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.

Tivo May Be Dead

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I have plenty to write about today, but the only thing on my mind right this second is that my Tivo may be dead. I came home and it was crashed. So I rebooted it. it is after all linux, so I was like a reboot will make it all better. Well 30 minutes later, it is still sitting at the please wait while I startup screen. that is not good. This thing always comes back in like 5 minutes. I don’t know what to do. It is like a good friend is sick. Is life worth living if Tivo doesn’t work? Yeah, probably. But it will suck that much more:(

I just turned it off, and I will let it sit idle for a while before I try to bring it back up. Honestly I think it is toast. I have an original 40 hour unit that I have hacked to 160 hours with a network card. No way I can get “support” on it. The unit was also purchased in September of 2001. So it has got some years on it. The thing is I have thought about upgrading and realized I had no reason to. This 3 year old device still does everything I want it to. Now only if it worked…

More news as it develops…

UPDATE: Well a 2 hours have passed and the Tivo is still not coming back online. According to the message boards I have read, the drive is bad, or the unit is totally fried. Not sure what I am going to do. I can try a different hard drive that I can prepare with a $20 piece of software from the people I originally upgraded my unit from, PTVUpgrade. Or I can upgrade to a new Tivo, or a different device. Either way I am out of commission for a few days. For now I am getting my shows on my ATI capture card. it is not perfect, but I have tv…

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.