I have some extra hardware laying around. Not sure what I want to do with it...
IBM Deskstar 250GB SATA Link
IBM Deskstar 160GB IDE Link
Soundblaster Live! Link
Athlon 2600+ (unknown quality) Link
ATI 8500LE Link
Lite-on LTR-12101B Link
Antec True480 Powersupply Link
Logitech MX700
ASUS A7N8X Link
Plus an unknown Athlon processor that's underneath a fan so I can't get to it.
dram told me to update my site, so I'm doing that. Nothing much to report. LAN party at netty's house next month sometime I think. quake3 almost every night at quake.teamslack.net. I failed my first attempt at my MCSE 2003 test (70-290). I'm gonna restudy and pass it. Other than that, life goes on.
It's amazing how few interesting things I do when I work 40 hours a week. On the plus side, I'm soon going to be one test closer to getting my MCSA/MCSE. Joy.
Here's some new pictures from my brand new Shuttle SN95G5. Enjoy. BTW, this machine kicks ASS.
Sucks. My CPU died. So now I'm at a crossroads. Should I continue down the path of athlon-xp, or should I make the big jump to athlon64... I suppose I probably SHOULD go to amd64 right now, because I know I'm gonna do it sooner or later. OK, I just talked myself into it. I just bought a Shuttle SN95G5 computer from newegg.com. I got 2-day shipping and rush processing for just $6 more. So it should be here by Thursday.
EBGames has some good deals on Black Friday. Here's what I'm gonna TRY to pick up...
Call of Duty $9.99
Call of Duty United Offensive $19.99
Doom 3 $19.99
Best Buy:
Advent 27" HD-Ready TV $349.99
Circuit City:
HP Pentium M laptop $599.99
CompUSA:
PNY 512MB DDR3200 RAM $59.99
TDK 100-Pack DVD Media $39.99
Office Max:
Western Digital 200GB Hard-Drive (2085-3701) $49.99
Should be a fun Black Friday :)
I got a new case/mobo recently. Just 2 weeks ago, I bought a Biostar 200NB from newegg.com. So far, I've put an AMD 2600+ inside it, as well as an ATI 9800np and 512mb of Corsair VS (3200) ram. Good stuff. It worked really well at the lan party last night. The only downside so far has been that the temperature sensor doesn't work, so I don't know how hot this thing is running at the moment. I'm going to email newegg tommorrow to see what they recommend. Also, it doesn't look like I'll be able to fit the Creative Audigy2 ZS Platinum inside the case next to the video card, so that was unfortunate (although the computer doesn't have a pretty nice soundcard onboard, so it's not a huge loss). The specs on it are:
Specifications:
CPU Support: AMD Athlon, Athlon XP, Duron(Max.FSB 400)
Chipsets: nVIDIA nForce2 IGP + MCP-T
Memory: 2x 184pin (DDR333 up to 2GB)
IDE: 2x ATA133
Graphics: Integrated GeForce 4 MX graphics
Expansion Slot: 1x PCI, 1x AGP 8X
Audio: Realtek ALC655 6-Channel Audio
LAN: Realtek RTL8201BL 10/100Mbps LAN
Extension Bay: 1x 3.5", 1x 5.25"
Front Panel Ports: 2x USB 2.0, 1x S/PDIF output, Audio ports, 1x IEEE 1394A
Back Panel Ports: 2x USB 2.0, 1x S/PDIF output, 1x IEEE 1394, 1x RJ45, 1x VGA, 1x Serial, 2x PS/2, Audio ports
Dimension(WxDxH): 8.3" x 12.7" x 7.4"
Woo hoo! Lan parties rock. Yesterday we had a pretty good lan party at my house. It started at like 5-6pm but because MAKER didn't bring his switch like he promised, we had a bit of a rocky start. Eventually stock went back home and got an 8port switch and things were great from then on. We had a great quake3 tournament, which master_d won. We played a game of AOE2 and a game of RON (sucks for Rand, he lost to me!) And for the second lan in a row, we didn't have any power outtages. Looks like I'm getting the hang of this :) Anyways... stock, duckjob and myself cooked a few things for the LAN party. We all made pizzas and cookies. You'll see in 2 of the pics, duckjob and I made some oatmeal cookies. Duckjob's are the flat, lifeless, crispy 'oatmeal' cookies, while mine are the light, fluffy, very tasty cookies.
My dog takes such great pictures. Too bad he can't catch a cookie if his life depended on it.
There will be a LAN party at my house scheduled for Friday, November 12th. At least that's what the concensus is so far. Look for an email coming soon with more information. And dont forget to sign the list!
UPDATE: logikal's list
Here's an email I got recently from Human Resources here at work.
IEC's Exclusive Private Party at Knott's Berry Farm
Friday, December 3, 2004
7pm- 1am
More information to follow.
For those of you who remember from last year, the company I work for buys out Knotts Berry Farm for an entire night (7pm-1am) and closes it to the general public. That means that only employees and friends of employees are allowed in the park and all the rides are either super short or non-existant. Anyways, all of #teamslack is invited this time. I can get pretty much as many tickets as I want, at $13 each. That's not only way cheaper than regular Knott's prices, but the park will be closed! More information coming later. But keep that date open if you want to come. So far I can count on stock, maker, and hipsterdf to come.
