The unthinkable

Posted on December 13, 2007 by Casey

I have gone and done it now.  I installed Windows Vista on both my work laptop and home desktop, and what a hassle it was.

The laptop most of all because I need everything to work on there.  It wasn’t until about 3 o’clock today that I finally got the bulk of the applications that  I need on a daily basis to finally start working, or at least have a reliable workaround.  Vista’s security is more of a bother then a helpful feature.  Nearly every file copy is attached to 2-3 annoying pop up dialogs, application installs take a jury of your peers to install.  Not to mention that the fan on my laptop hasn’t shut off since the Vista disk hit the DVD-ROM drive.  /sigh

James and Lana took off yesterday, it was great to see them and we hope to see them again soon, but this time in Austin.  I know a few other people that may like us to head south as well.  Now if only the real estate market wasn’t in the shitter.

Some very disconcerting news on the job front, things are in much turmoil right now.  Hopefully things work out for the good, but its very dicey right now.  I’m definitely not looking forward to the possibility that we could have to work MORE hours then we do currently.  Hopefully by the time that Kelly and I get back from Vegas we will have some insight into what is truly going to happen.

So we are supposed to get a bit more snow tomorrow, or so the incompetent weathermen around here are saying.  As long as its not an ice storm like my folks received recently, and I will be happy.

Oh and btw go see this movie tomorrow:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX773fMkS90]

“I Am Legend” – The story was written in ’54 so the writers of the movie had to take tons of liberty to bring the film into modern times, and I’m kind of scared that it will lose some of the personal intensity that Robert Neville goes through in the original book, for the sake of pretty cityscape scenes.  The original story took place in LA, near Compton to be exact.  But the movie takes place in NY, making it an Escape from NY kind of deal.  I have high hopes for the film though, so we will be at the theater this weekend.

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When pigs fly.

Posted on December 12, 2007 by Casey

I was just amazed when I watched this.  Just incredible.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmZyB_ghpa0]

Here is a quote from one of the articles I read:

“Modern suit design features tightly woven nylon sewn between the legs and between the arms and torso, creating wings that fill with air and create lift, allowing for forward motion and aerial maneuvers while slowing descent. As the suits, which cost about $1,000, have become more sophisticated, so have the pilots. The best fliers, and there are not many, can trace the horizontal contours of cliffs, ridges and mountainsides.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pzzRgsgERM]

NYTimes Link 

One of these days there will be a safe affordable personal flying transportation system, this next one is quite a ways from that.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYXrqoS08o]

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Oh the weather outside is frightful…

Posted on December 11, 2007 by Casey

Kinda sick of the snow already.

Its just been piling up here. We had 6-7 inches on Friday – Saturday and they are predicting more today. I really just don’t want to leave the house today, but I think we are supposed to head into the office and meet up with Dean. Still waiting on others to wake up and get around before I make that decision though.

Gonna watch some Planet Earth in HD tonight, hopefully the latest round of color corrections on the TV worked. I think I managed to get rid of the red-push that Sharp defaults had. I also played a good bit of Assassin’s Creed yesterday but I think I broke it. I completed all optional quests the first time I visited the cities, and now I can’t get any more information I need to complete later quests in the game. I may read gamefaqs a bit today and see if I can locate a clue as to what I’m to be doing, but not to much cause I don’t want to spoil the game for myself.

On another note I’m now 43 minutes into the first episode of Heroes (100) which is about 28 minutes more then the last time I started watching it, Kelly just keeps yelling at me to stop watching it cause she wants to watch them too, but when I want to put the DVDs in, she always wants to watch something else. So one of these days I will get around to finishing it.

I have been on pager duty since Friday and thus far I have had good luck and only paged twice. This is completely out of the norm for when I’m on call, so I can only think of two things going on here.
1. Holidays are slowing people down and less work is required.
2. Somehow the folks at work got screwed up on the schedule and didn’t realize I was on pager, thus their week to torment me.
Not that I”m complaining, weeks like these are a deceptive mask of how easy pager duty COULD be all the time. But most of the bills are getting paid so I can’t complain to much I guess.

OK guess its time to make a decision on going into work. /sigh

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One down…

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Casey

As you can tell I’m a little bored right now. I found this one to be quite good.


Terrorist gets owned – Watch more free videos

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Where’s Waldo?

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Casey

Well in fact he is right here and singing show tunes, kinda scary.


Dude Sings Both Female And Male Parts – Watch more free videos

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That time of the week again.

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Casey

Monday already?

Its ok I did absolutely nothing all weekend, as long as you don’t count the offline Exchange database defrags on Saturday morning. We sat on the couch all weekend and got caught up on TiVo. We finally watched the remainder of content on our old TiVo that was backed up from Dominican Republic then finally moved over to the new HD TiVo. If times weren’t so tight right now I would upgrade to CableCARD, but that may have to wait a bit as I recently put us further into debt.

I guess it was Thursday night after a couple of beers we decided to go buy a new TV. James being the instigator that he is pointed us to one particular set that just so happens was on sale at Circuit City, and they had a great deal on financing. So here is our new set:

LC-52D64U

So we bought the Sharp Aquos LC-52D64U – 52in LCD. Yes we didn’t need the additional debt right now, but damn is it a nice looking TV when you are pumping HD quality content through it. I downloaded some 1080p HD trailers to play through the Xbox 360 and they look amazing, SD content off the TiVo, not so much. Playing Assasin’s Creed in 1080p is hot hot hot.

