is a geek

I slapped in 2GB of RAM in the lappy and upped the process to 2.2Ghz. :-) It's nice and fast now. I can even play UT2004 on it (@1280x800) at ~ 35FPS. It's not a screamer, but its doable. I ordered a spiffy mobile power plugy thing for the airplane as I didn't want to lug around a big car adapter power thingy (sorry... the name is not in my brain right now, if you leave a message I will be sure to call you back at an unreasonable time).

I got my first non-drugged-up allergy shots after my rush procedure last week. I had 2 shots in the back of my left arm and 1 in the back of my right. I had to sit for an hour for them to ensure I didn't blow up. When I got home, the entire back of my upper arm (elbow to shoulder) was red, puffy and swollen (and horrible itchy). It stayed like that through yesterday (when it was itchy, sore, and bruised feeling). The Dr prescriped some steriods to help it tone down a little. Still itches abit.

Work has been interesting yet still busy. I'm working at a 8:30-5:30 schedule and rarely do much work out of those times, but between those hours its a marathon. It's like cat hearding in a way. We finally (and concurrently) finished many big projects yesterday all at the same time. It was somewhat relieving as they had been looming over me like a dark cloud for awhile. I'm close to clearing my plate for my trip to Japan / Taiwan in a little over a week. Yay!! (Un)Fortunately, a new employee will be coming in while I'm out, so he will get training from other people. Oh well.

I finally decided to venture out in the yard last week in hopes of not killing myself with 'The Outside' and it's allergies. The yard needed TLC something seriously and I was the designed person to do it. A few hours later the yard was mowed, edged, weedeated, weeded, fertilized, pesticided and generally spiffier. I decided that since I was horrible dirty and not dying of allergies, I'd deal w/ the compost bin. The compost bin contains: 75% texas clay, 23% bugs, and 2% compost. Needless to say, using the tiller attachment to the weadeater, it took another few hours to break the clay into reasonably sized pellets and till it into the garden. The garden is already sprouting basil and a HUGE amount of catnip. I brought a freezer bag full of catnip to work today. The first hit is free!

My dad was in town all last week and this week so he could visit one of the companies he is consulting for in the DFW area. It was nice having him around, but he usually ended up going to work before we woke up, getting home at the same time as us and going to bed 3 hours later. So, we didn't get to hang out as much. :-( Their new house in New Bruenfells is coming along... The process of building any house is fairly stressfull and draining, but I feel they will get there one way or another. They look to be moving in around the same time we are out of country. I have mixed feelings about that. :-P

Plan for this weekend: Train neighbors on fishtank care, find a doggy motel for the pups while we are away, tidy up the house so we dont feel bad about having neighbors in it, relax, sleep, pack.

Posted by chris at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got my 2GB of RAM in today for the laptop. I brought my jeweler's toolkit to work today so I could swap it out. It's much faster now. :-)

Posted by chris at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, today was the day I was going to have a working laptop. I wiped as much of my personal information as possible, packed it all up, and looked for the reciept. It was right ... here.. over in the ... um... bag... err car... err.. box.. er shit. So, I drove 30 mins home and looked for the reciept. While I was there, I let the dogs out. Finally, after giving up on finding it, I looked in the car again. It was in a super secret hidden compartment.. aka the arm rest. So, I get the laptop, put it all in my car, close the garge door and then backup 1 foot. Then I stopped the car and opened the garage door and let the dogs in. They weren't going to make it easy. Teddy immediately ran to the other side of the kitchen while Spunky beelined for the carpet. It was muddy outside. After cleaning up the dogs, pawprints, and Teddy pee from the floor, i get them back in the crate, i get in the car, close the garage door, and then... open the garage door get a saw i was loaning to someone at work, plop it in the car and finally closed the garage door for one second to last time. Then, I opened the garage door, turn on the house alarm, and finally get the heck out of there.

I arrive at Fry's in a happy mood. I wait in line for 30 mins before earning the priveldge of talking with someone. I explained what I did, etc... had the same problem before... The guys turns on the laptop and sees no wireless. After poking around a little, he hits a key on the keyboard and all the sudden the wireless connection shows up. WTF?!?! Yes, there is a little button on the keyboard that disables the antenna for the wireless connection. There are no indications if it is off or on, it is off when you turn on the computer, and no real mention in the manual that you must push the mysterious button in order for wireless to work. So, now there are 3 ways to 'disable' your wireless card. Hardware manager, Network Connections, and the mystery button. ARGHGHH

Posted by chris at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, I went and got a new latop from Fry's the other day. My old one was acting up too much and we decided it was time to replace it. We really just want a portable computer that has reasonable speed and doens't cost alot. So, Fry's has a special brand called GQ ('Great Quality'). They are cheap and (if you get a working one) pretty spiffy. So, I picked up a Turion MT-30, 256MB, 40GB, 15.4inch WXGA, CDRW+DVD, 802.11b/g, USB2, Radeon Xpress 200M, XP Home laptop for $500 out the door. Not too bad... if it worked. I bought the laptop on Monday. I'm on my second one now. It is borked too. The first one's miniPCI slot had issues. The onboard wireless uses the 1st miniPCI slot (under the keyboard). It never worked. I took the card out and put it in the 2nd miniPCI slot (on the bottom of the computer) and it worked fine (even w/o the antennas plugged in). I tried it with 3 cards from different manufactures. All had the same results. So, I took it to Fry's and exchanged it for a new laptop. Same damn problem. I also think the memory controller has issues as well (because it wont start with the 2nd dimm populated even though the 1st laptop did with the same memory module and w/o any issues). So, today at lunch, I visit Fry's again. I'm thinking about making sure that the wireless works at the store before I leave... so I don't have to continue doing this for the next few weeks.

