et alii*Step V.2
Friday, October 30, 2009
"3 for 3"
¶ 9:29 PM 0 Comments
Today I didn't get the call I was expecting. Said call was about the results of a job interview I had two weeks ago. The guy said I would here by yesterday and he didn't call yesterday or today. I think I'm going to assume I didn't get that job.
I did get a call from another ski resort I had applied for way back on September 30th. Since it was a reportedly a six month thing ending in april I just assumed since I hadn't heard anything by the 15th it was obviously past and they'd already hired someone. I mean october...april...six months right? Well I was surprised when I got a call at 4:30 today from the IT person at that ski resort asking if I was still interested.
Of course the other ski resort's job would be permanent and I can only assume therefore better. But if this job is offered then obviously I will take it. If I take it I can't exactly turn around and quit this six-month thing for the permanent. Or can I?
That's assuming both would make the offer. Which is assuming an awful lot obviously. I think I would like the more permanent of the two. Even if the people offering the six month one lie to me about some possibility of it becoming permanent later. I mean it's good to hear anyway right?
Anyway I'm so very glad I am getting all these offers. Makes me a little optimistic kind of.
Sunday will be the start of my writing marathon I do almost every november. I skipped last year ya see. Did the three years prior to that. This is the first year I think I'm unemployed at the start. Don't know what will happen with that. I mean will that make writing easier...or harder?
I have found in the past I do some of my best writing when I'm kind of stressed out. It's like the more stressed I am the more layers of inhibition melt away thereby letting the good writing flow. It's like when you clear your mind and make a basket from half court. Or something. Anyway little to no stress may or may not be condusive to the creative writing process. I guess I'll find out.
Other bit of note is that after looking over a large portion of my room for the reciept to the OPlay I found it in my jeans pocket. It was almost comedic out of some crummy sit-com: looking all over only to find it in a pocket. I only hope the store will take it back.
Besides just starting my WHS box on a scandisk of all drives which will probably take all night and some of tomorrow I have nothing more to write about. What with all the theoretical novel writing I'll be doing I don't know if I'll still write in this blog. I'll try though.
I did get a call from another ski resort I had applied for way back on September 30th. Since it was a reportedly a six month thing ending in april I just assumed since I hadn't heard anything by the 15th it was obviously past and they'd already hired someone. I mean october...april...six months right? Well I was surprised when I got a call at 4:30 today from the IT person at that ski resort asking if I was still interested.
Of course the other ski resort's job would be permanent and I can only assume therefore better. But if this job is offered then obviously I will take it. If I take it I can't exactly turn around and quit this six-month thing for the permanent. Or can I?
That's assuming both would make the offer. Which is assuming an awful lot obviously. I think I would like the more permanent of the two. Even if the people offering the six month one lie to me about some possibility of it becoming permanent later. I mean it's good to hear anyway right?
Anyway I'm so very glad I am getting all these offers. Makes me a little optimistic kind of.
Sunday will be the start of my writing marathon I do almost every november. I skipped last year ya see. Did the three years prior to that. This is the first year I think I'm unemployed at the start. Don't know what will happen with that. I mean will that make writing easier...or harder?
I have found in the past I do some of my best writing when I'm kind of stressed out. It's like the more stressed I am the more layers of inhibition melt away thereby letting the good writing flow. It's like when you clear your mind and make a basket from half court. Or something. Anyway little to no stress may or may not be condusive to the creative writing process. I guess I'll find out.
Other bit of note is that after looking over a large portion of my room for the reciept to the OPlay I found it in my jeans pocket. It was almost comedic out of some crummy sit-com: looking all over only to find it in a pocket. I only hope the store will take it back.
Besides just starting my WHS box on a scandisk of all drives which will probably take all night and some of tomorrow I have nothing more to write about. What with all the theoretical novel writing I'll be doing I don't know if I'll still write in this blog. I'll try though.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
"Brick"
I was playing around the O!Play the last couple of days and thought I had figured out some clever things and...whatever. As it turns out I don't know as much as I thought...I...do...because the thing is in a reboot loop right now. And there's no disaster recovery option built-in so far as I can tell. Which is a shame. I found a couple options online already but none have thus far worked for me. Seems like a fairly basic feature to think about. Fixing the thing when a firmware update goes bad or whatever. But this wasn't a priority for Asus apparently. So perhaps I'll return it.
Seems I let some time pass between entries. I'll try to remember some stuff from this week.
On I think Tuesday I went up to Tahoe and applied for a position at a ski resort. A position that appears to be permanent. They even have employee housing provided. Not sure if I would utilize it but it's there.
I was the first one to interview for this IT position and the guy seemed fairly impressed with me. He gave me a "waiting list ticket" and I was instructed to call the number listed on it if I had not been contacted within two weeks. So that is what I'll do. I hope I am contacted though.
Of course I am also supposed to hear about the results from another interview I had nearly two weeks ago. I was supposed to hear today actually but I heard nothing. So I'll hopefully hear tomorrow. And if not assume I did not get it. Which I am pretty much assuming now. But hey not only two leads but two leads on permanent jobs that sounds like a pretty good month. So at least I'm semi-optimistic I'll eventually get something. Maybe not soon but eventually.
On Monday I did spend some time with my niece-the-two-year-old. She seems to be a little bit more of a person every time I see her. Really she acts a lot like a typical two-year-old but it's still a kick to interact with her.
Yesterday I didn't much besides messing with my O!play. Note the lack of rebooting the O!Play yesterday. That's when the trouble started today. I was trying to write a guide about the steps to take to mount a portion of the file system to a thumb drive so more software could be safely installed. Apparently I didn't do enough research and as Zap Branigan would say no backsies .
Today a friend of mine came over to hang out for a few hours. It seems he was layed off from his work or at least significantly cut-back-upon. And for whatever reason his wife doesn't want him home during the day thus tipping off the kids. Which seems kind of strange or childish or something to me but I didn't actually offer any commentary on the matter as it really isn't my business.
We messed with the craziness of the O!Play and watched some episodes of the beloved series SPACED via my media server.
My hub idea hasn't really taken any more root since last I talked. It was kind of revolving around the whole web server-on-the-oplay idea. But since that never got done none of the other steps ever came up either. Perhaps I'll just do the preparance (that's a word?) on the laptop and then load it on the real web host when it seems ready. That probably makes more sense doesn't it?
Also I have a soar throat. I hope I'm not getting sick. I mean my media player is kind of broken. That's going to kind of suck being in bed for I-don't-know-how-long with nothing to play. Except with my other media extender. There's that.
I'm probably missing stuff but I think I'll stop now. I'm apparently fading fast.
¶ 10:53 PM 0 Comments
I was playing around the O!Play the last couple of days and thought I had figured out some clever things and...whatever. As it turns out I don't know as much as I thought...I...do...because the thing is in a reboot loop right now. And there's no disaster recovery option built-in so far as I can tell. Which is a shame. I found a couple options online already but none have thus far worked for me. Seems like a fairly basic feature to think about. Fixing the thing when a firmware update goes bad or whatever. But this wasn't a priority for Asus apparently. So perhaps I'll return it.
Seems I let some time pass between entries. I'll try to remember some stuff from this week.
On I think Tuesday I went up to Tahoe and applied for a position at a ski resort. A position that appears to be permanent. They even have employee housing provided. Not sure if I would utilize it but it's there.
I was the first one to interview for this IT position and the guy seemed fairly impressed with me. He gave me a "waiting list ticket" and I was instructed to call the number listed on it if I had not been contacted within two weeks. So that is what I'll do. I hope I am contacted though.
Of course I am also supposed to hear about the results from another interview I had nearly two weeks ago. I was supposed to hear today actually but I heard nothing. So I'll hopefully hear tomorrow. And if not assume I did not get it. Which I am pretty much assuming now. But hey not only two leads but two leads on permanent jobs that sounds like a pretty good month. So at least I'm semi-optimistic I'll eventually get something. Maybe not soon but eventually.
On Monday I did spend some time with my niece-the-two-year-old. She seems to be a little bit more of a person every time I see her. Really she acts a lot like a typical two-year-old but it's still a kick to interact with her.
Yesterday I didn't much besides messing with my O!play. Note the lack of rebooting the O!Play yesterday. That's when the trouble started today. I was trying to write a guide about the steps to take to mount a portion of the file system to a thumb drive so more software could be safely installed. Apparently I didn't do enough research and as Zap Branigan would say no backsies .
Today a friend of mine came over to hang out for a few hours. It seems he was layed off from his work or at least significantly cut-back-upon. And for whatever reason his wife doesn't want him home during the day thus tipping off the kids. Which seems kind of strange or childish or something to me but I didn't actually offer any commentary on the matter as it really isn't my business.
We messed with the craziness of the O!Play and watched some episodes of the beloved series SPACED via my media server.
My hub idea hasn't really taken any more root since last I talked. It was kind of revolving around the whole web server-on-the-oplay idea. But since that never got done none of the other steps ever came up either. Perhaps I'll just do the preparance (that's a word?) on the laptop and then load it on the real web host when it seems ready. That probably makes more sense doesn't it?
Also I have a soar throat. I hope I'm not getting sick. I mean my media player is kind of broken. That's going to kind of suck being in bed for I-don't-know-how-long with nothing to play. Except with my other media extender. There's that.
I'm probably missing stuff but I think I'll stop now. I'm apparently fading fast.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
"Hub"
¶ 10:12 PM 0 Comments
I went to my appointed one-day-job yesterday. I was officially on the clock at noon. There were three techs including me and one lead. There were very few PCs to do though.
We basically just disconnected some old peripherals from the PCs and connect new peripherals back to the same PCs although sometimes in a slightly different serial port. Then the corporate office pushed some images onto the PCs whilst and we finished re-connecting devices. Then the business employees validated these new set ups which only took a little while.
The whole thing, at least on our end, was done by 6pm. Which was fine by me, I would have gone home happy. Easiest day of work I've had in years. Too bad for the back end they didn't have the special printer validated or authenticated or whatever on the back so we had to sit and wait. I don't have much reason to complain though. I mean I was getting paid for doing NOTHING. Fine by me. Still I was tired and would have preferred sleep.
In case you're wondering it's no accident I haven't mentioned the name of the business I was in. It's kind of tacky to go on and on about how you got paid for doing nothing. I mean technically I don't actually have the check in hand yet now do I? Also there may be any number of NDAs I may or may not be under. Probably not but I still won't say the name of the company or the city involved or any detail like that.
Anyway I didn't get to leave until 9:00. So at least three hours of doing nothing. Fine whatever. I was so tired to begin with being trapped there instead of home sleeping was just awful. I felt awful too.
