Tech

I Really am a Geek!

Well, the website went down last Wednesday as I attempted to post the NAIAS pics, and took 2 days to get it all back. Now, yesterday morning, it happened again. Thankfully Apple restored my data on their own. It isn’t particularly great to fear your $99 a year backup server can magically delete your files on a whim, but at least its all fixed.

Anyway, what else…

I took a geek test. They gave me a little graphic for my score, but it wont work in blog, so I have to just say it – 97% – whooyah. I retook and managed a 100% with some cheating, but the 97 is all me. You too can take said test here.

Think thats it for now.

…Friday…

nick

“Because your waste is a terrible thing to mind…”
Rothchild’s Sewage and Septic Sucking Services

Memories

Lets start with a year ago today (October 24, 2003). I received Panther, reformated my HD and installed, then Suchyta and I went down to the Apple Store in Troy for the official release. It was also my first time to a Steak and Shake, which as I remember it was pretty good.

Now lets go way back, to 6th grade. When I was incapable of using a computer. Yes, it used to be so. I had used an Apple II at MacGregor, but that was a far cry from the Mac LC475s at Handy. I was of low enough skill to be unaware of wordwrap and the return key, hence using the space bar to create every new line. Yeah, that worked out well.

OK, so what else…

I have applied at 7-11 and RadioShack. I am leaning toward RS, except the commission part. I am anti-people, so having a pay system that is based on the requirement of talking to as many people as possible could be a bad thing. Maybe it will be good for me though. Interview is at 6 on Wednesday.

Looking around on eBay, I found one of these in the $150 area. The significance is that about 2 years ago, I bought one on eBay for $55. With what the store wants, thats nearly 4x in 2 years, even the auctions is 3x. I am excited, and tempted, but know I must hold on.

OK, thats all I suppose. See you around.

nick

01001110 01110101 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110001


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01010100 01110101 01110010 01101110 01101001 01110000 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100001 01110100 00101110 00100000 01001010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110100 01110010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110 00001101 00001010

01010100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00101110 00100000 01001000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100110 01110101 01101110 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00101110

01101110 01101001 01100011 01101011


01100111 01101111 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110011 01101100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110

Changes

You may notice the blog is a bit different. You may also have noticed there was a temporary “down” period yesterday. So what changed? Well, Bravenet was annoying, so I dropped them. That means the second counter has disappeared, along with the poll. The SiteMeter counter is still there, and is accurate. I am awaiting my 1500th visitor, shouldn’t be too long. The poll I haven’t found a replacement for yet. I hope to have a new poll within about a month, but who knows with me. New though is finally a search. At 149 posts (Saturday is 150, woohoo!) I felt a search was needed. The search includes a page that lets me see what the top searches are, top results, etc…, so I will periodically post those. It also provides a site map when it “spiders” my site, so that may be useful to some of you. It isn’t great yet though, so I will need to play with how deep it maps. Right now you can only reach the map from a search page, but I will be adding the link on the main site pages, and on the links in the top right of the blog.

Apple released it’s Q3 today. Two billion dollars in revenue, $61 million in profit, $4.96 billion cash in the bank (yes, cash, for buying smaller companies up generally). Wow. Also, it was confirmed that the reason the iMacs are shipping late is due to IBM’s poor G5 turnout. It isn’t IBM’s fault, 90nm is just really small to be building chips at.

I downloaded NetNewsWire Lite. It is an RSS news program. For those who don’t know, RSS is an online syndication standard, similar to how the Bay City Times gets all the Associated press articles, or how yahoo lists Reuter’s news. I like it so far. I have MacRumors, Space.com, Crazy Apple Rumors Site, Apple Hot News, MacCentral, and of course, my own. Yes, the blog has an RSS feed, it is built into iBlog. So if any of you are using an RSS program, you can get my feed here (Yes, it looks weird if you view it in your browser, all RSS feeds do. I promise it works fine though).

Ok, I have a nasty headache again from the wisdom teeth, so I am going to bed. I can’t believe I wrote this much honestly.

Night, all.
See you Satuday.

Remember: 150th post – Saturday, July 17th 100th general in iBlog – Sunday, August 1st (unless we get a special before then)

nick

Fry, referring to his accidentally nailing his own grandmother, knocking her up, and becoming his own grandfather:
“I did do the nasty in the pasty!”

On time, holy crap!

I’m on time! Well, I have an excuse (yes, I need an excuse to do things right). I brought my ibook over to Jenn’s so I can update from here.

Apple is at about 99,900,000, so they should certainly reach the 100,000,000 by tomorrow evening. I am impressed at how fast they are accumulating downloads.

It’s really warm out. The good news is it should rain in about 3 hours, thus dropping the temp and humidity. Michigan pisses me off. 63, 65, 55, 90, 85, 65. What the hell? Pick a season and stick with it.

I have folding@home running again. The graphical, regular program. Working fine, and I am glad.

