Free of SBC 13 March 2006
Well as most of you that try to read our adventures, what adventures, can see not much must be happening. Chemistry is going well and I am starting my first stereoselective synthesis, I am very excited. Other than that, it's been warming up here and tornado season has started.
From the title you can guess what I was finally able to do, get rid of those crappy, I am being nice, phone companies. I haven't been able to go all wireless yet, but the next best thing, VONAGE!!!! Let me say I am loving it, even though we don't use it very much. I got the Linksys Vonage box for free after rebate plus a $25 gift card to Beast Buy, keeps up my DVD habit. Vonage is great for those of you that still have a Landline plus cable broadband. The price for our package is over 50% less than SBC was plus we get no LD in the US and Canada. It is a great time to get Vonage now, it is nothing like it was from a couple of years ago.
I have been enjoying the idiot box lately, but now all of the good shows have ended this past week or so. BSG season 2 is over, I have to say the season ending was good, but I hope the rumors are not true for Season 3, and October start and a possible switch from Scifi to NBC. I think that would be the end for the show. The 4400 are suppose to start in a few months. I think I am going to try out the new Dr. Who starting this Friday, my friend from the UK says the remake is pretty good. I am also trying to get an episode of "The IT Crowd." You can only download episodes from within the UK and I have not done much looking for them. If anyone has seen it let me know how it was.
Ahhhhhh! Fry's 16 January 20067
Over the weekend we took another trip to Indianapolis for a little shopping we can't get in Champaign. We went to Trader Joe's and I found out that there is a Fry's Electronics there also, racecar theme is you are wondering. I know what some of you are saying, "Fry's why go there." Well you would also say it is a necessary evil, plus all I can go to for my electronic and computer fix is Best Buy and Circuit City. My friend Sean is in the market for a new PC and we want to integrate it into his home theater system. I was able to show him a computer setup by shuttle that I think we will build. I haven't decided on the build yet, but cash will be a little tight, so I might opt for an AMD setup, but not a 939 chip. I found a case and board with TV out for $199 and they had a special running for $249 with processor. We have a few weeks for that.
While there, I picked up a Maxotr 100 Gb SATA drive for $59, NR, and a SATA Drive enclosure. I want to see if my Motorola DVR box's SATA port is active and adding an external SATA drive will increase the storage cap on the system. I will let you know how it works, I need to finish watching some showes first and I will stick in on. I have read that adding the SATA drive will cause a complete system reformat. More on that in the following weeks.
Interesting Weblinks 07 January 20067
Listening to Security Now! by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte, Steve has some great links and references at his website Security Now!. He also wrote an excellent random password generator for protecting your routers or wireless access points. I am going to start to use them soon.
For those of us that enjoyed the tech shows from the good old techtv days, check out a few of these sites.
This week in tech
Kevin Rose and friends podcasts and vidcasts
From the Shadows featuring Yoshi, for those who know who I am talking about
Digitallife TV with Patrick Norton and Robert Heron.
Check out the links if you are in need of some good techie shows that use to be available
A new year 07 January 2006
Christmas has come and gone. Heather's parents spend christmas with us which was great. We all had a great time. Santa was very nice to me. I recieved a new remote control for the home theater system. I got the Logitech Harmony Remote Model 628. I really like it, but I am still working the bugs out of it. I need to format a few of the menus better for me. I also got a tripod for the camera, a few xbox and gameboy games, dvds, clothes, and a few Best Buy gift cards. I also picked up a 60 gig IPod video the day after christmas, more to come.
Not much else happened over the holiday, we took a trip to Indianapolis to check out the shopping out there. They have a couple of Trader Joes there which is a little closer than going to Chicago. I also found out that there is a Fry's Electronics there too, which I will check out next time I am out there. Heather's dad and I did a few projects around the house, check out the pictures page for the projects.
Back to the IPod, I am really loving it. First, I was debating to even get one and second whether to get an ipod or other music player. I decided on the IPod because of the available accessories out there. With the IPod I can get all of the tech podcast from all of the old tech tv guys, including Leo, Kevin, Patrick, etc. I also found that Patrick Norton is now doing a vidcast for dl.tv, digitallife tv. It really is a good show because it brings back aspects of the old screensavers show on TechTV. Leo has about 3-4 podcasts weekly which I am also listening to and catching up on. I really like the Security Now! podcast, it has a lot of great tips and info on securing our networking and computers. If you are concerned about security I would listen.
