by ·Comments Off on The Wonders of Computing

I’ve written before about the home theater PC (HTPC) I setup a few months ago.  I spent a ton of time getting it setup initially, running software called XBMC (www.xbmc.org).  It was great for the initial time, but it only ran movies I streamed from my server.  That’s all fine and good, but it was limited in its application. 

There’s a ton of great other software out there which can do a heck of a lot more, though. 

Initially, the Acer Aspire Revo’s setup doesn’t have the best specs when it comes to computing power.  It’s compounded by the fact that Acer installs so much bloatware that performance is bogged down even more.  That’s what initially led me to install XBMC-Live. 

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I’ve put off posting this awhile to let some of the facts percolate a little bit.  I guess it’s time to summarize my views on things. 

I make no bones that watching Lance Armstrong (and the rest of US Postal) is what lead me to pick up cycling in the first place.  I watched that 2004 TdF while I was in transition between jobs.  The stage where Landis and Azcevedo set such a brutal pace and the time trial up Alpe d’Huez were the memorable points of that tour.  It made me sad to think just a few years later that Landis was caught doping. 

For awhile, I liked to believe that he was right.  But when his B-sample came back positive, that sealed the deal for me.  I scoffed with other riders at the amount of time, effort, and most importantly, money, that he pumped into his defense. 

Fast forward to the start of the Tour of California this year, when Landis made his claims of systematic and routine doping practices within US Postal.  Lance’s camp fired back with a series of emails between himself and Floyd that paints Floyd in an even more negative light. 

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by ·Comments Off on Panic mode

It’s kind of funny here in the office today.  We’ve known for a few weeks that one of the staff would be leaving in September.  We just found out the other one we expected to leave by the end of the year – will be gone in two weeks.

It’s put the main bosses here into a bit of a panic.  Roles are sure to be tossed around.  My boss, however, hasn’t exactly approached me with any news yet.  Which leads me to believe that behind closed doors, he’s playing the “me first” card.

With the impending upheaval that this is bound to bring, it’s high time I stepped up my search.  I’ve been a bit on the quiet side, looking for the “perfect” opportunity, but I think now it’s time to expand a bit and consider a few things that I might not have wanted to otherwise.  True, it didn’t help when I found out that even though I have a 3,0 in-major, just because my overall is slightly below that, they won’t grant my Master’s, I slowed down, trying to re-assess my options.

Looks like I might be the last one standing when the dust settles.  With two out, it’s likely that the 3rd staff member might be leaving too.  The two newer admin assistants, one of whom isn’t working out that well, might be out.  The other one – most of this is over her head.  Not good.

While some might say it’ll be fun to watch the carnage unfold, I don’t think so.  Everyone already expects me to be the “IT guru” – I don’t need to be the “training guru” either.  I dislike simple questions where people could take two minutes and learn it for themselves.  That’s how I learned.  No one took me by the hand and said “this is how to do it”.

by ·Comments Off on Oh noes!

Well, this isn’t good.

My laptop died on Friday.  I put it to sleep and put it in my bookbag, like I do every day.  Took it to work, and it sat under my desk all day.  Got home, tried to wake it up.  No graphics.  Didn’t even get a signal on the VGA out or S-Video connector.

I managed to get the hard drive out and cloned to my desktop, so at least the data is salvaged, and rules out the possibility of a hard drive malfunction (like it ever could have been).  It’s now sitting at the local Intrex shop for the final word on whether or not its salvageable.  I doubt that it is, but remain ever so hopeful.  Perhaps a connector came loose, and that’s all it takes.

I got 2 good years out of it.  When I bought it, it wasn’t through a major outlet.  It was through ibuypower.com.  It was a strong system, especially for the price.  Sadly, it only carried a 6 month warranty.

Unfortunately, I won’t be getting a new laptop anytime soon.  I really don’t need one, as I’ve got my desktop, which just received a major overhaul 3 months ago (new motherboard, memory, processor).  I’ve got my 7 year old laptop sitting here for “light” duty (web browsing) when I don’t want to power up my desktop.  It’s funny, it’s got a 1.2ghz AMD Turion processor, 20gb hard drive, and 256MB of memory.  Talk about ancient.  But it operates, and draws a ton less power than my desktop.

If I do wind up getting a new laptop, I’ll probably go back to Dell.  While I won’t for a desktop system, the laptop makes sense.  Everything on there is so customized.  The warranty is useful in case something like that happens again.  I’m considering a netbook, but those really have about as much power as the laptop sitting out here now. And the tiny TINY screens…

I’d like to hear some feedback from anyone that’s got a netbook.  Might help sway my decision a bit.  =)