September 28, 2004
LOL SBC
So I signed up for a local phone today online, and I came across a description that was totally incorrect in their service options. Given this is the same company that once while I was moving disconnected my old phone number, didn't connect my new phone number, and forwarded my old phone number to the wrong new number all in one fatal swoop, I had to send them an email. Here it is:
Your web sign up page isn't exactly truthful about your speed calling 30 plan. The signup option page states:
"Speed Calling 30 $ 4.00/month
Dial 30 numbers by pressing one button for each."
I don't know about you, but my phone sure doesn't have 30 unique buttons to push ONE button for EACH phone number stored.
Checking the details the truth comes out:
"Three Button Dialing — Just dial the two-digit speed code and press # to make a call. "
So somehow 1=3 (or maybe you are just rounding 3 down to 1 in an attempt to make mathematicians gag?). At any rate I hope my bill isn't figured out in the same manner.
Posted by Plocmstart at 2:18 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2004
Week 2...
Well I survived the first "week" of classes, and the weekend that follows it. The week itself was rather boring and uneventful. The weekend wasn't really all that exciting either, but I guess I'll summarize it.
So installing ceiling fans isn't all that fun, but I got the experience of installing two of them this weekend for Liz's parents at their new condo. I managed to hurt my left wrist in the process apparently since it's giving me that nice dull pain which gets worse when I try to do certain things with it. Yay for what is probably carpal tunnel!
Anyways they have a nice place, and now have a ceiling fan for the living room and master bedroom to go along with it.
I tried to order the touchscreen display for the CARputer this weekend but my credit card billing address isn't any address I know of, or at least it wouldn't verify my address with anything I entered, so I guess I need to call them tomorrow and get that fixed so I can try doing that again.
I did get my new sound module for my keyboard though. The shipper had the wrong address number, but luckily it didn't get delivered and I had to just go pick it up instead. When I got it I realized it was U-110 instead of a U-220, but that's ok because this one was cheaper and it has the sounds I was looking for anyways. Now the problem is MIDI cords that are too short. It's a rackmount module but I can't quite get it over to my shelf without running out of cord, so right now it just rests on the floor against the keyboard stand. I figured out how to control sound changes from my main keyboard and program it, so if I were ever to have to perform (yeah right) I'd know how to set that thing up. I do need to open the module up though and replace the backup battery since the check battery display shows up every time I power it up. At least I know what the problem is unlike the old keyboard this module replaced.
So I guess a little bit about my classes. There's EE706, which is completely online class about medical imaging. It shouldn't be too hard as long as I can find a fairly good group. There's a group formation meeting tomorrow evening that I'll be going to. There's a CIS course about VLSI programming which should be cake, and a EE/ME776.01 course about engineering reliability, which will probably be very boring and filled with tons of statistics junk. If I were to drop one it would probably be that one, but then I have to pick up another class or some research hours. At least I don't have class until 12:30 MWF and 4:30TR. So I have the whole morning to do whatever I want or just sleep in (which makes lots of people jealous).
David is being totally crazy though. He's signed up for 23 or so hours of class and I'm sure will be working nonstop. I'm not sure why he's taking so much all of a sudden and hope he doesn't work himself to death. I have a feeling he's trying to keep himself as occupied as possible so the next two months go by fast. Why is that? So he can go see Claire again in China in December. I hope things work out with the two of them. David wants me to go with him. I'm not sure how well that will go over but I'd still like to have the chance to travel over there. Oh well something to think about.
Alright there's some junk to read. I'm going to sleep, so hopefully I don't sleep through the whole morning and I can get some more lectures watched before going to my 12:30 class. Peaceout!
Posted by Plocmstart at 1:43 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2004
Kansas City... GO CHIEFS!
School starts tomorrow. Yet another fun quarter of random classes and probably tons of other stuff I just won't have time to get all done. This past weekend was a nice change to things though. I helped J.J. move to Kansas City where he got a job with Cerner.
Overall it wasn't much different than Columbus except the people go 20 miles over the limit rather than 10. Also I think the highways were an afterthought, since most of the entrance and exit ramps gave you a very sharp ~20mph turn right by the highway and then about 200 feet to accelerate to 60 or so to enter the highway without cutting someone off. Crazy stuff.
