Monthly Archive for August, 2008

New HTPC Build

Reading Ray’s recent post about his HTPC made me want to get mine working again so while Zach Usa was over the other night we tried to troubleshoot it. Turns out it is more work than it is worth to try and fix it. I’m keeping the case (Antec Fusion) and drives (2x Maxtor 320gb, 1x Seagate 300gb) and am rebuilding the mobo/ram/cpu. I decided to do a core 2 duo build with a nice ASUS G45 board that has HDMI output. Here is a newegg wishlist that I put together with the components I’m putting in it. I ordered them late Tuesday night so they should get here Saturday or early next week. I ordered a copy of Vista Ultimate from the company store to run it on too. Should be a pretty screaming PC, probably way overkill for my HTPC but, it’ll play anything for sure :)
If I get ambitious I’ll post pics of me building it and the final setup once it is done. Once I get it done I’ll probably be motivated to upgrade my TV from my present 20″ LCD Monitor :-p

Weekend Shenanigans

Maybe it is too late to make a post about last weekend. I think not. It was kind of a crazy one because Malcolm and Adam came up but, it started off very mellow. On Friday, I made Kendall a nice dinner (Meetballs in Noodles with Vodka Sauce), it was pretty good. When I cook I usually just throw a little of everything in there so it was very cheesy and delicious. After dinner I headed up to the KA house and hung out with the boys. Kendall stayed back to play some Wii and while I was gone she cleaned my room and folded my laundry. I came back and was like, holy crap. It’s clean. For the first time since I moved in, it’s clean! That definitely made my evening!

Saturday, I woke up and cooked Kendall breakfast. I went to Trader Joe’s and got some blueberries, bananas and chocolate chips. I made banana chocolate chip pancakes and homemade blueberry syrup. It was pretty delicious and chocolatey (and most definitely very bad for you.) Kendall had to go to work and a while after she left, I went downtown to pick Malcolm up at the bus stop (long story). We chilled for a bit before my Kegger started. People started showing up around 7 or 8. There were a lot of people. Probably 30 throughout the night. There was a couple of games of Kings, plenty of drinking, some nice snacks and a couple of keg stands. There are pictures on my camera (I didn’t take them, but they’re there) that I need to sort through and upload.

By around 1:00am, everone had left so I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, Adam, Malcolm, Tyler (Adam’s friend) and Angel were all crashed over at my house. They’d had a pretty crazy night ravaging the U-District with doorbell ditching, climbing buildings, peeing on (and in) random things and being A-class douchebags :) I made pancakes for everyone and then made them clean up a bit. Then I decided to go to Northgate. Before we went however Adam and Malcolm finished off most of my half empty bottles of liquor. By the time we left they were both about 7 drinks deep which made for a very entertaining trip to Target. They also rode in the back of my truck (Tyler and I were up front, they were in the back).

Well, it started to rain a little on the way there. And they were kinda being assholes (like usual) so Tyler and I decided to give them a little excitement. Let’s just say we took the long way home:


google maps link

A total of 29.1 mi (the trip is normally 3.1 miles.) We managed to hit 3 bridges (520, 90, and University Bridge) and we managed to get Adam and Malcolm completely soaking wet. They handed us cell phones, and eventually all of their clothes save for their boxer shorts through the car windows because everything was so amazingly wet. I’ve got a few cellphone pictures I’ll post pretty soon and link from here of them in the back of the truck.

A waste of gas? Yes. Worth it. Probably not. Worth it to me? Sure… and that is all that matters.

When we came back, while Malcolm was showering (to clean / warm up) Adam poured a bucket of nasty beer water w/ baking powder, soy sauce etc in it over his head. I got it on video but, there is nudity so no internets for it. Funny none-the-less. Sunday night I went and saw tropic thunder with Malcolm and Shea. Afterwards we went to Earls for dinner and a couple of drinks (half tab was too busy) and went to bed shortly thereafter.

Adam and Malcolm stayed until Monday and then drove home while I was at work. It was a weekend for the history books for sure.

Training Today - Project Management

I’m in training today at Microsoft. The class is called Project Management and is taught by a guy named Peter Rogers.

Here is the syllabus

Project Management
Description
This is a two-day class for Engineering and IT professions, designed to better prepare Microsoft employees to understand and apply critical project management concepts, processes, best practices and techniques through a combination of instruction, facilitation, discussion, and activity.

