Category: tech

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

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the mountainfolk of wal mart


Long entry today, some boring some not. Hit it:

This weekend I up and torrent’d the entire Dick’s Picks series, which I already own, but figured would take longer to rip than just download. I wonder if that’s illegal? Likely so. Anyway, now that my “big storage” has evolved to 3/4 of a terabyte, I don’t mind holding multiple gigs of Dead shows – it was harder to stomach previously when >10% of my entire drive was live Dead shows. The Dead have always been pretty progressive with their intellectual property: allowing taping, abiding trading tents, restoring and releasing live shows on CD and radio broadcasts, etc. They even offer digital downloads on their website, in multiple formats – including FLAC and WMA-lossless. Pretty much anything you can buy, you can download (prices are equivalent to buying the actual discs). Not bad dead, hopefully we’ll see more of this. I’d honestly think I’d be more likely to purchase digital copies of albums than buy CDs – maybe it’s because online money seems all “virtual” and just spends easy…

New dads out out there, especially those of little girls, I got a question for ya: How’d you get back into… taking care of business? I mean, dang… the third trimester was… slow, at best; and the doctors, in their infinite wisdom, mandate a six week moratorium post-baby. So, how? How? When? Where? For crap’s sake, I have trouble when the cat saunters into my action – I can just feel those judgemental green eyes on me whenever she’s in the room. Aware of even cat eyes, you can imagine what having an infant daughter in the house is like – it’s just not fair. I’m reminded of the opening scene from American Beauty: a father, starting off his day in the way I’m sure many fathers occasionally do… at least that gives me hope that one day I’ll learn to live within these strange new boundaries which have been imposed upon me. There, I wrote around the whole thing – had that drafted for a couple weeks and was just trying to find a less-sensational way to do it. I think I managed it, eh?

This weekend, I lost a good bit of the hate I’ve been harboring in my heart for Wal Mart. I hate Wal Mart, get the “creepies” simply walking those carny-filled aisles, staring up at the double-overhead stacks of cheap, Made in China, merchandise. I’d be willing to wager that even the Wal Marts in the Hamptons is full of gut-over-pantline, sparsely-toothed, barefoot mountainfolk (I don’t know what “mountains” have to do with this, but the word “mountainfolk” was too awesome not to get into this sentence). Anyway, let’s move off my hatred (lest it return with a vengeance), and get onto my newfound appreciation for the small-business-raping beast.

Sharaun and I have several family members who are computer… challenged. All the digital pictures in the world mean nothing to someone who can’t check e-mail. These people can’t be bothered to log onto the internet, they’re probably too busy getting up to flip their LPs over, filling their iceboxes from the truck that comes by, and hauling their wash back and forth to the stream. Making fun of old-timers aside, it really is a shame that we couldn’t get some visual aids to our kin, and I figured, in this digital age, there must be a way to transmute these new-fangled “paperless daguerreotypes” into something our dinosaur relatives could enjoy. Wal Mart to the rescue! Wal Mart allowed us to upload pictures of our choosing and print them at any store across this great nation. Our e-nothing family could then crank over the horseless carriage, strap on their motoring goggles, and sputter right in and pick them up – pre-paid for by us. The prints are excellent, and the price is right. Using Wal Mart’s handy service, we were able to get photos in the hands of our family in hours, thus moving Keaton from their imaginations right onto their refrigerators.

Wal Mart, I take back (some) of those nasty things I said about you. Who cares if you smell like Filet-o-Fish because there are McDonalds’s inside of you? And, where in the rule book does it say cashiers should be able to make complete sentences with their mouths? Nowhere, that’s where. Anyway, I hope you’ll forgive me… I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t buy 1000 nightlights for 17¢.

Wait wait wait – I started this whole “we can print pictures from Wal Mart” deal to talk about some great new software I found. Let me explain: when there’s not enough natural light for photos, most people like to use the flash. I hate the flash on my camera, it’s too “flashy,” and paints the photos in some eerie, undead glow. So, I tend to turn on all the artificial lights in the room and take the photos in manual mode at a higher ISO speed equivalency. This works great, but the indoor lights tend to make the photos yellow (a white-balancing issue). I used to live with this, because the yellow tint isn’t all that unattractive, I had no idea how to fix it, and it’s still worlds better than the flash. Just recently, I discovered the “tungsten” white-balance setting on my camera. This special white-balancing mode for indoor, tungsten-type, bulbs completely eliminates the yellow tinge to my flashless photos. Using manual mode with white-balance in tungsten mode, and the ISO speed set to 400 – I can take great flashless photos that mimic natural light and are well balanced in terms of color. This makes me extremely happy.

