I read that the guy who runs a website is quitting because he put some video of a kitten being killed and readied for eating, and of course three billion people freaked out and decided to start spamming him with death threats. Never mind that the rest of the site is covered in porn and other goodies. Kinda reminds me of rotten.com, another “wait till you get the heck home” sites to look at.
I got some more sanding done in the basement last night, and was able to run the feed from the new computer circuit into a junction box mounted on the wall and up to the second floor office. I’m going to leave the circuit turned off until I can install a new box behind the drywall in there and add a plug. I got some more drywall installed and used the last 4’x4′ sheet, so tonight I’ll buy 3 more sheets, the junction box inserts for the new wiring, another tub of mud, several more 2×4’s, and three large lighted rocker switches for the lighting down there. I’ll probably try to focus on the front window tonight and build the box setup for the enclosure (that should take a while) and maybe get some drywall installed.
I talked to my Mom last night; she was mainly trying to get her iMac online and get the e-mail set up so she could send/receive again (Dad, who is frightened like a little German schoolgirl at all things Mac, got on there the other night and futzed the whole thing up) so I stepped her through the process and got her back online again. After 6 months of her paying for Earthlink modem access while Dad paid for a cable modem sitting in the next room, they finally ditched Earthlink, got her back up on his network after I suggested they buy a DSL/cable modem router like the one I have. Sometimes they drive me nuts.
Yesterday I found an archive of old Commodore 64 games, and found a pair that were listed that reminded me of days gone by. One was a game called ‘Impossible Mission‘, and featured a quote of an English guy saying, “Destroy him, my robots…” in a bad Bela Lugosi impersonation. That one took me back. The other one was a game called Mail Order Monsters, where you could build monsters and equip them with different items of varying deadliness, then drop them into an arena and have ’em fight it out Gladiator-style. I also found a copy of Skyfox, which for its day was a pretty cool game and had me entranced for about a month before I mastered it and it got boring. There was a clip of the IM theme music and a ROM download of the game; I also found an emulator for the PC and a great site to download more ROMS. Maybe if I get super-ultra bored I’ll fire it up and play a round or two. Maybe. This all served to remind me that I need to get back with Stas and see how he’s doing.
Found this site on PriceWatch- the Kodak 3400 is $279. A 48 MB compactFlash card is an additional $40 as well. I’m gonna look in the ol’ bank account and see what’s in there right now.
I’m back, and I have the cash, but I’m not buying it. Must focus on the basement. All I’d be buying the stupid camera for is to take pictures of the basement right now anyway.
This still doesn’t change the fact that I want a digital cam very badly.
Found this article on the Kodak website- i love this place, I have always been fascinated by it ever since I saw a GEO Magazine article on it in 1982, and I want to go to Arizona to see it.
11:30PM – Just came back upstairs from the basement- my back is aching, but in a mildly pleasant ‘I just did 4 hours of honest good work’ kind of way. I bought 3 2x4x10’s, 3 sheets of drywall and the adapters for the steel junction box, which got installed; more drywall up on the inside of the closet- there’s just a spot on the inside right wall that needs to be done and then it just needs a finish mud. The plug went in OK and all I need to do now is test it out tomorrow evening. The left wall of the closet is, in hindsight, about 6″ too close to the side of the furnace, preventing easy access to the humidifier unit, but I’m installing an access panel in the corresponding wall that will allow entry and replacement of the filter. The steel edging is up and 1/2 mudded on the left wall, and most of the inside is sanded. All in all, a good night’s work.
Let us all pray today goes better than yesterday. I reread the log below from yesterday, and whew! What a venting session that was.
Today I’m looking at the Scout mentioned previously- the guy has it in Baltimore this afternoon, right on the way to the house, so I’m going to cruise down there and take a peek. He says he wants $1900 for it. My finances are about a 2-year low, which means I could buy this truck if I wanted to but be dangerously low in the cash reserve department-not where I want to be in this recession/downturn/correction/assfuck we are all trudging through. It sounds great, although he says it has some rust; I wonder how bad it’ll be when I see it. I was able to walk away comfortably from the ’80 a few weeks ago when me and the guy pulled the tailgate out from the passenger side floor and looked through the hole to the weeds below. I hope his one is either a basket case or a (relatively) cherry truck so that the decision is an easy one.
