The thoughts that float through my head when I remember to jot them down. An insight into the madness that is me.
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Saturday, September 07, 2002
It's a dark day.
Slashdot.org has reported that Sci-Fi, in their ultimate of assanine-ism, Cancelled Farscape.
It's their second best rated show.
What the fuck are they thinking? I'm writing letters tongith
9:58 AM
Friday, September 06, 2002
Well, the TV Arrived yesterday around 3:00.
The bastadges wouldn't take it up the stairs. They didn't get in the door more than 30 seconds and then say 'That won't go up there' and proceeded to tell me that they can't lift the TV over the railing to get it in, or nothing.
So I get rather annoyed, and tell them to screw it, take it back.
Angi stopped them, made them bring it into the living room, where it sat for a bit. I was in the process of trying to figure out how to get the bad boy up the stairs, and decided to take it apart to see if I could seperate the screen / protective cover from the base projector assembly. Initial de-assembly told me no. I couldn't see what took the screen off the base. We got the mirror off and all, but not the front screen.
I put it back together waiting for my brother to show up. He called just about everyone, Dad, Robert, and Mandy's BF Alex. We stared it it some more, I took it apart again, and we sat there debating where the screw points were for the front screen.
We got it on it's side, and I tried squeezing various points under the front plate/speaker grills, and I was pulling a bit. The panel then just popped off. The panel was just held on by some, for lack of a better word, 'Poppers' that you just push the panel back into and they lock down.
After that, I found six screws and I fully removed the front screen. I took the screen upstairs, and then it only took two of us to carry the base up, and it was up.
It took three people to get the old 36" Wega back down the stairs, and then we got it into the truck, and off they went to do the old TV Shuffle. Matt got the 36", took his TV to Monica & Robert who's TV busted, and then he took his entertainment center to Mandy since the 36" won't fit in his, and he's using the base I had with the 36". Rather entertaining.
After that was all done, (Moving the TV, they said they didn't need me for the rest), Angi, Becca and I went to grab something to eat. As we left the restaurant, somehow a comment was made about painting the theater room the gray/black I always wanted too. So we ended up going to Sears and buying a couple of gallons of 'Tornado Weather' paint and associated application tools. We got a good chunk of the room, some of the ceiling painted before crashing out last night. Don't know when we will be able to continue because I have class tonight, and all day tomorrow.
Whee.
9:56 AM
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Welp. Sitting here at my desk waiting impatiently for my TV to be delivered. It's between 1:30 and 3:00 when it'll show up. Then I shall spend some time getting it all hooked up.
We spent some time last night tearing down the room. I think we're going to move the chairs around a bit to make some more room for more chairs. I wasn't thinking when I purchased them originally and counted how much they cost and bought with how much money I had. That meant 5 chairs. So now, myself, my wife, and then three guests can sit. Since all of my family is either married or dating, that leaves someone on the floor (well, several someones because all told there are 10 of us + the little ones.
So I hope to be able to make room for at least two more chairs. Maybe with the new TV people will want to come over and watch movies again. For a while that was all we did on the weekends, but the young ones have a tendancy to kill off those late night moviethons like we used to have, unfortunately.
My plan is to watch The Fellowship of the Rings first on the new TV. It is one of my newer films and I think it'll be best to experience the new wider screen and the progressive output (480p) from my DVD player. Unfortunately the new DVD player doesn't show up until tomorrow though. But that's ok, I have to spend most of the day getting things where I want them position wise.
I've been debating getting new cables to connect all my components together. Unfortunately, the quality of cables I would like to get are shall we say, rather expensive. All of the cables I need, in the mid-highend teir of options are probably going to cost upwards of $1000. Yeah, I know, I freak too when I see that.
But then, if you really want to freak, add up the cost of my current home theater.
TV: $4000
Pre-Amp: $1200
Amp: $ 900
DVD: $ 249
CD #1 $ 549
CD #2: $ 449
Speakers: $2300
For a total of: $7400 or so.
Now, if I were to take the number of DVDs I have and take them times an average price of, oh, 15, let's see, 547 * 16 = ugh, I'll think I'll be sick. $8600.
