Matt D's Blog

Twenty years old today..don’t feel much different, lol.Nothing to see here folks, keep moving.

Replacs the cars page with only the NA version - old onecan be found here.

Added a few lines to the cars page,for the possibility of going NA instead of turbo.

Hey Y’all! (I just had to do that) I got back from mytrip/vacation on the 19th.. I was in Texas from the 15th through the 19thbecause of a conference known as NECC. It was fun, there were a LOT ofexhibitors, but most of the time there was having fun. :-)The trip there was kinda long, about 4 hours, but it was a very smooth ride. I got some work done on TIMEKeeper (which I will be putting up a demo version soon), as well as just relaxing. Airport security was fun. After we got there, the hotel was ok, but they forgot the rollaway bed that we had requested (there were three of us in one room). No big deal. We went to this place called La Margarita for dinner. Food was OK at best. Next day, Sunday, I attended a seminar on fiber-based networking, which was pretty interesting. That night we walked by the river in San Antonio, which is very cool.. it’s below street level, and usually has tree cover, so it’s a good place to be. There was this Steakhouse there too, it was REALLY nice. I had a 20 oz. porterhouse, which was really good! On Monday we toured the exhibit hall, which was very large. We talked withvendors such as 3Com and Cisco, specifically about VoIP (Voice over IP).Both vendors were kinda expensive. It took a while to go through, butI saw some cool products there, so it was time well spent. We also wentto a Rodeo that night, which was a bit of a waste of time, except thatI got to see my friend ride the mechanical bull, which was cool. Thefood was bad, however. So, we headed out to the Hard Rock Cafe afterwards.On Tuesday, we “presented” in this little booth, but we got quite a bitof attention, so it was good. We went to this BBQ place for dinner,which was pretty good. We all had ribs, I had a full rack – that wasa LOT of ribs! After dinner we all saw The Bourne Identity, which waspretty cool.One Wednesday, our last day, we basically relaxed while the boss wentthrough the exhibit hall one last time. We then packed, and headed for theairport. Going through security was easy for me, as was coming down to TX,but not so easy for the rest of the people with me (they were carryinga lot more computers than I was, I only had one)…That was fun thingnumber 1. Number two, the food at the San Antonio airport really sucked.BAD. Three, they were bumping people off our flight, thankfully we didnot get bumped because we checked in so early. Fourth, the flight on theway back had way more turbulence, and we were in a holding pattern for30 mins over Virginia. After that, it was nice to be home.That was my vacation / business trip.

Well, went back to work yesterday…Had fun getting RealServerto broadcast correctly – apparently RealProducer version 8.5 is prettybroken, as the version 9 beta worked well. Today, on the other hand,was a nightmare…Attempting to get multicasting to work is an exercisein futility – ended up setting a test network up to try and get itto work. Will work on that more tomorrow. I will have a demo version ofthe TIMEKeeper Management software up very shortly.

Well, my uptime on my server is gone now…After an uptime of255 days, 4 hours and 19 minutes, I had to shut the machine down, because something blew up on my street – power transformer or fuse orsomething…The power went out on May 28th, at about 12:10 AM, as I was coming home from my good friend Mike’s house. I was just about to get out of the car, when there was this freaking LOUD sound, and big blue flash of light..needless to say I was a bit surprised by this…and I said “Damn, there goes my uptime,” and it did. Fortunately, Con Edison had the power back up in an hour and 10 minutes, which was much better thanthe 14.5 hours they took last time (255 days ago, duh). In more recentevents, I saw Sum of All Fears on June 2nd, it was pretty good…despiteit’s crummy ratings.I have figured out how to make DivX video look good, so I can make use ofmy firewire & my Dish Network PVR now, which kicks ass. I can recorda show off TV, and then encode it for use on a CD-R, it works pretty well,especiall DivX 5.02 Standard…Finally, check out the links page as I’ve added in a link…thought-crime.org…wierd stuff

All my grades are in, I got a B in E Systems, so I gota 3.25 GPA for this semester which is good enough for me. I soldmy old machine to a friend, who’s pretty happy with it, so thats alwaysgood news.

