6.29.2007
9:05pm

It's bedtime for me, not a typical time for a Friday night to be sure. However, tomorrow morning is going to be particularly early for me because I've got to get up at 3am and start driving to North Carolina. There's an official AV123 meet at the Clayton Center in Clayton, NC and I decided it would be a worthwhile weekend trip to visit with the other speaker enthusiasts and see a bit of NC again since I haven't been back in a while. I should be able to see more of the Rocket and X lineup and also some of the subs that Mark Seaton is working on. Mark Schifter was supposed to be there too but he ended up staying in Cali, Columbia to work out some manufacturing issues there. The gtg event should wrap up around 8pm, then I'm headed over to Asheboro, NC to stay at a hotel for the night. On Sunday morning I'm visiting the NC Zoo in Asheboro and will probably stay there until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Then it's just a 9 hour trip back to Melbourne.

I bought a Magellan Maestro GPS unit at Best Buy this week to use on the trip; I've been wanting one for a while and this seemed like a good time to pick one up.

6.28.2007
11:08pm

Are you a right-clicka or an iBook flippa?.

Either way I'm very glad the iPhone is getting released tomorrow. Then maybe there won't be so many frickin' news headlines about it. Digg, Engadget, Slashdot, Ars, it seems like everybody is fixated on it.

6.27.2007
11:10pm

Was very frustrated after work today... I called Wal-Mart at 5:30 and they said there was a 30 minute wait for an oil change. Drove over there and it was already up to more than 1:30. So I headed back toward home looking for any alternative and I see that Tires Plus is still open. I pulled in, willing to pay up to $30 or so just to get the oil change done today, and saw that they were running a $18.99 special. With free tire rotation. So I actually would have spent more money at Wal-Mart had they been less busy. I was in and out at Tires Plus in about 30 minutes, which beats Wal-Mart by about 3x even when they aren't busy.

Ryan and Nate came over tonight to check out the apartment and to watch Star Wars Episode 1. Nate brought Chinese food with him so we ate and listened to a little Dark Side of the Moon first so that Ryan would have a chance to hear a 5.1 SACD. I wasn't as pleased with Ep 1 this time as I have been in the past, mainly because I noticed they couldn't keep a consistent dialogue volume during the film. It would decrease by a few dB in some scenes. I had the volume turned down just enough to hear the talking comfortably, since the action parts can get pretty energetic in that movie. If I can get away with the podrace scene then I'm probably fine for any other movie. Aside from that I also noticed film dirt which I thought was absent from that DVD release. Turns out Episode II was the first one to use an all-digital shooting system.

One of my clown loaches has taken to doing a very loach-like thing lately: he lays on his side at the bottom of the tank looking like a dead fish. He's perfectly fine though and will move when startled. It is normal behavior surprisingly enough. The guys in that tank are getting some tubifex worms in a couple minutes, I doubt anybody will be playing dead during food time.

Slate has an article about Bruce Willis's famous line in Die Hard. Yippie-ki-yay and you know how the rest goes.

6.26.2007
8:35pm

Today must have been the official "get your car worked on" day in Melbourne, except nobody warned me in advance. The Wal-Mart in Malabar was backed up 3 hours, and the one in Palm Bay had three cars pull in right before I did. Then I tried to find a different place that might still be open at 6pm but almost all of them were closed already. Ah well, I suppose I will call beforehand tomorrow and see how bad the wait is. All I want is an oil change...

Lots of things to keep me busy lately, this weekend will be fun though. I've been trying to go for the nightly walks every other day (how's that for abusing the English language!) so that means I'm due for one tonight. Probably not going to be a long one since I'm still feeling Sunday's and already spent some time outside vacuuming the car. Plus I want to read the new National Geographic, listen to some music, watch a movie, browse the web some, well nevermind I guess that's not all going to happen tonight. I've been pushing 1am every night as it is, I'm very glad that it only takes me 5 minutes to get to work.

6.24.2007
3:21am

There was a new Animator vs Animation released back in March. I just discovered it, very amusing.

Also Icanhascheezburger is a good site to waste time on for photo caption awesomeness. Well, some of them are inappropriate but not too often.

6.23.2007
8:51pm

"The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it." --Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

1:18pm

This is funny.

12:45pm

Went for a walk on the beach tonight... it was nice enough but overcast. I was only out about an hour but walked past three sea turtle paths, and a group of people checking on the turtles. Must be that time of the year. In fact when I was leaving work tonight with a few other people we saw a soft-shell turtle in the middle of the parking lot looking uncomfortable. He crawled over into the shade underneath a car and we called Harris security to let them come try to move the turtle back to the pond.

