Monday, August 31, 2009
Are you l33t ?
The Oracle told me this was one of many futures . . .
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Nasty!
I just had to through this one out there. Cereal is a ubiquitous food in our house. It is consumed 24 hrs a day. It’s always a good time for cereal. We have all kinds. Linda is a traditionalist, sticks with the classics – Raisin Bran, Crispix, Rice Crispys maybe a little Cheerios once in a wile. Sarah follows her mothers lead. Katie and I will take a walk on the wild side. Apple Jacks, Lucky Charms even the odd Capt’n Crunch will find it’s way into our shopping cart and cereal bowl.
But there has to be limits. We don’t do Syrup coated Cinnamon Roll Krunch or “This weeks hit movie in icing and cinnamon”. I have tasted my share of grain gone bad but I don’t think I have ever had anything worse than . . . Special K Chocolatey Delight.
One of my kids, I won’t say which one because Katie, you know who you are, brought this one home. She had one bowl, stuffed the box in the pantry and ran off to school leaving her unsuspecting dad to gag alone in the kitchen.
Special K – not a bad cereal by itself, kind of boring but not offensive in any way. Now take a hand full of fake chocolate chips and through em in your bowl with your K. You go from boring to nasty faster than you can say “partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa processed with alkali, cocoa, soy lecithin, artificial flavor”
You can try this yourself. Grab your favorite regular cereal put it in a bowl, next grab a hand full of chocolate chips – you can even use the real ones, drop em in and add milk – dig in. It’s just not right, and they all gather at the bottom of the bowl so just when you think you can’t take it anymore you dredge up a spoonful of chips with some milk and an embarrassed flake. Nasty! If you insist on a chocolate breakfast look no further than the timeless classic – Coco Puffs
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monkey News
Today I have not one, but two pieces of monkey related news for you.
- The Arctic Monkeys, not the ones from the southern hemisphere, the ones from High Green England. The band is a little British pop, a generous helping of British punk mixed with a level of energy that can only be maintained by angry 20 somethings or chemically produced, or both. They will be coming to Houston to the House of Blues October 3rd. Linda and I will be joining friends of ours for a lovely evening of slam dancing and disorderly conduct. We will probably have to tell the bouncers we are one of the band members parents to get in.
- Media Monkey – I know what you are thinking. Anyone that has all of the Arctic Monkey’s albums and 5 different versions of Wayne Newton’s Danke Schoen must have a fabulous music library manager. I do! It’s called Media Monkey and i have extolled it’s virtues on this blog before. I found a hidden but extremely useful feature. If you have ever put together the perfect play list, burned the mp3s to disk,
then popped that disk into someone's mp3 player (like in a car) and shrieked in disappointment when the player proceeded to totally disregard your meticulous masterpiece and just play the songs in alphabetical order, then this tip is for you.
a. Build your playlist, selecting the perfect sequence of songs.
b. Create an empty temp directory on your hard drive
c. Select/highlight all your songs in your playlist
d. Right click on the highlighted list and choose “Auto organize files”
e. For the destination choose the temp folder you just made, this will move a copy of the songs in your playlist into that temp directory, the originals will be untouched
f. Next, click the configure button, the key field you want in the first position is <auto number> I use this configuration <auto number><artist>-<title>
g. then press OK
what you end up with is something like this;
001 Arctic Monkeys - The Bad Thing.mp3
002 Arctic Monkeys - Old Yellow Bricks.mp3
and so on.
h. Use the files in your temp directory to burn your CD, now when you play your mp3 CD everyone will be able to bask in your music compilation genius.
You can delete the files in your temp directory, their work is done. If you are still reading at this point I double dog DARE you to click on the Wayne Newton link above!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Milestone 148.8
After extensive study on the subject, I found out that the “problem” was the external amplifier. The head units have an amplifier built in, it uses a different set of cables if it is to talk to an external amp. I studied the wiring diagrams. I rubbed my hands over themselves, donned my lab coat – I was going to make my own harness.
After trips to Radio Shack, Home Depot, Harbor Freight and Walmart I was ready to begin. I started cutting up my audio cables, sacrificing them to the cause for their connectors. I stripped, I soldered, I crimped. My vision was clear, my execution was more “special needs kid builds television”
After monopolizing the kitchen table for most of the day I was ready to plug in my Franken-cable and try my shiny new stereo. I took all the precautions, disconnected the battery, ran an extra ground wire taped up all the “extra” wires. Everything was connected and I was ready to flip the switch (queue evil laugh), and . . . . nothing. Not even a flicker. Perhaps I blew a fuse? As I lay, knees on the driveway head up against the break pedal, I pulled each fuse and checked it with my flashlight. The neighborhood insects quickly twittered each other and took advantage of my compromised position to have a bite to eat.
Fuses looked OK, let’s try again. Just as I suspected – nothing. I switch to diagnostic mode. I put the old cable in and attach the old radio, to my surprise – nothing. Dash parts are strewn around the car, a rats nest of wire stick out in all directions, tools lay were they were dropped. It was the picture of defeat. I decided to sleep on it, perhaps the electronics elves would visit tonight.
