Category: tech

Talk about software, hardware, electronics, and a myriad of other sex-repellent topics.

Posted on

northwise by autocoach


Finally home, post 12hr drive where it was either raining or snowing the entire way. All twelve hours of driving in some kind of precipitation, our little greenhouse killer doing its part in joining the other bits of vehicular plaque clogging the holiday-weekend highway arteries of our nation… each of us fatter and slower for the turkey feast afforded us by virtue of our number one spot (as countries go) on this orb. Yeah yeah, it was a good weekend. I’m not entirely sure, though, that the drive is worth it anymore… certainly not with a little baby… it’s a long dang way – and although Keaton handles it like a pro traveler, it just takes too long. But hey, we’re home now. Let’s move on.

Despite the fact, however, that it was a great weekend – it was, as far as electronics are concerned, a complete bust. My laptop harddrive checked out, I’ve only got it running now because I smacked it just the right way and got it to work. It’ll have to be replaced tho, which will be a timesink. Then, my cellphone decided it was also tired of working, and gave up to meet the harddrive at some pub in tech-heaven. Not to mention that, ever since Sharaun dropped it into the cat’s water dish at the Halloween party, the digital camera eats through a battery in about 10min, making it nearly unusable. Finally, when I got home, my trusty had-since-college CRT monitor crapped out and I have to stretch the image so much to fill the screen that it’s hardly usable. Yes, my friends, it was a maelstrom of electronic failures… thank God the iPod’s still working.

Although I don’t have much more than the preceding readied for today, regulars may be happy to know that I did post Keaton’s Monday pictures this week – sorry for missing last week, but the digital camera issues and a general lack of pictures taken just didn’t produce a crop worthy enough to cull from. Going in weeks, the albums are now up to week thirty-seven – which makes no sense to me since Keaton won’t be nine months old until tomorrow (which is today, as you read this)… the whole weeks = months thing always messes me up. But, enough of that – here are the pictures, enjoy.

Goodnight folks – look for a more cohesive entry tomorrow, when I’m not so dead-tired and road-spent.

Posted on

we need more of those people


It’s 8:30pm already, Wednesday night. Tonight is garbage night, so I have to get the various garbages together and haul them to the bins, after which I’ll haul the bins themselves down to the street. After that, I need to clean up the dishes from dinner, and maybe try and pick up Keaton’s scattered toys from her busy day at home with mom. I hate nights where the late creeps up on you, like tonight… where it’s 8:30pm already and I’ve barely had time to do anything but get home and sit down. Nights where the late creep up on you are almost as bad as sleeps where you wake up 15min before your alarm clock is about to go off. Anyway… back to tonight – let’s write something.

I like friendly people. Today, as I was walking out the door heading back to work after lunch, a truck was parked outside my house and a guy was unloading some boxes from it. “Hey,” he said, “got some boxes for you here.” “Boxes for me?” I wondered aloud, “OK.” As I walked towards the guy, he must’ve seen my company-logo’d polo shirt and asked me, “You sill work for Company-X?” (I’ll call my workplace “Company-X” for this one). I told him I did, and he proceeded to tell me how he’d just been laid of from Company-X. Having worked previously in some shipping/receivables department, he’d been let go just weeks ago and was now delivering for FedEx (in a Penske truck, no less).

Anyway, he was quite the talkative fellow, asking me what the situation was like now at Company-X: was it still bad, heads still rolling, etc. The guy was genuine, if a bit of a jabberjaw, and sincere. And I stood on the curb for a good 10min just talking about this and that with him. For instance, I learned that his dad recently died, and he’d moved back in with his mom to take care of her. You know those people who get personal too quickly when you meet them, he was one. But, I enjoyed myself, standing in the sun there – me still having my cush position at Company-X and being able to look down on his now lowly profession of Penske truck drivin’, box lugging deliveryman. No, no, that was a joke. The point here is that sometimes it’s encouraging to meet people who are just straight up nice. We need more of those people.

Helped Sharaun work on her resume tonight, as she’s applying for some part-time work as a freelance elementary school textbook editor through a connection. Would be stay-at-home work done on the computer, but we sure wouldn’t mind even the part-time income. Y’know, I’m glad, though, that she decided to leave work and do the mom thing – I honestly don’t think I could do it full-time. Watching the baby is one thing, but I’d fear I’m just too selfish to do it long-term. You think spending all day “playing” with the baby and reading to the baby and feeding and changing and singing to the baby is easy work, wrong… for me I get caught up wanting to do my own things. The things I’m used to being able to do when I want to do them. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of respect for what a selfless act the full-time mommy gig is, and I’m glad Sharaun’s the one doing it the same way I’m glad some dude (who’s not me) drives a garbage truck and takes away my refuse.

