4.26.2008
1:09am
My project at work came to culmination Friday afternoon. We had a 4-hour downtime window to power down about 65 machines, move them off existing tables, have the electricians come in to replace the outlets, move the new shelving into place, put all the machines back on the shelves, wire them up, and power them back on. The lab looks a lot cleaner now and the space is utilized better. The PDUs from Tripp-Lite have built-in ammeters which is a nice bonus.
Andrew closed on his house so I drove up to Rockledge tonight to see his place and help move a few things. His house is only a few minutes from the condo he was staying in before. I was also busy cleaning today before Mom shows up and tells me how messy everything is :)
This upcoming Wednesday is the due date for my Java project and also the final exam day. So I've got some work to do.
4.22.2008
2:56pm
A good reason not to buy Dove soap. Article.
It is Earth Day, after all.
4.20.2008
11:29am
Sweet Home Alabama, unlike anything you've seen before.
Yesterday I went over to the Harris Stratex company picnic with Adam, had some good BBQ from Dustin's and some drinks. Jason Klein from work has his own pro audio rig for concerts, DJing, karaoke, etc so he brought some stuff and set it up for music and karaoke. His music server has like 4TB of songs and therefore the selection book was the largest I've ever seen. He even wrote his own C++ software for the karaoke program. Needless to say, we had more than enough volume for Wickham Park and it was only a third of his total gear.
4.17.2008
8:30pm
High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas. Interesting narrative article from Wired.
4.16.2008
10:27pm
Somehow I missed this Kodak viral commercial from last year.
Also a Microsoft internal spoof music video about Vista.
7:10pm
Wow, it's been one year already.
Not everything in the global economy these days is bad news.
The Pirate Bay launches a new blogging service. Although I haven't visited their site in quite a while, I appreciate the way they are trying to shake things up. Defending rights and anti-establishment.
Sometimes defacement is annoying and rude, but in this case it's funny.
4.15.2008
This might be the most amazing thing I've seen in 2008.
4.12.2008
Falling behind a little. Ryan's girlfriend Ashley has gratiously offered her Kia Sportage for me to learn stick-shift on this weekend. Ryan also has a manual Jeep but his car is almost brand new so the Kia will be a bit more forgiving. We were originally going to try for tonight but we had dinner at Red Lobster and that took a while. So instead we are going to do it tomorrow (well technically today). I probably ought to go to sleep soon.
On the plus side, the Harris parking lot should be empty.
4.08.2008
Harris Stratex Networks has a new CEO as of today. Harald J. Braun. Previously at Nokia Siemens. Originally from Germany, you can definitely tell by his accent and name.
4.06.2008
A good use for those old keyboards and mice?
I've been watching a documentary series called Wild Africa and learned about a pretty cool plant: the whistling thorn.
4.05.2008
I've finally joined the ranks of folks with HD cable. Since The Berkshires is going to start charging me $20 per month for basic cable starting in May, I figured I should at least try to make use of it. Of course I wanted to check things out first and see what I could get without paying any additional (monthly) money.
I picked up a Hauppauge HVR-1250 card at Circuit City today for a measley $50. It supports analog broadcast, analog cable, ATSC, and QAM. The feature I was looking for in particular was QAM, since I suspected that Brighthouse Networks broadcasts some of their stations "in the clear" using QAM. Also the card needed to be PCI-Express x1 since that's the only slot I still had available on my motherboard. The two PCI slots are already taken up with sound and wireless LAN. The card also included a remote control, very unexpected for the price point.
I got the card installed and updated to the latest software version. The channel scan picked up the 25 analog stations on basic cable and about 194 digital QAM stations. Many of those were duplicates though, and it boiled down to about 43 stations. I was able to get seven HD broadcasts, and they have a matching non-HD stream on another channel. ABC, Fox, NBC, CW, CBS, and a news station are all HD so that covers the locals. The remote control software interface doesn't work for anything except starting the program for some reason, so I'm hoping a future update addresses that issue. Then I can actually change the channel with it.
Right now ABC is showing Harry Potter and it looks pretty good for cable-based HD. Over-the-air terrestrial would still be better but I have very little chance of being able to pick it up here. Doesn't touch HD-DVD quality though.
4.03.2008
The book release I'm looking forward to this year is Brisingr. Looks like I will be re-reading the first two books at the beginning of September.
4.01.2008
I got Rick Rolled for the first time today. Well, sorta. Fitting that it would happen on April Fools day. I could have linked to Wikipedia, but it seemed more appropriate to use the Uncyclopedia :)
Somebody also thought it would be an appropriate April Fools joke to use a hacked account to bid on one of my eBay auctions that ended today. eBay cancelled the listing as soon as it ended due to the fraudulent bidding. Fortunately my other item sold without any unexpected amusement.
I've been watching some Arrested Development on hulu.com the past few days, and was having video stream interruption problems. I was about ready to call Brighthouse and yell at them for their internet service, but today I tried turning off the UPnP service on my router and all is well now. I remembered reading something a while back about UPnP sending out packet storms every once in a while that can interrupt other traffic. Seems like that was it.
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