Civil Service

I'm not entirely sure if working for the government is sucking the life out of me, but I have found myself being rather tired lately. And it looks like I've lost all interest in my web logs.

Actually, a lot of things have changed in the last few months, and I'm still working out a balance, and that balance seems like it will be quite a bit removed from my swinging bachelor life. Notably, I rarely stay up past 2 and I'm almost always up by 10. Who would have ever guessed that such a fate awaited me?

On another note, I had a few visions when I started this thing. One goal was to create a place where we could talk tech and establish ourselves online, but a far more important goal was to help Jake get started with a web log. I knew he wanted to do one, but he was dragging his feet. I figured maybe this would help him out, and I must say I'm very pleased with what he's done with it.

Back to sorting out my life, I've found time to watch The Simpsons this evening. "Enjoy them, old man. They will be your last."

Changed POV...

Look, I've just decided I don't care.

I'm sorry for the flippant attitude, guys. I guess I was too busy with my own vision for this blog to listen to Eric's.

Anyway, from now on, I'm just going to write. It doesn't matter, because I write, and what I write is an important part of me. If you want to read it, then it's out there and I'm fine with that.

I know the tone here probably sounds a little angry, but I promise I'm not, at least not at anyone else. It smarts a little when you realize that you were completely wrong about how your teammates view a project.

So here's what's been happening.

There's a lady named Sandy at WSU. She's taken her computer to two other techs and spent $250 on them trying to fix it and failing. She gave her PC to me to take a look, and after an embarrassingly long time, I found the root cause of all her problems...exploding capacitors. And boy, did they. A whole row of eight of them popped and took the processor out with them.

It's an HP system, and of course, when I called HP, they said in their very best corporate speak that I should gingerly bend over and wait for an intense burning sensation. I hung up on them, and went to work finding an appropriate motherboard replacement. The motherboard fried, so I couldn't know yet that the chip had also, so now I'm holding her system for a few more days while we wait for the new processor to come. *sigh*

DENTSERVER is going to get ripped to pieces tonight, and when I put it back together, it will be running with a brand-new 160GB SATA drive, a new 1.8 GHz Celeron, 512 MB of DDR 400, a new Antec 430 Watt PS, and finally, Windows Server 2003!

Yowza, that's a hell of an upgrade. I'm really excited. Then what is now the server will become a Linux bitch box and the Tux case badge on it will no longer be a horrible irony.

For those of you wondering, "bitch box" is a really crass word for a computer that you use to troubleshoot parts, test configurations, and generally do the crap work that you don't want to risk your nice desktop on.

I need a computer of this type so that I can **finally** start (for the seventh time) learning Linux. Been putting this off for far too long.

I'm in a bit of hot water with the missus because I ordered a new Tablet PC. I fought the urge as long as I could, but a few nights ago, I found a refurbished one at a particularly good price and I caved.

It's a good thing I'm cute, or she'd never forgive me. Ever.

(Photo Censored)

So Eric and Leon have taken on radio silence.

I'm pretty sure I know why in each case, and they are not the same reason.

Eric has a potential crisis on his hands and is trying to work out what to do about it. Leon is simply busy and otherwise-prioritized.

There's a photo I've been meaning to snap for the last few weeks, and I finally did it.

For those not in the know, most big corporations these days disallow any photography on their premises without prior arrangement with the management. This includes Wal*Mart.

My local Wal*Mart (it's their new Neighborhood Store variety), however, had an opportunity that I couldn't pass by.

In the clearly-marked Pain Relievers section, right below the sign, are all manner of contraceptives. When I first saw this, I laughed and laughed. And now, the more thought I give it, the more it makes sense.

So I sojourned to the store and blatantly took pictures in plain view of the cameras. I'm really surprised they didn't hassle me about it. I suspect that either a) their security people weren't paying attention, or b) they don't know the rule. At any rate, here's the photo.

Oh, dammit. Blogger wants me to find a seperate hosting solution for my photo. Screw it. Just ask me if you want to see the photo.

Random Post, Random Day

Amazon wants to know what I think. So I told them. Here's my note to them:

Seems that the deals on Gold Box aren't as good as they used to be. A lot of the stuff in there lately is over-priced even after the Gold Box coupon.

