Category: tech

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

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steerage no more


Mowed the lawn after work today, by the grace of daylight savings time. I had been looking forward to it, not only because it was badly needed, but because I would get to try out my new E2c headphones in a situation where it’s notoriously difficult to hear music over ambient noise. I was amazed… the normally overpowering rumble of the mower’s motor was reduced to a barely audible background drone. I could hear every note of even the softest songs the iPod shuffled up – it was like I was sealed off from the world. Man, I love those things. Getting out in the sun with crisp tunes in my ear and a brown bandana tied ’round my head really helped to force the cobwebs of work out of my head. Work has been… cruel… lately, neverending. I’m ready for my trip to Germany, but only because I won’t be in the office every day.

I feel like a fool, y’all. All this time I kept wondering why my VIP 100k mileage status on United hasn’t been garnering me more upgrades. Then, today, I was browsing my mileage account on United’s website and I noticed a link called “E Upgrade Summary.” Hmmm… what’s that all about, I wondered. Turns out, I have this massive stockpile of e-upgrades just sitting there… accruing with me being none the wiser. They are wholly separate of my miles, different animals altogether – just plain old “free” upgrades. Turns out I have 14,000 miles in “bump one service class” upgrades for domestic flights, and 6 “bump one service class” for international flights. I was stunned. All the time, these things have just been sitting there. I flew three times last week, and could’ve been 1st class every time, had I only known. Needless to say, I used one of my international bump privileges to get into business and 1st class on my trip to Germany next week. What’s more, because I’m a 100k flier they don’t disappear when the expire, United actually converts them into miles straight up… I’ll never fly coach again.

I had stuff written last night, but it blew – and I worked until midnight.

Tonight, I didn’t do that. Goodnight.

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all the better to hear you with


Almost 8pm on a Monday night and it’s still light out. I love this time of year, when I can still have light enough to mow the lawn after work. In fact, I think I’ll do just that tomorrow evening – get this jungle of a yard under control before I leave next Monday for Munich. It’s hard to stay on top of a yard when unending rain not only prevents you from mowing, but also works like grass-steroids.

I was actually hoping for a slight respite at work this week, maybe a break from the pace set by my last pre-travel week. Looks like I’ll have no such luck. Things are intense, and look like they’ll remain that way for a while actually. Being a manager is starting to become a little easier, I think I’m getting slightly better at it. I still have a lot to learn, and I think I’ll only take the lessons to heart when they’re real-world things, as all the training and scenario-play can’t really build experience like real experience can. Good at my job or not, I’m certainly consumed by it of late… I think this week will be another storm right up until Friday. I am, however, excited about the trip to Germany… work or not, I’m planning on having a grand time regardless.

Germany! Too bad I’ll be one week too late to miss this show where one of my favorite bands of last year is supporting the Stars, who I’d love to see again too, consequently.

I learned something in recent travels-by-air: I hate my current iPod earbud solution. Having quickly abandoned the ubiquitous stock white iPod earbuds, I’d been using an over-the-ear pair a friend bought to replace a pair he’d lost. They were nice, but they hurt my ear after just a short while. I must have sensitive ears, or not understand how to use traditional earbuds properly… because the vast majority I’ve tried end up leaving my ears sore in short order. Previously, I thought I’d found the solution in those over-ear foam ones (not in-ear, they just rest round foam speakers against the ear). However, on a plane, or mowing a lawn, or doing anything where ambient noise is a detracting factor – they just don’t cut it. You really need that in-ear isolation that earbuds can give to get rid of the outside stuff. And, with my long flight to Germany looming – I figured it was time to get serious and drop the requisite dough to get a decent pair of earbuds.

