Matt D's Blog

Originally this entry was supposed to be my rant about how Linux wasn’t quite ready for the multimedia desktop market quite yet. Server, absolutely. General purpose office machine, not too bad, I get by without a problem 80% of the time. I was quite upset that if you didn’t quite balance X.org versions, mplayer, and video card drivers, it could easily make a working setup blow up. Also the problem of bloated distributions (of course, that’s the one that worked fine, vs a slim distro that was completely broken) don’t make for a good setup either. Then again, with Vista coming out that’s over 3 GBs, I’m not worried much.

Instead, I’ve come to the conclusion, it’s the video card! I once used to be a champion of everyone’s now favorite - Nvidia. Yes, I owned a card based upon their NV1 chipset, so I was an EARLY champion. It was so early, that their VGA support was so busted the colors would be wrong on the standard 16 color pallete. But it had awesome 3D (came with Virtua Fighter) and Sega digital controllers….Anyway, as of now, I thought it was just their Linux drivers that were slipping.

So…I install Windows, Windows Media Player 10, ffdshow, and the Elecard MPEG player, and attempt to play an MPEG2 file. It plays, but not that great. That’s at 720p. 1080 isn’t very usable at all. (1080i resolution output) I install DirectX 9, and….now nothing works, and the machine slows down to an unusable crawl. I even re-installed, and installed DirectX before the video drivers…Broken, broken, broken. I will NEVER buy nvidia again.

ATI had 1 single bug which kept me from using it in Linux. Given that
A) It might be fixed
B) I may play video back in Windows instead

I’m going to re-try it. I also say FORGET NVIDIA!

Hello all, I hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving holiday. Mine was pretty good, we had most of the family here for dinner, including Leon. The more interesting day, however, was Friday. One of Leon’s friends wanted to go to Best Buy to pick up one of the TVs that was on sale. I looked up what sort of deals there were going to be, and said I’d come too. There were really cheap DVDs, and a REALLY cheap PC available. I had planned on getting up at 3:15 AM to make it down to the store by 3:30 AM, which I figured was plenty of time before the store opened at 5 AM. Well, I was wrong.

I went upstairs about 11:15 PM to get some sleep before I left. I had stuff on my mind, so I just tossed and turned for an hour or so. Well, at that time, my phone rang, and Leon said “you better get ready, there’s already people at Best Buy.” I was shocked, but said OK. I made some coffee, and went over to Leon’s. We then went to Best Buy, where we were greeted with a huge line. It was 1:30 AM, but the parking lot looked like a normal day at Best Buy. There were probably about 150-200 people in front of us at this point. So we stood in line, talking, and eventually getting pretty cold. They started handing out tickets to the early bird items around 4:30 AM, and we were allowed in the store at 5:15 or so. By 5 AM, the line was so far in back of us, there had to be at least 1000 people there. It was pretty crowded, and then by about 7 AM, the store was jam packed. People were parking in non-existant spaces in the lot, so it made it difficult to get out…I had to wait for the person next to me (with a much smaller car) to get out before we were able to leave. I didn’t get the computer, but we did get the TVs we were looking for, so overall it was an interesting experience…One that I’m not going to repeat, LOL.

Other than that, things are mostly the same. Leon and I took Usman out for his birthday a little while ago.
And, if you’re reading, Happy Birthday Rory (I know it was yesterday, sorry).

I realized this morning that all of the hybrid gas/electric vehicles I know about are all front-wheel-drive vehicles. While FWD cars are good vehicles (we are leasing a Honda Accord, remember ?), it doesn’t make a drivetrain swap very simple when attempting to stuff it in a rear-wheel-drive vehicle, such as the Town Car.