We also rented a U-Haul while we were there, and that was quite an experience in itself. When we got to the rental place this middle aged woman asked us if anyone was local, and of course since we just got there they day before that wasn't going to happen. Then she was asking for 2 forms of ID and the name of someone local that she could also get in contact with. Now let's say you just moved into a town. Are you really going to know that many people and have their information on you, let alone have a local phone number to get in touch with you or anything like that? Probably not. Luckily J.J. had his recruiter's business card with him with all the info she needed to "verify" we weren't terrorists or something.
Then she showed us this sheet that described all the different types of damage that could be done to the vehicle and the cost of repairing each one. Well this wouldn't be really important except for the fact that when we got our vehicle and looked around it apparently all the different types of damage had already been done to it! Everything from a big dent in the hood to long scrapes along the side. At least the tires weren't flat and it turned on.
The frame was an old Ford F350 diesel truck. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think the transmission on this thing was on its last leg. To get it to shift from 1st to 2nd you had to rev the engine up nice and high, let off the gas, listen for it to shift to 2nd, then apply the gas again. Otherwise it would just rev up and stay in 1st gear. Then I think it never got past 2nd or 3rd gear on the highway since the engine was really revved up just to go 55 or 60. It did have a tachometer, but of course it didn't work so I don't really know how high I was revving the engine. So I just went by the engine temp gauge which I hoped work since nothing much else did in this truck. Other things wrong included: missing half of seat belt for the middle seat passenger, radio display broke, left speaker broke, half the hinges missing screws on back door, mirrors that wouldn't adjust (bolts too tight), really soft brakes, and no log of vehicle maintenance where it was supposed to be.
I had the fun job of driving this thing around and probably cutting off a ton of people (add the shifting problem with the horribly designed highways), but at least we didn't put any more dents in the darn thing (even if we did they'd probably be undetectable).
Then we attempted to order pizza one evening. First place gave us a wait time of 2 hours for delivery. 2 hours?!?!?! Apparently they are slow to make pizza around this town. Then we called another which gave us a 1 1/2 hour wait, so we decided to order and pick it up. Not quite as bad, maybe 40 minutes.
So J.J. and his mom went out to pick it up, since according to the map it looked like it was just around the corner. An hour goes by... 1 1/2 hours... OK what's going on? Finally they show back up a frozen pizza from the grocery store rather than hot Papa John's. Apparently this town has multiple streets with very similar names, and they don't always connect. The rule is, if you add N or NE or NW or whatever to the street name it becomes a completely new street in a different part of down. So our pizza place just around the corner was actually all the way downtown. So much for that!
When the cable guy showed up to install things at one point he asked if J.J. and his mom were Chinese (which they are). Then he went on to mention that two people from China are contstantly trying to hack into his computer as if J.J. were actually the one to be doing so. Then later he was making some sort of attempt to it on J.J.'s mom. He was a little unusual. I told J.J. the code word was "Go Chiefs" since that was plastered all over the place, particularly at the grocery store where milk was $3.05 per gallon.
But there are some good things that go along with the unusual ones. There was a pool and hot tub basically just behind J.J.'s place, which came in real handy one night. Their downtown seems rather nice and the historic market area was kind of neat to see. There are farms just outside of town, much like Columbus, and most people seemed friendly besides their uber-agressive driving. Overall it was a nice place, and I think I could handle living there if I ever had to.
At the airport on the way back home of course I got randomly selected to be poked and prodded with the handheld metal detector (even though I purposely had nearly no metal on me, not even a key ring). This guy even scanned all the way around my feet. He didn't say anything but I was wondering if it would detect the metal pins in my left foot. I'm not sure how someone would really store something large enough to do much damage between their sock and foot anyways. Then he went all through my backpack which basically had my clothes and a few accessories for my computer and cellphone. But he never asked me to open my briefcase which actually had my laptop and other electronics in it. Oh well whatever. So I survived that one and enjoyed the two plane trips back, both around an hour long.
