Tech

As the Battery Looms

I am typing this unplugged. My battery gage was acting goofy, so I am discharging it. At 18%, 50 minutes remaining.

I made some updates to the website (that none of you look at anyway) but nothing big. Mostly added some pics that were hiding, nothing much. I will do the library page when I clean my room and can get to my book shelf, but not now.

I was going to just sit here and type whatever came to mind, but I don’t feel like it now. Oh well. I kinda did last time, since thats how the sock was written, just by going on about whatever, without thinking. Some other time.

Uhm, well, I have been kinda sick. And, uhm, yeah.

Well, I guess thats it. I can’t think of much else to say.

Nope, nothing

Yeah.

Ok,
til Thursday.

nick

“A closed mouth gathers no foot.”

TGIF

Ok, so it wasn’t a bad week or anything, but still, maybe is more of a TGIF for you?

Anyway, went to casino last night with mom and Suchyta. Suchyta puts a quarter in a machine, gets 3 7s, wins $0 because was only 1 coin. Puts in 3 coins a few times, and it came back! 300 coins, so $75. My mom gave him some, as it was her coins. Fifteen minutes later I put a $.50 coin in machine, same thing, triple 7s and got nothing because 1 coin. Put some more coins in and it came back, $75, mom gave me like $30 of it.

Wednesday night I got a Zip 250 drive. I hooked it up to computer with my Zip100, and made a dual zip raid array. God I need a life. Better than dude who used 5 floppies though, right? Good news is I was going through Zip disks and found one of them had some stuff saved from 7600, so I got some old docs from school and stuff that I thought was lost.

I worked today, possibly last day of season. Possibly last day ever, if I get a better job over winter (HINT HINT GM, IBEW!).

I just noticed I hit 400 visitors. Sadly it was some dumb shit searching on google, probably for ser*al numbers. Bastards, LOOK ON LIMEWIRE, THEY’RE ALL THERE! Idiots.

Ok, I think thats good for now.

nick

“the Sock” moved to “Stories” section.

Road Trip

Ok, we are currently at Exit 84B heading North on I 75. I tried to post in line at the Apple Store, so I could get uploaded over their wifi, but couldn’t get iblog to work right. Anyway, I got Panther at 2:33 pm today. Installed and we headed off to Troy about 5:30. Drive down was ok, not to busy. North bound lanes were in a complete stop some places though. Hopefully that has cleared up some by now. Ate at Steak and Shake at Great Lakes Crossing. Got to Somerset and line was pretty long. Probably 200+ people. Walked around store for about 35 minutes once we finally got in. 23″ Cinema Displays are HUGE. And 17″ PowerBooks are just weird looking, they are SO wide. G5s are faster than I can believe, though so are the 1.25 G4s that are still around. Lot of people in store, compared to when I bought ibook and we had 3 people waiting on me alone. I bought a Brenthaven case for ibook. $79. Probably shouldn’t have. In fact I just realized I could have bought online and saved $20 through .mac coupon. Shit. Oh well, we’re 25 miles away already.

Panther is awesome though, lot of nice features. If you want to see some, let me know. I would be happy to show off.

In other news, car gets fixed tomorrow. Guess thats all. See you all come Monday, unless I update this post when I actually send to server.

nick

Before you insult someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way you’ll be a mile away, and have their shoes.

And Suchyta says “Hi, Okay, so we stood in line and answered several questions for people who kept asking why we were standing in line waiting. Some people looked at us like we were crazy. Oh well, maybe we are.”

Hi

Hey! I’m glad to see some of you are taking advantage of the comment system. Only 3 of you (well technically 2) but there are only 3 or maybe 4 that regularly read, so thats pretty good I guess. I have removed access to the counter details, for a couple reasons. I doubt many of you ever really used it anyway.

I am enjoying ipod more each day. I want to get some new headphones though, Looking at Sennheiser’s PX200s. Sennheiser is the same company that makes most Aircraft radio headsets and studio mics, so they already seem like a good choice. This model also has great reviews, as does the very similar 100 model. Plus, unlike the other higher end models I had looked at, they fold up nice and tiny, and are only like $40 -$50!

