Where to begin...

Trying some Arizona Sweet Tea. Actually, we also snagged Arizona Green Tea with Ginseng and Honey and Arizona Southern Tea with Lemon at the dollar store. Why not? There was a guy I used to work with who would "mix" different teas together - he was way into the Arizona product line (and Hardee's, as well).

Charging the cell - and my carrier's service in my area went from sugar to shite. Used to NEVER drop calls - now all that are greater than a few minutes drop out.

Playing with thumb drives. The daughter upped a 1GB Memorex Mini Traveler that had U3 on it. U3 is a way to password protect data and provides a start menu and apps if you want them. The apps seem to be older, but I messed with it, anyway. Does this "create a cdrom" thing and you access your stuff from there. I guess it acts as an encrypted container. You can do shit like that with TrueCrypt for free and on any hardware (and TrueCrypt also comes stock with geek.menu, my Portable Apps menu of choice). I might zorch the U3 and use it for emulation and whatnot.

Thought I'd mention a bookmarklet I am fond of and have been using for a very long time - Lifehacker - Gmail this bookmarklet. When you are on a page you want to email a link to somone, click it and opens up a popup that has a minimal Gmail "compose" window and the subject filled in with the page title and a link in the body. I have it dragged to the toolbar of my Firefox and it greatly automates sending freaky shit to friends.

Heard tell of a new handheld game system called Dingoo A320 - has emulation of MANY gaming systems, music (many formats), video (mp4, anyone?), text files (YEAH!), FM radio, and a voice recorder. And they already made a Dingoo Linux for it. Sweet!

The garden is getting some tomatoes on it. Had to weed it up the other day, and the weeds are growing like... well, weeds. I'll have to do it again tomorrow, but I should be ass deep in some quality tomats soon. Mmmmm...

I really like Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. Installed it on the laptop and have been running it via geek.menu on a USB key for awhile now. Fast and tweaked to my liking!

Watching more of "The Closer" that I want to. The wife got the first few seasons on DVD and has been running them hard lately. The daughter has been rolling the "Charmed". I started bopping around "Angel". Just watched the one where Faith kidnaps Wesley and tortures him - you can catch it on Hulu - Angel - Season 1 Episode 18 - Five By Five

BTW - that is the original weave mousepad that I purchased with my old HP Pavillion 366mhz Celeron computer runing Windows 98. I use a Microsoft wireless optical scrolling wheel mouse (frickin' lasers, mang!).

And Homer is licking his feet. :)

Updates

Hooked this antenna to the Grundig S350DL radio (it actually has a coax cable input for an external FM antenna) and it now picks up much more FM than before. Cool!

When I hooked up Windows 7 I killed my iTunes install, and then rebuilt the library - and now if I sync my Touch it wants to wipe it clean and reinstall everything. I had a few apps that I think I have backed up on an external drive, but the data will probably die. That sux.

Looking into iTunes plugins - there seem to be a few that allow you to use iTunes to sync up "other" players with your iTunes library. That would be interesting. Also, maybe something that cleans up the MP3 tags a bit - album art would be nice. iTunes tries, but is usually unsuccessful.

TV is still working well. A few flaky moments, but I still have the aforementioned stations digitally and clear. Nice.

Managed to do the yard - and had an awesome moment of karma. A guy (no idea who) was riding by in a tractor with a bush hog on it (big-ass mower attachment) and he saw me push mowing the ditch line (which was fast approaching neck high) - he backed up, dropped the hog, and cropped the top 2/3rds off for me - was MUCH easier to deal with after that. He departed right after with a friendly wave and gratitude from me. I hope that guy's wildest dreams come true.

Hack hack hack....

This is a pic of the antenna I made following these instructions. I did modify - instead of using the 7 inches on the top and bottom elements I used 6 1/2 because my board was too short, and instead of a center connect point for my 300 to 75 ohm balun connector I used one of the element connect points because I was two screws short. It worked - did great for the analog signals that are still available, but the goal was to tweak the digital offerings. Not going to use it as is - will get a few more screws and try it again some day.

Anyway, I managed to tweak and position the other antenna that I have bolted to the wall for maximum draw - I now get digital 3.1, 3.2, 6.1, 6.2, 13.1, 13.2, 26.1, 26.2, 39.1, 39.2, and 39.3 (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and PBS and a few specialty channels on the "point twos and threes" that either run old movies, old tv shows, or weather only). Not bad for $35. Amplified and all. Seems to be reliable at the moment. Here's hoping that it stays that way.

