Archived News starting from 06-16-2005 and earlier
BlogI spent all day today at a Visual Studio 2005
developer conference. I did not win the Xbox or portable media center as hoped, but I did get some free stuff and learned alot about the new features in VS2005. I'll
again point to the free
Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta and suggest you take a look. They even have a version for Linux and OS X now. At the conference, I met someone who is programming an interface in C# for aircraft sensors. Things like fuel gauges and airspeed sensors would reside on a common bus and report to a single computer. This would reduce the overall cost of repairing and operating aircraft. The project is funded by NASA so I immediately attached myself to this person until security removed me and the restraining order was issued. Free stuff and free food, along with lots of geek talk got me all fired up about the 2.0 framework. I'm consequently installing the framework after this post so if your computer burst into flames unexpectedly it's most likely a short. However, that short may be caused by your visit to this .net 2.0 enabled server. Something to keep in mind while you're downloading
Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta.
My quasi-annual trip to
Niagara Falls was this weekend which involves
sightseeing the first day and a
Cougar meet the second. This year Missy,
Ron, Jen,
Pierre and Dale made up the tour group. Unfortunately the whole weekend was in the 90's for both temperature and humidity. Nevertheless we went
behind the falls and visited the mini-vegas of
Clifton Hill. Later, we stopped at the park before the falls and took
photos of the
abandoned scow stuck in place since 1918. The highlight of the trip was definately my
spare tire burnout performed for the sake of entertainment. Hooray!
Today at
3:25pm the
GnomeCam captured what looks like hail falling in my yard. Shortly afterwards, the server went down. I came home to find my
WGU624 Router with only the power and wireless link lights on (no LAN/WAN). I cycled the power and wound up with the exact same problem. Next I cycled the power on every computer component and noticed the router, cable modem and weather station were all extremely hot. I discovered the WAN port on the cable modem, LAN ports on the router and server, and the COM port on the weather station were all dead. The only thing I can think of that would cause this is a power surge of some type either from the
SmartUPS backup or through the
weather station anemometer (mounted on my roof). The UPS passed all diagnostics so my working theory is a static buildup above my roof discharged through my anemometer. From there it travelled to the weather station, through the COM port on my server, and out the LAN port to kill the router and cable modem. There is no evidence it was strong enough to melt or short circuit anything so evidently none of these ports take kindly to even a moderate power spike. Ironically there is an RJ45 power suppressor on the power strip I use for the server. The incoming weather station cable is an RJ45 jack so if I had run the incoming cable through this suppressor none of this would have happened. I thought a 75 minute UPS backup made my server impenetrable to power surges and didn't realize I have a lightning rod connected to the COM port on my server. Fortunatley the cable modem has a USB connection as well as the Ethernet port so the server is currently serving this page via USB. Consequently there is a direct connection between the cable modem and my server so take note hackers (
Steve), now is the time to make your strike
My
Nikon Coolpix 2100 camera is nearing the end of it's life since I've busted off the power switch and have to trick it to turn on. The camera has served me well, and I love the features in Nikon's line of sub $1,000 cameras, so naturally I'm leaning toward another Nikon. I've narrowed down my selection to the
Coolpix 4200 or the
Coolpix 4800. The 4200 is $150 and the 4800 is $275. The extra $75 buys me an 8.3x optical zoom compared to the 3x zoom on the 4200. Both have 4x digital zoom which I don't even count as useful. My question is: would you pay an extra $75 for an extra 5.3x of zoom?
Folding under high temperature and popular demand, I decided to go shirtless for my latest landscaping project. You can see me in my shirtless glory from 12:15pm - 4:00pm on todays
GnomeCam. I asked Missy to go shirtless as well to which she replied "This isn't Canada you know." Fortunately she did put on a bikini top which distracted my neighbors enough to not call the police on my tasteless display of flabby whiteness. I moved 2 cubic yards of dirt and replaced it with just under a cubic yard of rock. Once the shirtless urge strikes me again, I plan to get the second cubic yard of rock and claim victory.
Thanks to the astute observation of
Joseph, I learned my Gnome on the
GnomeCam was missing. I immediately had flashbacks to when Myrone the gnome was
stolen and feared the same for Butt. Before I was able to alert the Gnome Response Squad Missy pointed out he was not missing but in fact had fallen into the bushes below. No doubt a result of his heavy drinking the night before. As soon as he finds his coffee I'm sure he'll be back on top.
Somehow the old link is gone. Here is the new permanent link.
Buy My House!Today was an
MC-NECO mod meet in my garage. The
GnomeCam temporarily became the garage cam while I changed my brakes and intake,
Ron gutted his interior,
Pierre replaced his alternator and fan controller with Zack and
Jason lending moral support. Several burgers, pizza, and trips to Autozone later all cars started up successfully. It's always relaxing working my car for 8 hours.
Today I transitioned the
GnomeCam to the day/night wired camera now that Michigan looks like it's past the danger of freezing anytime soon. I also moved the location to increase the amount of inactive suburb you can see. Now instead of two boring houses you can see two boring houses and two driveways. If you look closely, you can finally see the Gnome in all his glory. You can also watch the plants grow. The excitement is so intense I decided to extend the captures to 11:00pm as well. If you find yourself dizzy or fatigued from the activity, remember you can always close your browser.
After getting back from vacation, my
XP Media Center was not
recording shows anymore.
Duane informed me his media center is not
playing any shows but
Steve has had no problems whatsoever. The apparently random occurences had me convinced it was a software problem so I decided to reload from a previous backup instead of trying to troubleshoot it. Once I had re-imaged the machine, I noticed live TV would randomly black out. After a few reboots it would work again. I checked to make sure I was getting consistent signal from the cable line and have decided it's a problem with the
tuner card. The blackouts would explain the lack of recorded shows since Media Center just quits when there is no signal. It could just be a faulty card, but
Steve has not had to reboot his machine for almost a month. He does not allow his machine to suspend which means it's on all the time. Bad for power bills, but apparently good for stability and possibly hardware components as well. I'm sure my machine has turned on and off at least 2 times a day for the past year and all that power cycling may have also affected the tuner card negatively. My suspend is off and a new card is on order. I'll see if this theory holds for the next year.
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