Playing around with this theme… Things might be a little funky at first. GTG hates it already.
Update: Changed back to the old theme.
Archive for September, 2006
I am posting these so I don’t have too much fun or pass out on the couch for the weekend.
* Install smoke alarm upstairs
* Touch up paint on walls.
* Start working on wiring downstairs. Buy wire.
* Finish never ending laundry.
* Work on digging out stumps from the bushes in front.
* Find photos for picture frames. - Find out if I still have the hookup at Kinkos.
* Buy a ceiling fan for my bedroom.
* New tires for the truck.
* Get insulation for upstairs.
(And for safe precaution) * Buy GF nice things.
Buddy was being a good dog tonight so he got a spot on the blog.
Made a Big Blue Store run tonight. My nerves were just dying for some new music. I picked up Lupe Fiasco’s “Food & Liquor” and Demetri Martin’s “These Are Jokes.”
Demetri is a comic that I’ve posted before. He did the MySpace satire “I got 9000 friends.”
Listening to Lupe’s album first. So far it has been similar to an early Pharrell William’s album except with more chorus and better beats.
I am not much of a comic person. I think I bought a few during my tween years, but nothing more than that. The comic pictured to the side was one that my grandma bought for me at a flea market. Never knew much about it.
Googled it today to find out the brief history of Tarzan from Wikipedia. It looks like it is a part of the series that was produced from 1977-1979.
It looks like that this was the first issue of the series, but this site has a different issue in that place. The binding and cover page is in crappy condition but the rest of the pages are in fair to good condition. Anyone have an idea if it is worth anything?
The Springfield blog population has spoken, which I think there was some choking and gagging involved, and has named Capital Fax Blog as best local blog. CFB, whomever you are, congratulations. If by chance of Google, don’t take this to heart. Keep on blogging.
A POLITICAL BLOG…. gah. I am not a fan of politics. However, I will get in a heated debate about towing in downtown Springfield. This stuff is boring in my opinion. Of course the guv has horrible hair and the state is running out of money. Nothing new in Illinois.
I was hoping it was going to be me someone with real blog posts about life: a horse shoe they ate, confessions of Catholic grade school, pictures of local landmarks, or puppies… you know, real stuff. I could care less if Judy Barr Topinka uses two gallons of hair dye each month.
Did you see the bottom of the article? I quote “and for that reason we think Capitol Fax is a shoo-in for next year’s award.” A shoo-in? Was that a low blow or a ‘Hey this is the Illinois Times we got love for the gotshoo’? We’ll never know?
A Shoo-in. I can’t believe it.
I am happy to say that BlogFreeSpringfield.blogspot.com came in 2nd. BFS is a wonderful read and is in my RSS feeds on a daily basis.
Sorry Unspelled, no blogger party. And I just went to Meijer and picked up the devil eggs and bratwursts. I’ll put them in the freezer for next year.
Last year at this time, I announced that I just taken a new job with a small IT consulting company in Springfield. So it’s almost been a whole year. I didn’t start my current job until October because I took a small vacation to Daytona Florida to visit B.
It was a big move. The past year I had been working in the truss and home planning design business. I had gone from only knowing that there were studs behind drywall to that you need a 4″ lip on a foundation to support a brick wall on a house, and if you were going to have the same size overhang over walls with siding and brick you were going to need to cantilever the trusses another 4″.
One of my first examples of a 3D elevation.
One of the tougher ones I did. This was for a house that was being built. They wanted a good idea of what it would look like with different building materials. I got to walk in this house - impressive.
Obviously my talents were improving over time. When the opportunity to enter a different career field came up I was seriously at a cross roads. I had my position where I put in 3/4 of a year training myself on designing and building homes, but I had also invested 5 years in school and got a BS in Computer Sceince. I picked the brains of many my close friends and family members. It pretty much came down to “You’ll know what to do.”
My inner-geek obviously took over, and I took the job in the IT field.
A year later, today, I ran into my old boss. He’s doing well for himself and the company has doubled in size after a partnership with another company shortly after I left. He was telling me about all the new technology and tools they had. I am a sucker for new toys (aka tools for the job).
I do miss doing the home design. Okay, I really just miss doing the 3D elevations. But I am glad where I am at right now, because of all the stuff I learned building houses, I learned that much more tinkering with $15K servers. In reality, it’s all about being happy and learning something new.
I was on a good pace for the month of August for getting up early and bike riding for 30 mins. That pace has slowed to momentum of a turtle race at the county fair. I am not a morning person. GTG knows that. My family knows that. And even my dog knows that. Now moving into night owl mode.
Since the bike rides have been lagging, I hit the gym up late this evening.
I am not a big fan of running, but I know it will burn the calories the fastest as well as improve my leg strength. I ran for 25mins with a magic number of 300 calories being burned. *Magic- because who knows how truthful those algorithms really are? Stern, you got an answer?
I had the “Yeah, I just ran my ass off, look at all this sweat” kind of face which could be interpreted as “OMG, look how out of shape he is.”
Feeling pretty good. Wait till tomorrow.
Today gas is 2.14 per gallon and there is no smoking in bars, restaurants, or any other public places.
Default Password List for Hundred’s of WAP’s and Routers.
This is a weird video, but neat site Neave.tv. Digging through it right now.
Dave is dreaming about the 2007 iTV. I, on the other hand, have already dreamed up and put together the ultimate geek home theatre setup. PC style, baby.
What to do with all the mp3’s, pictures, podcast downloads, recorded tv shows on my computer? That was the question I had been asking myself since May of last year. My original idea was to build a mini-pc and chuck it full with all the graphics hardware and memory I would need to have a pc connected to the tv, internet, and local network.