Wait wait wait – I started this whole “I found the right way to white-balance” deal so I could talk about some great new software I found. Since Sharaun had grown tired of yellow-tinted baby photos, the tungsten-balancing was just what I needed to appear a baby-documenting genius. Problem solved for the future, I now wanted to try and address the yellowy images we’d already taken. Used to be, back in the day before I got clean, I’d use my pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop and choose “auto levels” and “auto contrast” to do quick fixes on poorly shot photographs. However, since I went all freeware and open-source, I don’t have a “one click” photo fixit app. Enter the app that spurred the last four paragraphs of tangential blather: PhotoFiltre. Talk about a full-featured photo editing application, this thing does things both novices and experts would expect to pay dollars for – and it’s completely free for personal/non-commercial use. Installing it merely for its automatic level/contrast controls – I was blown away by what all it could do. If you’re looking for a nice, free photo retouch/editing tool (not necessarily a Photoshop replacement, for that use the GIMP) – this is it.

By the way (nerd stuff ahead), that “Dave goes freeware” thread I linked above is pretty out of date. CDBurnerXP Pro is still great, but the Cheetah software is probably just as nice and slicker looking. There’s now a completely viable free alternative to Norton Ghost by way of DriveImage XML installed on a WinPE bootable disc (try Bart’s WinPE) – although TrueImage is still good if you want to make runtime backups. And, turns out the K-Lite stuff has some bootlegged junk in it, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t need it if you run VLC Media Player. And FileZilla is better than WSFTP LE. So, there you go – a little freeware update for the conscientious nerds out there.

Goodnight.

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that’s no lie


I’ve truly, truly got nothing today… debated even posting what little I did have – mostly cobbled together from one-sentence notes I hadn’t had the time to develop over the week. Tonight some friends were over, part of the feed-the-new-parents drive. While here, they held and heaped praise upon our new daughter. After they left, we both talked about how much we love hearing people fawn over her. I swear I can already see her changing: bushier eyebrows and longer lashes, fuller hair and a rounder face – and more active all the time. And, anyway, she’s deserving of such prattling on – I’m convinced.

In part, I hate that awesome albums are always so short. Then again, maybe the shortness actually helps with the awesomeness… afterall statistics do dictate that the more music there is, the better the chance some of it will blow. Short and sweet, maybe that’s what it’s about. Anyway, this new Tapes ‘n Tapes album is short, I mean, like, I listened to it maybe… 700 times today, so much that I now hate it – to death. I seriously don’t want to hear it again until listen 1 of 700 tomorrow morning ’round 8am – and that’s no lie.

Know what I hate about the iPod? I hate that, after playback has been paused, hitting the play/pause button doesn’t immediately restart playback. Nay, it instead “wakes up” the iPod, whereupon it returns to its paused state. This means I have to hit play/pause twice to make the music happen again… and that’s unacceptable. Hey Apple, you think I have time to hit buttons twice? I’m a busy young guy, money to spend, and fickle tastes – show me a digital music player where the buttons do what they say on press #1 and I may just take my dollars elsewhere.

I don’t want to write, don’t really even know if I’m gonna end up posting this. Goodnight.

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guided by the divine


I completely kicked ass at work today, and feel damn good for doing so. In fact, today was one of the best work-days I’ve had in a long time – the planets all seemed to align for me, and things just kept falling into place as if guided by the divine. Coming off a day like that, and arriving home to this brand new food-to-poop-converter Sharaun and I gave life to, puts me in an exceptionally good mood. As I tick off items on my to-do list, my confidence grows. Taking time off for Keaton’s arrival put a more significant dent in that confidence than I’d originally thought.

You wouldn’t think two weeks away would be able to cause much pause, but for me, that feeling of being “out of it” that I described the other day really gnaws at me. I don’t feel right as a “manager” until I’m holding all the reigns of that team of horses before me. I know I’m to blame for my confidence waxing and waning in relation to relatively unrealistic factors, after all, I’m the one who sets these fairly ridiculous OCD-like requirements for myself (i.e. having to have “closure paths” for all the tasks before me before I can sleep easy), and they’re largely unnecessary – but I live and die by them regardless. For this obsessive behavior, I blame my dad. Thanks pops, I still love you.

