Month: November 2004

Zire 72

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I finally broke down and bought a Palmone Zire 72.  I have eyed it since August.  I had it for a day now.  it rocks, but I am returning it.  I found that I love the screen, I love the bluetooth, the camera, etc.  The simple fact is I want to try using a smaller phone, but always end up wishing I had my Treo with me.  Having my SE T610 in my pocket was a dream.  I didn’t realize it was there 90% of the time.  of course I wanted to check a contact or check a task and I couldn’t:(

So the impulse buy is going back (hopefully).  According to Best Buy’s return policy they should take it with no problems.  I am taking it back tomorrow.  I will take my eBay sales money (how else did you think I was paying for a technically unneeded piece of tech) and save it for something else.

Bloody Sunday

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Well not really, but I was listening to U2 before so that stuck in my head. It is my last day before I go back to work. Today I went to the office to pack up some stuff I am selling on eBay. nothing has actually sold, but since at last count I had 9 items up for auction I wanted them all to be packaged and ready to go when I finally did sell the stuff. I have more, but I figured I wanted this stuff to go first.

Jay and I then went to Macy’s, and Bed Bath & Beyond. I had to get cleaning stuff at BB&B. We meet up with Gretchen for dinner at this nice italian restaurant near their house. We have been there a few times. it is good. Don’t remember the name. I then rested the remaining part of the day. Now I am off to bed, so I can do busy things at work tomorrow. Daily recap now complete.

Blog Requests

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The moron’s at work (you guys did complain that I was too nice to you) are now making requests about what I write about. All I can say is that no one controls me. I will talk about what I dam well please. Now with that said, they did come up with good topics to discuss. I just cannot remember what they said. For most people at work, when they talk I hear the peanuts parent voice’s sounds.

It still freaks me out that Kai does searches on this blog to find entries about him. What he doesn’t know is that I have the secret blog where I bitch about him. Now as for Brian, I love brian (not in that way, but not that anything is wrong with that). I won’t speak ill of my boy BG!!! That kid is on the ball. He just needs to learn how to fill out Fedex insurance forms, and he will be all set. Brian if you are reading this, don’t read too much into this. I will still make life difficult:) I need some hobbies!

Disk Erasing Is Boring

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I have a stack of older (and not so old) hard drives sitting in my apartment. I have wanted to sell them or just get rid of them for a while. My problem is I have data on them, or had data on them. I am crazy about security. Sometimes not crazy enough, but when dealing with selling drives that once held my personal data on them, I am crazy. So what to do?

I know the multiple ways of removing data from disks. None of them include just formating the drive and selling it. I have wanted to invest in an electromagnet that degausses stuff. But that just screams Geek! it is also costly. I could do what Jay did and just copy lots of stuff onto the disks before formatting them and selling them.

I settled for a free program that will overwrite disks with random data. It is called eraser. it is a free open source product from Sourceforge.net. It is not a fast solution. Of course I selected the department of defense standard scheme for overwriting data. I don’t have state secrets on those drives, but I figured if it is good enough for the CIA to overwrite disks in this way, it is good enough for me. To be honest I selected the lowest DOD spec, but I figured that would be enough. Now I just wait while these drives get written over.

eBay Selling Round 2

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With Jayson leading the way, I have decided to complete my eBay selling spree by going through my old computer crap stuff and putting it up for sale. Lets face it, I am not going to use 4 extra CD burners, or 18 Gig ultra wide SCSI drives any time soon. They are perfectly good gear, but I have no use for them. What person needs 4 Adaptec 39160 cards? They just accumulated over time. Now it is time to sell them and earn some cash.

Black Friday

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Yesterday was black friday. The busiest shopping day of the year. As a rule for most of my adult life I attempt to avoid malls and most stores between Thanksgiving and New Years. I can buy stuff (gifts, etc) online. I cannot stand the crazy crowds at the store.

Today I got up early to head to the office (yes I had the day off, but jay and I needed to kill some time). Jay had to package some stuff up of his to ship, and we needed to kill some time till we went to my dad’s to fix his computer. On the way we hit the Best Buy near work to check out the “one day only” sales they had. We got there like 11AM and the store was mobbed. We saw how long both main checkout lines were and we were out of that store in 2 minutes.

Jay and I rebuilt my dad’s computer. Didn’t fix his problem. I got the Treo 300 he has to sync 9 out of 10 times. The 10th time (or so) it crashes still. Instead of a blue screen it just reboots itself. I totally removed his epocrates sync software. That crashed the computer all the time. I am trying to convince him to maybe look at a newer palm. The Treo 300 is running version 3.5x of the palm os. My Treo 600 that is not even the newest out there anymore is running palm os 5.2x something. So far he is not ready to change.

We hung out at my parents for a while, saw my niece. She was stingy with the hugs today. Dam kids. She did give me a hug and kiss goodbye. She salvaged her Hanukkah, lucky girl:) We headed back to Long Island City to return Jay’s dad’s car. We hit the white castle. Mmmm white castle. I never go there, but it is good.

