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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed  |
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Stumbled across this site with some funny videos... Funny Pics, Hot Chicks, and Cool Flicks posted by Dino at 12:19 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Thursday, April 28, 2005
South Park Character Generator Got this cool link from Peter! Create your own South Park character. Here's the one I just made:  Planearium posted by Dino at 10:47 AM (permanent link) (0) comments Way Too Weird Was playing World of Warcraft and had this chat with a total stranger. What a damn coincidence.        posted by Dino at 9:24 AM (permanent link) (0) comments Monday, April 25, 2005
Finally Got Around to the P4 3.4 EE (warranty upgrade) Wow. Very exciting! I finally got around to replacing my warrantied P4 3.4 EE tonight. I ran it through a series of torture tests, and it seems to be holding up very well. Only issue I see: at full load (running Seti, Prime95, Folding@Home, and Stability Test... pretty DAMN severe if you ask me), the CPU temperature gets up to 64 C. My warning threshold is at 70 C! Not much of a safety factor. I also encoded a 17 minute mpg into wmv (an app that has crashed repeatedly and consistently with the old P4 3.4 EE), and it ran flawlessly to completion. Conclusion: the CPU WAS bad! As a student of science, I'm happy to put closure to this issue. With computers, it's extremely hard to pinpoint the root cause of issues. Bad RAM, bad mobo, fried northbridge, bad power supply, bad IDE cable, loose SATA cable, too much pixie dust, bad BIOS... blah blah blah. It's enough to drive a computer science thesis-seeker mad. In my limited experience, computer problems have always been attributed to poor-quality power supplies, and more often than not, bad RAM. Special thanks goes to a little Canadian company called Eurocom. I bought the P4 3.4 EE from them via eBay. It was clearly being sold as "used", but definitely guaranteed not DOA (dead on arrival). When I first installed the used CPU, I did have to deal with bent pins (not good), but I was able to somehow straighten the pins out and seat the thing... wasn't easy... and definitely a warning sign. But I ran that CPU through a series of torture tests to "burn it in", and the tests ran without incident. After I was convinced that the CPU was good, I left positive feedback for Eurocom on eBay. A few weeks later, World of Warcraft was freezing every time I played it, requiring a hard reboot. And it was totally random. I was totally convinced that it was WoW that was at fault. I started root-causing the issue, removing and reseating video cards, sound cards, and RAM. Issue would not go away. Then I removed sound card altogether. Still, problem was still there. Then one day, I had to encode a video from mpg to wmv... bam! Same problem. Then I knew it wasn't WoW-only... it was a sytem issue. Was a little devastated, since I bought the CPU from Eurocom, as-is and used, plus I already left them positive feedback. I figured I was totally screwed out of the $575 that I paid for it. I called them up, explained to them my issue, and they told me to send it back to them. I was a little weary, but I sent it to them. Guess what? They received the CPU three days later, and called me to see if I'd mind if they drop-shipped a new CPU direct from Intel. Joy! The phone call was around 2:00PM on Wednesday. I received a Fed Ex package the next morning at 10:00AM with a brand new CPU. So, if you're ever considering doing business with a company called Eurocom out of Canada, they are first-rate! Two thumbs up to them! BTW, my CPU is idling nicely at 49 C as I type this. Hopefully, there will not be a followup story on CPU grief any time soon. If all goes well, I may even buy a water cooling kit and overclock the mofo. :) posted by Dino at 8:50 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Thursday, April 21, 2005
Interesting article forwarded to me from Peter: HEATHERGamers pay real cash for virtual goodies posted by Dino at 1:05 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Daylight Savings Time (Scanned @ Decoma)Did you know that Indianapolis doesn't follow Daylight Savings Time? I posted by Dino at 1:57 AM (permanent link) (0) comments Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Indy (Scanned @ Decoma)In Indianapolis right now. Blog Rule #1: Don't write too much after you've been drinking while on Blog Rule#2: Don't drink too much while away on business. Blog Rule#3: When in Indy, try to get ahold of Jesse, and make it clear Ten hours of traveling for a four hour meeting is for the birds. Cost save posted by Dino at 10:44 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Monday, April 18, 2005