Just received my RAM – 10:33AM. Kingston value RAM- very nice. Can’t wait to put it in SLANN.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Here at work with no Greycube server- Dan is out of touch and I can’t reach him. His cellphone is not picking up.
1:35PM. Server is back up and running. I got 10 IHC-Digest notes but nothing else from anybody this weekend. Feeling sad about that. Let’s see here- Jen and I went thrift-store shopping again this weekend, and bought some plants as well; I got a set of Martha Stewart sheets fo’ the bed at K-Mart as well- they are nice. I like my clean white sheets. Sunday Jen helped me in he basement and we got the rest of the window wall framed out; I’m going to have to get creative above the window with where it meets the ceiling- that whole section is a bit messed up right now. I’m also gonna need to add a bit of insulation up there before I close it up so that the ductwork stays dry and cool/hot. We put up more drywall, and I’m going to have to go out and buy at least another two sheets or so to finish, but I’m going to make a major push this week to get it done.
11:30PM. Just came upstairs from the basement; I got half the wall in the closet done, and the bottom sheetrock around the bottom front of the room. I’m down to a 4’x4′ sheet of drywall, so I need at least 2 more to finish, probably three. I was able to tape and mud the joints in the front corners, the area where the closet meets the wall, and the inside front edge of the closet. There’s a LOT more taping and sanding to be done, but it should go quick once the final drywall is up. Now the only big obstacles are figuring out how to finish off the ceiling above the front window, and installing a junction box by the computer circuit to run upstairs.
Got an email from a guy tonight who says he has a Scout:
I just came across your Scout website. I have a 1978 Scout II with 90K Original miles on it, that I am trying to sell. I was wondering if you knew anyone that might be interested, since you look like quite an enthusiast. I live in Bowie, MD (Annapolis, DC area), and Eric Foor has done work to my Scout as well. He replaced the floor boards and some other rusted areas when I first got the truck. I’m asking for $1900/ OBO. Basically, I’m just looking for someone to make me a decent offer. The truck runs fine but minor tune-ups could be done to make it run better. Also, there is rust damage. If you know anyone who is interested in buying a Scout, please pass along my personal email and phone number to them.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
In the office today after our company summer picnic. All the muscles in my legs are now feeling like somebody put them on a winch and torqued them about 30 feet or so. It took me 5 minutes to climb my stairs. However, we had a good time yesterday; I wish Jen could have come but I knew that there was no way she could take off after only two weeks of work. We played some touch football, some frisbee, and then a game of softball- I think it was the football that did me in.
Gary Condit did his interview last night with Connie Chung. What an evasive little jerk. They should run this guy right out of Washington.
Jen and I, talking last night, agree that the word ‘slacks’ is unnecessary and ugly.
I ordered 128MB of RAM for the NT machine- the total, with second day air shipping, is $30. How unbelievable is that? I remember when 8 MB of RAM was $400. What an incredible drop in price. Now I need to seriously look for a monitor. The RAM should be here next friday or so- it’s on backorder by 2 days. Meanwhile, Access Micro has barebones systems- case, power supply, motherboard, processor and 128MB of RAM, for somewhere around $450. And that’s Pentium 4 chips at 1.4Gig speeds. Add a hard drive- $120 for a 30 gig IDE and another $100 for a CD/RW, plus a good video card- like a Geforce2 for $150 or so, and I’ve got a pretty decent basic system. I’m going to see what my Dad can put together for me with a good chipset and processor and see if he’d like to build me a system in the next few months.
Loaded up Urban Terror on the home machine last night- sloooooooooooooooooooooowwwww. I got it running, but a few things are in order- I’ve found that 96 MB of RAM is entirely too little. I think I’ve found a company online that has cheap RAM for what I need but I’m still confused. The motherboard manual says I need 168-pin DIMMS of SDRAM, and further explains that for true error checking I should buy true 72-bit parity-type DIMMs. So I find a chip online here and I’m wondering how I know if it’s 72-bit parity? All the others listed are non-parity, and it says so.