I suppose it’s all related back to my self-confidence, or lack thereof. I’ve come to understand that my sense of self-assuredness and feeling of being “tied in,” or “in control,” is fairly brittle. Things that wouldn’t be specks of dust in the path for others can topple my cart. I’m not sure where this comes from. Since I was a kid, I think I’ve consciously undervalued myself out of a desire to seem humble. Understating achievements and strengths in front of an audience is natural for those attempting humility, but I think I actually undervalue myself to myself – which is different altogether. That little part of me that knows I’m smart and talented, and “better” than a lot of other people is shut-up tight in a cell at the back of my brain. I know it’s there, I let it have a little time in the yard every now and again – but for the most part I repress it, for whatever reason. This is just me: the not-so-subtle fake-humble guy.

Today I logged on to CNN to see a headline about how we (the USofA) arrested some Colombian drug badguys, which the US authorities have dubbed “narcoterrorists.” No, those aren’t the kind of terrorists that fall asleep suddenly and randomly, rather they are so named due to both their narcotic and terrorist activities. I think this is awesome. We’ve discovered a way to take someone who may be considered as a “vanilla” criminal, and equate him immediately with the likes of Al Qaeda. By simply by appending the root-word “terrorist” to their moniker, we knock the layer of ho-hum dust off their crimes and recast them as glamorous international fugitives. In celebration of our newfound way to arrest anyone we want using semantics, I terroristed up a few more common criminals – just to demonstrate how powerful a tactic this actually is. Check out these cutthroat thugs and tell me you don’t want to go all Operation Carpet Bomb on they asses:

  • jaywalkerrorists
  • atheierrorists
  • litterrorists
  • public intoxicaterrorists
  • terrorespassorists

Awesome, let’s round ’em up and send ’em to Gitmo, stat.

Nite.

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smarter, not harder


First off, I finally added some new pictures to Keaton’s gallery. Now onto the junk.

I walked out of work today to the kind crisp air that follows an afternoon of rain, that clean smell was on the wind – like everything had a good rinsing, and I could see my breath against the grey clouds. I plugged in the iPod and queued up the new Tapes ‘n Tapes album I’d “got” the day before. It’s no news to those who follow the indie buzz that the Tapes ‘n Tapes are the music blogs’ darlings this month, stealing at least some of the Arctic Monkeys arguably-underdeserved hype. Tonight’s our first night where we won’t make up tomorrow and have new or pre-existing guests in the house, our first night where, tomorrow, it’s us and the baby for the foreseeable future; bona-fide parents.

Work is hectic… frantic even. I’m speeding along trying to juggle things as best I can, trying to tie off all the loose ends. There are really three main states of “stuff to do” that I deal with at work, in order of painfulness:

  • Having a ton of stuff to do with no idea how I’m going to do it
  • Having a ton of stuff to do with clear ideas on how to get it done
  • Having everything done

When I got back from baby-vacation, I surveyed my task-landscape and took stock – my situation falling into the first class of “stuff to do” above. When I’m in this situation, things just flapping around with no closure in sight – that’s when I start freaking out. I feel out of control, aimless, at a loss and overwhelmed. I hate being in this situation. So, I start working. And that brings us to the present.

As of now, I’m somewhere in between the 1st two with my current “to do” list. The work I’m currently scrambling to do is merely plans for doing the actual work I have to do. As wrong, or backwards, as that may sound – I’ve learned it’s actually essential. For me, it’s easier to make a first-pass at the list, identifying paths to closure for everything and then acting on those paths in parallel, rather than taking them one item at a time serially. I think lots of people would begin attacking things one-by-one, closing each out in turn and moving to the next. I, however, like to take tasks like this and move them to my second stress-class: a pile of things to do with clear plans on how I’ll get each one done. Once I get there, I feel much better. Not only does it make me feel better, I actually believe it makes me work better. It’s like the Chinese acrobats who set plates spinning atop sticks: they run from stick to stick and get each plate spinning, then step back and watch for the first plates to being to slow and give them a second spin as they do. For me, it’s easier to manage several things at once, as long as the effort was put in up front to get them pointed in the right direction initially. I guess multitasking is just part of the modern workplace.

To close, some crumbs of stories:

I got my free iPod from freeipods.com the other day, or got Sharaun’s free iPod – since I’m now able to return the favor she did me a while back. In some respects, I can’t believe it actually came. And, they send a nifty t-shirt and mousepad to boot.

In other iPod news, although it’s been around for a while – I recently personally discovered the great iPod software SharePod. A 300k executable that you put on, and run from, your iPod. Once run, you have direct access to all music on the iPod, and can do everything you can with iTunes, and more: add songs to your library, delete songs from your library, play songs, and the most important – copy songs from your iPod to a PC (something iTunes doesn’t support). And, since ephpod hoses 5G ‘pods, this little piece of software is brilliant for getting your music back off your iPod. But, the real beauty of the app is the fact that it runs on the iPod, meaning you can plug your iPod into anyone’s computer and take/give music with ease – all without said person having to have any software installed on their end. Brilliant, just brilliant.