Well friends, the CD ripping part of my CD-ripping project is about 99% complete. I don’t know if I ever figured I’d really get this far. What’s left now is to optimize the entire resultant digital files. Because, out of roughly 150 gigabytes of music, some 50 gigabytes were ripped from discs that wouldn’t auto-grab MP3 ID3 tags from the ‘net. This means I’m going through and attacking them manually to make them more usable. But through a combination of some scripting I’ve done with the wonderfully extensible Godfather tagger, and just good ol’ done-by-hand data entry, I imagine the entire library will be finished sometime in early December. Make no mistake though, it’s downhill from here. All my tunes are now stored as safe digital copies, on a redundant disk array – and I couldn’t be happier. It’s a good feeling, to see my mater spreadsheet (which I started over two years ago) finally be completely green. I have now arrived at the digital age, ’bout time.

There we have it then, goodnight.

Posted on

it’s the little things


Wednesday night. I have a terribly boring blog tonight. A little about changing brakes, and a little about iTunes. Neither of which is that interesting. Sorry about that.

Saw a link for the new version of iTunes while browsing Digg today, and installed it immediately to see if it might rectify my iTunes 7 artwork issues. First off, why the heck is the iTunes installer 35MB? All it is is a shoddy add-on to QuickTime, which is a piece of software I hate for the fact that it offers me nothing and hooks into my system more than I want. 35MB of what? SharePod does essentially the same thing and is only 580KB – you’re telling me iTunes adds 34.5MB of “goodness?” I don’t think so. Anyway, about 5min into the thing’s ridiculously long installation time (you’d think I was installing a Windows service pack for as long as the thing takes), it pops up and tells me that I need to close Microsoft Outlook because it’s using some files that need to be updated. What?! iTunes is updating files that Outlook is using? Why in the world would it be doing that? I mean, I’m sure it’s some standard Windows/IE DLL thing… but still, that software is totally parasitic if you ask me.

Anyway, on a whim I plugged in the iPod, navigated to the Music setup screen, and did the famous “Display album artwork on your iPod” un-tick, apply, re-tick trick. Before iTunes 7 went to the new single-file artwork database structure, this used to fix artwork issues on individual misbehavers. But with previous versions of the 7.0 family, you were stuck if you 1) had embedded artwork in your MP3 files, and 2) manually managed your iPod (i.e. you drag and drop to get tunes on/off the iPod rather than using the library sync feature).

After some 20min of “optimizing artwork,” I unplugged my iPod and, with some anticipation, pulled up a track with known embedded artwork (a track whose artwork used to display perfectly prior to iTunes 7 and firmware xxx). You’d think that, after spending nearly 20min doing something, there might be some noticeable change, right?

(Note: While iTunes was “optimizing artwork,” I did a branch-predict and wrote the following paragraph. However, once you get through this paragraph and onto the next, you’ll see that my predictive writing was, happily, in vain).

Wrong! Stupidass iTunes just churned for the sake of churning, because not a damn thing changed. I still can’t see the album artwork which is embedded in my MP3s on the iPod itself. Oh sure, it still displays fine in iTunes, but not on the iPod. What I hate most about this is that it used to work fine, it was perfect… Talk about frustrating. Apple, are you listening? Fix this!!

(Now, what actually happened.)

Right! As I pulled up that first track (Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”), I was thrilled to see my artwork displayed proudly to the left of the ID3 information. The artwork is back! I can’t believe it, way to go Apple! Oh, and I’m sorry about that speculative paragraph above – but I just didn’t have a lot of faith that it would work.

Kudos for giving us manual users their embedded artwork back on their iPods, it was missed while it was gone. Let’s change subjects now, OK? OK.

This evening I changed the rear brakes on the truck. See, the truck’s been making awful, awful, grinding noises from back there – and a visual inspection the other day led me to believe that badly worn pads were the cause. I knew I needed back brakes anyway… but I didn’t think there were as bad as they were. And oh… were they bad. On the tire making the noise, I was actually into the steel on the pad, way past the squealer thing and way past the rivets. It was baaaaad. Being only the 2nd unassisted brake job I’ve ever done, not to mention really the only larger-scale maintenance I know how to do on a vehicle (aside from things like putting air in the tires), I’m no expert at what bad brakes look like. But even me, an auto idiot, could tell this was not good. So, I slapped on new rotors and pads, put the tires back on, and fired up the truck for a victory lap around the block.

