Tuesday, February 27, 2007

I got the hardware from uControl today. Since I already have an ADT system, this new module is supposed to simply snap into the system board ... and actually, it was quite simple. I was working on it during the evening, so I unplugged the horn (which I forgot to hook back up, now that I think about it). About an hour later, I had a web controlled, fully internet and cell monitored security system. ADT wasn't surprised that I cancelled due to lack of web control. I guess they'll have to learn some new tricks.

Sunday, February 18,2007

I got up this morning at 6, giving me 3.5 hours of sleep, but yet I feel fine. I think I've finally conquered this sleep thing. I think what's more important than the amount of sleep is the schedule of sleep. I go to bed at midnight every night and wake up at 6. This routine is why I haven't crashed yet. Sure my brain isn't repairing and organizing, and they say I'm shaving years off my life, but I'd rather have those years now in the form of no sleep than later in the form of withered old man.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Oh man, what a day. Now that I'm sleeping between 5 and 6 a night, it sure makes the days long. Not in a bad way, it just seems that I'm doing a lot more (which I guess is the point). For example, I got up and did house chores for 4 hours, studied for 6 hours, hung out with family for another 6 hours, and then played Xbox for 2 hours. (A good way to get major progress is to host a coop game and play until somebody finds you. Not only will you get time in yourself, but you'll continue checkpoint saves once somebody joins. Brilliant.)

When will I crash?

Friday, February 16, 2007

Black Licorice

1 oz Sambuca
1 oz Kahlua

Mix and serve neat.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

As I convert movies on my main computer, I FTP them over to the Xbox, then use the Xbox to FTP them over to the server (I'm still trying to figure out why my PC can't see the server). But my router seems to occasionally lockup when moving these 2G files (at a snails pace of 1M/s, which is another story). I've done the usual troubleshooting, but to no avail. I guess it's just a feature of an old crappy D-Link product. It seems there's a fair number of people on the user groups with the same issues.

One problem at a time please ...

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

I use ADT for the home security monitoring. A while back, I got Vonage and the security worked sometimes and not others. So someone came out and said that ADT rarely works with VOIP, and I should get the "cell backup". I told them to install it and thought I was good. Well, a few weeks ago I noticed the panel was displaying a failure to communicate code. Long story short, the ADT guy came out today and said I didn't have the cell backup installed. He tried using the phone lines and the system sent a signal. I told him it might work now, but probably will go out again. Plus, I think it messes up the VOIP router. Of course he recommended the cell backup (which I thought I already had) and left.

Now, I have to deal with getting credit on my account. I mentioned alarm.com to him and he said the online features sounded like a good idea. I told him that I didn't think my current hardware was compatible with alarm.com's panel, but he said you can always get things to work by going through adaptors. So basically the ADT guy told me to ditch ADT.

I guess I have more research to do ...

Monday, February 12, 2007

I officially started the mass conversion of all my DVD's to the server. It takes my machine between 3 and 4 hours to convert one movie, running at 100%. My goal is to get four converted each day. I'm starting with the official DivX Converter, which so far can convert 80% of the movies. I'll either need to find another application to convert the other 20%, or store the set of VOBs for each movie.

Either way, I'm sure I'll need to get a new processor after this project.

Sunday, February 11,2007

Aw man, I stayed up pretty late last night. Karl and I finally got some game time in. Here's a tip for you all: If you're at the very last guy and Karl wants to play coop from the beginning, don't do it. I lost my checkpoint and now have to go through the entire game again. I guess there's worse things.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

I'm slowly getting back into a routine. I was able to watch two movies tonight. I probably should be doing house things, but I figure as long as I can maintain warmth in and critters out, I'm doing alright.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

I've been having some problems with Mobil (Xbox) playing movies from zion (server). I recently reconfiged the samba users on zion and thought Mobil just didn't have access anymore. But I still could browse zion. I would queue a movie to play, Mobil would recognize it was a divx file, but then abort procedure. Maybe Mobil had read only permissions. So I change the directory to public executable, still no luck. I did some research and found others had a similar problem when XBMC tried to output a resolution that their display didn't like. My Mitsubishi accepts 480i, 480p, and 1080i. I have XBMC outputting at 1080i, so there shouldn't be an issue. Anyway, I set XBMC to be 480p and now the movies play fine. Currently I don't have any movies higher than that, and I'm too busy playing the 360 to worry about games on Mobil, so this fix is fine. Perhaps I'll look into this some more later ... doubtful.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Hey! Nothing broke in the house today!

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Knapper's in London and I've been meaning to get him some info on where to find me some absinthe. After a little nagging from him, I figure it would be easiest to post it here. So here you are Knapper. Don't feel obligated to do any of this.

Gerry's Wine & Spirits has a large selection of absinthe. See if they know where to get an absinthe glass. If you have time, could you also get a list, or take a picture, of their selection? When you're at the airport, look for Parisian Le Fee (not Bohemian).

Safe travels.

Monday, February 5, 2007

Ah yes. I love this house.

I woke up to no running water. Went to the basement and found the main water pipe was frozen. Alright, this sucks. So I get the hair dryer out and start thawing the pipes. I left the laundry tub faucet on and could see water dripping out as the ice melted. At some point I heard the ice clanking around, which I thought was a good thing because that means I'm getting movement. The next thing I knew I was getting sprayed in the face by freezing water. The main pipe burst. Alright, this really sucks. Now, I'm no stranger to water adventures, but there's no way I'm going to be able to fix this. So I get on the internet to find a plumber ... oh wait, no internet. This really sucks and now I'm getting irritated. I somehow found a number and was able to get somebody to come out on an "emergency" call. About an hour later, the plumber shows up, calmly assesses the situation, and starts re-routing the main instead of fixing it. the main was along the foundation wall, inside the finished wall and above the ceiling. The worst possible spot since this area is cold and gets no heat. The plumber said it was a miracle that this hadn't happened before. Apparently they didn't have cold weather back when they built the house. Anyway, a few hours and a couple hundred bucks later, i had running water again. This really sucks and I'm irritated, but it's over. I guess they had around 50 calls relating to pipe bursts. If I learned anything, it's that if you can wait to call a plumber on Monday instead of the weekend, do it. Overtime (weekend) rates are triple that of normal emergency calls.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

The network is still down. I called Comcast (again) and they said 20% of customers in my area are experiencing problems. When asked what was causing it, they said because it's been so cold (-15 degrees), lines are snapping and they can't repair them fast enough.

This got me thinking. One argument that Comcast uses to bash DirecTV is the idea you can't watch TV during bad weather. I so wished I recorded that conversation. I think I'll send DirecTV a quick note about this and get on a commercial or something.

Saturday, February 3, 2007

Saturday nights (late, late nights) have turned into gaming night. Karl and I have set it up to play some Xbox Live. I think it's been four weeks now, and we have yet to play together. The first three weeks, "something else" came up for Karl. Tonight it was me that didn't attend. My network went down, and I ended up spending two hours trying to get it back up. I've been doing a lot of file transfers and thought it might have strained the network. I ended up rebooting every component (cable modem and two routers) a few times. I finally got my end working, only to figure out the problem was on Comcasts end. I hate not gaming.

Thursday, February 1, 2007

I learned something today. Something very useful. Because I work at a large company, we have very strict internet blockers. I can't check web-based email, access web-based storage, nor view photo or video sharing sites. Somebody on digg mentioned that some administrators only block the domain name and not the IP address, either because they're lazy or leave them open for their friends. For example, YouTube is blocked, but 208.65.153.253 is not. Next up, GMail.