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Archive for the 'Whatever' Category

Back-up. Are. Good.

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Backing stuff up. It’s a good thing; if you do it.

Case-in-point: My work laptop died Monday morning - with several projects that I was working on. None of which I backed up. Why? I’m stupid. You’d think the fact that my laptop is nearly 7 years old and was continuing to be a major pain to work on, I’d have an inkling that something may go wrong at some point. Yep. It did.  Funny thing is that I actually thought about backing up to a thumb-drive but decided not to.

On top of that, I find out that my requested replacement, that was approved nearly 2 weeks prior, was never ordered. Plus our vender had the wrong specks for my new machine and apparently never saw the request. My question is, how can you order something without knowing what is wanted or needed?! So I corrected that and it was ordered. Too little too late. I’m now working from a spare that is almost as old as my dead box.

Our local IT person is attempting to get at my data on the dead hard drive but I’m not holding my breath.

The headache I’m running into is the fact that my Flash development is sitting on that dead hard drive and all I have to work from is the compiled SWF files. I managed to reverse-engineer them, but it wasn’t fun - I’ll explain in another post.

So, am I going to be more pro-active with my backups? Heck yeah!

Well, it’s been a while

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Where the hell have I been?! I’ve neglected my blog for nearly a month. Thing have been crazy busy and I just haven’t had the gumption to put my fingers on the keyboard and bang out a post.

So what’s been up?

As mentioned before, I had to buy a new computer system and bought a pretty nice Dell system. It’s my first retail system. Prior - I built all my systems. This time the cost vs. value of building a system finally caught up to me. I’m no longer keeping track of the computer component market so for me to up an replace a motherboard, CPU and memory would be too time consuming. I just want something that works, comes from the same place and is covered by a warranty.

I getting to love Vista - although I hear Service Pack 1 (due in March) should improve on some of the underpinnings. One annoyance I have is that my mouse is very imprecise. The pointer never quite activates a button as you think it should. I’m not sure if it’s my mouse or what - I’ll have to swap it out and see if that makes a difference - but it sure is annoying.

I totally love my Samsung 22" Windscreen monitor. Looks great and takes up 1/10th of the space my old CRT 19" monitor did - not to mention weighs a ton less too!

Freebies: The wait continues

I haven’t done too much in the way of freebies. I’m still waiting of a combined $2000 in gift cards that I completed between Aug - Sept ‘07. They should be shipping soon I hear.

I recently received 4000 Xbox Live Points from YourFree360Games.com. I downloaded a ton of Rock Band tracks and some other stuff. Came in real handy. Not in the mood at the moment to jump back into a freebie blitz but maybe mid year.

Drum Kit is Rockin’

My electronic drum kit is rockin’ now that I replaced a part of the hi-hat controller. Pintec uses a "foam chunk" to activate the hi-hat trigger and since I bought the kit used, the original chunk just gave out; it was cracked and no longer activating the trigger. So I ordered a new one from Pintec and it works great now. I also have been having a blast customizing my kits. It seems like every time I sit down to jam I end up tweaking something; finding the perfect kick and snare, experimenting with settings, etc… My bud and former band make, Brian, has some tunes he wants to track so we’ll be able to digitally record on my PC and have all kinds of fun. My sister also may have me do some drumming for her songs she’s working on.

Crackdown has my attention

I’ve been playing Crackdown just about every time I sit down and play Xbox. It’s just an extremely fun game. Great explosions, tons of action, huge explosions and the amount of freedom and activities your given make this a must-have in my book. I picked it up used from GameStop over Christmas vacation for under $20 and haven’t put it down yet. Anyone want to do some co-op?

