Thursday, August 11, 2005

I finally got a few hours of Xbox in tonight. I threw in Fable to give it another chance. I got through the training and started to go on a real quest, but had to quit just then. Many people say video games are a waste of time and brain power, but I find it quite therapeutic.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

On my list to do is to look into making sure the DirecTiVo was making its daily call since the switch to Vonage. Naturally I haven't looked into for a while. I think it's finally catching up with me since Season Passes are starting to not record due to "Insufficient Listing Information". I read somewhere that you have to set the unit to call New York for it to work with Vonage. Apparently this is a well known bug.

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

Another missed post, but this one wasn't my fault. The electricity went out for the entire neighborhood at around 9:30 and I couldn't stay awake to reboot the house. I watched this show about a community that is "off the grid", meaning no government or corporate sewer, water, or electricity. They had to light a fire to heat the water for their shower, which they only took every five days. But the cool thing was the solar panels they used to generate electricity. Apparently they've come down in price. Next blackout, I'm buying some.

Oh, and apparently I'm lonely enough to have a spambot comment on Sunday.

Sunday, August 7, 2005

Again, it's been a long time since I posted. I've either been in the hospital or, as a result, tending to a baby. They say that your life changes once you have a kid, and they aren't kidding. Now that it's been over a week since the birth, things have slightly settled. So I'm back in business.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Now, this is something. A meteorite crashed through the ceiling and landed next to a guy working on his computer in his house. The closest to this I've experienced is a piece of ice falling from the "El" in Chicago and hitting me in the head. It really hurt.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Just when I thought I got it all figured out ...

I watched Coach Carter tonight from the Xbox in DivX format. The video looks great when viewing it on the computer monitor, but I certainly can tell the difference from DVD on the 55" RPTV. It's almost as bad as a standard definition signal from DirecTV. I didn't notice it this bad on other movies, so maybe it's an anomaly.

On an unrelated note, I finally broke my cell phone clip. It actually held up for over 3 months, pretty good for how many times I've dropped it.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Finally, I finished a project that I've been wanting to get done for a long time. I set up Xbox Media Center as my default dashboard. This will help accessing pictures and video easier for the household. I just have a couple more tweaks to get it exactly how I want it. I'm still looking around for broken boxes to put one at every TV. I say broken because I won't be using the DVD-ROM or hard drive. Really all I need is the motherboard and power supply, and I can put it in a black shoe box with an "X" made out of masking tape on the top.

Friday, July 22, 2005

I figured I was going to be at work late tonight, but it turned out I had less work than I thought. Naturally, I used the evening for no benefit other than taking it easy.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

I read that November 4th is when the Xbox 360 will be released. It's going to be an exciting day when Karl gets his. I, on the other hand, will wait until the mods start popping up. When the games are $60 each, it would be hard to not rip them. But we'll see.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

My order arrived today from Combo Clothing. I like getting stuff I'm into. They're just a bunch of gamers that are making some shirts and selling them. Now, as we all know, I don't have time to set up a shop to do this. But, if you send Combo Clothing a design and they use it, you'll get $100 plus $1 for every shirt they sell with your design. Surely, I can come up with something. Hmmm...

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ...

Monday, July 18, 2005

I spent the better part of the night over at Karl's wiring his home network. The fishing and wiring inside the house was relatively easy. Then we had to hook up the DSL to the demarc. It seemed logical, but we tried to copy how the current DSL line was installed. Wrong idea, especially when the previous installer was going against standards. After many trials and errors, we didn't get it figured out. In fact, I'm surprised we even got the DSL back up and running on the old line.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

I watched Elektra tonight. A lot of people didn't like it. As far as comic book movies go, I thought it was acceptable ... much better than Catwoman, but nowhere near Batman Begins.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

I've been having troubles with my Vonage account. It seems I can't receive incoming calls. After a total of an hour on the phone with customer service, it turns out that the process of keeping my same number was never complete. So when the service from Qwest, my local carrier, ended, my phone number is now "disconnected", even though I can still make outgoing calls.

