It’s nice to have a project again.
Well a few weeks ago I ordered new headliner material for my car. It’s just been sitting in my office at work because it’s been so friggin’ cold out I didn’t feel like messing with it. Last thing I need is to be cold and frustrated working with brittle plastic. NOT a recipe for success! But today was beautiful so I took it upon myself to get started on the project.
Like most of the projects I do what I dread the most is usually the easiest and what I think is going to be easy inevitably leads me to cussing and breaking things. While the trim around the headliner popped right off, the dome light was held on by one screw and three washer clips. Gimme a break! Why would you not just use four screws? You saved 2 cents per car to ensure that no one could take the dome light out without destroying those clips? Thanks, Oldsmobile. Thanks.
But I got it all apart. It’s old and crumbly, that’s for sure, but there’s some fresh new material waiting to be glued to the board I pulled out. And behind that board. For some weird reason someone taped the final factory build sheet to the top of that board. So this sheet has been riding around in my roof for the last 22 years!
Click to zoom in.
This sheet lists every option that this car came with (which is a lot!) and also mentions that the car was built in Linden, New Jersey and shipped to Grainsfield, KS. Kinda neat to find a little tidbit like that tucked away somewhere so random.
I’ll try to remember to get some pics of it torn apart tomorrow. It’s quite the mess! And I’ll be sure to post the finished product!
Great quote.
One of the guys on ESPN said about the Daytona 500:
“You know it’s NASCAR when the Jack Daniels car crosses the finish line upside down and on fire.”
Some people just don’t think.
Most of the decisions you’ll face in life are trivial at best. Let’s face it, out of all the choices you made today, how many will affect you a year from now, or even tomorrow? At the same time, there’s some decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life.
One example of an important choice would be…say…choosing a name for your company. For instance, if you needed a contractor, would you trust a company called “Jon Doe Enterprises”? I kid you not, I cut a commercial today for “Jon Doe’s” contracting company. The copy didn’t have the address (naturally) but I’m sure it’s somewhere in Anytown, USA.
Moment of truth
So the Daytona 500 is today. I’m excited for Nascar to get underway again. For one thing it means that spring is right around the corner, and that the weather is soon to start getting a whole lot nicer. Also it means lazy Sundays chilling in front of the TV watching cars go fast, and watching the pre-race announcers trying to hype up any drama they can between drivers.
I’m excited to see Bobby Labonte race. He was making some strides towards the end of the year last year, so hopefully they get off to a good start and build on that, and not spend the whole year trying to get back to that level. My expectations are reasonable. I’d just like to see Bobby win one race. And maybe finish most of them. Nothing is worse than sitting down for the race, and your guy gets taken out in the first 50 laps. Ugh.
Andrea’s sister and brother-in-law came up last night, and we all went out to Aggieville. I didn’t hit it too hard since I wanted to make sure someone could drive us home. But once everyone wakes up and gets a grip on the day, I’m going into “race mode”. I just gotta fine me some “#43” gear. Everything around here has an 18 on it!
Wedding Date
I know that I had agreed that we had set a date, but it has been changed yet again.
I talked to my advisor, and it turns out that I can’t take any of my major courses over the summer. Yes, it sucks. So, this will push me back another semester. Unless my dad agrees that it’s okay for us to get married before I graduate, then it looks like either the spring or summer of 2009.
Sorry to let you all down, cause I knew how excited everyone was to finally know. Things change, and the university has to be a pain in the butt! If I take 15 hours each semester I will graduate in the fall of 2008. So, at least I can give you a heads up on when my graduation will be! 😛
I hope to get a date sent to everyone by this summer. Until then, erase the previous date that Matt told you to put down in pencil! Love you all!
Crazy dreams.
Well, I stayed up way too late last night. Seems like lately I’ve been running around doing a bunch of stuff, and look back and can’t quite figure out if I’ve accomplished anything. I feel busy, but it feels like I don’t have much to show for it. It doesn’t really bother me though. I guess that’s just what it takes to maintain the status quo for now. Last night Andrea had to work, and I stopped by to keep her company on her break, but when I got home I decided I wasn’t going to do anything constructive, I was just going to play Guild Wars all night.
All night turned out to be an understatement. Biebs is working on a new character, and since my character is already “maxed out” or whatnot, I was going to help speed the progress of his new character. Around about 12:00am a little message pops up saying “You’ve been playing for 4 hours, please take a break.” Ha ha. Well I couldn’t take a break! We were almost to Lion’s Arch! 
So about 12:30 and 4 1/2 hours of some intense gargoyle madness and frustration, we made it and I was drained. By this time Andrea had been home for a while and actually joined our crusade, so we all exchanged virtual kudos for a job well done and I pretty much went straight to bed. I fell asleep almost instantly, and as always, the night seemed all to short by the time I awoke. Then I realized I had dreamt all night about Guild Wars, the game I had just been playing. I dreamt that I had discovered a combination of skills that allowed me to kill anything in one hit! Ha ha. And of course, then I woke up.
There’s not much point to this story, other than it’s the first time I’ve ever dreamt about Guild Wars. Not the first time I’ve dreamt about video games though. That secret Super Mario 64 level I discovered in my dreams about 9 years ago is still vivid enough in my mind to draw a picture. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve sat down and put some real solid time into a game. Of course it used to happen all the time. I remember playing GoldenEye and Perfect Dark with Paul until the sun came up. Only difference was, I could sleep until noon then, today I had to go to work. =P
Legal doesn’t seem worth it.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have much experience with DRM (Digital Rights Management). However, in my limited experience, it’s done nothing but make one wish they’d just pirated the media anyway. It’s the reason I never really wanted to buy music, a movie, or a TV show on anything other than a tangible CD or DVD disc. At least with that I have limited freedom of what I do with it. I can take the disc to a friends house and watch it on their (usually more awesome) home theater setup if I want, or I can rip it to my computer or mp3 player and create playlists and compilations. I can listen or watch the content I paid for how I wish.