When I got home I was going to go to bed but my room mates invited me to the casino. And for some reason I went. Even though this is usually a bad idea as I always lose at least $100. But as it turns out I did quite well. Any time you can leave with as much or more than you walked in with is a good day at the casino in my book. I mean really.
Today I didn't much do of ...anything...wait. I don't feel like editing that. Piece it together.
So anyway on to other subjects. I have I think signed up for about every web site I'm going to sign up for. Though I have yet to actually produce any actual content for any of them. I'm thinking about converting my other domain to my central "hub" page that just links out to my pages and these various other sites.Something respectable and not in any way associated with this site. Something I wouldn't necessarily give directly to a someone in a job-related situation but wouldn't necessarily frown on if they found it some how.
It would just link to all my eHows, and FixYas and Constant Contents and perhaps a little blurb on what it's about and why it's worth taking a look at.
Actually I just visited that other domain just now and found out there was a pop-up ad. I hate popups. Apparently I had signed up for some nedstat thing and put their JS at the bottom. Well not only have I not used it I have status collection through my web host which I get without having to insert JS or deal with pop-up ads. So I deleted that JS and it's better now. The name is possibly an issue though. I think I can deal though. Even if it doesn't make any sense it's not like I'm going to buy a different domain for my hub page. Pfff. As if. Not even if I HAD a job. No way.
Also I'd like to find a more powerful platform than blogger. I think I may be out growing it. Perhaps WordPress or something based on RubyOnRails. I can dream right?
Ok I just re-scoped out WordPress and it seems some how a lot easier than I remember it being the last time I looked at it. In fact assuming I could install PHP/MySQL on the O!Play I could actually set it up on that thing. But also on my laptop.
Ya see I was going so many places to study the php/sql book that didn't have internet access I actually installed the Portable XAMPP on my laptop so I didn't have to depend on an internet connection. Course now it appears Borders is puting in free wifi so it's becoming less of an issue. In any case I would have to put on the laptop under XAMPP then some how syncronize it back to the web server on the O!Play. Then I assume eventually there would be some kind of synchronize between the O!Play's server and my actual host. Actually I imagine there's some kind of script for that already exists. A fancy name and/or recursive acronym and package. Don't know what I'd search to find it. Perhaps I'll make my own then, perhaps I'll make my own.
I think there was something else but I don't know what it was and I feel like going to bed now.
We basically just disconnected some old peripherals from the PCs and connect new peripherals back to the same PCs although sometimes in a slightly different serial port. Then the corporate office pushed some images onto the PCs whilst and we finished re-connecting devices. Then the business employees validated these new set ups which only took a little while.
The whole thing, at least on our end, was done by 6pm. Which was fine by me, I would have gone home happy. Easiest day of work I've had in years. Too bad for the back end they didn't have the special printer validated or authenticated or whatever on the back so we had to sit and wait. I don't have much reason to complain though. I mean I was getting paid for doing NOTHING. Fine by me. Still I was tired and would have preferred sleep.
In case you're wondering it's no accident I haven't mentioned the name of the business I was in. It's kind of tacky to go on and on about how you got paid for doing nothing. I mean technically I don't actually have the check in hand yet now do I? Also there may be any number of NDAs I may or may not be under. Probably not but I still won't say the name of the company or the city involved or any detail like that.
Anyway I didn't get to leave until 9:00. So at least three hours of doing nothing. Fine whatever. I was so tired to begin with being trapped there instead of home sleeping was just awful. I felt awful too.
When I got home I was going to go to bed but my room mates invited me to the casino. And for some reason I went. Even though this is usually a bad idea as I always lose at least $100. But as it turns out I did quite well. Any time you can leave with as much or more than you walked in with is a good day at the casino in my book. I mean really.
Today I didn't much do of ...anything...wait. I don't feel like editing that. Piece it together.
So anyway on to other subjects. I have I think signed up for about every web site I'm going to sign up for. Though I have yet to actually produce any actual content for any of them. I'm thinking about converting my other domain to my central "hub" page that just links out to my pages and these various other sites.Something respectable and not in any way associated with this site. Something I wouldn't necessarily give directly to a someone in a job-related situation but wouldn't necessarily frown on if they found it some how.
It would just link to all my eHows, and FixYas and Constant Contents and perhaps a little blurb on what it's about and why it's worth taking a look at.
Actually I just visited that other domain just now and found out there was a pop-up ad. I hate popups. Apparently I had signed up for some nedstat thing and put their JS at the bottom. Well not only have I not used it I have status collection through my web host which I get without having to insert JS or deal with pop-up ads. So I deleted that JS and it's better now. The name is possibly an issue though. I think I can deal though. Even if it doesn't make any sense it's not like I'm going to buy a different domain for my hub page. Pfff. As if. Not even if I HAD a job. No way.
Also I'd like to find a more powerful platform than blogger. I think I may be out growing it. Perhaps WordPress or something based on RubyOnRails. I can dream right?
Ok I just re-scoped out WordPress and it seems some how a lot easier than I remember it being the last time I looked at it. In fact assuming I could install PHP/MySQL on the O!Play I could actually set it up on that thing. But also on my laptop.
Ya see I was going so many places to study the php/sql book that didn't have internet access I actually installed the Portable XAMPP on my laptop so I didn't have to depend on an internet connection. Course now it appears Borders is puting in free wifi so it's becoming less of an issue. In any case I would have to put on the laptop under XAMPP then some how syncronize it back to the web server on the O!Play. Then I assume eventually there would be some kind of synchronize between the O!Play's server and my actual host. Actually I imagine there's some kind of script for that already exists. A fancy name and/or recursive acronym and package. Don't know what I'd search to find it. Perhaps I'll make my own then, perhaps I'll make my own.
I think there was something else but I don't know what it was and I feel like going to bed now.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Today I signed up for one of the "freelance writing" sites called suite101. Or at least I attempted to sign up for it. Sometimes they have you fill out a sample article with your submitting just to imply or otherwise induce a higher caliber of applicant. Or, at least the that is what I would guess from the other site I signed up for that required and a sample and accepted me. That was about the same quality as what I sent to suite101 but suite101 rejected me. So either the other site has much lower standards, suite101 has much higher standards or maybe my samples just didn't fit-the-bill as they say. I think I'm going to practice some more, try and "find my voice" and then try again. The good news though, suite101 rejected me less than an hour after I applied. Maybe it's just an auto-mated program that scans for first-person (bad), spelling errors (bad) and "SEO" (more the better). That's probably it.
I had signed up for LifeTips a couple days ago, another freelance writing site. When I submitted the application (with writing sample) it had said it could take up to two weeks to get the results. So expected to be waiting a long, long time. Instead I got the result today. Well I signed it and read some information and watched a pre-recorded "webinar" from last July but I still have no idea how to actually contribute content, create tips or anything else. I don't know if something still has to be done on the back end or if there's a glitch in the web site. In any case it seems rather confusing to get an "accepted" email and then have no way of actually creating content in any way or even some way of telling if there's something left to do and I should wait or what. LifeTips, actually, has this side thing where you take your tips and apply it to a publish-on-demand book publishing dealy. Although the webinar (from last July) said they were going to start charging for that and yet the front page of the site still says "free book publishing". Ok, whatever. Either way it would be fun to have my name in print even if that print wasn't especially obvious or prevelent or likley to earn me any money.
I also signed up for Associated Content. They don't have any kind of assessment of skills what-so-ever. You just sign up for an account and start writing. It's some kind of payment-per-1000 page views or whatever. The more you put into getting visitors and whatever to visit it the better off you'll be. And I think SEO has something to do with it.
I have created a "web jobs" folder in my dropbox containing a sub folder for each of these web sites. I haven't really started on any of them of course. But they're there. I mean I signed up and put a URL shortcut to each and in the respective folder but I haven't really contributed actual content.
So there's associated content, bukisa (not sure on that one), eHow, howtodothings, hubpages, lifetips, squido and suite101. Squido and hubpages seem like different versions of the same site. But HubPages has a much better look to it I think.
Next morning...
I wrote this last night. Actually I think it was longer but blogger decided to not work no more. Every screen I went to had some error message. Good thing blogger periodically backs up what you write. ¶ 9:59 PM 0 Comments
I had signed up for LifeTips a couple days ago, another freelance writing site. When I submitted the application (with writing sample) it had said it could take up to two weeks to get the results. So expected to be waiting a long, long time. Instead I got the result today. Well I signed it and read some information and watched a pre-recorded "webinar" from last July but I still have no idea how to actually contribute content, create tips or anything else. I don't know if something still has to be done on the back end or if there's a glitch in the web site. In any case it seems rather confusing to get an "accepted" email and then have no way of actually creating content in any way or even some way of telling if there's something left to do and I should wait or what. LifeTips, actually, has this side thing where you take your tips and apply it to a publish-on-demand book publishing dealy. Although the webinar (from last July) said they were going to start charging for that and yet the front page of the site still says "free book publishing". Ok, whatever. Either way it would be fun to have my name in print even if that print wasn't especially obvious or prevelent or likley to earn me any money.
I also signed up for Associated Content. They don't have any kind of assessment of skills what-so-ever. You just sign up for an account and start writing. It's some kind of payment-per-1000 page views or whatever. The more you put into getting visitors and whatever to visit it the better off you'll be. And I think SEO has something to do with it.
I have created a "web jobs" folder in my dropbox containing a sub folder for each of these web sites. I haven't really started on any of them of course. But they're there. I mean I signed up and put a URL shortcut to each and in the respective folder but I haven't really contributed actual content.
So there's associated content, bukisa (not sure on that one), eHow, howtodothings, hubpages, lifetips, squido and suite101. Squido and hubpages seem like different versions of the same site. But HubPages has a much better look to it I think.
Next morning...
I wrote this last night. Actually I think it was longer but blogger decided to not work no more. Every screen I went to had some error message. Good thing blogger periodically backs up what you write. ¶ 9:59 PM 0 Comments
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
"Transition"
¶ 10:34 PM 0 Comments
Today I went to a "training session" for an upcoming one-day-only job I've signed up for. Seems like an awful lot of lead up to what amounts to roughly four to five hours of work. Still, too much training is way better than not enough.
It was scheduled to last two hours but it didn't go quite that long. More like 90 or so minutes. I don't thinking I really caught enough of it. Fortunately I opted to not be the lead so I'm not nearly as stressed as I would be. The training was at a hotel down town. Come to think of it I haven't set foot in a hotel in years and this week I was in the lobby of one or another two days running. I don't think that means anything.