The noise was ten times worse than before.

Crushed, I pulled back into the garage. I’d noticed while putting on one set of pads that I kinda bent the little squealer thing, and I thought maybe I’d bent it too far inward and it was rubbing. But, despite my best efforts to try and see without taking the tire back off, I just couldn’t tell. So, up went the truck on the jackstand and off came the tire. Turns out the squeal tab was fine, but being able to see the caliper assembly I immediately ID’d the problem. There’s this little “clip” thing, two of them actually, that sit where each brake pad clamps in. I don’t know what they’re for, they’re tiny little thin things that serve no immediately recognizable purpose to me. Anyway, I must’ve unseated the bottom one, and it had gotten lodged between the rotor and it’s housing. Off came the caliper, on went the “clip” thing, and the whole thing went back together.

The next victory lap was blissfully silent and smooth. Success.

Goodnight.

Posted on

gremlins


Halloween this year was ultimately frustrating. From the moment I got home, things went wrong. There were literally (literally!) a group of kids running around my yard a good 30min before dark, just projecting that Halloween anticipation.

And it was with that example of youthful expectation fresh in my mind that I set about getting things dialed in just right for the evening’s parade of candy-whores. First up, I had to fix the dangling blacklight that illuminates the crank ghost, as it had fallen (for the billionth time) off of it’s ceiling-mounted screws. While up on the ladder in the fading daylight, I noticed that the crank ghost herself had gotten wrapped up in her motor pretty badly – so I untangled the mess and set her straight. Next it was off to get the witch turned around to face her spotlight, as the wind had spun her around and had her facing the wall. A witch’s back is a lot less scary that her wart-nosed profile.

Next up, PicoBoo’s connection to my speaker was touchy and every once in a while would vibrate loose and emit an unbearably loud buzzing. Fixed that, and came back out to find the ghost – now working under motorized power – had spun herself right up into knots again, and with the motor driving, had completely bent her rotating puppet arm. Beyond repair, I unplugged the motor and settled for a static prop. Finally, after about the 3rd sortie of trick-or-treaters, the string controlling the ceiling dropper snapped right in two. I had no option but to clumsily break out the ladder and attempt to do nighttime repairs while the kids were forced to maneuver around me. After several minutes of cussing and swearing and sweating, I had a rough working fix that would have to suffice.

But despite all the drama and prop-fallout, things went off OK. Once again, we had a pitiful turnout, handing out candy to what I’d estimate was about 25 total trick-or-treaters, and that’s a generous accounting. So, the night itself was somewhat of an anticlimax… but I still enjoy the holiday. Moving on from Halloween then…

Lately, I’ve become quite enamored with the “Deep Tracks” channel on XM radio. I don’t pay for XM, but I get a pretty sizeable chunk of their offerings as some freebie piggyback on top of my DirecTV. My old buddy Kyle has been telling me now for two years that “satellite is the future of radio, Dave,” and maybe he’s right. Still though, I don’t want to pay for radio. And even though my “free” XM doesn’t come with anything as hip as Sirius’s “Left of Center,” I’m really into the unique tracks they seem to play on “Deep Cuts.” No, I wouldn’t pay for it – but to hear things like a Leon Russell cover of George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” is kinda refreshing.

Goodnight.

Posted on

feeding at the trough


Good Monday morning to you, readers. This was a heck of a weekend. My parents in town, Keaton’s first night away from mom and dad, and our 4th annual Halloween bash. We had a great time, and the party seemed to go off swimmingly – a rousing success by my standards. And, since it’s now 11pm on Sunday night, it feels like midnight, I’m still on the hook for posting Keaton’s regular weekly updates, and I want to get the costume contest gallery up for the party – the entry is gonna be lean today. This paragraph, which only serves to setup the links to the Halloween and Keaton galleries, and then the little one below about my fortuitous Saturday evening e-mail surprise, and that’s it. So, sorry for the slim pickins, but I did what I could, and here’s the bulk of it:

Halloween 2006 Costume Contest. Use the voting stars to rank your favorites, and don’t forget to comment.
Keaton’s week thirty-three gallery. No voting, but a whole lotta cute baby.