Luckily, only telemarketers ever call my home, so maybe I'm now off some call lists.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Of course I received all three DVD's today from Blockbuster. And I forgot to use my two free in-store rentals before they expired. I wonder what it will take to make me finally switch to Netflix?

Thursday, July 14, 2005

I haven't received a DVD from Blockbuster in over a week. I'm to the breaking point. After complaining about not receiving any of the shipments I was supposed to, they shipped some more with an estimated arrival date of today. Nothing. So this is it: if I don't get anything tomorrow, I'm switching to Netflix. Mark my words...

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

I saw this server project over on Slashdot. It's these kinds of projects that make me want to build stuff, and I'm not talking no paper cup projects. It is nice to have the laptop up and running to do some internet research. Now to only stop time...

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

I think all of my personal learning of Nucleus, PHP, and other random research has finally taken its toll on my work schedule. I've been increasing my "fun" time at work while decreasing my "work" time. I might have to cut myself off in order to clear some mounting pressures to get things done.

Or work twice as fast so I still have some play time.

Monday, July 11, 2005

I've put a link under Notables to the family website, or my first stab at using Nucleus. It will shed some light on my "other" life, as opposed to my battle royale with technology described here.

As my PHP knowledge expands, I get closer to porting this site from Blogger.

Sunday, July 10, 2005

I took the time tonight to install Mandrake Linux 10.1 (now Mandriva) on my laptop. I had 8.0 on it before I messed it up. I thought I was ready for a more serious distro, but I guess not. Anyway, in about an hour, I had the laptop up and running, connected wirelessly to the network, and surfing the web. Quite incredible actually since I did the network setup manually.

Saturday, July 9, 2005

I ran around like a decapitated chicken today doing errands, resulting in additional projects for the house.

There are two inventions for the home that seem incredible, but they are a nuisance: vacuum cleaners and ceiling fans. Vacuum cleaners always get clogged, they're dirty, and never seem to work consistently for a year. So I bought some parts to fix it, but we all know how this will turn out. For ceiling fans, you're suppose to make sure they are installed into support beams. If they're installed incorrectly, they may fall and kill you. Now, I've never known anyone to install one correctly, and I've never known anyone getting killed by one. I started out with good intentions to install one correctly, but after the curses came, I think I'm going to resort to just slapping it up and dealing with the injuries later.

Friday, July 8, 2005

I finally got around to setting up the family blog idea. This idea was to set up a system so that individual "households" could set up blogs; we could set up family reunions, calendar functions, contact information, etc. I choose to use Godaddy as the hosting company, and Nucleus as the content manager. It'll probably start out as another personal site and allow other households to become members as I become more familiar with it.

As Nucleus was built around PHP and MySQL, I finally get to get my hands dirty with some old fashion coding.

Thursday, July 7, 2005

After grueling testing, I think my official DVD backup system is to use StreamRipper to rip the DVD to the hard drive, then use DivX Converter to store them as divx files, and watch via the DivX Player on PC or XBMC on Xbox. I haven't come across a DVD I couldn't backup, and I think the $20 is worth it.

Happy Anniversary, Pea.

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Whoa, what happened here? Over a week without a post. Am I too busy to take 5 minutes to post something everyday? I think I need an entire month of no work to get caught up with my projects.

Ahh, who am I kidding? I'd spend it all playing Xbox.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

I read that Peter Jackson, director of LOTR, will receive at least $200 million for the movie. What? Aside from the usual "what would I buy if I won the lottery" question, I can't even comprehend that much money, let alone getting it through directing a movie.

I have to seriously think about my profession.

Monday, June 27, 2005

I spent the night cutting up the old carpet for easier handling. I went through a few razor blades in the process. And because it was storming outside, I had to keep the garage door closed, which triggered a sauna-like effect.

I experimented a bit with twingine.com, which compares searches between Yahoo! and Google. At the time of this post, echomoche was number 8 on Yahoo! and first on Google.

Post #200 ...

Sunday, June 26, 2005

I was getting ahead of schedule on my chores today. I had a choice between getting the server going, rebuilding the laptop, or playing video games. I chose the easy way, Xbox. If only I could pass MC2. Although, there's nothing like playing the same level over and over, and over and ...