Now I'm back here in the office waiting for Winnie to get back. Apparently I can't pick up my football tickets because I have a balance on my account, and I have a balance on my account because my fee authorization hasn't gone through to pay for all that junk. So now that I'm back up to the present time I'll go check on that and write more later. Ok peaceout.
Posted by Plocmstart at 1:21 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2004
CarPUTER
So I've been thinking about putting a PC in my car for quite awhile, and I just haven't had the time to get around to it. I've recently done some research into the cost of building one though. Here's the setup I'm thinking about:
| VIA EPIA ME6000, 600MHz, Fanless mini-itx motherboard | $132.00 |
| Lilliput 7" XGA Touchscreen | $279.99 |
| ITPS + PW-70a Combo (12V power supply and on/off regulator) | $86.99 |
| IBM 10GB hard drive | already own |
| 256MB RAM | ~$50 |
| Misc cables, case, etc. | ~$100 |
| Total | ~$650 |
Other options include a DVD drive for playing basically anything, a GPS for navigation, making the USB port easily accessible to insert a pen drive and play music off of it, and a wifi card to pick up wireless on the fly. The worst part will be mounting this thing somewhere inside the car (glovebox? behind dash?) and hoping the LCD fits. I'd really like to find a slightly smaller touchscreen LCD (maybe 5" or 6") instead of the larger one due to the location I'd like to put it in.
For those that don't know, I drive a 2003 Nissan Sentra Spec V, and in this car at the top of the center console there is a compartment with a lid on the dash. This would be an ideal compartment to hide an LCD in which could be popped up whenever it is needed. It doesn't really hinder the driver's view and there is quite a bit of room below and behind the compartment inside the dash for the LCD to slide down into if necessary. The only problem is a 7" LCD is really pushing it on the width of the compartment. I don't really want to severely modify this compartment just to make an oversized LCD fit in the given space. I'd like to get a second plastic form for this dash compartment and work with that one while I keep my car in one piece. I have to find out how much one of those might cost (or check around local junkyards for a wrecked Sentra).
As far as software's concerned it looks like I have basically two good options. There appears to be a Linux OS at mp3car.com and a Windows-based app called Media Car by Coyote (which appears to be a French site even though the app seems to be in English).
So that's the idea. I just have to get around to researching the LCD a bit more, finalizing whether I want to stick with the 600Mhz board or go with a faster one, and determining exactly how to mount this whole thing.
For those interested in doing something similar, these websites come in
handy:
MP3Car.com
mini-itx.com
Coyote Media Car
Mini-Box.com
Posted by Plocmstart at 8:56 PM | Comments (0)
On a lighter note...
So I had a friend ask me who I planned on voting for in this coming election. Well I don't really like getting into politics, because that just ends up being some big messy argument where reality and reasoning breaks down into spewing of overgeneralizations and supposed facts with no information to back them up. So at any rate here is how I feel. Feel completely free to not agree with me, and don't bother trying to get me to change my mind. I've made up my mind a long time ago and no amount of recent discoveries of new "facts" or "data" or whatever spew you want to call it is going to get me to change my mind.
So as I was saying, I decided that if given a real choice, I'd actually elect and engineer to be president, or at least someone that knows how to use logic and reasoning to solve problems, has some sense of time and commitment, and can take other people's lives and opinions into account when making a decision. It doesn't necessarily have to be an engineer, but since I know them best I know there's at least a possiblity you can find all these qualities in one of them.
But since neither of the candidates chosen for us to choose demonstrate all of these qualities very well at all times I am not inclined to trust either of them as our president for the next 4 years. I won't even bother getting into spewing "facts" or anything. That part is up to you to discover and decide upon if you truly wish to make an objective decision.
So now that I've come to this conclusion that I'd rather pick neither, I'm also faced with the fact that I have to pick one. Dealing with this, I've decided that given past performance of our current president, I'm not currently happy with the outcome of many hot topics. Given this thought I might as well give someone new a chance to be president and see how he performs. This is the country of equal opportunity, right? When given the choice between knowing that I still won't be happy and the possibliby of being happier, I'll pick what's behind door number two.