I ordered the official Ford publications on the Escape Hybrid, but only discovered this morning that on the Ford system, the electric traction motor is integrated with the transmission, so you must use it together, which may cause some issues. The Escape doesn’t use a conventional driveshaft with u-joints, instead it uses a Torque Tube, which only has 1 u-joint instead of two, but I just realized this may work anyway, just that more of the transmission tailshaft area is exposed more then conventionally. Then te other issue is what to do with the front axles. There is so much room in the Town Cars’s engine compartment, I might be able to make use of the front transaxle. I’ll be reading more, that’s for sure.

with your friends every so often. Last Saturday I got together with Mike and Anthony for the first time in a long while. We hung out, caught up on each others’ lives, in which Anthony has been workinglike a dog, and Mike and I are always busy between work and each of our relationships. So overall not much has changed among us. We got some Japanese food at Nagoya (good place), drove around with the top down on the Cobra for a while, then headed back to Anthony’s for some video games. After that we called it a night (around 11:30 or so), and we once again went our separate ways…

I gotta hang out with Usman and Rory again soon, it’s been too long…

… and not much changes. I’m writing this from the train station, and as usual I’m late because it’s a Friday, which means no parking, and because I can’t seem to get out of the house quick enough. Not much is new, save for the fact that I’m still getting over this cold that’s going around.

I recently broke the pricing down of my EV conversion into two parts, and unfortunately for me, it’s $20k for the minimum stuff. Ouch.

On a brighter note, Leon is feeling better, and everything is OK. He told me not to be so hard on myself, but I’m gonna try and do a better job in the future.

The train is here, time to go.

Sometimes I feel like the most insensitive boyfriend in the world. I called Leon after work, walking toward GCT. He said he’d been trying to get ahold of me all day. This is when I realized I left call forwarding on all day, so I fixed that and then called him back. He talked about some BBQ tomorrow so we couldn’t be at his house, which wasn’t that big of a deal to me. I then asked him how he was feeling, as he had gotten sick two days ago. He said he wasn’t doing well still. I said I was sorry to hear that, but that I really didn’t want to get sick. He took offense to this and said it was nice to know that whenever he comes down with a cold that I’m gonna stay away from him. Now I feel really bad for not thinking about how he felt, and why he was trying to call me all day. This isn’t the first time I’ve neglected to think about him, and I try to do so, but it doesn’t always happen. If I were to have to pick a flaw about myself, that would be it.

There are some mitigating factors, however. I already had plans to go to Sears with my grandmother to look at washing machines. One of Leon’s friends also had called him to get together as a friend’s father had died today. So, tonight was pretty much accounted for anyway, at least the early part of it.

However, I still feel bad, and I don’t know what to do.

Unfortunately while I was on vacation our washing machine gave up the ghost. It’s quite a pain to buy a washing machine these days…Convential top loader, high efficiency top loader, or high efficiency front loader? Choices, choices. Oh and we need one soon!

And Chris is happy. I’m happy, and now I’ll pay off those pain in the butt credit card companies.

So now we travelled to Buffalo, which was about another 1.5 hours. What was planned was that they were going to go back to see the Falls again, this time lit up and from the American side. However, it was optional and additional money, and both Leon and I were tired, so we didn’t want to go. So it was us and five other people who didn’t go, and they literally dumped us off at a Chinese buffet. It was either Burger King (which was closed as it turned out), or the buffet were our choices. They then said “see you in 45 minutes.” Gee thanks. We ate the so-so food, and then sat and waited. Forty-five minutes was more like over an hour, and in the process of waiting, I saw a roach crawl by on the table. Even better. So they finally came back, and then another 30 minutes later, we were at the hotel, a place called Adam’s Mark.

We had purchased a bottle of wine at the duty free shop, and Leon wanted to drink it. However, we didn’t have a corkscrew. So we called up room service, and they said they’d get it to us. We waited about 15 minutes, and then just decided to call it a night.

We were now on our way back to the US. We stopped in the Duty Free shop to pick up some items at discounted rates, and free of Canadian and US taxes. Not a clue as to why these shops exist. Anyone?

Then it was time to go through customs. The process itself was not that bad, the guy was only on the bus for less then 3 minutes. However, getting up there took almost an hour. This was quite a bit more of a wait then to come into Canada. It only took about 5 minutes total then.

We had lunch at the Secret Garden, which looked promising from the outside. The floral work around the building was extensive and very beautiful. The menu looked decent so we decided to eat there. It helped that we got a 10% discount because we were part of a tour. The food was decent, but I said that the ‘secret’ was that they took a trip to Costco and heated up some of the food from there. We had stuffed shells, which tasted far from fresh, and the Cesar salad tasted like lettuce in a bag.

