Hung Out, Watched Elf Saturday

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Saturday I slept in. I wasn’t out too late on Friday, but I was tired from the week of work. I cleaned up my place and Rich came over to hang out. We haven’t hung out in a few months. Both of us have been busy, and he has been trying to conserve cash. We rented Elf on DVD. Neither of us had seen it, and everyone at work said it was great. I thought it was funny, but not outrageously so.

We walked down to Sassy Sliders for a quick dinner. It was a cool long walk, but we were on a budget. That place is like a wannabe White Castle, but the food is really good for fast food.

The plus side of having company over was that it forced me to clean up the crap in my apartment. It now looks halfway decent. I had a good day. I need to hang with Rich and Amanda more. I miss them:(

DVD’s I Might Be A Bit Embarresed To Admit I Own

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Generally I am not embarrassed by my taste in DVD’s, or TV & Movies in general. Others tend to think so sometimes. I will admit that I am a fan of Science Fiction. I am addicted, but I have very picky tastes. Not just any crap will do. Wasn’t a fan of the Lord of The Rings. Just wanted to get that out there. So, my collection of DVD’s does include several SciFi movies, and an ever growing collection of TV shows on DVD.

My latest arrivals are the 7th and final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will admit that I like that show. I started watching it just as the 7th season aired on TV. My friend Rich is a big fan. I made fun of him for years for watching Buffy. One day he was like, come on. You like Scifi, you like hot women, and you like well written comedy. Why don’t you give the show a try. So he lent me the first season on DVD. Dam Rich. I actually liked the show. So I ended up Tivoing season 2-6 and watched it. By the time I finished season 6 in rerun’s, season 7 was on TV. I now own all the seasons on DVD. There were a few episodes that I never actually got to Tivo, so it was good to get these last remaining hours of TV to watch. When I tell people I like this show I eather get asked “are you retarded?” or, “cool I love that show”. Why is Scifi so polarizing.

Other good DVD’s I have are Angel. That was another great series, by the makers of Buffy. Joss Whedon actually has great ideas. That guy also came up with Firefly. I have that also on DVD, but it didn’t last very long. I am also collecting as many Simpson’s DVD’s that they will put on DVD. Of course at the rate Fox is going by the time they are done putting all the Simpson’s seasons on DVD I will be in retirement and DVD’s will be outdated.

To set the record straight I am NOT a Star Trek fan. One of my vendors likes to make fun of me because several of us from work made the mistake to see a recent Star Trek movie. Out of all the series out there, the only one I can tolerate to sit down and watch now is Deep Space 9. That one at least had some killing, and real fighting. The other shows were people going around acting like no person I want humans to evolve into. Come on, who gets shot at and is like “lets talk this out”? Blow someone’s ass off. (Deep breath) Ok, my ranting is over.

Below are some links to other posts where I have talked about great TV shows on DVD, that most people will miss out on, but are fantastic.

Two Of The Best TV Show’s, Ever, And You Probably Didn’t Know It

What’s on TV?

Tivo & PVR Trouble

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Sunday and Monday I spent time working on my Tivo. I have (had) a 40 hour original Phillips Tivo that I had hacked to a 160 hours. Well as I said earlier it died. My online searching said that the problem I was having could be the hard drive or the unit itself. I went out and downloaded InstantCake from PTVUpgrade. I originally had PTVUpgrade do the hacking for my Tivo so I figured I would check them out. IntantCake allowed me to prepare a new hard drive for the Tivo in hopes that the original drive was dead.

After spending most of monday trying to get 3 old computers to get drives working in the exact way InstantCake wanted I was finally able to get instantcake to build a drive. I don’t really blame instantcake for my woes there. They had strict requirements that I just had trouble getting to work with some old PIII 700’s. Once the drive was built I plugged it in to the old Tivo. No dice. The same problem happened again. It looked like my old Tivo finally died. We had a little more than 3 years together. I am upset that our relationship is over early, but I will get by.

I went to Best Buy near my apartment and picked up a new Tivo Series 2 80 hour DVR. I got it home and Jayson brought over a USB nic card that he had (I bribed him with Pizzeria Uno). The Tivo for some reason keep rebooting itself. The online community didn’t say very much about this problem other than it is very bad and I should bring back the unit. So after only 3 hours with it, my Series 2 Tivo went back and I got another shinny new one. This time the setup was a snap and I have been happy (or kind of happy, I did have to blow $299 before rebate on tech I already had but it broke)

At the same time on Monday I decided that the ATI All In Wonder video capture system was not doing it for me. I did some research on a product that looked like a good Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for the PC. Beyond TV from Snapstream got my interest. the problem was the demo sucked on my ATI card since the ATI card did software MPEG-2 encoding. If I knew that I would never have bought the card. The software itself looked awesome. So I took the plunge and bought a bundle of Beyond TV 3.5 and a Hauppauge USB2 video capture device. I got it yesterday and it rocks so far. I am now just programing it up, but it looks like most of the Tivo functionality on my PC. and I have full access to the MPEG-2 files it creates. The bundle even came with its own remote that actually works. It is nice.

These new hardware investments are now funded by the sale of all that old gear I got rid of over the past 2 months. Easy come, easy go I guess. I am at least using this gear. I am addicted to video capture recently, what can I say.

Home Reorg

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I took the day off today (Monday). Unlike normal people I didn’t relax or do anything special. I slept in. Then I proceded to attempt to fix my Tivo. After hours of agrivating over it, and messing up my apartment in the processes I gave up.