EDIT: Now dram and jill are going (I think)
Well, it's been a long time since I last posted something here. Basically, since I last posted, I took a trip to Maui for a week and now I've been back for like a week or so. I was planning on posting many wonderful and glorious pictures about my trip, but there was over 1gb worth of pictures taken and it's quite an effort to sort and resize the ones I want to show. But fear not, I'm still here and last night I finished sorting and delting some pictures. PROBABLY (big probably) I'll get around to uploading pictures tonight when I get home. In the meantime, I found two links that should bring a smile to your eyes.
First link has to do with one of the best movies of all time. The director has now announced a sequel is in the works and should be out sometime next year. Here's a link to the story (LINK). Yes, let's all rejoice at more crazy Spaceballs comedy.
Second link has to do with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Apparently, JS went on the O'Reilly Factor and Bill O'Reilly made a comment to the effect of ... "You know what's really frightening?" O'Reilly said. "You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote." Apparently JS and the folks at Comedy Central took that seriously and found some stats which prove otherwise. Way to go JS. O'Reilly can suck it. Viewers of Jon Stewart's show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch "The O'Reilly Factor," according to Nielsen Media Research.
Just felt like taking some pictures of my dog Bud. I tried to get him in the act of barking, but this is all I got.
Ah what a wonderful day today. Today I am the proud owner of a brand new 2005 Nissan Altima 2.5S. After the fiasco on Tuesday with Nissan of Orange, I went to costcoauto.com and asked them to find me the best deal. They came up with Garden Grove Nissan (Brookhurst & Trask off the 22fwy). My parents and I went down there and it was the best experience I've ever seen from a car dealership. Because we went directly to the fleet dealer, there was no haggling for prices. She quoted us $200 over the invoice price, which is pretty damn good. After about 2 hours of filling out paperwork and waiting, I had my new car. And seriously, out of those 2 hours, there was never any negotiating, never any yelling or anything like that. It was the most peaceful deal ever. The way we figure it, unless we were to get one of those "one at this price" special weekend deals, we probably couldn't have beaten $200 over invoice. I put up some pictures for you guys to drool over :)
P.S. I recommend getting your Nissan at Garden Grove Nissan.
P.S.S. Dont forget my sale items! Click HERE!
Well, I've narrowed my car selection down to the 2005 Nissan Altima 2.5s. Very nice car. My dad has a 2002 Altima 3.5 SL and it kicks ass. So we took a trip down to Nissan of Orange hoping to get a good deal. What we got instead was a very large headache and a new hatred for car salesmen. Have a seat as I tell you a story...
We get to the dealership and this guy comes out who by first impressions looks quite shady. Something about the grease-slicked hair and oddly shaved sideburns that makes you uneasy. Anyways, we told him exactly what we wanted and would accept nothing else. So he says that the exact color was not in stock at their store, but it could be delivered tommorrow... not a huge deal, but it means I would have to buy it before I actually SAW it. So he asks what I want to pay a month and I say "350 a month for 60 months". He says, "let me see what I can do" and leaves for 15 minutes. Keep in mind these 15 minute breaks become standard for the rest of the night. I think he took 15 minute breaks like 6 times. I'm not kidding.
So he comes back with his "deal"... 425/mo for 60 months. I laugh and say no way. His response, "what if I could do 350/mo for 72 months". This was after I specifically said I didn't want a 6 year loan. So he tries to spin the facts around, all the while he hasn't actually said what the car costs. At one point my dad says "but I don't even know what the car costs". My favorite line of the whole night, and I kid you not, the car dealer replied "when we shake on a deal, you'll know the cost of the car". No lie. Those were his exact words. So after many more attempts at dealing, he never actually told us what the car costs.
I gave him 2 requirements (besides color); none of that $1200 paint/pinstripes that they put on, and anti-lock brakes. That's all he had to deal with. On the first requirement, his first attempt was to "forget" to take it off. After calling him on that, he went back to his manager and 15 minutes later he said "ok, we can take that off". So logically I said ok. Later I realized he just meant they'll take off the pinstripes, but not the cost to put them on in the first place. So he finally takes the cost off, but just for the pinstripes ($100) not the entire extra clear coat of paint ($1200). Then we got to the deal of ABS. He didn't have any cars that had ABS installed in the color I wanted, but he assured us he would get that. Despite the fact that everywhere I read says you can add JUST abs, he insisted on packaging it up with some other stuff I didn't want. Then he pulls a car up that didn't have ABS and he claimed that it did. We looked at the dashboard which lights up when ABS is active and of course this model didn't have it. He claimed that the ABS was installed, just not activated and that it was standard on all models. Which of course is a crock of shit. At this point my dad and I left, each with a giant headache.
Moral of the story, don't ever go to Nissan of Orange.
This is the end of my venting for now, I'll fill in some more great details later after I've calmed down a bit.
PS. Oh yeah, and they denied me not only my student rebate but also 1.9% financing because ... apparently my credit was ... too good? I have a credit rating in low-mid 700's (which is A+ credit). Go figure.
