Matt D's Blog

On Friday, we basically did some shopping - we got the things we needed to get to make our trip enjoyable…We picked up a few things we didn’t have…I had a razor, but no blades…so I was going to pick up blades, but found a combo for a razor, blades, and hair trimmer for $7.51, so I jumped on that. I bought some batteries for my digital camera, because I only had 2, not 4. We picked up some sunblock (mom got SPF 15, I got 50), and other random stuff. We just relaxed a little while walking around, and then went home. The beauty of a vacation is - no schedules. We went out for dinner at a buffett place, which was better then I expected. We watched Flightplan on DVD (Not my first choice but it was watchable), and then went to bed, as we were going to the beach the next day.

It’s Thursday at 1:56 PM, and I’m frantically finishing last minute checks on all of the servers before I go on my trip. I’ve got all of the major ones covered, and I’m ready to leave. I start off for Grand Central Terminal, first stopping at the Post Office to mail something. I then make it to GCT shortly before my 2:20 PM train leaves, and get home around 3 PM.

When I arrive home, I try to get things together for me to go, including my laptop and camera stuff. Leon then comes by to say goodbye to me. I remember about getting nasal decongestant so my sinuses don’t act up on the plane, so we run to Walgreens to get some Afrin nasal decongestant. We then say goodbye, and mom and I pick up Eric to drive us to the airport.

We leave Eric’s place around 4:45, just in time for…traffic. There was traffic backed up from 95 onto 87. As a result, it took us way longer then it should have, but we still made it to the airport at 5:30 PM. Our flight was for 6:59 PM. We checked our bags outside, and go inside to go through security. I have no problems, but I needed to remove my sneakers - mom didn’t remove her shoes, and for some reason they didn’t ask her to. I did have to go through the metal detector again, because I left my cell phone in my pocket - oops.

After we get past security, we cut our sandwiches that Eric prepared for us, because he didn’t have a chance to do so. We then used the restrooms, and proceeded to the gate. We sat down in the waiting area at the gate, and waited…and waited…and we noticed that there was no plane outside. Then they announced (at 6:25) that our plane was supposed to land at about 6:40 PM, which meant that we wouldn’t be able to start boarding until the plane was de-boarded (10 mins), and cleaned (20 mins). This meant a earliest boarding time of 7:04 PM. OK, fine.

So at like 7:15 PM, we get on board, near the very back of the plane (row 32 of 34). It’s just starting to lightly rain (they forecasted thunderstorms). We get settled, and…wait some more. Then the rain starts. I mean, really starts. It rains, then it hails, yes hail. We then sat on the tarmac until the rain and hail stopped. We then got in line, with 4 planes in front of us. Total time difference: 1.5 hours. We were scheduled to get in at 9:59 PM. We got there at 11:32 PM.

There was one cool thing about the flight though…Every seat had touch-screen LCDs in front of them, which had Dish Network TV (25 channels), Music from Delta Radio, and various CDs, movies you could rent, games you could rent (as well as a trivia game you played against other passengers for free), and best of all…it was powered by Linux! It was pretty crazy, because I see them turn on, and I’m like, wait a second….It was a Geode processor based system, and ran Linux off of a flash memory card. Pretty neat. I was impressed.

Oh yeah, first thing once we’re on the ground…the humidity hits us hard as we walked out of the airport…Even at 11:50 PM, it was hot and humid. Yuck.

My boss’ boss announced today that he’s leaving on July 12th to pursue another oppurtunity after 6 years of being with my current employer. This is kind of out of left field, and it puts pressure on myself and my boss to fill in his place until they find a replacement. Hopefully things will be smooth while they find a replacement for him…

I’m finally going to be taking some vacation time this year - the end of June into July, and sometime in the end of August. I will be going down to Florida with my grandmother to visit Judy in June, with no particular plans. I will be going somewhere with Leon sometime near the end of August, and it looks like somewhere in Canada at this point. I can’t wait.

This weekend was kind of adventurous…ok, maybe not. Fun, though. Leon has a friend who recently had surgery on his nose to repair his mucus membrane between his ear and nose. He is doing fine now, but Leon wanted to go see him, and see X-Men 3 as well. I wanted to see X-Men this weekend too, so I went along with him. His friend lives in NJ, so it was a little bit of a trek, but I decided that driving would be fun. There were a total of 8 of us visiting him, seven of us came from NY in 2 cars, and one came from NJ and met us there. I drove the Mustang, and for the most part it was fine - traffic was not bad on the NJ Turnpike, only a little heavy on the GW Bridge.

So we make it to his house ok, and thats where the fun begins. We hang out there for a while, and then decide to look for movie times. It was around 9 PM at this point, and we were looking for movies around 10:40 - 11:30 PM range. This seemed to be enough time to get there. What I was not aware of was the fact that the closest movie theater was almost 25 minutes away.