Furniture, Theater Specific, is another $3000 or so. Damn. I have never added it all up. Wow.
so $19000 worth of theater gear, $1000 worth of cables isn't that much. Ugh. I never added it all up. Amazing.
11:48 AM
Welp. Sitting here at my desk waiting impatiently for my TV to be delivered. It's between 1:30 and 3:00 when it'll show up. Then I shall spend some time getting it all hooked up.
We spent some time last night tearing down the room. I think we're going to move the chairs around a bit to make some more room for more chairs. I wasn't thinking when I purchased them originally and counted how much they cost and bought with how much money I had. That meant 5 chairs. So now, myself, my wife, and then three guests can sit. Since all of my family is either married or dating, that leaves someone on the floor (well, several someones because all told there are 10 of us + the little ones.
So I hope to be able to make room for at least two more chairs. Maybe with the new TV people will want to come over and watch movies again. For a while that was all we did on the weekends, but the young ones have a tendancy to kill off those late night moviethons like we used to have, unfortunately.
My plan is to watch The Fellowship of the Rings first on the new TV. It is one of my newer films and I think it'll be best to experience the new wider screen and the progressive output (480p) from my DVD player. Unfortunately the new DVD player doesn't show up until tomorrow though. But that's ok, I have to spend most of the day getting things where I want them position wise.
I've been debating getting new cables to connect all my components together. Unfortunately, the quality of cables I would like to get are shall we say, rather expensive. All of the cables I need, in the mid-highend teir of options are probably going to cost upwards of $1000. Yeah, I know, I freak too when I see that.
But then, if you really want to freak, add up the cost of my current home theater.
TV: $4000
Pre-Amp: $1200
Amp: $ 900
DVD: $ 249
CD #1
11:45 AM
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
I saw a model lower of my TV at the Best Buy in Kansas City. I'm getting excited.
I'm a little bummed I couldn't get the high end DVD player I wanted, but this model will have to suffice. Just can't afford a $1200 DVD player right now. Though hopefully next year maybe I'll be able to upgrade. This one will do Progressive Out and SACD as well, just not the top 'kewl' model that matches my Pre-Amp.
They're supposed to deliever between 1:30 and 3:45 tomorrow. Whee.
Tonight I meet with my Senior Project team members. We'll see how it goes, I'm not real confident on this particular project. Maybe this will spur some movement.
New classes start this weekend. I get to take my last two courses of my College Career. They are CIS480 - Something about Windows and Networking, should be something I can sleep through, and the pain in the ass, why the hell am I being forced to take this class : 'Career Development'
I have a career, it's devloped thank you. But, nope, no way out.
Oh well.
10:06 AM
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
Well, I took a plunge today. I ordered a 57" HDTV 16:9 Monitor for the house. I've been using a 36" Sony Wega for some time now, and it just wasn't cutting it. I also got a progressive scan DVD player to pump out high def signals (as best I can) from my DVD collection.
It'll be here Thursday. We'll see how it looks. Yep, that's right. I bought it sight unseen. I have no idea what it looks like other than the pictures on the web.
see, no one apparently likes to stock these monsters. So I went down to my local Sears and just ordered it. They've got a guarantee that if I hate it, I can take it back.
I hope to buy a High-Def Satellite receive later in the year. Right now it looks like Samsung will have the first one to use the DVI port that the TV comes with. That way I can receive High-Def TV Signals from the Satellite as well as local broadcast over a single box.
So Thursday should be a fun day. I've wanted a hi-def TV for some time, just finally had the ability to swing one. It wasn't the monster 65" I'd once dreamed of, but the reason I didn't get that one is it won't fit in the room, or up the stairs. 57" should be perfect...for this house at least.
One day I hope to have a projector on the ceiling with a huge theater decorated room, but that won't happen for a while. The room I have is just too Narrow, as it is now with the Berkline Cinema chairs you can't sit more than 5 people in there now because the chairs are so big. We'll have to see what I can do later in the year, or maybe next year
12:50 AM
Sunday, September 01, 2002
Spent the day with the family. Watched several episodes of Good Eats, probably dozed off a bit during them as well. Didn't get to catch Fresh Gear on the ol' satellite so don't know what toys I missed stories about. heh.