Speaking of Xbox

My wife asked me why I’m not playing on-line. I responded, "Because I don’t like playing with idiots." It’s true. I can’t stand all the smack talk and especially being target practice for the 15yr olds that have nothing better to do than sit and play for 12hr a day. It’s a bit intimidating. The sad thing is I have a ton of great multi-player games such as GRAW (1 & 2), Halo 3, COD (2, 3, 4), Rainbow Six: Vegas, Gears, and they just sit there. I’d really like to do some co-op or play multi-player with some buds but time is always an issue. So if you see me online (gt: Captain Betty) shoot me an invite if you promise to let me win.

Photos Added

I uploaded a fresh batch of images on my Flickr account.

PC died; bought my first retail computer

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

Man this sucks… My computer died on Friday. The screen would just go black. A reboot usually got it back up, but at some point it stopped booting. No beeps, no nothing.

Thinking it was my video card, I ran around trying to find an AGP based video card. Landing at a local PC shop I plopped down $70 and ran home to slap it in.  Nothing. I got the same results. The box turns on, the fans whir up but that’s it. Bubkis. I tried everything; re-seat the CPU, pull the memory, un hook everything… nothing.

My only thought was that it was either the motherboard or CPU. Digging around NewEgg.com, I discover that if I upgrade either one… I’m screwed. I’d need new memory, video card, etc… No point in blowing $300 for a band-aid.

I’ve built my own computer for nearly 15 years. I’ve never purchased a retail system. I’ve sold them and even had a very small custom PC business. It’s not that I didn’t like retail systems… I just liked getting my hands dirty. I like custom building stuff. But this time, I think the state of the industry caught up to me. It’s fine if you just need to swap out a component but when you’re dealing with the motherboard or processor, that’s major.

So I broke down and found a fairly decent Dell. We don’t game on it (that’s why we have 2 Xbox 360’s), but mainly web, email, music, video - pretty standard stuff). I splurged on a 22″ Widescreen Samsung LCD monitor (just like I did for my Mom when she bought her’s recently); something I was going to buy anyways once I got my $2000 in gift cards (whenever that  happens). I compared a few other configurations and this was probably the best of both worlds. I ended up blowing about $760.

So about a week or so I’ll have a band spanking new system. Money that I really didn’t want to spend - but life works like that… here’s hoping my tax return is hefty.

Misc Post: Grab bag

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

Well it’s been a while since my last post and need to get a few “happenings” on the site.

Happy Thanksgiving: Here’s your car repair bill

For while now my car’s a/c fan has only worked on high. Wasn’t that big of a deal during summer and fall, but now that winter is on us it’s become a pain. Lately it hasn’t even been working; blowing or producing heat. If first made a call to my extended car warranty company, but low an behold, it’s expired. Great! So I made a call to my local Chrysler shop to get it in for an estimate; Aside from the issue I gave them they noticed cracked belts, leaking transmission fluid, and low coolant (a reason I wasn’t getting heat). I said let’s do it all. They managed to finish by Monday night which was good since I needed it to go back to work Tuesday. The bill? Over $1000. Yeah. Merry Christmas! There goes my bonus and part of our flexible spending. Grrr!

Mass Effect in the house!

Just received Mass Effect from yourfree360games.com. I’ve only played through one mission so far. I’ll be able to dive into it more over Christmas vacation that starts Dec 19th. I just love the presentation. As most reviews point out, the menu/inventory system take a bit to get used to and figure out. I also love the film grain effect they applied; makes it more movie-like. Most people don’t appear to like the effect though - it’s nice that you can turn it off or on.

Halo 3 Legendary from Jake Ludington

I received my Halo 3 Legendary package from Jake Ludington over vacation and it’s too cool. I didn’t know the helmet was that large. I’ll look great in my office once I get some shelves up. The best part is that we now have 2 copies of Halo 3 (just like Halo 2) and the boys and I can can play co-op between our two boxes.

Boys Xbox down and out - again

Grrrr! This is just frustrating. Over the weekend the boys Xbox started to show corrupted colors (mostly a yellow hue) across everything. I tried three different AV cables (between standard and high-def) and between two TVs with no change. So I call into MS and they’re shipping a coffin (aka pre-paid shipping box) to have it repaired. The boys aren’t too happy about being without a box but it’s not that bad. This is repair/replacement number 2 on their box.