Otherwise I've continued to look at the various sites of how-to this explain-that. And that's still really the only thing I've done: look. There's just too many unanswered questions about taxes and unemployment (or lack therein) to make me really want to go and start seriously creating content. I have signed up for a few of them at least. I have also created a folder called "web jobs" in which is one folder for each web site I have signed up for and inside each of those is a URL shortcut to that web site along with an empty text file whose name is the user name I chose for that site. I also create different shortcuts to different pages within that site.
The goal is actually to archive all the content I create for all these different sites in word documents or RTFs or texts or whatever so I know how much work I've done for each and I can avoid directly duplicating content. Some of them seem to have a big thing about content being exclusive, some have different levels of exclusivity and still others have a up-to-you sort of a deal. But irregardless they all seem to recommend making the content you make for them exclusive.
And while only some emphasize "SEO" articles I have a feeling all would really appreciate it.
While I'm thinking about it I should probably complain about the government. Good thing that's not popular! Wow, sarcasm. Creative.
Anyway it seems like every possible incentive to get off of unemployment should be made. For instance if I wanted to say "pause" unemployment with no severe consequences I should be able to do that. I mean with all these web sites maybe combined I could make up to and including the equivalent of $14/hour after that whole 30% or so tax thing and maybe I couldn't. But it's kind of hard to to even want to go there if I know at the very least it would be incredibly difficult to start receiving it again and at the worst simply not an option.
I mean wouldn't be better to incentivize everybody to find alternate sources of income sooner rather than later? Isn't being unemployed generally considered a "bad thing"? My hesitations and concerns seem like proof enough perhaps that maybe things aren't set up like they should be. If anything trying new stuff and experimenting should be encouraged with tax breaks or possible extensions or whatever.
With that of course I suppose there would be further bureaucracy to prevent abuse of the system. More paper work, detailed plans, blah-blah. I mean I think it would work without additional bureaucracy. If you could just, oh I don't know, explain your plan to someone along with how long you want to experiment and then report back the results after some period of time. They could even look at what apparently works and doesn't work and try to circulate the ideas to all the other unemployed people. I mean jeeze. It's a problem right? Why not think outside the box or something...?
Ok I guess ranting done now.
It was scheduled to last two hours but it didn't go quite that long. More like 90 or so minutes. I don't thinking I really caught enough of it. Fortunately I opted to not be the lead so I'm not nearly as stressed as I would be. The training was at a hotel down town. Come to think of it I haven't set foot in a hotel in years and this week I was in the lobby of one or another two days running. I don't think that means anything.
Otherwise I've continued to look at the various sites of how-to this explain-that. And that's still really the only thing I've done: look. There's just too many unanswered questions about taxes and unemployment (or lack therein) to make me really want to go and start seriously creating content. I have signed up for a few of them at least. I have also created a folder called "web jobs" in which is one folder for each web site I have signed up for and inside each of those is a URL shortcut to that web site along with an empty text file whose name is the user name I chose for that site. I also create different shortcuts to different pages within that site.
The goal is actually to archive all the content I create for all these different sites in word documents or RTFs or texts or whatever so I know how much work I've done for each and I can avoid directly duplicating content. Some of them seem to have a big thing about content being exclusive, some have different levels of exclusivity and still others have a up-to-you sort of a deal. But irregardless they all seem to recommend making the content you make for them exclusive.
And while only some emphasize "SEO" articles I have a feeling all would really appreciate it.
While I'm thinking about it I should probably complain about the government. Good thing that's not popular! Wow, sarcasm. Creative.
Anyway it seems like every possible incentive to get off of unemployment should be made. For instance if I wanted to say "pause" unemployment with no severe consequences I should be able to do that. I mean with all these web sites maybe combined I could make up to and including the equivalent of $14/hour after that whole 30% or so tax thing and maybe I couldn't. But it's kind of hard to to even want to go there if I know at the very least it would be incredibly difficult to start receiving it again and at the worst simply not an option.
I mean wouldn't be better to incentivize everybody to find alternate sources of income sooner rather than later? Isn't being unemployed generally considered a "bad thing"? My hesitations and concerns seem like proof enough perhaps that maybe things aren't set up like they should be. If anything trying new stuff and experimenting should be encouraged with tax breaks or possible extensions or whatever.
With that of course I suppose there would be further bureaucracy to prevent abuse of the system. More paper work, detailed plans, blah-blah. I mean I think it would work without additional bureaucracy. If you could just, oh I don't know, explain your plan to someone along with how long you want to experiment and then report back the results after some period of time. They could even look at what apparently works and doesn't work and try to circulate the ideas to all the other unemployed people. I mean jeeze. It's a problem right? Why not think outside the box or something...?
Ok I guess ranting done now.
Monday, October 19, 2009
"Talking"
¶ 11:14 PM 0 Comments
The most obvious thing for today was the job interview. Yes, I had the job interview today at 5pm at some hotel.
I wanted to make sure I wasn't late so I went down to the area at 3:00. I mean I found the hotel at 3:00 or so. I finally found the right turn-in (it was a little tricky) then I just kind of drove around randomly for a little while. Finally I went to the closest starbucks for roughly 35 minutes until 4:30 or so and went back over. I got there right before 4:45. Made sure I had all the stuff I needed and went in.
I brought a couple copies of my resume, the one I'd been using, and also what I was calling my "extended edition" resume with ALL my jobs listed. I'm beginning to think I should just stick with the all jobs version instead of the resume instead of the abbreviated version that summed up everything in a page. After the interview I emailed the recruiter that extended version so he could pass it on the to the two interviewers.
Anyway I met the two interviewers in the lobby and we had a conversation. I went over my past jobs, explained how I created a PE environment on a thumb drive and some other things as well as how I created the how-to documents in Word and left them for the team even as I was leaving.
I think I did a lot of explaining, gave a lot of detail and hopefully came off as knowledgeable. Of course as I assumed the interviewers mentioned they had a lot of people to interview so I'm sure my competition is quite stiff. I don't know how likely it is that I'll actually get this position. I hope I at least make it to the "short list". Although if I don't get it after making it to the short lift I don't know what possible difference that could make.
The only other event of note for today was finally updating the O!Play device to the newest firmware, 1.11N. I wasn't sure if I should at first because I had installed some lpkgs and and the system may or may not have informed me that I was out of space.
It took me a while to finally realize what lkpgs were and how to use them. In hindsight it seems so obvious but it took until now to realize it for whatever reason.
All this experimenting with the O!Play made my want to look back into my other teeny-linux-based-device of yor, the Neuros OSD. I bought it about a year ago and had given up on it shortly there after because the videos I tried to play seemed to be kind of skipping frames and besides the interface is just ugly as anything and kind of glitchy. Also I thought it supported UPnP for some reason but apparently it does not.
Well I got it back out and hooked it up and to try it out once more. As it turns out at least on the linux end it's just as powerful if not more flexible then the O!Play. It has lots of features like the video input AND output, S-Video input, a serial input, network of course and a multi-card reader for varous SD cards and memory stick along with one USB port. If the thing had some kind of hi-def output it really would be superior to that of the O!Play (which only has two USB ports/1 eSATA port).
For whatever reason in this iteration the OSD seemed to work plenty perfectly with my DiVX videos on the media server. I didn't watch for very long but I didn't notice any hick-ups what-so-ever. Although it's been nearly a year if not a year and when I did an auto-check for new firmware it said no new firmware was available. Which is kind of depressing. I mean call me crazy but I was have though an open-sourced, hacker-targeted device with obvious glitches and issues would some how be recieving regular updates. Guess that's just me.
I did have this one crazy idea about converting the O!Play into a laptop. Now I'm thinking since I apparently care so little for the OSD maybe it would be a better test bed for this sort of thing. And having a built-in multi-card reader makes it that much more appealing for adding more storage. Of course I don't know how to add a new input device outside of the remote, nor do I have any "mad" soldering skills. So I don't know if this is at all likely.
I should probably mention the new O!play firmware. It's actually incredibly good. They actually added UPnP as a feature on the main menu.
I wanted to make sure I wasn't late so I went down to the area at 3:00. I mean I found the hotel at 3:00 or so. I finally found the right turn-in (it was a little tricky) then I just kind of drove around randomly for a little while. Finally I went to the closest starbucks for roughly 35 minutes until 4:30 or so and went back over. I got there right before 4:45. Made sure I had all the stuff I needed and went in.
I brought a couple copies of my resume, the one I'd been using, and also what I was calling my "extended edition" resume with ALL my jobs listed. I'm beginning to think I should just stick with the all jobs version instead of the resume instead of the abbreviated version that summed up everything in a page. After the interview I emailed the recruiter that extended version so he could pass it on the to the two interviewers.
Anyway I met the two interviewers in the lobby and we had a conversation. I went over my past jobs, explained how I created a PE environment on a thumb drive and some other things as well as how I created the how-to documents in Word and left them for the team even as I was leaving.
I think I did a lot of explaining, gave a lot of detail and hopefully came off as knowledgeable. Of course as I assumed the interviewers mentioned they had a lot of people to interview so I'm sure my competition is quite stiff. I don't know how likely it is that I'll actually get this position. I hope I at least make it to the "short list". Although if I don't get it after making it to the short lift I don't know what possible difference that could make.
The only other event of note for today was finally updating the O!Play device to the newest firmware, 1.11N. I wasn't sure if I should at first because I had installed some lpkgs and and the system may or may not have informed me that I was out of space.
It took me a while to finally realize what lkpgs were and how to use them. In hindsight it seems so obvious but it took until now to realize it for whatever reason.
All this experimenting with the O!Play made my want to look back into my other teeny-linux-based-device of yor, the Neuros OSD. I bought it about a year ago and had given up on it shortly there after because the videos I tried to play seemed to be kind of skipping frames and besides the interface is just ugly as anything and kind of glitchy. Also I thought it supported UPnP for some reason but apparently it does not.
Well I got it back out and hooked it up and to try it out once more. As it turns out at least on the linux end it's just as powerful if not more flexible then the O!Play. It has lots of features like the video input AND output, S-Video input, a serial input, network of course and a multi-card reader for varous SD cards and memory stick along with one USB port. If the thing had some kind of hi-def output it really would be superior to that of the O!Play (which only has two USB ports/1 eSATA port).
For whatever reason in this iteration the OSD seemed to work plenty perfectly with my DiVX videos on the media server. I didn't watch for very long but I didn't notice any hick-ups what-so-ever. Although it's been nearly a year if not a year and when I did an auto-check for new firmware it said no new firmware was available. Which is kind of depressing. I mean call me crazy but I was have though an open-sourced, hacker-targeted device with obvious glitches and issues would some how be recieving regular updates. Guess that's just me.