So, having some Best Buy gift cards stored up – I hit the web to check the reviews. Confident in my research, I went in today after work fully intending to buy the reasonably-priced Sony MDR-EX71SL earbuds. I instead left with a pair of $100 Shure E2c earbuds. I know, $100 for earbuds? But man, let me assure you these things are amazing (and I only paid $30 for them after the gift cards anyway). When they are wedged in, you hear absolutely nothing – Shure’s “sound isolating” tagline isn’t just marketing fluff. I had Sharaun scream at me while listening to the Allman Brothers belt out “Dreams” live at Ludlow – and heard nary a peep, just watched her mouth open in a wide, soundless wail. The bass response is amazing for such little things, and they’re surprisingly comfortable for how “stuck” in your ear they have to be to work right. It is taking me a little while to get used to the increased pressure in my ear, which is a product of the tight seal they rely on – and I can actually “feel” the flex of the small waves of air in my ear canal. But man, even as I sit and type this while doing an extended-listening comfort test, I can’t hear a single keystroke over whatever Deep Purple track the iPod has shuffled to.

Goodnight friends, I’ve no more in me this evening.

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out of dry dock and recommissioned


Saturday saw me forgoing my regular weekend cleanup, instead spending hours prying compact discs and their artwork out of jewel cases, rubber-banding them together between two slabs of cardboard, and packing them for sale. It was a bittersweet moment, as years of my life were wrenched from their comfortable plastic homes and piled neatly in stacks. Soon I’ll send them away for good, banish them to the “used” shelves at some NYC secondhand shop. I think they knew we were about to part ways, as their colorful artwork and shiny finishes silently asked me, “Why, Dave? After all this time, you’re just selling us off? We though we had something together, an arrangement, as it were… what happened to the Dave that blew his paychecks to get us? You’ve changed man… you’ve changed.”

I’ll be sad to see ’em go, but if I end up using the money as I plan (for Lasik), I’m sure I won’t regret it. Funny thing is, even after selling off some ~600 discs, I’m still left with an overwhelming amount that I didn’t sell (didn’t sell any of my Beatles & related bootlegs, which total about ~600 in and of themselves, and didn’t sell anything that was a traded-for CD-R copy from my old swappin’ days). The occasion was so momentous, that I decided to capture it for posterity – check out the pictures. (I’ve also decided that I’m going to start using the image gallery to store any future blog-supporting images, as it’s nice and cleaner than just posting images inline here).

Sunday morning I awoke to find the Easter Bunny had visit the night before while I slept. In my multicolored woven basket, he’d left the oddest array of Easter trinkets I’ve yet to see: a green plastic egg filled with Snickers, I carton of bubblegum eggs, lingerie, a bottle of champagne, tingly condoms, and KY “warming liquid.” I tell ya what, waking up to that kind of Easter basket after a proverbial “40 years in the desert” can do wonders for a man’s faith. With any luck, I’ll be able to celebrate two “resurrections” today.

This weekend, the hip-hop station Sharaun kicks most of the time was doing an all-gospel Easter Sunday. This got Sharaun and I talking about the stark dichotomy of the hip-hop culture: fuckin’, shootin’, and boozin’ on one side of the fence, and the Lord God on the other. Hip-hop folks may love their Lord, but they sure seem to love freakin’ and hustlin’ just as much. I’ve always got a chuckle when hardcore rap folks win awards for songs like “Take This Dick” and get up to thank Jesus and their grandmothers. I could never thank my grandmother for being my inspiration if my output was all about “gettin’ sloppy head in the back of a Benz,” and I’d be afraid Jesus might throw a lightning bolt at me if I did. For a good example of what I’m talking about, peep some lyrics to the new Nick Cannon song (for the record, I have no idea who Nick Cannon is – Sharaun brought this exemplary nugget to me this weekend and it fit perfect here):

Who you know a gigolo and still Christian?

Here, Mr. Cannon is stating that he’s not only a gigolo, but is also a Christian. That’s good, because without that setup, one might not catch the Godly undertones throughout the remainder of the song:

Cuz you know da Cannon be flashin, I’m gettin’ more head then an aspirin
At the strip club got me throwing singles tonight
Now she a born again vixen with some dick in her life
Sex real loud next room they can hear us
I’m lookin for a dime who can take the whole 9″
Check the sex tapes if you think I’m lyin’

“More head than aspirin?” Am I the only one who thinks that doesn’t make any sense? Must be some obscure biblical reference, Mr. Canon being the fervent Christian he is.

