Tuesday, May 31, 2005

I officially give up painting. I'm obviously not good at it, which any one could tell by simply looking at the walls. This in turn means I hate it. Luckily, my duties have officially ended since all three rooms are done.

Maybe now I'll have time for my latest project.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Probably the most beautiful Memorial Day in history, and guess where I was ... inside painting.

Somebody owes me for this. Big time.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

I'm covered in paint and my retinas have pink burned into them (the primer was pink, not the paint).

I did get to watch House of Flying Daggers and Flight of the Phoenix this weekend. I expected Phoenix to be just another Hollywood movie made for money. Although not great, much better than I expected. I didn't really know what to expect of Daggers. It's usually hard to tell how foreign martial arts movies that are imported to the States will pan out. But, if you're into martial arts movies, this should definitely be on your list to see. As I do all foreign movies, I highly recommend keeping it in its native language and have English subtitles.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

I started the "Makeover of 2005" on the house. There are three rooms getting new carpet next week, so it seemed like a good idea to paint each of those rooms. Seemed...

Friday, May 27, 2005

I finally figured out why XBMC wasn't working. This one sure racked my brain. Here's the long version.

I built an entertainment center for the movie room with the equipment shelf way on the left side. I obviously didn't take cable length into account as all my component cables were a few inches too short to reach the inputs on the TV. Because component cable is not cheap, I rerouted all equipment to pass through my A/V tuner, with only this going to the TV. Unfortunately, I had no more inputs on the tuner for the Xbox, so I had to plug this directly into the TV. Well, XBMC recognized that component cables were connected and output 1080i. Since I only have one HD input on my TV, the Xbox is plugged into a 480p input. Hence, a scrambled picture. My current workaround is to force Xbox to down convert to 480p, which is fine for now as I don't have any HD games or movies.

As I said, this sure took a lot of brain.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Three Kings convened tonight. It's always a blast to hang out. We did some grilling, gaming, drinking, car hacking, and pondering. We decided to save Edward Fortyhands for another night, one which we didn't have to work the next day and where women and children are nowhere near.

I brought my Xbox over and hooked it up to Karl's TV, and XBMC worked. So now I have to figure out what the difference between the two setups are. The two obvious differences at Karl's are that we didn't have the network cable plugged in and he had a full screen TV, as opposed to widescreen. Hmm...

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

I finally saw the Minnesota quarter for the first time. It has the phrase "Land of 10,000 Lakes", a loon, and two people in a boat fishing. These are the things that symbolize Minnesota? I, as a Minnesotan, hate fishing (except if it entails beer and not much fishing). I figure I can make fun of it since my uncle was on the commission to design it. He'll hear it from me at the next family gathering.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

The good news is that I may have found a fix for my XBMC. I'll have to try it tomorrow.

The bad news is that I tried to tweak the antenna in the attic to receive OTA HD signals. Not only would this allow me to get all local HD content, but I could then cancel the "locals package" from DirecTV. Using my trusty Garmin eTrex Vista, I pointed the antenna to 318°, but there's another tower at 321°. I get decent signal for half the channels, but very weak for the other half. Another variable is that I'm running over 50' of coax, which severely degrades the signal. So either I rethink my antenna distribution or get an amp for the line.

With the Powerball at 180 million, I think I'll bulldoze the house ... after I win.

Monday, May 23, 2005

One word, Edward Fortyhands. I tried to convince the Three Kings to attempt this. We're hopefully getting together on Thursday to try it out. Would this be a good time to get the video camera out?