Cater to my tastes a little more. You know that I'm an electronics junkie. Why do you show me kitchen junk?

I'm far more likely to buy a spindle of blank DVDs than the first season of "Friends." If it's a good deal.

Your competition is spanking you on price these days.

Tech-savvy users know what Froogle is. Do you?

Your price on an iRiver iHP-140 MP3 player is 399.94. Comp-U-Plus sold it to me for $351 and Fedexed it to me for $1. Here's a link:

http://www.compuplus.com/insidepage.php3?sid=gc53g216sp13e9x&id=1001871&track=searchViewed

I don't even check you guys first anymore. I hope you get better.

I dunno, was that too harsh?

Yesterday was both my first day back at school (as a Sophomore now, thank you) and my first day on the job at the Davis Computer Lab. It was a seventeen hour day. I'm used to having a little more time to myself than that, but this should be good for me. If I can manage to get into some of the same habits I had three semesters ago, maybe I can start carrying even more credits. Or maybe not.

Here's what I love about sitting at a computer at the WSU Information Commons. Girls. I love girls.

When a pretty one sits at a computer in front of me, I can stare all I want, because she's looking at the computer screen, not me. I'd have to burst into flames, run, and scream for her to notice.

And I love to watch girls. I don't think it makes me dirty, any more than loving to see a brown trout flashing in the sunlight just above the river water does. Although it is a different kind of beauty.

It's not like I'd ever do anything about it anyway, for several extremely compelling reasons. For one thing, I love my wife. She isn't just pretty, and she isn't just a friend. Crystal is part of me, and beautiful to boot.

Now, I'm sure the pretty blonde in front of me is a really nice girl. But pursuing her would mean death to so many good things in my life that it's not even tempting. This is why I believe that people who cheat are not only inviting unhappiness into their lives, but are already plenty unhappy. Or extraordinarily stupid. Pick one.

Aw, no more solitaire? Bye. No more like that in immediate view. Maybe I should have burst into flames.

Travels

I just got back on Friday from 9 days of travel all over the western extremes of this country. It was exhausting. I recommend visiting Hawaii and Alaska, but not on the same day. Waking up in Waikiki and going to bed in Anchorage pretty much did me in.

There's no point in double posting, so catch my travel log entries over at the Garden of the Blind.

Hello Vacation!

I'm in Park City, on a pirated net connection. Fun, yes?

Leon is sitting next to me with my Dell laptop, and I'm on the Tablet.

I've really got to say...we came out here only yesterday. We're at the WSU 2004 Academy of Leadership. And what I have to say is that even though we've only been here just over a day, we're having a hell of a time. In a good way.

The drive out was heavenly. I listened to my mp3 player, the morning was cool, and I navigated us right to our hotel. Flawless.

Leon and I were unpacking and he managed to lock his keys in his car...with it running. Leon made a call and two hours later, Gary was here with a spare key. The experience was a little scary, but it ended well.

Gary earned huge brownie points in the fiasco. Thank you, Gary. We were screwed, you saved us.

These leadership-type conferences can be hugely boring if not done properly, or even worse than boring, but this one has been good.

Last night, they finally let us out at around nine, so Leon and I went to Park City's Main Street to see what was going on. Not much. It's the off-season, and it was too late for anything but restaurants to be open.

What we did find open is a sushi bar called the Flying Sumo. Yum.

We ordered our sushi right away, and then waited over an hour for it. The wait staff were excellent though, gave us a free appetizer while waiting, and after sushi, gave us free desserts. I tipped about 75%. They deserved it.

And yes, the sushi was delicious. Outstanding.

The free appetizer they brought us is called edamame, I think. It's pronounced ehddamahmay. If anyone knows the proper spelling, let me know. Basically, it was soybeans, still in the shells, salted. My first, and very good. And the sushi was incredible.

The hotel we're at, Yarrow Inn, is a reasonably nice place. I called before we came out and verified that they have net access, both wired and wireless. What they neglected to tell me is that you have to pay $7 a day for it. Not cool, folks, especially for just a DSL that the whole hotel shares. For $7 a day, I expect a T1.

So a guy in my group coughed up the $7, and now three of us are sharing his password. Thank God.

This meeting's over. I have to post.

Life is Life

I may have been dead for a while but I believe in resurrection. Though it may take a while to get the blood moving.