I need a job. Yeah, I do the landscaping thing, but I need a REAL job. I rewrote my resume, and need to start submitting it. I need money, and I need something to do all day, and Jobs are good at solving both of those.

Ok, good night all. I will try to be on time Wednesday too, start a habit of it. And I PROMISE new poll by next post.

bye
nick

When life gives you lemons, you clone those lemons and make SUPER lemons.
(Principal Scudworth, Clone High)

Whooopsie

Sorry all. Two days late is kinda bad, huh? I didn’t post Thursday before I left to Jenn’s, thinking I would when I got home. Problem was I didn’t come home til about 1 on Saturday morning. So I put it off till now, about 12 Saturday afternoon. I will make sure it doesn’t happen again.

When I installed F@H, I also installed a little utility to make it auto launch. Little did I know what a pain in the ass it would be. I decided to switch from the command line version of folding to the GUI app, and deleted the command line program. For the last 2 days now I have been unable to use my terminal, because it attempted to launch a non existent program, then when unable to find it exit the shell. Fine, I’ll put the program back. Nope, still exits the shell as soon as I end F@H. After a 16 post thread on MacRumors forums, I found the culprit. It wasn’t some Unix file like we thought (I checked every shell rc, profile, and login file I could think of) but the preferences file for Terminal. And stranger still, the setting can’t be reached from in Terminal, I had to open the com.apple.Terminal.plist file manually. Weird shit. Glad is all OK now though.

The 1 year anniversary of the counter has now passed. July 6th, 2003 I put it up, with 0 views. July 6th, 2004 it ended the day at 1306, which is really 150 too low, so 1456. By the way, you will notice that both counters (should) have the same value now. The Bravenet counter will go away soon, followed by the replacement of the poll and the addition of a search feature. No, really, I will.

Jenn and I are going to sidewalk sales today, and perhaps the car show. I need to go get ready for that, so I will see you all, tomorrow. Being late screws stuff up.

TTFN

nick

I’m sure glad global warming never happened.
Oh, it did, nuclear winter just cancelled it out.

Hello Out There

There was no quote last time, you notice that? I couldn’t think of one, sorry. I have been running dry on quotes lately. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Fireworks Saturday were cool. Jenn and I were right behind DoubleTree Hotel, between their building and the river. Was a really good spot I felt. Jenn seemed to enjoy them too.

I realized earlier today that my brother’s birthday is the 9th, which is like 3 days away. Wow, that’s close.

Apple is giving away free ipods. Every 100,000th song purchased, from the 95,100,000th to the 99,900,000th, will bring a free 20GB ipod to the purchaser. Then, on the 100,000,000th song, the purchaser will receive the grand prize of a 40GB ipod, a 17″ PowerBook, and a gift certificate for 10,000 free songs to fill their new ipod. Also, the grand prize winner will get a chance to create their own celebrity play list for the music store. Apple’s website has more info, as well as the rules for no-purchase entry. They are at about 96,865,000 right now.

I ran XBench on Jenn’s new ibook. Wow. With a dual 800MHz G4 as a baseline 100, Jason’s 733 G4 Quicksilver received a 64.68 overall, my 800 G3 ibook got a 42.90, and our 400 G3 imac a 30.24. So what does Jenn’s 933 G4 ibook get? An 85.17! Thats wicked considering it was only $1049. She scored over 100 in several categories too, especially under memory since she has DDR memory where the baseline system had SDR. And by the way, A dual 2.0 G5 Powermac averages a 200 overall, with up to 2000 in HD performance thanks to it’s Serial ATA drives.

What else…..

I am using Folding@home now. Some of you may remember that I used to run SETI@home. I pretty much stopped running SETI when I switched to the ibook, and have now decided that folding is probably a better choice. Yeah, looking for Aliens is fun, but this is more likely to be useful.

I’m getting to the point I wish I didn’t know about Tiger. I hate knowing I have to wait till mid 2005 to buy it. By the way, for those unaware, OS X has cats for all the version names. 10.0 is cheetah, 10.1 is puma, 10.2 is jaguar, 10.3 is panther, 10.4 is tiger. Future versions of the OS are expected to include lynx, cougar, and leopard.

Well, thats quite a post for me, so I am going to bed.

night

nick

“I’m gonna bite you sucka”
– Blackula

Hello

I added pics of Ludwig, so you can all see what my turtle looked like. I should have Molly, Roxy, KC, and Shilo up by next time.

I worked today, and yesterday. We started back at Hughs’ but should be done tomorrow. We sepent the day cutting sod, which is one of the most evil jobs we get stuck with. It’s not so bad when it’s dry and peels right off, but when it’s wet like now it just won’t come up.

I spent Monday with Jenn, and was there last night too. Will be going there tonight too. I am almost considering not mentioning it anymore unless we do something big, since I am there every night for the last 3 weeks.

Toshiba unveiled their new 60GB 1.8″ drives today, so it shouldn’t be too long before we see 60 gig ipods. Maybe as soon as WWDC at the end of this month, but maybe not until early August. It depends on how soon Toshiba starts shipping them. I figure 20 40 60 as new lineup, but only Steve and Jon know for sure (Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, and Jon Rubinstein, head of the iPod division for those not in the know).