Speaking of repairs

One of my 360 game controllers is dead as well. But here’s the hitch; in order for me to get it repaired, I need to write into Microsoft to have them move my two year extended warranty from my original Xbox 360 to my replacement. I thought that’d be automatic if your box was replaced, but apparently not. What puzzles me is that you can’t do this over the phone.  Oh sure, you can call and purchase the warranty, but you can transfer it. Stupid. Good thing I have 4 controllers.

This post contains “web developer blasphemy”

Friday, September 14th, 2007

<blasphemy>

Mozilla/FireFox is stupid. I hate making sure my CSS works on it.

</blasphemy>

Yeah, I’ll go to Hell for saying FireFox is retarded.

I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary. Standard stuff CSS based layout and such, but for some reason my code works beautifully in IE but when I check my work in FireFox = annoying crap.

HTML:

<div id=”main”>
<div id=”content”>
<h1>some text here</h1>
<!– … more stuff … –>
</div>
</div>

CSS:

body{
margin : 0;
padding : 0;
text-align : center;
font-family : Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
background : #fff;
}

#main {
height : 600px;
background : #000 url(../images/body-bkg.jpg) 50% 100% no-repeat;
}

#content {
text-align : left;
width : 700px;
margin : 20px auto;
}

#content h1 {
background : url(../images/cosmicgroove.gif) 50% 0 no-repeat;
height : 90px;
color : white;
font-size : 3em;
width : 100%;
}
#content h1 span {
display : none;
}

Results

As expected, IE looks fine. The #main div remains flush with the window, the #content div is pushed down 20px from the top and all is well in my world.

In FireFox what happens? FireFox decides to push #main and everything else down 20px revealing a white border (the body’s background color).

The fix?

Mozilla obviously doesn’t like the top margin setting on the #content div or the H1 which is somehow forcing everything down. I had to remove the top margins and replace it with top padding. This also goes for the H1 - no top margin as well. Stupid.

So the CSS of the #content and H1 now looks like:

#content {
text-align : left;
width : 700px;
margin : 0 auto;
padding : 20px 0 0;
}
#content h1 {
background : url(../images/cosmicgroove.gif) 50% 0 no-repeat;
height : 90px;
color : white;
font-size : 3em;
width : 100%;
margin : 0 0 20px;
}

Sometimes I wonder. I have no problem making things work between browsers (I have to, it’s my job) but it sure is a pain when things seem very plain and simple but don’t pan out that way. Good thing 95% of our web visitors use IE.

Certain “web standards” always bugged me.

Take for example the “box model issue“. IE defines how a “box” works one way while others handle it another way.

IE’s way (and the way I think) works like this. You have a box, you may have a border around the box and padding around the stuff inside that box. You now set a dimension on that box - oh let’s say 400px wide. From edge to edge, border to border, content and all, IE and myself says that the box should be 400px. End of story. It is a box - right?

Not so with the “web standard” crowd. They say the 400px width assignment defines the “content” of the box and does not include the border or padding (whoever heard of putting padding on the outside of a box?). So if I have defined a 400px wide box, apply a 2px border and 10px worth of padding, my “box” is technically 24px wider because of the padding and border (left + right = extra width). Retarded - I know.

So now every time you deal with setting dimensions on a container you have have to either avoid using “width” or “padding” or “border” or use funky math or some other hack to make sure you “box” remains the size you want across most browsers. But that’s why they pay me the big bucks (not really). 

Windows Live Writer: Beta 3 now available

Thursday, September 6th, 2007

This just popped up in my RSS feeds; Windows Live Writer: Beta 3 is now available for download.

What is Windows Live Writer?

It’s a free, and easy way to blog off-line and then publish to your blog when ready. A host of standard word processing features accompany it as well as pulling down your blog’s style and allowing you to see how your post will look as you type. Pretty nice.