I recently purchased another video game at the suggestion of a friend (Jake). It is called far cry and is a first person shooter that pushes the limits of my vid-card witch I find is happening more and more often as late. I had a desire for a new game that we could play at our LAN parties but I am afraid that this one will not cut it for the following reasons.

1. The graphics are great in fact they are to good and can’t be run on all the computers when we get together for a party. People would be excluded.
2. I believe the same problem exists for the processors.
3. The maps are huge, massive, I mean phenomenally big. Our regular 5 to 8 players would run into each other about once every 10 min. This is only if everyone constantly moves. I personally like to be a sniper witch means that I find a good spot and take a few kills then move to the next one. The game seams to reward this tactic in single player, but in multi player it would just be a lot of sitting around waiting.
4. The game has the ability to create your own maps but I do not like putting that much effort into a single level.

Next up on the things I have been doing is getting ready for my next vacation. I do not take vacations often and when I do they are not extravagant. This may be because I like money and vacations don’t make money as often as take money from your wallet. But what is the point of having a little money if you cant make life good for yourself every now and again. Well now I am ready to go to park city stay in a hotel and enjoy some time away from home and work. For the last 3 days I have been receiving phone calls from the registration office for this trip because they had no record of payment. Good job guys. Well they found my receipt yesterday and called to say they had it. It was good timing because I had just picked up the phone to call Jake to see if he wanted to make a trip back up there to show them my copy of payment. So now all is dandy once again. It is kind of strange my life only gets complicated and interesting when Jake gets involved, well that is what good friends are for.

So Sorry

I haven't posted in a little bit. I think my last post was a month ago yesterday.

Here's a rundown of some recent happenings:

It's finals week for me in summer semester.
My Archos mp3 player was stolen at school.
Money is getting tight and I have to sell my car.
I bought a new mp3 player.
I had a small LAN party with Eric and Leon.
Some other stuff.

I've been pretty busy. I'm supposed to be writing an English final right now. It's due tomorrow, and I've written about five sentences. Oh boy. I feel a late night coming on.

I started writing a post a couple of weeks ago. I do want to finish it and post it, but it's pretty long and I don't know if it will hold the attention of anyone but me long enough to read it.

I am alive. Really, I am. I will post again. The real question is if Leon will post again.

Gotta go.

An afternoon with Tux

I am sitting in a room with all three contributors to this site. I just finished demonstrating to them the wonders of bootable Linux distributions, notably Klaus Knopper’s Knoppix distribution. I highly recommend trying it out if you’re interested in trying out Linux without dedicating an entire machine to it.

It’s also fun to boot someone’s machine to Linux and see them freak over having lost their Windows installation.

Anyway, now that we’re all here, we’re just sitting around letting the fan keep us cool. And talking about the batteries in our mice. Good times.

Thou hadst, and more, Miranda.

I finally have the file/web server of my dreams!

Okay, it’s not quite what I would ideally want, but it’s getting quite close.

The problem was that the old Compaq machine was dying. Well, dead would be more like it. I had already brought in a 300 MHz PII machine to replace it, but that box was having lots of problems. Particularly, it would run out of virtual memory every time I tried to do anything. So, with the death of one machine, cannibalization became possible. I stole 192 MB of RAM from the dead machine, which made the server run a lot faster.

I then took the 80 GB drive from the old machine and tried to put it in the new machine. The motherboard didn’t like it. This new machine (which technically is older, but isn’t crippled by Compaq’s motherboard and proprietary BIOS) has an older motherboard that doesn’t want to read larger hard drives. This is in keeping with what I deduce the design philosophy was, which is “just barely enough”. Fortunately, Jake had some advice. He suggested using an ATA controller card. So, I stole one out of my main system (losing the Zip drive as a result, but I’m not losing any sleep over that), and now the 80 GB drive is up and running.

I also swapped the machine’s 32x CD ROM drive for a 32x10x40 CD-RW drive. I should take some time to image the system’s OS drive soon.

Awakening

I’ve come alive again.

It’s a disorienting feeling. I’ve been cut off from most of the online world since I got married and moved out. That was over two months ago, and now I have a huge backlog of material to catch up on. Most of it will just go by the wayside. But now I have to figure out which threads to pick up and try to follow.