In closing, I checked my gmail account Saturday night and was thrilled nearly to Christmas morning tears to see in my inbox an invite to one of the underweb’s best-kept tunes-downloading secrets. And even though I’ve mentioned it here before by name, becoming a member has encouraged me to use discretion. Anyway, some kind user had taken the time to toss an invite my way, and I immediately used it to setup an account. Now, I must say that, due to the skyrocketing visibility of what is probably the scene’s most prolific private tracker, I am a bit leery of even using the account. Honestly, the whole nature of trackers and IPs and whatnot is scary to me – but the content is just sooo good. I suppose I’ll use it, y’know, here and there…

Until tomorrow, then. Look for Halloween candids later in the week as I get downloads from various cameras. Goodnight.

Posted on

q&a


Tuesday night, but tomorrow is my Friday – as Ben’s wedding sees me taking both Thursday and Friday off to do my groomsmenly duties. Can’t wait, should be awesome fun and drunk-relaxing to boot.

You know, a few months ago when I finally decided to add my e-mail address to the sidebar of sounds familiar, I wondered at first if anyone even noticed. Then, the mails trickled in. They were simple at first, although I got the occasional nugget. Over time though, I feel I’ve collected enough of these gems to assemble a choice little review. So, here we go friends, a rundown of what I feel are some of the best e-mails I’ve got as a result of my blog entries:


Did this really happen? (written in response to my poop entry)

Why yes, it really did. My old college roommate at the time even confirmed it here. I assure you that I really did spend an afternoon cleaning feces off the floor, wall, and ceiling.

i like to be gay with u, and in some of ur blogs u sound like u might b ok with it?

Sure! You’ve keenly picked up on the obvious homosexual undercurrents in my writing. Let’s meet sometime in real life and see if we get along. Maybe then, and only if you’re cute, can you be gay with me. I want to make it clear that, while I’m not 100% gay, e-mailing me random propositions is probably the best way to increase your odds.

Chinese people make me nervous, they always look like they will rob you. How can you relax there? (written in response, I think, to my entries on trips to Asia)

Well, you’re right – Asian people certainly do come across all back-alley thug, don’t they?. But, you have to work through it if you want to really connect on a global scale. Look, I’ve been to Taiwan like, ten times, or something – and I’ve only been stabbed twice (and one of those was with a chopstick, so that doesn’t even really count). Plus if you’re able to conquer your fears, the Asian tail is saweeeet.

Your daughter and wife are beautiful, but your fat and your hair is thin.

You have keen powers of perception, dear reader. I am indeed a bit oafish, and a good bit of my hair has gone the way of the dodo. I also agree heartily that my wife and daughter are some of God’s finest creations. However, I have a very logical explanation for it all: Panties shake loose in fits of laughter around me.

I can’t believe you think that fukken album is good, you must have retardness of the brain and cancer of the ear and a permanent shittaste in your mouth from all the shit you listen to. You are a dick idoit bitch. (written in response to this entry)

Whoa, padner… slooow your roll here. What gives you the right to criticize my taste in music?! I have a blog, you idiot, and that makes me an expert on whatever I deem myself an expert of. I won’t let your negativity impact my genius, I just won’t.

I think I also have this allergy. Did you ever feel itchy in the shower after football? (written in response to this entry)

Football? Shower?

do u go to mihs? i think i am who blew u in the field. (written in response to this entry)

Wow, where to start on this one – this is probably my favorite one to date. First off, no, I didn’t go to “MIHS.” Second, I’m preeety sure you’re not the girl I was, uhhh, writing about. Your first clue should have been the fact that you seem to be writing about events which transpired relatively recently, while I, on the other hand, am writing about something which happened in my storied past. Wow.

You could do this much easier with real robots. (written in response to this entry)

“Real” robots? Now why didn’t I think of that?

Brilliant! I showed this 2 my youth group that my stopid mom makes me go 2!! (written in response to this entry)

Just what I need on St. Peter’s roll when I show up, spreading heresy to impressionable kids. Seriously though, don’t take anything you read on the internet as gospel. In fact, don’t even take the gospel as gospel – question everything and you’ll be better for it.