I'm having a sale on two items. First item up for bidding is my camera. It's a Kodak DC4800. 3.1 megapixel, 3x optical zoom. You'll see by the pictures that quite a few accessories are included. This includes 2 batteries, a 64mb and 16mb compact flash card, and a 3x optical zoom attachment to bring the optical zoom on the camera up to 6x. Asking price is $200 OBO.
Next item up for bid is my 15" LCD. It's an Envision EN5200e. I'm selling it because I want to get a 17" LCD to match my current 17". It's in great shape and there's no ghosting in games. Max res is 1024x768. Asking price is $200 OBO.
Sigh. Cars can be so troublesome sometimes. Yesterday afternoon my '97 Ford Taurus finally kicked the bucket. As I was getting off the freeway, my car started to make noise and sputter. Right as I turned onto Heather's street, my car totally died and wouldn't start. Come to find out a water seal burst and my car lost all it's water. It'll cost like $600-$800 to fix. With that in mind, I've gone searching for a new car. The thing is, I'm 6'5" and I don't fit in most cars. So searching for cars is quite a trying experience. So far, the only two cars that I fit into that I liked are the Mazda6i and the Nissan Altima 2.5s. (I also fit in the Chevy Impala but I didn't like it). Other than those, I didn't fit into any cars. Some of the cars I was really looking forward to such as the Subaru Impreza, VW Jetta/Passat, and the Scion tC. Oh well, such is the pain of being tall. I'm sure I'll find a car within the next few days and I'll update here with pictures.
Heather and I went to the Orange County Fair today. It was quite a lot of fun, but it was exactly like I remembered it. Nothing really changed in the past few years. There's still the giant horse and giant steer. Same old, same old. We did go on this one ride that felt like it was going to fall apart at any minute. Luckily, we went on a Friday so all rides were $1, instead of the normal $2-5 per ride. Also, we watched the VitaMix demonstration for a while, and I've come to the conclusion that I really want one.
The LAN party last night went really well. No power outtages for the first time ever. We were almost short on tables, but we ended up using our ping pong table and it worked really well. We had some awesome games of Quake3: Threewave, Quake3: Urban Terror, and Counter Strike Beta5.2 (The best version ever). The CS was really fun and it brought back a lot of good memories. Ah LANs, they're so much fun. We started at like 5:30-6:00pm and I didn't get to bed until 5:30am. I think it was the longest LAN party we've had. Here's some pictures I took with my new Pentax Optio S4.
Man, it's been so long since I last updated. I got my new camera in the mail the other day. I got a Pentax Optio S4. It's a pretty sweet little camera. It literally fits inside of an altoids tin can. And it's 4 megapixels. Anyways, I'll take some pictures with it (or of it) and post them later. Maybe I'll even writeup a little review of it when I get back home and get my hands on it again. Anyways, for those who have forgotten... THERE IS A LAN PARTY THIS FRIDAY. Please sign the roster/list so I can plan accordingly. The list is currently at www.krystalogik.net/lan. GO SIGN UP.
Heather and I went to the Warped Tour on Friday. It was held on the CSU Fullerton campus. At first I thought it was gonna be a good idea, seeing as college campuses are usually well layed out with plenty of parking. Come to find out, whoever was in charge of planning and logitics was a fucking retard. Seriously. We stood in line for ALMOST 2 hours and we only got in at 12:30, after 3 bands had already played. And that was after we cut in line because everyone else was already cutting. Oh well. So we got in and the first band up was Alkaline Trio. They were pretty good, and I've been listening to them lately so I recognized almost all of their songs. They sounded good, but it wasn't very energetic seeing as 2/3 of the crowds were still in line outside. Next up was Flogging Molly and I think they were the best show there. Nofx was good and so was Bad Religion. Other than that, it was a pretty typical Warped Tour. It did seem quite political with almost every band making SOME sort of anti-Bush statement. And that's always good :)
LAN PARTY! Repeat after me... lan party at pens house. That's right folks, it's that time of the year again. Time for the LAN to end all LANs. This time there's no excuse not to come. I fully intend on breaking the 20 person barrier this time. For some of us it will be the 'end of school' celebration that we so desperately need. Anyways. Onwards to the information. It will be July 16th at 6ish (as usual) It's a Friday and everyone should be there! /me looks in ashandarei's direction. logikal will soon have a signup page. I'll repost here once that happens. Until then, keep dreaming about LANs. woo
Brightroom.com took some pictures at the mud run. And by 'some' I mean like 9000 pictures. After looking through all 9000+ pictures, I've found some pictures of me and my group running through the mud. There's 1 picture each of Greg, Brad and Joe and a few of me.
I think I finally got my photo blog thing up and running. This is the first test of this sexy new system. Here are some pictures from our mud run. If this works, I'll post more pictures from various events. Look how muddy we were :)
We won our hockey game tonight. And with that win, we are now the champions of our division. Go us! We won 5-4 and I had 2 goals and 2 assists. Go me! That is all.