Southfield (Scanned @ Decoma)Gridlock on Southfield at 3:30... One of the few things I don't miss about At least now I'm driving in an automatic with AC. posted by Dino at 3:49 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Saturday, April 16, 2005
St. Petersburg (Scanned @ Decoma)Sunny and 80 F in St. Petersburg the last two days. Danielle, her sister We discovered where her kitty, "Tiger" has been hanging out. She sleeps up Now we're going to downtown St. Petersburg to see what's going on. posted by Dino at 2:02 PM (permanent link) (2) comments Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Our Baby's Heartbeat Danielle and I started listening to our baby's heartbeat using a portable 2MHz doppler yesterday. Tonight, we decided to record the wonderful sounds by simply recording it using Audblog (I knew Audblog was a cool thing). The recordings were instantly uploaded below. One thing we noticed with the doppler, is that it does not have static/noise reduction built in. The doppler we use produces a great deal of static. So, I did a little research on the internet and downloaded a program called Tsunami Pro 32. It's a home-grown (I've never heard of it) professional recording studio program that the company claims, "Turn your computer into a professional recording studio! An award winning state of the art professional quality recording and editing program, yet very simple to use. More features than the competition, yet only costs one fourth as much. " I downloaded it simply because I typed in Google, "mp3 noise reduction software". And noise reduction is one thing it did quite well. Listen to these audio files of our baby's heartbeat that were run through Tsunami Pro 32. Cool thing is the demo will only record up to a max of 30 seconds of audio... perfect for this type of thing, so I'll never have to purchase. Gotta love demos. Then listen to the files below that are raw mp3's without any noise reduction. It's a world of a difference. 173203NR.mp3 173205NR.mp3 173206NR.mp3 173207NR.mp3 I guess you get what you pay for. A few hundred more bucks and we could've gotten a doppler with built-in noise reduction. Ha ha! We saved that extra hundred bucks to buy our baby some newborn Polo outfits with matching Gucci shoes. posted by Dino at 10:10 PM (permanent link) (2) comments CPU Water Cooling, Simplified! I think I'm going to get one of these! This is, by far, one of the best kits I have seen on the market. I read a write-up in Maximum PC, and decided to do some research. For $100, and a totally, self-contained water cooling system, why wouldn't you buy this for your PC? Ninjalane - Cooler Master Aquagate Mini Review Coolmaster's Site - Aquagate Mini Click here for a nice video review from XPCGear.com My overall impression is this is going to be a HOT seller, and I want one! What they need to do is: 1) Offer a way to attach a video card cooler to run inline with current water cooling. Right now it doesn't. You can only cool your CPU. Also, you can't cut-n-splice the line because the fluid is vacuum filled and sealed at factory (nice because there is no line-bleeding required... it's truly plug-n-play!) 2) Fan speed is controlled by an external knob. Would be nice to have an automatic fan. I guess this could easily be done by just buying a 120mm thermally-controlled fan, but that sensor would be working off of air temp and not water temp. You really can't beat $100 for a closed-loop, ready-to-install water cooling system that's truly effective. posted by Dino at 2:40 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Pictures of the accident Click here to see the pics. posted by Dino at 9:20 AM (permanent link) (0) comments Monday, April 11, 2005
Monday Mondays... What a way to start off a Monday... Left my house about 7:20 AM. It's a little later than I hoped to depart from my house, but wasn't cause for alarm. Got stopped at the 17 Mile & Van Dyke light. I could have blown through the early yellow, and almost did, since radar detector was silent, but decided to stop like a good citizen. Got stopped at the 17 Mile & Mound light. I was in the left lane, and the right lane cleared up since people were turning on Mound, so I took the right lane pole position. Things are looking up. Pretty rare that I get one of the poles at that light. Bottleneck comes up in two miles, so it's nice to get ahead of the pack, mainly to monitor the heroes fortifying