Used an inherited Nikon Coolpix 4600 camera for these pics - it is beat up, but used to do "shaky" pics. Found the macro stuck on and tweaked the settings... seems to do just fine now, uses only two batteries as opposed to four in my other camera, and is WAY smaller and lighter. An excellent toting camera!

Still enjoying the Windows 7 - need to add more of my programs. Tweak, tweak, tweak...

DVD's are making a resurgence in my life - watching Team America as I type this, but also watched the first two Mummy flicks, Almost Famous, the first American Pie flick, and Spaceballs (not as funny as I remember it being - no surprise there).

CrunchBang Linux and Asti...

I nailed the light cd bootable version of CrunchBang Linux and am messing. A very cool lightweight distro - minimal paint, maximum speed and usability. Only glitches I see so far is the @ and " are backwards - I had to hit " for the "at sign" and @ for some quotes. The light version uses VLC as the media player, and I was hoping to have something a bit more geared towards both audio and video with a library. The wifi recognized and everything is doing well. I might nail the full live disk and try that.

No screenshot as there was no graphics program on it.

Windows 7 Ultimate RC build 7100

This is a screen cap from the desktop of my Windows 7 RC install. Took about an hour and it recognized EVERYTHING! I'll give the update as I work things out install-wise.
Fun shit, so far!

Random Geek

Twitter Search searches Twitter for cutting edge info. Or you can find out what kind of freaky shit the Twitter crowd is into. Whatever.

As far as my recent radio obsession, I am still in deep. I had a few old Kodak rechargeable AA bats that I was using for the Grundig S350DL radio - the thing can run off either AA or D cell batteries. Anyway, I wanted to upgrade to D cells as they last MUCH longer between charges. I nailed 4 Energizer 2500 mAh Nimh Rechargeable Batteries D cells batteries. So far so good. They are MUCH lighter than a regular battery.

Noticing more and more streaming apps on the Touch - including one for Deutsche Welle. Various NPR streams and all have a few different ways of listening on the Touch. Cool! Add to that the ability to do podcasts, and you have one mondo-info machine! Viva-La-Touch!

Managed to get the dual-boot Vista-Ubuntu 9.04 installed again on the laptop. Tweak tweak and feeling good. I found a hack to get the fan under control (something that the native Vista install did, also) that I need to try, but looking good.

Met the granddaughter this weekend - pic in the TwitPic on the top right. She's cool.

Loading the USB Flash Drive with APPS and files. Good stuff. I might need to get a bigger drive.

Found a thread on AskMetafilter about Firefox Add-ons and Grease Monkey Scripts - What add-ons to Firefox do you find useful?

Downloading...

Windows 7 Release Candidate. 5 hours and 2.36 gigs. I have downloaded longer (300 megs on a 5kbps dial-up connection off and on for over 3 days!) but I have never downloaded a single file that was anywhere near this big. Needless to say, they force you to use their activex and java download manager, which, I guess, is a good thing. I have heard much positive regarding Windows 7 - hopefully it will work with my laptop. If you want to down it for yourself, I came into the links via Lifehacker - Windows 7 RC Available for Download Now. Had to use Internet Explorer to download it due to the aforementioned activex controls needed for the download manager. This is a public release - make sure to print out your Activation Code!

***IMPORTANT***

The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start.

***IMPORTANT***

Homer had a seizure today. He is shivering a bit now, but seems ok. Skipped lunch with the wife to keep an eye on him.

And also, now I see why the guy in "Sideways" didn't care for Merlot wine. Maybe I got the wrong box. :)

Beer, Wine, Chikin, Pics, Movies, and Games

Watching Jesus Christ Superstar on Hulu and drinking some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I love the way Judas' character sings in the beginning of the movie. People just don't sing like that anymore! I have to admit that I have tried to watch this movie many times over, and usually only hang for the first little bit.

Chikin on the grill this evening. Gotta start the grill in a few minutes.

I got a small 500 ml paper container of Merlot wine. Want to try it. The guy in the movie Sideways hated Merlot so bad that I gotta see what is what. Interesting packaging.

Got my Twitpic account worked out - I kept sending my pics to the regular Twitter and they wouldn't post.

Found a game of Sichuan Majohng (also known as Shisen-Sho) for the iPod Touch (free). I love that game!