Archived News starting from 03-27-2006 and earlier
BlogYesterday two of my neighbors decided to collect sticks from their yards, bundle them up and put them by the curb. Trash night isn't till Friday so Lisa and I took this to mean they wanted us to have a
loud and obnoxious bonfire. After playing trashman and collecting the bundles, preparation was complete. A call tonight to Morlock Prime and
Mark ensured the obnoxious requirement would be fulfilled. Two Growlers of beer later the loud requirement was also met. Disappointed by the lack of police intervention, we called it a night.
Over the weekend I was in Cleveland visiting Lisa's parents. It was a very educational trip, proving that despite it's flatness, Ohio has many great things to offer, such as
Quaker Steak and Lube which I was convinced was an oil change place until we sat down to eat. We also stopped at
Lisa's old work,
Nasa's Glen Research Center, and a
radioactive power plant to name a few. Lisa did a good job
putting up with me but took it out on
her cat.
Today I went to
Leo's house to take apart, check, then regrease my
Cougar halfshafts and found
this sitting in his driveway. No sooner do I get out of my truck then he asks if I want to go for a ride, to which of course I reply with "Hell yeah!" Inside it looks just like a regular Mustang Cobra, except it has a 5-speed instead of the standard 6. Once we get out on the open road he punches it and the boost gauge
pegs at 21 psi while I get light headed (and he misses third). Obviously not a stock Cobra. I open the glove box and see it's registered as the Mustang Terminator Coupe, and find out it has over 600hp to the wheels. Leo is fortunate enough to be working on a part for the car so he got to drive it around for the weekend. We took off a layer of rubber and returned to the shop for my
halfshaft work which quickly required another ride in the 600hp parts-getter for halfshaft clamps. The engine was
quite impressive with the entire upper-end of the V8 rebuilt to handle the high boost. Even though breaking the tires free in 4th gear is cool, I'm sticking with my slightly safer front wheel drive car that doesn't spinout at the tap of the gas. Here's a
front seat ride.
Free from the clutches of MMORPG for
less than 4 months I am again sucked back into the time void that is
Eve Online. This time the blame lies squarely on a co-worker who is more obsessed with the game than the original people who got me into it. Morlock Prime and another co-worker have also been sucked in, assuring my stay here will be more than temporary. Having advanced from mining operations to blowing stuff up as my primary income in the game it's also become more interesting, making it that much more difficult to pull away. I've even considered taking advantage of the various
auctions on eBay to feed my addiction (no doubt money generated by sweatshops in asian countries, all the more reason to support them). Hopefully the spring weather will save me this time and I can re-enter reality before summer starts.
With the same
difficulties of running a network cable to my
media machine that prompted me to buy my
current wireless router, I've again decided to dabble in high speed wireless. This decision was a
failure last time, but I've been bombarded with enough marketing double-speak to believe in the
MIMO revolution and try again. My Xbox occasionally has trouble getting a fast enough connection to my media machine to stream my recorded TV; the adapter and router just can't communicate fast enough to bring me "The Office" without interruption. Enter the
Netgear WPNT834 wireless router. I halved the advertised 240Mbps to 120Mbps, then halved it again to bring it to what is probably the actual consistent output. Did I mention marketing double-speak? This brings wireless close to actual wired ethernet speeds, and not surprisingly they mention this on the site. It's also confirmed in various "independent" reviews of the product so I was convinced enough to jump on it. The advantage of moving from Netgear to Netgear is the transfer of all my port forwards, wireless and dyndns settings is relatively easy, but still time consuming. After 30 minutes of copy/paste action I had the routers swapped and was enjoying a great
light show. Unfortunately I won't be able to do a true test of wireless speed until I get the matching "240Mbps" wireless adapter for my media machine, but hopefully I'll get a little boost for now. Back when a
power surge forced me to use the USB port on my cable modem,
Ron noticed web pages loaded faster from this server, which led me to believe the routers firewall was slowing down packet transfers. Now that I have a much
larger and heaver router (which we all knows translates to better) I'm hoping Ron will again compliment my server on it's blazing fast packet management (shh, don't tell him). My CoWorker mentioned that soothing blue translated to faster and better wireless speeds so I thought I'd share this revelation.
On Friday
Mark got free tickets to
AutoRama which we wound up not needing thanks to a conveniently open door in the back of Cobo hall. There were a few good cars, but it didn't seem as exciting as the past two years. If I had paid to get in I probably would have felt ripped off. Of course, this is most likely because my car wasn't there which meant I had nothing to ramble on about the entire time. Then yesterday I went to my first
Monster Jam with Jaird and it more than lived up to it's redneck reputation. Fortunately you don't have to be a redneck to enjoy it. Giant high horsepower trucks jumping over and on top of cars is fun for anyone, especially when they flip over or get wrecked. After deflowering my monster truck virginity I can confidently recommend it to everyone (at least once).
I started my credit card career with a card from
NextCard when I was 19 because I could put a cool photo of a space shuttle on it. My dad told me that demons would descend from the sky and slit my throat if I ever failed to pay my full balance each month, and except for two occasions of extreme consumerism I always have (the demons were a challenge, but I defeated them both times). I quickly discovered that not only could I borrow the credit companies money FREE for a month, but they would also PAY me to borrow their money for a month (again, as long as I paid off the full balance each time). My cool space shuttle card quickly gave way to the first of many "cash back" cards that I now use religiously. A few months back my
MasterCard statement included a $100 check of accumulated cashback which I promptly blew on automotive parts. Monday my
AMEX rebate check for $187 arrived and I reluctantly spent it on stuff I actually needed. Flushing all my purchases through my credit cards does let the government track my every move (despite the aluminum hat) but I'm hooked on my cashback drug and I don't want to kick it!
The sheer stupidity makes this an all-time classic:
Juggernaut Bitch
Today found me awake at 8:30am on my way to
Leo's house to change the clutch on my
Cougar motor. The transmission has been sitting in his garage since I
dropped it off and he has since completed work on it. Surprisingly my clutch had very little wear and was still in good condition, but that didn't stop me from putting in the new SVT clutch and pressure plate. After changing the clutch I mated the now bulletproof transmission back up and had my engine/trans combo back in one piece again. A few hours after I arrived it was in my truck and I was headed home again with a very satisfying feeling despite the fact that it's still not in the car. I subsequently updated the
photo album.
Today was yet another
winter LAN party to break the boredom of winter. Even with several no-shows and an over 3-hour setup this one went quite well. The hardware highlight was definitely John's
massive 30" monitor. My new Nvidia 7800 video card was too power hungry for even my new 500w power supply, which meant I had to declock it to 80% just to keep from rebooting. Consequently,
Mark is now the proud new owner of my 7800 while I return to my less power-hungry 6800. I also had an opportunity to put my new Poweredge 2400 machine
to the test and it handled the traffic quite well.
Lisa not only got interested in the games, but provided teehee convulsions which put
Ron on the floor, disabling him. Unfortunately nobody took the opportunity to pelt him with an airsoft gun.
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