and strategizing their positions to somehow get in front of you. So far, very nice day. No aggressive asshats pushing their way up the right lane to pass. Days without the asshats are usually stress-reduced days for me. Not a car in sight for over a quarter mile behind me... it's actually a nice feeling to know that there's not someone behind you, on your ass, aggressive, and in a hurry to get nowhere. Bus in right lane. Flashers come on... first yellow (for a long time), then red. Hmmm... pass the bus or stop? Passing the bus would have required me to punch it, but not bad. I could have easily passed the bus and still stayed in the yellow. But why bother? I'll do the right thing and stop. By stopping I could actually box in any aggressive hero that decided to pass me on the right. Perfect! I could enjoy a leisurely drive west on 17 Mile Road, with a bus on my right to keep the asshats behind me. So here I am... stopped behind a schoolbus. I'm in the left lane, and the bus is in the right lane. I'm about 50 feet behind the bus as I come to a complete leisurely stop. I'm thinking, "where are the kids?" Then I notice a toddler coming out of one of the houses. Nice. Door-to-door service! I don't remember that going to school. The kid gets halfway down his walkway from his front door... The next thing that happened sucked, and ruined my Monday. As the kid was walking to the bus, out of nowhere, I get rear-ended. Out of nowhere!!!! Remember, I was at least a quarter mile ahead of the traffic! I don't even know where this guy came from. He either came out of one of the subdivisions, or he was in a huge hurry to somehow get ahead of the stopped bus. I'm trying to understand how a person, can come up on a bus with its red flashers on, with another car stopped in adjacent lane (me), and somehow think: 1) That I am not actually there, or 2) That I am actually moving at the same rate of speed he is. My conclusion is simple: it's all related to genetics, and somehow, someway, this world is getting infected with stupid people. I hate stupid people. I hate slow people. I hate people that don't know the square root of 49. There, I said it. I am severely prejudiced against stupid people. "I pooshed brakes and they not verk...", Hilai, the Romanian immigrant says to me as he gets out of his minivan. "Did you see the blinking red lights on the schoolbus? It wasn't moving. Did you see me, stopped behind the schoolbus? I wasn't moving. What part of two, non-moving vehicles did you not comprehend?" "I pooshed brakes and they not verk well. Gee, it take me three year to get inserance rates low. Now thees. How much you theenk thees ees going to cost?" "I don't understand how faulty brakes is the reason I have a smashed rear fascia. There was a left turn lane. You could have swerved there. It's really my fault, I should have blown by the bus, or kept an eye out in my rear view. I guess it's assuming too much to think that someone will stop, if I am stopped for a schoolbus. Damage is going to be at least $2000. This vehicle isn't even a year old. Geez, man." So I call information to get the SHPD. They arrive in about ten minutes. In the meantime, I make some calls to Danielle and to work. Then Hilai asks if he can use my phone. LOL. Sure. Then he motions to me to get into his minivan. We sit there for a while as he calls his wife. I'm a little less on fire now, since the guy is definitely sorry. Shit, accidents happen... never by me, but I guess we all can't be connected to reality 24/7. Cops come. Very nice, too. They see us both sitting in the minivan like we were father and son. I hope that's not what they thought. Hilai gets out and tells the cops that I stopped suddenly, and he couldn't stop fast enough. I let him tell his story while I shook my head. My story was simple: I stopped for the bus. I watched the kid walk from his front door to the sidewalk, and the next thing I knew, some asshat hit me from behind. Cops were quick. I wrote my statement (in extreme detail). He couldn't even write his, since he could barely speak Enlish, let alone write it (not that this has any bearing on whether someone is stupid or not). So I waited for the cop to give me back my license, registration and proof of insurance. It wasn't that long, surprisingly. Maybe a total of ten minutes. I asked the cop what I do next, and he says, "That guy got a ticket. You have the option to come to court if he elects to have a hearing. But that's your option. He was totally at fault." Hmmm. Thanks for letting me know he was totally at fault. I was beginning to question myself... I thought this to myself. So now I have a busted fascia, a deductible, and I won't have a vehicle for a week. What do I get for my inconvenience? posted by Dino at 2:50 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Saturday, April 02, 2005
