Category: Television

Categories
Beer Entertainment General Technology Television

I broked the internets!

Haven’t written in a few days. I intended to, but I couldn’t. I broked the internets! 🙂

It all started Saturday, which was truely a day to myself. I didn’t leave the house except for some grocery shopping (translated: I bought beer and some meat to grill). I spent most of the day tinkering around my home office, backing up data, updating software, and researching some new computer equipment to buy. Fun stuff, yeah? Yeah, well it was for me. And, it was nice to spend a day doing practically nothing. Not seeing anybody, not going anywhere, just hanging out by myself. Well, me and the cat I guess.

The research was for a new WiFi access point. I have been running on a dinosaur, the original Apple Airport (known as the Graphite model) since around the year of our lord 2000 AD. It was old, slow, and though it worked, I’ve recently been using the wireless a lot more (what with the new laptop) and it’s shocking how long it takes to transfer a large file over that old, slow WiFi connection. I also wanted to move to a WiFi router, something new that could take the place of my old WiFi access point and my old ethernet switch. One power plug instead of two, one or two less cables snaking along the wall, etc. This, after loads of research, lead me to the newly released Apple Airport Extreme (1 gigabit ethernet version).

While out grocery shopping Saturday I tried to visit the nearest Mac store and buy one, but they’d closed. Oh well. I spent the night surfing the net and watching season 3 of Black Books, a very funny / snarky English comedy series.

Sunday however, I was able to purchase my new toy. So I got home with it in the afternoon and set in getting it all hooked up. One thing I knew was going to happen in all of this was that my current setup was going to break a lot… my old setup was such that my broadband modem fed into my Linux server, which then fed to my ethernet switch, which then fed into my old WiFi access point. Long story short, a LOT of configuration was done on my Linux server to get all this working… and I had to undo it all, and do a lot of new stuff, to get everything back up and running.

I had however underestimated how much of a pain some of it would be. Getting my network up and running and getting my computers online was really easy. That part only took 10 minutes. What was more troublesome was getting my Linux server happy again, and then discovering some things that meant some larger changes to my setup (new nameservers, routing for my domain name, port forwarding, blah blah blah). What that all means is that Circusgeek was offline for a couple few days until everything got sorted out. Which, as far as I can tell, happened today sometime. Now I’m finally able to post to my blog again. Hence, the long-winded post. 🙂

Now that it’s all running, things are faster and I’m happier overall. More than anything, I’m just glad to have everything running again. What a pain in the ass!

Categories
Beer Entertainment Humor Television

Ford creates man’s dream world

In a recent commercial from for the Falcon XR8 Ute, Ford has created a manly man’s dream world. The paper delivery isn’t a newspaper, but a burrito, a group of men chase after a beer truck called "Mr. Frothy", most of the stores in the town have large signs that read "Tools". Oh, and the theater is running "BEER: The Musical". I’d watch that. 🙂 Click here to read more and watch the video.

Categories
Technology Television

Just in time (apparently)

Today we had some tech (and apparently sales… keep reading) folks come out from Comcast to fix some cable troubles. Our ancient, old-school analog cable has been having troubles with some channels. It’s not a new problem, it just took Kelly and I a long time to finally call Comcast about it. Channels 2 through 13 were having some ghosting issues, and two other higher channels had insanely low audio volumes, to a point where we’d have to crank up the receiver and then remember to turn it down before changing channels again.

The Comcast techs hooked up this nifty box that both played video / audio from the cable, as well as analyzed the frequency strengths, etc. I heard it for myself, apparently there was nothing wrong with the signal. It could have been the old VCR we had our cable run through to change channels. Dunno. However, the helpful fella started talking to me about digital cable, their PVR units, and even how I could get things working with my MythTV box upstairs (that for years I’d been using to record shows with, later burning them to DVD, sans commercials, for later viewing). After some brief consideration, I decided to go ahead and upgrade… mainly because for a year, we don’t really pay anything different than we have been paying. While I feel it was definately an upsell, I don’t feel cheated. I’ve been wanting digital for a while. I wanted the handy guide for navigating channels. I definately wanted a PVR hooked up to my TV directly for a change. The extra channels are nice and all, though I’m not too concerned about most of them (though now we have BBC America, and for 6 months free, HBO). Neat-o! Guess I’ll see in a year what I want to keep and what I don’t. Chances are I’ll get so used to the extra features that I’ll drop the premium bits (HBO) and keep the PVR & extra digital channels, and just pay the extra $10 a month or whatever it comes down to. Either that, or we’ll get our use out of it and drop it. Time will tell.