Sunday, May 22, 2005

I was looking forward to watching a movie tonight. My only real chance of catching up on all the movies I need to see is during the off season of studying. My target is at least two per week. Well, it didn't happen this week. I guess it feels good to get some work done around the house, but I think the withdrawal symptoms are appearing.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

I reinstalled XBMC and am still having the same problem. I better get this figured out soon because all the movies I've been ripping are just sitting in storage not being watched. Unacceptable.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Pea and I took a walk around the lake today. There's maybe 5 caches in the parks. We looked for one and successfully found it. There's a multi-cache close by with clues and riddles. Hopefully summer weather will get here soon to enjoy this new game.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

For some reason, XBMC has become corrupt on the Xbox. The video is all scrambled. From what I can tell (I've had practice deciphering scrambled cable channels), sometimes it hangs on the splash screen and sometimes continues to the menu. At any rate, this will be yet another thing that worked fine that I'll have to fix. I guess if software worked the way programmers intended, there wouldn't be bugs to exploit.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

I rented Fable for the Xbox. I've put maybe an hour into it. So far, it's nothing amazing, but I'm still in "training". It definitely has great potential. Hopefully I'll be able to put some more hours in, but I'm sure I'll be working on the house more than I'd like to. There's nothing more that I like to do than mudding the walls. Nothing.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

I came back from Hartford and did not find the two caches I looked for. I think one of them went missing from flooding, as I guess the area down by the river floods every spring. So now I have the Travel Bug that I should probably put somewhere so others can take it. I'm going to Chicago in June, so maybe I'll try picking it back up before I leave. Surely I'll be able to find a cache in Chicago.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Now, don't get mad if you or someone you know is a flight attendant, but this is a career that could be deleted. It took 4 flight attendants to serve a can of pop for a two hour flight. I could see having one person on board to assist with carry ons. But people bring their own food on board, and why not beverages? I've taken train and bus trips for longer than two hours that don't have "attendants". If the airline industry is looking to reduce costs, this would be one area I'd look.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

I have so many projects to get done, but dubbed today to be lazy Sunday. I went up to my hometown of Cambridge to get a Travel Bug from a cache. The goal of this TB is to travel as many miles as possible. Since I'm going to Connecticut this week for work, I'll bring it along and drop it off in Hartford.

I finally watched Panic Room tonight. I'd rate it average. There were a couple weird scenes that didn't make sense, possibly due to editing. There were at least two incredible camera sequences that I caught.

Speaking of becoming a Hollywood hotshot director, I ended up going over to the movie set to be an extra. As it turned out, everyone was running late, and by the time the director got there, the pizza came and it wouldn't be for another hour before shooting. Since I had to get to my surprise, I ended up leaving before doing anything. However, I did talk to everyone I could while we were all standing around: camera man, other extras, producer, and the stunt coordinator. All good stuff.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

I got the surprise party pulled on me tonight. I knew we were doing something for my birthday, but didn't know what exactly. I figured we'd go do something and go out to eat. We ended up looking for a cache in the early evening, which we didn't find because it was too muddy. Then came the blindfold in the car. When we got out of the car, I had a suspicion we were back home and that there was a surprise inside, maybe a candlelit dinner or my 55 gallon fish tank set up. But when the blindfold came off, there were about 30 people yelling at me. Quite the surprise.

Oh, and I got a lot of compliments on the movie room. Little do they know it's not even done, yet.

Friday, May 13, 2005

I've been in contact with a producer of a short film in need of extras for a particular scene. It happens to be filming in the park right near where I live. I don't know if I'll end up going; I can't seem to find anyone to go with me. I imagine it will be a lot of standing around. I figure it'll be a good learning experience for when I become a Hollywood hotshot director.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

I got a chance to watch the Xbox 360 unveil. It was certainly an MTV production, a lot of fluff, little detail. The show served its purpose in that my interest is piqued. I won't know the stuff that's important until after E3. Everyone's ranting and raving over the "sexy design", but it still looks like a small form factor case to me. The idea of an always on gaming console / media center with HD capability is very cool. I also heard a rumor that it's liquid cooled. Very cool.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

I was at Menards tonight and was reminded of an incident someone had. Menards wouldn't take a check for $400 because he didn't have "proper" identification. Coincidently, he recently lost his drivers license, but had the renewal papers, along with another non-government issued picture ID. I'd say proper enough. But the thing is, I've been going to Menards for years and always use a credit card. They've never checked my ID, even when it's obvious I don't sign my name.