At the end of this class students will:

  • Understand how project management components are used to organize and deliver projects
  • Understand the Project Management Institute (PMI) standards for project lifecycle and methodology
  • Use Microsoft (and industry) terminology to organize, communicate status, and deliver projects
  • Start up a project using established project lifecycle templates
  • Keep a project on-track through the project lifecycle; initiation, planning, execution, control, and close-out, using methods demonstrated in the class
  • Understand and be able to appropriately apply the Work Breakdown Structure tools
  • Close out a project and document lessons learned using an established post-mortem procedure
  • Apply tools, tips, and techniques to promote cross group collaboration
  • Know which tools and techniques to apply in the event of common project problems

Eligibility restrictions
Recommended for: IT/operations program manager, program manager, program manager 2 (career model)
Available to: all employees and contingent staff

I’ll edit this post with any juicy knowledge and my opinion of how the class is/was.

New Phone?

My w810i is aging, I’ve had it for 2 years now (since summer 2006). It has been a great phone (I love the 2mp camera with autofocus, the signal strength and the durability). Now there is a crack in the screen (still usuable just annoying) and it is just getting old and rusty. It still outperforms 90% of the phones people I see using everyday and I’m still attached to it but it is getting to be time to upgrade. Right now there are so many cool phones coming out that it is hard to decide which to latch on to. I’m out of my AT&T contract so I can pretty much move to any carrier and Microsoft gives me discounts on all of the big ones.

Here are the things I really want to have in my next phone:

  • GPS
  • Large touch screen
  • Autofocus camera w/ flash (or led)
  • Qwerty keyboard
  • 3g + wifi

I’m leaning towards either the Xperia X1 or the HTC Touch Pro. Both will be available in Sept-Oct time frame and have very similar feature sets. Are there any other handsets I should check out? Again I am flexible on carrier and am mostly concerned with getting a quality phone that’ll last me a while.

Edit: Treo Pro is another possibility, although the screen is smaller and the keyboard is always exposed, no slider.

Edit 2: iPhone is out because:

  • No keyboard
  • No MMS
  • Extremely expensive rate plan, no MS discount
  • Crappy camera
  • Lots of problems w/ current iPhone 3g’s

Yelp

I have started using yelp to find restaurants and check stuff out and I think its really cool so I decided to create an account and start reviewing things myself. If you use yelp you should become my yelp friend :) Check out my profile.

shirt.woot x 2

I ordered today’s shirt.woot.com. I like the absurdity of it and the color, and the Yeticorn, obviously.

I thought I missed out on yesterday’s shirt but, I was able to pick it up in the ongoing sale. It cost $5 more though, oh well. Now I’ll have three woot shirts (including the one Kendall got for me).

Can’t wait until they come. Maybe I’ll have to post pics of me modeling them ;)

Debauchery

Last night was half tab at Finn’s. I met Shea, Erik and Shelly there for dinner and a few drinks. A few drinks turned into: a black and tan, an irish carbomb, a double knob creek and soda, another carbomb, and an ameretto and soda. At the point I was sufficiently buzzed and we decided to part ways.

On the way back, before we all seperated, Shea decided we should go to Flowers because they make a good mojito. Erik and Shelly decided to bail but I joined Shea for the Mojito. They didn’t have any mint so it was really just rum with lime, simple syrup and sprite over ice. Not bad though. After the mojito, Shea told me he wanted to walk around a bit before driving home (he drank a little bit less than me).

Anyway, we’re walking through campus topless (it was hot out, okay?) and I get this crazy idea. I say to Shea, “I’ve got a crazy idea, if I tell you what it is, we have to do it.” To which his response was something along the lines of, “How crazy– On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being federal pound me in the ass prison and 5 being a ticket.” I thought long and hard before deciding on a four. He thought that was agreeable and said, “What are we doing.” To which I replied: “Swimming in Drumheller Fountain.”

Since he’d already agreed to it, we were now bound to jump in. We walked through Red Square down the path next to MGH towards Drumheller. We decided to scope out the ladders before taking the plunge and agreed that the ladder on the West side was best (less lighting = less chance of getting caught?). On the way we passed a few people sitting on a bench, two girls and one guy. We invited in to take a dip but, they politely declined. We were ready, nothing stood between us and the mirky, duck feather and poop filled water that would be our baths– except our clothes.

Shea and I stripped down to our skivvies and proceeded to hop in. Actually, for Shea he more slid in. Very painfully. He scraped the shit out of his side in an attempt to gracefully get in the water without letting his head end up under water. Look how well that turned out; he probably has a duck STD in his side now. I just jumped in and started swimming around. Yeah there were chunks floating on the water and I kicked several things that I don’t want to know what they were. The bottom was entirely too slippery, like snot on a counter top. The smell was… surprisingly not that bad but, it definitely didn’t taste very good.