After eating, we went into the gift shop and purchased a couple of small items. Then we went to the casino that was across the street because Leon felt lucky. We were there for about 45 minutes, and unfortunately we didn’t win anything, but we only lost $20 Canadian, so it wasn’t bad.

The next thing on our tour was the Maid of the Mist boat ride. This was a boat that goes by both the American and the Canadian side of the falls, and stops at the Canadian side for a minute or two to bathe everyone in the mist. The legend goes that those who are in the mist are purified and will have good luck. We’ll see. After this short ride, we went up to the gift shop where they had the picture they took of us on sale. Leon almost made off with it without paying the rediculous $25 for two pictures. It wasn’t worth the money by any stretch of the imaginiation.

We went to see the “Floral Clock” next, which was a bunch of flowers as the face of the clock, and hands made out of tubular metal. Nothing too exciting.

Then we went to the IMAX theater to see a movie about Niagra Falls. It was kinda interesting, but didn’t go into as much detail as I would have liked about the people that jumped off the falls.

Then we went to Toronto, during which time is when I wrote most of this entry about Ottawa. It started to rain, so our tour was put off until tomorrow and we had the night to ourselves. So we took the Toronto transit system - the subway down to where they said was a good part of town to go to, which was between Queen and King streets. We found a subway station (which we later found out was connected directly with our hotel…oops), and got a day pass, which to my surprise covered both of us. The station was pretty dead, but the train arrived in only 3 minutes from when we got there. Once we got in the car, we noticed it was very clean, and the seats were similar to the Bee-Line buses seats. We noticed that our station, North York Civic Center station, was near the top of the map, and King was near the bottom, but then we started to move, and their phrase “Ride the Rocket” was quite fitting. We went downtown in only 19 minutes, which surprised both of us. So we got back up to the street level and started looking around to see what Toronto had to offer, and the answer was quite a lot. Think of it as NYC but cleaner, and there was a lot of stores. We walked uptown, and saw a lot of different things - food, electronics, Internet cafes, camera stores, and a bunch of other random things, including a few adult stores. One thing that we noticed about Canada in general was that things tend to close early, and Toronto was no exception, save for the restaurants and Internet Cafes. We first found a Bistro, but the service was so slow that we left, and ate at an Indian restaurant instead. At the Indian place, the service again was slow, the Lasis weren’t big enough, and the food…was weird. I’ve never had such rich and tomato tasting red sauce, and I couldn’t finish it. Leon did not fare any better, in fact it was worse - his Saag Paneer was very green and spinach-y, and it made him sick to his stomach. We continued walking north and saw the gay part of town, as well as Chinatown after it. Then we were exhausted so we got back on the subway, and headed north. About two stations before our stop the train conductor said it was out of service and to grab the next train. Thankfully, even at 10:30 PM it was only 2 mins. Then we got into the hotel directly from the station. We went swimming for about 30 mins, then we went to sleep.

The next day, we got up around 7 and had breakfast downstairs, which was complimentary again. This time, still runny eggs, but pancakes, french toast, bacon, sausage, toast, fruit, juices, and cereal were there. Decent overall, but the fruit wasn’t so great.

Then we looked at a local government building and took pictures in front of it. Then we went to the CN tower. The tower is the tallest freestanding structure in the world. At the tour we went through the strangest security system I’ve ever seen. It consisted of a machine with about 30 different air jets and a camera, along with a security guard manning it. Then we took an elevator ride up the tower at 15MPH, lasting 58 seconds. We looked out over the city which was a vast panoramic view of the city. Then we went downstairs and stood on the glass floor, which was all that separated us from the ground. I initially was not very happy with this idea. Leon jumped on floor and didn’t fall through, so I joined him on it. After the novelty quickly wore off, we went downstairs and left after visiting the gift shop. Then we headed toward Niagra Falls.