I did have this one crazy idea about converting the O!Play into a laptop. Now I'm thinking since I apparently care so little for the OSD maybe it would be a better test bed for this sort of thing. And having a built-in multi-card reader makes it that much more appealing for adding more storage. Of course I don't know how to add a new input device outside of the remote, nor do I have any "mad" soldering skills. So I don't know if this is at all likely.
I should probably mention the new O!play firmware. It's actually incredibly good. They actually added UPnP as a feature on the main menu.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
"Prose"
¶ 9:06 PM 0 Comments
I managed to use the word "prose" in a sentence. Luckily no one was around to notice or hear it. I'm assuming using such a word in a sentence is not a good thing.
Why or how did I use prose in a sentence? I'm still browsing lots and lots of freelance writing sites trying to decide which one or more sites I will eventually sign up for and stumbled across LifeTips. I was reading their standard lines/pitches to get people to sign up as a "guru". So many of their lines kind of rhyme sort of. The kind of poetic that doesn't rhyme in other words. Ok I realize poems exist without rhyming. In fact probably a majority of poems don't rhyme.
Anyway my first reaction to all those poetic sounding sentences was I like their prose. I thought that without even thinking about it.
Like I said I have found many many very similar writing sites now. Some seem like more of a social network with the added profit sharing sort of thing but emphasis on community as much as anything else while other seem to be more about nothing but driving traffic to articles while still others seem more about getting bids and selling work. All of them are different approaches to the same thing as far as I can tell. I really need to explore LifeTips a lot more before I even think about joining.
Upon closer inspection of LifeTips apparently once you're accepted as a "guru" you have to submit 101 apparently short tips your subject of choice. Or at least that many. Or that many every so many weeks or months. Whatever. Anyway at some point your pick what you think are your best 101 tips and LifeTips actually publishes these tips as a book and makes them available to both online and real-life book stores. I thought I'd see if they were full of it so I searched amazon for lifetips and to my some-what surprise there are actually lots and lots of lifetips books for order on amazon. Looks like the application process might be a bit steep though. Which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing but I just hope I'm not rejected. I'm definately leaning towards signing up for LifeTips. Sure would be cool to have a copy of my own book to show to people!
On seperate note since my neck and shoulders have felt so stiff for so long I bought some of that "IcyHot" stuff. The version that comes in the form of a patch. It's the first time I've tried such a thing and it's kind of freaking me out. It's sort of like putting your hand in some ice water then putting said hand in some warm water. But in patch form. Maybe that's supposed to obvious from the name. Whatever.
Tomorrow, or more specifically 19 and 1/2 hours so from now, I have a job interview. With someone. For whatever reason it's at 5:00pm and at a hotel. First time doing an interview at a hotel. I'm assuming it'll be much like any other sort of interview. Never did get a specific job description in writing from the recruiter. Feel like I'm kind of going in blind. Maybe that'll be an idea for an article on of those many freelance writing sites: recruiters - stop being dumbasses. Or you're a recruiter, not a dick. I don't know just spit balling here.
I should probably go to bed now in preperation for said job interview. Wish me luck...
Why or how did I use prose in a sentence? I'm still browsing lots and lots of freelance writing sites trying to decide which one or more sites I will eventually sign up for and stumbled across LifeTips. I was reading their standard lines/pitches to get people to sign up as a "guru". So many of their lines kind of rhyme sort of. The kind of poetic that doesn't rhyme in other words. Ok I realize poems exist without rhyming. In fact probably a majority of poems don't rhyme.
Anyway my first reaction to all those poetic sounding sentences was I like their prose. I thought that without even thinking about it.
Like I said I have found many many very similar writing sites now. Some seem like more of a social network with the added profit sharing sort of thing but emphasis on community as much as anything else while other seem to be more about nothing but driving traffic to articles while still others seem more about getting bids and selling work. All of them are different approaches to the same thing as far as I can tell. I really need to explore LifeTips a lot more before I even think about joining.
Upon closer inspection of LifeTips apparently once you're accepted as a "guru" you have to submit 101 apparently short tips your subject of choice. Or at least that many. Or that many every so many weeks or months. Whatever. Anyway at some point your pick what you think are your best 101 tips and LifeTips actually publishes these tips as a book and makes them available to both online and real-life book stores. I thought I'd see if they were full of it so I searched amazon for lifetips and to my some-what surprise there are actually lots and lots of lifetips books for order on amazon. Looks like the application process might be a bit steep though. Which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing but I just hope I'm not rejected. I'm definately leaning towards signing up for LifeTips. Sure would be cool to have a copy of my own book to show to people!
On seperate note since my neck and shoulders have felt so stiff for so long I bought some of that "IcyHot" stuff. The version that comes in the form of a patch. It's the first time I've tried such a thing and it's kind of freaking me out. It's sort of like putting your hand in some ice water then putting said hand in some warm water. But in patch form. Maybe that's supposed to obvious from the name. Whatever.
Tomorrow, or more specifically 19 and 1/2 hours so from now, I have a job interview. With someone. For whatever reason it's at 5:00pm and at a hotel. First time doing an interview at a hotel. I'm assuming it'll be much like any other sort of interview. Never did get a specific job description in writing from the recruiter. Feel like I'm kind of going in blind. Maybe that'll be an idea for an article on of those many freelance writing sites: recruiters - stop being dumbasses. Or you're a recruiter, not a dick. I don't know just spit balling here.
I should probably go to bed now in preperation for said job interview. Wish me luck...
Saturday, October 17, 2009
"Busy Mind"
So I've managed to be distracted by mutliple things today and yesterday. Yesterday I went down to my Aunt and Uncle's house to help them with their computer. I decided they needed a router so I went to Fry's which was pretty much on the other side of the whole city. I got the router as well as a new DVD-RW drive and an HDMI cable for the Asus O!Play. By that time it was 4:00 on a Friday so it took a while getting all the way back to my Aunt's. I set up the router for them and then went back home.
The O!Play actually does look a lot better with the addition of an HDMI cable versus composite video. That's the other thing I was distracted by: first I just wanted to figure out if I could issue a command in the telnet session to make a particular video start playing on the TV. That would be sweet because I could write a script and set up a CRON job to start something playing. That synced with my TV power itself on would make a good alarm clock. Right?
My other bright idea which I have yet to take any action on at all would be to convert my teeny little O!play box into more of a "clam-shell" form factor kind of like those portable DVD players they still sell or a net book for that matter.
I've seen an image of the circuit board inside and it looks like that biggest thing it has on it is the fairly large heat sync. Of course there's a lot more than that I'd have to worry about in converting the device to a clamshell. I mean I'd have to make it a battery-powered device, figure out some input for it besides the remote (but still leave the remote as an option), maintain the normal outputs for HDMI/composite/SPDIF but add a built-in screen for it, and perhaps some kind of mini-keyboard if I wanted to interact with the underlying linux shell and a telnet connection isn't immediately convenient.
I know it's theoretically possible as there's a whole website dedicated to taking about game consoles, both new and old, and making them battery powered/built-in screen/pass-through outputs and either continued interaction with wireless game pads or a built-in gamepad/input device.
Well I haven't done this yet with a game console I think starting with this wouldn't be very wise and also on the expensive side. The O!Play does have the added benefit of standard output connections so at least I wouldn't have to do a LOT of soldering. Not on that part anyway. I don't know that it would really work however. I can dream though, right?
Also, I put a bunch of those iPKGs or whatever on there and filled up the internal storage. Well two things about: first I need to see if it's possible to "uninstall" or the rough ipkg/linux equivelent therein to free up lots of space then I need to see if the latest firmware, just made available on the 17th, will install. The firmware should be much improved. Or lets hope so.
This also let me to wonder if there wasn't some way of getting a third USB port soldered off of the circuit board so I could just mount a USB flash drive inside the thing, still leaving the two USB ports working and accessible on the outside. Also an apparently optimistic dream.
The other thing I started thiking about was exporting the data from my original question/answer site into a spreadsheet for convenient sorting and filtering of the data. I had already requested some ideas for this from the people who had qualified for the "Programming" section of the site but got absolutely ZERO response from them.
But since I noticed when you right-click on the table that makes up the "Question List" the context menu has an "Export to Excel" option as a choice I decided to try that. Turns out this does in fact work (and unlike the original time I tried this excel didn't crash this time).
So I had the data imported into excel. But I couldn't do the formating and filtering like I was used to via the selection of an area and "create list" feature.
I did some experimenting with pivot tables for a while but nothing I did seemed to give me the results. Then just noticed the Data menu's Filter->AutoFilter which provides the very menus I was seeking via the list feature, although apparently when the data refreshes the convenient auto filter menus are gone once more.
So right now it's kind of useless since I have to keep setting it over and over. I'm making progress though. Ironically I think I've spent more time try to manipulate the question data than actually answering questions for the site.
The other thing I did yesterday and today was start looking at some freelance writing sites. I don't how many if any I will join but it certainly is tempting, isn't it? I have so far looked at suite101.com, Associated Content, and possibly Demand Studios.
I think I'm possibly most impressed with Associated content followed closely by suite101, based purely on page layout and the completeness of their FAQ and general "have their shit together" first impressions. Which isn't to say suite101 is much worse, of course. Just hard to live up to suite101.
I was also looking at eHow at one point. I probably will go back to that one as well. I need to just spend four or whatever hours dedicated just to answer a bunch of questions on that site. Trying to decide if I can actually work with it or not.
Actually I found Suite101 while searching for advise on the life of the self-employed. Keeping track of expenses, filing taxes, etc and there was an article on suite101. I read the article then realized I could probably sign up for that site as well.
On another site, possibly AC, I also found an article about the "search engine optimization" of articles, or SEO for short. It was a very interesting read and it itself was very "SEO"ed.
I think it's time for bed. Midnight, again. ¶ 11:25 PM 0 Comments
Friday, October 16, 2009
"Rain"
It was kind of a weird week weather-wise. We've had nothing but perfectly beautiful days of no clouds and between 70 and 80 degrees for a couple weeks. Then it clouded up, got extremely windy, knocked the power out, rained and poured amazingly heavily and just kind of...stopped. The whole weather sequence lasting roughly 36 hours. Now that it has passed we're right back to 80 degrees with no clouds. It was kind of strange in that way. Or something.
One thing of note, I did finally have a new window installed in my car. Hopefully it won't be broken into again. My faux-window was actually amazingly water resistant (not water proof) for what it was. What it was was a peice of trash bag taped over the hole with transparent packer's tape as tight as possible then a second layer of trash bag with again a layer of packer's tape. And the tape covered the entire window, not just enough to hold the bag onto the car. If I ever need to know this agian for some reason I think I'll have a pretty good idea of how to do it effectively. I was actually glad I had a black car for once since I was using a black trash bag. Still ghetto looking but at least "stealthed" ghetto. Doesn't matter now, I got a new Window.