Posted by chris at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, Christine attended a lingerie shower this weekend and was planning on spicing it up a bit by having a cake made in the shape of boobies. I offered to do this, but the lucky bride to be's mom expressed interest in doing it, so I let her have her fun. At 11pm the night before the shower, Christine shows up with a boobie cake pan and asks if I could make it. I politely declined because of time contraints.

Last Friday I went to a brazilian resturaunt for lunch where they weigh their food to determine how much you have to pay. It was wonderfull. While I was there, I noticed they had a little 'gift shop' at the register. One of my coworkers commented on how she really missed the chocolates from Brazil while she pointed out a large egg shaped chocolate goodie thing in the gift shop. Being the good husband that I am, I grabbed an egg and some other goodies to share with Christine at a later date. A few days later, we decided to partake in the chocolate. Basically, it was a large 9 -12inch tall hollow egg (1/2 white the other 1/2 was dark chocolate). Inside were a few small chocolate treats. Yum. Somewhere in the confustion the white side of the egg broke, so I decided to test my culinary skills and play around with it. I decided to melt it down and fill the other side of the egg w/ it to form a layered chocolate mess. I got the mess part down great! It ended up melting everything, so I threw it all in a pot with some other chocolate and peanut butter chips and melted it down. Now all I needed was something to pour the chocolate into so that it would have a neat shape.

I present... chocolate boobies (safe for work). They taste great.

Posted by chris at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Im typing this on my phone. Grin

Posted by chris at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So, I got FIOS. It's pretty cool. EXCEPT that you can't have port 80 (http) unblocked AND have TV. This means, in combination with my current setup at DYNDNS, that I had to create another domain. So... update your bookmarks to http://www.ck1-is-a-geek.org and it will get you there (via redirection).

Posted by chris at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few nights ago, we created a wonderfull batch of brownies. We used 2 mixes: 1 fudge and 1 w/ peanut butter 'topping'. I mixed in pecans, coconut, chocolate chips, almond extract and Godiva chocolate liqour. They are really yummie. The almond extract really adds alot to it.

Tonite, we take the dogs to 'training' again. I'm not looking foward to it as much as I should. It's fairly stressfull most of the time and it takes up an entire evening. The classes dont seem as usefull as I had hoped. We learn some stuff, but spend the rest of the time practicing it and trying to get our dogs to behave. If I had known this, I would have gotten a book and read that instead. Oh well. It's already paid for.

I'm trying to motivate myself to go outside and clean off all the rocks and wood I had gotten from my parent's lot this last weekend. I need to hose them off to get all the dirt off of them, then I need to soak them in a container with a powerhead in it for a few weeks. It just seems dirty and abunch of work... things I am not super motivate to do right now.

I thought I got my winXP64 computer working a few nights ago, but was dissappointed. I got a neato soundcard (Turtle Beach Montego DDL) and already had a Dvico FusionHDTV-3-QAM HTDV tuner card. Unfortunately, they STILL do not have 64bit drivers. This sucks abunch because I can't use my media room computer much for anything untill they do. Grr.

I figured that since we are between seasons in hockey, I'd go play drop in hockey on Thursday. Unfortunatly, today it dawned on me that I still have a few Friday games left in 1 league and practice on Saturday. So, hockey 3 days in a row should be a blast. I hope my body holds up.

Last night we made a rack of beef ribs. I had marinated them in a beer and BBQ mixture for a few days, then cooked them on low on the grill as I randomly brushed on extra sauce. It was really really good. We finished the whole rack (and didn't even save the bones for the dogs!) Afterwards, Ting went shopping as I washed the pups. Washing them in the shower isn't that bad except for having to bend over abunch to brush them, apply shampoo, etc.. My back was very tired by the time I was done. I figured that since I was already wet and coated in hair, I would wash Ashy too. Ashy is actually one of the more pleasant animals to wash in our house. She just cry's like a little baby, doesn't really try to get away, and most importantly, doesn't extend her claws either. Half of the time, she will try to hold onto you gently with her paws so she feels more secure. Anways, 1/2 of my animals are clean now, I didn't want to deal with the rest.

Posted by chris at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I called up and signed up w/ Comcast to get free HBO and Showtime for 2 months. They require a converter box for this, so I the CSR on the phone told me I could pick up the box from their service stores in order to avoid the 3 week lead time before their first available appointment. So, I stopped by the store after work and waited in line for a fw minutes. When I got the the front of the line, I explianed my conversation on the phone to the CSR at the desk and she started typing away. She informed me their is no such deal. I told her, the lady on the phone signed me up for it. She asked where I live (Wylie) and explained it is only availble in the DFW area. I informed her of the location of Wylie and it's inclusion in the relatively broad "DFW area" geographical comglomerate. Then she told me to call the 'lady' back and work it out with her. "The same 1-800-Comcast I called at noontime?" I asked? Then, I got annoyed and repeated that I set all this up with the original CSR and she told me to come here and pick up the damn box because I didn't want to wait friking forever for them to drive to my house, hand me a box, and charge me for it. Then she found it. Surprise! GRRR. As I was filling in the paperwork, she told me to plug it in, put in the batteries and unlock the volume. WTF? Unlock the volume? She thought it was somewhat funny that I was confused that 'unlocking the volume' was necessary to achieve ultimate cable satisfaction. It isn't. (Unlocking the volume tells the remote control to only control the cable box when using the volume controls. If you don't unlock the volume it will try to turn down the volume for everything it is pointed at: TV, stereo, cable, vcr, cat, toaster, and wife). It didn't work on the wife.

So, anyways, I got it home, hooked it all up, and it didn't work all the way. It wouldn't download the Menu/Guide after an hour and HBO definately didn't work. After swapping out cables, etc.. at few times, I tried it in another room and it finally worked. I guess I had a bad crimp on the cable in the other room. Comcast On-Demand is pretty neat, though. It's basically like a remote DVR that is controlled by Comcast.