Ended up the night hanging out at his place, and then Gretchen, Jay, and I went to see Christmas with the Kranks. it was funny, if not predictable. Nice entertainment. I just got home a little while ago.

Jay and Gretchen are off to hunt for a Super Walmart tomorrow. They are going to do food shopping / Christmas shopping. They wanted me to go, but I was not up for a long car ride. I was out Thursday and Friday, so I want to lay around today (it is early Saturday morning). I know I have no reason to feel this way, but sometimes I feel like a third wheel when hanging around with them. I need a girlfriend, that is probably why I feel that way. I know gretchen doesn’t mind me hanging out (she would tell me if it did bother her), but sometimes I get self conscious and think differently. And since they read this, I wont get sappy!

It is late, and I am not tired. Man my sleep habits are going to be messed up by the end of this weekend…

Happy Turkey Day

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I am off to my parents in a little while. Then it is off to friends of the families for Thanksgiving Day Dinner. I don’t know how I did it (my mom did) but I got my dad to pick me up from the subway. No trekking over to Penn station to catch the once an hour rail road for me this holiday.

Now all I have to do is eat something before I leave. Did I mention I hate Thanksgiving food? The actual event is fine, just not a fan of what we eat. I will grab something on my way!!!

Wireless, Wireless, World

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I was busy Tuesday. At work I had issues with our Wifi setup. Gus has complained about it for years, but I never find anything wrong with it. On monday I did notice that it was just not working at all. I took my old 802.11b wifi point from home into work to troubleshoot. The point I had at home is the same type we use at the office. Back in the day it was top of the line. Now, not so much. Turns out both points at work are bad. The Wifi cards are fried. We are running off of my old point for now. I want it back so I can ebay it, but I will keep it at work until we can purchase new ones.

At home I had wifi issues of my own. I wanted a new 802.11g point at my house for a while. Ever since I got my VPN firewall I have been without high speed wireless. So since work got my old B point (that I should have sold long ago) I finally went to Best Buy and got a new Linksys 802.11G point. I set that up in no time. My problems started when I tried to configure the Wireless Bridge (802.11b if you were wondering) I had lying around. After hours of messing with it, I finally got it to work correctly. Right now it is plugged into my VOIP phone so I could put the phone in my bedroom without pulling any cables. it is neat. My eventual goal is to plug the bridge into my Tivo so I don’t have a cable running from my router to my TV wall unit.

I like the bridge so much I may get another one and keep the phone where it is. I have all the components to go totally wireless. I have a 802.11g card for my desktop. The only down side of wireless is if I want to transfer large files, which I do sometimes. For now everything works!!!

Scott Math

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Ask Jayson, I have a weird way of justifying buying stuff. It is a combination of impulse buying, ebay selling, and sometimes disposable income to throw around. Of course having a girlfriend that sucked down the disposable income didn’t really slow me down much. That is something to think about later.

I buy stuff, use it for a while and the sell it. By selling stuff, I can justify buying newer versions of said stuff, or different stuff. Take my computer I just got. I didn’t go out and blow a ton of money on a computer (well I did, but read on). I had half the purchase price set aside in what I like to call my Tech/Vacation slush fund. it is for impulse buys and such. I put gift money, cash earned from selling gear, etc into that account. When I want a big ticket item I go there to spend it. So I paid for half of the computer with that money. Then I decided to sell a bunch of other stuff on ebay to pay for the rest of the computer. When all is said and done, I would not have spent any money out of pocket for the computer. Jayson laugh’s at my theory. My friend rich scratches his head with confusion, but it works. All I know is that I get new gear with little or no expense out of pocket. Soon I will sell my powerbook and pick up a new one. Only having spent a few hundred dollars on the difference between the used computer sale price and the new machine.

That my friends is how you can keep up on the new technology. Of course I only do this for some items. Much of my crap is not recycled allot. I have the same 4 year old tv I have had. my stereo is not getting any newer, etc. But how good a stereo do you need in an apartment?

If you are reading this post going, "hey that makes sence, how can I do that also"? You are crazy. If you are reading this post going "man Scott is crazy". You would be correct. I am not normal. I never said I was. All I can say is eBay is addictive…

Firemen Climbing, and Me Watching

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The other night on my way home from work I decided to get off at the stop before my apartment and get some takeout and walk home. On the way back to my place there was a bunch of fire trucks and ambulances. I noticed people standing around and watching. I had no idea what they were looking at. Then I noticed firemen climbing up ladders and scaffolding into a building. I stopped for a minute and though, weird. then I continued on my trek home. What was really weird about the situation was that allot of people were standing around watching this happen long before I got there, and probably long after I left. Is it that you don’t have much else to do, or do people really like to watch guys climb buildings? I think it is the flashing red lights. it attracts people.