Goodnight my friends, until tomorrow.

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all aboard


Seeing as work-related duties brought sounds familiar to a grinding halt last week, causing me to miss both Thursday and Friday, I figured I better write Monday’s entry on Saturday (which I’m now doing). I’ll be leaving tomorrow (Sunday, for those still not grasping the temporality here) for Texas, the beginning of my US-tour of customers. Like I said in an earlier entry, I’m not actually presneting the material Monday, nor am I presenting Wednesday (the second visit), nay – I don’t present until Friday. However, I’m still sweating the visits as if I were presenting – since I have a feeling I won’t just be the guy in the back of the room. Either way, I don’t really want to leave… not looking forward to being away from the baby, even if for just a few days. Speaking of the baby, this seems like a good spot to link to her freshly-updated gallery: Keaton’s gallery.

The work continues on my MP3 library: I’ve established a process that works well to ensure all the new stuff I rip/get is up to standards – normalizing them to 89dB with MP3Gain and importing album art using the aptly named Album Cover Art Downloader. The album art application is actually outstanding, as you can take any image you can find online and simply drag if from a webpage onto an album. This means that pesky albums like bootlegs and obscure releases can be manually tagged with artwork by simply googling and dragging. As part of the my library improvement, I moved all songs off my iPod (using SharePod, because *#&^$#*!! iTunes only sees the iPod about 20% of the time, on good days), normalized them, added artwork to them all, and then put them back on. A little reorganization with the help of Tag & Rename and the Godfather, and my tunes are now better off than they’ve ever been. Time to backup the RAID array… just in case.

While waiting countless hours while my music library was tweaking, I decided to pop in the Neverending Story DVD Sharaun bought for me months back. I never realized how damn awesome the soundtrack to that film is. It’s one thing to have a radical fantasy story with flying dog-monsters and super-hot chilld empresses… but to have a kickass soundtrack on top of it is almost too good to be true. Sounding like the inspiration for everything M83’s recently put on wax, the backing music paints a fantasy soundscape that’s unmistakably 80s with it’s flat, hollow digital percussion and synthesizer. I need to get that crap on the iPod, it’s freakin’ timeless I tell ya… timeless.

Well, that brings us to a close my dear friends. Not much substance I’m afraid, but at least you can check out Keaton’s gallery. Until Tuesday…

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all the better to see you with


Sunday afternoon and I’m done mowing both lawns before wunderground.com tells me the approaching clouds plan to loose their loads. Mowing with haste under the threat of grey skies makes a man sweat, warrants a shower before he heats up some leftover fajitas for lunch.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m gonna wake up and head into work early tomorrow, give myself a couple “bonus” hours on the day. I don’t like to do this, but the week ahead dictates it I’m afraid. I’d planned on working some tonight, getting that head start, but I have fundamental thing against using my weekend to do work. I know, if my issue is with work cutting into “my time,” the weekend or pre-8am are the same. I don’t think it’s that though, it’s more: work for five days, rest for two. Don’t work on those two, just don’t. So it ends up being that I don’t mind pulling longer hours during the “work week,” as long as I can sufficiently atrophy over the weekend.

Folks, I’ve decided what I’m going to do with the loot I’ll get from selling off my CDs (a shoddy, never-finished, out-of-date and incorrect webpage explaining this can be found here). Yup, that $1300 was calling all kinds of things out to me: HDTV, Keaton’s college education, downpayment on a new vehicle, etc. But, while showering Saturday morning it hit me: I’m going to use the money to get Lasik surgery. Last time I went to the optometrist, he casually mentioned that I’d be a great candidate for the newest Lasik procedure (apparently even less invasive, or something), and that piqued my interest. Plus, it seems that, within the past year, my eyes have grown less and less tolerant of contact lenses – I used to not even know they were in, and now I can’t stand them after ~12hrs.