Or we could just roll a die or flip a coin and leave it all to chance.
Posted by Plocmstart at 5:54 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2004
Good Weekend
So this past weekend was pretty good. Friday was Kibby's wedding rehearsal and dinner. The reshearsal went well and I, as best man even remembered to bring "practice" rings to it. I had some twist ties and I'd made small rings from them before when I'd be bored while at the computer, so I figured it was a perfect opportunity to make some rings to bring along and suprise them with. No one expected that, and I think Kibby really appreciated them which of course made me feel good.
Then was the dinner which was at La Casitia (I think that's how it's spelled) just over on Bethel down the street from my place. It's a local Mexican food place, which I didn't expect for a rehearsal dinner, but the food was really good. The food took awhile to be prepared so we munched on chips and salsa for quite awhile, but when it did arrive we had lots of fajitas, stuffed peppers, rice, beans, and other stuff that I can't remember at the moment. We also had some great desert. Liz really enjoyed her fried ice cream and I thought the dulce de leche cake was also awesome.
After dinner we all headed over to Kibby's new house which he had been renovating since he got it about 3 months ago. The place looks great compared when I first saw it, which was about a month after he bought it. I'd say he easily has added at least $10k to the worth of the place just by cleaning up the wood floors all the painting and refinishing the walls and getting rid of the smoke smell the definately was there before. After that it was back to Liz's to give Lilly her medicine (she had a big fat lip from getting scratched or bitten by Sammy), then back to get to sleep for the wedding the next morning.
Saturday morning involved getting up early and arriving at the Park of Roses by 9:15 for pictures. Then it was photo session and just waiting around till 11:30 for the actual wedding. Kibby of course at first thought he really wasn't nervous, but then started to get a little antsy to get things started. The wedding actually started around 11:45 and I got to do my Best Man duties with the real ring this time. Things went perfectly (and with a couple tears from almost everyone). Then for the post-wedding photo session and over to the reception which was at the Westerville Golf Center.
Both the wedding and reception were outdoors, which wasn't too bad except being in the hot sun with no clouds in a black tux makes you get very hot very quickly. The reception was very informal. There was a free round of putt putt golf for everyone, the head table was for Kibby, Leslie, and their family while the rest of the wedding party just sat and mingled with the rest of the people at the reception (which I guess was good for Liz since she didn't really know anyone else there). Then I got to give my toast, which first included a bunch of crazy things Kibby has done in the past. A few of them I mentioned are:
He builds a swimming pool out of the shower.
Or stores buckets of ice in your and the nieghbor's fridges to make a wall of ice.
Visits the Olentangy River on Thursday night to throw fruit into it as a sacrifice to the Olentangy River god.
Takes the bedroom door off the hinges and leaves it in the bed for you.
Flushes the toilet while you're in the shower to test the plumbing.
Decides to bring the grill inside and cook on it during a rainy day.
Decides to cook his burgers using Lysol when you run out of charcoal.
Nadine, the maid of honor actually left the reception right after she got there, supposedly saying she wasn't feeling well. This actually didn't suprise me since she has some issues with eating and I bet she was pretty tired after a whole morning of being busy and nothing for her body to use as energy. So since she wasn't there the next girl in line gave a toast also (I can't remember her name at the moment, because I'm horrible with names of course). Then there was the customary dances, then Kibby and Leslie headed off in their getaway car. Leslie had to drive since it's a stick and Kibby doesn't know how to drive it. They had a suprise limo ride from the wedding to the reception.
So after they left, of course the party was pretty much over and we ended up on clean up duty, which involved moving all the tables and chairs from the reception area to the parking lot where they'd be picked up by church staff later. That was a LOT of work to do, especially in a tux, but I couldn't complain of course since I did get free food and I was the best man in the wedding.
So after cleanup was complete Liz and I headed back to my place to change and relax for awhile. Then it was back to her place yet again to give Lilly her medicine and while we were there we ate some pizza at Tiberio's.
Then it was back to my place which I noticed a message from Craft asking if we had any plans for the night. So we ended up going over to his new place and playing some hand and foot for a couple hours before coming back and getting to sleep.