I absolutely must catch up on this Phischkneght forum. I’ll even have to go back through the archives until I’ve read it all. Jake said a lot of nice things about me in his last entry, and now I have a lot to live up to. Wise counsel, you say? Go jump in a lake.

Speaking of which, that’s what I did this week. I went to Bear Lake with my wife’s family. Or my mother-in-law’s family, to be precise. I got my first taste of water skiing, and I’ve got to say that it has a distinctly lakey flavor. I was having trouble breathing though, so I had to call it quits before I got up, but not before I got dragged behind the boat for a good distance.

My other advice is to call your ISP before you move. Don’t assume that moving to a densely populated suburban area that has cable service will guarantee you coverage by the high speed internet providers in the area. Also, phone companies are of the devil. I’m not saying that Satan himself runs them, just that he’s behind their marketing, pricing, and customer service. It’s been my experience that only one in every two or three customer support reps is capable of providing any useful information over the phone. Unfortunately, I’ve spent hours on the phone waiting for someone to even take my calls so that I can determine whether I’ll reach a competent human being.

It looks like I’ve become frustrated here. So, my wise counsel is to avoid using telecommunication companies that have a near monopoly for your area. It’s been my experience that they’ll treat you like worms, because they can.

Happy Birthday to Me

I love July.

I sure as hell won't be posting on my birthday, so maybe I should take this chance to say a few choice words.

First, this keyboard is crap. Truly. And I'm not all that grateful for it.

That said, there are many things for me to be grateful for, standing here on the cusp of 27 years of life. Honestly, I hear thirty calling, and life is exactly as short as it wants to be. There's no guarantee that I'll be granted the 76 average years that might be expected by someone in my place. So, in the spirit of thanks for my life thus far, I present:

Some Things I'm Really Very Thankful For:

• Crystal. If there is anyone on this rock that I know everything about, it's her. And if I've ever met a stranger, it's also her. Crystal is my beautiful, changing, volatile companion. I don't know how I could love a woman more, and if I'd even want to. The fact that she has an A-type personality like my own and still puts up with me is humbling. Life without her is incomprehensible.

• Harrison. My first child. Harrison is the best two-year-old I've ever met. I'm doing my best to be a good Dad to him, and he's clearly paying attention. He says 'please' and 'thank you.' Harrison is a great man blossoming. He cares about others and he tries to obey the things we tell him. The thought of him growing up is at once thrilling and terrifying.

• Rachel. My daughter is proof of woman’s godly nature. Crystal and I went on a vacation about a year after Harrison was born. During our vacation, she forgot to take her pill, and became unexpectedly pregnant. I’m ashamed, but man enough to admit that I held this against Crystal for a time. But she was inspired. The daughter she gave me, Rachel, is the sweetest girl I’ve ever met. Rachel gives the best hugs in the world, and her laugh is more precious than rubies.

• Leon and Eric. These two men are not at all like the other, but they’re the best friends a man could have. Eric is the smartest guy I know. He’s honorable, pious (in a good way), and reasonable. Leon is compassionate, loyal and extremely forgiving. The two of them could offer the wisest counsel to the most powerful of men.

• My Mom. I know you think your parents are strange. All parents are. Mine defy definition. My mom and I had some hard years with each other, mostly because we’re so alike. She’s an inspiration to me. The year I graduated high school, she graduated too…Summa Cum Laude in Communications. Yes, a mother of three can pull straight A’s. I didn’t go back to school until I was a father of two. I pulled a 4.0 my first semester. My mom has given me a tradition of excellence. I intend to keep it.

• My Dad. Have you ever known one of those guys who can do anything? My Dad, part rocket scientist, part botanist, part etymologist, part celebrated author, part electrical engineer, part scriptorian, showed me what a wonderful place this world is as a kid, and helped me learn to manipulate it. I don’t know another kid whose dad heat-bent glass tubing with him. Taught him how to catch butterflies. How to build a Tesla coil that stepped house current up to 200,000 volts. That Tesla coil intimidated the hell out of my seventh grade science teacher.

• Julianne. I’ve only got one blood sister. She was born when I was eight years old. I was a torturous big brother. She knew how to get me in trouble, and I knew how to make her miserable. Somehow we grew up and became friends, and I’m glad we did because she is a strong, compassionate woman. It has been an unspeakable honor to carefully scrutinize the young men she’s dated and at times intimidate them for her sake. I can’t wait to see what great things she’ll do.