The Daily Show does Bush vs. Bush:

Also, I wanted to thank the fine folks over at Cheetah for sending me a free registration code for their great Cheetah DVD Burner software. Their policy is to send registration codes for links to their software, or kind reviews on download sites. So, in an attempt to round out my Cheetah line, I’m now linking to their CD burning app – which, in trial form, appears to be equally as awesome (and free!) as the DVD app. If you’re looking for slick, guilt-free alternatives to whatever app you’re currently pirating – check out the peeps at Cheetah for some awesome non-soul-damning software.

Goodnight folks, I loves ya.

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preoccupation


After nearly a week of pulling out all the stops trying to get uncorrupted data off my failed RAID array, I finally exhausted all my ideas and gave up. Five years of digital photos, three years of taxes, all the prank phone call compilations I’d been working on, three years of website backups, all the scans for my bootleg collection, my huge collection of MAME and NES ROMs… ugh. At least I had a backup of my music… I don’t think I’d be caught without that. All the CDs I’ve ripped, and my non-ripped collection as well; I’d’ve possibly had a stroke were all that lost. When it comes down to it, I could care less about everything but the photos. I can replace MAME ROMs, re-input prank phone calls, download bootleg scans, etc. But man, had I lost my music collection… that’d be something to be really upset about. As it is, I’m pretty bummed about losing five years of pictures – and Sharaun’s more than “pretty bummed” about it too. Owell, I’m up and running a brand new 750GB RAID5 array now – here’s to avoiding tragedy in the future. I keep hoping I’ll run across a long-forgotten DVD backup of our photos somewhere…

I just have nothing to write, I think because I’ve been single-tracked trying to get this data back – and we’ve had company in town. I think things’ll get better after tomorrow, when it’s just us and the baby… but for now, I have absolutely nothing.

Goodnight.

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paging dudley do-right


Evening folks, sorry for the lack of posting yesterday – spent most of my evening hunched over my desktop PC, willing my precious ones and zeroes off a limping RAID array. My pictures, music, taxes, finances… all of it – seems hopelessly lost forever. I’m not beaten yet, but each and every attempt thus far has been met with total failure. I got to the point where I can actually see my files again, and am able to copy them… but they are all completely corrupt. I’m currently trying a last-ditch effort with some $800 professional data recovery software that I happened to find, discarded in the bushes outside my house; I call it serendipity, you call it what you want. An eclectic entry fitting the old-blog mold today, enjoy.

Either someone signed me up as a joke, or the Republican National Committee found out I’m a registered bleeding-heart and somehow acquired my e-mail address (please write your own Patriot Act wiretapping joke and place it after this sentence). Either way, I’ve been getting hilarious mails from the GOP for a couple weeks now, and I just had to share some of this classic verbiage. First, it was this internet ad called “Find the Leader,” where we go through a litany of potential dem leaders. If you’re interested, you can watch it here, or read the text here. Next, it was this gem:

Dear David,

This week, liberal Democrat Russ Feingold called on the Senate to censure the President for a program that is successfully stopping terrorists. After months of searching, Democrat leaders are finally beginning to find their agenda: take away the tools America needs to fight terror. In the last 24 hours, fringe groups like MoveOn.org and Democrat leaders from John Kerry to Harry Reid to Dick Durbin have rallied to Feingold’s side, praising his grandstanding as a “catalyst” for the investigation of the President.

Oh man, I love it. Not that I’m pro-censure, which, for the record, I think is a retarded waste of time, but I just love the alarmist vibe of the whole thing. As an American who breathes air and prays to Jesus, I should be up in arms over the Democrats’ new terrorist-loving motives. And, if I’m not feeling guilty yet for allying myself with the crazy liberals:

Weakening our national security is their agenda. Is it yours?

Well, hell no it’s not! Somebody give me a hamburger, rare as fuck, with a side of ranch dressing and a big slice of apple pie to finish it off while I watch fireworks. I’m American, not Democrat, dammit!

… a lone Senator wants our government to look the other way when an Al Qaeda terrorist contacts a sleeper cell inside the United States. Democrat leaders never miss an opportunity to put politics before our nation’s security.