Heather and I just got back from Las Vegas. Not much has changed since the last time I had been there, except that I can now legally drink and gamble (none of which I actually LIKE to do) After a 3.5 hour drive up to Vegas, we got to our hotel (Circus Circus) and realized that we should have paid the extra $10-15/night and stayed somewhere nicer. How can I say this nicely... Circus Circus is crap. It's such a bad hotel compared to some of the newer hotels. The casino was the smokiest of all the hotels, and the rooms had some problems which I will not go into here. Oh, and it's so far away from anything fun. Anyways, we hit up ALMOST all of the major hotels and gambled a bit in each. During the day Monday we went to the movies and saw Dodgeball. We didn't really goto the pool at Circus Circus because it looked pretty dirty and pretty small. Oh well. Lessons learned. Next time spend the extra money and stay at a better hotel. Oh, and my car is dying. The AC kinda died on the way back :)
It's official! I'm going to Hawaii; Maui to be more specific. My Dad just booked 6 tickets to Maui (5 for my family + Heather). Woo! I've never been to Hawaii before. So far here are the preliminary details. We're flying on September 12th at 5pm out of LAX [Flight info] and we come back September 20th [Flight info]. Come to find out, my dad has so many frequent flier miles from business travel, that despite spending 210,000 miles to get the 6 of us to Hawaii, he still has like 275,000 miles leftover. Weee! More details to come...
EDIT: It might be these flights instead LAX -> OGG, OGG -> LAX
EDIT AGAIN: Hmm, looks like the links aren't working, so here's the flight info for the LAX/OGG flights...
# Departing Date/Time Arriving Date/Time
161 LAX / Los Angeles 09/12/2004 05:45 PM OGG Kahului/ Maui 09/12/2004 08:13 PM
14 OGG Kahului/ Maui 09/19/2004 10:25 PM LAX / Los Angeles 09/20/2004 06:20 AM
dram rocks! He fixed some of the 'broken' features on this website for me. Mostly they were problems that he didn't like and bugged him so it was easier for him to fix it than to bug me :) Basically all the pages OTHER than the main page now look like the main page... a much more consistent look. For example, click on either the monthly archives or an individual entry and you'll see how it now looks like the rest of the website. Sweet. This kind of generosity has made me want to actually fix all the broken links on teamslack.net. Maybe I'll actually have time now that school is almost over.
Woo, just finished one of my finals. Econ 20B. Took me all of like 20 minutes to take the final, and now I'm glad that I'm done with that class. Joy! Just two more finals and I'm done with school FOREVER!
I have this new screenshot to present. It's my first attempt at creating a fvwm2 desktop. Yes, I know I have to get better icons, that will be done soon. Enjoy.
Man have I been busy lately. Let's see if I can recap last weekend. It started off with a LAN party at rico's house. This LAN was quite different from the normal logikal/pens LAN parties. First off, there were several girls there who were serving us food and drinks. It was quite awkward at times to see these girls act as 50's housewives. Oh well, I got my cookies :) Also, there was a pool there and several people went swimming while the rest of us played more games. Never had that happen before. All in all it was a good LAN. Thanks rico!
I got back home around 1'ish and went to bed. I got up at 4:30am to drive down to Camp Pendleton to run in the World Famous Mud Run. Brad, Joe, Greg and myself all participated in this. It was quite the interesting run. Nothing quite like what we were expecting. I was stupid and wore clothes that soaked up a bunch of water. I ended up running with an extra 15 pounds of water on me. There were a bunch of river crossings, tons of sand running, mud pits, hay bales, running across tires, wall climbing, lake crossing, slippery hill climbing, and finally army crawling through a mud lake :) It was really tough, but I can already tell I'm gonna do it again next year. Brad and Greg ended up getting 9th and 10th place in our age group and I got 13th place. Our times were like, 1:04 for 10k (6.2 mi for you non-metric geeks). We had a TON of fun doing this and I recommend it to all you runners out there.
After the run, I went home to take a 3 hour power nap. At 4:30, Brad and I went to the ARC to prepare for a UCI athletics fundraiser. It was quite the social event. Many important people were there (important relative to UCI athletics anyways). Brad and I got the best job. We were given 10 disposable cameras and had to go around taking pictures of everyone having fun. We ended up talking to pretty much everyone there, including Chancellor Ciccerone and our AD Bob Chichester. It was a lot of fun for everyone involved, even though Brad and I were thoroughly tired. The UCI Athletic department raised a bunch of money through auctions and donations. Go UCI Athletics!
When I was cleaning out my closet on Saturday, I came across an old laptop that I stopped using 2 years ago. It's a 300mhz Toshiba Tecra 8000. It still worked but was too slow for me to use. So I got this great idea to tear it apart. Of course my idea went a little farther than that. I was going to rip it up and make it into a digital picture frame for my desk.
So I took it all apart and removed the motherboard from the case. Then I removed the LCD from the plastic housing. I got it booting up at that point so that made me quite happy and gave me hope. Heather and I went to Aaron Brothers to look for picture frames and I found the most perfect picture frame for what I was planning on doing. Unfortunately I can't find a link to what it looked like before, but you'll see in the final pictures. Anyways, after trying to assemble it, I got it to boot up, but with many memory errors. Come to find out, memory doesn't like to be in contact with styrofoam. So I raised it up a little bit and it worked great. After I got back to my apartment, I found out that I didn't reattach the CMOS battery, so it's quite a pain in the ass to start it with the box together. As of now, I just have one picture of the final product, but tommorrow (probably), I'll have more pictures of the inside.