Lately, my el-cheapo Pioneer receiver has started to tick me off. Thing is, I don’t even do anything with it. I don’t have a CD player hooked up anymore, it’s up in a box in the garage with my record player. I simply don’t listen to anything at home that’s not the free XM feeds that come with DirecTV, piped off the iPod, or playing from my hard drive – no need for all that media (in fact, all my already ripped CDs went into bins and subsequently into the rafters in this past weekend’s organization fit). Anyway, for some reason the damn thing has taken to enabling only the right speaker more often than not. Oh, the other speakers are still functional, the test tone confirms this, but they just don’t work. I fear an internal circuit inside the budget box has gone lame. Certainly not an insurmountable problem, but the whole thing just makes me think I’m being told it’s time to upgrade the whole A/V solution… plus stupid Pat keeps talking about the falling prices of flatscreens…

Well, that was nice. As for the rest of the week, I think I’ve got something creative planned for Thursday and Friday’s posts – if it works. For more good stuff today, pop over and read this piece – it’s a good one.

Goodnight.

Posted on

coffee and pizza


Hey hey Thursday again, and I’ve written nary a word as the clock tick-tick-ticks towards 8pm. I could be working on the new tombstones, but I’m not. Usually, when I come home from work, I take everything out of my pockets, peel of my shoes and socks and get down to a pair of shorts and my undershirt and then collect my cellphone and head to the living room. When I forget my cellphone on the dresser, I can’t hear it from the front part of the house. So, I end up missing calls. Later, when I find my cellphone and see how many missed calls I have I rarely return any phone calls, and even more rarely listen to the pileup of voicemails. I don’t know why I don’t listen to voicemail, I guess I have some notion that, if people want to talk to me or tell me something, they’ll probably call back. I know it’s a dick point of view, but if you’ll remember I’ve never actually said I wasn’t a dick.

Today I came home for lunch and made a pizza, those frozen oven kind with a french bread crust. I had four of the smallish pieces and some soda before playing with Keaton for a while, kissing her forehead, and heading back to a packed day at the office. When I came home, I decided to once again not mow the lawn (this is perhaps my longest dereliction of the duty), and I held and kissed and played with the baby a little more before Sharaun left for a “girls night out” with friends. On my own for dinner, I surveyed the options: leftover spaghetti (my go-to, always works, never tired of it meal), leftover sausage and peppers (but I’d have to cook some rice to put it on), or the remaining slices of the very pizza I had for lunch. Faced with the choices, I went with pizza. So, today, I had coffee and pizza; that’s it. Coffee and pizza do not fine-dining make, my friends. Not by far.

Update: Seems Apple fixed the artwork issue with the release of iTunes 7.0.2, read here to find out how I got my artwork back. Read on for my original entry.

Anyone else having issues with their 5G iPod not showing album art anymore after firmware 1.2 and/or iTunes 7.0.1? I consider the album artwork display feature to be one of the better “perks” of the iPod, but also one of the most poorly implemented. Why do some MP3s with embedded artwork just “work,” while the iPod seems to ignore others? Why do I have to uncheck the “show artwork” and then recheck it to get the iPod to “optimize artwork” so it’ll display properly? Should the damn thing “optimize” it when I drop the files onto it? Why did the new firmware/iTunes break artwork for newly-added albums?

Last night, I tried to fix this and the damn thing ate all my lovingly added artwork and now I can’t get it back. Oh, it’s still embedded in the files – it shows up in iTunes, just not on the iPod. I was so angry, I just laughed. Yeah, I was that mad. This website says I should “remove all the tracks” from my iPod and then “re-synchronize it.” Great, except I don’t use the “synchronize library” feature, I manually manage the songs and have no established library with which I can re-synchronize (the measly 60GB that is my iPod represents a mere fraction of my entire music collection). Moreover, there’s no “approved” way to get the tracks currently on my iPod off my iPod so I can re-add them. I guess, I’ll use SharePod to take all the songs off my iPod, blank it out, and then re-add them through iTunes 7.0.1. Yeah, I’ll do that when I have 3hrs to spare…

I’m not the only one either, others are also struggling with album art issues in 7.0. Anyway, I’m hoping somone will hit this page with a Google search for the subphrases “artwork shows in iTunes” and “not on iPod,” and comment here with a quick-fix because this…

If you are in manual mode, the ONLY way to put artwork back onto your iPod right now is to add the artwork to the song in iTunes and then re-transfer those tracks back to your iPod. The artwork can be added either manually or automatically, but it must be added to the file in iTunes and then the file transferred to the iPod.

…is bullshit. Goodnight.