The latest headache isn’t really my headache at all. Andrea’s mom, Belinda, was wanting to know where to get mp3s for her new mp3 player. Of course she can buy CDs and rip them to mp3 easily enough, but the thought of being able to go online and pick just the songs you like and pay less than a buck a piece is alluring. Since her player isn’t an iPod I didn’t recommend iTunes, I instead mentioned Wal-Mart’s music distribution service that has songs for 88 cents a piece. She finds a few of her favorites and $4.00 later, she has her songs. However, trying to play the songs only resulted in the “Blue Screen of Death” and that was that. None of the driver updates or codec packs could solve the issue. I didn’t have the time to really dive in deep and see what other solutions people had tried. But the point is, you shouldn’t have to mess with drivers or BSODs. DRM in this case is just a deterrent to legitimately obtaining the product.
It’s often been said that all these DRM measures are hurting honest paying customers more than the internet pirates. In the case above this seems to be true. But if you ask me the future of DRM is more than preventing piracy, it’s taking advantage of honest paying customers. DRM doesn’t just keep you from copying your song and giving it to your friend. I mean, that’s bad, and you wouldn’t do that anyway right? The capabilities go far beyond that. Imagine buying a movie to watch on your TV, then when you want to watch that movie again in your bedroom, it won’t work because it’s locked to the hardware that’s in your living room. You’re forced to either buy the movie again, or only ever watch it in your living room. Then buy it again for your portable video player in your car, and so on and so on. Or imagine not being able to record a tv show that you’re going to miss, because the publisher doesn’t want you to have all of the episodes recorded before the boxed set comes out. Digital distribution is the future, and your ability to actually use the products you pay for is quietly being whittled away.
Steve Jobs is lobbying for music companies to strip the DRM for their online catalog of music. However, given the music industry’s track record, I’m skeptical at best. I agree that publishers should have some means to protect themselves from unauthorized distribution of their products. At the same time, there needs to be a way to keep these guys in check. You can’t keep selling me the same product time and time again, just because a new format came out, or I got a new TV. And when I do buy that Weird Al anthology, it had better be compatible, and “just work”. Other wise, I have friends in low places than can get the job done easier, and unfortunately for you…for free.
02.8.07Words couldn’t begin to describe…
…how terrible our tech guy is at work. Perhaps he’s just phenominally unlucky, like losing a coin toss 100 consecutive times unlucky.
Computers are bitches. Especially “shared” computers where lots of people use the same computer. I know from first hand experience. Somebody visits a questionable website just once and BAM virus or spyware! They should know better, but they don’t care because it isn’t their machine. And when you have around 20 computers being used daily by a bunch of different people, eventually hard drives are going to fail, power supplies will go out. Those things just happen.
I’ll try to remember everything that’s gone wrong with our machines in the past year or two. This will be a conservative account, seeing as how I’m sure to forget an instance or two. You tell me if it’s just bad luck.
- 6 new motherboards
- At least 5 failed hard drives
- 1 defective LCD monitor
- 7 new power supplies
- Replaced entire system except hard drive because it wouldn’t connect to the network
- Replaced hard drive for above system
- 1 Non-Genuine copy of Windows XP
- Whatever I forgot
Unfortunately it’s not just an excessivly high failure rate in the products this guy sells that leads me to believe that he’s a total d-bag. It’s the ridiculious crap that he and his employees say to people around here that don’t know any better. For instance.
“I’m installing Double Density Ram, so after this it will be twice as fast.”
“You can’t use that router because it will take up too many IP addresses.”
“That Windows installation is so old, it’s probably started deleting system files.”
If the above statements don’t mean anything to you, good. It just makes it all the more clear what kind of person or persons we’re dealing with here. Every statement is completely false, and every one I’ve overheard these guys saying to someone around here that has no idea about computers. To me that’s just taking advantage of somebody, unless they truely are that naieve.
So there’s one of two possibilities here. ONE: That I am actually better versed in technology than this guy and his employees. Or TWO: That this guy runs a shady business selling cheap and/or second hand crap as new and bluffs his way around it when things get sticky.
Either way, given his track record, I don’t know how we’re still doing business with him. But since the people calling the shots don’t know any better, I’ll have to continue to tolorate it. Just don’t touch my laptop!
02.5.07I think a part of me just died.
Yes, it’s true. I think my Nintendo 64 has played it’s last game. I’ve been in the mood for some old school N64 gaming the past couple days, so I go to fire it up, and glorious glorious sound…but no video. I spent at least 30 minutes making sure I had all the connections right and making sure the cables weren’t bad. But nothing I could do would bring back the video.
It’s kinda sad. I mean, all the time I spent playing that Nintendo 64 is probably an easily measurable percentage of my life. All 120 stars in Super Mario 64. All the record times in Mario Kart, all the GoldenEye Fests/Perfect Dark Events. There’s a lot of my history in that little machine as nerdy as it is. So I’ll admit I was pretty sad when I finally realized that it probably isn’t going to work anymore.
So I’m going to have to scower the local game shops and see if they have any N64s. They should be pretty darn cheap. Hopefully I don’t have to resort to eBay. But one way or another, I shall game again! Luckily the console is easy enough to replace. Finding decent controllers on the other hand, that’s a challenge.
02.1.07Don’t quote me on this…
But I was talking to Andrea today, and I think we’ve nailed down a date for the wedding. September 6th, 2008! Mark your calenders…but you’d better mark them with pencil until you hear the official conformation from Andrea.