We got up Sunday around noon (I know we didn't go to church - bad us!) and Liz wanted to go horseback riding. So I called around and found a place down in Orient that let people just show up and ride. So we got some lunch and headed down there. The ride was somewhere around 45 minutes and was a nice slow trot through the woods in the area. It was sort of relaxing and a nice change to the busy city. Liz's horse must have been hungry since it kept stopping to eat grass, and Liz had trouble getting it to stop eating and keep walking. Eventually she got it going again though and we survived without being stranded with grass-eating horses all day.
Then we drove back and David had also just got back from being at home. Prior to that he had been in China for about 10 days with my friend Claire and a couple other friends and of course had a lot to talk about.
We headed down to campus for him to pick up mail and at the same time coordinated where Me, Liz, David, Radigan, Molly, Craft, and Kristin would be eating dinner. David and Radigan really wanted steak, but Craft and Kristin didn't, so we settled on Applebee's finally with the promise of Outback Steakhouse later this week.
Applebee's was of course good (when isn't it good?). I had chicken parmesean for a change, just to see what it was like. It was pretty good, not the best I've ever had, but definately acceptable.
Then it was back to the condo where some of us played hand and foot again (the guys one this time! the night before the girls kicked our butt majorly) while Molly, Radigan and David played some video games then decided to brainstorm about the robot course for this coming year. Then after our card game Liz, Kristin and Craft went home and that left the four of us thinking about the robot course. Eventually that ended and then everyone settled in for bed, which leads up till now.
So overall this has been one of the best weekend I've had in awhile. Liz had a really good time today and I felt like she wasn't worried about anything for once. Making Kibby happy of course makes me feel good, and getting a bunch of friends together for dinner is always a great thing.
Tomorrow Lil Jenny will be visiting, and I'll be getting lunch with her and her Mr. Erik, the German guy she's been seeing for a couple years now. I don't remember the last time I actually saw her, and she spends most of her time in Europe so I feel special that she's actually going to stop by just to see me. Then I have all those other fun errands like returning the tux, cleaning my room yet again, and I'm sure more things I'm forgetting. Enjoy reading this long post, I think it's a new record for me. Peaceout!
Pictures of the wedding are available here. Liz took all of these since I was busy best manning. More will come later as I get them.
Posted by Plocmstart at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
September 9, 2004
USA Today Article
... and along with yesterday's rant comes this article about the same thing.
Posted by Plocmstart at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
September 8, 2004
Information Pirates!
So I've been getting a lot of spam emails lately for websites that try to steal information from me simply by pretending that something horrific has happened and I need to verify my information so that somehow the problem will be fixed. HAH! Do people really fall for things like this? I sure hope not. Anyways they go something like this:
Dear [PayPal, Citibank, Ebay, SunTrust, etc.] customer,
We recently reviewed your [insert account type] account and suspect it may have been accessed by an unauthorized user. To protect the security of your account you must visit the link below and enter your information:
http://somelink.com (which goes somewhere else completely when you look at the source).
Blah blah blah and more random information.
Sincerely,
The [insert site here] Team
The links usually go to very professional-looking sites, usually ones that just steal the graphics from the actual website to pretend to be that website. One even has a bar that hides the actual URL being visited with a fake one that makes it look like it's pointing to the correct website you'd normally log into.
So a word of advice: If you get an email asking you to login from a link in that email to enter sensitive emaily, just don't. Go to that website manually (open your browser and type the URL). In order to help out you may also want to forward the original email to abuse@[enter real service website name].com. Usually this will alert the proper people that can get these fake sites shut down.
So that's my rant for tonite. Peaceout.
Posted by Plocmstart at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)
Ariel Kite Photos
This is a cool link that was posted on /. Cool pics.
http://www.thehaefners.com/kap/
Posted by Plocmstart at 1:33 PM | Comments (0)
First Entry
Yay so I got this thing set up and maybe I'll actually post stuff here occasionally. Don't be suprised if I forget though, because I'm good at forgetting especially when it comes to writing junk.
Posted by Plocmstart at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)