Thursday, March 31, 2005

I woke up this morning quite sore. I don't know about this "new technology" in the Sleep Number beds. Basically, it's just an air mattress ... the same you can use while camping. I think I'd be less sore if I slept directly over some jagged rocks.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The Sleep Number bed came today, in several boxes, in the rain. The estimated assembly time was one hour. It took me two, with my excuse being that I basically had to set up two beds. The king is actually just two twins. They said no tools required, and instead used wing nuts. Well, I'd rather have a drill to tighten screws than tighten a million wing nuts by hand. My fingers are quite raw. At any rate, what the instructions don't take into account is the prep time, which was about 40 minutes. This included getting beer from the beer store, disassembling the current bed, finding a new place for all the stuff forgotten about under the bed, vacuuming a two inch layer of dust bunnies, and going to the bathroom from drinking too much beer already.

We'll see how this bed "changes my life forever".

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Along with probably everyone that uses Blogger, I've been experiencing some problems with accessibility and updates. It seems a lot of people start with Blogger to "test the waters" of the web log trend. If they like it, they'll port over to another service. I guess that says something of Bloggers friendly user interface.

Hopefully soon I'll be one of those that switches, trying my hand at the great PHP and MySQL duo. Of coarse, that would mean I would have only myself to blame at the problems.

Monday, March 28, 2005

If you have "Do one thing on to-do list" on your to-do list, can you cross it off?

Sunday, March 27, 2005

I went to Champps (which, by the way, has free Wi-Fi) today for the Easter Brunch. As soon as I walked in the door, I was greeted by someone dressed in a rabbit suit. It was at this time that every synapse went into overdrive and I couldn't get Donnie Darko out of my brain. I suppose I should give that movie another chance, but it really freaked me out the first time.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

A little more research into the TV viewing arena has made me giddy. I found out that XBMC can also play ty files, which are Tivo files. This allows me to bypass the step of converting these to mpeg files.

I can't even begin to understand how mankind survived without the internet. It would take so long to learn anything new when your bandwidth is the speed of a covered wagon.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Today at work, I did a lot of research on the Tytools package. In a nutshell, it allows the extraction of Tivo's (including DirecTiVo's) video files to a PC to a format that can be further edited for your needs. Many people create VOB's from these for DVD authoring. I plan to create MPEG's to stream to the TV's.

All of this requires a hacked Tivo, something I'm not willing to experiment with on the new boxes. I still have my first Series 1 DirecTiVo sitting around looking pretty. I think it's time to finally crack it open and play with its guts.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

I had meetings from 8:00 to 2:30, continuous. The good news is that most were conference calls and I got to browse the internet while on the phone. The bad news is that my neck is permanently crooked from holding the phone up with my shoulder. Maybe I'll have to steal someone's headset this weekend.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Karl got his Xbox rigged with a bigger hard drive. So the next natural step was to transfer all my games over to his box. After trying several variations of FTP programs using his PC, we decided to try the Xbox FTP program. I thought this was never going to work, seeing as most computer things never do, but it was quite easy. In fact, we even got the magical 10Mb/s transfer speed, allowing us to transfer 30G in about an hour.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

As I was walking home from work yesterday, I saw something shiny peeking through the melting snow. Obviously distracted, I picked it up. Lo' and behold, it was the missing face plate to my Alpine radio that some punks trashed from my car. I wiped off the mud, snapped it back in the car, and it worked like a charm. Luckily I didn't win the auctions on eBay for a new faceplate I was bidding on.

In related happenings, it would really suck to have a malfunction if you were this guy.

Monday, March 21, 2005

I finally got the second DirecTiVo unit activated and running. Now that I have the video working upstairs and down, my next project will be to get the surround sound fine tuned. Naturally, this involves running more wire around the house, something I've learned to love.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

What can I say, another day. This studying routine better end soon, especially when I have to stand while reading to prevent falling asleep.

I did notice that yesterday's post was my 100th. There was no ad in the New York Times, but still significant (to me).