In other notes of news, or whatever, I have recieved my MCSE books. I think I already mentioned that. And that whole week alone at my mom's house didn't do anything apparently I hardly made any progress at all in the PHP/MySQL or the MCSE books.
I think I've mentioned that I bought an Asus O!Play. And I played with a little. Tried playing some super-high-quality MP4s and whatever and that's about it. Until yesterday that is.
That's when I somehow stumbled upon a review mentioning that the unit comes with a telnet deamon and not only that but there's a root user with no password already existing. I then found some articles on installed a program that allows for easy install of some packages form a package repository. I've already had some fun with that trying to see if I could get the packages for a PXE boot setup. I don't think the unit has enough storage space for it all though. I was also going to set up an Apache/MySQL thing on it. Or at least one of the two. Maybe if I figured out how to install packages to a thumb drive sticking out of one of the USB ports.
I got so obsessed with it I stayed in a very bad sitting position for an extended period of time. I was stiff but fine when I finally went to bed and I was fine this morning when I woke up. But about 10am or so I just got this incredible pain in both of my sides, like my ribs were bruised or I pulled a muscle. So I took some aleve and laid down for a little while and the pain stopped. Very strange thing the way that happened.
¶ 11:36 PM 0 Comments
It was kind of a weird week weather-wise. We've had nothing but perfectly beautiful days of no clouds and between 70 and 80 degrees for a couple weeks. Then it clouded up, got extremely windy, knocked the power out, rained and poured amazingly heavily and just kind of...stopped. The whole weather sequence lasting roughly 36 hours. Now that it has passed we're right back to 80 degrees with no clouds. It was kind of strange in that way. Or something.
One thing of note, I did finally have a new window installed in my car. Hopefully it won't be broken into again. My faux-window was actually amazingly water resistant (not water proof) for what it was. What it was was a peice of trash bag taped over the hole with transparent packer's tape as tight as possible then a second layer of trash bag with again a layer of packer's tape. And the tape covered the entire window, not just enough to hold the bag onto the car. If I ever need to know this agian for some reason I think I'll have a pretty good idea of how to do it effectively. I was actually glad I had a black car for once since I was using a black trash bag. Still ghetto looking but at least "stealthed" ghetto. Doesn't matter now, I got a new Window.
In other notes of news, or whatever, I have recieved my MCSE books. I think I already mentioned that. And that whole week alone at my mom's house didn't do anything apparently I hardly made any progress at all in the PHP/MySQL or the MCSE books.
I think I've mentioned that I bought an Asus O!Play. And I played with a little. Tried playing some super-high-quality MP4s and whatever and that's about it. Until yesterday that is.
That's when I somehow stumbled upon a review mentioning that the unit comes with a telnet deamon and not only that but there's a root user with no password already existing. I then found some articles on installed a program that allows for easy install of some packages form a package repository. I've already had some fun with that trying to see if I could get the packages for a PXE boot setup. I don't think the unit has enough storage space for it all though. I was also going to set up an Apache/MySQL thing on it. Or at least one of the two. Maybe if I figured out how to install packages to a thumb drive sticking out of one of the USB ports.
I got so obsessed with it I stayed in a very bad sitting position for an extended period of time. I was stiff but fine when I finally went to bed and I was fine this morning when I woke up. But about 10am or so I just got this incredible pain in both of my sides, like my ribs were bruised or I pulled a muscle. So I took some aleve and laid down for a little while and the pain stopped. Very strange thing the way that happened.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
"Word"
¶ 11:16 PM 0 Comments
Other than going to my sister's house and playing with my two-year-old niece nothing of any much significance happened today. Playing with my niece is always fun of course, you never quite know what she's exactly going to do next or what mood she'll be in next. I'm fairly certain that's normal for a 2-year-old though.
Yesterday though I found out within 10 seconds or so of opening MS Word it would crash.
I did the normal troubleshooting I could think of: repair install, re-install, uninstall/re-install, deleted the normal.dot, crated a new user, logged in and tested under said different user, tried adjusting a few registry entries per a suggestion I found on the Internet...unfortunately none of those things worked.
I did find out if I opened word and then brought up the options screen it wouldn't crash. So the crashing seemed to be related somehow to the blinking cursor...or something...
Finally I went in and looked at my installed printers and realized I had a corrupted printer install still in there. I deleted that and attempted to delete the instance of the same printer installed, which hasn't yet worked, and Word stopped crashing. The other instance isn't actually marked as my default printer however. It's just kind of there. Trying to be deleted. I uhh...kind of wish I had thought of this as a cause a little sooner.
I did get a lead on a possible job. I don't know if anything will come of it. Also it's like two hours away. When there's no traffic two hours. In rush hour I don't think I want to know how long it'd take. At least it'd be a year contract. I think I'll move closer by if I some how got it.
Well this was certainly an exciting entry, wasn't it?
Yesterday though I found out within 10 seconds or so of opening MS Word it would crash.
I did the normal troubleshooting I could think of: repair install, re-install, uninstall/re-install, deleted the normal.dot, crated a new user, logged in and tested under said different user, tried adjusting a few registry entries per a suggestion I found on the Internet...unfortunately none of those things worked.
I did find out if I opened word and then brought up the options screen it wouldn't crash. So the crashing seemed to be related somehow to the blinking cursor...or something...
Finally I went in and looked at my installed printers and realized I had a corrupted printer install still in there. I deleted that and attempted to delete the instance of the same printer installed, which hasn't yet worked, and Word stopped crashing. The other instance isn't actually marked as my default printer however. It's just kind of there. Trying to be deleted. I uhh...kind of wish I had thought of this as a cause a little sooner.
I did get a lead on a possible job. I don't know if anything will come of it. Also it's like two hours away. When there's no traffic two hours. In rush hour I don't think I want to know how long it'd take. At least it'd be a year contract. I think I'll move closer by if I some how got it.
Well this was certainly an exciting entry, wasn't it?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
"Tired"
Somehow no matter how much or what I write there's always stuff I realize later I meant to write about. And then next time I still forget to write about it. I think if I just keep writing I will eventually get to everything. I mean how much could I possibly go on and on about without actually saying anything? That's just crazy.
Today I actually did very little. I did go on a relatively short walk downtown for coffee this morning. And I received some correspondence back about replacing my car window although that's not really something I did so much as something that happened.
When I got home I was amazingly tired so I just stayed on the couch for a really long time and nodded off a couple of times. I've been going to bed at like 1am every night or whatever and then I get up at 7am to inject the diabetic dog so I get very little sleep. Learned a lot about medieval weapons made from modern parts though thanks to something called the military channel. I didn't even know there WAS a military channel. It's kind of like discovery but with more military. I know, you'd never guess right?
Also I queued up even more VOBs for conversion to high-quality H.264/MP4. So there's that. Queued up quite a bit files but already half of them are done. So if I really wanted to watch them tomorrow I could probably. I'm really excited to see how well that Asus player works playing the hopefully super-quality MP4s. ¶ 7:59 PM 0 Comments
Saturday, October 10, 2009
"Large, High Quality"
¶ 11:29 PM 0 Comments
Remember when my titles were some how creative? Ya me neither.
Today I apparently felt the need to catch up on my lack of cable TV subscription since the TV has hardly been off as long as I've been in the house. And I haven't even opened the PHP book.
I did go back to the condo for a while, mailed my one envelope, gave the dog a shot (twice), and then also went down to Fry's. Despite the one extremely negative experience I had there. I'm back to spending money with them apparently.
I wanted to buy the cheapest DVD burner available. I was about to buy a $30 one when I spotted a no-box OEM one for $20. Didn't realize until I got home it was a ROM-ONLY drive. Well I have another burner and I really needed it for booting computers off DVDs anyway. So haven't decided yet if I'm going to take it back. Although I think I may as well since what's the point of a drive these days if it doesn't also burn?
I also bought one of those little embedded print servers for another $20. See that's the one thing I really did actually need from Fry's. I didn't spend a lot of time studying the box for it either so I should probably test it in case it also has to go back.
Lastly I bought an Asus O!Play for only $90. Mostly because I can tell my current media extender/streamer/whatever is apparently slowly dieing. Although that it some how lasted this long is actually rather impressive. I can tell though, I don't know when it will finally die but I know it will die.
I bought O!Play and brought it back up to the house but didn't bring any media with me. I merely hooked it up to the TV to see how it looked and functioned. Reportedly it can handle really high quality H.264 media files without an issue. Even MKV files which I guess are some kind of 720p HD things. I don't really know since my current extender can't handle them. And I have no Blu-ray period never mind rips of them.
That's the other reason for getting a new extender: more complete support for a wider range of video formats. My current one handles the quality DivX no problem but either won't work at all or works very poorly with MP4/H.264 formats and won't even try the MKV files.
So right now my media server is encoding a few movies in MP4 "high quality" H.264. From what I could tell via a terminal services session over the Internet through a Himachi VPN connection it seems high quality. Oh and I'm ripping it straight from an 8 Gig VOB file too. So it should be the highest quality possible as far as H.264 files go anyway.
I'm using a freeware application called Format Factory which is just incredible. I just has so many formats to convert to. It's like "all-to-MP4", "all-to-WMV", "all-to-3gp", "all-to-MKV", so on and so forth. Maybe I should convert to MKV instead. I think that's just for really hi-def stuff taken from a blu-ray or raw satellite feed or something. Anyway format factory allows for converting directly from a VOB file to H.264 so I consider it pretty awesome.
Of course I there's always the possibility that the O!Play will simply play the VOB files directly. But if I can get the same quality at 1/8th the HDD space why should I do that? Right?
So those are the three things I bought although I don't think I can afford any of them. I am still looking into various online jobs so I'm hoping to make it up sometime soon.
Also, since my car is still missing a rather small yet important side window I think I'm going to have to play find-the-window at the local pick-in-pull in preparation for the coming rainy season. Apparently yes, it does occasionally rain where I am. Although most of September and all of October up to now has been incredibly mild: completely sunny and never really topping 80 degrees. I've not only been walking every day but walking between 11am and 1:30pm every day. Long walks too although I hardly notice since I'm not sweating profusely from the heat.
I often listen to a podcast called security now who did a special episode on Vitamin D and how important it is. I like the episode but haven't gone so far as to go into a store and try to find vitamin D supplement pills. Hopefully all this sun exposure will get me some of much needed vitamin D supplies into my body. Although this weather will end eventually and then I'll really be without my source of D. So I guess I will go and find some kind of pill form of D.