Also enjoying Airport card, using it right now! And now that 10.2.8 v.2 is out, my battery life is back to normal. My 6 hr battery that will generally give me about 4 hours in OS9 and 5 in X, was down to about 2 hours in X with the first 10.2.8 update. Maybe when Panther arrives (Oct 24th?) I will see even better time.

I am cleaning my room, very slowly. Moved bed, cleaned up computer table, filed some papers. Problem is brother’s stuff is skattered about too. Doubt will get much further tonight, and work tomorrow. Maybe finish Sunday?

Want to redo website again. According to counter, nobody goes there really, but what the hey, its something to do. Granted, that will mean beginning v.3 when v.2 isn’t even finished (or v.1 for that matter) but I always knew it was going to be a work under constant progress (hoped there would be progress anyway). Will decide before next update weather I will attempt it or not.

Received letter from IBEW, I am accepted for interview, what did I tell you. Interview will be next Wednesday (the 15th).

Ok, thats all for now. Want to try and get back to old blog, where I would just complain and you would read it and laugh. I guess thats a complaint, so I am doing well toward goal.

Ok, TTYL,
nick

There are 10 types of people in the world.
Those who know binary, and those who don’t.

I got prizes!

Friday morning, I received a brand new airport card, so I can go online wirelessly. It’s very cool. And, I got a refurbished 10GB ipod, also very cool. Next, I need headphones. The earbuds bug me.

Just yesterday I received more hits than normally in 2 weeks. MacRumors had a poll as to whether or not visitors have a blog, I responded yes and posted address. The result was 17 new visitors from 3 countries.

Haven’t made it to River of Time yet. Busy with new stuff. Definitely going tomorrow though. Havent missed one yet.

Ok, I guess thats all. See you on Tuesday, will try for a post bigger than this and previous.

See ya,
nick

Johnny 5: “KO Derf.”
Fred: “That’s Fred.”
Johnny 5: “That’s what I said, Derf.

Uhm, uhh. No, I got nothing.

Hello all, happy hump day!

I cleaned up my HD last night. 700MB cleared away. I also organized a lot of stuff that was just laying around, and backed everything up to CD. Its weird, there is NOTHING on my desktop. Looks freaky. Might need to create some empty folders just to look right again, or put HD icon back on desktop. Then again, I’m sure I will mess everything within a few days.

Apple sold that 20GB ipod about 20 hours after I posted that I would buy it. They did get some 10 gigs back in, but they’re the windows version. If you have windows, and are looking into an MP3 player, this could be good news for you.

Nintendo GameCube is down to $99.99. Wow, I paid $299 for my PS2, can’t believe systems are going so low. Next generation PS should be coming in about a year or maybe 2, others follow another year later. Also, there should be a portable PS coming!

I really don’t have much more. Haven’t been doing much lately. Stayed up till 10:30 this morning doing backup, then slept till 5. I’m so sad.

River of Time is this weekend, and A&W closes this weekend. I am going to River of Time, if you want to make plans, I would be happy to go with whoever, or I will just see you there.

Ok, see you Saturday, issue #44. 50 is approaching, thats about 6 months! Actually, 6 months will be November 27th. Hey, next post will be the 4 month anniversary, cool!

See you later,
nick

There are no stupid questions,
Just inquisitive idiots.

Can I write for 3 days before the post?

This is my first try at writing stuff as I think of it, for 3 days, then posting it all as normal. If it works out, I may stick with it.

HUGE news: I’m on Google!
I fixed the counter so it counts both the website and the blog, and when looking at the visits, I noticed it was listing google searches as the referring URL. Sure enough, if you type “nslyax” on google, you get my blog! (along with some macrumors forum posts and my completely unused geocities page) the search terms I have been found by include:

“airport card” ser*al number: google.com
people counters: google.com
site:homepage.mac.com unpack G5: google.com
iblog ser*al: google.com
s*mc*ty 4 ser*al number: search.yahoo.com
number s*m c*ty 4: google.fr
isync motorola v120: google.com

Awesome, huh? You can check them out yourself. Just click the counter, click “details” on the next page, then click the number before the domain (i.e. chartermi.net, etc…). You can also click “Who’s On” to see who’s been on in the last 20 minutes, including you!

