scott

TV Update

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So I won’t be buying the winbook TV I was talking about. Turns out it only does 15:9 aspect ratio. DVD quality is 16:9, so I will pass. I knew it was too good to be true. The Dell & Gateway 30″ TV’s are still $1599. At that price I will wait a bit longer, or until Jayson talks me into buying it. I just can’t see paying $1600 for a friggen TV. My last TV (a sharp 27″ CRT) was like $500 in 2000 and I thought that was too much.

This is a purchase that will require much research. I am a tech person that considers myself at least moderately electronic savvy (probably a bit above moderate, but I am being modest), and I find myself being a bit confused by the options on these TV’s.

Road Trip & Softball Games

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Went upstate on a road trip with Dan today. I had a bunch of things to take care of. Dan wanted to leave to head back to NYC by 3:30PM to make our first softball game. Being the realist I am I said we would never leave on time, and we would never make a 5:45PM game. I was right on both accounts. We didn’t leave until around 4PM. We missed all but 2 innings of the game.

We ended up getting lost getting to Roosevelt Island. Yahoo maps gave us the wrong exit name, and the stupid exit was not numbered. once we drove past it we knew we missed it, but it took tons of time to turn around. The rest of the directions were good though. Thanks to David for emailing them to me, and thanks to the Treo 650 and T-Mobile wireless data for bringing up the directions on my phone and actually working! Tech that works is priceless!

We lost by 1 run. It was tied until the last inning. At least it was not a blow out! Went out for a drink after the game and then headed to J & G’s for dinner.

All in all it was a good but busy and travel filled day.

Freedom Day

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Today is the day I have been waiting for. It is the day that my mobile phone contract is up. I rely on my mobile all the time so since february I have been thinking what I would do when this day came. My issue was I have 2 phones on the same plan. One line was under contract and the other one has not had a contract in years. The one without the contract I wanted to keep, and drop the other one that the contract just ended on. The issue is you have to change price plans when you switch off the family share plan to a single phone plan with T-Mobile. I didn’t want to change the plan type on the phone I wanted to keep and then have to get into a contract since I was making a change. I am so against contracts for crap like a cell phone that I would have switched from T-Mobile and switched providers just to prove a point that a long time customer should not have to sign contracts!

Turns out T-Mobile was super cool with my situation. They offered me a regular 1000 minute plan with no contract, but I couldn’t get unlimited nights. For the price, and the fact that I still got unlimited weekends I took it. I can always get rid of it later if I have a problem.

So after my billing cycle changes (sometime this weekend I think) I will be down to one phone and no contract! Lets just hope that when I get my bill next month they didn’t f–k anything up.

Cari’s New Place

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We went to check out Cari’s new pad. it is down in little italy. it is a nice place. Not my taste but she got a deal and can do allot with it. I will stick to the lazy living that I currently have, but of course will go hang out there due to its killer location.

We went for desert at a restaurant on Mulberry street. it was good. I had chocolate cake and a cappuccino. Since I think it is bitter normally I put like 4 sugars in it. Then it tastes great. The problem is we had desert around 9PM tonight. I am still wired from it and probably wont sleep right tonight. Not that I slept right last night and I didn’t have a coffee then!

I am going to lie down even though I know I wont fall asleep right away. I have to try! More tomorrow!

Messing With My Site

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I have been playing with my website today. Really tinkering if you want to call it anything. Jayson messing with apache and other crap on his Linux box got me to mess with my site. I was not as hard core as he has been. I have been using a Windows 2003 box with IIS. I am modifying my site using Frontpage, Fireworks, & Dreamweaver.

The basis for the tinkering is that I want to add more photos to my site. The issue is two fold. One I want to secure some of the photo pages with a password. I am doing that now but each section has its own username and password. That is not effective. The other issue is the organization of the site and how it is presented to the viewer. Right now people enter my site and see a home page built with fireworks. It looks nice, but it is not super easy to update. I want something that can dynamically update as I add content, or change the links.

I still don’t know what I want to do. I want to use Fireworks, but I am having problems updating it. I am playing around with text and tables in Frontpage to have the same affect. it is not the same, but I am not sure if it will do. I will mess with it more later in the week.

A New TV?

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Jayson found this $999 30″ LCD TV from Winbook. I have been eyeing it ever since. I have wanted a new TV since last year. HD ready plasma’s are still too expensive for my taste. And until recently the LCD TV’s I have seen have been too small. Now I find a 30″ LCD TV within my price range. I still don’t know if I should get it. Winbook does not make their own TV’s. I don’t know who makes them. I also am skeptical since their TV is like $600 cheaper than the nearest competitor that I know of. I believe you DO get what you pay for. I want a nice review of the TV from someone other than who Winbook says to check out reviews for.

I am not anti Winbook. I have actually been tempted to buy a laptop from them several times in the past. For whatever reason I never did, but I hear good things about them. I am waiting for more information on this TV before I make a decision. But it sure would look nice hanging on my wall in my living room!

Electrician’s Also Do Snow Plowing

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Funny story I was told by Kai a few weeks ago when it was snowing. He needed to have some electrical work done, and setup a time for the contractor to come out and do it. Turns out that day it was snowing (and had snowed the previous day). He called to see where his contractor’s were and they were like, yeah we need to get to you later this week. All the guys are out plowing. Turns out when it snows this company throws some plows on their trucks and they do plowing for nearby communities. I have never heard of electricians that did plowing. I got a good laugh out of that! This is for the wierd but true file!

Call Center Day

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Today I went to Kingston. I had to meet the construction guys for an update. The work is coming along and should be done ahead of schedule. The cable guys still need to come and do their work, and the furniture needs to be setup but it is going along smoothly, so far.

I got an update on the new deployment method they are going to use for desktops. They are going to use RIS from Microsoft. For me seeing RIS actually working in a beta group was nice since I asked about doing this over a year ago.

Took Kai to lunch. I need to work on his review this week. it is late since I was sick this month.

The Kingston trips are always busy, but I never feel productive. I am beginning to think that the feeling of not “really” doing anything is because I am not getting what I want to get done, but helping out or doing stuff for other people.

Travel Day

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Today was a travel day to Kingston. Dan and I went up there for several reasons. He wasn’t looking good. He had a cold or something. I told him that if I got sick since I sat next to him on the train that I would have to hurt him.

The day was busy. We headed back to the city around 4:30. The 5pm train we were aiming for was late and the 4pm train was late also. Since we got to the train early for the 5, and late for the 4, the 4pm train arrived a few minutes after we got to the station. Train math gets me dizzy too.

Dan and I sat in the cafe car and drank. I didn’t know they had a nice selection of alcohol. I had some Jack Daniel’s and Coke. The trip went by fast.

A bunch of people got together for Jim’s next to last night in NYC before flying out. I got back too late, and I was tired so I passed and went home to relax.

External Hard Drive

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Ever since I upgraded the hard drive in my new HP computer (like a week after I got it last year) I have had 2 160GB hard drives lying on my desk. I haven’t needed the space since I have 2 new 250GB drives in there now. Since I am using my DVR more and more I decided to put the 160’s to use. I got an addonic’s external USB 2 drive enclosure. It is neat. For $40 you can put a normal IDE drive in it and make it a USB 2 drive. For me this is perfect since I have no more internal drive bays on my computer but I have extra USB ports. I will get another one of these enclosures soon now that I know they work as advertised.