We make it to the first theater around 10:25, and 10:40 is sold out, with huge lines in the place. So we figured we wouldn’t get the 11:30 showing either, so we try another theater. This theater is an additional 25 minute drive away, oh, and did I mention the rain? It was raining quite heavy at this point, and as a result we were driving around 30 MPH or so. I hate driving in the rain, and it being dark makes it ten times worse.

We arrive at the second theater at about 11:05, and the 11:30 is sold out, but there’s a final showing at 12 AM. So we purchase tickets for the 12 AM showing. After this, it’s uneventful as we’re just waiting for the show to begin.

The movie was pretty good, but in my opinion not as good as the first two. I really enjoyed them, and the facts that this film wasn’t directed by the same director, as well as not having the same screenwriter definitely had an impact on it. The action was good, but something wasn’t quite right. On top of that, most of the people I went with were comic book fans, and were very disappointed by the ending.

After the movie, we went to get some food - we were all hungry at this point, but especially Leon and I, as we didn’t eat anything before going; The rest of the people that we met in NY ate something at McDonald’s, which I refuse to do on the quality of food, and Leon refuses to do because he’s a vegetarian. So we go to find a diner, and of course, the one we pull into, closes, 25 minutes before we got there. The movie let out around 2:15 AM, and the diner closed at 2 AM. So we travelled a little farther (hmm, this seems to be a recurring theme here…), and found another diner. The food was OK, the service was so/so, but we were all relatively happy with the food in the end.

I got a cappuccino (of so-so quality) from the diner, then we went back to the house, said good-bye and were on our way to NY. The drive home was uneventful, except for it being kinda long. We finally made it home, as the sun was coming up. We then passed out, and slept very soundly.

I fixed MythTV! I was having trouble after upgrading to 0.19 of no sound. Stupid me disabled something I shouldn’t have. I re-compiled it afterward, but I didn’t ‘clean’ out the directory. Cleaning, and recompiling it fixed it. Sound works, picture is good, I just need to re-scan my channels, as it seems Cablevision has moved them in the last 6 months lol.

As it turns out, the channel scanner is kinda wacky, and needs simplification from it’s normal tuning method…After I fixed that, all works well, and I was able to record the Alias series finale. I was very happy.

One thing I’ve been reading about lately is battery powered electric vehicles, or just EVs for short. Unbeknownst to most Americans is that there have been a few EVs put out by major auto manufacturers already, only to be destroyed later (for the most part). For instance, there was the highly visable GM EV1, the Toyota Rav4EV, the Ford Ranger EV, and the Ford Th!nk, to name a few. The default for all these cars was a lease only. The EV1s were almost all crushed. The RAV4EVs some were sold to people, others couldn’t buy them. Not sure about the Rangers, but I know that the Th!nks were sent off to Norway to be sold.

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Answer: Not a whole lot. For the most part, my life is in a steady-state at the moment. Work is ok, and I just got a raise, so I’m ok there for some time. No super-crazy bills to worry about, so finances are under control. Things are going well with Leon, and I don’t see that changing. So at this point, things are just moving along day by day.

Why today for an update, you ask? That would be becuase I’m home still kinda sick. Wednesday afternoon I started to feel a dryness in my throat. Stupid me thought it was just my office (which is not exactly the best environment, so it wasn’t totally out of the question..), so instead of starting to take Zicam right there, I just drank more water. Didn’t work. By Wednesday night my throat was really bothering me, so I decided that I’d at least sleep a little later on Thursday to try and make up for me not sleeping enough. Well, I slept terribly, and when I did wake up at 11:30 on Thursday, I still felt terrible, so I called in sick. By Thursday night I was starting to recover, but I didn’t want to go back right away to then give it back to whoever gave it to me….so I took Friday as a sick day as well. Besides, my nose is still running like crazy, and I think I’m gonna go through my box of tissues in a day.

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As I briefly mentioned in the last posting, the LS has been in the shop for work, at this point 2 weeks, and it’s finally done. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a $1400 adventure, in total, is adding up to much more. Almost $800 in parts, $1400 in labor, and I still need to buy catalytic convertors, because those on the car are shot, and the car can’t pass inspection. Sucks quite a bit, because that’s another $800 + labor. Always fun.

Yet again another long period has passed between the last update and this one. With things
that I’ve been working on, and work, I just don’t have a lot of time to write stuff often. But I will try and fill in some stuff right now.

First the good stuff. Today was a good day because I got quite a bit accomplished. For a while, I have been looking at the area around my TV and being very upset at how the wiring was. Or, more importantly, my grandmother was really starting to get on my case about it - and rightfully so, it was terrible. I had the TV almost 2 years at this point, and didn’t

really do much in terms of cleaning the tv except for the occasional dusting. So I ripped everything apart, cleaned up all the cables, cleaned up all of the shelves, dusted the TV, put everything on a table to get it off of the floor, and then wired it all together again. The result is a nice and clean system, and much less clutter then before. I also moved the TiVo out (goes into the living room now), and moved in…

MythTV! (Pardon the age of their site - it is actually a VERY active project) MythTV allows me to do all of the TiVo items, and then some. I have a PC in place of the TiVo box that lets me pause live tv, record things, play music, go through picture slideshows, play other videos, play DVDs, create CDs and DVDs, Read news, Get the weather, and finally, surf the web. Wow, thats quite a bit of stuff. It gets better - I can do this with HDTV! Which is my major source of frustration with TiVo is that I had to give up what I spent so much money for. This way, I get the best of both worlds. MythTV is also very flexible in that it supports multiple machines - I can have multiple machines that record, and I can have multiple machines to display it on, so it’s very flexible in how it’s configured.