The only other thing I want to write about is my installation of MS office I have right now. Or perhaps my lack thereof. I an bring up word and leave it open for a while but eventually it crashes of its own accord. At least i think that's what's happening. I actually paste content in then try to copy-and-paste the same content back out to some other destination. It is at the point word will crash. I already did a "repair install" and a "re-install office". My next step will be:
Aren't computers fun? (Yes, the answer is yes)
Today I apparently felt the need to catch up on my lack of cable TV subscription since the TV has hardly been off as long as I've been in the house. And I haven't even opened the PHP book.
I did go back to the condo for a while, mailed my one envelope, gave the dog a shot (twice), and then also went down to Fry's. Despite the one extremely negative experience I had there. I'm back to spending money with them apparently.
I wanted to buy the cheapest DVD burner available. I was about to buy a $30 one when I spotted a no-box OEM one for $20. Didn't realize until I got home it was a ROM-ONLY drive. Well I have another burner and I really needed it for booting computers off DVDs anyway. So haven't decided yet if I'm going to take it back. Although I think I may as well since what's the point of a drive these days if it doesn't also burn?
I also bought one of those little embedded print servers for another $20. See that's the one thing I really did actually need from Fry's. I didn't spend a lot of time studying the box for it either so I should probably test it in case it also has to go back.
Lastly I bought an Asus O!Play for only $90. Mostly because I can tell my current media extender/streamer/whatever is apparently slowly dieing. Although that it some how lasted this long is actually rather impressive. I can tell though, I don't know when it will finally die but I know it will die.
I bought O!Play and brought it back up to the house but didn't bring any media with me. I merely hooked it up to the TV to see how it looked and functioned. Reportedly it can handle really high quality H.264 media files without an issue. Even MKV files which I guess are some kind of 720p HD things. I don't really know since my current extender can't handle them. And I have no Blu-ray period never mind rips of them.
That's the other reason for getting a new extender: more complete support for a wider range of video formats. My current one handles the quality DivX no problem but either won't work at all or works very poorly with MP4/H.264 formats and won't even try the MKV files.
So right now my media server is encoding a few movies in MP4 "high quality" H.264. From what I could tell via a terminal services session over the Internet through a Himachi VPN connection it seems high quality. Oh and I'm ripping it straight from an 8 Gig VOB file too. So it should be the highest quality possible as far as H.264 files go anyway.
I'm using a freeware application called Format Factory which is just incredible. I just has so many formats to convert to. It's like "all-to-MP4", "all-to-WMV", "all-to-3gp", "all-to-MKV", so on and so forth. Maybe I should convert to MKV instead. I think that's just for really hi-def stuff taken from a blu-ray or raw satellite feed or something. Anyway format factory allows for converting directly from a VOB file to H.264 so I consider it pretty awesome.
Of course I there's always the possibility that the O!Play will simply play the VOB files directly. But if I can get the same quality at 1/8th the HDD space why should I do that? Right?
So those are the three things I bought although I don't think I can afford any of them. I am still looking into various online jobs so I'm hoping to make it up sometime soon.
Also, since my car is still missing a rather small yet important side window I think I'm going to have to play find-the-window at the local pick-in-pull in preparation for the coming rainy season. Apparently yes, it does occasionally rain where I am. Although most of September and all of October up to now has been incredibly mild: completely sunny and never really topping 80 degrees. I've not only been walking every day but walking between 11am and 1:30pm every day. Long walks too although I hardly notice since I'm not sweating profusely from the heat.
I often listen to a podcast called security now who did a special episode on Vitamin D and how important it is. I like the episode but haven't gone so far as to go into a store and try to find vitamin D supplement pills. Hopefully all this sun exposure will get me some of much needed vitamin D supplies into my body. Although this weather will end eventually and then I'll really be without my source of D. So I guess I will go and find some kind of pill form of D.
The only other thing I want to write about is my installation of MS office I have right now. Or perhaps my lack thereof. I an bring up word and leave it open for a while but eventually it crashes of its own accord. At least i think that's what's happening. I actually paste content in then try to copy-and-paste the same content back out to some other destination. It is at the point word will crash. I already did a "repair install" and a "re-install office". My next step will be:
- completely uninstall office
- delete any files in c:\program files that reference office
- go into my profile folder and delete any Microsoft or other references to office
- Also, I'm going to run CCleaner to clear up any thing else that may be left
- Then if I haven't already, I'll reboot the computer and see if that fixed it
Aren't computers fun? (Yes, the answer is yes)
Friday, October 09, 2009
"Busy"
I've actually been busy the last couple of days, a slight departure for me. I put XP MCE on my AcerOne netbook (over-writing Windows 7 RC) and then put some movies and a TV show on it in DivX format and let my mom have it for her trip to Hawaii. I got started on this entirely too late in the day yesterday and didn't even get it to her before 4:30. And I didn't get nearly enough movies and shows on to the thing before I gave it to her. Thanks to my automated XP install methods it was all automated to install it but it actually took quite long to finish. But then I did install .NET packs and service pack 3 during install so this isn't entirely unexpected. At least I didn't have to a lot "the clicking".
I've also started using a ToDo/Events track application called Rainlender. I like it quite a bit only I am using the free version whilst the pro version syncs online to Google Calendars. Not wanting to spend the 10 Euros or whatever I haven't purchased it which makes having it installed on more than one PC rather useless. So here's what I did to get around that:
I figured out the Default.ICS file is what keeps track of the various ToDos and Events whilst the INI file sets the path to the ICS. So I set the path to the ICS on each different PC to the DropBox folder, but first copied said ICS folder to the dropbox folder.
Anyway now both installations of Rainlendar point to the same ICS file and every time I update the ToDos and events on either of my computers it updates also on my other computer. Which is very convenient.
Especially since I'm right now at my mom's house on my laptop and will be here for a several days and be presumably continue updating said ToDos and Events.
Events like injecting insulin into my mom's dog twice a day for instance. And also I have to fax some paper work for an upcoming 1099 job. I probably mentioned it. Or not. Whatever.
Oh and I have jury duty. Why they don't leave me alone I have no idea. I hope that doesn't have an effect on a new job. Or getting a job. That also.
Haven't done a lot of the Q/A job the last couple days. Just too many priorities I guess.
I think mentioned my ordering a bunch of books to study for the MCSE. Well I received the final set today. The whole "core package" of four different books. Of course, I haven't even started on the first book yet. An incredibly think book on the ins-and-outs of XP.
I keep telling myself I want to get through the PHP/MySQL book first and then as I'm taking notes and highlighting the MCSE books I'll also keep the information also in an easily accessible SQL database.
Anybody else have have Firefox randomly forget how to red underline typos? Hmmm.
Anyway that was the theory. But I have this thing about spending too much time in my condo because of the state it's in. So I keep going to random coffee shops and the library to try and study the PHP/MySQL book but I never get very far. Too many distractions I guess. Perhaps spending more time than not at my mom's house will be more conducive to the studying. Doesn't an easily query-able (if that's a word) database of MCSE-related information sound good and/or convenient? Just have to remember to password protect it probably. I mean I have a database on my WHS but I also have one on my laptop. The whole purpose of a web server/sql database combination is to have it all in one place which means I'd probably use my convenient hosted service for the database. I mean if I just have to sync the database back and forth between computers why bother using SQL? May as well use Word or Excel or something.
Right now I'm watching the apparently much ignored Dollhouse program. This episode isn't all that great either, although it seems a little better than last week's episode. Usually the episode really revolves around Echo, this one was relatively Echo-lite I thought. I thought the guy that played Victor does a pretty job of playing a large range of character from a serial killing psycho to a stereo typical ditze valley girl who apparently like rubbing various parts of her body on various objects. It was funny to watch Victor act like that. It's kind of a cheap method of coming up with a way to get a reaction out of an audience though.
Both of these first two episodes have been rather forgettable and not in anyway extraordinary in any way. The preview I saw kind of made it seem like maybe the next couple of episodes will be more eventful and hopefully of greater by which I mean any quality what-so-ever.
¶ 7:23 PM 0 Comments
I've actually been busy the last couple of days, a slight departure for me. I put XP MCE on my AcerOne netbook (over-writing Windows 7 RC) and then put some movies and a TV show on it in DivX format and let my mom have it for her trip to Hawaii. I got started on this entirely too late in the day yesterday and didn't even get it to her before 4:30. And I didn't get nearly enough movies and shows on to the thing before I gave it to her. Thanks to my automated XP install methods it was all automated to install it but it actually took quite long to finish. But then I did install .NET packs and service pack 3 during install so this isn't entirely unexpected. At least I didn't have to a lot "the clicking".
I've also started using a ToDo/Events track application called Rainlender. I like it quite a bit only I am using the free version whilst the pro version syncs online to Google Calendars. Not wanting to spend the 10 Euros or whatever I haven't purchased it which makes having it installed on more than one PC rather useless. So here's what I did to get around that:
I figured out the Default.ICS file is what keeps track of the various ToDos and Events whilst the INI file sets the path to the ICS. So I set the path to the ICS on each different PC to the DropBox folder, but first copied said ICS folder to the dropbox folder.
Anyway now both installations of Rainlendar point to the same ICS file and every time I update the ToDos and events on either of my computers it updates also on my other computer. Which is very convenient.
Especially since I'm right now at my mom's house on my laptop and will be here for a several days and be presumably continue updating said ToDos and Events.
Events like injecting insulin into my mom's dog twice a day for instance. And also I have to fax some paper work for an upcoming 1099 job. I probably mentioned it. Or not. Whatever.
Oh and I have jury duty. Why they don't leave me alone I have no idea. I hope that doesn't have an effect on a new job. Or getting a job. That also.
Haven't done a lot of the Q/A job the last couple days. Just too many priorities I guess.
I think mentioned my ordering a bunch of books to study for the MCSE. Well I received the final set today. The whole "core package" of four different books. Of course, I haven't even started on the first book yet. An incredibly think book on the ins-and-outs of XP.
I keep telling myself I want to get through the PHP/MySQL book first and then as I'm taking notes and highlighting the MCSE books I'll also keep the information also in an easily accessible SQL database.
Anybody else have have Firefox randomly forget how to red underline typos? Hmmm.
Anyway that was the theory. But I have this thing about spending too much time in my condo because of the state it's in. So I keep going to random coffee shops and the library to try and study the PHP/MySQL book but I never get very far. Too many distractions I guess. Perhaps spending more time than not at my mom's house will be more conducive to the studying. Doesn't an easily query-able (if that's a word) database of MCSE-related information sound good and/or convenient? Just have to remember to password protect it probably. I mean I have a database on my WHS but I also have one on my laptop. The whole purpose of a web server/sql database combination is to have it all in one place which means I'd probably use my convenient hosted service for the database. I mean if I just have to sync the database back and forth between computers why bother using SQL? May as well use Word or Excel or something.
