You know, the candies. Damn those things are awesome. I’ve been damn busy this week with the house and stuff. What with the artwork I put up recently, the shelf I screwed into the wall, and various other projects. I am almost ready to begin working on the computers again. Having upgraded processor, motherboard and RAM, I am about to turn my sights on the holy grail of storage.

I cart a laptop hard drive around with me wherever I go, thanks to a Hotdrive USB/Firewire enclosure. Yeah, I finally replaced my ghetto old enclosure with a shiny new one. This one is much better. Standard plugs, both USB and Firewire, power supply support if the machine doesn’t have powered USB ports (what doesn’t? But flexibility is important). All in all, a better box, but it still has the old double-headed USB cable.

I keep meaning to replace the stupid usb cable with a Zip-Linq retractable cable, but there are actually a few USB hubs (the one in my laptop’s port replicator for one) that actually need both connections on the other end to “prime the pump” so to speak. After I plug both in, I can unplug one to be entirely accurate. It is just such a kludge, in my opinion.

That aside, I finally have something I feel comfortable with upgrading. The last one was just so busted that I didn’t really feel like getting a nice drive for it. This one… well, a nice 60 gig 5400 RPM drive would be just what the doctor ordered. The server needs a bigger storage drive though, 80 gig just doesn’t cut it. And the motherboard I got supports SATA and while I have a Parallel to Serial adapter, it just isn’t the same.

So far, I think that my priorities lie in the following order:

1. Big drive for the fileserver. 300 gig or so.
2. Bigger drive for the enclosure: 60 - 80 gig.
3. Nice SATA drive for the desktop. 80 gig

Why am I babbing about hard drives? Well, my friend at Lex2 left, so I now have nobody to talk shop to. Its all… corporate now.

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I went and saw “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” yesterday, and while it dragged on for a while (there were about three plot threads that didn’t have to be there), overall it was an interesting movie. According to the girlfriend, it gets props for being the only really original movie in a while.

There was about thirty minutes of trailers and commercials in front, including Manny the Stunt Guy calling me a thief becuase I downloaded Versus before it was licensed in America. Thankfully, somebody else decided to make a parody of the damn thing, because I couldn’t ever put one together that looks that good.

I’m just annoyed that somebody who is payed scale has complaints about something that if it influences anything in the movie industry, influences the gross profit. Something that Manny the Stunt Guy gets not one part of.

Speaking of that parody: 1.) Its damn funny. 2.) Its in Real Player (sorry). And 3.) Apparently it actually runs in front of movies in Canada.

(Read the article)

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I had a lengthy two weeks though, and it doesn’t look like its going to be getting any easier for a while. Not that I’m flailing for an excuse not to post. I mean hell, if I didn’t want to babble here I’d let you guys know. Victory though, over home improvement.

I’ve gotten a lot done over the last few though. Last weekend was all lighting. I bought a floor lamp for the living room on Friday, then on Saturday returned it for one with all its parts. Its a pretty cool lamp too, if such a thing is possible. Its like a four legged tripod (quad-pod?) with three square shelves on it and an upturned bell made of cloudy glass with a light bulb in perched on top. Its all full of dragon-related statuary at the moment, and a kickass $7 cordless (2 AA batteries) fountain. Pretty awesome. That and the lamp that looks like a Fatal Frame 2 save point kinda make the living room almost… livable. Just need a cheap DVD player and we can start watching movies in a room that doesn’t require people to sit on my bed. People who are not my girlfriend sharing my bed is a little… weird.

On Sunday I purchased and installed some track lighting. That was a journy worthy of Homer, I tells ya. First off I spent my hard-earned sword money on a set of track lighting that costs almost as much as my PS2. Then I get the thing home and find out that hanging it will be a little more difficult than building the Sears Tower out of chopsticks. I took the old, burned out track lighting down with the help of a hammer, utility knife (sully my M-16-K? Who are you kidding) and screwdriver. See, the last person to put up track lighting in my house didn’t trust just using toggle bolts, so there was caulk involved. The bastards.

Once I got the old lighting down, the real fun begins. See, I now know why the old set of track stuff was burned out. See it was wired in hot. No way to turn it off, in other words. The power was handled by the individual fixtures. So then I have bare, live wires in hanging out of my ceiling. Only had to grab those once to know I don’t want to again. My circuit breaker box is unlabeled so I had to turn everything off, then turn the switches on one at a time and then touch the wires together with a screwdriver to see when I get sparks. When big fat sparks pop into my living room then I know which switch runs the juice.

Interesting side note. The Third Bedroom, my bedroom and the track lighting all run on the same circuit. My fan and overhead lighting runs off of Charlie’s bedroom, and the pantry and my bathroom run on the same circuit as the hall. Wonderful design. I’m sure it makes perfect sence when chemically enhanced.

Then it was all over but the cursing. I mean there was only about 30 minutes of work left all told. I slammed the track and transformer into the cieling and everything is great. Except that the halogen bulbs get really hot, so I took them out of the track until we can get a switch installed. When that happens then we will move some artwork to the entryway wall and the room will look a bit nicer.

Speaking of artwork, weekend before last the layday and I attended a Craft Fair and like every time I attend a gathering of skilled artists, I spent $150 on artwork. I got a dragon and phoenix carved out of a single sheet of rice paper by a Chinese guy with an x-acto knife. I also bought a killer painting of a tiger. The latter is being custom framed at the moment (damn odd size paintings) and the former is framed easily enough.

I got Miho framed (Thanks, Jason.) and while I’m thinking about it, I did get you a belated X-Mas gift, so get your car fixed and come and get it.

My parents were cleaning out their closets and came across an asian oil painting my Dad bought in Japan, which is now hanging over my fireplace.

I also hung some tiebacks for the curtains I still haven’t produced pictures of.

Basically, my living room is getting to be pretty nice. Just need some more bits and a coat of paint (that’s what Spring Break is for) and we’re ready to go. I never did show anybody how the front door looks without the screen or the tree-damage that the ice storm caused did I? Damn, I’ll install photoshop tonight and after dinner with my parents I’ll throw together another update and get some pictures up here. We can try out that thumbnail stuff.

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