EDIT: yes, that's Heather's dog Bear. She likes to lick the carpet :)
Today I ran with Greg (Brad's roommate). We weren't quite sure how far we ran at the time, but it ended up being 8.5 miles. That's a hell of a long run, especially for me. I hadn't run more than 5 miles in months. But it was all good. We ran at like 8 minute mile pace in order to get us ready for the Mud Run coming up soon. Of course, I was so tired by the middle of the day that I overslept and forgot completely about my scholar athelete banquet. So I got some concerned called from Brad and my parents asking where I was. Luckily I made it over there before all the awards were handed out and everything was all good.
I just had the best conversation with HP support. Now I know what you're thinking... good tech support at a computer company? Nahhhhhhh. But here's the catch, it wasn't over the phone. HP offers a live chat thingy that was miles ahead of it's phone support. Check out this conversation I had with HP support.
Kevin : Hi
Elizabeth : Hi Kevin. How are you today?
Kevin : good
Kevin : apparently my warrenty has expired,but it really hasn't
Elizabeth : ok- so i see your issue
Elizabeth : Are you trying to use the warrenty now or are you just tring to get the information to show acurately?
Kevin : just trying to get it updated correctly
Kevin : i had a problem earlier in the year and the warrenty was still screwed up
Elizabeth : ok. the best thing for you to do is to call our contracts department at(800) 386-1115
Kevin : and it took me a long time to get it updated, but apparently they didn't fix it all the way
Elizabeth : They can help you get it all sorted out
Kevin : sigh. i've tried that before, nobody ever seems to know what's wrong
At this point, I was about to kill HP and vow to never use them anymore. But then the unexpected happened... What follows below will blow your mind.
Elizabeth : would you like me to call. i can see what i going on
Elizabeth: i can call right now if you don't mind holding
Elizabeth : would you like me to call. i can see what i going on
Kevin: yes please, that would be excellent
Elizabeth: ok great
Elizabeth: can i get the system handle or the warrenty information
Elizabeth : Also when did you purchase this?
Kevin : december of 2002
Elizabeth : ok great
Elizabeth : Contracts is going to update the information.
Elizabeth : Is there anything else I can help you with?
Kevin : nope, thank you very much
Elizabeth : ok great. Give the ITRC a day or two to update the information
Elizabeth : Have a good weekend, Kevin!
Elizabeth : Thanks for using HP Live!!!
Kevin : thank you :)
Like I said, weird....We'll see if it actually gets fixed in 2-3 days like she says...
In the process of cleaning my apartment, I've found some computer parts that I'd like to sell. If anyone wants them, email me at pens@teamslack.net or check in #teamslack. Here is a list of items. Make me an offer if you want one of them
Aopen AK77-333 motherboard
AMD 1800 processor
SB Live (UPDATE: sold!)
ATI 8500 64mb
Alminum case w/ DVD drive
15" LCD (1024x768 res)
All items are in perfectly working condition, as far as I know (they were working when I stopped using them)
Let me know if anyone is interested.
Heather had this brilliant idea the other day. Her old laptop had died several months ago, and it was just sitting in pieces on her floor. (Since then she's gotten another, cooler laptop). Her old, broken laptop was pretty much the same model as mine, with different innards. So she thought, 'why don't you use my old screen on your laptop'. So I took it home and swapped them out. Luckily they were exactly the same size (case, not screen) and all is well. The best part is, I used to have a 14" screen, now I have a 15" screen! And on top of that, I no longer have to use a lame 1024x768 resolution. Now I'm kicking ass at 1400x1050. If anyone's ever used 1024x768 for an extended period of time, you'll understand how excited I am to now use a desktop at 1400x1050. It's so great. I love Heather!
Last night, Hipster, Masterd, Penboy and I went to see Nofx in concert at the Bren Center. Also playing were some random band I dont remember, Authority Zero and Alkaline Trio. I've never heard Authority Zero before and I thought they sounded really good. Not only were they pretty good as a band, but the sound technitions actually did a good job and so they SOUNDED great too. Alkaline Trio was good, although as Heather put it 'a lot of their songs sounded the same'. On to the reason I went to the show, Nofx.
Seriously, when nofx got up to start playing, the entire pit was rocking. Nofx sure does know how to put on a show. A lot of bands just get up there and play 10 songs and that's it, but not nofx. After every song, they'd do something hilarious or at least interesting. Not to mention the fact that they sounded REALLY good. At least I thought they did, but maybe that's just coming from a die-hard nofx fan. I'd have to say it was the best set by a band I've seen in a long time (rivaled only perhaps by another nofx performance at the Warped Tour in 2000).
Last night, Heather and I went to the most expensive restaurant either of us have ever been to. It's a place called Morton's Steakhouse in Santa Ana (although they have restaurants nationwide). The only reason we went was because my mom had given me a giftcard worth $80. Right off the bat we were worried that it was gonna be REALLY expensive. I ordered a large porterhouse steak which was pretty good, and Heather ordered a large piece of swordfish, which I hear was also pretty good. Only problem was, my steak cost $42 and the swordfish was about $30. No matter how great it was, it wasn't worth $42. Anyways, after all the damage had been done, the total came out to be $108 (plus tax and tip, $134).