The box is somewhat interesting. They finally figured out how to talk via the co-ax instead of a phoneline so a landline isn't required (Yay!). Also, however, the base box doesn't come equiped with a S-video outlet... RCA only. Blah. That is so 90's. I'm going to try and swap it out tomorrow and see if I can get a neater one.

Posted by chris at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We watched Sahara last night. It was alright and nice to watch while doing other stuff. Eh... Some neighborhood kid (friends of my neighbors) came by and tried to sell us next years entertainment book. We told him not at the moment. After closing the door we changed our mind, but he was down the street on his bike. So, we called the neighbors and asked if they could let him know, and 30 mins later he came by again. (We were expecting the next day perhaps) :-P

My dad got an 'internet fax' service and he keeps on faxing me my brother's mail. It's starting to get annoying because it comes out as a multipage tiff file. Most programs normally found on a PC can't deal with multpage tiffs. Gimp 2.2 even has issues. I eventually opened it in Gimp and it only showed page #5 (put it indicated there were 5 pages). So then I selected visible layer and deleted it, thereby showing layer (page) 4. I repeated this untill I got all the layers (pages) printed. Kinda stupid if you ask me.

Tonite is dog training night. It will probably be stressfull as all get out. Nothing like bringing your misbehaving dogs to a big glass echo-y room filled to the brim with other misbehaving dogs. In related news, Mark is finally going to get his dog spayed and updated on shots. The last thing I wanted was a dog in heat in my house.

Posted by chris at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I've been looking for a soundcard to end all soundcards for awhile. Basically, I want to be able to hook up 1 SPDIF connector (just 1, no more) and get dolby digital / dts on 5.1 enabled GAMES and DVD's. Else, I would need 1 SPDIF cable for DVD's on one input and 5 RCA connectors from my soundcard for 5.1 surround from games on another output... A big cable mess! Nvidia had a neat solution called soundstorm incorporated into their nforce2 chipset, but the didn't propogate that feature into the nforce3/4. Basically, what happens is games output 5.1 analog signals, and the SPDIF cable can only trasmit digital signals. The only way to get 5.1 over digital is to use dolby digital or DTS encoding. The encoder costs money, so very very few soundcards support it. So, I've been waiting in the wings, looking for a good deal on cards that support it.

Today, I went searching, didn't find one on fatwallet or bensbargains, so I hit up pricewatch and pricegrabber. All stores had it for around $80 shipped (normal price)... except 1. Buy.com had the Montego DDL for $55 shipped!! So, I bought one, and posted the deal on avsforum and fatwallet and waited for the congrats, 'nice post, and 'thanks op's to roll in. An hour goeas by. Still no responses. So, I figured that not many people cared. Then, I checked bensbargains and he posted it there!! Theivery!! Ben, atleast give me a green on fatwallet to make me feel better!!

Posted by chris at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry about the downtime yesterday.... the new linksys router was acting all silly. It said it told dyndns my new ip, but dyndns didn't agree. Anyways, I fixed it.

I spent some time this weekend working on my laptop. It is a ECS desknote A535+. Overall it works great and does the limited things we wanted it to do. The price was the motivating factor in buying it a few years ago. Anyways, the wireless had been going flakey on it. I thought it was the routers, microwaves, etc... but eventually I found out it was the built in 802.11b. They had basically stripped a usb dongle of its plastic, hardwired it to the usb bus, stuck it under the keyboard, and ran the antenna behind the lcd. Anyways, I had aquired at 802.11A/G miniPCI card from my dad awhile back, and so I just ripped the old one out, routed the antenna to the new one's connector and slapped everything back together. Much much better. I also took the time to use lock tight on everything as the lid's pivots had become loose and started to crack the plastic. Much much much better now.

I'm almost done w/ the new server. I have it running with all the new software. Check it out at http://ck1.is-a-geek.org:8000/. Everything should work over there. If it doesn't let me know by commenting on that blog. As you will see, I'm also going to revamp the templates a little, so be prepared for different colors, etc (right now they are the default templates).

Posted by chris at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, I WAS supposed to upgrade my server... but real life keeps on getting in the way (as well as other geeky things). The new server is a dual opteron running gentoo linux w/ the latest 2.6 kernel. I will also be running Apache2, mod_perl2, php, mysql4.1, and Movable Type 3.2 Beta etc.... Everything except the 2.6 kernel is a signifigant 'upgrade' from what I'm running now, so I'm taking it slow so I don't experience major problems.

In other news, hockey is going great. We played our first game a few weeks ago (and lost) but I finally understood what I needed to do and started to have fun (instead of being all worried and such). About 1/2 through the week, I got an email inviting me to play I-League in Farmers Branch on Friday for cheap becuase they were dying for players. My loving wife didn't object too much... I think she actually pushed me out of the house and did a happy little dance as I was leaving. Hrmm. So, now I play hockey on Friday and Saturday nights. The exercise feels great!

Because of the looming 2-nights-in-a-row of hockey and the constant rain rain not going away, I've not been able to mow my yard abit. My yard liked this alot and responded by growing a inch taller. We spent most of last night mowing, edging, weedeating, tilling, etc... The yard looks good. I'm tired.

Now for the entertainment news. I saw War of the Worlds. It was great. The effects were super swell and the movie really drew me into the story. I didn't care for the 'stupid kid runs away but magically lives in the end' part. Some people complain about the 'defeat' of the aliens... but wasn't that how the original ended? Thursday night, we watched Bubba Hotep. It was great. Christine loved it and I chuckeled along at her reactions and the movie. Different but great. Saturday at 2pm, I picked up Harry Potter and put it down Sunday at 6pm. It was really really good, sad, and somewhat suprising. I can not wait for the final book!! Sunday, I saw Willy Wonka. The begining of the movie was emotional, and the rest was intersting. I really enjoyed watching it, but I'm kinda confused as to say wether I liked it through and through. I would definatly watch it again for the first time. They were abunch of memoriable scenes from the movie... but all the singing kinda got to me.