Saturday, March 19, 2005

I was unusually tired today. It was hard getting up this morning, hard studying, hard drinking beer.

I'm also having a little trouble with Blockbuster's mail DVD subscription service. The past two movies have been mutilated through the mail, allowing the return envelope to show resulting in the movie automatically being returned to Blockbuster. Also, the two free in-store rental coupons were not showing up online, so I couldn't use those to get my two games to copy to the Xbox. And the emails I sent are being unanswered. I guess this is how customer turnover starts.

Friday, March 18, 2005

My plane back from Hartford was supposed to leave at 5:45pm. I got to the airport at about 4:00 and learn that it's been delayed until 7:00. After sitting around, it got pushed to 7:45, then 8:00, then 8:30, with rumors that it was going to be cancelled. A cancelled flight isn't the worst thing, but if it was cancelled after sitting at the airport for over 4 hours, that would have been quite irritating. In the end, it took off a little before 9:00 and didn't get into bed until almost midnight.

I think I deserve to not have to come in on Monday since today was a 15 hour day.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

I went to my boss's boss's house for a St. Patrick's day gathering. It's about 50,000 square feet atop a large hill with a pool in the back and a hottub in the loft overlooking the world. Most of the furnishing came with the house, including a 47" plasma, liquor bars on every level, an arcade in the basement, and the servants.

Anyway, I tried to refrain from playing the video games for as long as I could. Someone asked me to try to beat the high score on Ms. Pacman. When I finally died, they were either impressed with the score or happy they now got a turn. It was probably good it didn't ask me for my initials, as I had many Guinesses and the possibilities of work inappropriate 3 letter words would have been to tempting.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

I watched Super Size Me tonight ... much better "documentary" than The Real Cancun, but certainly not as good as The Matrix. I mean, what good is the McDiet experiment when we're all just living in a computer program?

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Alright, I'll admit it. I watched The Real Cancun tonight, all in the name of science. Don't blame me if my goal in life is to watch every movie made. Although it's officially a movie, I'd be hard pressed to call this 90 minute Real World episode one. I suppose if you're into reality shows, which I'm not, this would be a good way to get a season packed into one sitting.

Monday, March 14, 2005

So I was thinking of The Village and wondered if I could live in the 19th century.

I doubt it. It might be a learning experience for a weekend, but to live Little House on the Prairie life? Not interested. Their games consisted of scaring girls with toads and sweeping the porch, slightly different than playing Halo with someone in Europe and watching HD with DTS audio.

Of course, my great-grandchildren will be saying the same thing about the 21st century.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

I watched Around the Bend last night. It's only worth seeing to see Christopher Walken. There's one type of actor that plays the same character the same way in every movie. There's another type of actor that plays different characters the same way in every movie. Either would normally signal a bad actor, but not in Walken's case, which is the second type. His characters range from The Prophecy and Last Man Standing to Envy and Stepford Wives. But in each movie, I see Christopher Walken playing a character. This is not to say he's a bad actor ... just the opposite. He can't do wrong. If you disagree, check out the Saturday Night Live with him hosting. Hilarious.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

I have a 55" widescreen, which is perfect for the room it's in. I tried to play Halo 2 online with split screen down the middle. Even though half of the screen is still pretty big (I'd say about a 30" regular TV), it was near impossible to play.

I guess I'm spoiled...

Friday, March 11, 2005

I stumbled upon a very interesting site with some things to think about. Some of it's a bit lengthy, but worth a glance.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

I had meetings with big-wigs, studied, and went to bed. I did happen to watch a little High Def television programming. It's still incredible to me. I'm not sure if it's worth the extra $10 a month for a few crappy channels, but I'll definitely use my free 6 months to the fullest.

Wednesday, March 9, 2005

I watched The Village last night. Some people don't like M. Night Shyamalan's movies, but you certainly have to give him credit for out-of-the-Hollywood-box thinking. He always seems to throw in a "here's one more thing I'll put in my movie to get them thinking". I don't like to give away much in a movie in case you haven't seen them, but The Village and The Sixth Sense are excellent examples of this, and to a less obvious extent Signs and Unbreakable.