Well, my new machine kicks ass! It’s really fast, I’ve gotplently of disk space, I just need to organize things again…DVDs playback OK in Windows, would be nice to get them to work in Linux..but,NVidia’s drivers work really well in linux…Still waiting on my E Systems grade, all others are good…

I hate UPS. Plain and simple. They have horrible prices forreally bad service. $14.95 for UPS Ground for a 2 LB package!!! And,it took 7 days to get here from CA. Where, I paid like $20 for a 7 LB package to get here in 3 days from CA from Federal Express’ cheapestway to get here! I would gladly have rahtered the extra $5 or so. I haveno idea what I’m doing in Electrical Systems unfortunately. I planon getting up early tomorrow and studying the whole day, no matter whenmy motherboard comes. (It was supposed to come today – I should havegotten two packages.) I don’t care. I’ll wait until Wednesday afternoonto put it together if it comes down to that… I did get my CD-RW today,however, albeit a bit useless without the motherboard. I just want thisweek to be over, and everthing will be good. Also, kinda sucks when it’sreally stormy – Dish Network went out like 4 times today, but only fora little while, and when it was pouring like crazy…

Two down, one to skip, one to go. I have finished myThermodynamics and Differential Equations finals…I think I did OK on both.I am skipping my Microcomputers final, and I should get a B+ in that class.And then comes the big one – Electrical Systems..That’s on Wednesday. Thatwill not be fun at all unfortunately. I bought a new computer, it’s prettynice – I’m still waiting on the motherboard and CD-RW though. Should behere tomorrow. After finals are over I will be getting back to work, so Ican make back some of the money that I spent! I get Dish Network now,which is really cool – I have the PVR model which kicks ass. Unfortunately,I also get to pay the bill. Plus, I am going to get my car registeredand insured over this summer, which is going to be MORE bills every month –again not very fun. All I need now is to get a video switcher for the big TVin the living room, and I’m all set…I can borrow a video camera to doanalog -> firewire for now (I want to do video editing on my PC), andI can borrow Premiere 6.0 from work (I qualify for the upgrade, but can’tafford it right now.), so I will have a really cool computer, greatquality TV, and still some money in my bank account..gotta love it. Plus,my car will finally be on the road soon, which is even cooler, I can’t wait.I’ll report how fast the machine is when I put it together.

Well, I’d like to say Welcome! to all the 6bone users whohave recently been at my page…Putting that link to the site list was the bestthing I could have done – people now actually see my page. In other news,school is kinda boring lately, but I’m catching up on all my subjects exceptfor Electrical Systems, that’s just plain impossible. I talked to my bestfriend from high school for over an hour last night, which was nice. Work willbe slowing down, as I’m out of hours, and as much as I like working there, I realy don’t want to be working for free (hell, I was already working there forclose to it!)…So I will be able to concentrate on school. The weather has beenvery hot yesterday and today, it’s like summer already. Makes me want to do lesswork. Ah well, time to get back to studying Differential Equations..

Re-evaluated exhaust options for Mustang that I wish to get, I thinkI’d go with the Roush side exhaust kit. Expensive though. Looks very professionalthough, which is the point. Nice looks, nice sound, and anything is better thanstock exhaust.

Went to NY Auto Show…Somewhat of a disappointment, very mucha rehash of last year…got to see the Audi A4 3.0 (nice), BMWs, Mercedes Benz,and of course, my two favorite muscle cars, the Dodge Viper, and the Ford Mustang.

Mwuhahaha, my HP is going to be crazy when I’m finished..I’m doinginsane security policies on it…..

Well, my HP finally has IPv6 support!! So, I will beplaying with Apache 2.0 and khttpd next, sounds like fun if you ask me…Happy Easter and April Fools, now that they’re over. Time for sleep now.