Remember kids, you too can create forest fires!

Posted by chris at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night we were finally able to really appreciate the work we have put into the vegetable garden. I went out and picked several handfulls of fresh basil of several types so I could make fresh pesto for dinner. On the way home, Christine spent a few hours running around town trying to find some pine nuts to go in the pesto. Eventually she found some airline peanut package sized one for $5!! OUch! Anyways, we got them home, I tried adding it to the basil in the blender and spilled about 30 ($2 worth) of them across the floor. I super carefully picked them up and washed them off and a few ($0.75 worth) tried escaping down the drain (I didn't let them). Anyways, we mixed it all up with some garlic, nice olive oil, and a pinch of kosher salt and it was superb!! Yum!

Afterwards, I went upstairs and tried finishing up a montage for Emily and Kane's wedding next weekend. After I finished it, I decided to redo the one from Alpha's wedding and decided to try and use all the pictures I took at her wedding (1000+). Unfortunately, over 1/2 of them were in RAW format and had to be converted into jpg before I could use them in the montage software. My old version of PhaseOne Capture One DSLR Rebel could only batch process 5 (or 10... dont remember exactly) images at a time. Seeing that I had 500 to process and that they unexpectedly discontinued all updates and support for the Rebel version a year or so ago, I was forced to update in order to finish sometime this decade. So, I ordered the latest greatest LE version and started converting away. I found that, however, if you add more than 100ish images to batch processing it crashes. Urgh. Now to go file a bug for software that I just bought.

Posted by chris at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Christine and I escaped from our chores for the evening and went and saw Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith on the DLP screen at The Legacy. (i have now used up all of my capitalization for the message). i agreed with all the reviews i have read. it was the bomb!! (Screw this, I'm going to go OVER my cap quota). I saw very little I would change with the movie. EP3 does a great job of transitioning between EP1&2 and the older episodes. The fight scenes were enthralling as well. There were several times I squealed with glee. I found it interesting the movie is a long 2 and 1/2 hours. It was a 3 bathroom movie and I got a satisfying crunch when I stepped on some guys feet. (Sorry man!)

However, it wasn't all fun and games. I was underwhelmed by the DLP. As expected the "film" quality was superb; They've lost the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps. Unfortunately, they've added pixelization. Most of the time you don't notice it, but a few scenes really bring the problem to light (the helmet scene towards the end).

Overall, I would definitely see the movie again in the theater and I will buy the DVD. Awesome!

Posted by chris at 08:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've seen 2 things that have greatly impressed me this morning.

First: Google Maps Notice the drop shadows on the boxes. Type in your address. Make your window full screen and click the arrows in the upper left corner. Neat? Click 'To' or 'From' this address. Very nice interface. Good job google!

Second: 4 Gigapixel camera Click on a picture... Wow! I want one! Here is the rest of the story I wonder how long it takes to set up the shot?

Posted by chris at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It worked! I finally got all my stuff off my broken raid array and onto a new 250GB drive that WinXP can see in it's entirety. OMG, it sucked so bad. I installed on 250GB drive, XP only saw the whole drive but only 1/2 was free. So, I used MaxBlast (like norton ghost) to copy from 250GB drive to spare 160GB drive. Then I formated the 250GB drive completely and copied everything back. After that, I used findntfs and findpart to copy the data from my broken highpoint (hpt374) raid array (240GB) to the new 250GB drive. All in all, it took only a few hrs! BTW, if you are using MaxBlast to copy from disk to disk, boot into windows and copy from there... its atleast 10x faster transferring data. Anywho, everything is tidying itself up this week!

In other related news, I was playing around with my FusionHDTV card (allows me to tune and watch cable QAM and O.T.A HDTV on computer / projector) and flipping through channels. Usually, some channels always caused the program to crash, however, while flipping through them with their latest software, I saw that all the sudden they worked. Apparently the channels are Comcast's tv on demand for people in my neighborhood. So, when people aren't watching anything on On-Demand, then the channels are empty. When they are watching something, then I can see it. So, now I know, that at 10pm on Sundays, people in my neighborhood watch porn. Also, on Mondays, at 10pm, people in my neighborhood watch old westerns. The best part, was that if there was a brief nudity, the channel would rewind / pause / etc... to review the scene. I wonder what's OnDemand for Tuesday?

Posted by chris at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Someone (other than Murphy) explain this. I buy a shiny new processor (p4-3.06) to upgrade my HTPC to the fastest processor the motherboard can handle. I could have almost (had I not found such a great deal) gotten a new motherboard and faster processor for the price I paid. I decided to go w/ the new processor because I didn't want to have to migrate my system from one RAID array, to another kind. It would take copying everything to a spare drive on the old machine, then copying it all back to the same drives (after being formated, etc... so they can work on new different brand RAID controllers). So, what happened this weekend? My RAID array went south. CRAP! There is some sort of corruption (other than WinXP) that keeps the startup screen scrolling for hours on end... never reaching its destination of the login screen. I tried safe mode. CRAP. I tried cussing. CRAP CRAP. I tried another processor. CRAP CRAP CRAP. I even tried the recovery console but no matter what, I couldn't get the console to recognize my RAID array. CRAP. After all of that, I still can't return the new processor and migrate to another motherboard / etc. Ugh! I do deserve a little credit for the mishap, however. I did install WinXP on a RAID-0 array for maximum speed and pleasure. It lasted 2+ years. I guess it got tired. I think tonite I will be spending time install WinXP on a spare drive and copying contents of RAID array someplace safe. After that, well, that's another story.

Posted by chris at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fiber to my neighbor's premiseseseses! I guess my neighbors are luckier than me. They can sign up for fiber and I can't!! I'm hoping its because they had to stop working yesterday and later today it will be available for me. I would hate to have to wait untill all the lots across the street are populated. The timing is good because comcast just decided to raise their rates. Also, the repair guy came out and looked at the modem's connection logs and said it looked like it was something on their end. Then he left. I was like... I was out cable for 3 days and that is all you have to say? Ugrh.