Other site/blog updates include a link back to the homepage, and I posted the new website, which is frame-less. I hate frames, but at the time it seamed like the best choice. They are gone now though and I am glad. let me know if you prefer it or not. I don’t know why I say that though. Nobody has ever said if they like a change or not, or answered any question I post. There not rhetorical people, I really want to know (I give credit to jason for applauding the new post summaries though). Also, I have accepted that the website doesn’t matter, and that I might as well post everything on it as a blog entry and leave a link on the front page of the blog. But what would be the fun in that? Another question is weather I should gizmate the website (yes, that is a word, because I say so). I could add a comment system, or a poll, or whatever. Let me know.

For some reason I need to have an internet obsession. There really isn’t that much to do online unless you do a lot of the same thing. Just this year I have obsessed over:

S*mC*ty 4
Rare Apple items
Any new Apple product
Mountain Bikes
Bike Trails
Delta Classes
more…

Currently, its getting a $169 refurbished ipod from Apple (more on that below). Most of last year was based on wanting a new computer. And btw, still no SC4cd2.

“Fox News, Fair and Balanced Hurricane Coverage.” Yeah, we don’t want to be prejudiced against an ACT OF NATURE! I like Fox news, more than the other news channels, but come on.

I wanted to buy the refurbished 10GB ipod on the Apple Online Store. It was only $169, which is $230 less than when new. But, I hesitated and they got sold out. So I was waiting for some more to come in, and I was going to order one ASAP along with a $51 airport card, at $28 off. It sold out too. So I was considering, since I have an MBNA rebate that expires on 9/28 that I would buy the 15GB which is the newer model, but costs a whopping $279. Hey, I get $25 off though, and its a 15 and the newer model. It sold out too. So, just to put a final test to my powers, I am going to publicly announce right now, that unless one of my previous goal models becomes available by 9/28, I will buy the 20GB previous model for $269. Now, lets see how many hours until it sells out.

Have you heard about them wanting to crash Galileo into Jupiter? Well, they do, it’s almost out of fuel and to prevent the slim chance that stowaway microbes may inhabit Europa, NASA plans to turn Galileo into Jupiter and let it burn up on entry. Thats crazy enough, I mean what are the chances of microbes surviving 14 years in space, and then making it to Europa. It gets better though. A group believes that since Galileo is Plutonium powered, the heat of entering Jupiter’s atmosphere will set off an atomic explosion. Then, since Jupiter is mostly hydrogen, it will go into nuclear fusion, creating a new star, or simply exploding.

NO!

Heres why:

  1. The plutonium of Galileo is the wrong isotope, it is incapable of fission.
  2. The arrangement of the Pu on Galileo is wrong. It is in linear tubes, and would need to be in a sphere to enter fission.
  3. The hydrogen on Jupiter is the wrong isotope. For fusion to take place, you need Deuterium or Tritium (hydrogen with 1 or 2 neutrons, regular hydrogen has 0).
  4. To maintain fusion, you need “critical mass”. Jupiter is WAY under critical mass, which means the heat from any fusion that takes place would push away all the other hydrogen, stopping the reaction.

And there were a few more. A better description is available here. I just found it amusing.

What else.

My cousin Tim is in town. Arrived Thursday, leaves Monday. Came for his parents surprise party.

I think thats it. I’ve been writing crap for 3 days, and see I have quite a buildup. I can’t think of much else to add, so I guess I just need to post it all. If I try this again, I will need to work on organization though, because its just kinda here-and-there.

Ok, ttyl,
nick

Every cloud has a silver lining,
And each year millions die of lightning strikes trying to reach it.

Again?

It feels like I just did this yesterday, oh yeah, I did.

Cool TV show: the Joe Schmo Show. They found some guy and put him on a reality TV show, but its all fake. The other 8 contestants are actors, and nearly all of it is pre-scripted. I don’t watch reality TV, but this is good.

Objective C++ today. Feels like I missed a class between 181 and this. Technically I did, Data Structures should be between, but isn’t required to be. Should come back soon.

IBEW test yesterday was a joke. Gave up to 45 minutes for reading portion, took me about 15 or 20. Math section was equally laughable. I expect an interview in 30 – 60 days.