Long Time Overdue December 07, 2005
A lot has gone on since the last update. Heather and I made a trek to Las Vegas, where we meet up with many old friends and meet some new ones. We stayed at the Luxor, which is one of my favorite hotels in Vegas. I played in two Live Poker tournament while there and placed in the top 15 in the first tourny and did not due as well in the second. We all had a great time and experienced a great restaurant, which is a Las Vegas staple, Batistas: Hole in the Wall. The place was just great old Vegas, you have to go to experience it. It was great seeing everyone there.
Just this last week we took a trip to Omaha to see family and friends. While in Omaha, I picked up an inexpensive LCD TV for the bedroom. My brother worked at in my opinion the best store for electronics, furniture, etc, Nebraska Furniture Mart, and got me a deal on a 15" Envision LCD TV open box, picked it up for $179. It is not the best TV, but it's better than the 13" CRT we had. We also picked up some food items we can't get in Champaign, ie Mission brand tortilla and Wimmer's Hot Dogs. The drive out was great in the new car and it handled beautifully in the snow that Omaha recieved on Saturday, AWD is great. We will plan another trip in a couple of months.
My friend Dave shipped me out a copy of WinXP Pro for my desktop system. I upgraded for the usual ressons plus Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 only works with WinXP. It took me around 7 hours to wipe, install, and reload everything. My biggest hangup was with my financial software file, it would not load properly and wanted to up convert before opening. I called the tech support and what happens, I get the file to open finally. The system is running great as are all of my other boxes. My next test is using windows remote desktop. I want to try it out so when I am away I can access my systems still. More on the computer front, I played geeksquad last week also for a friends girlfriend. She and her roommates where having networking problems. I never found the cause, but I suspect it was a bad install of one of the wireless cards. I also helped to clean and disinfect a laptop taken over by viruses and spyware. I couldn't find every piece but cleaned 95% of it. I also got a copy of Firefox 1.5, it works great, but besides the security patches, I haven't seen much difference from 1.07.
With christmas coming soon, I am trying to think of some projects for Heather's dad and I. I am going to run a electrical outlet and coax drop to our guest bedroom so I can put the spare TV we now have in there for guests. I am going for a ceiling mount and will install the coax and electrical in the same area. I also have to consider a new DVD case or build a smaller case for my video games, I am thinking the latter.
If I don't update before Christmas, I wish everyone out there a great christmas. I will post a short list of gifts that I got after the holidays.
Upgrades October 23, 2005
I finally got around to purchasing a K&N air intake system for my truck. Heather's dad and I installed it this weekend in about 1.5 h. It was very easy to install, especially with K&N's very detailed installation instructions. I am hoping for about 1-2 mpg for around town. I also might get a high flow muffler installed for the backend. I can hear the difference between the old and new air intake when I hit the throttle, it gives the truck a more throaty sound. Here are a couple of pictures of the final installation.
In addition to the air intake install, I also installed XM radio in Heather's parents Chevy Trailblazer. Let me tell you it was a pain in the ass to install. Well not so much the install, but the logistics of how to wire it up. We opted for the tucked away fm modulator over the wireless one that plugs into the 12V power supply. GM has given the radio so many things to control now that it's almost a mini computer. I had to find a switched fuse in the fuse box under the backseat to tap into. After I found the correct fuse, I needed to add and extention wire so I could power the modulator, since I needed to have the modulator tucked under the dash. On top of all of that, We had to get antenna wire converters because GM uses a non standard adapter. It took us about 4-5 hours total time for the install. It would have been quicker to take it to get installed but I had fun with the installation. Here are a couple of pics of the XM reciever in the Trailblazer. This location was about the only place to mount it, I am sure glad that this was a 4x2 version otherwise it would have needed to be mounted on top of the dash.
New DVR September 18, 2005
Hi all in cyberspace. Again I am getting lazy with updates, but I have to be honest, not much excitement goes on in my life. Heather and I are officially going to Vegas the end of October. We are meeting about 10-12 people there, some that I haven't seen in about a year or so, we are very excited. Our garden is on its last legs, but those tomatoes just won't stop. I have made lots of great salsa with them. The fall is slowly approaching here, we are trying to get our lawn ready for the winter. The front lawn took a big hit this summer, the heat and little rain combined with my lack of watering, left it kinda weedy and a few dead spots. We just layed down some new seed and will fertilize this next week. Hopefully it will be greener and less weedy this next coming year.