I didn’t sleep well, I was visited by ghosts of projects past and future. The next morning I was back on the driveway before breakfast, I needed to triple check the fuses. Still no joy. In my research I found that grounding issues accounted for a large percentage of the problems other amateurs experienced. I pulled the ground wire from the harness and attached it to a screw anchored in a metal support, reinstalled the Franken-cable and crossed my fingers. Success!! “It’s a liiiiiiight” Sound came out of the speakers and everything. Today was going to be a good day.
My Franken-cable had worked but it needed work, and I thought I could do better. Back to Walmart. I got another one of those harnesses that 
“wouldn’t work” with my system. Using some of the primo connectors I purchased from Home Depot the day before, I put together a rig that I could be proud of. I had to test it several times along the way just to make sure.
I hooked everything up. Even cut out a perfect round hole and installed a protective rubber grommet to run the USB cable to a little cubby in the dash. I was feeling downright cocky. I made Katie and Linda come out and be impressed by my handy work and the resulting audio extravaganza several times that day. Sarah would return from Las Vegas in a couple of days – I think she liked it. She just left for College Station and took her stereo for it’s inaugural drive.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Milestone 148.5
- 1 sensible accessory - nil.It’s not over.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Milestone 148
Today I am here to tell you about #148. It’s not one of the biggies, but it has been coming in and out of focus for about 35 years and this past weekend I finally punched my ticket. This milestone would fall in the technical/manly category. I successfully took out a factory radio from a car and installed a new (aftermarket) one. I know, I know, half of you are thinking, “wow, yeah, that’s nothing, I shopped for pet food AND a purple belt in the same weekend!”, the other half are thinking “cool, wish I could, or I remember when, I installed one of those”. You know who you are.
Sure, in the past I replaced a speaker here and there and fixed some wiring but never the Head Unit. This is something you think about doing as an adolescent even though you don’t have a car or a radio. Boy, the audio extravaganza you would put together if you only had money and any idea of how to get the dashboard off (and back on) without breaking it, not to mention figuring out a tangle of wires that would make one of those old fashioned switchboard ladies faint.
There was always some new feature that would get the juices flowing again, speakers in the front AND in the back, an 8-track player, a cassette deck, CD player, subwoofer, MP3 player . . . it just goes on and on. A couple of weeks ago Sarah’s car stereo ate one of her CDs. It wouldn’t play it and it wouldn’t spit it out. Left with just the radio, she was in dire circumstances. I looked at the high end integrated system and plastic dash and cringed. Sarah went back to College Station and I hit the internet. I found some helpful information, it was all about which parts to pull in which direction, how hard was still a mystery.
The following weekend Sarah and her car were back and I was committed to attempt the tricky dashus-removus procedure. Surprisingly, I was successful! Now it was a matter of screws and bolts and disconnecting the radio. I have worked on a lot of computers so taking apart the CD player was not a problem. I extracted the disk but nothing seemed wrong with it. After connecting it back to the car, with the dash parts laying on the floor, I discovered the CD portion of the radio was indeed kaput. I put all the parts back together and sent Sarah on her way albeit still tuneless. BUT now I was embolden.
My initial thought was to add a jack to her existing unit so she could play her iPod through the stereo. Once you gained access to the back of the radio I didn’t think adding one of these jacks would be too difficult. Sarah would like that, playing her iPod would be better than playing a CD. As I shopped for one of these add-on jacks I found some very reasonably priced head units (by the way, that’s the part you see in the dash, radio, CD player etc). Hmmm, maybe I could put a whole new unit in?
To be continued
Saturday, August 01, 2009
. . . 4 more years! . . . 4 more years! . . .
Yes friends, it’s been 4 years since we started this blog. It seems like only 2005. It wasn’t my first foray into narcissistic publishing, but it has been the most long lived. The inaugural post showed a slightly chilly family standing on the top of Pikes Peak in July of 05. As I sit here in Houston this summer, I wonder if I have been chilly since then – I can’t remember.
Many of you have crafted your own cyber-presence on blogs, MySpace, FaceBook and one of you who shall remain nameless, posted that video of yourself on YouTube of your own music video lip syncing “She works hard for the money”. You all know that you approach the task of maintaining your cyber-presence with a range of emotions that goes somewhere from dentist-drilling-dread to exuberant exhibitionism.
Low points are times when you post a particularly insightful or witty mini masterpiece and no one seems to notice. On the other side of the coin, I have talked to people who I didn’t know (a friend of a friend) who have told me they enjoy reading my posts. Blogging is like a box of chocolates.
Blogging isn’t cool anymore, it’s kind of old fashion. I suspect it will eventually evolve into micro versions of online newspapers and magazines, or maybe just the equivalent of columns and photo essays. We will see. If you are reading this – thanks. I have to imagine I am virtually talking to someone. If your not, well, don’t tell me.
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