finally recovered my once-thought-to-be-bricked Pro S2 XBees last night, and spent a little while today getting them to talk. X-CTU is a PITA in OSX - i really need to get Parallels running on my laptop - but in the end i had a coordinator sending data to a router just fine. i even got the router to trigger an Arduino Uno to turn a pin on and off, though i was hoping for a little more out of the day.

in related news, i really wish that the usb ports on the side of my MacBook were spaced like 5/32" wider than they are. also, my iMac could either 1) have a usb port on the front of its body, or 2) have a little more elevation on the backside of its keyboard so that a normal usb plug would fit without screwing everything up. just sayin'.

still, progress is progress. next up, gotta get this solid state relay to switch 120VAC by the same means. and i'm super pumped about the temperature sensor i've got coming to me on friday - that's gonna be *cool.*

with special thanks to Jordan Husney.