Here’s the part that makes this all kismet-like. I just read that the free channel guide my MythTV computer uses to get it’s channel data, is dropping it’s free service as of September 1st of this year. Apparently there has been some abuse of their free XML data (likely that the data was being stolen and re-sold). This could mean that in three months, unless something else crops up, MythTV boxes will become a lot less useful. This makes me very sad, and perhaps the company (Zap2It Labs) will offer some kind of paid subscription service (like you pay for with any other PVR service anyway), but for now, it makes my cable upgrade a timely one. 

Categories
Beer General Technology Television Work

Week recap… slacker edition

What a week! I've been swamped with work, social engagements, and a fascination with a new toy in the house.

On monday Kelly and I met our friend Miranda at Moon & Sixpence for some dinner, drinks, and some Irish folk music. Had a blast!

On tuesday, after some deliberation, Kelly picked up her new baby, a black MacBook (which she named Mozart). I rushed home to get to see / play with it for a bit before meeting Snooks at Kennedy School for a couple beers (and to hand off copies of the last few episodes of Battlestar Galactica that I burned to DVD… we both needed to see the massive cliffhanger season finale).

On wednesday, plans to meet some friends fell through, so I was able to get some yard work done, and have a relaxing night at home. After mowing the forest that was my lawn, and doing some other yard work, Kelly and I watched Battlestar. Man, what a cliffhanger, and to think we have to wait until 2008 to see the conclusion. It's just cruel.

Last night I met several friends at my old haunt, the Goose Hollow Inn, for some dinner and beers after work. Both my brothers met me there, and after we went to another old haunt, the ultimate 'dive bar', the Commodore, to shoot some pool. Fun night, and thanks to all who came out!

Today I worked from home so I could focus on all the code I need to clean up / rewrite from the first release of SuperSweetCo's new product. A lot of the CSS / HTML has been driving me crazy since I originally wrote it. Also, trying to write in a lot of the new design. After work, I spent some more time with Kelly's MacBook, getting a few applications installed, and moving some music into iTunes for her. Found a great app called Senuti that allowed me to move tracks from my iPod onto her Mac. The more I play with Kelly's Mac, the more I want one for myself. Later, Snooks and I went back to Kennedy School to talk about Battlestar, drink beer, and eat pizza, while the girls were out eating fancy cheese and sipping wine.

Tomorrow I'm going to spend most of the day migrating data from Kelly's old work laptop to her Mac. To make sure she doesn't lose anything when she hands her work laptop in on monday, her last day at StinkyCorp. While doing such work is usually a big pain, I doubt I'll mind much, since I'll get to play with Kelly's MacBook.

Categories
Beer Entertainment Television

Friends at Rose & Thistle

Went out this evening to Rose & Thistle with Miranda & Brian, and Mr. & Mrs. Ghost Dog. It had been a while since Kelly and I had gotten together with these kids, especially the Ghost Dogs. Had a great time catching up, chatting about all manner of things, from Lost, to Battlestar Galactica, to the headaches of driving in our local metro traffic hell. I have to mention the dish I had for dinner, the 'Charles Stuart (Chuck)', sort of a chicken & gravy pasty, with mashed potatos and veggies… very delicious. Near midnight Kelly and I caught our bus homeward, stopping at Binks for a final drink or two before walking home. Great night, and a perfect end to a productive weekend day. If only I had my millions, I'd be able to have this kind of day EVERY day. 🙂