Posted by chris at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Either comcast's setup can't handle the cold or some dumb butt in the area plugged his router in backwards. When my modem actually suceedes in getting a signal, my router picks up the ip 192.168.100.10 half the time. Hopefully, they will actually show up sometime today and figure it out. Comcast has been fairly good in this area, but the speed is sometimes lacking (especially on uploads). I can't wait for fiber!

Posted by chris at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We just finished watching the Return of the King Extended Edition. It was awesome! I can see why they cut a few of the extended scenes, but most of them were seamlessly intergrated into the film and added a sense of completness. Yawn! Time for bed. P.S. we found a white fuzzy blob we like and are considering going into negotiations with the dealership.

Posted by chris at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

UPS shows the LOTR - ROTK - EE as 'out for delivery'! I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonite. I'll have to pull out the hot chocolate and blanket, though, as it decided to act abunch more like winter all the sudden. I was wearing jeans and short sleaves on Sunday while doing yardwork and I was hot, and last night it dropped below freezing. Tonite it is supposed to be even colder!

Posted by chris at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I got home yesterday, I saw a Verizon truck in front of my house. I've been very interested in their fiber to the premises service (mainly because of the 15Mbs/3Mbs connection for $50). They have been slowly rolling it out, and Wylie is one of the first cities nationwide to get it. They have site where you can punch in your number and check for availability. It doesn't work for me because I only have a cell phone (no landline). Anywho, I went and chatted w/ the worker for awhile, learning about many things. I gave him my name and number so they can call my cell when the flip on the fiber. Yay!!

Posted by chris at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

While Ting was out of town, I decided to try to make the DYI projector screen from 2x1s and blackout cloth from JoAnne's. I picked up a staple gun while I was there (that had a cool adjustable oompf thingy-mc-bobber on the back). Anyways, after breaking my dad's miter box and much cussing, I managed to make a rectangle out of wood in a 16x9 ratio. Then I proceded to try to stretch the blackout cloth over the frame. 1 inch too short!! So, after some hacking, I had a rectangle in a 16x8.5 ratio that now had blackout cloth streched across it. Unfortunatly, the starter staples they included w/ the gun only allowed me to staple 2 out of the 4 sides. Therefore, Ting and I made a journey to Home Depot at 8:30 (where every single employee we saw offered to help us), to get new staples. After trying EVERY box of staples to see if it fit in the staple gun (we brought it along), we had no matches! Urgh! Damn proprietary format staples!
Anyways, what I'm planning on doing is making a frame for the screen and either staining it dark or painting it black. Then we will paint the ceiling 1 color, and the walls another color. Then we will mount the projector, focus and setup for 3 days, then enjoy! Atleast that is the plan. I think I'm going to skip all the steps in the middle and just mount the projector and enjoy and save the rest for after the wedding.

Posted by chris at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ting had a night off last night, so I spent abuncha quality time with the projector. Currently, I'm feeding it a RGBHV singal (those 5 BNC connectors you see on the back of high end monitors) from my computer via an ATI 9600XT -> VGA -> Breakout Cable -> RGBHV. I was originally going to feed it a 16:9 @ 1280x720 image, but decided to instead feed it a 4:3 @ 1280x960 signal. This will allow me to watch the few 4:3 movies I have at full size while being able to watch 16:9 movies at the same size as it would have been had I used 1280x720. Anyways, I'm slowly setting it up (on purpose) to familiarize myself with the controls and setup for the fatefull day I decided to hang it from the ceiling. Take into consideration that I'm not even close to being done calibrating the projector when you look at this picture. Yes, MS Outlook at 82inches by 67inches!! The camera batteries died, so I only got 1 image. :-( Afterwards, I popped in XMen2 (fullscreen... ughh... still kicking myself for that one) into my computer and got motion sick during the opening sequence when they were roller-coastering through the nerve endings. After I get it all setup and calibrated, I'll need to find a much shorter entertainment center to hold all of my stuff and then I'll mount the projector on the ceiling. Its gunna be super sweet!

In related news, I journeyed over to Home Depot to by parts for a DYI screen. There are several plans at the AVSForums (Audio Video Science) in the DYI Screen section. So, I picked up some 1x2s (2 8ft and 3 6fts) to make a big rectangle, then I'll get some blackout cloth (backing for curtains) at a fabric store and have a nice looking screen for under $50.

Posted by chris at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I ordered a Belkin bluetooth GPS a few days ago. I got it all hooked up and used it to get me to work this morning. It includes street maps for every state and the software issues voice prompts. So, I punched in my work address and it told me when to turn left or right. It was fun! The unit is really small too. It is about the size of a cellphone. It actually uses a cellphone battery too! The power adapter is pretty cool. Its a normal sized DC plug and a usb adapter on the other (so it can get power from laptop). You can also plug the usb end into a car adapter or a wallwort to get power from various sources. Very neat!

Last night, I borrowed Judy and Evan's stud finder so I could mount my rear speakers to the wall in my media room. Even with the stud finder, I have about 10 extra holes in the wall where I pre-tested the location of the stud using an icepick. I guess using a stud finder on an outer wall isn't as accurate as one would expect. Anywho, I got the speakers mounted nevertheless. All I need to do is to run a custom made subwoofer cable using quad shielded RG6, patch a few holes, and clean up or put wall plates on the remaining holes. Everything is going so well!

Luckily, one of my buddies in Houston, Chris, was able to pick up Adam's color laser printer from the Enron warehouse even though he was getting sick! Thanks Chris, you rock! He said he put it on the porch with a plant on it so nobody will steal it. Good thinking, Chris!

Posted by chris at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So, we finally watched the last episode of Kingdom Hospital. Umm... Well... Its was a little less than I was expecting. It just got too wierd and depended too much on flashbacks. Ohh well. Something that always bothered me about Stephen King mini-series/movies/shows is that they always had great and interesting premises but the delivery was usually really lacking. They would just get too cheesy or too predictable. There are a few notable exceptions, yet I think the flops really hurt Stephen King's appeal to new readers. Regardless, I will still keep on reading his books (especially the Darktower / Last Gunslinger series) and watching the movies and shows that surface now and again. I think a GREAT combo would be King and M. Night Shyamalan. Spooky!

Posted by chris at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today I recieved Photoshop CS from an order I placed a few days ago and I just finished installing it. All my computers are now completly legal. It feels good.

Posted by chris at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

All I can say is wow!

Posted by chris at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, yesterday morning we talked to the priest, filled out a scantron-based questionare to determine compatibility (FOCCUS) and got a list of 10 or so dates that are available this year as well of a list of things to do before the wedding. For lunch, we went to a small sandwhich shop in downtown Wylie and our waitress looked surpirising like my aunt in Montanna. The food was great! (L&L I think...). Later that evening, we went over to my parent's place for dinner and talked about which day is best, then went over to her parents place, and talked about what day is best, and after ALL that, it came down to what Christine's Mother's Friend said was the best 'energy day' for having a wedding. :-P That day is... Oct 30th! So, this morning we checked with all of our wedding participants for compatibility, and fired off an email to the church! Yay! As for church restrictions, no strappless or spagetti-strap dress and no alchohol. Ohh well, I guess I'll wear a tux.

On another note, I was awoken at 12pm, 4am and 6am by Zephyr playing with things. I couldn't find anything to throw. Grrr... Anybody want a cat?

On an up-beat note, I got a check for my deductable from my insurance company from when that Jaguar-lady ran into my car and claimed she had no insurance! W00+!!1 (that 1 is there on purpose).

On a off key note, I re-discovered Infocom games (completely text based games (Zork)). I played them as a kid. I fondly remember calling up my dad's friend all the time to get help! hehe! I'm using Frotz. What rekindled my interest in the game was a AIM frontend to classic Infocom games, that I saw off of Slashdot. This all ties in nicely with a project I'm working on at work that uses an perl/AIM bot to notify agent's of special events on the system. I found Net::OSCAR to be WAY better than Net::AIM as it uses the more feature rich protocol for the AIM network.

Finally, they started framing the house!! I went Sat/Sun and it was foundation. I went Tuesday morning and they had almost finished the 1st floor. I went this afternoon and they are almost done with the 2nd floor! Awesome!!

Posted by chris at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I think its pretty damn ironic that many of the spams I have been receiving recently are for spam filter software. Atleast I'm not alone.

Posted by chris at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hrmm.... so the foundation wasn't poured (but they did cut out the curb for the driveway), and we went to the church. We waited for 20 or so minutes. We walked around and couldn't find an open door and Christine's bladder was bursting. So I called up Adam and had him check my email.... we were supposed to meet in 2 weeks! Ugh... wrong date...

So Christine went home because she had a headache, and I went shopping and picked up 'Kill Bill'. Now I have to wait till tomorrow to see it with Ting... which REALLY sucks becuase the presidential new conference is on almost every channel (in spanish too!!). So... Ranger's game or Tree Hill/Everwood/some show I don't know the name and don't watch. Hrmm.. maybe I'll read instead.

In other news, I submitted a patch to Apache::Gallery to sort directories by create time / mod time which you can do with files already (which you can see working with my House pics). Anyways, I submitted it an someone else had sneaked their patch in just before me!! Foiled again!!

Posted by chris at 08:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, Brandon the Builder called today and told us that he can't put a safe in the foundation. :-( Not super happy about that, but what can you do? He said that they stopped doing that after liability issues arose from owners in similiar situations. Ohh well. We talked about a few things and he said he hopes/plans/expects to be done in June. Only 1 month after my current lease ends. So that means I will only be violated for 1 month instead of the 2 I expected. He was a pretty young guy but he seemed to know what was going on, so everything looks good I spose.

In other news, I'm playing with a script to make a calendar, that lets me browse my pictures based off of the exif date. I'll let you know when I have something for you all to play with.

In other other news, I got my first chance to take pictures 'professionally' for a group.... Sartaj asked me to be an event photgrapher for a camp this weekend, but unfortunately its 3 hrs away and its all day Fri and Sat. I work Friday, and I feel uncomfortable driving 3 hrs there and 3 hrs back and unsure if I get paid (they pay for what they like). If it was alot closer or I was guarenteed more payment than cost of gas.... Hopefully another opportunity will pop up soon.

Posted by chris at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think I'm back.
I managed to delete all of the db for my Movabletype installation. I left all my archives. I've been busy as hell, but still had the hope that I could recover completely from my archive files. Maybe someday I will. I'm tired of screwing around with it and I miss posting, so I skipped it. Blah. You would think the MT archive files would be compatible with the import format (or atleast a utility to convert between the 2). No such luck.
I took the time to go ahead and use mysql for the db instead of berkley db. After I thought I cleared that hurdle, I found that my perl stuff didn't work (gallery, etc). So, I had to reinstall apache, mod_perl, php, etc.... Then, I checked the sensors and noticed they were out of wack. So I compiled the 2.6.3 kernel (from 2.6.2), and rebooted. My machine mysteriously turned off after 1 minute after each reboot. I went to the lunch-box like machine and noticed it was as hot as hades. Apparently, the fan decided become unplugged, so the machine had NO ventalation. Anyways, Im surprised it still worked. It was the hotest I have ever felt any motherboard/harddrive/case/powersupply.... and I've worked with ALOT of machines. I guess I'm lucky.

Anyways, we signed on the house and they will start building very soon. :-) Yay!!

