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Alaska

Alaska

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I’m up in Alaska right now. This last week was one of my best seminarian buddies ordination to the priesthood here in Fairbanks. A couple of us flew up for the ceremony and ensuing revelry. It was a great ceremony and went wonderfully.

It was also my first trip to Alaska as well. Unfortunately, I only have had an extra day or two to go around and see the sights. I went to the University of Alaska and the museum (highly recommend). Went out to see the Alaska pipeline, the large animal research center with musk-ox and reindeer, ate at a lot of greasy spoons (with reindeer meat sausage), went to North Pole, Alaska (most amazingly bad tourist trap I’ve yet visited), and drove down to Denali. I have one day to do a trip through Denali, then next day I catch my flight back home. Sigh. Where does the time go?  Hopefully I’ll get some good pictures tomorrow. Haven’t gotten out of town to take many so far since we’ve been doing ordination activities.

Indy 500!!!

Indy 500!!!

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Oh happy day!  The 91st running of the Indy 500 was on Sunday. It was kind of an anti-climactic running this year with it stopping for several hours of rain delay and then being called after more rain 50 or so laps before the end. However, local Oregon hero Danica Patrick got 7th. She is from Lake Oswego and has gotten a reputation for being a fiery personality.  She got her start racing carts at a cart track my old boss practices at just a few miles from here.

But I love watching the race – more now than before. Mostly because I grew up in Indiana and it always brings back fond memories of finishing chores with my brothers/dad, or having a BBQ or some-such while the tv or radio played the race in the background. On days during the race, if you drive through Indianapolis, you can easily hear the race 25+ miles away from the track.  The thunder and roar of the Indy cars is that loud. It’s called “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” because it still has the largest attendance and worldwide radio/television audience of any single-day sporting event.

Even as a kid, you could see the state bend itself as Indy approached. We had neighbors who’d paint their trucks with ‘Indy or Bust’ and drive down. Radio stations go nuts with their latest hair-brained Indy contests (on contest involved singing “Up, up and Away in my Beautiful Balloon” for 3 hours in the porta-potty’s at the track). One fellow shaved the radio station’s call letters in his hair, etc. Folks would talk before and after about the race. But it really was always about getting together and watching the race, BBQ-ing, having a few beers, and enjoying the first big event of summer together. Makes me all nostalgic.

On a different note, a lot of Linux folks raised money to get the Linux penguin put on one of the cars.  Unfortunately the Linux car #77 was the first to crash and finished dead last. There’s some irony there for you race fans.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/29/linux-car-first-to-crash-at-indianapolis-500/

Laptop saga takes a sad turn

Laptop saga takes a sad turn

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After being to their repair depot 2 times, my new HP laptop’s problem of overheating and randomly shutting itself off is still occurring.  The third time is the charm and now they’re building me a new one. I got a free upgrade out of the deal, but I still would just rather have had this one working. It’ll be 2-3 weeks for them to build me a new one.

Kudos to HP for building the new one.  They could have easily said: “Sorry must be software or your applications or whatever” and not done anything; much like some poor apple folks got when their MacBooks exhibited similar problems. So, as long as it ends well, I’ll be happy.

HP DV2000T adventures

HP DV2000T adventures

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I finally settled on a HP dv2000t for replacing my old laptop and ordered it with a $200 discount coupon. For just over $800, I got a Core2Duo, 14″ widescreen brightview display, dvd+rw, 1.5 gig ram, 120gig hd, nvidia 7200 graphics card, and Vista Home Premium. I got it a week earlier than planned (it was FedEx’ed from their China manufacturing site). They are super-sleek and nice looking laptops. I really liked the 14″ displays and their bright glossy finish. The wireless remote that hides in the PCIe slot is a nice touch and the fact you can watch DVD’s using the surface touch buttons without actually having to boot the machine is super cool.

Alas, after a week of use, it would randomly and instantly power off in the middle of watching videos or playing games.  I figured out that anything that got the system hot would cause it to happen, not unlike what some MacBook users were experiencing (http://macbookrandomshutdown.com).  I called support and they graciously offered to fix it. They paid for next-day shipping both ways – and I only lost my machine for a total of 5 days. When I got the machine back, it did some weird driver reloading at startup.  I checked the device list and the nVidia 7200 was gone and the cheaper/slower Intel 945 was in its place.  Sigh, they’d put the wrong motherboard in it.

Worse still, I couldn’t use the system re-install disks in it since ‘the hardware didn’t match’. Stupid locked OS install disks. I call support and back it goes again. Sigh. I certainly hope they fix it this time. The case got escalated (not by me even), and I was promised that if it wasn’t fixed this time, I’d get a new machine. I will hand it to HP’s customer service – they are good at not stonewalling you and do the right thing for the customer but I just want my working machine back. Can’t wait to get to really using it.