• Jeff. My only brother is ten years younger than I. Our gap in age prevented Jeff and I from really getting to know one another until I returned from my mission in 1999. When I finally did begin to get to know Jeff, I was amazed at what a fair, giving person he is. Jeff can’t stand the idea of injustice, and he does everything he can to keep peace and make things equal. Jeff is seventeen, and though he’s had a hot temper in the past, he’s got an amazing grasp on it now.

I’m so glad I wrote this. I was going to express gratitude for things that I enjoy—computers, my car, sushi, and instead the most important stuff came tumbling out. There’s an old saying that I know is true.

Writing is easy; just open a vein and let it pour out onto the page.

Thank God for my family and friends. Happy birthday to me.

A Modern Concern

Time for an update.

I'm coming to terms with it. I am a modder, and the instinct to change everything I lay my hands on permeates every part of me.

This, for some reason, has been terribly difficult for me to finally admit to myself, but there it is. And it's completely true.

The other day I bought a new external USB 2.0 CD-RW drive for my Tablet PC. Before I even got the darned thing home, I had hatched a plan to take it apart and put my DVD-RW drive into it. I mean, how did this thing become so automatic?

I was taking things apart all the time when I was a kid, and sometimes I even got them back together and working. I'm guessing that at some point I accidentally made something better than it was before I got to it, and a modder was born. I modify everything.

Here are some of the things that I own that I've put various modifications into:

My Archos Jukebox FM Recorder (60 GB hard drive, high capacity battery, open source firmware)
Two of my UPSs (new batteries, case mod to make one fit)
My Antec Sonata PC case (modded in a switch to control the bright blue LEDs)
My USB 2.0 and Firewire External Hard Drive (Several different drives have been in there)
My Dell Inspiron 8200 (Please don't ask)
My Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC (All kinds of hardware swaps)
My AirSoft pistols (higher-tension springs for more muzzle fps, clip mods for more rounds)
My 2003 Honda Accord (wired-in FM modulator, xenon-ish headlights, some other stuff)
My Casio EM-500 PocketPC (Overclocked from 150Mhz to 200Mhz {this was a while ago})

Those are just a few of many and the evidence is overwhelming. I'm always thinking about how my gear could be better, and when I think I can do something about it, I do. I know the risks when it comes to warranties and such, and once or twice, I've broken the object I was working on beyond repair. But I do it anyway.

I'm a tinkerer. Thank the heavens for a (mostly) understanding wife.

Comcast has been lying to Eric some more, and the forecast gives an 80% chance of more lies to come. He really didn't fall off of the earth, he's just out of touch. And still, I might point out, a newlywed. So, you know what he and his new wife must be up to...writing thank-you cards. Don't look at me like that.

Stop everything.

Yes I have been taking a break and enjoying what life has to offer me. But one thing that I did not enjoy recently is what the “bank did for me”. A little while ago I went in to my bank and requested a new debit card to replace the one I had, which was cracking. So I went home thinking that everything was going to be great and that I would have new cards in a few days. Well I went on a few dates still using my old card and the day after my last one my new cards came they even had a pretty back ground on them. Well the first time I try to use one it dose not work. And yes I did activate it. So I thought ok maybe things are slow so ill try tomorrow. The next day it still did not work .now my anger is getting to me. So I go back to my bank and ask them what is going on. I was nice to the guy I talked to because it was not his fault and people seem to forget that sometimes. And because I was so kind he did some checks and found out that my card had been reported as stolen. That urge to yell washed over me again but I let it pass and asked him who had done that and he told me that it was either me my or my father. Since I knew it was not me and I immediately called my dad and asked him and he said it was not him. So we did more checking and it came to another branch somewhere that had called it in. I and the guy at the bank think that some moron at this branch mis-keyed a account number and changed it to my account number so my stuff was reported as stolen not the person who actually had theirs stolen. Well a few days later I had a new set of cards and a new pin number and a couple of letters saying that I had used my card on such and such days conveniently the day I was out with a date and showed the sums for dinner and the other activities. They were so close to rejecting my card on those days luckily I got by. Now all is working again. And every now and again I wonder if they ever fixed the problem for the other guy who actually lost his cards.