Latest News - Finally! Most of you have probably heard the good news, and some of you have probably figured it out. It's now official! Danielle and I are expecting a baby! We had to wait until we heard the heartbeat from the OB/Gyn-- at 13 weeks! It wasn't good enough that we heard the heartbeat two weeks ago on a hand-held doppler that one of Danielle's friends borrowed from work (she's an RN). It's very exciting to hear a fetal heart pumping away at 160 bpm! Amazing! What's more amazing is that we heard the heart beat at 6 weeks, with a more high-tech ultrasound at a hospital. Six weeks is about as early as you can hear the heart! We even saw an ultrasound of our 6-week old baby, yolk-sac and all!  I'm so excited about dopplers, I bought one the other day from ebay! It's all so exciting! Now Peter and Michelle's baby (expecting in eight weeks), will be play cousins... hopefully not kissing cousins. Decoma Well, I finally did it. I'm now officially off the DSIG payroll. I have accepted a position upstairs (back to my early, original group) to work on automated running boards. I've only officially been onboard with the DSIG group for about two years, but I have been away from OEM engineering for about four years. I've had a pretty exciting career at Decoma. There's never been a dull moment. I started out engineering exterior components for Ford, then I went on to managing the Ford Release Group, along with creating and managing the division intranet. I then went on to IT development (still in same group) to discover a way to bring Decoma out of the 19th century and help push us farther into a paperless society. I discovered Nexprise, and for the next year or two, I helped setup, implement and rollout the system on an international level, hooking up all our divisions in Canada, our engineering division in Troy, as well as divisions scattered across the US, as well as overseas. It was quite a daunting task, and Decoma is still using the system today. I then moved on to become a project manager of our development center, which was one of the best experiences in my tenure. It was exciting because I helped manage the building of show vehicles, which meant I was always getting performance items from vendors such as Borla, Enkei, Warn, etc. to put on the show vehicles. That came to an end a little too soon, and I was placed where I was needed: a program manager for DaimlerChrysler's specialty vehicle group. Biggest headache there was blow-molding a spoiler and stuffing it with foam. I could spend a year typing about all the grief with that program. They're still suffing foam into a blow-molded spoiler to this day. Then the whole face of Decoma changed with a restructuring, and DSIG spawned into quite a large organization. I continued as a program manager, and helped launch a specialty program in about six months- a world record to me, and probably a world record in the entire automotive industry. Too bad I didn't get a medal. Maybe a swift kick in the teeth, but definitely not a medal. I then ended up in engineering, and worked on several projects. Too bad I was never able to see one from concept to grave. I am leaving behind an exciting program, that should be 90% designed and ready to get manufactured. And off I go... Monday is my last day. I did go in on Saturday to try and wrap things up. No medals, though. I don't think anybody ever notices. P4 3.4 EE Looks like my P4 3.4 EE is covered under warranty. Thank goodness I bought it (used) from a reputable source. Lesson learned: don't buy used cpu's. You never know what type of torture and/or abuse they have been subjected to. This one was probably overclocked to kingdom come. Hopefully that will resolve the grief I have been having with World of Warcraft. Perhaps WoW ruined the cpu? Who knows? Crazier things have happened. Speaking of WoW... I haven't been able to play a decent round for well over a week. I'm having major WoW withdrawal. Bidness My web business has kicked up steam, almost to the point that I barely manage the workload. If I won the lotto, and I didn't have to work, I would quit my day job and do web sites full time. Perhaps if business increases, it'll be something that I actually do on a full-time basis. For now, I need the insurance that my day job offers. That's all for now! posted by Dino at 2:50 PM (permanent link) (4) comments |