Salute your Shorts, Hey Dude, Clarisa Explains it All, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Care Bears, GI Joe, Punky Brewster, Pippi Longstocking, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 321 Contact, Alf, Dinosaurs, Eureeka’s Castle, The Elephant Show, The Joy of Painting, Mr. Rodgers, Beakman’s World, You Can’t Do That on Television, Bill Nye, Pete and Pete, Reading Rainbow, Connections, The Secret Life of Machines. Just thoughts. Leave any I missed that you liked, would love to hear. Maybe next poll will be related.

OK, I think that’s it. Be back Saturday with more stuff. PLEASE comment and vote, I always like feedback. And yes, I am working on getting the site back up.

nick

Skinamarinky Dinky Dink,
Skinamarinky Doo,
I Love You

I went WarDriving!

I drove around for like an hour today WarDriving. For those who don’t know, it means I was driving around with my laptop looking for WiFi networks that I can connect to. I found a whole heaping load of them, especially along 4th and 5th streets, where the older buildings prevent easily pulling wire. Now i really want a GPS though, so I can record the networks and their location, for future reference. I can build a WiFi coverage map of the city for all you to use. I just need $89 for the GPS though.

Evil Sarah says I can’t vote in my own polls I see. The very nice Scott says I can though. Hopefully a few more of you will vote too.

Iron Chef America is all over now, though it is replaying all week. Results are as follows:

Flay over Sakai – Trout
Batali over Morimoto – Spiny Lobster
Puck over Morimoto – Eggs
Flay and Morimoto over Batali and Sakai – Sea Urchin, Scallops, and Langoustine

All 4 were against my judgment, except the Batali Morimoto. All in all though, I guess Flay was winningiest with 2 wins, followed by Batali, Puck, and Morimoto in a tie with 1 each, then followed by Sakai with 0. So the winners of the poll contest are Erica and Stacey, who both voted Morimoto. I would have voted probably Sakai (who should have been 2-0, not 0-2) or Batali. I still can’t freaking believe that Sakai lost a fish battle, or even lost at all. And that Sakai and Batali lost the Tag team is bull.

Anyway…

Tomorrow I have HTML, Thursday will be JS and Networking, then I am free! Yeay, 2 days off. Ok, not so impressive. Will give me more hours to work so I can afford a GPS though.

Hmmm, what else…

Oh, Monthy Python and the Holy Grail, this Saturday at 11pm at Fashion Square. I know Scott is going, and hope more of you can too. Let me know, ok?

I guess that is all.

Will see you all Friday to let you know how last week of school went.

bye,
nick

You don’t need to be right all the time, just enough of the majority that people THINK you are.

Untitled, Because I Can't Think of One Right Now

Hi!

I was really looking forward to this blog, but now I am really tired, so I am not any more.

I downloaded Civilization III, and have been playing it a little too much, so haven’t slept as well as I should be. Last night I saw Gods and Generals at the State, so that had me up late too. Tomorrow I am supposed to work with my mom, so not sleeping in at all. I will deal though, what choice do I have?

New poll up, PLEASE VOTE. Sakai and Morimoto tied the last one. Will see who was right in a week or so.

I went for a bike ride today. Did the whole rail-trail loop for 9.5ish miles. I think that may be adding to the tired. Sadly, I went alone because nobody will ride with me right now. Oh well, solo rides give me a chance to think and such, so not all bad, just kinda lonely.

Hmmm…

We did XML in my website class, and its really cool. I wish I could do my site in XML, but most browsers have lousy support for it. Speaking of the site, I haven’t done anything with it in a while. Either busy or not up to it. I will have another fairly big update soon though, maybe after school lets out?

Ahh, school. Just 2 more weeks, so nice. And it’s been nice out lately too. Was mid 60s today. Supposedly might brake 70 tomorrow, but chance of rain, And not even a thunderstorm, just rain. Too bad.

What else is new…?

I was right about the Stacey thing, was a friend of Suchyta’s that thought was his blog. She tried to delete the posts but couldn’t. Funny, because if I had known, I can delete comments, but didn’t so made a big deal out of it. Haha!

Apple released a new eMac on Tuesday. It seemed like just a speed bump, until today when i realized it has an 8x DVD-R drive. Now, eMacs are $999 and have an 8x drive, but the $2999 G5 only has a 4x. All the rumor sites are wondering if new G5s are coming soon, and this answers it to me. If Apple was just going to switch to an 8x SuperDrive, they would have done so before the eMac got it. That they didn’t though, means they must be waiting to release something more. And with the NAB conference next week, it seems like a good time for it. Probably an update to iMacs too, as they are a higher end unit than the eMac is. Could they be going G5 soon? We will need to wait and see.

Ok, I think thats enough. I guess will see you all back here Sunday.

adios,
nick

When the inventor of the drawing board messed things up…what did he go back to?