Saturday, June 25, 2005

I went to visit with the family at the annual camping trip. Luckily, there was no spending the night. Not that I don't like camping, I just like getting stuff off my to-do list.

Speaking of technology, I played a game called Kubb. The rules are you throw pieces of wood at pieces of wood.

Friday, June 24, 2005

I really enjoy grilling season. I think I've been on the deck each night with the grill, a magazine, a brew, and a Djarum. I can't wait until I get the laptop running again.

Just ... need ... time ...

Thursday, June 23, 2005

I went out on a paddle boat for work today for the afternoon. Man, the sun drains you...

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

StreamRipper works fair enough. It seems to have trouble distinguishing the exact timing to cut off files and start new ones between songs. This might have something to do with the radio station being tricky and fading the songs together. This probably isn't a big issue, since I'm listening only to discover new bands, after which I'll end up "buying" the disc.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

I put about half a gig of recorded stream on the new player for my bus ride home. Right when I pushed play while waiting for the bus, the battery died. And unfortunately, it has a proprietary battery pack, not AAA batteries. Humbug.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Since I got a new MP3 player, I've been craving some new music. My current solution is to record some internet radio stations. I needed a stream recorder that would also parse the songs into individual files. As there are quite a few free ones out there, I choose one cleverly called StreamRipper. We'll see how it works.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

I've noticed again that I'm veering away from posting about technology. This is probably because other things in my life are competing for the precious time.

The rumors are that the results of my last exam come out this week. I've actually started studying for the next round. It sucks now, but will be worth it when I'm done.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

I had a full day of fun today. I got whipped around behind a boat today. I can guarantee I'll be soar tomorrow. Then I went up to North Branch for Karl's party and drank all of Dave's beer.

Weekends are worth it.

Friday, June 17, 2005

One of the things on my list to do before I die is to go storm-chasing. I think it would be incredibly fun to see a tornado in progress, deaths aside.

I also got a chance to play more with my new iRiver H10. This is a device that has an audio player, picture viewer, FM tuner, voice recorder, and text viewer, all with 5GB's internal storage. I need to get into discovering new music again. Suggestions are welcome.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

I was in an all day meeting and all of a sudden Pea showed up. Well, surprise, surprise. Everyone in the meeting had set up a surprise party for us, but Pea was in on it. I'm sure I was as red as a beet. Nobody had a camera, but one of the big wigs literally had 3 cell phones, a Blackberry, and a PDA, and didn't know how to work any of them. It would be fun to be rich and buy toys that you don't use.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

I was dragging today ...

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

I got home from Chicago at around midnight. Again, not a short drive. And on top of it, I got pulled over for doing 80 in a 65. First of all, why is the speed limit on I-94 only 65mph? The cop told me that the ticket was around $280 and that in Wisconsin you have to pay on the spot. Luckily he gave me a warning. Of course I drove slower all the way home, hence the midnight arrival time.

Wisconsin sucks.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Today was the first day of my seminar, and as such, my mind was wandering. I watched National Treasure this past weekend. The only reason I gave this an average rating is because it was about the Freemasons and had secret codes to break. This got me thinking that I need to become part of a secret society, perhaps the Illuminati, or start my own.

It would help if I was filthy rich and didn't need a day job.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

After trouble checking into the Allerton Crowne Plaza downtown, we spent the entire afternoon on Navy Pier. It was another nice day to sightsee, picture take, and urban geocache. There was one that was creative. It was a film canister wrapped in velcro with the other piece glued around a blind corner. So you had to reach around into a dark crevice and feel around.

Another creative one had several locations you had to find and parse information off of signs, do a little math and conversions to calculate the final cache location. Well I ended up not finding it because I think I used a short ton conversion from pounds instead of a long ton. Maybe next time...

Saturday, June 11, 2005

I spent a few hours in the blazing sun going to a couple different parks finding some caches.

