nuxx.net

TiVo!

March 1, 2005

After what turns out to have been wasting around three hours trying to make it work via Vonage, my TiVo is working. Without connecting it to a phone line.

How?

Well, it seems that on newer TiVo models, if you boot them with a supported USB network adapter attached (most all of them are supported) and you set the modem’s dialing string to ,#401 it’ll appear to be dialing the modem and such, but instead it’ll connect via ethernet.

Imagine that…

Well, the TiVo is now all set up with USB network adapter and all. Being a good geek, I didn’t properly cable it yet, because I wasn’t certain if it had worked or not. But now that it did, I’ll fix it tomorrow.

I’ve also subscribed to a season pass of Good Eats, and the episode of Frontline showing at 3:30am should be recorded. We’ll see how it goes.

Regardless, I’m satisfied. I just wish that the Ethernet-based option for setting up the Tivo would have been a bit more obvious.

I must say, it’s a pretty nifty device… There’s lots of things you can tweak, including a built-in guide for programming the remote to control your HT gear’s volume and mute, turning on and off the front LEDs (this is big to me), network settings, internal diags, log access, etc. Definitely a nice box.

…and now I sleep.

+++ATH0

March 1, 2005

Wow, what a beautiful morning. While the drive to work wasn’t the quickest, it really was beautiful. Only an hour and fifteen minutes… I wish I was off work today so that I could plod through a park taking pictures of the snow hanging off of the trees. It’s just heavy enough to stick to absolutely everything, and the wind isn’t really blowing so the snow is tending to stick on things. (Snow!)

Also, the 40GB iPod Photo I ordered fully charged last night, so I synched it and started using it today. I must say, the display is much easier to read, especially while driving. It just looks a lot smoother, and more text can fit on the screen. The album art is also a nice perk. (Photo) Now I just need to get the old one cleaned up and ready to be sold on eBay.

Tonight I’m supposed to head over to my parents house to do some work on their computer. I also need to bring the TiVo so it can do it’s first round of guided setup which (for some unknown reason) absolutely requires an analog phone line. Yet after that you can use the device with an ethernet connection… Hopefully the snow won’t put a crimp on these plans, because I’d really like to grab the latest episode of Frontline. Tonight’s episode is called A Soldier’s Heart and addresses mental issues that soldiers can experience after battle and various other bits of military service and training.

Worst case I’ll just watch it live, but the TiVo service has been activated, so the device should be as well.

Shows like Frontline are the reason I picked up the TiVo. I almost always miss them, and while I hate scheduling my life around a television show, shows like this are really worth watching. Actually, a number of the shows on PBS restore my faith in television journalism. With all the AOLTWMSNBCBS soundbite-based crap, it’s very refreshing to see a detailed, well-documented story. And no, { Discovery Channel | History Channel | Learning Channel | Whatever } doesn’t hold a candle, because they all seem to be stuck on ‘Big Angry Shop Rats’ or yet another ‘Hitler the Drug Fiend’ or ‘Aliens: The True Story’.

Curiously this morning someone had arranged for Panera to bring in trays of bagels, and there was a espresso-based coffee cart in the cafeteria, all for free. I’m trying to eat less so I skipped the bagel, but a nice double shot of espresso was a nice change of pace from the normal work-provided crap-coffee.

acquired things moved from livejournal weather

PowerLeap

February 26, 2005

Has anyone who reads this ever worked with a PowerLeap CPU upgrade? I’ve got a machine that I’m working on here, and it seems to have a PowerLeap PL-iP3/T in it. The machine boots saying that it’s running with a 111Mhz FSB at 800-some MHz, but installed in this PowerLeap device is a 1.3Ghz Socket 370 Celeron. In addition, the documentation that I got with the computer states that one should “Please disregard the speed shown from the BIOS when you boot. This may not be the true speed of your system.”

I’m… not really sure what to make of this device. It’s currently installed in a 440BX-based Slot 1 board with a mixture of PC100 and PC133 DIMMs. In addition, this motherboard has had it’s BIOS upgraded with one from eSupport.com. I’m not really sure what to think of this place. They seem to sell all sorts of interesting third-party BIOS’, CPU upgrades, etc.

Maybe removing the PC100 memory from the system will help…

computers moved from livejournal

Fly Strip

February 25, 2005

Click for moblog…

So I was wandering at work, attempting to locate the source of a rather foul smell. In doing so I came across this garbage can which contained some rather populated fly strips. Interestingly, this was not the source of the smell.

With regards to the smell, I’m thinking that someone microwaved some catfish or something of that nature…

UPDATE: There are actually two fly strips, so I pulled them apart and took another picture. That can be found here. I just wish I had a large baggie so I could take them home and photograph them in greater detail.

moved from livejournal work

Best Buy Part Deux

February 24, 2005

Well, I went to the Utica Best Buy location on the way home. They were not able to duplicate the issue at all. Fortunately after talking to the (much nicer) service guy, I came away with a potential solution. If I can record a video of the problem happening, that will be acceptable as proof. Well, the problem happens a lot, and my phone can record video, so next time it happens I’ll (try) to get video of it. Interestingly, it happened in the car on the way home, but I was so excited that it was happening that I bumped another button before I was able to get the video. Ah well…

acquired things computers moved from livejournal

Best Buy Woes

February 24, 2005

So, for the last while the MENU button on my iPod has been intermittantly non-responsive. I can’t help but think that this is a systemic problem with the third generation iPods, partially leading Apple to switch to mechanical buttons (via a rocker wheel) on the latest iPods.