Worked on the main website a bit before I headed over to the parents. Got the amazon.com search engine back up and a few other things. Going to get Tomcat running on the new web server so I can play around with a few JSP and Servlet type things hopefully. Unfortunately my play time is dwindiling already. Need to make play time though for the Senior Project stuff soon. Oh well.
Don't know what's the plan for dinner tonight so far. But tomorrow it's a block party in the evening, and The Usual Gang party at my parents house. The chilli tradition continues from sometime in 1981. One of our few traditions that still holds strong.
6:57 PM
Well, halfway through my labor day weekend and I've done labored to get a new server up and running for my website, my email server, and my firewall.
I'm partially done. The webserver, DNS server, email server, and DHCP server are functioning well. I shut down the two servers from IBM I have in the living room, the PC Server 330 and it's 3 SSA drawers as well as the beta version of the Netfinity 5600.
It's about 5x quieter in here. I had to turn the volume down on my speakers on the laptop because the beeps hurt my ears. Wonder how many years of hearing loss I'm going to have because of those machines. So now I have my new main DNS/DHCP/Web/Email server built, and need to finish the firewall part so it does transparent proxying for my machines. My original file server is back up in it's 360GB of glory, and then my lone Windows machine is running so I have access to Microsoft Money. I'm debating switching to Quicken 2003 on the Macintosh but my bank doesn't support online banking with Quicken for Mac so I may have to switch banks. Not in a big hurry to do so, but I may end up doing so. However there are maybe 6 - 8 years of Data in Microsoft Money, and converting it would be rather labor intensive.
Canon finally came out with a borderless printer drive for OS X so I can now print borderless 4x6 and 8x10s again with my S9000. Beautiful printer. We have a lot of stuff to print out that we've not done the last few weeks. Angi would like to print out our five year anniversary picture to send to family memebers so I think we'll try to do that this evening, who knows.
The living room is still in a huge stage of disarray. There are network cables, SSA Cables, lefto computer pieces everywhere. There are about 10 extra power cords draped over a couch that is turned the wrong way against the wall. Need to clean that up today too hopefully.
I'm pretty pleased with the end result of my Red Hat 7.3 server. However I must admit the email package I chose to use could have been a little easier to install. QMail was a huge pain in the ass to install. I tried following a 'life with qmail' website, but it apparently missed several chunks, or the explaination was as clear as mud. It's no wonder Microsoft is so prolific, their email server that supports thousands of users can be installed in a matter of minutes. It probably took me 5 to 6 hours to get QMail running, and that says a lot. I've got years of experience with server software and this had to have been one of the most difficult and frustrating installtion experiences out there I've had in a while. I mean Gentoo linux was easy compared to this. The hardest thing about Gentoo was waiting hours for it to compile.
But it's all good now it appears. Aside from a few people that got a 'I can't deliever even though it says I should' type emails delivered to a few people while I was trying to figure that little glitch out. The next step is to work with my Sister to get her email working because technically I'm a relay agent for her machine since it is not on my internal network.
I Also need to learn how to make my DNS server act as a DNS for just my internal network while also serving 'real' DNS requests for the internet. I know BIND 9 can do it, just need to find the right book on it. I think I have the righ O'Reilly book so I'll be working with that here in the near future. But for now, a host file to get to my NFS/SMB server isn't all that bad.
I'm really digging Mac OS X compared to my previous desktop Ximian Gnome. I never got into KDE much so I can't compare the two. Other than a slight bug with Mac OS 10.2 and Java with Mozilla, I'm pretty happy. I've found a web page that walks through the integration of CUPS with Mac OS X and Linux, so I hope to have my wife printing from my Epson 900 Attached to my file server soon. Right now the Canon printer is USB attached to my Powerbook, and the epson is in the middle of the floor. The Canon is used as a photo-only printer and Epson for everything else.
We'll see how it goes.
Great, Discovered another bug with mozilla and blogger. Apparently, if you make your post bigger than the inital edit window the Post/Post & Publish windows disappear.
12:13 PM
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