Anyway, ever since the idea graced my brain, it’s been all I can think of. The thought of camping or hiking or going to a concert and not having my contacts dry out and bug me, not having to deal with my eyes tiring of them each evening – I’m so pumped. I think my vision plan will actually match a certain percentage up to an amount, and I plan on checking into it tomorrow (today, as you read this). I’m actually really excited, and would do this before I left for Germany if there was any way to… but I doubt it. As it is now, I really am going to try and get something scheduled as soon as I get back – this bug has really bitten me. I keep thinking how awesome it’ll be to be able to wake up and see again, no more worrying about fumbling for my glasses when that burglar breaks in before I can aim my gun and cap him.

This weekend, I set out to make my mp3 collection all the better. By normalizing the volume not just of individual files, but all my files relative to each other. Most MP3 normalizers just adjust individual mp3s to a peak level within each file, but not necessarily relative to other files in that album, or other files from other albums. This used to confuse the crap out of me, I’d normalize my files to 89dB thinking now I wouldn’t have to adjust the volume on the iPod when switching from the Moody Blues to Nine Inch Nails… but t wouldn’t work like I wanted it to – the Moody Blues were still half a spin of the knob quieter than Trent. Then, this weekend, I discovered the open-source MP3Gain, which allows you to normalize all your albums to an average 89dB while preserving each file’s relative album volume (i.e. it doesn’t just “amp” all the songs on an album to a certain volume). This little program is awesome, and it’s volume adjustments are not only lossless, they’re completely undo-able should they break something (MP3Gain stores some undo info in the mp3 tag itself). I also used Zortam to auto-import album cover art from Amazon for my entire collection. Took all weekend, but now I just have to completely empty the iPod and repopulate it with the volume-corrected albums… bummer, but worth it.

It’s nearing the end now, running out of steam. Let’s finish this off with a random bit I wrote Saturday.

I thought the local Tapei newpaper’s April Fool’s joke was pretty good. They pretended to “out” a top-secret government weapons program based on betel nut spit, or Operation Bin Lang Fen Nu. I’ve written about betel nut before, so just the fact that I “got” the joke made it funny for me. The device is described as “an aerosol-dispersal device to shower enemy positions with red betel-nut juice, leaving enemy personnel feeling slightly ill, while possessing them with an uncontrollable desire to sing at a KTV.”

Goodnight.

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invested


I love my blog; I really do. Sometimes, I just point Firefox towards it at random times during the day. I’ll re-read my own posts maybe three times during each given workday. Sometimes I do it under the guise of “looking for errors,” but really I just like reading my own stuff – I’m that full of myself. Every night, I check the day’s blog stats: who visited, how long they stayed, what they’re reading and searching for; I eat it up. During the day, I’ll take quick notes on my cellphone, things I want to write about (yesterday my cellphone chirped at 6pm, flashing a cryptic two-word reminder: “island sex”). I like to imagine people reading it and smiling or laughing, I like to imagine the little green s|f icon sitting in peoples’ favorites. I like to imagine people thinking, “I wonder what Dave wrote today.” I like all these things because I’m arrogant, conceited, and self-centered – traits which I think a good portion of bloggers likely share (blogs are for an audience, after all). I don’t care though, I still love my blog – and see no end to it, even as we march onward towards three years together.

This weekend, I sent off a note to an online used CD store. In it, I included a text list of all the titles I’ve ripped and verified from my extensive collection – and asked what kind of price they’d give me for the lot of ’em (some ~500 discs). Their original offer came in a tad low, so I countered and raised by about ~$400. In the end, it looks like I’ll be lucky to make ~$3 per CD upon selling them. Surprisingly, this doesn’t disappoint me that much… I mean, I’m done with these plastic things, they’ve served me well, and certainly given me $15 worth of entertainment over the years – if I can get 20% resale on them after all this time and use, who am I to balk at it? So, in the end, I’ll be dumping nearly half my collection (the other half being mostly Beatles, bootlegs, or CD-R copies of albums I accumulated via online trading) for roughly ~$1500. That’s a $1500 windfall, as far as I’m concerned. Plus, I get rid of ~100lbs of plastic and paper and can sell my specialized CD racks on Craigslist. All in the spirit of simplifying, well that and a corrupt “make a copy and then sell it” sense of capitalism.

