Lego has produced a version of the Imperial Star Destroyer and it can be yours for a mere $270. People have already started receiving them and posting their experiences building this beast. Here’s an amusing one.
Dec 122002
Nov 042002
Our local cable company has launched a new Digital Video Recorder (DVR) service similar to TiVo or ReplayTV. I’ve found a little more info on a TiVo discussion board. I went and picked one up on Friday.
It’s not as full-featured as TiVo, but it’s cheaper and everything is tied through the cable company instead of having to use another service. Our initial experience with it this weekend has been pretty good. I’ve had trouble recording two programs at once, so I need to look into that some more. I also made the mistake of turning the cable box off this morning, which screwed up some things that I was unaware that Mary was trying to record. Being able to record any show at any moment is a definite plus. We were watching an episode of Ed, Edd n’ Eddy that we particularly like and were able to record it with the press of one button. The pausing of live tv will definitely come in handy now that we have two young children. I’d be interested in finding out if there is a local discussion board for this particular service. I haven’t checked the newsgroups yet.
Jul 172002
I ended up having to reformat and reinstall The Wife’s hard drive. I tried the recovery console (chkdsk, fixboot, and fixmbr) and I tried the repair option that’s part of xp setup. None of these fixed the “disk read error”. It was a good thing I had just installed everything the week before. Four hours of work last night and she only lost a few days of email.
This fun little incident has motivated me to get a UPS and to look into all of the new backup/system recovery options in xp. I balked on the UPS a few weeks ago as you need a super deluxe one to get any amount of up time with large monitors. I’ve decided that the monitors can stay on a basic surge protector, but the PCs are going on a UPS. (Mine and The Wife’s anyway).
If you tried to access the site’s root url (http://thechunk.com or http://www.thechunk.com) earlier today, you may have noticed that you got a 403 – Forbidden response. Apparently, Avid decided to move me to a new and improved server last night, but neglected to configure the web server correctly. They somehow forgot to include “index.php” as a default directory index page. I can’t be the only one who was affected by this. Anyway, for some reason, it took them several hours to add one filename to the apache config file and bounce the web server. Sigh.
Jul 152002
So, I finally got all of the computers set up correctly on Saturday afternoon. We each had our own PC and could share files, the printer and Internet access. The Boy’s was connected via an 802.11b wireless card. I was all impressed with myself. My wonderful networked home lasted 24 hours.
We left all of the computers on yesterday when we left to go see Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course (The Boy loved it. It’s just a longer version of his show wrapped in a weak plot). Just as we were leaving the house, a massive storm hit complete with torrential rain, thunder, and lightning. We were getting gas a few blocks away and noticed some particularly close lightning strikes. Turns out that they were so close that we must have had a temporary power outage. Both mine and The Wife’s PCs were off when we returned and The Boy’s had rebooted. Mine and The Boy’s started up just fine, while The Wife’s gave the dreaded “Disk read error has occurred” on boot up. After spending three hours last night trying to resurrect it, it looks like I’m going to have to re-install xp. Luckily, I still had most of The Wife’s stuff on my PC from the changeover last week. She’ll only lose 4 days worth of email. She seems unimpressed.
Jul 112002
Don’t make any jokes about drunk pilots on America West flight or you’ll find yourself booted off the plane. I don’t know what recourse this woman has, but I’ll avoid flying their fascist airline from now on. That’s utterly ridiculous.
I broke down and bought a bunch of wireless networking stuff from Netgear. I’ll let you know how the install goes. I’m hoping to be able to have wireless in The Boy’s computer, but also be able to steal the card for my work laptop when I bring it home so I can browse the Internet downstairs. I’ll let you know how it goes. By the way, I have to give props to Buy.com. I ordered a network card from them on Monday and got it today with free shipping. They always ship fast, but fast for free rocks. I hope this price war with Amazon lasts forever. I love competition. The consumer always wins! Anyway, buy from Buy.com. They’re my heros.
I’ve been in video card hell for the last few days trying to get a Visiontek GeForce2 card and then an ATI Radeon card working in The Wife’s PC. No luck. I’ve already returned the GeForce card and the ATI card is going back tomorrow. There’re apparently not many options for upgrading a video card on a pentium motherboard with no AGP slot these days. I lucked into another possibility though, so I’m hoping I can work this all out tonight.
Jul 022002
It’s still raining like crazy here. If it goes on much longer, I might dig up those ark plans.
I spent most of the weekend holed up in our home office installing WinXP Pro to my machine and setting up The Wife with her own machine. My parents gave us several hand-me-down PCs when they upgraded my dad’s office last year. I must say that I’m pretty impressed with XP. It installed my printer without any prompting or assistance from me and sharing it was a snap. It’ll apparently recognize my digital camera without installing it’s software (haven’t tried it yet). It’s a good thing since I tried to install the sw and it promptly told me that it wouldn’t be installing USB support (which is how I connect the camera) because I was using WinNT 4.0 and it doesn’t support it. It didn’t give me the option of installing it anyway, it just decided to “help” me. Apparently, Kodak’s developers can’t read version numbers correctly and/or don’t plan very well for the future.
I’m using XPs Internet Connection Sharing and their firewall. I’m a little skeptical that MS’s firewall is as good as ZoneAlarm. I need to search around and see what others think. If I can use ZoneAlarm with ICS, I’ll install it. Anyone?
I also need to finish setting up a PC for The Boy. The Wife’s parents got him a Bob the Builder CD-ROM that he’s been dying to play for the past several months. He’ll have to wait for Internet access until I break down and get a wireless access point and LAN card. I don’t feel like running CAT-5 cable all over the house.