Archive for March, 2006
3/1/2006
One site I like a lot is Old-Computers.com. It’s just really wild to look at and read about computers of yesteryear. Unfortunately the site doesn’t say too much about the Tandy PC’s of the early 90’s.
Up until the early 90’s I was doing the computer thing on the Commodore 64 mostly. I also had a “Co-Co 2” Tandy, an Atari 800XL and an Atari 130XE.
Side note: The Co-Co 2 won the award for “clackiest” keyboard I’ve ever used. Loud, loud and loud. The Atari 130XE was by far the coolest looking computer I’ve ever had, and the keyboard was amazing.
I actually found an article on the first PC I ever had.
In ‘92 Tandy released 4825 SX. Pop bought one and it was the new family computer. This thing was so unbelievably awesome. It had an Intel i486SX 25MHz processor, 4MB of RAM, 1x CD-ROM drive and a 120MB hard drive. Wow. I spent hours and hours on that thing. Later on I upgraded it to a DX/50MHz, bumped the RAM up to 12MB. Ever cooler.
In the basement, Pop had an Okidata 2400 baud external modem which was originally intended for the Commodore 64 but he never opened the box. Turns out it worked on the Tandy and I dived into the world of BBS‘ing (my first online experience). Later on I updated to an Intel 14400 baud modem (also external).
The Tandy was also the first computer I used with Windows 95, and it worked great. Before that I was using Windows 3.1.
I had that Tandy for several years. It was a good box. Correction: A great box. The thing just kept on clickin’.
I sold the Tandy when I bought a new computer, the Compaq Deskpro 6000 with Windows NT (the worst computer I’ve ever owned). I think I sold it for 50 bucks to a guy I used to know.
Right now I’m using a Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.5GHz (that’s 1500MHz by the way) with 1GB RAM in it and a 60GB hard drive. It’s already obsolete by today’s standards but I like it. It’s a good box.
But sometimes I really miss those Tandy days with the BBS’s.
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3/2/2006
The sinks in the house I live in are older ones that have small grates for drains and there are no drain plugs, so I had to buy little rubber ones. Wal-Mart (and everyone else evidently) calls these “sink stoppers”. I thought they were called drain plugs. Whatever. This is what a sink stopper looks like. These stoppers have small metal rings to place beaded chains on them if you so desire. I chose not to do this because I really didn’t need them.
Or so I thought.
Milo (the cat) is having an extended stay with me and he likes to drink out of the sink, so I purposely leave the water trickling for whenever he wants to hop up and get a drink. For some reason he started taking the sink stoppers with his mouth out of the sink and leaving them somewhere else in the house. My house has two sinks. One of the stoppers I found and the other one is gone. I have no idea where the cat left it.
I headed to Wal-Mart and bought another sink stopper and some beaded chains. This should solve the problem of the stoppers vanishing.
One sink stopper:
$1.00
Two thirty-six inch (3 feet) beaded chains with fasteners:
$5.00
This cat cost me $6.00 today.
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3/3/2006
From Hacking GPS:
A survey by Privilege Insurance has polled 2000 drivers and come up with some scary findings.
First, they found that 19% of drivers who use an in-car GPS lost concentration while driving, compared to 17% who read maps. It also seems that motorists that use GPS would take their eyes off the road for 10 seconds when traveling at 60 MPH, which equates to driving the length of two football pitches without paying attention to the road.
One in 10 motorists with GPS set off on journeys without bothering to programme their route into the GPS while and more than half admitted they had then had to take their eyes off the road to input the details while driving.
My response: Very typical of an insurance company to do something like this. If there is any excuse they need to raise rates, they’ll find it.
Furthermore, the poll is flawed. Why? Because the insurance company performed the poll, the poll results were not scientific fact whatsoever.
To Priviledge Insurance, I say unto thee: You’re a bunch of idiots trying to find a way to raise rates by indirectly stating that having mobile GPS is a liability. And yes, you are trying to say that. If you want anyone to believe you, try getting actual scientific data from a reputable organization other than yourselves, not “your research”. Until then, your “findings” are biased and flawed.
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3/4/2006
Above: One of my current XP desktops. I use a feature of Windows that hardly anyone uses: Quick Launch icons and taskbar “stretching”. If I don’t use Quick Launch icons and stretch the taskbar a bit, I end up with a crapload of icons on my desktop.
Note I said one of my current XP desktop screens. I actually can choose between four of them at whim.
How is this possible? Virtual Desktop Manager for Windows XP. It’s on the PowerToys page. Very nice to have and it’s free which is cool. I’m hoping the VDM will be a standard feature in Windows Vista when that’s released.
Note to anyone using the VDM that’s having wallpaper issues: Easily resolved. Dump the wallpaper you want into the folder C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper and then you will be able to choose each desktop image easily from the VDM itself (not by right-click Desktop / Properties).
–
To anyone wondering: Yes, each desktop image is made by me. Three of them are my photos (#4 is my truck), and one is a “corporate” logo of my biz name. All the desktops appear wide because they actually are wide - I use widescreen display (1680×1050).
–edit–
Here’s a screenshot with a bunch of different apps opened. Yes, you can truly separate the desktops with VDM.