I don't think I'd ever eat at one of those places with my own money, even if I had millions of dollars to waste. It just seems like its SOOOOOOOO overpriced that I could do just as good lighting my money on fire and cooking cheap steaks by the flame. I mean, Heather ordered a crab cake and it cost $12. $12 for a crab cake no bigger than the ring of a small fountain cup from Carl's Jr. We did have a good time though, so I guess it was worth it seeing we did have a lot of it paid for :)
Should I feel guilty for eating an entire box of Samoas/Caramel deLites today at work? I mean, they were so good, yet why do I feel like I shouldn't have?
Just got my grades back for last quarter. Not so bad. Here they are so you can decide for yourself. I'm actually surprised I got a C in Math 105B. God, I hate math with a passion. I'm sooooooo glad I never have to take another math class again.
HISTORY OF JAZZ MUSIC 78B A- 4.0 COMP&NETWRK SECURTY I&C SCI 168 A 4.0 NUMERICAL ANALYSIS MATH 105B C 4.0 NUMERICAL ANLYS LAB MATH 105LB C 1.0 LINEAR PROGRAMMING MATH 171A A 4.0
Good: no more school this quarter. After what seemed like a painfully long 10th week/finals week, I'm finally done with the quarter. That leaves one more quarter of 'fairly easy' classes left to take. Watch, 10 weeks from now I'll be complaining about how hard these classes are and how much I hate school. It's a cycle. I think I really fucked up in Math 105b, but I think I did good in ICS168 and Jazz. Oh, and let's not forget my automatic A in Math 171a. Joy. We'll see how I did next week sometime.
Bad: I'm getting sick. Correction, I AM sick. I suppose it doesn't help to get between 4-5 hours of sleep a night, wake up at 5am for rowing practice, and the stress of studying for finals. I guess it all caught up to me and now I'm feeling a sore throat and a little run down. Being sick won't help me too much next week when we have two practices a day for crew. I'm thinking of skipping at least the first practice if I don't feel any better. We'll see...
Ugly: Don't even get me started on rowing. It's generally a good thing to take a few days off every once and a while to keep the body healthy and in good shape. Of course, that's the LOGICAL idea. Our coach is anything but logical on the issues of rowing and what is best for us. After our narror lose against UCLA (which, by the way, we practiced pretty hard on Friday considering it was the day before a race), we havn't taken a day off, and now our coach wants us to practice twice a day from Sunday-Friday, then race our 2nd biggest race of the year on Saturday in San Diego (Crew Classic) I'm so worn out right now that I can barely stay awake. Not to mention how out of it I am mentally. Oh well, that's what I get for choosing the sport of rowing.
Wow, this is my longest entry ever. Must be a really boring day at work :)
Today I decided that I've had enough of my stupid Sony NetMD piece of crap (actually the hardware is great, but Sony fucked up royally on the software) so I decided to go get an iPod mini from the UCI bookstore. All I have to say is, it kicks ass. Funny story on my way to go get it. I called up the bookstore before I left and asked how many they had left. They said they had 'several' silver and 'several' blue iPods in stock. I was looking to get a silver so that was perfect. So I took a trip down to the store and come to find out, no more than 10 minutes before I got there, some jackass bought all the iPods except one to sell on ebay. What a jackass. So the only one left was the gold iPod. I kinda liked it (although not as much as the silver) so I got that one instead. All in all, a very good purchase. Now I just gotta get the protective cover and possible the desktop charger dock thing.
... to me! Seriously though, happy birthday to me. Today is my 22nd birthday, and I "celebrated" it by staying up late to write a paper and study for a final. Then I woke up 4 hours later and rowed. Top that off with a final in the afternoon and my birthday was just peachy. On the plus side, 1 final down, 2 to go. Woot!
So Brad and I signed up for the Camp Pendleton mud race. It looks like a lot of fun and I hear from Grant that it is a LOT of fun. It's on June 5th down at Camp Pendleton. Link is here. Looks like Joe is also gonna sign up for this thing too. Team Fly and Die will be out in full force that day!
Today is Heather's birthday. Happy birthday! Enjoy your cake :)
Not sure where this came from, but it's WAAAAY too hot here in Southern California lately. It really needs to cool off.
Anaheim, California -- 1:23 PM PST on March 08, 2004 Temp: 92F/33C Humidity: 20% Conditions : Clear with wind ENE at 12mph/19kmh
Irvine, California -- 1:21 PM PST on March 08, 2004 Temp: 87F/30C Heat Index: 85F/29C Humidity: 32% Conditions : Scattered Clouds with wind SW at 12mph/19kmh
I have more screenshots here
I made some pizza tonight and it was really really good. I took some pictures of the pizza for all you pizza lovers out there. Now you can see what a real pizza looks like ;) I put fresh pepperoni, onions, olives, green peppers, mushrooms and freshly cooked sausage on it.
Here you can see the dough pre-cooking. It had a very smooth texture as well as a perfect consistency.
Here is the pizza right being being put into the oven. Very nice. And now for the pictures you're all waiting for, the post-oven pictures!
It's been a while since my last update, I guess I just forgot/neglected this site. I'll start updating more often now (cross your fingers)
Merry Christmas! Hope everyone's having a very merry christmas. I know I am!