Oh dear Lord, I can’t believe this is true! I don’t want this “Al Queda terrorist” they speak of to contact the “sleeper cell” they speak of that’s apparently in the United States already!! All this and the democratic party doesn’t even care. Where do I sign up? Some internet searching give some insight on the source of the mails:

The Republican National Committee today unveiled a new web ad entitled “Find the Leader,” highlighting the lack of leadership in the Democrat Party. “Find The Leader” will be emailed to Republican grassroots supporters and shown this evening at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Republican grassroots supporters?” That’s me to a tee!

Lastly, some darker humor. Logging into CNN Monday morning, I was met with this headline: “Miss Deaf Texas struck by train, killed” I know, I know… I shouldn’t laugh – it’s terribly un-funny… buuuut… I mean, if the headline weren’t enough, “… the train sounded its horn right up until the accident occurred.” Yes; I bet he did. Don’t laugh with me, laugh at my sick sense of humor. My condolences to Miss Deaf Texas’s family.

Lastly, I wanted to share this mail I got yesterday from a visitor to my Pac Man pages. I found it completely hilarious, especially the mid-sentence switch from all lowercase to all caps:

i use to play pac-man in the 80’s and now i have a 10 tr. old and i can get to the chase but he want TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THAT. HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE TO EAT THE SCREEN TO GO ON OR IS THAT IT. HELP US W/AN ANSWER PLEASE. WEATHERFORD TEXAS THANKS

Goodnight.

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into your brain


It’s Monday as I write, and it’s the last day of my week-long “working from home” vacation extension. If I were grading the amount of “work” I’m getting done while “working from home,” I’d say I’m at about 75% of my in-office capacity. It’s not that I can’t do it without being distracted, it’s that I just don’t knuckle down enough while here. So, in part, I’ll be glad to actually get back into the office tomorrow where I can be 100% worker-Dave and work my way back into the flow of things. I’ll miss the baby, and the abject laziness without regret, and hanging out with Sharaun all day eating gingersnaps – but it will be good to actually feel like I’m truly “earning” my paycheck again. Oh, and before we get into whatever we’re about to get into – I added a bunch of new pictures to Keaton’s gallery. I dunno, maybe you’re not as amped as I am about my new daughter… I suppose that’s understandable. But even so, I’m gonna keep posting pictures and linkdropping right here, mostly because you’re not the boss of me.

Tonight Sharaun ran out to the grocery store and left me to man the baby-ship. Turns out, Keaton was still a half-hour away from her next “scheduled” feeding (I like how, when they’re infants, they’re not “eating,” they’re “feeding.” Like throwing slop in the trough for the pigs every day at 4pm – “feeding time.”). However, we’ve sort of noticed a pattern in her evening eating habits – the pattern being she picks up her schedule starting around sundown, wanting to eat every couple hours vs. every three. Needless to say, she was not happy being stuck with dad – the only member of the family with milk in her breasts not around. So, I bounced and sang, swung and patted, hugged and kissed – did pretty much everything and anything to try and calm her down. I had a modicum of success, for the most part keeping her occupied between raspy wails, but I was a poor substitute for boobs. Hopefully, as Sharaun learns to love the robot suckling-machine, I can play a poor mammary substitute with a bottle of fresh stuff in mom’s stead. ‘Cause man, ain’t nothing piercing like a baby’s hungry cry… I mean right into your brain.

Sometime over the weekend, my SATA RAID array went south. Truth be told, I knew it was going to happen – the thing’s been acting flaky now for the better part of a year. Randomly on reboot I’ll get a degraded or failed message from the controller, but usually a reboot will make the thing recognize properly. It’s been tenuous forever, and I keep saying I’ll replace it one day – but working in the “computer industry,” the last thing I want to do at home is fix computers. So, I’ve been ignoring it, rebooting until it works, chugging along and filling that crap array with more and more data I don’t want to lose. So, now, the standard frantic data copy to some intermediate drive, RAID replacement and re-copy. I’m going to a larger PATA drive array, I made a purchase of four 250GB drives long ago when there was some rebate offer – planning to change the dodgy array all along. As a bonus, aside from a non-crap array, I’ll be doubling my capacity to 500GB – which is good, as I was fast approaching my old 240GB cap. I hate working on computers, I really, really hate it.

Back to work. Cellphone alarm’ll ring ’round 6:40am and I’ll snooze it till 7am. 10min shower, dress, pour four cups of coffee into my metal carry-cup and hit the road. Tomorrow I’ll dig my fingernails in, grip tight for my 8hrs and try and kill so much work that I can sleepwalk through Friday afternoon. I imagine it being busy, when I get back; busy like it was when I left. I plan on coming home for lunch so I can hold my daughter – maybe she’ll be in one of those good moods where she just looks up at the lights and makes little snorting sounds. I think that would make my day.

Goodnight.