Don’t tell anyone, but I bet I got at least 100 of those CDs by scamming the Columbia House and BMG music clubs. Back in middle/high school, I’d join up each service multiple times, under multiple pseudonyms with fake variation addresses of my folks’ house (y’know, Ian Ichamore in “suite B” and the like). I must’ve been a member of each club four or five times over, sometimes maintaining several memberships simultaneously, each one garnering my 12 free CDs. But Dave, what about the commitments you had to fulfill to get out of the club? How could you keep getting the free discs without buying anything? Easy, I had a few standard excuse letters that worked brilliantly each time. My favorite was the, “I’m in the US Navy and am spending the next 16mos aboard a carrier in the Pacific.” I also used the, “I’m in the Army and have been relocated to Japan/Germany/South Africa” bit – but usually my excuses involved compulsory military service – so as to lay on the guilt should I not be absolved of my commitments. Worked like a charm every time. (Dang! I thought I already wrote about this!)

Like the day I discovered I’d been spelling the word “won’t” wrong for my entire life, yesterday I realized that, in my some 30 years of writing, I’ve been using the word “desert” to mean both an arid, dry/hot area of land, and a sweet post-meal confection. Somewhere along the lines, the lesson about there being two Ses in “dessert” missed me. As of tonight, I’ve gone back through the entire blog and rid myself of this embarrassing faux-pas. Isn’t my face red.

Goodnight my friends.

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nap in a hammock


I can feel the weather starting to turn: a little warmer with each day, trudging slowly through Spring on our way to what’s sure to be another sweltering Northern California Summer. Every time I go outside in the evening to take out the trash, or, recycling, if you’re more eco-sensitive, I get a little more anxious for my first Summer with a backyard. Oh, and I’ve got plans; I’ve got hammocks to string up and benches to build, foliage and flowers and groundcover to plant, and garden-boxes to build and seed. I want strawberries and maybe corn and tomatoes and fresh herbs; maybe cucumbers and squash or maybe even a watermelon or two. I want summer naps in the hammock, beer in-hand while the iPod shuffles my favorite songs over the speakers and the sun shines. Am I dreaming? I can have this, right?

While reassembling my PC after dropping in my new RAID array, I took the time to throw in a friend-donated PCI card to parallel port (so I can use my trusty laser printer, which has been sitting idle since I upgraded to a legacy-free PC), and I took a chance and re-hooked up my old DVD burner which I disconnected long ago when thought it failed. Turned out, the drive is fine – and I’m back to having a decent speed DVD burner again. Not only that, I removed a PCI Firewire card that I never use, as well as the swappable drive bay hard drive caddy thing that I also never use. Stripped down and back to health, the machine is running like a champ again. Not only that, but the PATA drives that make up my new RAID5 array seem to run much, much cooler than the SATA drives of my old RAID0+1. Don’t know why, but I do know it’s better for the drives and everything in that case. Sorry for the nerd talk, I write what I do.

Travel coming up for work, taking me away from Keaton for the first time. I’ll be doing a US tour in early April: Texas, South Carolina, and Colorado. Then I’m off for a few days in Germany later in April, I think four or five once all is said and done. My first time in Germany, or Europe, for that matter – I’m pretty excited, but leery leaving Sharaun alone with the baby. I know she can take care of herself, I just feel bad taking off and romping ’round the world while she stays home and does the mom thing. I’m also a little worried about the material I’ll be presenting, as, for the first time in a looong time, I’m not the one developing it. Presenting something you created is one thing, but presenting something borne of someone else’s mind and organizational/content-flow preferences is another thing altogether. I just want to make sure I have time to get comfortable with the stuff before I’m up in front of a group of Germans parroting it. Germany!

I guess it’s time to go to bed, I’m not doing any good here anyway. Goodnight.