I had a fantastic night at the figure drawing class last night- I got a bunch of really good drawings out of the evening, and we had a great model to work with. I’m going to scan some of them and post them today. It was one of those evenings where I felt immediately like I was in the groove, and I never came out of it. A very good way to leave this summer’s series. I’m looking forward to the fall series.
Slann is up and running again and looks & sounds happy; it’s incredible to get 1280 x 960 on that monitor. Time to go hunting for a 19″ with a shallow footprint- if such a beast exists.
Here is a quick (5 min.) sketch of my girl Jen; she was on the phone with her friend Tracy, and planting in a big ol’ pot on her deck.
Click on the link below to see what all the dudes said about my thermostat. Apparently I just need to be really careful about which wire I hook up to be the ground. So I’ll wait for a few weeks to fool with that- but first I have to make sure it’s compatible with my Bryant unit. After all the trouble of putting that unit in, I’m terrified that I’ll fuck it up.
Hmmm. Last night Jeff C. and I rode up to Guitar Center in Towson; he was looking to fix two of his guitars and I was looking to see if they had any Steinberger strings, which are harder and harder to find these days. I got my strings– $30 or so, and Jeff bought a nice Ibanez acoustic guitar. That place is huge. I got home, took a leak (was dying) and pulled the Crate amp out, dropped Siamese Dream into the CD, and played 6 of the 10 songs or so.
Saw a girl and her boyfriend fighting in the parking lot of the Rite Aid, where I usually have to park the fleet after 10 on weeknights. She was an upset blonde and he was an angry shaven jock-type. They argued for a while; she was apologizing, and then he shut his car door and left. She got in her Neon and left too. I was straining to hear what they were arguing about but I couldn’t hear anything. Next time, speak up so I know what you’re fighting about, OK? (this is the shameless nosy parker in me coming out.)
Last night I also booted up the 7100 running MKlinux and browsed some pages using lynx and then the browser that shipped with Xwindows. For some reason I had a problem seeing .JPG files- I wonder how old the openStep browser is in that install.
A few days ago I got PhotoVista reinstalled on the NT machine and ran it to update the vista pictures I took with the Cidera camera lo, these 2 years ago- they’re up now as applets and don’t need a plugin anymore, as long as you have Java installed on your machine.
I’m hooked on the subwoofer concept for computer stereo, at least; I have a Boston Acoustics BA735 here at work and it is awesome. Next paycheck I might have to invest in a subwoofer system for the house (providing I get the NT machine up and running again.)
11:27 PM Happy to report the 3dfx card is properly installed with the correct drivers and is currently powering my Sony 15″ monitor at a comfortable 1280 x 960 pixels. DAMN it’s nice. I brought up Quake2 and set it on first the default OpenGL drivers and then the 3dfx open GL set; the standard drivers were very dark (not helped any by the rapidly deteriorating tube in this monitor) and the 3dfx drivers were lighter but smoother- it seemed like a lack of detail was evident. I’m going to purchase a copy of Quake3 this week and we’ll see how that runs on this machine. The Best Supporting Technician Award goes to Jeff C. for his help. Now I need to look at some 17″-19″ monitors next paycheck….
And the Best Actress in a Laundry or Drama goes to Ms. Jen Lockard, for her work in Last Sunday Afternoon.
Well, let’s see. This weekend Jen and I went thrift store shopping on Saturday and were able to find a bunch of very nice clothes for very cheap- I found a few Banana Republic shirts, brand new, for about $4 total. Jen also found me a great hipster short sleeve button down shirt, probably about 30 years old, for $2. I found a beautiful tuxedo jacket and pants that fit me well (well, not the pants) for $70, but I couldn’t justify the price. Also found a Revereware fry pan for camping for $2 and a few books- $1. Jen found a few real nice blouses for work, but we didn’t stop to pick up her jeans, so there will be another trip down to Laurel in the near future to get some pants for her work wardrobe. Saturday night we went to see The Others with some old friends fron Cidera; it was a lot better than I thought it would be. Very creepy, good story, and a kicker ending.