Quite a few people at work were happy today because we got a shipment of LCD monitors in and were able to replace some of the old CRT monitors that people were using. We still have a decent number left to replace once the budget is there for more LCDs. I'm still using my own personal monitor there but when the next batch comes I will get one to set up a dual-screen configuration. I pulled an old palmtop computer out of the storage drawer today and tried plugging it in to see if it still worked. It's one of the old HP units that was top-of-the-line with 16MB of RAM and a 256-color screen. Man I really wanted one back in the day but now they seem laughable in comparison to even the cheapest units. Anyway, the unit powered on and I saw the HP logo as it started to boot up. However, after a couple seconds, smoke started wafting out of the side of the unit and weird noises started being emitted. I quickly unplugged it, thinking that the lithium-ion battery was on the fritz like all the laptop videos I've seen. However, that wasn't the case and the battery was still intact. Instead it appeared that one of the power connecting wires for the LCD panel had deteriorated and had started melting the plastic hinge.

Show off the old school games. "Part of the reason you wear coke bottles for glasses may be because you sat four inches from the TV screen so you could hit every last duck that flew by. Small price to pay for not having that dog laugh at you."

Today when I stopped by the Melbourne Square Mall, I walked a little too close to one of the aisleway kiosks and heard that unfortunate "excuse me, sir?" I turned back to see what product he was trying to sell and realized it was a T-Mobile kiosk. He asked who I had for my current cell phone service and I said T-Mobile, after which he gave me a high-five. I almost scoffed instead at the corny gesture but what the hell. Then I asked why T-Mobile had two separate kiosks in the mall, but turns out they have a third one hidden somewhere that I haven't seen before. When I commented on how unusual that was for a small mall like Melbourne's, he said "well Sprint has five..." Fortunately there's only one Radio Shack in the mall so I didn't have to make any difficult decisions about which one to visit with my 30% off coupon from Slickdeals.

6.21.2007
10:21pm

Woohoo, car insurance yesterday and renter's insurance today. I ended up with Allstate for the latter because they were the only local place that would actually give me an easy quote for Florida. Too many places have been scared off due to hurricanes and such so now you have to physically meet with an agent for most cases. I'm wondering now whether I should have paid them for the whole policy up front... ah well at least it's out of mind now for another 12 months. Plus they charge 5% interest if you do payments.

Funny spoof commercial of the Microsoft Surface.

6.20.2007
9:24pm

When you sign up for car insurance with Geico, they ask for the current driver's license number but also request the previous driver's license number if you have had the new one less than 3 years. The same driver's license that the lady at the Florida DMV confiscated from me because I would never need it again (of course). So it's a good thing that I remembered the first 6 digits and figured out that NC uses the birth year as the last 2 digits. Well, only after calling Mom and trying to get the Allstate phone support (direct from India) guy to divulge my old driver's license number over the phone. I suppose it's actually a good thing that he stuck to the policy (pun) and refused to give it out, although I still think they could have asked me some security questions to establish my identity first. Anyway, as of 7/16 I will be a Geico customer since they were substantially cheaper than Allstate. Plus they have the cool gecko and Verne. That's right caveman guy, I'm ignoring you, because you aren't funny at all and have no British accent. Honestly, I've watched most of the caveman commercials and they are horrible.

6.19.2007
9:39pm

Via CapitalistLion: "Thou shall not consider a car an object of personal glorification or use it as a place of sin." Link.

And speaking of cars, today I went to get a quote for auto and renter's insurance from Allstate. The local agent right here in West Melbourne pulled them up for me so now I have a baseline to compare with. I went on my lunch break and when I got back to work Nate told me that Ryan's brother works for Allstate in Palm Beach. So they got me in contact with him to see if he could get any better rates than the local agent.

6.18.2007
12:49am

Today we lose a member of the GGHY team. Ron is flying to Maryland for his permanent job at APL. I guess that leaves GHY within Florida. If Rolando moves to Chicago then Matt is the only remaining one. There was a big party at Ron's apartment on Saturday night which was a lot of fun. Jason is going to be staying there a little while longer but has to decide whether to renew the lease or find a new place to move to. Courtney is flying up with Ron tomorrow to help him get settled in with his new roommate and then going back again at the end of July. She won't be going permanently until her master's degree in teaching in done though. Today I went back to their place for a pizza lunch and we then went to see Rise of the Silver Surfer with Rolando and Diana. Aside from the Dodge Hemi part I didn't actually want to throw something at the screen. Plenty of the dialog is campy and the plot was pretty bad but it was still a fun flick and I did laugh at most of the intended jokes. I'm a little surprised it's managed a 6.7 at IMDb right now. Slate's review, named with a clever anagram.