Christine has been having her mail stolen for the last 2 months. The postmaster wrote her in conjunction with the Garland police and said they caught a 'non employee' in posession of her mail. Their investigation in the matter apparently left her mail unable to preform its original duties, so they ended up sending copies to her. So, she had to go change credit card numbers, etc...

Beer anyone?

Posted by chris at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Well, I went to Trilogy Tuesday yesterday. For those of you not 'in the know', it was all 3 Lord of the Rings movies (in extended version) in a row: 1 ticket, 1 theater, 1 seat, one numb bottom. It was awesome. The movie was set to start at 1pm, so we headed to breakfast at 8:30 and got to the theater at 9:15ish. There were already 200 people in line when we got there!! While in line, they had a few trivia competitions, cosutme contests, etc.. (with prizes!). After waiting in line for a few hours, we were finally allowed in the theater to our seats at about 12:30. They gave everybody wrist bands and explained the way things were going to happen. Trailers and ads on 1st movie, and none on the others. The 2nd and 3rd movies start at exactly 5:30 and 10pm respectively (no trailers, so if you are late, you miss part of the movie). Overall, I was surprised that my body didn't hurt abunch, but after further thinking, I realized that I pretty much sit on my butt 12 hrs a day anyways. Return of the King was AWESOME!! The fight scenes were cool, the effects were cool, the suspense was awesome!! I am definately going to see it again in the theater!! As we were walking out, New Line Cinema was handing out collectables to the people who went. They handed out a 'Film Frame Collectable', which is a rock-like thing that has a original frame from a reel of each one of the movies. Mine has a scene with fireworks from the 1st movie, a fight scene w/ aragon from the 2nd, and a scene with Merry from the 3rd. Awesome!! Anyways, we got out at 1:30 am. I figured I was at the theater from 9:30am till 1:30am and actaully watching movies for over 11hrs. Wow, I'm tired.

Posted by chris at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some of them are obviously not in focus (as the camera is fixed focus at infinity). Some of the colors are interesting too. I think its well worth the $11.

Posted by chris at 08:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello all, its been awhile.
I hate crazy drivers. I was driving down 635 at 9ish one night in the 3rd from left lane (the 1st being HOV). I was behind a truck and beside a car. We were all driving nicely a little above the speed limit. All the sudden, some lady came flying up the lane next to me and started flashing her lights at the car in front of her. I'm guessing she wanted the car to go faster or get out of her way. Remember that we were already going over the speed limit and definatley going appropraite speed for those lanes. So she sat there flashing her high-beams for awhile untill she decided to cross over into the HOV lane (only 1 person in her car, and solid DOUBLE white lines (so 2 no-nos so far). I see this and see kinda where she is going, so I punched it and pulled next to the HOV lane... effectivly blocking her in. She tried flashing her lights at me a few times. I flashed her back a little. Grrr...
I went to walmart for the black friday sales. I woke up at 5:45ish and managed to get out there by 6:15ish. We were worried, because when we showed up people were already leaving empty handed. We went in anyways and tried finding the deals that we had circled on their fliers. Then we saw the other 40000000 people. Everybody was jammed into the aisle were the product was supposed to be, looking and searching for them. We decided that we would just get the groceries we needed and head home. Lo and behold, all the specials were in the main aisle of the grocery section. Yay!! On our way out I saw a nice Apex 27 inch TV and decided to get it for my sis for christmas. We waited in line, checked out, went to the car and started unloading. Unfortunately, the TV didnt fit in my car... ANYWHERE. The doors were too small and it didn't even come close to fitting into the trunk. I eventually had to leave the TV there, driver over to my parents, grab the truck, drive back, etc... Anyways, I woke my sister up at 8 and told her to get her damm xmas present because I didn't want to have to lug it around everywhere. She was surprisingly civil for being woken up at 8 in the morn.
Awhile ago I got a disposable/reuseable digital camera from Ritz/Wolf camera for ~$11ish. I've been trying to get it talking to my computer ever since without any luck. The premise of the camera is, buy it for $11, take pics, return to Ritz for developement for $11. Repeat. My premise is: buy the camera for $11, take pics, upload to computer, repeat. I like mine better. Anywho, I finally got the darn thing working. I got the Data- and Data+ lines swapped. More info here. Pictures later.
The University of Dallas (UD) was having their Chartering ceremony for Alpha Phi Omega on Saturday. Our chapter is their big brother chapter (which is cool, cause we are only 5 years old ourselves), and we are incharge of doing the ceremony. Our chapter was supposed to meet at 5:15ish. I showed up 5 seconds late (literaly) and people were leaving in cars as I was pulling up. So I flipped a U turn and tried to catch up. I never did. UD is located across the street from Texas Stadium. I somehow ended up near Six Flags (This is much much much further) (its the equivelent of going to Denton from Dallas and ending up in Oklahoma). BTW, I don't have a cell phone. Over an hour and 15 mins after I left my house, I managed to find UD and arrived just in time to take tons of pictures. I will have those uploaded to our chapter's site soon.
I made dinner for abunch of people last week. We were supposed to make plaques APO's banquet. I've been doing it for the last few years and decided it would be good for others to know. I got everything all printed out on paper and it looked really nice. They decided the wanted to do things different. Instead of sharp crisp edges, they wanted to rip them. That wasn't good enough so they burnt the edges. Still, that wasn't good enough so we dipped them in tea/coffee to give them a weathered/old look. That was good enough and now we have some pretty kick ass plaques. For dinner, I cooked a light pan fried tilapia with capers and asparagus. Everybody was happy!
Sorry for being so flakey these last few weeks. I've been really busy with APO, life, work, etc... It should get better right after Christmas. Stay Warm!

