Sunday, 28 July 2002
11:59pm
[SWANK
CONDO MODE ON]
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[SWANK CONDO MODE OFF] (visit Josh's Swank Condo)
Now that I've taken care of that little bit of unpleasantness, I had a rather pleasant weekend back at home in LA again, finishing up building that computer for my sister. We got everything working pretty smoothly with few of the kinds of issues that can pop up unexpectedly when doing this kind of stuff. Her new computer isn't anywhere near top of the line, but it sure beats the heck out of what she was using before!
While she was in Europe, my sister picked me up a fancy bottle of olive oil from France. I haven't cracked it open yet so I haven't been able to get myself a taste of it yet. All in due time. Also over the weekend I got myself a wireless ethernet adaptor for my laptop to use with the wireless system my family has going at their house... wow pretty cool stuff. Kinda fun to be able to sit on the couch and watch TV or at the kitchen table or on the toilet and be connected to the Internet. Of course, I was already doing all this stuff at my apartment by way of one really, really, really long ethernet cable, but there was something extra cool about being able to do all this without having any wires coming out of the laptop at all!
I played a little low-limit poker at one of the many places you can do such a thing in the Los Angeles area. I ended up winning about $200 playing $3-$6 hold'em, but instead of being happy, I felt guilty. The deal with poker is that when you win, you're actually taking money from the people you are playing with, not from some faceless corporation as you do with other casino games. I felt kinda bad because every single person sitting at that table looked like they needed that $200 more than I needed it, and I took it from them. But hey, what can I do? Those poor addicts (who really, really suck at poker anyway) are gonna be in that place throwing their money away anyway... might as well throw it in my direction, I guess.
The weather was super nice this weekend, and particularly during my drive back down to San Diego, I was reminded just how much I take certain things for granted, like seeing the ocean on the side of the freeway on a routine journey from point A to point B. Billions of people live out their entire lives, never seeing an ocean their whole life, and here I am not even paying attention to the beauty and grandeur of the blue Pacific as I speed down the highway along side it. So today, I took extra special notice of it, and even (dangerously) snapped some pics. Yes, I am truly glad I live in a place like San Diego.
Monday, 29 July 2002
11:59pm
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While I was messing around with it, I decided to put Cami's old hard drive from her old computer into the new old computer... it had died before, but it ran fine for about 15 minutes before dying again. At that time, I decided it would be fun to take the useless, broken hard drive apart, and hang it on the wall with the platter exposed. It will be a piece of art, because I say it is.
I thought originally about trying to turn it into some kind of clock, but at the moment, that plan doesn't seem particularly feasible. Anyway. While I was doing all this with the old computer equipment, Cami was busily refurbishing the aquarium that's been sitting outside for the last few months. She was preparing a new home, inside our apartment for her turtle.
That's when we got the idea to put a webcam on the turtle. The old computer that was not fast enough to do what I was originally hoping it would do for me would be plenty fast enough to run a webcam! What a great idea! Turtlecam!
Then, looking at the hard drive hanging on the wall, inspiration struck again -- what if the computer running the turtlecam was just hanging on the wall with all its guts exposed? Jeff (the creator of the famous Game Man) and I started thinking we could just mount all the parts on a piece of wood, and hang it on the wall. Easy enough. But I was already seeing room for possible improvments.
We could get our friend Scott to weld up a very industrial looking metal frame for the whole thing. I could invest some money into taking apart another flat screen LCD monitor (like the one in the Game Man) so that would also hang on the wall in one piece. How about a little shelf for the keyboard that folds out and locks into position for use, but can retract and fold flat against the wall for display purposes? What about flat speakers mounted to the frame for playing MP3s? The possibilities seem endless now, but it's definitely something I want to really do.
But for now, I'll just work on getting a really simple turtlecam up first. But it sounds like there's a pretty interesting project forming here, and I've already got a pretty good idea of how I want it to come together. Fun fun fun! There was this little project I was gonna do for my sister, but it may end up having to be put on hold... we'll have to see. But in the mean time... look for Turtlecam to hit some time tomorrow.
Tuesday, 30 July 2002
10:30pm
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By the way, BEST BUY SUCKS ASS. The first WAP I bought was an open box special. I saved $20. The sticker says that Best Buy will "honor the manufacturer's warantee", but if it's defective and you bring it back, they don't give you a brand new one or anything. They just refund you the original purchase price. Some warantee honoring. Of course, everyone just goes and buys the real one for full price anyway.
But the kicker is... after I went to the back and got my new WAP, I saw the guy at the return counter taping up the box from the one I just returned, preparing to put it back on the floor, without testing it or anything!! These are unscrupulous business practices here... so... upon the completion of my collection of the ST:TNG DVD series, I think I will no longer patronize Best Buy. I have to get the DVD collection there cuz they throw in extra stuff that you can't get anywhere else... but yeah, when it comes time for me to buy that new TV... it ain't gonna be from Best Buy.
In happier news, the Angry Turtle Cam is up. This is probably not the final URL it will be at, and it is actually very crude right now... i just wanted to get something up and running ASAP. So yeah. Enjoy it!
I just realized right now that today was my 2 year anniversary of living in this apartment. Woohoo.
Friday, 2 August 2002
11:59pm
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After going through two defective WAP's, I finally got one (from a different brand and form a different store... one that actually tests returned merchandise before putting it back on the shelves) that works. Woohoo! I can sit out on the bench outside my apartment and surf the web, or share files with the rest of my network at home, or whatever! What great fun!
The Angry Turtle Cam seems to be doing pretty well, with about 230 visits since I started it up the other day... I set up a sitemeter on it so I won't have to go through and analyze all the logs to see who is on there in real time. Did any of you notice that I turned the camera around on Thursday night and the Angry Turtle Cam became the Poker Nite Cam: Presented by Angry Turtle Cam for a few hours? I do have to admit though, that the turtle seems a lot less angry now that it has a lot of room to swim around and stuff.
The countdown is on -- a week until the RBP Vegas Meet. I'm getting pretty excited, and worried at the same time. Worried about the huge turnout we're getting, but that also that makes me excited as well. I don't generally throw parties. Birthday parties, Superbowl parties, whatever... I never threw a party in my whole life until last year's Vegas meet, and I haven't thrown a party since then. But people seem to like coming to these, so we'll just keep having them, I guess. I'll just throw my one big party a year or something.
I'm worried that the number of people coming is gonna be more than I can handle, and more than the space I'm renting can handle... but it's funny because I was feeling the exact same way last year, and that space was less than half this year's size, and had less than half as many people showing up, and there were certainly no international attendees last year. I think the furthest distance travelled last year was from New Mexico. This year we've got Seattle, New York, and even Perth, Australia representing. If you don't know, Perth is on the west coast of Australia... it's about as far from Las Vegas as you can really get on this planet and still be in an english speaking country!