Archived News starting from 02-26-2007 and earlier
BlogLisa had become dissatisfied with both the quality of my HDTV signal, and her ability to watch TV reliably in the bedroom. She threatened to find a man who could deliver a multipath interference free 1080i HDTV signal along with a reliable network connection that I was obviously not providing for her. My relationship on the line, I had to fix both. I relocated my
HDTV antenna to my attic and ran the antenna wire and a network cable to the TV. After adjusting the antennas until Lisa was satisfied with the signal strength, I ran the network cable down to my laundry room. With the attic work done, the
Morlock got Sam
good and hyper with some catnip in preparation for his cable run. Unlike
last time, there was only a mild freakout while he got into his
PETA approved harness. Once he was in the joist space he took off
like a pro and greeted the Morlock at the other end with the cable on the first try. After the Morlock
calmed him down he was more relaxed than when we began. My cat is officially a trained cable runner, and with a wired media center and a strong HDTV signal, my relationship is once again safe from disaster.
Lisa called me around noon today and informed it was "acceptable" to visit her at work today since her unit (labor and delivery) had no patients. Apparently this mornings ice storm wasn't good weather for having babies. I know I certainly wouldn't want to be born in this ice storm, or this cold weather, or anywhere in Michigan for that matter. After a few spinouts on I-96 I arrived at the hospital and finally saw
what Lisa does all day. Unfortunately my request for a photo of me in stirrups while giving birth to a pillow was denied for sanitary reasons, I know that's what everyone was hoping for so at least I tried. I successfully embarrassed her in front of each co-worker and learned all about the birthing process. It was edutainment at it's finest. I'm sure I'll never be allowed back, but at least I'll always have the memories.
Playing
Battlefield 2142 isn't always enjoyable, but you keep playing for those times that it is. It's like a bad drung you just can't kick because the highs are so good you forget the lows. Well today I hit bottom. After being knifed in the back 5 times in a row, I
snapped my keyboard in half over my leg. Needless to say, my anger was released but my game time was over. $20 later I've decided to take a break from playing for awhile. The keyboard was flimsy to begin with so my hulk powers aren't that great, it just looks that way.
Over the last few months, my
referrer logs have been showing my increasing role as a
Myspace image provider. Most people would be thrilled to have the honor of serving up bandwidth to the millions of 1995-era web pages hosted there, but unfortunately in 1995 the principle design rule was cramming as many enormous images and animated gifs you could onto a page. This translates into significant bandwidth demands on my server, so my desire for a usable website won out. A quick Google search found
LeechBlocker, which was exactly what I needed. Happy to install random ISAPI dlls into my server, I was instantly free of Myspace traffic. As an added bonus, the filter formats my entire C: drive when someone requests "bah-weep-graaagnah-wheep-ni-ni-bong.html". So nobody make that particular request.
My recent TV purchase brought my total number of required remote controls to four. Previously my receiver remote could at least turn on my TV and I only needed three. Feeling crowded, I decided to research media center 2005 compatible universal remotes. Since my TV and DVD player are both Philips, I quickly found
exactly what I wanted, but it was either never manufactured, or is no longer in production. Even eBay didn't help. Disappointed, I found the
Logitech Harmony line of universal remotes to be my next best choice. Unwilling to spend over $100 on a remote, the best bang-for-the-buck turns out to be the
Xbox 360 Remote (even though I don't own an Xbox 360). After TigerDirect's instant ground shipping delivered it to my door, I set it up for my TV, DVD and receiver by entering their model numbers. There was no option for "custom built media center" so I picked a random HP media center model for the media center support. I then configured the "xbox buttons" as Guide, Recorded TV, Start and Live TV respectively. Not quite my comforting green windows logo button on my regular remote, but at least the green button did the same thing. I then set up "Activities" like "Watch Recorded TV" which turns on the TV, receiver, and displays my list of recorded TV. After I had everything configured in the interface, I clicked "Update Remote" and waited for over a minute while it uploaded whatever configuration was required. Once it was done, I pressed the "Watch Recorded TV" activity and sure enough everything turned on as expected. It's important to note that during my demonstration to Lisa, none of the activities worked properly, but she did understand the "Devices" button and how to switch between them all, so it passed the fiance test. However, her increasing nerd factor may make her an unsuitable baseline comparison. A review I read mentioned how the channel/volume/directional buttons "click" when pressed, which is slightly annoying. I also had to manually set volume up/down for each device to my receiver volume up/down, but this may have been me missing a configuration option.