On an exciting technology front, my cable company has finally stocked the motorola dct6412 dual tuner dvr. I picked one up with the loss of quite a bit of TV shows on my old box. The only shows that I could not get back are the Tripping the Rift Season One. Other than that I was able to get all of the recorded shows that I lost. I also have a series III box which has a SATA port on the back along with the other nonfunctioning ports. From what I have read on the forums, this port should be active and I can plug an external SATA HDD into it to increase my total recording capacity. I have yet to try it since I need to get a SATA enclosure, HDD, and download the remaining shows I want to keep. The forums say that plugging the extra drive in will start an auto format of the drive to make it useful, but at the same time will also format the HDD inside the DCT. I will keep you posted on my DVR adventures.
With the fall tv season starting, the summer season is coming to an end. My two favorite shows for the summer, The 4400 and Battlestar Galactica, are ending or have ended. Its very sad, The 4400 ended with a great WTF ending leaving you starving for more, but more will come next summer probably. BSG's season finale is next friday and Ron Moore is bringing a classic BSG storyline back, the return of Battlestar Pegasus. For all the nerd out there, the admiral of Pegasus is ST:TNG Ensign Ro. I just saw on Scifi.com that the finale will run two minutes overtime, so make sure to set your recordings appropriately. I will wait with baded breath for the next seasons of these two series.
Birthdays August 28, 2005
Sorry for the long delay with the update, I have been lazy. Heather and I went for a weekend in Omaha to see friends and family. It was my mom's and my birthday, we enjoyed seeing everyone. We stopped by the farm to see Heather's aunt and uncle for the afternoon. After that we spent the rest of the weekend with my family. Omaha is sure growing from when I was younger, I could actually enjoy moving there again. Omaha built an outdoor type shopping mall with all the trendy stores and restaurants. I finally found a new pair of Nike shoes, I really seems that I can only get new shoes outside of the state I live. We enjoyed a great dinner at the Kona Grill, a great place to eat. I think there is one in Scottsdale, AZ at the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall. The food was not quite up to the west coast quality, but quite enjoyable.
For my birthday, I received a few Best Buy gift cards. With those I was able to get a some DVDs, a much needed battery backup for my computers, and a digital optical audio cable. The battery backup I picked up is a cyber power brand 450 W supply. I needed it for the power flickers we have here in Champaign during thunderstorms. In addition to those things, Heather gave me the System Selector from Pelican that I have been eyeing for about a year now. It is an eight port switch that has the same footprint as other audio components, so it will blend into your A/V system seemlessly. It comes with all video, component, s-video, and rca, audio is either rca or digital optical, and finally has a built in ethernet hub. It is a great switch but the only bad thing is that it does not up or down convert the video signals. Maybe the next gen switch will allow the conversion. I also would have liked a few more of the name plates or find a place that sells custom name plates for the switch. Check out the system selector here. The system selector pro is featured is the previous model. You can pick up your own at Best Buy if interested.
I will try to update my movie and game list also more often. I know some people out there are interested in what I have available.
Ouch!!! August 7, 2005
About two weeks ago, I at work fixing the exhaust on a piece of equipment (my rotovap, venting it into the hood finally) in my lab when I decided to filet my right thumb. Luckly I sliced it with my new knife and didn't hit the serrated part of the knife either. Of course I need to have medical attention to the finger. At the time, I was hoping the doctor would super glue my finger back together instead of stitches. The doctor did super glue it together, durmabond, it's 2-octylcyanoacralate. The superglue worked for my cut for about the first 12 hours, but started to weaken and unglue after that. I think in my line of work, stitches are the best choice from now on. Since I work with chemicals and various solvents and the constant use of gloves doesn't fair well with the durmabond. I found that with another bandage and wearing nitrile gloves produces enough heat to weaken the glue enough to not hold. Now maybe I didn't let the durmabond set up right which could have been a factor in the failure, but I think it was the heat generated from the nitrile gloves that I wore.
My thumb is now on the road to recovery and fully sealed up again. That was mainly due to the nightly butterfly bandages that I would use and letting my thumb air out after work. I will have a slight scar but nothing major. I do not think I have any nerve or major tissue damage to my thumb. It is still a little swollen but does not hurt anymore.
Check it out, I have finally put my games and movies on the web, check out my collections. I think the box covers for the games will work but not for the movies. I have a few too many movies to put the box covers on my site, due to space limitations. Hopefully I can get my comics in the database soon. The software I use is CollectorZ software to catalog my items.
