My Substitute Reality -You're just jealous cause the little voices only talk to me-

Saturday October 22, 2005

Love that Frys, sometimes

Filed under: Geek — don @ 10:01 pm

Frys’ Electronics. The place we love to hate. Most of us geeks look forward to their ads because, well, because they have lots of geeky stuff. They also have about the best prices and selection around. You’ve probably been in their stores. They all have themes. The one I go to in Woodland Hills has an Alice in Wonderland theme. The one in Burbank is a space theme complete with a crashed spaceship on the roof. And the stores are BIG. So much stuff to look at. So many questions to ask. And there’s the rub.

If you have a question good luck. It’s not that you can’t find someone to help you. It’s more you can’t find anyone using the brain that day. I suspect there is one brain at Frys and they all take turns using it. I can’t remember ever running into that person but I’ve heard rumors he exists. Just once I would like to actually have a question answered to my satisfaction. Maybe someday.

So last week they had several 1 day sales and a 3 day sale. The first day they had a Notebook computer for $399. I went to look at it and they were sold out. That’s no surprise. The computer did have a Via processor so it wasn’t that good but $399 for a notebook is pretty cheap. The next day they had another 1 day sale and another Notebook. This one was $499 and it had an AMD processor. Not an Intel but pretty good. I went to see if it was any good. The salesman who showed it to me said I wouldn’t be happy with it and I should get the one next to it. That one was $999. I went ahead and got the one for $499. I brought it home and I must say I’m quite happy with it. It’s got the 2600+ AMD(which runs at 1.6 GHz. Why don’t they just call it a 1600?). It’s got a 15″ XGA TFT screen, 40 Gig drive, 10/100 wired LAN, 54 MBs Wireless G LAN, Windows XP, and a CD-RW/DVD. The only thing it’s missing that I wish it had is a serial port. My Garmin GPS has a serial interface. I guess I’ll have to find a serial to usb convertor. I know they sell them.

So now I’ve got a decent notebook. I bought a Compaq 180 MHz notebook about 8 years ago but it’s battery would never hold a charge. I couldn’t really use it unless I plugged it in. Michelle wants it so she can at least have a computer of her own. Maybe I should put Linux on it and give it to her. In a few months she could rule Frys.

Sunday August 21, 2005

Where has Don been?

Filed under: Geek,Life,Personal — don @ 9:59 pm

It’s been a long time since I updated this. Some may think I’ve been wasting the time watching TV but you would be wrong. I’ve been wasting time creating maps for Counter Strike:Source.

What’s Counter Strike? It’s a computer game that’s similar to Quake and Doom except you play on a team. You are either Terrorists or Counter Terrorists. The T’s and CT’s run around in a simulated world that looks extremely realistic compared to the old Castle Wolfenstein and Doom 1 and 2. The game runs on the same “engine” that runs Half Life 2 if you’re familiar with that one.

To create maps you use a CAD tool called Hamer(used to be called Worldcraft). It’s got 3 views, X, Y, and Z and a camera view to see what the textures and models look like. The tool actually comes with the game. You draw blocks and cylinders and stuff and put textures on them to create the world. It’s a lot of fun for me and has become quite addicting. I’ve got some pictures of my latest map in my gallery from last week. I’ve made a ton of changes since then and I’ll get some more screenshots soon.

On to other doings in our family.

Heather and Mark are expecting their second child in about 7 months. She wrote me last week but for some reason I didn’t get the email. I found out by reading a post by Dianna. Camden is getting old and needs to have a visit from his grandpa. I’ll try to do that soon but read the next paragraph to find out what I’m doing short term.

My other daughter, Jocelyn, is getting married in about 2 weeks. She’s marrying Eric Weiss up in Kenosha, WI. Betty and I are going to make the trip for the wedding. I haven’t seen her in a few years. It amazes me how fast time goes.

It’s about bedtime for me but I figured I better let everyone know I’m still alive and kicking.

Sunday July 3, 2005

A Sunday Ride

Filed under: Geek,Life,Motorcycle — don @ 1:31 pm

I took a ride today very similar to Chuck’s ride a few months ago. I didn’t take any pictures at Neptune’s Net but I was carrying my GPS receiver. When I got home I hooked it up to the computer and downloaded the data to Google Earth which is now available for download by the way.

Here’s some pics from GE that I generated.


Overall View.

The eagle-eyed among you should notice the above image is very similar to the picture at the top of this page.


A cool tilted view showing some ups and downs.


A close up of my house.


A higher view of my house.


And finally a closer view of the outlook..

Wednesday June 29, 2005

See the World, kind of

Filed under: Geek — don @ 7:36 am

Would you like to fly around the world? See things you’ve never seen? If so I’ve got the application for you. It used to be called Keyhole but Google bought them and now it’s called Google Earth. It’s a program that reads images from a database of satellite photos and creates a map of the earth. If you’ve used maps.google.com you might have seen the image quality. This goes one better and actually lets you “fly” around the globe allowing you to zoom in wherever you want.

I’ve been using the subscription version for about 6 months but now it’s free. For those who had a subscription we get Google Earth Plus which adds the ability to print in higher res and my favorite, connect to a GPS receiver. You can download all the waypoints, routes, and tracklogs from any Garmin or Magellen receiver.

I highly recommend it. If you’re like me you’ll spend hours the first few days looking at all the places you’ve lived, visited, or want to visit.

Note:(6/29 – 5:15pm) Google must have gotten a REALLY BIG response to this because as of this afternoon the download is on hold. They say it will be available again soon.

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