I was able to move my desktop computer from one half of my computer table to the other. Now it is closer to the TV wall unit so I can run cable to it. Most of the day was busy working on my Tivo. See post on Tivo & PVR Trouble.

The Long Travel Day

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I woke up at 6AM today.  Almost a good 2 hours earlier than normal.  Am I stupid you may be asking?  Well, yes in a way.  I went up to our Kingston office today.  I had 4 things to take care of.  As with any Kingston trip I am lucky to get anything I plan on doing done, since other stuff always comes up.  This trip I wanted to get 2 interviews done.  I wanted to sit with Kai and Brian about DNS modifications.  Then I wanted to work out some on call paging issues.  Lastly I wanted to meet with Craig and Kai about some email issues.  Actually when I look at all the stuff I needed to do I got 3 out of 4 of them done.  I cannot really count meeting with Craig since when I was in Kingston he was in NYC.  The other tasks were actually completed.  So I feel good that I had a productive day, even though I don‚Äôt feel productive.

The trip up was longer than expected.  Track work slowed the train trip down.  Then I got to the station and there was no taxi‚Äôs.  Kai had to come get me.  At least I rate enough to have someone come get me

I am offline now writing this entry on my way back home.  This trip is going slow also.  I assume track work.  To guarantee a seat I paid the extra $9 for a business class seat.  I got lucky.  This train has newly renovated seats.  These seats rock.  They have leg and foot rests.  Almost as nice as the automatic seats on Delta Biz elite.   If my treo could take low light photos I would have gotten a shot of them.

The interviews went well.  I was (still am) looking for a good support candidate in Kingston.  Both guys I spoke with seemed smart, but had very limited experience.  Now I find out that someone I know very well is looking to relocate and is very interested in the position.  I think this person would be perfect for the job.  The only problem is he would not be able to start till January.  I need to have Kai tech him out and see how smart he thinks he is.  This is another case of someone I would never believe would be willing to move, stand up and say I would do that.  Hey I want to move.  If jayson can surprise me, why can‚Äôt other people?  I want to be impartial so I will send Kai the resume and see if things work out.

The Jets Game

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Today I met up with Jay and Gretchen and headed over to Dan’s to watch the game.  Well I didn’t really watch the game, but that was the reason why everyone was over.  He had a good appetizer spread.  Jay and I took off and went to J&R Computer World.  I was looking for a laptop. The Sony Vaio I wanted to see did not impress me that much, so I am back to square one on my laptop search.

We headed back to Dan’s and played a round of trivial pursuit.  I learned that Jayson gets bored at games quick. Cari has tons of useless knowledge (and I want her on my team next time). Gretchen also has good trivia skills, and would be someone I want on my team.  I should have listened to her when she asked for me to be on her team in the first place.  Dam guys vs. girls game.  Jennifer should not be playing trivia, let alone be on my team every…  Dan was hot and cold.  I think near the end he was just tired.  We had a good time.  We ordered food and hung out for a while.

Halo 2 Day Redux

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Saturday was another all Halo 2 day. I met up at Johns and played Halo 2 for most of the day and evening. We had 6 people so it was a good game. John, Jayson, Dave, myself and 2 of John’s friends from work came over. In general I still sucked, but surprisingly I was not in last place for a good portion of the games. We played capture the flag and just shoot them up rounds.

I always have fun playing, but my eyes start to hurt after a while. John wanted to play poker at night. I was not into it. I was tired and I am not a fan of playing poker which requires concentration after playing a video game for 7 hours that requires concentration. We ended up going for Italian food around the corner from his place and then he drove Jay and I to the F train. I was thankful for that because by the time we got to the train it was already late and I didn’t want to wait for the 7 and then the 6. I just took a cab from the F train stop by jayson home. I admit I was lazy…

Thursday Night Out, Man I Drank Allot

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Thursday night a bunch of us went out after work to drink with Gus for one last time (at least as an employee of our company). We went to our typical bar No Idea? We drank. Some more than others. I may have drank more than others, or at least felt that I did. Yes, I got a bit drunk. I am happy to say I made it to work on Friday relatively on time (only an hour late). I didn’t even have hang over. That of course is because I couldn’t sleep and I drank about a gallon of water over the course of the night.

All in all we had a good time. Glenn picked up the tab for allot of the night. We drank, played pool, etc. I threw a drink at Jim. The usual stuff. Glenn said I was drunk and that I should probably not drink more. Then of course we held a conversation related to a big purchase we are in the middle of, so either I was not really drunk or I am just confused…

A good time had by all. I think Jim is dry now so that is good too…

Friday, Gus’ Last Day So Where Is He?

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Friday was the last day at work for Gus. So where was he? I actually knew he would not be in.  He gave me his key cards for the office on Thursday when we were drinking.  Will we ever see him again?  The jury is still out, even though he lives 3 blocks from Jayson…

Friday Night Team Dinner

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Friday night my team and I went out for the holidays.  Kai and Brian came down for the dinner.  We went to a Angelo & Maxie’s.  We like that place.  Cari tagged along since Bob could not make it.  All in all we had a good time.  Because of what we do, we never all get together.  Kai and Brian left the call center early and came down.  Thankfully nothing broke after they left.

We didn’t drink that much since most of us drank the night before at the Gus goodbye "party".  I had a filet, and the cheese cake for desert.  It was good as always.  Jayson was not happy with his food, but he was getting sick.  Danny had 2 potato’s and that was it.  I can’t see going to a nice steakhouse and ordering two plain baked potatoes, but he was happy so I guess it is ok.

I am so blacklogged on writting that I am going to cut this post short.  More happened, bla, bla, bla.  Fun had by all, etc.  You get the picture.