And, now the bad. I was supposed to go on a ski trip the 27th, but I’m not going. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m not going to be skiing to begin with, and it was getting more expensive then I liked. Plus, I had unforseen car expenses, which certainly didn’t help.

Finally, tonight we gave away Gizmo. (One of the dogs) I was actually much more sad then I thought I would be, but I’m sure I’ll get over it soon. It’s unfortunate, but we need to get rid of both dogs at some point, because we just can’t take care of them as well as I’d like. It’s not fair to the dogs, and it’s not fair to us. We’re just not here enough. Sigh. Life moves on.

So tonight I decided to take a trip. I actually decided it two days ago, when I found there were no theaters locally playing the movie Brokeback Mountain any time soon (ie before the 22nd). So I was going to go up to Pleasantville. However, two things stopped me. 1, The rain has been so crazy that a lot of things are flooded. 2, There was no way I was going to make the 7:45 show, and the next one was 10:30, which was too late. So I found the next theater, which was in Connecticut instead, called the Avon Theatre Film Center in Stamford. It was pretty easy to get to, but because of parking, I missed the first 5-10 mins of the movie; this was not a problem because I have read the book also…err short, I mean, really short story. It was 45 pages or so, and smaller then a normal paperback size. I was going to buy the book when I bought Jarhead the book (saw the movie too, both were good), but it was so short I read it in the store instead.

The story itself was OK. Anne Proulx’s writing style is very interesting in that there’s very little words put down on the page. A lot needs to be inferred from the reader. It’s refreshing in a way, but leads to a very short story. The movie version was at least 2 hours, and does go beyond the main story a little. I think Ang Lee did a good job on it when it came to directing - it has a similar style in that there’s a lot of short scenes with hard cuts in it. It works well for it. I’ll probably be buying it on DVD when it comes out.

The content of the story is summarized in that two cowboys, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar get a job herding sheep in the summer of ‘63. Over time they develop a relationship - but remember this is 1963, so it’s only on Brokeback Mountain where they can enjoy each other’s company. It shows the struggles that they both have as they attempt to live their lives (over a 20 year period), and is really a touching story with a sad ending. Please read a review, such as Roger Ebert’s for a much better synopsis then I can give hehehe.

If you can find it in a local theater, I’d say to go see it. For that matter, even if you can’t, maybe a short trip is in order?

Well, it’s been quite a few months, and I am happy to report that Sunrocket has been working quite well. It is actually now my main number, as I got rid of my old phone line. So, I figured I’d pass along a link to them which gets you a great deal - $199 for a year of service, and a free cordless phone…Check it out.


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Today I brought the Cobra up to my aunt Lisa’s house (thanks Lisa) to put it in the garage for the winter. It’s a raised-ranch style house, with two bedrooms on top of the garage. So it won’t be nearly as cold as outside, which is good. She’s gonna start it every two days or so, and I’m gonna come up every 2 weeks or so to drive it (weather permitting, of course). Next time I go up I have to clean it off, cause it has some dirt on it right now from the recent rain.

On the way home, I went to pass someone, and the transmission didn’t like the idea of downshifting from 5th to 3rd. It didn’t make the change right, then beeped, said “E” for the gear (instead of D5), and put up “Check Transmission” - great. Either it’s low fluid (I hope!), or a bad solenoid pack :-/

Saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, thought it was pretty good. I should really read the books.

Well this Friday my friend Mike asks me what I am doing…I told him I was cleaning my room. First off, it took me about 3 hours, but I threw out so much stuff it’s not even funny. As a result, I can walk through my room without any problems, and I have a mostly cleaned off table. So that worked out well.

He asked me if I could help him with finding some home theater equipment, because he had just purchased a new InFocus ScreenPlay 4085 projector. Now ordinarilly I would have told him to take it back, as it’s not HD. However, he got it for $400. It retails for $1400. So, mega deal #1 of the day. We looked online a little, and decided that going to Best Buy would be a good idea (he works for them) to find a home theater system. Well, we went kinda late, about 9:30. Even then, there were a good amount of people in the store, and inventory EVERYWHERE. I mean boxes at ends of the isle…I think they would have failed a fire safety inspection. Markdowns everywhere, giveaway bundles, and discounted DVDs all over the place - I got “Catch me if you can” for $5.99..Pretty damn good if you ask me. I don’t think dealing with all the people is worth it though, for the most part.