Fortunately I still know some people in town that are cool to hang out with but it's going to be more boring around here without Ron. Maybe he won't like APL and decide to come back to Harris... yeah right. Most people can't say that they are a rocket scientist and I know Ron's going to enjoy using that line.

Tonight I also watched Flyboys which I got for $7.50 at Best Buy. Nice dogfights and James Franco did better acting than in any of the Spiderman flicks. Also Jean Reno was a surprise bonus. A bit slow at parts due to the "love interest" which worked about as well as Pearl Harbor if that tells you anything. I still think it was a better film than the critics made it out to be. And I'm not just saying that because there was a lion in it. Well, maybe.

I need to take my car for an oil change. Maybe if I put it on here I will be more motivated to do that.

6.16.2007
11:30am

SomethingAwful's Photoship Phriday presents: Green Games.

6.14.2007
9:08pm

"I wish I had more quality...". I thought this video was hilarious. Lumens. Lumens. Lumens. They have some other crazy ones too.

Makin' fun of Apple and the Bush administration in one parody video. Sweet.

Apple can be funny too though. WWDC intro.

12:18am

I had meant to post something else besides the Meat Loaf quote yesterday but never got around to it. Too busy listening to music in the living room and my laptop is temporarily out of service.

I finally got my projection screen resized for the apartment--down to 84 inches now and much more reasonable. It took me three nights but it's done. Velvet was too expensive for a border mask so it got wrapped in black fleece instead. Actually doesn't look too bad. I had enough left-over fleece to make a throw cover for the coffee table which was a plus. I tried to reuse the blackout cloth material from the last screen but it got wrinkled and didn't want to stretch very well anymore since it had already been stretched once. So not only did I have to remove about 100 staples from the original screen, but I had to do it all over again so that I could attach new cloth. Plus I used up all my small staples so I had to stop by Home Depot to get some refills. I went back to Joanne's tonight to get the material; I feel weird going into that place, the only other guy I saw was working there. I think Home Depot cancels it out though so I'm good.

My next DIY project is going to involve Radio Shack and no artsy or crafty stuff.

On CNN's site tonight: "corrupters of the world" fear the Islamic Penal Code.

6.12.2007
11:10pm

"A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age..."

6.10.2007
11:42pm

I was supposed to do a few productive things today, but at 10:30 this morning when I woke up, I didn't feel like doing any of them.

So, I decided to go to the Brevard Zoo instead. It was actually very nice, I can't believe I have ignored the place for the last 4 years. I was there for about 5 hours, it would have been quicker but I watched the vulture feeding and the alligator/croc feedings. Also I spent a disproportionate amount of time by the jaguar exhibit. The only bad thing is that the temperature reached 92 today so a lot of the furry animals were sleeping or hiding in the shade most of the time. It's only about 20 minutes away from my house so I may just end up getting a membership there; they are AZA accredited which means I can visit any of the partner zoos / aquariums for free if I do that. My pics. These other pics aren't mine but they are a whole lot nicer. Amazing what a nice telephoto and DSLR can do. Google found these too.

6.07.2007
6:25pm

If you are a computer geek, you must watch this video: Love Two Point Oh. He even manages to incorporate the AACS key in there.

Today I went with Matt and Ron to pick up our Florida Tech diplomas. All three of us actually had enough credits to qualify for dual degree (rather than dual major), so we got two separate diplomas. One for Electrical Engineering and one for Computer Engineering. Afterwards we had lunch at Olive Garden with Sputnik and Loveless. Sputnik starts his full time job at Harris on Monday, but he'll be working at the Palm Bay campus.

When I was talking to Ron today I found out that Rolando's house in Palm Bay got broken into last week after Javier and Jimmy had moved in. They had only been there for a couple weeks but all their valuable stuff was at the house. Somebody broke the realtor lock-box that was on the front door, took out the keys, and let themselves into the house. They had a few laptops stolen, stereo equipment, digital cameras, etc. On one hand I'm glad that they didn't break in when Rolando and I were still living there, but I also feel really bad for Javier and Jimmy because they had all their nice stuff taken. I think Rolando's dad is going to be filing the insurance claim for them but not sure how it's all going to work out.

6.05.2007
6:08pm

Forgot to update the blog for a while...

I spent most of the weekend watching Heroes. I managed to finish the whole first season and now I'm eagerly awaiting the next one. It took a little while for me to warm up to the show but it eventually hooked me.

That is one bad thing about summer, all of the popular shows are on hiatus until the fall season starts. I have some other things to occupy my time though, like reading a few books that I've been putting off. Also the new Harry Potter book comes out in July and hopefully the final book of the Inheritance trilogy will be released too. Speaking of HP I need to go pre-order the book somewhere locally.