Regardless, I have a four-year warranty for my iPod through Best Buy. I took the device in today to see if they’d swap it, and while the “tech” had the problem happen to him, he noted that it “wasn’t happening anymore” after the first problem with it. Based on that, he determined the iPod wasn’t having problems anymore. He offered to send it out to the repair center for 3-4 weeks to see what they could do… Well… That’d be nice, not having an iPod for 3-4 weeks.

I had been hoping that the “tech”, after having it demonstrated to him that the button occasionally fails to work, would realize that the device really does have issues and get it replaced with a new one. Best Buy’s support isn’t going to be able to repair a capacitive switch that occasionally fails after the device has been sitting for a few minutes.

acquired things computers moved from livejournal

SCUBA Tank Failure

February 24, 2005

Click for more…

When I was poking around looking for the updated list of UN/NA Numbers for Hazardous Materials Shipment this morning, I came across a series of photos of the investigation of an explosion caused by the failure of a SCUBA tank during pressure testing. These photos can be found as part of the Cylinder Failure Analysis Reports section of the Office of Hazardous Material Safety‘s website. The site where it happens appears to be a dive center in Key Largo, FL, although upon further looking, these may be photos from two separate incidents.

From what I can tell, in at least one case the SCUBA tank was being refilled while submerged in a large tub of water. I believe this is done to cool the tank, show signs of leaking (stream of bubbles), and also to absorb some of the shock if the tank does fail. It appears that the SCUBA tank shattered, the plastic tub shattered, and the entire surrounding area was rather torn up (trees, siding, etc). A couple of the other photos appear to show blood on the gravel, right next to the point where the tank exploded. It’s truely, truely scary.

The aforementioned site is rather slow, and one has to download all of the files as part of a large, self-extracting EXE file, so I decided to mirror them in an easier to browse format.

To take a look at the pictures, either click in the photo above, or take this link: http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/scuba_tank_failures

found things moved from livejournal

TiVo…

February 23, 2005

Well, that went well. I just bought an 80 hour TiVo off of eBay, and it should end up costing absolutely nothing.

Here’s how the deal went…

It seems that last week Sam’s Club was selling Humax-branded 80 hour TiVos (the are the same as the normal ones, just with a different looking case) for $49 or so. This guy bought as many as he could find and is now selling them on eBay for $99.99 Buy-it-Now with $15 DHL shipping. He runs a shop and sells car parts on eBay normally, so they just do billing via CC over the phone. So, I used MBNA’s Shop Safe stuff to generate a one-time number, gave him a call, and paid for things.

When purchasing these he also got separate receipts for each one, and he’ll be including the original store receipt with the unit. This means that I can legally and honestly file for the $100 mail-in rebate when I activate the unit. In addition, he said that if I use his email address as person-who-referred-me when signing up for TiVo service, that I should drop him a piece of email and he’ll refund me the shipping cost. This should bring the total cost for the TiVo down to $0, with my only having to pay the $11.95/mo charge. This seems like a really good deal.

In addition, it should be wholly possible to add / replace hard drives in the unit, should I find that I want more storage.

Oh, if you are wanting to get one yourself from this same guy, look here for his auctions. It’s a guy named Brian who seemed to be really friendly. He’s also in Xenia, Ohio so shipping to the Detroit area should be real fast.

So, I think it’s a good thing that Costco was all out of them at lunch. How interesting that it worked out that way… :D

acquired things moved from livejournal movies

TiVo…

February 23, 2005

So I’m thinking of getting a TiVo. Here’s why… Costco has 80GB (80 hour) TiVos for $269, with a $100 mail-in rebate. The monthly charge is $12.95. I’ve been thinking of resubscribing to Netflix, but that’s $20/mo, and I mostly tend to want content to watch while eating dinner or whatnot. This means :30 tv shows or so. Netflix has a harder time providing this…

I’ve thought about building a MythTV box, but with the cost of a large hard drive, memory, quiet case, and a MPEG2 video capture board, I’m looking at around $400 to get things going this route, plus my time. At this rate the break-even point would be 17 months… Granted, MythTV would allow me to do more with the captured files, but if I want a captured show, I’ll be doing it in DV, not MPEG2, and thusly using the capture device on my Mac. So, that’s kinda out the window…

Hmm, does anyone who reads this have a Series 2 TiVo and actually use it? The price isn’t too bad, and I think it’d be pretty handy… Costco’s price is also a lot cheaper than buying it from Best Buy or Netflix.

One other neat thing… Hopefully Tivo will get around to releasing a new Mac version of TiVo Desktop fairly soon, which will allow me to watch recorded shows on my Mac. Right now it’d be PC-only. Poo.

acquired things moved from livejournal movies

Tie Rod

February 21, 2005

Hmm, so $179.40 later and my car has a new passenger side outer tie rod. $75 for the tie rod itself. Looking now I could have purchased this from Jim Fresard for $58.05, but labor to install it was $30. That seems pretty reasonable… Then with a four-wheel alignment was $69.95. Looking now, my alignment was a fair bit out of whack.

That said, my car now drives considerably better than it had been. For maybe the last six months I’ve noticed a small knock when going over very small bumps, and I’d noticed what felt like the car was pulling, but it wasn’t consistent. When I’d take my hands off the wheel, it’d stay within the lane, only moving like there was a cross wind.

After doing some reading, this appears to be consistent with a worn tie rod. Now the slight clunking / knocking sound is gone, and the car drives as if it’s on rails. I also don’t have to fear for the tie rod breaking, and the wheel ending up damaging everything near by while I skid to a halt against a concrete barrier. I think this is a good thing.

automotive moved from livejournal