Taking A Break

Leon hasn't posted in a while. Maybe he's forgotten.

He'll get some time to post this week, though, as his current dating interest will be in New York on vacation.

I'm sitting in my Microbiology class right now, waiting for it to start. The professor is pretty cool.

My English class and my Micro class are separated by only 15 minutes, so I must budget my time wisely.

This morning I hadn't yet read today's required reading for English, and I had to use the ten minutes I had before class to sit at a table upstairs and get some reading done. I'm sorry that I didn't do the reading previously, as I really enjoyed the story.

I've been spending a lot of time lately converting all of my audio books to mp3. I'm a huge mp3 junkie, even though I know it's not the best format in existence.

It's the most accessible format. Everything plays it, and it's shareable.

I don't care that AAC has higher quality at a lower bit rate. It also has DRM, and that bugs me. Ditto for WMA.

Well, class is starting.

Course Correction

How about we talk about angst? Yes?

Oh, good. First off, I'm so sorry for those two last posts. What the hell was I thinking? I don't know. Sorry again.

So anyway, I got way off course, and now I intend to find the course once more and proceed with renewed vigor. Ok?

And yes, I am on new drugs. These ones seem to be working, unlike the amphetamines that my doctor prescribed. Once again, just for posterity, I'll restate that I DO NOT enjoy amphetamines. My body mostly shrugs them off.

Well, we re-arranged my house the other day. Leon came over and we worked and worked and moved crap around until he was nearly too tired to drive home. The new arrangement is meant to take advantage of my new KVM switch, which negates the need for huge amounts of more computer gear next to my computer desk. Nice.

I work on computers frequently, and usually the best place to work on them is right next to the computer that I usually use. So I used to keep a monitor, mouse, keyboard, extra desk, and so forth to the side of my main desktop PC. Thankfully, those days are over, and now we have a much better living arrangement.

My new KVM is now stationed as part of my desktop PC, and any computer that needs that kind of work can be set down next to the desktop and share its keyboard, mouse, speakers, and one if its gloriously huge monitors. I love my computer. This is gonna make my life easier.

Wanna see something cool? This guy (http://www.spcollege.edu/star/cisco/Matt/list_of_current_papers_and_brief.htm) teaches Cisco networking and was sick of students having to pay Cisco hundreds of dollars for textbooks, so he wrote his own and you can download it for free. It's a huge (5MB) Doc file. I'll Pdf it and offer it to him. Maybe he doesn't have Acrobat.

Eric called the other day and claimed that he'll soon have net access at home. He also alleged that at such time he will resume posting in this forum. That'll be a good thing, in case you were wondering. It is a little flattering, though, that he's posted here more recently that he has at his own Garden of the Blind.

I'm supposed to do homework right now. I've got a math test tomorrow and a Microbiology test on Thursday. And an English test...well, sometime. I'll have to read the syllabus at some point.

Every day my urge to go out and light some dazzling fireworks gets stronger. Random neighbors have been setting off bottle rockets and firecrackers at odd times. They've got the bug too. I don't know what I'll do, but I don't think I can hold out that much longer. Fate knows me far too well.

Holding Out For A Hero

Ray Charles died today, and I'm in a funk of the worst kind.

I've just been listening to his version of "America The Beautiful" over and over again tonight.

I liked Ronald Reagan, but I didn't cry when he died. I haven't yet for Ray Charles either, but I won't rule out the possibility. I've got many musical heroes, but not many of them rank as high as Ray.

Thank you, Ray, for the music you gave us. Thanks for "I've Got A Woman." Thanks very much for "Old Man River" and the irreverent "What I'd Say." Thanks for all of it. Good fortune to you in the next life, and I hope to see you there.

Inanity

I fear inanity.

Inanity is what can make any and every piece of work a writer writes completely irrelevant.

Such as this: There's a guy about twelve feet from me whose nose is only about eight inches from the LCD monitor of the university workstation he's at.

See? That was flavorless. But how about this?

Not only that, He's got a goofy non-hairdo, frizzy curls in the front--clearly unintentional, and flat in back, also unintentional, glasses, a hilarious black-and-white floral print shirt, and every couple of minutes he does a chicken-like head bob.

Now, that's better, isn't it?

