like to keep it up, and push even harder this year.  If all goes well, I’ll be running the Chicago Marathon with a friend later this year.
• Study More: I’m coming up on my last semester as an undergraduate, but it really doesn’t end there for me.  I just applied for graduate school, and hope to pursue a Masters in machine learning starting next Fall.  I want to end this year strong, and get ready for harder classes and more research in graduate school.
• Revive automaticable: You may have notices lulls in posting during our first year.  This is mostly due to my own lack of time and motivation, but I’d like to fix that in 2009.  Brian has already alluded to a few changes we are planning in the site layout, and there’s a few other things we have planned as well.  Stay tuned.

These are my goals for 2009.  Have you made any for yourself?  And as we begin a new year for automaticable, what would you like to see more of on the blog?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Hey loyal readers! I know it’s been a while (Holy crap, 3 months?!?!?) since our last post, but that does NOT mean that we Wegnerians have given up on you.  We’ve just all been swamped with school, work, social lives, or lack there of.  There are some changes that you will notice to the site as soon as the New Year, which includes a brand new Tab dedicated to me!  Why me? Because #1 I’m awesome, #2 I’m special, #3 I have a class project with my new internship that requires me to keep record of what I’m doing (I’ll post more on this later on).

So, I’m sitting here thinking, and I realize I only have about 32 more hours before I’m off on a flight, leaving the U.S.A. to go be in warm, 85 degree weather during some of the most brutal snow storms Chicago’s had in quite a while.  The family and I (yes, all automaticable bloggers) are taking a GLORIOUS trip down to Jamaica for my parent’s 25th wedding anniversary.  This is a trip that has been in the makings for about six months now, and I’m as gitty as a school girl.  With a brand new camera, and skin as white as the snow we’re leaving behind, I’m fully prepared for a 7 day, all expenses paid vacation in the Caribbean.  Our resort includes a poolside bar, sailboats at our leisure, a beach, and endless amount of sunshine.  I don’t want to brag or anything, but it’s supposed to be 85 degrees EVERY day that we’re there.

Now, being it the holiday season, we were torn at first, at what to do about “The Big C” (Christmas), but in the end, we decided…..we’re skipping Christmas.  Yes, I know, shocking, because every year we have Christmas Eve at our place, and 45 people will all be disappointed this year because Santa will be coming down the stairs this year, instead of the elevator.  The fact that we’re skipping Christmas this year, is kind of difficult.  All my friends are asking me what I want for Christmas, and the only good answer I have come up with is “A Tan.”  I’m saving a bunch of money for not having to buy any gifts this year, but I can’t seem to put a close to 2008, even with New Years on its way.  Without Christmas, my year just doesn’t seem to be complete.  Oh well, Jamaica will still be fun, and I’ll be tan for my arrival in Orlando.

So here’s the deal, starting January 7th, I’m leaving the cold once again to live in Orlando, Florida for 5 months.  I have been offered (and I graciously accepted) an internship at Walt Disney World.  I will be working in Quick Service Food and Beverage, but I won’t know which exact park or where IN the park until I arrive down there.  The new tab I was talking about is for the Coop-Internship side of things, where I have to keep in contact with a faculty member at my college so they know I’m actually doing something down there instead of just enjoying the warm weather.  I’ll try to post ATLEAST once a week, and there will also be pictures to support my posts.  This is an exciting thing for me, because it’s an opportunity of a life time, and will give me direction and motivation on what I really want my future to hold.  With that being said, it’s now close to midnight on Saturday and I only have 30 more hours, before my flight leaves for Jamaica.

A Bon Voyage to you all, as well as a Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah with a Jolly good New Year!

Woo, we’re on vacation!  That’s right, the bro’s drove down from Downers Grove last night, and we’re Georgia-bound this morning.  The next 8 days are to be spent hiking, fishing, swimming, canoeing, and all-around have a good time.  We’ve got a few competitions laid out so far, but I think the whole week will be competitive craziness.  I’m talkin’ watermelon seed spitting contest, Euchre tournament, and “who will-jump-over-the-fire-naked” bets.  Anything goes this week.  We are on the road in less than 35 minutes.  Later, automaticable.

PS: In case you weren’t following, yes, Kyle does owe me 22.22 beers this vacation.  And yes, I did make my 50 mile goal.  And yes, I am doing the Chicago Half Marathon in September (more on that later).  I’m not really sure what kind of beer it’ll be yet– any suggestions?