Check out this link to see it in action hooked up to some guys Computer at full resolution: AVS Forums

And here for the full spec sheet: SharpUSA.Com

This TV has a 4ms response time, which means no streaking or blurring during fast motion scenes or gaming. I will be happier once we have some true HD content to push through it though, but until then I will get my fix by gaming on it.

We picked up about 6-7 inches of snow on Friday-Saturday, and I think we are supposed to get even more late tonight and tomorrow. James and Lana went skiing this weekend, as I understand it they received 18-22 inches in the resort areas, so I’m sure that made for good skiing, just maybe not so good road conditions to those areas. They will be back sometime later today.

We also scheduled a dinner tonight at the Melting Pot as a way of congratulating ourselves on nearly finishing up this new Exchange environment that we have been working on for the last two weeks. Thank you Corporate AMEX, HP is footing the bill tonight. But up to this point we have everything deployed that we have the information for. So now we are mostly on clean-up duty.

Here is a funny pic Justin sent me the other day. I laughed quite hard. And btw since when are 12 year olds allowed to drink?

Ugh

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Foggy

Posted on December 7, 2007 by Kelly

An incredibly thick fog has been over the Springs all day today. Visibility was down to 100 feet or so and the temperature didn’t top 32 (and now its snowing). Lana was supposed to fly in at 3:05 but before she even left Austin, her flight was rerouted because her connecting flight in Kansas City was canceled because of bad weather there. After switching airlines and being redirected through Phoenix, her flight was canceled right before it was supposed to begin boarding. Now we’re hoping that she’ll make it on the flight in the morning that will arrive around 11:30. Apparently the flight is full so we’ve got our fingers crossed that she doesn’t have to waste another day at the airport.

Not a lot went on today around here. I got my hair highlighted and cut – same style, no changes. It’s so funny because I passed my dad on the way into the salon (he was getting his hair cut), my mom had an appointment later in the day, and my grandma was in last night. Then I picked John up and brought him back to the house where we had Panera Bread for lunch. Other than that we’ve just been waiting to here word on Lana all day and have stuck around the house.

Dude is supposed to have a follow up vet appointment on Thursday but we’re planning to cancel it. He’s doing quite well with his medicine and since he hates it so much, Casey would prefer he just grow out of the mange as his immune system further develops. I’m just hoping it doesn’t spread to more of his body. We still have quite a bit left of his medicine and since the hair is growing back, I may just push his appointment back a bit instead of taking him off of the meds completely.

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Ch-ch-changes

Posted on December 6, 2007 by Kelly

I got up early this morning and got the 15,000 mile service on the FX.  It was double a  normal oil change but I figure for the additional things services that were performed it was probably worth it.  And now our garage has the new car smell emanating from the FX .  All I did while waiting was watch depressing stories on Fox News and read the newest James Patterson book, Double Cross.  I suspect Casey should have more to say tomorrow and if he doesn’t I will post other development he’d be otherwise responsible for writing on.

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Busy.

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Casey

Been a busy day today.  Lots of Windows Server 2003 configs and Exchange configs.  Here it is 9:30 and I’m trying to do some additional configuration on Exchange to prep its database locations.  Gonna be a lot of work to do tomorrow as well, but we are making very good progress and hopefully we will knock most everything out by the end of the week.

We received our TiVo today and thus far its working well.  The CableCARD installation is a rip-off but what are ya gonna do.  Right now the TiVo can record two shows at once but only on standard cable, so perhaps I will call Comcast (the devil) tomorrow and order the cards.  I dunno.  I also need to order some additional cables for the TiVo, XBox360 etc.  James and I went to Best Buy today and they wanted 50+ dollars for an HDMI cable, what a joke.  What people don’t realize that in the digital age a 5 dollar cable will provide the same quality as a 50 dollar cable.  This wasn’t always the case with analog signals (composite, component video/audio), but now its just 1’s and 0’s…

Didn’t get much of a chance to play Assassin’s Creed today, but since we knocked much of the work out today, I can probably squeeze a bit in tomorrow when I get back from the Infiniti dealership.  Got the one year service on the FX this month, hard to believe we have had it that long.

Ok I’m off to bed, perhaps I will have something more interesting to say in the morning.  I really need to configure the email posting that way I can post from my iPaq / Blackberry when something strikes me.

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Disappointed

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Kelly

I was all set to buy the Xbox HD DVD player with the 6 free movies today on Amazon.  But as luck would have it, yesterday was the last day of the sale and the price has gone up $50 overnight.  They have this sale periodically so hopefully I’ll be able to snap it up nex time.

Our HD TiVo came in the mail today!  Casey’s already got it all hooked up and its downloading program information right now.  We still haven’t contacted Comcast about the digital cable and cable cards we’ll be needing but will probably do that some time this afternoon.  My dad also got one of the HD TiVo’s and when he went down to the Comcast office to pick up cable cards for his as they told him he could over the 800 number, he found out that he has to pay them $15 a card (he needs two) for the technician to come out and install them.  Such a rip off!  I’m not looking forward to the increased cable bill but am pretty excited that we’ll be able to record two shows at once now *and* actually a third show since we have our old TiVo we’ll be hooking up in our bedroom once we get that new TV.

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