On a sad note, I just finished final #1 and I must say, it hurts. It was a pretty harsh final with very tricky questions. I felt so prepared for it, then it hits me, why bother studying if the test is just gonna be a guessing game. Oh well, one more to go.
On a MUCH happier note, there will be a LAN party at my house come December 19th (that's a Friday). Just in time for the holidays. Sign up here so I can get a handle on how many to expect. Hopefully this time we'll fill the garage to capacity again.
I bought a new LCD monitor today from Costco. I got the Princeton VL1715 (specs here) for around $330. No rebates or anything. So far, I'm so stoked by it. It's seriously one of the coolest things I've bought for my computer so far. Coming from a bulky 17" CRT that could do a max of 1280x1024@60hz, seeing an LCD sit on my desk is truely a thing of beauty. Not only does it take up like 1/10 of the size of my old CRT, but it just makes my desk so much sexier. Any my eyes dont strain while reading text due to the high(er) refresh rate. Another great thing about this is that since I bought it from costco, if I find any cheaper LCDs in the near future, I can always take this back to Costco, no questions asked. I'm also happy that I didn't get any dead pixels, which I hear is common and can be very annoying. Of course, I don't know what's a "good" lcd and what's not. So my new Princeton LCD could in fact be crappy and I don't know any better. That might end up being a problem if I'm stuck with this in the long run and I find out that it does suck, so I'll be on the lookout for any dell deals that come up. Needless to say, I'm hooked on LCD's from now on. Here are the specs, not too bad:
17" TFT Active Matrix LCD
150° Wide Viewing Angle
450:1 High Contrast Ratio**
25ms Response Time (typical)
SXGA 1280 x 1024 Maximum Resolution
SXGA 1280 x 1024 Native Resolution*
Built-in Stereo Speakers
VESA® Wall/Arm Mount Ready
Kensington® Lock Port
Plug & Play Ready
So I've been fairly busy lately. I forgot to write about my weekend. First off, Heather and I went to Magic Mountain on Friday. It was a lot of fun, except for the heat and the drive through the hell that is LA traffic. But we had a blast and got to ride MOST of the rides with a mere 5-10 minute wait. I made Heather go on the rapids ride (whatever it's called there) thinking that we might get a little splashed. We ended up under a giant wall of water and got very soaked. Heather was not happy. Let me tell you something about Heather. She is like a cat that does not like to get wet. She even hisses at you if you try :) Anyways, we came back and had Fatburger for dinner which made the day pretty good. Heather paid for all of this for some reason, so I found it only fitting to repay her by cooking her a great dinner and desert. Last night I made a REALLLLLLLLLLLLY GOOD cheesecake. It is very good. I took some to work and everyone just loved it. I also will be making Heather one of her favorite dishes, a Thai Chicken Pizza (ala CPK). We all know the dough will turn out great, so I hope I don't fuck up the toppings. If it turns out anything like the cheesecake, it will be awesome. I'll post the recipes later for anyone who's interested in making them.
Well, today was not exactly the best day so far. First off, my Pittsburgh Steelers lost pretty bad to the Chiefs today. Oh well, at least Andrew's 49ers lost as well. At least my team didn't lose to a 2nd string quarterback. Also, the power seems to be going out sporadically around here. It was out for like 45 minutes earlier today and then went out shorter after it came back on. Ironically my UPS did shit for me. What a waste of time/money. I also saw Seabiscuit last night with Heather. It was actually a pretty good movie. I mean, you KNEW what was gonna happen and who was gonna win the races, but it was a good story nonetheless.
Just a little over 10 days till International Talk Like a Pirate Day! LINK
This pirate walks into a bar with a big ship's wheel down his pants. The bartender says, "Excuse me, sir, but do you know you have a ship's wheel down the front of your pants?"
And the pirate says...
Aaargh, it's driving me nuts!!
I had a fairly enjoyable past few days. First off, I didn't have work on Friday so that's always a big plus. I also helped Heather clean her room and move her furniture around. That was fun. Also, one of the best things of this weekend was that it was the start of the football season! It just made my day when the Steelers essentially f'ed up the Baltimore Ravens 34-15. That was just great. Go Steelers! While watching football yesterday, I experimented a little bit and made myself a peanut butter and jelly pizza. As some of you may know, I make my own pizza dough (using THIS recipe) and then I just added some peanut butter and jelly on top of it before I cooked it. I got this idea after watching Food TV (or maybe it was the Travel Channel). For those of you who are wondering, THIS is the place that I saw on TV. It's called East Of Chicago, and they make the peanut butter and jelly pizza. It turned out pretty good actually. Basically it was a hot peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Last but not least, I registered margulieux.com. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but now I have it. On the topic of new domain names, Heather just registered her own domain name. Go visit her at hipsterdf.com. I believe this is her first trip into the land of HTML but it's already looking pretty good. Oh yes, almost forgot. I capped off this weekend with a game of hockey up in Brea. We tied 4-4 but I had 1 goal and 1 assist. Woot.
