Archived News starting from 05-14-2007 and earlier
BlogAfter a planned trip to Florida with coworkers failed to happen, Lisa decided she'd
take me and go anyway. Flattered that she thought of me after her coworkers, and that she remembered I love Florida, I agreed. Since Joseph moved back to Michigan, my resident welcoming committee was notably absent this year, and we had to brave the harsh Whorlando airport by ourselves. Once we arrived at our Cocoa Beach destination, a strict schedule of beach and sleep was implemented immediatly, interrupted only by trips to
Kennedy Space Center and
Medieval Times. Lisa was
very excited about visiting NASA for the first time. She took me on the
Up Close tour which was cancelled due to terrorists last time I visited so this was the first time I got to see the shuttle launch pads from 500 feet. Lisa was upset neither pad had a shuttle ready to launch due to a recent hailstorm, but rolled her eyes in excitement after I assured her we would come back again and again until she saw one on the pad. After a full day of calming Lisa down from the space center, we went to Medieval Times where Lisa enjoyed the soap opera which I had previously ignored. Apparently all the talking they do between the fighting and jousting actually creates a storyline. The absence of the Josephs from the greater Whorlando area definitely tuned down the fun factor, but being on a sunny beach with a hot woman helps make up for it.
I've been
eyeing the
Motorola Q ever since I got my
free Treo 650 almost two years ago. The recent price break to $200 was enough incentive for me to make my move. The thinner profile and Mobile 5 OS were the two most attractive features to me and both have proven to be worth the upgrade. I find myself checking to make sure my phone is still on me it's so flush to my belt compared to the Treo. The Mobile 5 OS enables me to write my own software (easily) and once I installed the
.NET 2.0 compact framework on my phone I quickly had a homemade crappy RSS reader written and installed on the phone. "Myrone Detector" is in the works, so if you've got a Mobile 5 phone you won't have to fear
Myrone sneak attacks much longer. Despite
Keith's recommendation of
CodeWallet, I decided to go with
Password Manager for my password keeper since I was able to find an older free version online, and CodeWallet is overkill for me. Owning a phone that can't play
DiVX is embarrassing, so my next install was
TCPMP which I also used on my Treo. It was thankfully ported to Windows Mobile. I recently got Lisa to move from a paper calendar to
Google Calendar and since she decides what I do and when I do it,
GMobileSync was my next install which flawlessly downloaded my life for the next 60 days.
Google Maps Mobile looks and runs much better and faster on the Q compared to the Treo, despite the fact that the Q doesn't have a touch screen. A visit to
FreewarePocketPc.net rounded out my installs with a few games and utilities. The
EV-DO network is noticeably faster than the
1x my Treo had when connected to my laptop, but the latest Q firmware
prevents Bluetooth DUN so I'm stuck with a USB connection for now. There are some downsides though; I miss the longer battery life and touch screen on my Treo, and it's noticeably slower and more complicated to do things compared to the PalmOS (both phones have a 312Mhz processor), but as
Stavos pointed out it shares a name with a
Star Trek character, and that alone compensates for the shortfalls.
My work took the entire company to see
Spiderman 3 today. Getting paid to watch a movie is just the latest in a long line of perks for working at a media company. The trip was officially for "market research" into our new
Spiderman Fatheads which are now hanging on the wall next to me at work. I'll rank this latest movie on par with #2, but below #1. It felt like the same level of effects and storyline as #2, but the dreaded singing scene turned out to be the funniest part of the movie. News of the free movie was the perk clencher for
EternalOne who was hired in shortly before. Unfortunately that means getting vacation for
Cougarfest is now that much more difficult.
So, not too long ago we discovered we have a groundhog living under the deck in the back yard. We haven't seen it in a while and thought it relocated to Florida for nicer weather. (Do groundhogs migrate?) But much to my surprise, while I was chasing the cat out of the bathroom window, I saw the groundhog again on the back patio making a clucking noise. I just happened to have the camera in my hand for something else and snapped a
couple pictures. I tried to go outside and get closer so it could bite me, but it heard me unlock the patio door and ran away. The end.
- Story by PoopyThe flatlanders
stopped by for a visit yesterday since Melanie had to participate in the wedding planning task force. The task force quickly degraded into a drunken karaoke fest so Jaird and I hid in the basement and played my Wii (that the Morlock claims is his). The visit continued today with several
choice photo ops as I gathered up the courage to climb onto my roof and free my troubled HDTV antenna from the attic. Lisa was initially concerned since I did not yet write out a will indicating her as the primary benefactor, but she decided she could forge one if necessary and promptly forgot about me. After the relocation, all signal strengths had a bright "green" meaning full signal, but on recording I still got occasional jumps. An exciting turn of events that requires me to climb onto the roof yet again to install a
even larger antenna.
After the failed
first attempt at neutering my Cougar, I decided to go with the stock exhaust option.