Right now I'm watching the apparently much ignored Dollhouse program. This episode isn't all that great either, although it seems a little better than last week's episode. Usually the episode really revolves around Echo, this one was relatively Echo-lite I thought. I thought the guy that played Victor does a pretty job of playing a large range of character from a serial killing psycho to a stereo typical ditze valley girl who apparently like rubbing various parts of her body on various objects. It was funny to watch Victor act like that. It's kind of a cheap method of coming up with a way to get a reaction out of an audience though.
Both of these first two episodes have been rather forgettable and not in anyway extraordinary in any way. The preview I saw kind of made it seem like maybe the next couple of episodes will be more eventful and hopefully of greater by which I mean any quality what-so-ever.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
"Considerate"
¶ 11:53 PM 0 Comments
Today I think I was slightly more productive than normal. I went for the long walk again. It was a "warmish" 70 degress or so at 11:30am so that is what I did. I walked. I don't know how long, probably between 2 and 3 miles. Lots of hills and on pavement. I'm sure it's killing my knees but whatever.
Then I came home and spent some time on the answer site. Then I went to lunch to have the "lunch buffet" at round table where I studied the PHP/MySQL book. After that I went to a coffee shop and studied it some more.
Then I finally came home and found yet another question/answer site called FixYa. This one makes you earn the ability to apply for the paid answering unlike the one I'm currently trying to do. I'm still not sure if you JUST answer the minimum of 30 or if you answer them and actually have to get positive feedback on what you answer. In any case I've "answered" five questions so far today and did a "claification request" on a bunch more.
Some how it's just easier to type in a quick answer for a question when I'm doing it for free and I know I'm doing it free. Or maybe that's just me.
One thing I don't like about FixYa is the annoying ads all over the place and the constant popping up in a new window (or tab in my case). And my current Q/A site has a very nice "AJAX-ee" auto-updating list of questions in the computers category. While my Q/A site has too few categories FixYa has way too many. Some how Toshiba is a category under OS and Microsoft is a laptop brand on FixYa. It's like it just inserts categories as the users ask questions or something, doesn't even matter if it works or not.
I still haven't even started on that Mechanical Turk thing for Amazon for reallly signed up for that "LivePerson" site. Though I did look closer at the LivePerson and I don't know how I'm going to compete with all those 1,000+ five star rated people with BA degress and whatever.
I do have a PC to deliver (still, ya the same one) and I was going to prep my little AcerOne Netbook for my mom so she can use it as a media player on her trip to Hawaii. I figured I would outfit it with XP MCE, set the MCE shell to open by default and then transfer as many movies and shows over as will fit on the drive. Well I'll leave four or five gigs free but whatever. Step one would probably be re-installing it with MCE. And I haven't done it yet. I'll just have to do outside my norm and not spend so much time on Q/A sites tomorrow and instead get all these computers out of here.
Course for all this time spent on the Q/A sites I have actually attempted to resolve relatively few questions. I mean granted not that many questions really come up that come even close to what I can answer (MagicJack? really?!?) but still I have some kind of stage fright or something. I guess it's that people have already plunked down money for the answer and I don't want to disapoint them. So I don't respond unless I'm much more confident I can actually solve the issue. Considering the number of customers that don't bother responding, letting the question expire, I should probably get over it. I am supposed to be earning money after all. Right?
Speaking of which I have been checking Craig's List for new jobs. I found this one nearby with this long laundry list of requirements. I mean there's management experience and MCSE preferred and all kinds of digital phone repair/maintanance and on and on and on. Then you get to the end and...$15 an HOUR!?!!?!?! What a fucking joke. Oh and Indian heritage preference in hiring. I don't know what kind of prospects they're really going to get from this ad. I mean damn...may as well make it TWO DOLLARS. I mean sure we're in a "deep recession" and all but this is just cruel and unusual. You can't have THOSE requirements and pay THAT LITTLE. What jerks. The ad will expire (page won't exist) in a couple weeks from the time I write this but here's the link.
The last note I'll make is about my server, aptly named Caprica (ships revolve around planets, comptuers revolve around servers...my two PCs are Caprica and Pegasus...made sense at the time...). I took it up to my mom's house to use her air compresser to blow the dust out of it. Which I did. I have to say this case/fan/PC component combination has held up incredibly well. Anyway I was so fed up with so much dust accumulating ever three months I bought some kind of air filter in some kind of sheet form and have literally wrapped the front of the Caprica with this air filter. It's covering the whole intake, the "backplane" with the hard drives, all of it. I also put some on the back although I doubt that will do too much since those fans are actually blow out out. So it's kind of humorous just looking at it. I won't find out until January or so if this little scheme as actually done anything or made no difference.
Since it's coming up on 1am I think I'll stop now...Wow I was trying to select all with ctrl+a blindly so I could copy this to avoid losing it and I some how lost the whole tab. Luckily blogger is idiot proof and had saved a copy for me. Guess I won't need to try and copy it then.
Then I came home and spent some time on the answer site. Then I went to lunch to have the "lunch buffet" at round table where I studied the PHP/MySQL book. After that I went to a coffee shop and studied it some more.
Then I finally came home and found yet another question/answer site called FixYa. This one makes you earn the ability to apply for the paid answering unlike the one I'm currently trying to do. I'm still not sure if you JUST answer the minimum of 30 or if you answer them and actually have to get positive feedback on what you answer. In any case I've "answered" five questions so far today and did a "claification request" on a bunch more.
Some how it's just easier to type in a quick answer for a question when I'm doing it for free and I know I'm doing it free. Or maybe that's just me.
One thing I don't like about FixYa is the annoying ads all over the place and the constant popping up in a new window (or tab in my case). And my current Q/A site has a very nice "AJAX-ee" auto-updating list of questions in the computers category. While my Q/A site has too few categories FixYa has way too many. Some how Toshiba is a category under OS and Microsoft is a laptop brand on FixYa. It's like it just inserts categories as the users ask questions or something, doesn't even matter if it works or not.
I still haven't even started on that Mechanical Turk thing for Amazon for reallly signed up for that "LivePerson" site. Though I did look closer at the LivePerson and I don't know how I'm going to compete with all those 1,000+ five star rated people with BA degress and whatever.
I do have a PC to deliver (still, ya the same one) and I was going to prep my little AcerOne Netbook for my mom so she can use it as a media player on her trip to Hawaii. I figured I would outfit it with XP MCE, set the MCE shell to open by default and then transfer as many movies and shows over as will fit on the drive. Well I'll leave four or five gigs free but whatever. Step one would probably be re-installing it with MCE. And I haven't done it yet. I'll just have to do outside my norm and not spend so much time on Q/A sites tomorrow and instead get all these computers out of here.
Course for all this time spent on the Q/A sites I have actually attempted to resolve relatively few questions. I mean granted not that many questions really come up that come even close to what I can answer (MagicJack? really?!?) but still I have some kind of stage fright or something. I guess it's that people have already plunked down money for the answer and I don't want to disapoint them. So I don't respond unless I'm much more confident I can actually solve the issue. Considering the number of customers that don't bother responding, letting the question expire, I should probably get over it. I am supposed to be earning money after all. Right?
Speaking of which I have been checking Craig's List for new jobs. I found this one nearby with this long laundry list of requirements. I mean there's management experience and MCSE preferred and all kinds of digital phone repair/maintanance and on and on and on. Then you get to the end and...$15 an HOUR!?!!?!?! What a fucking joke. Oh and Indian heritage preference in hiring. I don't know what kind of prospects they're really going to get from this ad. I mean damn...may as well make it TWO DOLLARS. I mean sure we're in a "deep recession" and all but this is just cruel and unusual. You can't have THOSE requirements and pay THAT LITTLE. What jerks. The ad will expire (page won't exist) in a couple weeks from the time I write this but here's the link.
The last note I'll make is about my server, aptly named Caprica (ships revolve around planets, comptuers revolve around servers...my two PCs are Caprica and Pegasus...made sense at the time...). I took it up to my mom's house to use her air compresser to blow the dust out of it. Which I did. I have to say this case/fan/PC component combination has held up incredibly well. Anyway I was so fed up with so much dust accumulating ever three months I bought some kind of air filter in some kind of sheet form and have literally wrapped the front of the Caprica with this air filter. It's covering the whole intake, the "backplane" with the hard drives, all of it. I also put some on the back although I doubt that will do too much since those fans are actually blow out out. So it's kind of humorous just looking at it. I won't find out until January or so if this little scheme as actually done anything or made no difference.
Since it's coming up on 1am I think I'll stop now...Wow I was trying to select all with ctrl+a blindly so I could copy this to avoid losing it and I some how lost the whole tab. Luckily blogger is idiot proof and had saved a copy for me. Guess I won't need to try and copy it then.
Monday, October 05, 2009
"Idle"
Not sure why I didn't post yesterday. Just didn't get around to it I guess. I did open a new savings account so I had some place to shove all this online money and point my paypal at. I won't keep much in it ya see so if PayPal is hacked what little life savings I have isn't wiped out. That's the theory anyway.
Today I didn't get a lot done either. Tried to start working on my PHP/MySQL quest again. Haven't gotten very far and most likely won't. I'm at the library now: free wifi and very quiet. The paid answer site is too distracting though. And I still have those MCSE books to get to. I got the first two, the big package of several as a set is still due. Which is just as well since I don't think I really have the room to store them.
I also found out I have jury duty. I don't know if that will interfere some how with my job seeking or not. Or receiving unemployment. Whatever. I'll find out at my unemployment class or meeting or whatever it is.
See as how I apparently have a lot of important dates to remember -- more than you'd think for an unemployed guy -- I started looking up "to-do" list type applications. Great, one MORE thing learn. I don't know what I'm complaining about, it's not like there's a list of more important pressing matters on my plate or something.
I do have to deliver the computer to the father-in-law-in-law (or whatever).
later...
One thing I haven't yet mentioned is a game for the 360 I've been playing off-and-on lately. It's called Red Faction: Guerrilla. It seems a lot like one of the GTAs to me in so much as you have kind of an "open world" or "sand box" and then accept different missions at your leisure. It's also sectioned off like a GTA. One more thing like GTA, when the bad guys get wind of you first their "aware" with a yellow alert and then their "kill you" with a red alert and all kinds of military vehicles come flying out of no where and start crashing into each other and blowing each other up, much like GTA and police cars. It also has lots of vehicles both nearby for free and randomly wandering the warzone for you to "car jack". I don't think the cars have radios though.