Sunday Jen and I hit Hope Depot to pick up my window, and I found a Honeywell programmable thermostat for $50 on sale. I need to do some more work to see if the rumors that it blows up furnaces is true. We got back to the house and I was able to install the window up front in a relatively short while- it was really easy and went in quickly. I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to get the old one out in time, but it came out without too much fuss. I need to go and buy some nonexpandable foam to seal the edging, and some vinyl or metal flashing to cover the wood box I installed it in. It’s really cool to have a window up front that is level and new- I think it’s going to really cut down on the cold air up front too.
I managed to blow up Slann last night trying to install the 3dfx Voodoo 3 card; they got bought by nVidia, and don’t have a complete list of drivers online for the card, so I installed the 2000 drivers and rebooted. Now the box just continues rebooting itself; it gets to the NT load screen and then restarts. Repeatedly. So I’m going to ask Jeff here at work to look at it. I might have to buy a card after all. I did find new drivers for it though.
Let’s see. Here’s the first thing I found worthwhile on the Binder Bulletin this morning. A list of parts up in Pennsylvania.
Here also, is a picture of the lifted Traveler I looked at over in Ellicott City. It had reasonably good parts on it, but A. was a Traveler, meaning I couldn’t swap the frame with my Scout, B. had fiberglas fenders and quarters, only the fenders of which would fit my Scout (and weren’t even in that good shape- lots of bubbling and waving), Bushwhacker flares, which were in good shape, a springover conversion that was done poorly, and loads of rust. I figured that for all the work to pull the fenders off, I’d destroy them and negate the cost of buying the truck. Somebody paid him $1300 for this thing. The rockers were gone all the way up to the seat bases, and the pillars were totally shot- worse than my truck.
At this point, because she talks so loud on the phone, I know that Amy here at work does not like her landlord because she is afraid he is videotaping her secretly. Spooky.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Had a very productive night last night. I went shopping for a new video card, but found the cost to be prohibitively expensive right now. So I bought a sound card for the home NT box and got it installed with minimum fuss-thank god. I also got the drywall in the basement sanded and second-coat mudded; it’s coming along pretty well so far, but I need a few items to continue properly:
- more mud
- another good sanding sponge- those things are cool
- a pack of 150 grit sandpaper discs for the orbital
- a length of coax cable- 50 feet should do it
- more steel edging for the corners
- a tube of liquid nails
- probably five more sheets of drywall
- and I need to pick up the window- Home Depot called about it Monday.
Have I mentioned that Toadnet sucks big moose butt? They’re down again. Major big smoking, feces-covered moose butt.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a search on Google for Gamma World, a role-playing game TSR came out with in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I spent one summer completely immersed in this game, in between 7th and 8th grade, when a few guys from my new school got me into D&D and other RPG’s. I got a copy of Gamma World and D&D for my birthday, I think, and Mike P and I played these games constantly. He went on a two-week vacation that summer, and I obsessed over the game and creating new maps and worlds based on what I knew (which was, pitifully, nothing.) Being trapped on the side of a hill in Ridgefield with nothing to do but swim, eat and play Gamma World that summer, naturally all three blurred into each other. I dug out my Gamma World books that night (yep, still got ’em) and read through each one; it took me back to a two-month period where I was completely lost in my imagination.
That fall, I went to the Ridgefield Middle School, where once again, the gods of bitter irony prevailed and I wound up in none of the same classes as anybody I had become friends with that previous school year. I went through 4 months of total isolation there, and then we moved to Mahopac, where I went through another year of isolation before I made friends with anybody.
Jesse is going to sell me his old Voodoo3 card fr $20, so I’ll have something better than an Apple 8/24 in my PC at home; This Is Good. Now I can concentrate on saving up for and finding a good 19-inch monitor, or a reasonable 17-inch LCD display for the NT machine. (side note: new Voodoo3’s are going for about $40 online- bonus.) Additionally, I may be heading to his place for 3D Max lessons on Sunday- a BIG opportunity to get some knowledge for cheap- a 12-pack of Guinness might do it.