Jrak, helpful to a fault, had a spare stock exhaust laying around that he not only gave me, but
helped me install yesterday. This time the operation was a complete success. So much so that I now have to resort to the tachometer to know when to shift. I haven't noticed a significant drop in power, but I'm sure the 3/4 inch smaller diameter exhaust pipe is holding back some of it. I felt so bad for stockifying my car I roped
Ron into
installing his first generation sequential taillight flashers on my car today. Since he's almost completed his second generation (with unlimited flashing combinations) a windows media center extender was sufficient bribe to get my hands on his old circuit (innuendo intended). My 96 Mustang had the same circuit and I've missed it ever since I turned that car in. After the install, I spent at least 15 minutes mesmerized by the
light display. I might have a quieter and slower car now, but at least I have a chance of waking up the 8am zombies behind me when I'm in a turn lane. Lisa was supposed to have contributed a photo of herself approving the quiet exhaust, but she decided to get sick instead.
I've been excited about Windows Home Server ever since the
unveiling at ICES. I was recently accepted into the
beta program and decided to
install it on a stolen Morlock PC today. After entering the product key, I went to mow my yard and came back to the
login screen with no other configuration required. A quick check of the control panel found everything you'd expect in a Windows 2003 Small Business server, including IIS. My ultimate goal is to make Home Server my primary webserver, file server and backup server, so I was glad to see IIS ready to go. The centralized backup is the biggest feature of WHS, so my next step was to setup all my computers with the WHS client. It was pretty clear I wouldn't be able to backup all my computers with the 40GB drive in the Morlock PC, so I added a spare 120GB and another stolen 20GB Morlock drive for kicks. WHS has a
warning screen for silly people like me that prefer traditional RDP access to a server, so I decided to go along with it and used the RDP-ish "Home Server Console" to add the drives to the storage pool. After seeing the
result, I checked the
partitions and found nothing exciting. Some kind of redundant spanning takes place on the drives (supposedly if one drive fails home server alerts you and keeps on chugging). With my improved storage I
backed up all my computers from the console interface. The advantage to this over the built-in microsoft backup (both use
shadow copy) is I can now initiate and schedule backups from one place instead of making sure each computer has the proper access, setting up scheduled tasks, and making sure they are on (WHS wakes them out of standby for the 2am backup). A backup is only as good as it's restore options, so I decided to "fail" my laptop drive by wiping it clean. I then popped in the WHS restore CD and booted into a modified version of Vista. Instead of loading every driver that does (and will) exist in the world, each backup has a "Drivers" folder you copy to a USB drive for restores. After booting up, it
scanned and
found the drivers on the USB drive. I entered the WHS
password, picked the
machine,
backup, and
partition to restore and my laptop came back to life. You can also restore individual files from specific dates, but that's not as dramatic.
File shares,
users, and
network status are also easily administered from the console, with enough detail to keep me satisfied that I'm not actually RDP'd into the box. If you've read this far, you're probably wondering why I'm so excited about a centralized backup system. You'll find your answer the next time the RIAA SWAT team swoops in with localized EMP pulse rifles and zaps all your PC's. While you cry about the cavity search I'll be booting up restores happy in the knowledge my WHS is safe underground in a lead bunker.
While the feature to load archived captures has always existed in the
Gnome Cam, I replaced the javascript popup calendar with a dynamic one. Since the backend functionality is identical, but it now has a "fresh and new" interface, I've taken a page from marketing and renamed the "Archived Captures" feature to the "Gnome Cam Time Machine." Obviously a more exciting version of the exact same thing. Now when you reminisce about
Enoryms last visit, the
Nukie© party, the Morlocks
curb job, or the
barn LAN, you no longer have to look at the URL to get the date.
Today I brought my
Cougar into the local Tuffy shop to get neutered. The noise from my flowmaster muffler was too much for Lisa to handle on trips, and my approach to 30 years of age has been making me rethink the noise as well. That or Lisa has successfully hooked into my subconscious and is now controlling my thoughts. The owner of the Tuffy shop has been named "The Rainman of Exhausts" by
Duane for good reason. He can whip up a solution to just about anything for $200. For my situation he had a muffler from a minivan ready to mount under my car, and he actually got it to
fit successfully. At idle I don't even know my car is running, but anything under load it's almost louder than it was before the operation. I'm guessing it's jammed so tight into the exhaust chamber the vibrations are transmitting directly into the cabin area. Needless to say the operation failed, and I still have a loud Cougar. My next step is some kind of vibration dampening or a return to the restrictive stock exhaust. Since old folks over 30 shake their fist at any kind of noise, and don't need a fast car, it will probably be the stock exhaust. Unless of course Lisa implants another thought into my subconscious.
Thanks again to the
transitive property, I now have a new Wii attached to my 42" Plasma TV. I decided to let the Morlock unbox, set up, and try it out before my Wii bowling debut. Lisa dominated the first few games, but the Morlock eventually beat us both. I was in last place due to the defective Wiimote which interpreted a curve for my every throw. This was later confirmed at the
Kelleys where my bowling game improved significantly on their properly calibrated Wii. I imported my Mii from Steve's Wii, and Lisa whined excessively about the suggestive nose we gave her Mii, which of course prompted a permanent lock on her character. I have to admit it's an addictive gaming console; the
giant 8-bit mario in Super Paper Mario alone justifies owning one, but something seems not quite right
from this angle.
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