The Sheraton hotel claimed to have free wi-fi access in all rooms. After spending an hour playing around with configurations, I finally got connected with an incredibly weak signal. After each page loaded, the connection would of course drop and it would take 5 minutes to reconnect. They probably had one access point down in the front desk. I guess I could have went down there or complained, but it was much easier to shut down the computer.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Seven hours in the car is a long time. Coming from St. Paul to Chicago, we went through a few tolls. This is a completely inefficient system that humans thought up. Let's make everyone come to a screeching halt and pay a measly 80 cents every few miles. Stupid. I can't wait until the RFID chips are installed in our brains at birth.

Thursday, June 9, 2005

I spent today entering some coordinates from geocaching.com into my Garmin GPS. I have a seminar in Chicago next week, and Pea and I are leaving tomorrow to make a weekend trip out of it.

If only I got paid to play on the internet. Oh wait, I guess I do.

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

I'm doing some testing at work to verify the new version of a particular model gives the same output as the old model. Basically it's just running a few test cases through. Unfortunately, it's not going well. On top of that, I didn't build the new model, so I'm spending most of my time complaining and devising more efficient ways to do the same thing. The good news is that I'll probably be in charge of the next version and will be able to change anything I want. The bad news is that I'll actually have to work.

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

Karl came over to help me move the furniture back in each room, and then he paid for my dinner. All this, and he hasn't given me signs of impending doom at his place. Hmmm...

After that, the Three Kings met and discussed the state of the union. The CD player in the garage finally gave out. This might be the motivation I need to get the all-house speaker system in place. If I just wasn't so lazy.

Monday, June 6, 2005

I had the day off to keep a watchful eye on the carpet installers. And since they were on the top two floors, that only meant I had to be holed up in the basement. Instead of being productive, I spent the entire day on Xbox. As soon as I pass Midnight Club 2, I'll have to work on Riddick.

I also got around to watching Chronicles of Riddick. I can see how some might think this is a stupid, pointless movie, but I really liked it. A good combination of visual effects and story. It had many sub-plots going that were easily distinguishable, but had some great ideas on joining them in the end.

Sunday, June 5, 2005

I pretty much spent all day pulling out every staple in the floor from the old carpet. I can't open my hand now from clenching the pliers.

These house projects are sure getting in the way of my tech projects.

Saturday, June 4, 2005

Karl and I busted through some projects today. We took everything out of many rooms and crammed it into fewer rooms. Then we ripped up thousands of square feet of smelly carpet. Of course, all this was rewarded with Xbox, pizza, and RvB.

In the words of Karl, if you bought an Xbox and played only Halo, it would've been worth it.

Friday, June 3, 2005

Getting off work early is always fun, even if it is to just run errands.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

I finally got my main HDD, secondary HDD, CD writer/DVD, and Neo all working (somewhat nicely) together. The Neo is very picky on which IDE cable connection and jumper settings it has with multiple devices are present.

Now, to find more music.

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

I was walking down the street when I saw two guys, one in a suit and the other in rags. Both were talking to themselves and each started screaming. I chalked them both up as crazy, but noticed Suit had an earpiece connected to his phone. Maybe Rags had a tooth phone.

I'm going to have to buy about 50 rechargeable batteries and have them in rotation. My Xbox wireless controller finally conked out. And I was in the lead in Midnight Club 2.

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.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

There's a new radio station in the area called The Current. It's public radio that's run by common folk and plays pretty much anything that the DJ's want. It reminds me a lot of my MP3 player that has 30GB of music set to random. On the way home tonight, they played a Stan Getz duo with Joao Gilberto, followed by Beastie Boys' Intergalactic Planetary. Rad.

Friday, April 29, 2005

I feel sorry for those of you who've stumbled across this site. It must be pretty boring reading about my study adventures. Well, I've got a solution. I invite you to hang out with me while I study. If you're anywhere near normal, you'll be screaming to only have to read about and not live through study season. Just bear with me ... Tuesday is the big exam. After that, it'll be nothing but blow and hookers.