I scrapped that idea in a few months after buying a really nice ATI video card that had it’s own tv tuner card and could record tv in the same way a Tivo could. And after that, I ended up building a system that could support the hog of a video card.
So I opted out of building another mini-computer and took the old baige box that used to be my main system and put a wireless card in it, hooked it up with a wireless keyboard and mouse and set it next to the TV. Nothing is more geeky than having a beige computer box sitting to your tv.
Fast forward to last week when I was talking to my Dad about a product he had been looking at called Music Bridge. It was essentialy a wireless box that hooked up to your receiver and played what ever was being played on your pc. Very limited, but I like the idea.
Blame my Dad, but I got all geeked out about a new multimedia setup. I made the trip to the Blue store. The Blue store and I are a dangerous combination. I think I am on the top 10 for the frequent visitor list.
At the Blue store, I found the D-Link Media Lounge. I could tell it was a great product right away. It had support for HDMI, S/PDIF Digital Audio, S-Video, Composite Video, Composite Audio, a LAN port and Wireless. I asked a guy in a blue shirt, “What is your return policy on this?” He replied, “Dude, that thing is awesome ..(didn’t hear much after that).. like a first born or something.”
Needless to say, I made a purchase.
How it works. It’s connected to my TV and sound system. I have an application that runs on my PC where I have all my podcasts, mp3s, and movies. I tell it what I want to share with the media lounge. It goes out, searches, and makes everything available.
Works great, but a few things that I have tweak out.
- The response is a little slow when flipping through photos. Most of my photos are around 800k. Whatever my 5 megapixel camera spits them out at. I think I can improve the preformance by hooking it up to LAN connection.
- Music plays and sounds great. Although, the management of my library of music is to be questioned. Music can be browsed by Artist, Album, Playlist, or Folder.When I ripped my music (note: legally - okay there might be some old school P2P, but I’ve turned my ways.) I ripped them into a directory structure MP3\Beastie Boys\Licensed to Ill. Then I would stick my playlist into where the tracks were located. Unfortunately, the playlists were all named “playlist”, so when I browse by playlist I am clueless. Best thing I can think of is to write a program to rename all the playlists to the directory they are stored in.
- Video - Actually doesn’t do a bad job over wireless except it can not play mp4 in the AAC format. The format that Apple’s iTunes commonly uses and the same format my Sony camera creates videos in. I don’t know what I’ll do about this but take it into consideration the next movie download or try to show podcasts.
Overall result, happy and it doesn’t look geeky at all.
One photo before I hit the sack. Took this pic tonight. There are more but I think GTG wanted first dibbs on what she wanted to post…..
I had to sneak just one…
I came across this site tonight BikePortland.org. Putting off work, I went through the archives and educated myself on biking in Portland, Oregon. Didn’t realize how big biking was out west.
You thought Springfield had it bad with a smoking ban? Well, there is a big fiasco over fixed gear bikes without ‘hand brakes’. Ayla Holland, a bike messenger, was ticketed by a particular officer whom has deemed himself the ticketer of brakeless bikes with a loosely interrupted Oregon law. A few other cyclists have been ticketed by the same officer. Kind of interesting -read it for youself because I am going to bed.
Jessie, how is your fixed gear bike coming along? How about some pictures?
I was a little productive tonight.
I’ll eventually get this going.
Ohh what a weekend. I’ll give you the skinny going back through time.
Right now, I am sitting in Panera, glorious haven of free internet and IC-Mochas. After this post I plan to do some work. My eyes just lit up as another patron just opened their 15″ Intel based black Mac and went directly to Firefox. Nerd heaven!
I am sore. Today was the Springfield Century. My parents, grandparents, and girlfriend had joined me in conversation many times about the Century. All declined to ride citing the weather, which was beautiful - it was suppose to rain, being sore (more on that), and just not ready to make the ride. That’s okay guys, still love ya. I just did the ride solo today.
I had thought I was going to do the 100 Metric Century (62 miles), but thought I should be a little more conservative and round down to 40 miles since tomorrow is Monday and I can’t take the day off from work. That and I was feeling a little strain in my back from yard work (keep reading).
I biked the 40.29 miles in 2:53:06. Not bad for a first time and keeping a strong steady pace. Some notes I made for next year: 1. Take the road bike, not the mountain bike. 2. Do a few 40-60 mile rides on the weekends next summer. 3. Get some sweet ass bike shorts that show all of the contours (ohh baby) give the butt some extra support. 4. Need a bike jersey. More specifically a New Belgium Fat Tire bike jersey. 5. Bring a few friends. Scenic country is cool and all, but it’s cooler to admire it with a few friends.
Our good blog friend Dave Heinzel was attempting the real 100 mile century. Not the half ass metric. I saw Dave heading the opposite direction off of Route 4. Gave him the biker’s “What’s up”.
It was a beautiful day for a ride.
Saturday, my dad and I went Texas chainsaw massacre on my front yard. He came over to give me a hand on another one of the tree-bushes littering my front yard. This thing was a beast reaching 20 feet up. We cut it down to the trunk and gave up after realizing that it was going to take more power to it put it out of it’s misery. Because a chain saw was not easily acessible, we moved onto ripping out more bushes. Arr-rr-rr. (That was just the man call for more power) Mother Nature 0 - the Scheufele’s 6.
House looks much better, and I even had a neighbor telling me so. Better Homes and Garden - watch out.
Warning: Fall is in the air. I saw some leaves turning colors.
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