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3/6/2006
I read an interesting post by Wil concerning his impeding decision whether to use TypePad or have a traditional hosted MovableType (as in “you install it, you configure it, you run it”) setup.
I make it well known that I don’t like anything that requires anything “external” to function on a web site because you always run the risk of losing it.
I’ll clarify with an example of a popular blogging service: For all you LiveJournal bloggers out there, what would you do if LJ went down tomorrow? What if you went to the LJ web site and they said they would no longer be offering service with apologies to anyone who actually paid for it (of which there are quite a few)? That would suck, wouldn’t it?
There is absolutely no guarantee in the world that any existing service provided by anyone on the internet (whether free or fee-based) will stay there. Of course, the companies and organizations that offer these services pledge to stay online as long as they can, but that’s a worthless promise. No one can predict the future, so why run the risk?
I personally believe it is totally worth the time and effort to program your own web site rather than subscribe to another service to do it for you. It is better overall to accept the responsibility and just hash it out as best you can, for better or worse. In that fashion you have control over everything rather than be at the whim of someone else (who offers no real guarantee that they will be there tomorrow).
When you program your own web site, you know proof positive that it will be there the next day, and the day after that and so on. It doesn’t matter how you program your web pages or what publishing software you use. Your site will be there.
That’s what counts.
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3/6/2006
Below: Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, that being showing photos of this particular guitar I own. Someone did a Google search (yet again) for this guitar and ended up on my site (I mention it in some other posts here), so I figured I’d make it official and make an entire post just about this guitar.
This is a Guild “The Lance” Burnside guitar. It was made to look very similar to the Jackson Rhoads V model. I bought this guitar years ago for $89.00 used from a music store in Southbridge Massachusetts and yes, I still own it. I had always wanted a “V” guitar and hey, the price was right so I couldn’t say no. I’ve had it ever since. While it’s true I own much better guitars like my Schecter C-1 Classic, I still play this cheap Guild from time to time.
The guitar is in its original color, with a 21 fret neck, stocked with EMG active pickups (the 9-volt battery is below the pick guard), the strings are top-loaded only and there are no holes in the back. The reason you don’t see any bolt-on screws where the neck meets the body is because there are none. This is either a “neck-through” design or it could possibly be a one-piece.
Compared to other V’s, this one is weighted perfectly. The headstock does not “drop” when you have it strapped on in standing position. The bowl-shaped cut in the back is unique to this particular model as it doesn’t cut into your body at all (a nice touch).
The bridge is not original, it was replaced due to one of the string saddles breaking. One of the volume pot knobs is also obviously not original. I never bothered replacing it.. why bother?
Note added 7/10/2006: The replacement bridge is a Kahler “Flyer” fixed bridge system.
The back of the neck has its paint worn down (it was like that when I got it) and there is a finish crack.
On the headstock, the locking nuts are missing. Since I don’t use the tremolo I never bothered to get replacements.
This guitar surprisingly stays in tune very well and has distortion so “hot” it distorts on clean when the bridge volume pot is turned all the way up.
The Lance is one of those guitars made in the glory of 80’s heavy metal when every kid in town wanted to pick up a guitar, and manufacturers were more than happy to oblige. That time has past, but the guitar is still cool - and it still plays well.
When was this guitar made? Unknown. Were I to guess, I’d say around 1985, which would make this guitar over 20 years old.
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3/7/2006
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3/8/2006
As I wrote about before, things are going well concerning the whole moving thing. Pretty hawesome, huh? Pretty hawesome. Indeed. Anyway, the house was shown for the first time to a potential buyer. I guess I’ll know shortly whether they’ll take it or not. On Sunday, a second buyer will be looking at the house. I am crossing fingers that at least one of the two will make an offer and then phase 2 goes into effect. I can’t really say much about what phase 2 entails, but it’s cool, trust me. Once everything goes according to plan I will be able to say more about it.
related tags: hawesome, house, moving
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3/8/2006
I found that my .htaccess file wasn’t blocking hotlinkers like it should have been so I had to do a rewrite of it. I found a nice tutorial that helped me out quite a bit, so everything is to my satisfaction now concerning that.
Definition of “hotlink” for those who don’t know: This is when someone will directly link to an image (or other file) on your web site from their web site, effectively hogging your bandwidth. That’s bad. MySpace users are infamous for this. Since they can’t physically host any files, they link to others without any thought that they are stealing bandwidth (literally) by doing so. Hotlinking does not mean to block people from viewing images. It means that they can only view the images on your site and not someone else’s by means of direct linking.
After the .htaccess fix I discovered some 403 errors in my server log. 403 means “forbidden” by the way. So I checked it out. Someone on a message board (most likely) was hotlinking the images from my Buick post.
To the guy who did that: Stop your fucking hotlinking and just link to the article instead, ok? Good. Glad we had that chat.
related tags: htaccess, hotlink
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3/9/2006
Today’s word of the day is ignominy. Use it in a sentence.
Can’t do it, can you?
Neither could I. I had to look it up.
I saw this word used on another blog by a commenter. Of course, the comments stopped cold after that because no one can follow up after seeing an obscure word like that.
related tags: obscure, english, words, ignominy
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