And speaking of Hollywood movies, I saw The Notebook last Sunday. This romantic drama was incredibly predictable and had a formulaic plot. However, I thought the acting was quite impressive and the scripting was entertaining. I'd definitely recommend it to the right audience.

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Yet another interesting day this week. I was supposed to fly out to Hartford this afternoon for work. We got on the runway, and the captain said that Hartford was closed due to weather. So we had to deboard the plane. After a few hours of complaining and waiting at the airport, I decided I could go out next week and got a refund for my ticket. This was all on work time, but I would have rather been at work.

Take a look at the Neo MP3 link on yesterday's post. The song's title is quite fitting.

Monday, March 7, 2005

I went out to my car this morning and found that the passenger side window was smashed. I could tell immediately that I was dealing with amateurs on account of the faceplate to my Alpine was smashed. Instead of pressing the "detach faceplate" button, they took a crowbar to it. They then attempted to pry out the radio, which might work if you're the Hulk. They also did a number to the heat controls. All in all, they probably did little monetary damage (other than the window) since there are a million 1998 Nissan Maxima parts out there. This incident might have bothered me less if they were a little more professional about it.

As he cooks his heroin --
VINCENT
I just wish I caught 'em doin' it,
ya know? Oh man, I'd give anything
to catch 'em doin' it. It'a been
worth his doin' it, if I coulda
just caught 'em, you know what I
mean?

LANCE
It's chicken shit. You don't fuck
with another man's vehicle.

They didn't even bother taking my sunglasses, CD's, coat, the stuff I would probably take if I were a thief. The weird thing is that I happen to take my removable Neo MP3 player out that night, which I never do. They probably wouldn't know what to do with it, but it would have really made me mad to lose 30GB of music.

Sunday, March 6, 2005

It was around 50 degrees today, and it's supposed to be below freezing tomorrow. I don't get the weather in Minnesota. Actually, I just said that so you'd think I talk about more than Xbox and studying. In fact, I don't care at all about the weather. The only time I'm outside is to get to and from the car. Other than that, it could be typhooning outside and I would have no idea. Unless the DirecTV signal went out. Then I'd care...

Saturday, March 5, 2005

I went to go install a print server and a printer for someone today. You'd think an hour tops, but it took almost four. I thought I'd do this install correct and follow the instructions to the letter, but that didn't even come close to working. I searched the web pretty hard trying to find someone with a similar error, even called Dell, but to no avail. I ended up solving it while on the third hold with Dell. I should probably throw my solution in the newsgroups for the next person.

Friday, March 4, 2005

I went to a surprise birthday party for my sister-in-law (?). It was expectedly fun. She was quite surprised and Karl was a bastard after a few brews. I hope I can wake up for karate tomorrow.

Thursday, March 3, 2005

I may have found a fairly good solution to streaming DVD's from the server to the Xbox. I'm trying out a free program called SimpleDivX. I've done some tests and it looks promising. The only glitch I've found is that there is no sound when sampling the sound at 48kHz. I know a lot of sound cards can't handle this and must have the sound converted to 44.1kHz. I'm recreating the avi file now at the lower sample and we'll see if Xbox can play it.

Or I could just find out what the Xbox can handle and build the file around it.

Wednesday, March 2, 2005

Nothing too exciting happened today. I inched my way closer to the final products in both wiring and Xbox.

But here's something you can amaze your friends with.

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Well, the whole online gaming has taken me by storm. I usually end up being in last place, but it's still fun. Other than that ... late to bed, early to rise.

Monday, February 28, 2005

After how many complaints, and I finally got XLive Kai working. I had to do the proper testing to make sure it was working (of coarse) and ended up playing until midnight. It works, but it's not pretty. I had an old laptop sitting around with Windows 95 on it, which is now rigged up after having to find another patch cable (5' for $3 at Menard's). The only tricky part of installation was the fact that the router would lose power everytime I left the closet; and when I went back in it would restart. As it turns out, the power outlet is also controlled by the light switch...