It works with most popular blog platforms (I use Wordpress)

If you’re a blogger and haven’t used Windows Live Writer - give it a shot. If you’re currently using an earlier version… get over there and download it!

Back to work after extended Holiday vacation

Monday, July 9th, 2007

I took the opportunity to take a a few days off work to extend the 4th of July to a 5 day vacation. It felt good to get away from the office for a while.

So what the heck did I do? Yeah, I played some Xbox. Watched a few movies. Started prepping our driveway to get sealed (which it desperately needs). Started a video project with the kids (more on that at a later date). Went to see the fireworks. But mostly chilled out.

I will say I had the best time yesterday with Jonah (my 10 year old). We’ve been slogging our way through the Halo series on Legendary (the hardest difficulty level). We were stuck on a level for a while but we muscled our way through it with some strategy. Once we made it through we were screaming and bouncing around. What a rush! Then we managed to make it through another level which also broke out in celebration. What a great time! I’m pretty proud of his skills.

I managed to whip up a few more offers over at YourFree360Games.com and get my order in for Too Human. That went fast. It took less than 2hr for the offers to report back complete and I had it ordered.

My freebie line up looks as such:

  • Waiting to go ”complete”:
    • $100 EB/Gamestop gift card (2x)
    • $50 EB/Gamestop gift card
    • 12mo Xbox Live card + $50 EB/Gamestop gift card
  • Completed:
    • Xbox Live Arcade: Unplugged (on it’s way)
    • Xbox 360 wireless controller (2x)
    • Mass Effect (ordered)
    • Too Human (ordered)

 Woo! That’s a lot of stuff. Granted I paid a few bucks for trial’s and such but the return is great. I have a feeling that for two of the giftcards I’m going to have to request manual credit - which sucks since it only extends the wait. I’m pretty much done with available offers at YourFree360Games.com. I’ve exhausted most of the decent ones. I’ll have to hold off on that for a while now.

Well, back to work.

Free Stuff Update: Controllers Received

Friday, June 29th, 2007

I managed to get the necessary 2500 tickets from club.live.com and order my Xbox 360/Windows controller. The notice confirming my gift selection stated 6-8 weeks for delivery. How about less than 1 week and via FedEx ground. Wow that was fast and the controller works like a charm. Now I have a USB dongle for my PC if I ever (read: “never”) need to use my 360 controller on my PC.

I also received another 360 wireless controller from my favorite free game site: youfree360games.com. We now have 4 controllers total between the two 360’s we have. No more fighting over controllers. Pretty cool.

Free Xbox 360 Controller from YourFree360Games.com

Free Xbox 360 Controller from Club Live

In other news

We scored another month of Blockbuster Total Access; this time free (last time I paid $10). I’m telling you, if you want movies and have a near by Blockbuster, you’ll have movies coming out your ears! Get three out on-line, receive those, take them back to the store and get 3 more movies - free! It’s pretty quick turn-around as well. Although I will say that Netflix is VERY fast as I’m did a trial as well and even though they don’t have a storefront, turn-around time is speedy.

I have to move my stuff out of my old office in Oshkosh as the IT department is shifting seating around. I’m now working in Neenah due to a huge project Bemis is working on and I’m part of the team. I also took the opportunity to ask for some new stuff; a new monitor (hopefully a nice 19″ LCD) and Adobe CS3: Web Premium. Hopefully it gets approved.

I bought NBA Street Homecourt the other day from GameFly.com for about $30. I’m about ready to trade in the original Xbox as we’re barely playing it any more as well as any non-backwards compatible games. I hope GameStop’s still running their console trade-in deals. Homecourt is pretty fun. I’m not much of a sports game player (I did enjoy NFL Street 2), but Homecourt is quite fun with some very over-the-top dunks and double-dunks; Yes, double-dunks. The games achievements are a bit weak as there’s only 16, and the game sports some internal “awards” which I thought was odd. But whatever, it’s a fun play.