Sigh. I had an 'interesting' day at work today. So I trying to help a co-worker get a popup message on his screen. At first I thought of winpopup, but WinNT doesn't come installed with that. So then I tried 'net send localhost hi' but that didn't work for some reason. So I then try 'net send * hi'. About 1/2 a second after I hit enter I muttered 'oh shit' as I proceeded to mass-message the entire network here at work. About 10 seconds later 10-15 people came up to me and started joking around and asking me what happened. Then slowly throughout the day people came up to me and jeered me about it. I never did find out how deep into the company the message went. At least the president never approached me today. On the plus side, a lot of people saw my last name and just assumed it was my dad's fault. So he took a lot of blame too :)
Went to see S.W.A.T. last night at the Spectrum in Irvine with Heather. I thought it was a pretty good movie. Of course, it's not going to win any Best Picture or Best Script award, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Maybe if there was one complaint about it it is that it was a little predictable.
Also, today is a good day for me. Check this out! Let's just say, DRI support for my ATI IGP 340M. Good stuff.
pens@sonic pens $ uname -a
Linux sonic 2.6.0-test4-mm2 #4 Sat Aug 30 13:01:06 PDT 2003 i686 Mobile Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 1.60GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
pens@sonic pens $ dmesg | grep agpgart
Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Detected Ati IGP330/340/345/350/M chipset
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 380M
agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xe4000000
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
pens@sonic pens $ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
disabling TCL support
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Well, this is the first time I've ever taken my Ford Taurus in for repairs. Last night while getting ready to go over to Heather's house to watch LoTR:TTT, my car wouldn't shift out of park. No matter what I tried and how hard I pulled on the shifter, it would just sit in park. So after googling a bit, I found out that the brake light switch went bad. Essentially it's a little switch/fuse in the brake pedal that tells the computer inside that the brake is depressed and thus should allow the shifter to move. (It also made it so my brake lights would function). So I found in the manual that you can get around this manually by turning the car on (not the engine) then shifting to neutral, then turning the engine on. So I did that this morning and took it to Villa Ford. After about 45 minutes they returned it to me good as new. Shrug. Oh well.
So, I've had quite the busy weekend. Let's see. My lovely weekend started off right on Friday morning with some wisdom teeth being removed. It was pretty nice actually, I was put to sleep and I woke up with an ice pack on my jaw and it was all over. So I spent most of Friday alternating ice packs on my face while sitting at my computer. Friday night was spent at Logikal's house for a lan party. It turned out to be a really good party. It's a shame I had to leave early though, as I couldn't drive and my face was starting to swell up. So the rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful, just me sitting at home nursing my wounds. I think I'm going to pull out my stiches tonight, as I'm getting quite annoyed at having to shave around them every morning.
Grrr, got in a 'fight' last night playing hockey. Actually the other guy just sucker punched me and I had to get some stiches. I believe the official count is 7 stiches in 1 big gash on my chin, and 1 stich in a smaller cut also on my chin. I spent about 2 hours in the emergency room last night. Grrr. Let's just say, next time we play that team he'll be getting some big hits curtesy of me. On a side note, I found this absolutely hilarious video while browsing on slashdot. Here is the link. It's absolutely hilarious. 2 people playing ping-pong matrix style.
Been playing Neverwinter Nights a lot recently. Just finished Chapter 1 last night after only 1 day. go me. Anyways, I hope I can finish it in fairly quick time, otherwise my small attention span will take affect and I'll probably stop. I just wanted to finish this game and get started on the expansion pack, SoU. Anyways, I had a 'fun' hockey game Sunday night. Our goalie didn't show up, so guess who got to take his spot? Yep, you guessed it; the wall of pens. 'Only' let in 6 goals, so it wasn't TOO bad I guess, but I had a blast while in net. Anyways, still working on those pictures at pensphreak.com
Wow, just got back from my vacation to the Caribbean. All I can say is it was awesome and I think I gained about 10 pounds from all the food that they give you. Heather and I had a blast. We went parasailing in Labadee, swam with stingrays in Georgetown, Heather got stung by a jellyfish in Jamaica, and we visited some Mayan ruins in Mexico. And that was all intertwined with relaxing on white sandy beaches with beautiful turquoise water. Doesn't get much better than that. The food was amazing. Every night was some other awesome piece of food. From what I remember, I had lobster, prime rib, steak, roasted duck, LOTS of shrimp, Jamaican jerk chicken and some pasta. I obviously missed some stuff there, but you get the point. I'll put some pictures up on pensphreak.com later.
Took Heather to see American Wedding tonight. I don't know if it was as great as previous American Pies, but if you can excuse the first 30 minutes of extremely lewd language and behavior by Stiffler, then the movie is actually very funny. I'd give it 4/5 stars. Also, today was the first time in a while I've been to Denny's for breakfast. I went with Heather before work today and the waitress was a fucking retard. Of course the day I'm in a hurry she screws up and 'forgets' to put the order into the computer...Retard.
Whew! Just got back from a hockey game with Jon and Cary. Finally we won a game. :) I think I had like 1 goal and 2 assists. Gotta love these days of summer. Playing hockey 2-3 nights a week and going on a week long cruise to the Caribbean.
OK, so I finally have my own blog/weblog/whatever on the web. I don't really have that much to say about my life right now, but maybe that will change. My life can't be that interesting that people would actually come to my website to listen to me. I will be going on vacation Friday morning to the Caribbean for a week (woot!) with Heather and the rest of my family. Should be fun as I've never been on a cruise before.