This got me thinking. Is it easier to forge a credit card or a check? With a credit card, you need either particular personal information of someone to apply, or access to the physical card, both of which aren't too hard. With a check, you could print them at home with the victims account numbers. Either method of payment would be easy to forge, but maybe Menards is good to at least confirm checks.

Anyway, who still uses checks, Karl?

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

As predicted, I couldn't move much today due to soreness.

I've been thinking a lot about the end state of the home network, and how I'm going to get there. In one of these posts, I'll have to lay it out. But right now, I have too many computers and parts in various rooms and need to take inventory to know what I'm up against. For example, the temporary file server is a Pentium (that's Pentium I) laptop running Windows 95, while the real server is sitting upstairs in front of the heat vent. Ugh.

Monday, May 9, 2005

This will be the first full week that I'll have to work a full eight hours. As much as studying sucked, it at least broke up the day. If today was any indication of how the week will go, it's going to be incredibly difficult.

Not only that, but I helped Karl move a basement worth of sheetrock from the driveway. Unfortunately for us, more so for me, I haven't worked out in quite a while. Little does he know what's in store for him over at my house.

Sunday, May 8, 2005

I watched Finding Neverland tonight. As it turns out, the problem I had with SmartRipper was not its fault. The disc was unreadable about 10 minutes from the end. Of course, it was probably the most important part of the movie. I got it working again in the DVD player by skipping about a minute, but I still couldn't get SmartRipper to work without sitting at the computer pressing enter to skip each unreadable bit.

In any case, I gotta find a DivX application that is a bit more robust, and seamless.

Saturday, May 7, 2005

I went to a wedding today up in Cambridge. The reception was at the Legion, which brought back a lot of memories of various Boy Scout events. I think my favorite was the Pine Wood Derby. This is where you'd get a block of wood, and you would design, carve, paint, and weight it to roll it down a track. I wonder if I still have them stored somewhere?

Friday, May 6, 2005

I spent too long in Target playing with the little scanning gun. It reminded me of a hack I read about. All these guns are are wireless computers connecting to access points which are connected to the Target network. Some kids figured out how to exploit some codes on the guns to access the network. I think they could only do some inventory and price checks, but it was pretty cool. I think it was in 2600, a magazine that should be on everyone's coffee table.

Thursday, May 5, 2005

Man, what day is it? If it weren't for this daily blog, I'd have no clue. Partying like a rock star. Things should return to normal once I ... I can't think why they will.

I started up the movie conversion from DVD to avi's again. I currently use SmartRipper, but it seems that the newer DVD's have encryption that SmartRipper cannot handle, and I don't think SmartRipper is supported any longer. I'll have to see if XBMC can handle the newer DVD's.

Wednesday, May 4, 2005

It was great having the day off today. I'm trying to pick up where I left off before The Time We Don't Speak Of. I've gotten back into video games, getting the server room fully installed, and drinking. I suppose I should start working on other parts of the house...

But today, I drank. And having the whole house to myself today and tomorrow will probably not help matters.

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

The exam is over! You'll find no forward looking statements as to the outcome of the exam. In fact, all exam talk is banished from this site (at least until August). A few of us went to a few bars after the exam with surprisingly little talk of it. The common theme of the night was the government's use of monkeys in bomb dismantling. Boy, did we take it too far.

Monday, May 2, 2005

Well, this is it. No more studying. I suppose I'll cram a few more factoids in the brain tomorrow morning. Like that ever works.

Sunday, May 1, 2005

I watched Sideways last night and my brain couldn't handle it. So tonight I decided to watch something that required no brain power, Taxi. The last few days of studying, I try to let my brain boil to get the most out of the useless knowledge. Hopefully it works.