After doing my taxes and discovering a significant return (thanks to four mortgage payments)
this deal on a
50" Plasma TV begged me to blow my money on it immediately. It satisfied my need for a good deal and was larger than any of my friends digital flat panel TVs. (Yes Ron, your projector is 158" but I did say digital flat panel!). With primary goals met, a quick check that my entertainment center would hold the TV (after a circular saw modification) was all I needed to click the BUY button. Today it finally arrived and
barely fits, a beacon of consumerism in full 1080i glory. After discovering 480p DVD's now look crappy, I switched to on-air HDTV for the same breathtaking video my
42" Plasma displays, but with 8 more inches of it. What next?
Upgrade the firmware naturally, and add an
HD Tuner to my
media pc, which now connects via HDMI. Apparently all those upgrades were too much for the
Morlock to take, so he
rammed his car into a curb and called for a
tow.
Since
Battlefield 2142 was a no go during the
Jan LAN, the pansies (
IronDan and
Leinnintiger) decided to organize an exclusive one that was
held today. They were joined by
Mindkill,
EternalOne,
LordJudson,
Odyssvs,
Cheffords and of course,
me. Various combinations of bots and us on different teams took place with the clear conclusion that even at full skill the bots suck. Despite the lack of challenging enemies, we still managed to teamkill each other plenty to stay amused. Event video from
Gnome Cam is
here.
Six months ago, I built a mid-level PC out of leftover upgrade parts to play around with the then-beta Vista operating system. Feeling bad that Lisa had no computer at my house, I offered it up for her to use. I was thanked, and told she would "probably never" use it. Fast forward to today and it's become her primary computer. During the
condo cleanup, I decided it was time to bring her beloved mac to my house and set it up for her. I can definitely see the chick draw, since it resembles some kind of alien more than a computer. My network would have nothing to do with it, and for three days I tried to get it to recognize the ethernet port. I finally figured out the wireless software I installed at Lisas condo messed it up pretty bad, and after removing it, my network was
successfully infected with a mac. Sure it
looks innocent, but secretly I know it's waiting to wipe all my hard drives. Fortunately the chick factor hasn't degraded over time, and I can still get $500 for it when I "accidentally" ship it to the highest bidder. Whoops I said that out loud.
I thought it was cold
last week, but that was before -2.2ºF last night. Now we've dipped into negative on every common temperature scale except Kelvin, which puts us at a toasty 254.15º above absolute zero. Kelvin makes me feel warm all over. Strangely enough, the new low for the year happened at 4:20am, which puts the blame squarely on the original Morlock. Apparently
El Nińo is no match for the Morlock.
| -2.2 °F at 04:20 on 05 February |
After seeing Ultra 1024MB PC3200 memory was
$50 after rebate, I couldn't resist bumping my system memory from 2GB up to 3GB. I use same-model memory in my system for reliable
dual channel operation, and so far the ULT31664 chips have been good to me. Last week I learned exactly how good when I was re-educated on dual channel memory controllers. After my upgrade, I booted into Vista and had to re-run the Windows experience tool. I was shocked to find my memory score dropped over a point from
4.9 to
3.6. My
total worth as a person was below
MorlockPrime and the
Elder. My motherboard had fallen back to single-channel memory speeds since there was an odd number of chips. This was obviously unacceptable, so I scammed
Stavos into getting me another $50 rebate memory chip (one per household) which bumped me up to 4GB. Apparently the extra addressing operations take their toll on the controller, as I now only get a
4.6 score, placing me on par with MorlockPrime. An excellent example of how effective dual channel technology really is, how much of a sucker I am for good deals, and yet another look into the strange world of the nerd ego.
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