Re-calculated time I’ve owned ibook last night. 278 days; 39.7143 weeks; 9.26666 months; 0.76164 years. Way too many significant digits, especially considering I didn’t figure in hours and minutes. Oh well.

I keep hitting command – , (comma). Opens the preferences for the open application. Is rather annoying, and it happens almost every time I do a lot of typing.

I think thats it. I’ve been writing every day for, well, this would be the 4th day, so lack of thoughts is kinda understandable.

Ok, night ya’all.

nick

Number 38

Well, I spent the majority of last night downloading all 650 MB of S*m C*ty 4, which means I get to spend the majority of tonight finding a ser*al number, which is proving to be much harder. The things I do to save $49.99 plus shipping.

Rabbit seams to have grown in 3 days, weird. Its annoying, mom always wants me to feed it and whatever. IT’S NOT MINE! Gah, not like I know what a rabbit wants. I owned a snapping turtle, my view of baby rabbits is about 2 weeks of food I don’t need to buy.

Only 2 days till my birthday. It was suggested to me that I go sit in a bar at 11 tomorrow night, wait for 12, and order something right away. What bar is open and serving at midnight on a Sunday? I’m sure there out there, but why go there? I have the rest of my life to drink whatever I want, the fact that you can’t doesn’t mean I have to. Seriously though, only a bit over 24 hours, how cool. So I know your all thinking “Man, 24 hours, what will I get?” Well, A good starter is the Sunday papers. Anything from OfficeMax, Staples, Best Buy, or Circuit City thats at least $25 will probably be good. If nothing else, its worth $25 when I return it. Seriously though, there isn’t much I ask for:

Apple Airport Card $79 ($71 for students)
512Mb PC133 1.25″ SO-DIMM $95 (depends where you go)
Coke, or Pepsi (I actually want it now though, not Monday)
A ser*al number for S*m C*ty 4 for mac
Any of the books on my Amazon.com WishList, if you go there there’s some way for you to look at my list, pick something, and have it shipped to me, look around.

Thats about it. Of course, I always accept cash.

And, funny of the week, from Apple’s Mac OS X Panther site:

Unix-lover Heaven
Panther will include a final X11 window server for Unix-based apps, improved NFS/UFS, FreeBSD 5 innovations as well as support for popular Linux APIs, IPv6 and other important acronyms.

Other important acronyms? Is that a technical term? The heck?

Anyway, moving on…

Still no ser*al number. Keep finding them for Windows version too, which seems to have different ser*als. I also learned tonight that I need a ser*al for iblog, as my 30 days seem to be up. For all I know, this wont even post.

Ok, enough for now, I got stuff to do. Need to get back on a normal sleep schedule for school. All 2 days of it.

Night ya’all
nick

…Nope, wont post. Hmm, how to get $19.95 to an Indian bank account at 11:33 on Saturday night, when you ain’t got the money on your credit card. Hmm. Guess I go watch SNL and figure it out at 1.

…Well, its about 8:27:53 right now (well, I guess not “about”) and still no iblog. Tomorrow though the money will be on my credit card. I want to blame it on Lifli for making me pay, but I knew it was $20 and didn’t pay when I could have. Crazy part: Says the program costs $19.95, WRONG! Actually, since developer is in India, it costs 950 Rupees. So with exchange rates as of last night, it really costs $20.79. Now $0.84 isn’t a big deal, but I would like to know about it. Rupees, hah!

My birthday is closer, just two and a half hours. Mom is at casino, the Sunday nearest my birthday seems to be lucky.

Jason was looking at a CD-ROM for his PowerBook 1400, and we found one that’s “Certified Pre-Owned.” The seller guarantees that if you ever find that the CD-ROM was not owned by someone before you, he will give you double your money back. I laughed like hell seeing it, it’s a funny gimmick, I give it that.

I downloaded S*mC*ty 4, which I’ve been searching for for weeks (weird to say “for for”). So I get it downloaded, go to install, and “Please enter your password.” Crap, ok, online for a password. Find one on a website finally, has been about 24 hours since I started download at this point. So enter password, instal commences, and half way through “Please enter disk 2.” Crap crap crap crap crap. Still haven’t found a S*m C*ty 4 disk 2 for Mac. Bastards. I was googling for some info on it, and found a forum where the reviews are “mixed.” Every thing from “My G4 400MHz with 256MB of RAM runs SC4 fine” to “My G4 dual 1.42GHz with 1.5GB RAM chokes on the piece.” Don’t recall anyone with specifics on trying it on a G3, so who knows what my results will be. Definitely not shelling out $50 with results like that though.

