Tuesday, February 28, 2006

That weekend went by quick. I guess that's good when you're counting down the days until the exam (56).

Thursday, February 23, 2006

A rare uneventful flight back home. During the plane rides down to Dallas and back, I had a chance to use the PSP. I watched a few podcasts from the Revision3 family, a Metallica documentary, and played a little GTA: LCS. I also listened to a bunch of podcasts in mp3 format on the iRiver. I have to say, the PSP is a handy little gadget. It might be a bit spendy for the uses I just described, since you could probably get a cheap PDA to do the same plus office apps, but the PSP looks so cool.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I had quite the excursion in Texas tonight. I went on a 9 mile circuit around the hotel looking for geocaches. It started off good, found two right away. The third was difficult since night started setting in. I decided to leave that one and head to the next. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account the large golf coarse and the even larger lake between me and the next cache. So after quite the detour, the next one was in an alley like walkway. It's now pitch black and the cache is located in a vine covered wall. Using my cell phone as a flashlight did not help. Imagine that. So, now it's completely dark, closing in on 8:00pm, and the co-workers are probably gone out to dinner. I start heading back and have about 3 miles. Luckily there was a Pizza Hut on the way. Apparently in Texas, there's no such thing as a "personal pan pizza". The dude made me a "small" pizza and charged me 2 bucks. We got to talking about beer and also apparently Guinness is $10 for a 6 pack and extremely hard to find. I told him it's about $6 in Minnesota and in every liquor store.

Anyway, a fun adventure indeed.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

I'm in the great state of Texas. We were treated to dinner to the tune of almost $800. With a few cocktails in me, I found a cache right across the street from the hotel.

I also got bad news about my two broken Xbox's. A dude that has modded over 300 boxes claimed these two were the worst he's ever seen and can't fix them. He mentioned he'll look around for some used motherboards, but the added expense is going to ruin my profit margin. Maybe I can sell them and get one working one to mod. Bummer.

Monday, February 20, 2006

I really have to get back into the habit of updating this every night. Not that there's interesting things happening, but Doogie Howser, M.D. could do it.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Well, now I have a possum living in the garage. Perhaps you'll remember such adventures as squirrel and vole. After reports of seeing one in the garage (only one eyewitness of questionable state), I looked everywhere last night but couldn't find it, which amazed me on account of the massive size of it as described by aforementioned eyewitness. Anyway, on my way out this morning, I decided to take one final sweep through, and sure enough, the little bastard was curled up sleeping in a box of wood. Resisting the urge to smash its head (and pissing my pants), I tried to calmly "shoo" him out. Him with his ravishing teeth trying to infect me, and me wanting to come to a reasonable compromise ... actually he just sat there and I pushed him out the door. He ran to the backyard. After gathering myself, I tried to track him in the fresh snow, but he evaded me. I think I'll start filming some of these encounters and send to America's Funniest Videos.

Monday, February 13, 2006

My two Seagate 250GB hard drives from tigerdirect came today, I think in record time. These will be going into the two Xbox's. I found a local guy that will chip 3 boxes (2 of them broken, the other one is Karl's) including the chip for $350. I have a use for one of them, but the other was possibly for the garage TV. Depending on the going rate for a modded Xbox, maybe I'll sell it and find a new toy.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Man, I'm on a roll. Another project done. I replaced a toilet. I think it only took 5 hours, but if you've read any previous project posts, you'll realize how distracted I get. Don't worry, some tech projects will happen soon.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

I decided to stop by Auto Zone to get my car diagnosed. It's been hesitating on acceleration and been getting worse. The computer came back with a bad knock sensor. Like that's not made up. I bought the $140 part and asked the guy how hard it is to replace. He said to just find it under the hood, unscrew it, screw in the new one, and you're done. Well, this is the size of a ping pong ball. Luckily with the help of Google, I was able to find it. Unluckily, my hands are just too big and got stuck and scraped several times. Luckily, I made use of some woman hands that were at my disposal. After beating on the Maxima for a little bit, I think it may actually have fixed it.

Thursday, February 9, 2006

I happen to take a glance at this site using Internet Explorer, and it's really ugly. I like the way it looks in Firefox. Put that on the project list.

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

One of my new pet peeves are when people don't answer all your questions in an email. If I have several questions, usually I'll bullet point them to make them all noticeable. And almost always, only the first will be answered and the rest ignored. When this happens, I've started resending the exact same email with the answered questions removed. Maybe if I just called them, less time would be wasted. But then I'd have to talk, which is hard on the vocal chords.

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

A few days of no posting, that should make the three people that read this mad. With Karl's help, I've been trying to find somebody to chip my two broken Xbox's. When I got them, I had master plans to try it myself. I think it would be quite simple with the proper tools and the proper time. I've realized after they've been sitting in the corner for many, many, many months that it'll be near impossible for me to get around to them. Ergo, outsource.

Saturday, February 4, 2006

I had time to watch another movie, Wedding Crashers. Actually quite funny.

Friday, February 3, 2006

I got a chance to sample one of the new absinthe bottles. In a word, crap. It's very bitter, no anise, doesn't louche, and little aroma. Apparently, this brand is meant to be a mixer. It's hard to comprehend at the price it goes for.

Thursday, February 2, 2006

I've always thought that performance reviews were bogus, and after today, I still think that. It's probably because I've never really been in a position to understand how "incentives" are determined, but from my point of view, the people that know the work you do have no say in the incentives. Plus, writing down your "goals" for the next year is a waste of time. Just do your job and do it well. You get what you get. If you're not happy... well, figure it out.

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

I've been playing with my PSP, trying to figure out the homebrew scene. Recently I found a 1.5 firmware, which allows 100% of the homebrew applications to run. The firmware doesn't come with any real features that I'd like (browser, numerous image and video extension compatibility), but there are some homebrew that can accommodate. Realizing that to get a particular homebrew browser to run is a bit cumbersome, I decided to upgrade to 2.0. While I can't run 100% homebrew now, 2.0 still allows about 80%. However, 2.6 just came out with a lot of built in functionality, including RSS audio feeds. This means that you can set up an RSS of music files on your home network and "stream" them to the PSP. This of course means you don't have to waste valuable space on the memory stick for your files. But I think I'll wait to upgrade until I figure out what I really want to do with the PSP.