But until then, stay tuned for tomorrow's antics: marathon study day.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

When I study, I try to think of worse things that could happen so studying doesn't seem so bad. One I thought of was being in a dust storm in Iraq, with your eyes and mouth held open.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

I'm thinking of getting Mountain Dew to be my sponsor. It'll be like NASCAR or professional golf. I'll wear their logo and use their product while I study. When I pass the test, I'll claim it was due in part to the use of Mountain Dew. I would even appear in a commercial if they'd like. All I ask is that they pay me in Mountain Dew. Nothing more, just all the Mountain Dew I need.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

It's really amazing on how much the mind wanders when you're studying insurance law. I have thought of ways to make, save, and steal money, additions to the home network, updating the file server, components of my car PC, not to mention a few theories on world peace and cold fusion.

Monday, April 25, 2005

I use Sage as my RSS reader. It's interesting to see the changes in the sites to which I subscribe. I have anywhere between 15 and 25 feeds. It got pretty crowded on my screen with 40, but then I stumbled across a feed that aggregates feeds. Thankfully, the original feeds are only updated weekly, otherwise I'd be clicking on it constantly.

But what else do you do at work?

Sunday, April 24, 2005

I tried to teach Pea how to play Tiger Woods, perhaps one of the easier games to learn. After about 10 shots into the water, she gave up and swore off video games. How can I continue to live with someone that hates video games?

Saturday, April 23, 2005

As you can probably guess, when the two week mark hits, I get really cranky to have to study. The spring exams are the roughest, since it's nice outside, I have other projects I want to work on, and friends call me more to do stuff. After tomorrow, only one more weekend.

I tried not drinking brew for a while in an attempt to try to keep my brain focused. I broke down tonight and picked up old standby. After only four, I was falling down the stairs, slurring my speech, and driving off cliffs.

Friday, April 22, 2005

I took the evening off from studying and left work around 5:00 pm. I got a little gaming in and watched Spanglish (which I'm still weighing in on). I am supposed to meet Karl online to slay some Covenant, but can't keep my peepers open and have to cash in a bit early tonight.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

If the Kamel Jockey doesn't remind you of Animatrix, I don't know what will. They've built a machine that can control a camel, but I can't figure out a way to bypass my work's internet filter.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

... 12 days, 14 hours, 40 minutes ...

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Studying sucks. Friends are taunting me to come out and play, but I can't for another two weeks. Crap, two weeks ... I better get studying.

I did get the HD DirecTiVo up and running. It's working as expected, except that they gave me a used receiver. Of course, the box will become a doorstop in a few years anyway.

Monday, April 18, 2005

As I was driving home late from a wonderful day of studying, someone was driving a radio controlled car down the road. It had headlights, blinkers, and was obeying all traffic laws, including the stoplights. The cool thing was that other drivers didn't freak out, but acted as though it was a real vehicle, yielding to it and everything. It may have been the vast amounts of useless facts in my brain causing weakened blood flow, but I couldn't stop laughing. Out loud. Hard.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

I pretty much studied all day. I did take a break and found my first cache with Knapper.

For Movie Night Sunday, I watched Ocean's Twelve. A true to form thief movie, it was written and directed similar to the first. There are quite a few twists and turns, but you're expecting them. If you don't take this movie seriously and have fun with it, you'll have an entertaining two hour's.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

I had a great birthday today. I got to see Sin City, an excellent film. I haven't seen a movie at a movie theater in a long time. Having a decent home theater, and usually bothered by candy wrapper, popcorn eating people, I tend to stay home for my movie experiences. But this time wasn't bad, other than the commercials before the previews.

The replacement DirecTiVo came today as well. Hopefully I'll get this installed tomorrow.

Friday, April 15, 2005

I took an opportunity to play a little more Tiger Woods 2005. After maxing out my stats and figuring out the techniques, I can see this game being put away for a while. It is a fun game, but with so many others to try, it's almost time to move on.

Still no HD ...

Thursday, April 14, 2005

I'll give you one guess on what I did today. Answer is study.

I did check out carpet prices to redo the entire upstairs, about 1450 sq ft. It's quite spendy. I figure if I just wear slippers, I can go without carpet and just use the wood subfloor.