Posted by chris at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adam got me Halo for the PC for my birthday. I played that on Tuesday night. That’s it. I went home, popped the game in, and I came back to reality 6hrs later. Man, that game is cool. I played a game a year or so ago with a little angel that runs around and shoots people. I wasn't impressed with it. For some reason, I thought that game was Halo, so I had dismissed it up to a month or so ago. Then I downloaded and played the trial version and realized I was mistaken. :-P Anyways, cool game, neat effects, good game play, Not your usual run-out-there-with-guns-blaring 1st person shooter.
Last night, I convinced Christine to skip dance class so we could catch up on chores, etc... Yay!! Afterwards (9:15), we met Lilly and Jimmy at Il Sorrento, a very nice Italian restaurant at Hillcrest and Northwest Highway in Dallas. My parents went on dates there before they got married and go at least once a year since then. So, 26+ years later, Il Sorrento is closing it's doors. :-( Very Sad. Supposedly, the owner is getting a little older and decided it was time to do other things, and didn't want to sell it. What is interesting about the restaurant, is it's decorations. Outside is a big fountain with Italian statues. Inside, the main room is like being in an open courtyard in Italy in the middle of the night. Even the ceiling looked like a midnight sky!! Also, the food is great! I asked for the waiter's most favorite thing that isn't lobster. I ended up with delicious stuffed shrimp and the best carrot, zucchini and lima bean vegetable side I have ever had. The vegies were very tender, but not mushy, and in a buttery wine sauce. YUM!! Unfortunately, they are not taking any more reservations, but will try to seat any walk-ins. The lady who answered the phone recommended very early (5:30) or very late (9ish). Enjoy it now!
Tonight, I'm going to be making Chili Con Carne again. Last time was a great success, however I was only able to use 1 type of chili peppers to make the chili powder. Now, having some experience under my belt, I'm confident that it will only be 93% as messy and at least 9% better tasting. :-P
There was a little excitement in the office at the end of last week. One morning, I was sitting in my office, working quietly before my co-workers got in, and noticed a flock of birds fly by. This isn't unusual in any way, considering I'm on the third floor and birds seem to be on the move, as it's getting colder. What was unusual, though, was the birds were larger than normal… either pigeons or mourning doves. So, anyways, they fly by and I go back to work. A few seconds later, I hear a REALLY REALLY loud bang down the hall. I look out the window, and the construction workers from across the street are staring at the window and one even dropped his tools and started over here. So, I look out the window and see a hawk on the corner of the lawn with a bird in it's claws... eating breakfast. Hrmm. I open up the door, go down the hall, and one of the guys (figuratively) is cleaning the crap out of his pants. I look at the windows behind him and there are 4 'splots' where the birds flew into it. As humorous as this may seem, it isn't too too weird…. until you look at the splots. 2 of them had perfect outlines of the birds created by their oils. By perfect, I mean you can see the outlines of individual feathers, you can see the claws, which way its head was turned, that its beak was slightly open and its wings were fully extended. Anyways, check out the pictures. You can kinda see the outline. I had a bunch of trouble trying to capture it.
Sometimes, I worry about my co-workers.

Posted by chris at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I remember in English class back in the days of high school, how I used to be enthralled when the teacher pulled some hidden meaning out of a book and explained it all to us (then we would do this for 6 weeks and I hated it, but that’s beside the point, I liked it at the beginning). Keep that in mind. I was thinking about what I should write about this morning and remembered a line by Morpheus from the matrix. 'I have dreamed a dream and now that dream has gone from me'. That line sounded incredibly familiar when I first heard it, so I went and did a little googling. I ran across a forum thread discussing that line and realized there was so much more to the matrix than I originally thought. After watching Matrix Revolutions, it was blatantly obvious that there were parallelisms with many major religions. I.E. Neo being the chosen one, the messiah, etc.. However, what I overlooked were all the details that support that line of thinking hidden throughout the movie. License plates on cars and plates on ships refer to bible verses, etc.. Following the links off the thread, I came across a link that tries to dig into the symbology ;-) of each character's name. Digging even further, I realized that page is only one of MANY on that site. All of this is so cool to me, yet I realize that if I dig any deeper I would pop out someplace in China. So, I might go get a few books from the bookstore and start from there.

Posted by chris at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, after hitting my snooze button a few too many times, I cracked open my eyes, located the clock, and realized I had 15 minutes to wake up, get dressed, pick up Adam, and get to the movie theater to see Matrix Revolutions at 8:00am. The ride was interesting, but the movie was way better. I had been worried about some reviews I read about it, and after waiting through the pre-commercials, commercials, trailers, mid-way commercials, and the Dolby digital bit, my worries were swept aside. I had no trouble quickly becoming enthralled in the movie and found myself holding my breath during most of the cool action scenes. The dialog was typical for Matrix and Keanu (the less, the better) but there were a few more kissy kissy scenes than I would have liked. There was also a REALLY weird Club sequence where the people were dressed up like the latest Japanese and latex fetishes. It was a little odd to see another Oracle (the previous actress passed away). Thankfully, the movie was not predictable and kept me guessing to the very end. The only thing I thought was a little hokey was the very end of the movie, but it didn't ruin it. I was amazed at how much religious overtones where put in the movie. It seems like it would make for very good discussion at a latter time. However, before we do that, I should grab some coffee.

Posted by chris at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Been working alot with maps and perl at work recently and thought up an idea. I would get a map of the world or Americas and put dots everywhere that I went and link them to the encyclopedia of images I take.
First I fired up cpan and got Image::WorldMap. It can do neat things like this (plot spots on the map by only giving it lat and long).
Then I tried getting Image::Maps::Plot::FromLatLong and Image::Maps::Plot::FromPostcode. That part was hell. One didn't have all the files it needed, the other depended on the first but provided the missing file and had dependencies that cpan didn't know about. Finally, got it all working.
This is an initial rough framework. Still need to add 4 billion images/links etc. I'm storing the data in a mysql DB and creating the png on the fly. Eventually I will have a bigger picture.
:-)
Anyways, I had fun!!

Posted by chris at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)