We are only a few days away from the Wegner summer vacation and it is about time I announce our first annual Mountain Man Competition. Not only am I announcing this to the folks here on automaticable, but this is the first time the other vacationers are hearing of the idea as well. If you want to help participate, make sure to read through the end of the post to find out how you can be a part of the Mountain Man Competition.

For the first aspect of the Mountain Man Competition, we are going to have a beard growing contest. I’m not sure what the state of all the participants’ facial hair is, but for everyone participating we will have a final clean shave Friday morning and document our spikey growth over the entire week. Expect a photo-blog of our facial evolution when we get back. The winner gets to bask in his (or her?) manly glory as the most masculine (and hairy) person of the bunch.

Help us come up with more ideas!

How do you want to see the Wegner brothers compete over a week in the mountains? Leave your ideas in the comments. We only have a few days left, but any great ideas will have their own post created (which includes a link to your site, if you have one) and the competition photo-documented if possible.

This is open to everyone: automaticable readers, vacation attendees, random extended family members…anyone really. There is only 1 rule: no running competitions! (grrr…)

Well, two weeks and three days away until I leave on the trip of a lifetime with some of the closest people to me in my life.  Most of them you have heard from if you’ve read automaticable for a while.  Kyle Wegner, Scott Wegner, Joe Wegner, Stacy Friel, Lindsay Gerke, and I will all be road tripping down to the Smoky Mountains in Bryson City, North Carolina. This trip should be a lot of fun because it’s our first real big vacation where our parents haven’t been watching over our shoulders and there to guide us in what we should and shouldn’t do. My brothers and I have been camping and being outdoorsy for as long as I could remember, but we’ve never done anything of this caliber without our parents planning and them being there. But we’re finally making it our own and going down a path that has yet to be ventured by all of us. Granted we’re using a lot of the techniques that we’ve learned by observation through the years, like cooking teams, cleaning teams, planning out our expenses to a T and how much each meal SHOULD cost and what not. It’s kind of exciting to see how it will all come together in the end. So far we don’t really have many adventures or excursions planned for our trip, all we know is we have a cabin next to a lily pond, six people, two cars, and a weeks worth of time to have fun and enjoy everything that the Smoky Mountains and North Carolina has to offer us. If any of you Automaticabalites have been there and have suggestions for us to do or see, please, leave a comment and let us know! I’m sure when we return, there will be plenty for us to tell about our adventures and photos to go along with our delightful adventure.

Happy Download day everyone! This is an exciting thing on all ends, because not only is this my first techy blog on good ole automaticable, but today is the Firefox 3 Download Day!! There’s many plans going on, the biggest of all, of course, is the ability to pledge to download the new update today, in the next 24 hours, to be apart of the Guinness Book Of World Records 2008! That’s right, with the new release of Mozilla Firefox is trying to have the most downloads in a 24 hour period. When I pledged, just moments ago, there were 1,683,932 other pledges just like mine! So head on over to www.spreadfirefox.com and make your pledge today! While you’re there check out some of the other cool things happening. You can plan an office or school Download Fest where you all meet up on your lunch breaks and download the new Firefox 3, join some of the great Download Day groups on Facebook, or Myspace, or become a campus rep for Firefox! All of these things are very exciting and I want to encourage ALL of our automaticable fans to head on over and make the pledge to download Firefox 3 today and be apart of the magic happening all around the world!

This Memorial Day weekend marked the culmination of months of planning and bad chicken jokes for my parents: Saturday was their First (Annual?) Chicken Cook-off. I wasn’t able to make it, but from what I can tell it was pretty fun. My mom was so excited, she even wrote a guest blog post about it. Keep reading below for the details, as well as some pretty funny pictures.

Continue reading “Bawk: Memorial-Day Weekend Chicken Cook-off”

So you thought you would pinch a few friends who weren’t wearing green today, huh? Just because it’s March 17th you think you have the right to go about reminding people they forgot St. Patrick’s Day? WRONG. You are the one who forgot St. Patrick’s Day!

According to this excerpt from the Telegraph Herald, St. Patty’s was actually on Saturday, March 15th this year. The reason? The Catholic Church traditionally moves the date of this celebration if it ever falls within Holy Week, which has not happened since 1940.

So put away your clovers and hide that green shirt because you are starting to embarrass me! Oh, and if you are worried about missing St. Patty’s again sometime soon, don’t be; we shouldn’t have this problem again until the year 2160.