Not so fast…

Not so fast…

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I got one of those Snapple drinks with the ‘Little Known Facts’ under the cap. Well, it claimed that:

The only English word that rhymes with spaghetti is confetti.

Well, I believe that ‘machete’ also rhymes with them both. Still, one might argue that spaghetti, confetti, and machete aren’t really English-rooted words.  But it does make me a little more optimistic about my rarely-flexed syllabic balladry skills.  Guess you can’t believe everything you read on a bottle-cap.

flu

flu

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Had the flu for the last solid week. Ugh. It started with a night of aweful cold chills and sweating, then 2 days of body aches, then it moved to my head for conjestion, coughing, and ears plugged up by fluid. After 7 days, it’s finally broken. I’ve heard of two other people who have now gotten this same progression of misery – so be on your lookout and know it’ll knock you out for a whole week.

Price hikes for internet radio and how petitions should work

Price hikes for internet radio and how petitions should work

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I’m not much of a zealot about most grass-roots stuff, but the Copyright Royalty Board has raised rates for internet radio stations by hundreds of percent to play songs online. I, for one, listen to lots of internet radio at work – and this stinks because it will put some good stations out of business.

These guys (http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/home/) have a great system that allows you to enter your name/address and it will find your reps – then allow you to automatically fax or email them.  You can also print and snail mail them. Takes about 30 seconds total unless you want to customize the message. This is the way petitions should work.

Weekend of upgrades!

Weekend of upgrades!

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Well, put the latest performance review’s positive outcome to some new hardware this weekend.

First off, bought a new case since my old one wasn’t cutting it with the RAID drives and keeping everything cool. These were on smoking sale at Fry’s so I bought a limited edition Antec P182 – which comes in a wicked-cool gun-metal color.

I can’t say enough about the great fan layout which is super-silent and keeps everything very cool inside (each fan is 3 speed 120mm with external speed control and external removable lint traps for easy cleaning). The style, silent operation, excellent airflow, and functionality (the front audio jacks actually work on this case – finally!) are complimented by the ability to mount any board and its ample drive bays (each drive mounting point has rubber shock mounts and the drive bays have a silky smooth slide operation) which accommodate my 1.2 terabyte RAID just nicely. I have a feeling I’ll be using this case for years to come.

Next up was to finally replace my old laptop. I finally sold my old Dell Inspiron 8000 (P3, 1gig ram, XP, etc). It was a great laptop – the first model to have a 3D accelrator in it (gforce 2) – but weighed a ton and was just too bulky with its old 15″ rectangular screen (they didn’t have widescreen back then). I actually got $450 for the whole setup – about $100 more than I thought. However, compare that to when I found the paperwork and discovered I paid $2700 for it when it came out in 2001 – ouch.

Swallowing that lesson on technologies’ steep capital depreciation curve and vowing not to spend over $1000 ever again, I used the cash towards a new HP dv2000t. It’s a 14″ widescreen Core 2 Duo, 1gig ram, 120gig hd, 128meg nvidia gforce 7200 graphics card, dvd-dl burner, built-in webcam, vista home premium, 802.11/b/g, works, and usual bundleware. I found a $200 off coupon (thanks NotebookForums) and got it all for $800. I really fell in love with the glossy finish and style of this laptop after looking at many 14″ notebooks. Outside of a Mac, I think it’s one of the nicest looking laptops around. I settled on the 14″ because 15″ simply got too big for me anymore. This one was super-nice sized – fits in carrying satchel’s pockets very easily, was very light (tiniest power supplies I’ve seen), was more than powerful enough to play simple 3d games, ran Photoshop CS2, Visual Studio, Office apps, Dreamweaver, etc. On top of that, you don’t even need to boot it to watch dvd’s, just use the touch buttons on the surface. Can’t wait till it arrives in 2 weeks.

An interesting side note is that I got much more for my old Dell laptop on craigslist than what it was selling for on ebay. Similar laptops sold for $275-$325 on ebay, but I had bidding wars all the way to $450 on craigslist. Probably because you meet face-to-face with craigslist (ebay is full of laptop scams), but also people seem to really *REALLY* want used laptops on craigslist. Got a number of starving arts/student types. Interesting.

Woodburn tulip festival

Woodburn tulip festival

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The Woodburn tulip festival is just kicking into high gear!

I went last weekend and there were only a few rows up. This weekend, they blooming is up to about 65% of the fields.  It should be an amazing week with good weather returning about Wed/Thurs.

If you get a chance, bring your camera and go. Admission is $5 on weekends, but free during week. It can also be exceptionally crowded on the weekends – but it’s shaping up to be one of the best years I’ve seen in the 5 years.

Here’s a picture I took last trip to inspire you: