Category: Rants

If you read my previous post, you know I’m bent about picture taking. That’s nothing compared to installing PHP scripts on a server with old PHP and MySQL. The scripts just don’t work and working around the problem is rather difficult.

I think I’ll go lay down and walk away from the PC for a while. Grrr.

I spent the better part of today out shooting pictures of aircraft at a local air show. Problem is I get home and review the pictuers and more than half of them are blurry. Just unusable, blurred pictures. What’s worse, the camera was at its highest speed settings.

So, it comes down to this: is the lens crud or is my auto mode shooting crappy? I’ll post the pictures soon so you can be the judge.

I would love to say that I am enjoying the new place (more on that subject later) but these days it always seems to be about work when I get home. In fact, just taking the time to do this update is tough. It makes me wonder how homeowners and people with families do it every day. Maybe they are less busy or more willing to space out all the “to do’s” than I am.

In any case I am ramping up for another few months of travel. The kickoff will be Taiwan again, followed by a whole lot of state hopping. Hopefully I can spend some time at home now and then, but it certainly looks to be a busy summer. Anyone need a place to stay for a few months?

I’m back in town for a few days between the many trips I’ve been elected to attend. It certainly seems like more time is spent in hotels, airports, and meeting rooms than at home these days. In a way it is nice to be out of the office from time to time. But, when you are out for weeks at a time it can become a bit tiresome. And right now I’m exhausted.

More challenging still is trying to close on a house purchase while traveling. It isn’t easy and in this case it is my first purchase. So I am learning and waiting and worrying all at the same time. For kicks, if everything works out, I’ll close on it while I’m on a trip. Good thing I’m not in a hurry to move, I guess.

I’m not looking for sympathy here, but I felt it was worth logging anyway. I suppose the next big purchase is furniture, starting with a new bed!

It seems as though work never ends these days. I have just had a full day of clean up at work where every possible box, board, and spare part that went unused for the past several months went into the scrap heap. Fine, you say.

I come home and then start to the task of doing exactly the same thing with books, hardware, clothing and anything else I own in preparation for the inevitable move ahead (more on that later). Also fine, you say.

On top of all that I am going through the slogging process of de-HTML-izing another web site I now manage. In the end it will be a good thing, but for now it is just plain grunt work. Sometimes I really wish I didn’t have to do things.

I just found out today that for the next 3 weeks I’ll be going all over the middle and eastern US on various visits. Each trip will consume at least 3 days out of the week and each day I’ll be in a different city and different state.

I’ll have to take the camera with me because I can’t imagine that I’ll have anyone believe all the places I have to visit. Just you wait and see.

I’m really starting to wonder if my Tivo box has it in for me. I come home and find that some programs recorded fine, while other have random audio and video glitches. All of this is happening on a relatively new hard disk, so I don’t know why there are any problems at all. Things should just work.

Strangely, I think this is Tivo’s way of telling me to record less television. Maybe I need to listen rather than watch?

Today I put a bid on a townhouse in California. The opening price was $459K. By the time all was finished it rose to $510K. That’s an astounding $51K of cost increase in less than 24 hours! Only 4 people (including me) bid on the place, and it wasn’t all that fantastic. Needless to say, I passed on it.

Just goes to show you that people in California are nuts. Really nuts.

Yesterday I acquired a copy of EA’s latest masterpiece, Battlefield: Vietnam. What I was met with was utter disapointment, thanks in no small part to the total lack of QA on EA’s behalf. The game just up and crashes every few minutes, usually taking the whole PC with it.

Today I did a series of tests on several systems to see what the problem could be. Here’s what I learned:

Now I’m really puzzled. More testing is necessary to determine what’s goin on here.

Yesterday it was a hypothesis. Today it is reality: my Tivo hard drive, upgrade a little over a year ago when the last one died, has died.

This puts me in a bind as I shift into major travel mode. Sure, I have lived without TV before, but not without Tivo for so long. I have tried to put in a temporary replacement drive but even now I am rebuked by the GSOD (Tivo’s Green Screen of Death).

I think that somehow Tivo knew that I was at IDF this week looking at PC-PVR alternatives and so it died to spite me. Figures.