I just savagely made fun of an unknown colleague. Well, Jesus didn't have a blog.

Today my mp3 player absolutely burned the hell out of my finger when I touched it after somehow having shorted out the battery. I quickly yanked the small machine open and relieved it of its shortness.

If I flip you off, you'll see the blister. But since I don't normally make obscene hand gestures, you probably won't get to view the damage that easily. Or at least not by pissing me off.

I ebayed an Archos Multimedia 20 a bit ago. It's supposed to be essentially the same thing as my current Archos, but with the added functionqality of being able to play .avi movies, .jpg photos, and .wav sound files. Plus it has a color LCD instead of the monochrome, green-backlit unit that I'm used to.

In short, I don't much like the user experience on the Multimedia version. I use open source firmware on the Jukebox called Rockbox, and it suits me well. Rockbox isn't available for Archos' Multimedia models, and that's a shame, plain and simple.

So I'm not keeping the Multimedia. I'm not. Yeah, it's nice, but usability is a big deal to me. I was going to sell the Jukebox, but no more.

Oh, and I fixed the battery short. Man, I hate that kind of crap. I was just changing out a hard drive.

Speaking of which, when are mp3 players going to become standard and mainstream enough that a technically oriented person can just pop it open and change out the hard drive or battery?

Honestly, I've got a Toshiba Tablet PC. Let me tell you, that thing is masterfully designed. It's super compact, and yet getting the hard drive out is a piece of cake. Need to get to the RAM or wireless card? Fine, you'll have to get under the keyboard, but for a sufficiently advanced technician, that's no problem. And the whole machine is sturdier than cheap toilet paper.

Archos, on the other hand, designs their products with an eye toward fragility and complexity. Change out the hard drive? No problem, you've got two choices: 1). Unsolder the whole damned unit open and simply unplug the drive and plug the new one in. This method gets old really quickly. 2). Bend the upper portion of the unit's chassis to allow clearance for the drive to slide out. Hang on...those are the options? Solder it open or bend the chassis? There weren't any better ideas?

I just can't believe that none of the Archos engineers said in a meeting 'Hey, what if we found a way to access the hard drive without compromising the structural integrity of the whole device? Think it's worth spending ten minutes of design time on?'

I'm good personal friends with an engineer, and I don't buy the ages-old argument that all engineers are born and raised in Satan's left nostril and fall out only to begin their careers.

I think the poor design decisions in this case are the fault of a pointy-haired-boss type.

At any rate, were I a powerful person at NEC, Toshiba, Sony, Dell, Compaq, or Palm, I would get some people right to work on a friendlier hard drive based mp3 player.

Batteries, even rechargeable ones, need to be easy to replace and almost short proof. Hard drives need to be accessible to advanced users who are going to tinker whether it's easy or hard to do.

If for no other reason, these things should be implemented to make in-house RMA repairs faster and more cost efficient. Hard drives will head crash, you know.

Anyway, I gotta go.

Oh, anyone wondering about Eric's dearth of posts will be pointed to the fact that Comcast has been lying to him. They keep pushing back the availability date of digital cable in his neighborhood.

Oh, Like You Post On A Regular Basis...

Save the accusations, because it's agitated guilty conscience day and there is no need for them.

But other than that...well, some things are up, some down. You know?

For one thing, the weather around these parts has just been lovely and summer is definitely rising in the East. On a related note, my birthday is one month from today. Eric, Leon, Crystal, everyone else, you all know what that means...FIREWORKS!

Please, no fireworks as gifts this year. I've still got a lot of fireworks with questionable legality from previous years. I keep looking for opportunities to use them, but since the neighbor got a fireworks ticket last year (that was at least partly and probably mostly my fault) I've been iffy on the whole idea.

The other night I dreamt that you can buy bags of cherry bombs in the sporting goods department at Wal*Mart. That was a pretty good dream. I didn't buy any (because I've already got lots of fireworks. Funny how stupid real-life details leak into clearly unreal dreams) but I did suggest to my brother that he buy some. Seemed a little more age-appropriate. He's ten years younger than I.

There was a while there I was going to use this blog to publicly make fun of my math instructor. I'll still mention him, but I'm beginning to respect him, and the making-fun-of part won't work the way I originally intended.

So his name is Mr. R. Yes, that's the real first letter of his real last name.

You know what? Once again, I can't make Mr. R entertaining to write about. So instead I'll write the story of the above-mentioned firework ticket. Ok?

So it was about July, and just a gorgeous evening. It had rained a little the day before, so things weren't too terribly dry, and I dragged the wife out to light a few fireworks. Seems like it was either the 4th or the 24th, because there were houses all over the valley with fireworks going off that were at least almost as illegal as mine.

A while back I went to Evanston (WY) and bought some pretty big rockets. They're on sticks about three feet long and the rocket engines are a good couple of inches around. Also, I'm a big fan of floral mortar shells. I found some particularly large versions of these in Evanston also, and they're great.

So Crystal and I went out to light a couple of rockets and a couple of shells. We went outside and I set up a shell and launched it. FOOMP!, the shell said as it left the tube. BOOM-CRACKLE it said at apex. Beautiful.

The neighbor to our East paused lighting his dinky bottle rockets (also illegal...that's gonna be important in a minute here) to gape in awe.

So now the neighbors were enjoying the show, and joined in with whatever they had. He lit a salute roll (it's a bunch of tubes with flying firecrackers), and I lit a couple of my big rockets.

Just as I dropped another floral shell into my mortar tube, the wind started to blow a little. I lit the shell, and we could see it get blown around as it traveled upward and then burst.

I turned to my wife and said we'd better go in, even though I had intended to light more of the same. I picked up my tube and the remaining fireworks on the driveway, and just as I crossed the sidewalk on my way to the house, I noticed a police officer walking briskly toward me, about twenty feet away.

I continued on my course into the house, and he continued on his, past my house, and straight to the neighbor, still lighting the little stuff. I came back out of the house and quietly found a dark place to hear and watch the goings on with my neighbor and the cop.

The cop explained that he had been out on the highway and had seen our big fireworks and had followed them right to us. Then he asked the neighbor for ID and ticketed him for lighting illegal fireworks, which the neighbor admitted to doing.

The two talked about how the big ones were being launched at my house, not his, but apparently, the cop didn't catch me red-handed, had to assume that they were all coming from the one guy he caught, and couldn't do anything about me. Whew!

So I literally dodged a $50 firework ticket by about five seconds last summer. I'm a crazy guy, but I'm not interested in trouble with the cops, so I need to find a better outlet for my firework bug.

And that's my Almost-Got-A-Fireworks-Ticket story. Instead of my math instructor. Believe me, it's better this way.

Bring em on.

Well things have been going so well with my dad’s two desktop computers since they were cleaned up that he decided to have me do his laptop as well. Of course I had to complain it makes it seem like they are getting more that they asked for when you are done witch makes their appreciation about equal to the effort you put into the job.

Well this job started Friday night I thought I would just do a ghost back up and then hit all the hard stuff tomorrow. Well the backup process crashed about half way through and I don’t work well when I am tired so I just let it go until morning. So I woke up at 8:00 am after sleeping in for four hours. Had breakfast and jumped right back into the battle with this machine. This time I got rid of all the unnecessary file and programs ran the virus checker and reg-cleaner and ad-aware. Then I did the scan disk and defragmenter, and this time the ghost back up worked flawlessly. When I looked at the clock I realized that wow it’s lunchtime already. So I took a break for a half hour and then I got right back at it. This time it was partition magic’s turn and I found that there was half a gig in a partition that was not even formatted to be used, just one more thing that I fixed. Then came the exciting part of installing Windows ME, and all the drivers for the hardware and all the extra software that he wanted on the unit. Of course it had to be limited a bit because I had another ghost to do later and I did not want to have a lot crap that he did not need on it. Well once all the software was installed I ran the virus checker, reg-cleaner, and ad-aware once more to clean things up. Then with a finial scan disk and defrag it was ready for the final ghost. Jake has made me a firm believer in a fresh install back up. Its great because if anything goes horribly wrong you can be right back to the beginning with minimal effort. Finally I cleaned the case screen and key board to make it look good again and now I am done again and it is 5:00 pm on Saturday.

Hopefully this will be it for a while since all my parents’ computers have done. And I refuse to do the ones at their work; they have people who are paid to do that. I was thinking that I could get out of doing dishes and chores for a month as payment but we will see how that goes.

next time "the credit card".