More Great TV July 24, 2005
Well I am just loving the summer TV season. BG is getting better with each episode. I just read today that episode 10 of season 2 will find Galactica meeting Battlestar Pegasus, a revisit to a story line of the original series. In addition, Best Buy will be selling BG season one starting this week. I read it the UK version formatted NTSC. I have also found a new series on Scifi, Tripping the Rift. It is a hilarious scifi animation set in the future of a misfit space crew. If you like scifi, south park and family guy, then you will probably like this show. Scifi has been rerunning season one, which I have been "tivoing", and season two will start next week. The 4400 is getting better every week also. The plots of the main characters are developing beautifully. If you haven't seen an episode I would try to check out season one and catch season two on reruns. Finally on the TV front, WSOP has begun airing on ESPN. I don't like how ESPN is airing this years WSOP, they spread it out over the next five months. I will be watching, new airing every Tuesday.
I have picked up a couple of new movies and a new game for the xbox, World Championship Poker. I like the game okay, better than some of the other poker games that I have. I picked up a poker game from Sam's Club but didn't like it. The only other poker game that I enjoy playing is DD Poker. Version 2 of dd poker is coming out in August and the creators have made a lot of great updates to version 2, I will probably get that copy also. I am also in the middle of MGS3: Snake Eater. I haven't played in a couple of weeks, took a break to play Sly Cooper, but I will get back to shortly. I am going upload my game and movie collection soon in html format so everyone can check out my collections. I need to get off my lazy butt and log my comics and once I do, I can upload it also.
For those of you that care, I am not just sitting in the house all the time now. I have started riding my bike again. I felt I needed to get up and do some more activity. I found two nice 4.5 mile circuit that I ride every other day now. I also can combine the circuits for a nine mile circuit also. I hope to start that before the winter really hits here. The summer is brutal on me when I am out riding. It is different than Phoenix, the humidty makes a huge difference in the ride. I am glad that I have a good internal thermostat. I am enjoying my rides and it's great to get back on the bike again. I would like it more if I had some place to do some trail riding, but the county roads will do for now.
TV and things July 19, 2005
I read an article today on G4tv.com, I know "you actually go to that website?" I enjoy the news that they post once in a bluemoon. In the techie news today, a new employee of Microsoft's regulartory department had a rude awaken today. His step-son got a hold of the the new xbox 360 he was testing and decided to post pictures on a blogsite. I guess someone has not heard of an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
In other things, I just watched the first episode of Battlestar Galactica yesterday. Let me tell you it was great. If this season is anything like last, we are in for some great storylines and entertainment. As a sidenote, I also read a news article discussing why Star Trek is not on the air. I guess at Comic Con in San Diego, trekies had a round table discussion on this issue. The cause they stated, Battlestar Galactica. Read more about it if you are interested at Trekweb.com
Finally the other new show that I have been watching is The 4400. Another great show and it's getting much better. I haven't watched this past Sundays episode, but the previews looked great. It's nice to have these type of shows back on the air, it beats the reality crap that every network seems to love.
Catch up
What have I been up to? Well too much to go into, but I have pretty much installed a computer in almost every room of my house. I have a workstation in our workroom. In the den area I have a file/web server setup. My laptop which goes anywhere in the house wirelessly and finally my main desktop system. Here in Champaign, IL a few of the stores are and have put a lot of their satallite radio equipment on sale. I have picked up a couple of delphi skyfi car kits at sears for $14. I used one and converted it to a home kit for Heather's Skyfi in her car. I went to Target and picked up an AC to DC converter for $20 and bingo home kit. The car kit stand is a little top heavy so I took a scrap piece of 2 x 4 I had, routed out a channel in the middle and viola instant stand. It looks pretty ghetto, but it works. Maybe a couple coats of stain will make it look better. Here is a pic of my rightous stand.
I picked up Sly Cooper and the Thievous Racoonous for Heather the other week. She is enjoying playing it and I am almost finsihed with it also. For those of you with a PS2 and enjoy platformers I recommend picking this one up and it's only $20 to boot. I am also in the middle of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. For those of you familiar with the MSG franchise, this one takes place before MSG1 and you are playing Snakes father. It's a good game, but I am not over great at these type of games.
Live we are July 5, 2005
Well Okiegochie.net is live and raring to go. July 4, was the offical launch of Okiegochie.net and I am excited. I chose host excellence as my host provider. For what I need right now the space and price was right. I get free domain registration as long as I host with host excellence.
Of course with any site launch there were problems and those problems have to be in the form of MSIE, so sad. So for the time I would recommend viewing the site with an alternative browser, I use firefox. With some help from friends and endless searching on the web, I hope to resolve the rendering problems.