Well, school tomorrow, and IBEW test, and birthday, so need sleep. That wont be for probably 2 hours, at least. Oh well.

I do plan to post as normal on Tuesday, and will add to this before I post it. You should be able to read this on Monday though. Weird to write stuff knowing nobody will see it for another day, screws with the “relative dates.” By the time you read this “tomorrow” will be Wednesday and “Today” will be gone. Time is a funny thing.

Ok, adios,
nick

…Ok, 9:44 Monday night. Apple released new imacs and ipods today, but wont bore you with specs, just check apples webpage.

Most un-eventful birthday in history, especially for a 21st. I’m not complaining though, not one for a big party anyway. Woke up this morning to “Good morning, happy birthday, I think rabbit is dead.” It was. Was too young, needed mom’s milk and we couldn’t give it. Wild animal’s should be left in the wild.

Started Unix today, bit disappointed. Working on Windows machines, just logging into a unix server. Oh well. Will see how Obj. Oriented C++ goes tomorrow.

And most important, I PAID FOR IBLOG!!! Which is why you can see this.

Update tomorrow, like it should be.

Bye for the third time,
nick

The End is Here

Number 34, the last blogger blog to be blogged.
😦

I still have my flu-e-cold-ish-thing. Doing much better though, thank you. Thursday it was just starting, from about 2am to 2 pm friday was the worst, barely breath, coughing, lots of draining, horrible. Started getting better after that (as if it could have gotten worse).

Was bored, so I went to leoville.com, and Leo said that he heard rumors around that TechTv might be sold, which got me all reminiscent of old TSS episodes, when the network was really awesome, as ZDTV. So I go to the TechTV.com and I see they have a WMV of the VERY FIRST EPISODE, EVER. With Leo and kate and UGM 1.0 (though it wasn’t 1.0 yet because there were no successors planned) with an amazing PII 300 and 128MB RAM, WOW. Anyway, so then I see the links to everyones webpages, and go through them all, except kevin’s, because it says it was down and just gives a link to go somewhere else for now. So when I’m on Sarah’s blog page, there’s a link to that same site kevin had posted, so I go there. OH MY GOD! It’s the greatest show ever, you have to watch it. Yes, it’s an 85MB download, yes you need to go get a DIVX player, but its so worth it if you even remotely like this stuff. Oh, you need the link huh, here.

Also, check this out, entertaining at the least.

What else. Hmm. Going to do a lot of work on website soon. I need to. My HTML class isn’t til October, so can’t depend on that pushing me. I really am going to try though, I promise.

I went to a family reunion in Munger today. Not my family, but close. My “Grandpa” Jack was there, we haven’t seen him in years. He lives in a VA nursing home in GR now, used to come over all the time though. He recently recieved a medal for fighting at Normandy in WWII. Here’s the PR. As old as he is, and as bad as his hearing and eyes are, you could see how happy he was to have gotten it.

Ok, I guess thats it. See you Wednesday for my 3rd blog at the new blog. Actually I’m not real sure on numbering scheme. Guess it would be number 37 huh. Yeah, number 37. If anyone has suggestions as to what I should work on, improve, or add to the blog, website, or anything, please let me know.

Ohh, I almost forgot.

1 Nicholas Yax
2 Jason Julian
3 John Pauwel
4 Nicholas Suchya
5 Lauren Somalski
6 Robin Yax
7 Stephanie Ricker
8 Scott Helber
9 Troy Histed
10 Rachael Zieve
11 Barb Courtney
12 Jacob Courtney
13 Connie Yax
14 Danielle Pilon

Thats all of you. Sad isn’t it. Over 3 months, and only 14 people, and I’m one of them. granted, you may have showed other people, but I doubt it. But I guess thats one of the great parts about having a blog. You can say anything you want, because nobody actually reads it. I have IP address logs to prove it. Ok, thats all.

later,
nick

those that don’t believe in war,
remember all who fought and died to allow you that belief.