In the morning they woke us up at 6 AM, which I consider to be early, but it wasn’t so bad. We had complimentary breakfast at 7:30 AM which consisted of bland scrambled eggs, toast which was soggy with butter, french fries, bacon and nasty sausage. We got on the bus at 8:30 and we were on our way to see the changing of the guard. We saw some sculpture that was 3.8 million dollars of a spider, as well as the Prime minister’s residence, and Hillary Clinton’s Thirteen million dollar sculpture which looks like it’s giving Canada ‘the finger’. Then we went to see the changing of the guard. This was a major waste of time, but I guess at least I can say I saw it. Then we got back onto the bus and headed for the 1000 Islands. This was a 2 hour trip on the bus, which was only supposed to be an hour. I was not particularly fond of the bus anymore, if ever I was… We had to use the bathroom at this point, and unfortunately so did everyone else. There was supposed to be two sets, but only one was in operation. This unfortunately made for a ridiculously long line, and so us being the ingenious people that we are, we bought two waters and then used the “washroom” of the little food place nearby. Then we had some ice cream before our boat for the tour arrived, and Leon wanted to go to this shop that served Hershey’s ice cream, but I said we should go across the street to a place with homemade ice cream, and Leon reluctantly went. After we ate the ice cream, Leon admitted that for once I was right about my prediction on the quality of the food. This made me feel very good, because Leon tends to be right, which usually pisses me off.

Then the boat came, and we started our tour. The boat itself was technically impressive, with a total of 5 diesel engines onboard. Three powered the boat with a total of over 1000 HP, and two provided electricity. The weather was gloomy, with impending rain. The sites were explained in three languages, and the major problem with taking photos was a majority of the islands looked the same. The narrator said that there were over 1800 islands, some purchased very cheaply, by rich people. For example, one island was bought for a bottle of rum and $25. Rich people tend to continue to be the ones inhabiting the islands. Another anecdote is that it’s where 1000 island dressing was invented. Thankfully the boat when coming back was pretty fast, as we went past the islands kind of slow. Overall it was OK, a nice ride but nothing too crazy. Then we got back on the bus. Oh joy.

So far Canada looks like upstate NY except everything is even cleaner, and of course in the Metric system.

We stayed at a Radisson hotel which had a very comfortable sleep number bed. By te time we got there, we were kind of hungry, so we looked for somewhere to eat. On the way we toured a little and saw the Supreme court and the Parliament. The Parliament building was pretty big, and looked pretty cool. It had bronze sheets on the roof which had oxidized giving it a antique look. One thing you notice is that there is a Canadian flag on every building. We stopped at a tourist information placed and talked with a really nice guy who told us where the nearby restaurants were. We found a place called Yesterday’s, and we sat down, but after looking over the menu we decided that the fare didn’t look so hot and it was more expensive the we wanted. We continued walking around, eventually making it to the market area. We ate dinner at a Japanese rest named Wasabi, it wasn’t so great in that the service was slow and the food was expensive.

Our first experience consisted of getting up at 4:30 AM, which meant we did not get a lot of sleep. The result was two cranky people. We then got on Metro North’s first train of the day. We arrived to a mostly empty Grand Central, with most things still closed. I was expecting more things to be open at that point, but I was wrong. Thankfully Hot and Tasty bread place was open, so Leon got a bagel and I got a corn muffin. We then went to get the bus, which the ticket said between Lexington and 3rd at 41st street. When we got there, there were just a bunch of people standing in line. I felt like the trip was going to be cheap and ..ghetto? And so we waited.
Two buses arrived but they were heading to Virginia. Finally our bus arrives, and they check our IDs an stow our luggage. Then our adventure really begins…
First we went to Union City NJ and picked up more passengers.
Everything is in Spanish and I have to rely on Leon for most of the translation. They started off the bus ride with a prayer. And Leon was frightened by this, and that doesn’t happen often.
Then we stopped at the Vince Lombardi rest stop.
No real food there, and Leon predicts what the rest of the trip will be like. As it turns out, he’s right.

We get back on the highway and we start traveling north, or so I thought. It turns out that the next time I look out of the windows I see signs for the Pocono Mountains, which are in PA. Why we went through PA I’ll never know. We stop at 12 for lunch in Binghamton, where again it’s mostly fast food, and we have Pizza Hut for lunch. We got personal pan pizzas, which are not as big as I thought. So we ordered a stuffed crust with jalapenos to go.

We continued to drive north on Rt 81, and after another 3 hours and 2 movies later (in English thankfully), we made another pit stop toward the Canada border.

Then we made it into Canada after going over the first 1000 islands bridge. We stop off at customs and 3 people need to get things worked out. We are then in Ontario, and I’ve officially been out of the country.