Geek

There are times when I just an idea into my head and I’m not going to let it go until I realize the dream. Poor Earl steps aside because he knows that when I get in these geek-intense moods, there’s no stopping me, except perhaps a debit or credit card with no juice left.

The project of the day is a media center computer for our great room. Or is it Great Room. Whatever it is, it’s starting to look like Yucca Flats after the blast as I throw cables about, swap network cards and give the subwoofer cable one more tug to make it reach just to accomplish this vision I have.

I want to be able to sit down and show pictures from our iPhoto collection, watch a movie or surf the internet right from the comfort of our Great Room using the big-screen TV as a monitor. Think of it, with a monitor that big we should get amazing detail on even the tinest of items! (Get your mind out of the gutter, we don’t do porn in the living room, not unless we want the neighbors to watch us. Now that I think about it, that could be fun.). Is this too much to ask?

Granted, with the Christmas bills getting ready to make their ’06 debut in the mailbox this week, my budget is quite limited. Looking at the pile of junked computers in the basement, I found that if I mixed and matched enough parts, I could come up with something that should work fairly well, provided we go to Circuit City and buy a power supply and a firewire card. So we did. Earl sighed, I spent and all was right with the world.

Now I’m trying to install my perfectly legal copy of Windows XP on this computer I’ve scrapped together so I can say I have something up and running until we can afford to buy another Mac Mini. (Sweetheart, if you’re reading this, consider yourself hinted.)

Now I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft Windows. I’ve been using various incarnations of the operating system since Windows/286 came out in the mid 1980s. So I pride myself on the fact that I kind of know how Microsoft thinks and how they like to do things. It’s this knowledge that has made me very popular with my family as I play system administrator to various aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, mothers, fathers, neighbors, et al. I don’t mind doing it at all, it keeps my system admin skills in check and gives me an excuse to get a free meal for payment.

But when I’m home trying install Windows XP Professional on a home-built computer, a computer that I built myself, I shouldn’t have to jump through ten hours of hoops just to get the blasted thing going! “Your username does not exist.” Funny, I feel like I’m right here.

So Earl sighs again and knows that when I’m in the geek zone, you just gotta ride it out. At best I’ll get the thing running and we’ll have small items with amazing detail in glorious technicolor in the Great Room.

At worst, I’ll eventually fall asleep.

Where would we be without technology? Here it is Christmas day and for the first time in my life, I’m not going to see my sister in person to celebrate the holidays, since she’s currently living in Moscow (the one in Russia) with her boyfriend the hockey player.

I miss her very much. We never fought much as kids and she usually went along with any scheme I had, whether it was to host a huge parade at my grandparents utilizing all my cousins, a few wagons and a smattering of batons or the time I was driving her to town to pick up contact lens solution with dad’s truck, even though I couldn’t drive a stick at the time. (I slowed down to a crawl so she could hop out in front of Ames, then I did laps around the parking lot until she hopped back into the moving truck). My sister has been at my side through thick and thin.

Thank the Universe for technology. I’ve forgiven her for using MSN Messenger (instead of the iChatAV compatible AOL instant messenger), but it’s nice to be able to show Christmas presents and chat on the webcam, even though we are literally thousands of miles apart.

I’ve received a couple of e-mails from people that have stopped by that they aren’t happy that I instituted “registration required” rules on my comments form. The reason I did it a month or two ago was because my early blog entries were being flooded with spam. Oy.

I’ve changed back the comment system back to the old way of doing things. If you have something to say, feel free to say it without having the register first.

The latest version of Mozilla Firefox was released yesterday. The version number is 1.5. An alternative to Internet Explorer for Windows users, Firefox is the perfect web browser for Windows, OS X or Linux. This latest version seems much snappier on my work computer running Windows XP SP2, I’m eager to test it on my PowerBook running OS X (Tiget) tonight.

I highly recommend it.

Here’s a link to the USB Christmas Tree. There’s a lot of fun gadgets to be found there. I think my desk at work is going to be very crowded!

I’ve trained my family in computer matters the best that I can. Since they’re all Windows users, I’ve shown them how to update their virus protection. I’ve explained the virtues of using Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. I’ve begged for them to not open e-mail attachments from people they don’t know.

How do they repay me? They use MSN Messenger instead of AOL messenger to chat back and forth. MSN Messenger (actually called Microsoft Messenger) doesn’t work that well on a Mac!

At least there’s a relatively new version out. No webcam support though. Ugh.

Medium in 3-D

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I are ready for tonight’s 3D episode of Medium. While we were grocery shopping last night, there we were in Wegmans, ready to swipe the debit card at the checkout when I loudly proclaimed, “We need our 3D glasses!”. I shoved aside the woman behind me who seemed to have way too much asparagus on the belt. (How much asparagus can one eat, anyway?) I spotted the smiling faces of Patricia Arquette and Jake Weber on the cover of TV Guide and practically jumped over two adjacent lanes to grab two copies. The man next to the magazine stand looked at me with a puzzled look. I told him, “We need our 3D glasses for Medium!” and bound across asparagus woman’s cart again to get them to the scanner just before the cashier hit subtotal.

I didn’t even need a phone booth or room to whirl with orchestral accompaniment to accomplish this feat. This is probably a true Jump The Shark moment for the show, but it’ll be fun nonetheless. We will forgive them for any extra cheese in tonight’s episode.

We’re ready for the big show tonight. Do you have your 3D glasses?

I guess I get surly with anything to do with the entertainment industry, but here’s an article that proves to me little more than the fact that this country has lost it’s mind.

I guess the thing that I find most amazing is that someone found four recent movies good enough to actually download.

Last night I goofed around editing my latest little video endeavor right up until the time I went to bed. Earl was out of town so I knew that I was going to have a hard time falling asleep anyways, so I figured I’d make myself good and tired then call it a night.

It didn’t work.

Last night I tossed and turned, thinking about what to do for a serious video project. I couldn’t get ‘video’ out of my head! Should I do a music video? What would happen if I tried various camera angles trying then split the screen so I could appear as twins, instead of doing a dead on shot. I kept hearing my transporter sound effect over and over, like a song stuck in my head. Of course, then I would fall asleep a little bit and get my transporter effects in my video mixed up with making out with Jonathan Frakes (I really don’t think I’m his type), then I would wake back up and think really strange thoughts about what is going to happen when aliens finally visit us and how Bush Lite would probably cry… you know how it gets in the middle of the night when you’re three quarters asleep but that one quarter of your brain doesn’t want to settle down and everything gets all mixed up. By 4:00 a.m. I was thinking I was related to Bea Arthur (watching the Golden Girls in bed is not a good idea either); I was certain Earl was going to drive through the bedroom window at any moment and I had a wonderful intimate conversation with our cat Tom, and he was talking back at me, plain as day.

I’m such a friggin’ mess.

The alarm jarred me awake, about 45 minutes after I finally fell asleep. It’s funny, on Monday and Tuesday I worked the 9:00 am shift at work, so I was able to wake up naturally in harmony with the sunrise, now that Daylight Saving Time Hell is over. The rest of the week? Get out of bed to the annoying sounds of our old GE alarm clock.

With Earl out of town I decided to do a little practice with the Handycam again. Click on the picture above to see my 30 seconds of absurdity.