After a few minutes of splashing around and yelling and screaming (we were celebrating our recent liberation of being surrounded by air) we decided to take a lap around the fountain. I led the way and turned back after about 100 feet when I felt something very strange at the bottom of the water, no idea what it was but it felt electrical and I was like, f- that. We swam back to the ladder, and out clothes and climbed out of the water. We were dripping wet and in our boxers. We used our t-shirts to dry off and then we stripped off our boxers and got back into our dry shorts.

We walked back up to Shea’s car and on the way back to my place to drop me off, we decided to go to A-Mart and get another pint and some pizza. This decision was made however approximately 8 feet from the A-Mart parking lot travelling at 30 miles/hour. Needless to say Shea almost mowed down a pack of pedestrians in his mad rush for a parking spot. In a-mart we consumed 2 slices of barely-food-quality burnt pepperoni pizza with a pint of beer each before heading back to the car and traveling to my apartment.

Shea had never seen my new place so he came up to check it out. He liked the view from the balcony so I decided I’d show him the roof. We went up there and there was a homeless guy with a long beard down on Roosevelt. I said very loudly, “Hey, Shea, look, it’s Gandalf!” Shea (and the homeless guy) laughed. I decided since Gandalf had a good sense of humor I should give him some money. I crumpled up a dollar bill and said, “Gandalf, I’m throwing down a dollar.” I threw it but it drifted gracefully to the 2nd floor balcony below me. Oops. I decided I’d try again (my last bill). Same effect. I told Gandalf I’d go down and try to retrieve them for him but the door to the 2nd floor balconeys was locked and I couldn’t get in. Oh well. Sucks for him.

Overall, it was a crazy night, definitely one of the most crazy I’ve had in a very long time. It was fun, and stupid. Makes me miss college and being able to get away with shenanigans like that guilt free. I wonder how long that’ll last? Oh well, who cares. It was a night to remember.

Nice Domain

http://kitty.cat

Waterpik

I bought a Waterpik from Amazon last week and I really like it. I already have a sonicare which was one of the best investments I’ve ever made, but my dentist still complained that I didn’t take good enough care of my gums. I hate flossing so I decided why not let technology do it for me. We’ll see how that goes at my next dental checkup.

There is definitely a marked difference though since I started using the sonicare. My new dental routine is

  1. Brush teeth with sonicare toothbrush
  2. Waterpik teeth and gums
  3. Rinse with ACT Fluoride mouthwash

My teeth feel dentist clean every morning and night. It really is amazing!

Weekend Recap

The weekend went pretty much as planned. The Senate show was great as usual, chilling with the KAs after was very relaxing but, ended up putting me to bed too late.

Saturday was very busy too: Kendall’s surprise started by walking me down to 45th where we caught the 44 bus heading west. We got off on Fremont and started walking north. It took me a minute to realize it but, we were heading to the Woodland Park Zoo! I’ve lived in Seattle for 5 years and have driven past the zoo several times but, I’d never been thre. I had no idea how big it was! We spent several hours there and I think we still missed a few exhibits. Kendall and I took a handful of pictures (they’re uploading now. I’ll edit this post with a link to the set when they’re up.

After the zoo Kendall and I were drained so we decided to take a 30 minute power nap which turned into almost 2 hours which ended up making us pretty late for the Mariner’s game (we got down there during the 3rd inning after the Mariner’s had already scored a bunch of runs). The game was fun though and it was nice to see Merz, Sara, Michael Hanson, Kurt, and a bunch of the active KAs there. The Mariner’s ended up losing though (by one run in extra innings) which brings my personal record to 3W-2L for Mariner’s games I’ve been at this season. I’ve got a handful of pics from the game uploading too.

On Sunday I went to help Rugg set up his new 47″ HDTV. He got a nice wall mount for it and we had it 3/4 of the way up before the 4th bolt broke off as we were drilling it in. We had to take out the other 3 bolts, go pick up my drill (his was just about dead) and then redo the whole thing with 4 new holes. That silly bolt added about 2 hours to our mounting adventure. In the end tough the TV looks reallllly nice set up how it is now and I’m excited for some away game football action there!

After helping Rugg I headed down to pick up Kendall and we caught the 4:40pm boat to Bainbridge Island for her younger sister Olivia’s birthday party. It was nice spending some time with her family and her dad made some pretty good tacos! Before we left Kendall started to feel a little sick and by the time we got back to Seattle she was running a pretty nasty fever. She was feeling better today though which is good. Being sick sucks (I know, I’m just getting over something too).

So all-in-all it was a very nice weekend! Lots of fun stuff going on and kept busy pretty much the whole time. Definitely my kind of weekend :)

Edit: Zoo pics are up! flickr.com/photos/xijio/sets/72157606681894260/.
Edit2: Mariner’s pics are up: flickr.com/photos/xijio/sets/72157606682033424/. I need to go to bed.