But everything else is different in that you're in a desert on Mars and it has this incredible physics engine when it comes to knocking down structures. You use this massive hammer or demolition charges in just the right area of the foundation and then detonate and the whole thing crumbles. Possible on top of you and/or your vehicle. Of course in one case I just crashed a big track through a building to bring it down all the more efficiently. I think that hurt some civilians but at least I accomplished the mission.
The thing is, right now, I only really play after dark becuase for some reason my land lard won't buy blinds for the only door into the condo which is a big sliding glass door that lets in lots of light for the whole day. So even though I other wise dislike fall/winter as seasons at least I can play the 360 again since it gets dark so much earlier.
Since that last posting I did do some very minor amount of work in the PHP/MySQL book but for some reason I just can't get back into it. I don't know what the deal is with that. I seem to do better when there's no Internet as an option. No paid questions to answer or anything else to distract me I guess. Same thing happened when I wrote the 50k novel in 28 days: starbucks = no internet which means more concentration apparently.
Speaking of which the novel thing is coming up in November. I hope all this blogging is effective writing practice. And that it doesn't make it worse some how.
Also, on a completely different subject, the weather here has been simply fantastic. It's always sunny and the high reaches the mid to high 70s. Which means I don't have to wait until an hour before dark to go for a walk/jog, I can go at 1:00 in the after noon if I want. Which I've been doing quite consistently for the last several days. I think I do actually feel better too.
I also watched the next episode of Dollhouse on hulu. That show's rating are already going to down after one episode and this second one wasn't exactly better than the first. I think the main problem is there really aren't any likable characters. The story lines aren't that compelling. And that chick, the main doll that once played Faith on other Weadon shows, doesn't quite seem up to the task of taking on all these different characters. She's no Jennifer Garner (i.e. Alias) in other words.
That's what's so frustrating. I *KNOW* Weadon is capable of such incredible brilliant writing and production and yet it's not coming through on this show. I was hoping at least for some kind of out-of-the-park deal with the premier episode. Something to really show the viewers how great the dollhouse can be. But It was just as pedestrian as any of the others. Same with the second. Maybe in the latter episodes, assuming there ARE latter episodes, he will finally write/direct an episode that is as brilliant as his various buffy/angel/firefly (and dr. horrible?) episodes. I just wish he wouldn't wait until the fifth or sixth episode to do that. The show really needs saving now, not later. Seriously.
It is cool how first one BSG cast member showed up then another. And there was already the one Angel cast member, now another has shown up. I imagine the picture is largely similar behind the camera as well. ¶ 7:31 PM 0 Comments
Saturday, October 03, 2009
"JA JA"
¶ 10:41 PM 0 Comments
I'm not nearly as upset about my bad experience with the question/answer site as I once was. The guy I reported to the site as a jerk (in so many words) refuted my complaint. I didn't think I could rationally respond yesterday and apparently I only get 12 or 24 or whatever hours to do so. So ya, whatever. I'm a little unhappy with the site anyway so I am starting to look for alternatives that do something similar.
Probably not many people know this but google actually has this related: feature that allows you to find sites similar to one specifically. Like related:download.com or whatever would give you other download sites. It's very handy. Actually there's a number of these parameters you can put in to narrow searches like that. My favorite is probably site: for searching everything on JUST one particular domain. On a whim once I also tried a search with date:2009 well some other date but you can the idea. I didn't even know it would work but it did. I was very impressed.
Anyway I'm now scrolling through alternatives to that paid answer site I'm signed up with and I think I found a good one. Right now I'm buffering a video on how the "become an expert" part of the site works.
I'm also letting the buffer fill on a now show: Stargate Universe. I figured I should let it go a while since it's 90 minutes. Course it is 11:00 maybe I shouldn't watch it now. Meh, whatever.
The site I'm currently looking at is LiverPerson. I've never heard of it but by the looks of it I think it is much better than my current site (which I won't mention since I critisized them so bad in the last post). I like the layout, there's lots of categories and sub-categories and there's lots of options for communicating with users (my current one was but one). On what I'd call a downside outside of a few short videos it's very light on details. I mean as a potential expert for them I want LOTS of information, not just a little. I am after all going to be giving them a lot of my personal information if I sign up. Be nice to know they're part of the better business bureou and/or not working through a nigerian prince. I'll probably sign up anyway eventually.
I also found Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" with the slogan "Artificial Artificial Intellegence". I'm not really sure how that all works. But you know, sure. I think I'll sign up for that as well.
I think I am either done or basically done with my sister's father in law's PC now. I had to hookup my own DVD drive to install the OS. Apparently his is broken. What I'll probably do is just give him my DVD drive and use that as a convenient excuse to go an buy a new optical drive for $30 or $40 some place. Since I keep both my IDE drives in USB enclosures these days I might actually buy an actual slimline USB DVD burner instead. That will be closer to $60 instead of only $40. And I don't know if the speed is comparable. And if I ever work on a PC again that doesn't support USB optical drive booting that I'm kind of screwed. Other than that it's a good idea to buy the actual USB simline drive. Also I'd save space slightly. I wonder if there's a USB-to-IDE coverter...no that probably wouldn't work...Or would it? No probalby not.
Ok now it's 11:40 instead of 11:00. Not sure I really want to spend another 90 minutes. I'll see hopw long I last. I guess that's it for now.
Probably not many people know this but google actually has this related: feature that allows you to find sites similar to one specifically. Like related:download.com or whatever would give you other download sites. It's very handy. Actually there's a number of these parameters you can put in to narrow searches like that. My favorite is probably site: for searching everything on JUST one particular domain. On a whim once I also tried a search with date:2009 well some other date but you can the idea. I didn't even know it would work but it did. I was very impressed.
Anyway I'm now scrolling through alternatives to that paid answer site I'm signed up with and I think I found a good one. Right now I'm buffering a video on how the "become an expert" part of the site works.
I'm also letting the buffer fill on a now show: Stargate Universe. I figured I should let it go a while since it's 90 minutes. Course it is 11:00 maybe I shouldn't watch it now. Meh, whatever.
The site I'm currently looking at is LiverPerson. I've never heard of it but by the looks of it I think it is much better than my current site (which I won't mention since I critisized them so bad in the last post). I like the layout, there's lots of categories and sub-categories and there's lots of options for communicating with users (my current one was but one). On what I'd call a downside outside of a few short videos it's very light on details. I mean as a potential expert for them I want LOTS of information, not just a little. I am after all going to be giving them a lot of my personal information if I sign up. Be nice to know they're part of the better business bureou and/or not working through a nigerian prince. I'll probably sign up anyway eventually.
I also found Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" with the slogan "Artificial Artificial Intellegence". I'm not really sure how that all works. But you know, sure. I think I'll sign up for that as well.
I think I am either done or basically done with my sister's father in law's PC now. I had to hookup my own DVD drive to install the OS. Apparently his is broken. What I'll probably do is just give him my DVD drive and use that as a convenient excuse to go an buy a new optical drive for $30 or $40 some place. Since I keep both my IDE drives in USB enclosures these days I might actually buy an actual slimline USB DVD burner instead. That will be closer to $60 instead of only $40. And I don't know if the speed is comparable. And if I ever work on a PC again that doesn't support USB optical drive booting that I'm kind of screwed. Other than that it's a good idea to buy the actual USB simline drive. Also I'd save space slightly. I wonder if there's a USB-to-IDE coverter...no that probably wouldn't work...Or would it? No probalby not.
Ok now it's 11:40 instead of 11:00. Not sure I really want to spend another 90 minutes. I'll see hopw long I last. I guess that's it for now.
Friday, October 02, 2009
"Still Up"
I have no idea why I am still up or how that happened exactly. That actually wasn't the plan.
I think I actually have a good reason for not posting this time: I was accepted into that paid answer service web site.
I filled out their form, answered their ten fairly generic but-not-that-bad quiz questions about computers and then submitted some info to have my background verified. In this case my work experience and through LexisNexis. Some how I thought LexisNexis was something else. Or perhaps they used to be something else. Like some kind of subscription-only search engine that searched through normally paid-only sources like newspapers online. That's what I thought for some reason. Now I'm not entirely sure what they are.
Where was I? Right, the answer site. I started answering questions Tuesday evening and got my first accepted answer from a customer last night and my second this morning. I've made a grand total of an astounding $18. But then I think I tried to answer all of one question all of today. Not sure why, just wasn't feeling it I guess.
But then I also kind of wanted to finish re-installing my...sister's...father-in-law...which I don't think they have a name for how he's related to me. Anyway, even though I so thuroughly enjoy (or atlesat did) compiling a customized XP install disc for computers I just kept putting it and putting it off. I think probably my sister/brother-in-law are going to start getting impatient with me so I will most likely instead put off the question answering tomorrow and work on that computer. I think I'm actually almost done. It's not that bad. I've already had it about ten days or so.
I keep getting distracted. Probably because it's 12:15am and I'm tired-sort-of. Anyway on a less than positive note about that answer site I had my first question/answer session "hijacked" today as well. I was being stupid by actually asking QUESTIONS of the customer trying to get clarification on his extremelely generic, mysterious, single-sentence statement/question, you know like some kind of customer-service oriented "tech". But before the customer could respond at all some ASS HOLE comes in and pastes what really, really looks like a canned answer, pre-formatted and a page or so long cover EVERY POSSIBLE solution to just about every answer imaginable. Boy did I feel like a dick trying to pretend like this is some kind of job that required some kind of skill as opposed to a pre-canned copy/paste service.
I mean why bother having experts at all? Why not just use a server app to scan the customer's questions and generate a pre-canned answer with a bunch of generic links? I mean WHAT THE FUCK. So I complained to a moderator. That's about all I can do really. To make it even worse, rub salt in the wound if you will, the canned answer horrible spelling, what I thought to be an ugly formatting job and suggested a norious pirate live CD as one of the possible solutions. I mean come on now. It really makes me question the validity and ethics of this web site.
Also they only pay through paypal. That seems kind of stupid. What I don't actually WANT to sign up for stupid paypal? Well too late now, I guess I have to. I was going to set up a new savings account just for the money made through this site so I could keep track for tax purposes.
I will say one thing good that came out of the hijacking: it motivated me to propose some kind of "declaration of principals" to the fellow "experts" in the experts-only forums. I'm not sure it would have come about without the hijacking. I posted it tonight when I was still kind of pissed and so far no one has responded. But then for most everybody it was the middle of the night when I posted it. So I hope I get responses tomorrow.
I think I'll go to bed now. It's only 12:30...
Labels: wtf
¶ 12:01 AM 0 Comments
