Frodo on Drugs

Watching "The Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring". Our copy is full screen and that sucks. I can letterbox it, or I can play a bit and get a kinda ok looking wide screen, but with a bit of a smear (hence, the "Frodo on Drugs" title to this post). This is letterbox and zoom together, which is about the best of all worlds for this setup. The living room TV has a "Cinerama" mode that is AWESOME at converting full to wide. Anyway, maybe I'll replace the series with wide screen - maybe even Blue-ray. Or not. Whatever.

Last week, work was full of challenges. Hopefully, this week will be much less challenging. I do have to prepare a PowerPoint Presentation - I started it, but am having trouble organizing the presentation. The two slides I have thus far look good, though.

Doing some Chinese Spare Ribs in the crock pot. Smells good.

Big Bang

Apparently you can't upload a pic from your iPod Touch via the web interface. How interesting. Netflix was kind enough to send me the first disc of The Big Bang Theory Season 1 and I am enjoying it immensely. The beginning episodes are really funny.

I was called into work for awhile because of a big rain - I kinda like working a problem. Too bad it takes me awhile to wind down. At least I got a few hours of sleep before I went in.

I spent a few hours over the weekend flashing my router and then upped the encryption - had been using WEP because that is the only security that the Nintendo DS could run (officially). Not that I really have to worry about people hacking in to the wifi where I live out here in the sticks. I have a Linksys wrt54g version 8, which sucks because after version 4 certain hardware changes were implemented that make it difficult to flash an alternative router os like Tomato. With Tomato you can jack the transmit power and other such useful enhancement

Oh well - I'll watch an episode of BBT and roll off to sleep.

Test post from cell...

This is Homer out in the yard today.

Had to edit because the post included a bunch of stuff Verizon tacks onto the end. Disabled the feature.

Nerdcore Rising

Watched a documentary called "Nerdcore Rising" about the Nerd Hiphop movement. It featured an act called MC Frontalot. I liked. I also went to Frontalot's site and downed his MP3's (about 70 of them) and loaded my iPod with them and am rolling them as I type. If you are a geek, you might find them interesting. The first Nerdcore thing I ever heard was Weird Al's "White and Nerdy", and I thought it was funny.

And speaking of funny - I read a short book by Justin Halpern called "Shit My Dad Says" and laughed and laughed...

For what it's worth...

BTW - after updating my Touch to 4.0 the battery seems to not last as long.

Fourth of July Weekend 2010

I heard about Paper Jamz months and months ago. The concept is a $25 digital guitar. You can also get an amplifier with it for another $15. Anyway, I had seen a few videos of the thing... it had a few built in songs that you can strum with and then a "Freestyle" mode that allowed you to do your own. And they came out on the 2nd of July and I bought the Les Paul and the Amp. And then I got it home. And then I spent at least 15 minutes getting the packaging off the guitar. And then I added the batteries. And then I was disappointed. Maybe I was expecting too much, but the Freestyle mode was what I was mainly interested in. The chord patterns were difficult to figure out, the sensors in the fingerboard were not very good or quick at tracking changes, and the "strum" was difficult to control - you could mute it with the palm of your hand and get a bit more control rhythmically, but the strum is very limiting. I took the amp back, but I am going to keep playing with it and see if I can get at least ONE freestyle tune out of it.

And the rest of the weekend was cool - had a few things to do at work on Saturday, but that was knocked out quickly, and then on to the rest of the weekend. I played with the guitar a bunch. We BBQ'd some burgers and dogs and I made some potato salad and slaw, and both of the Weasels were home. It was a good time. I also went to the Chinese Grocery and got some Wasabi coated dried peas and some Shrimp Chips. Had a slice of Primo Pizza and a cup of Mash House Irish Red (kinda bitter, but I liked) at the Mall. And I finally pruned the tree out front. Need to get to the rest of them, but it's a start in the right direction.