Firehed’s Blog

I doubt it, but it still looks like awesome software. It has that Twitterrific/fullscreen Aperture/Disco look - semi-transparent and ‘dark aqua’ but oddly professional. Still, if has half the useful features of Photoshop (which, by the list and screenshots, it certainly looks to - at least relative to what I use), I’ll very likely buy a copy, if the $59 pricetag noted at TUAW is correct.

Mac users, check it out.

Oh God, that’s an awful noise the fan is making. Looks like this thing will be headed to the nearest Apple store quite shortly. For the third time. And this time I’ll just ask them to replace it - this is getting insane.

(283KB, MP3)

It was even worse with a video playing…

(345KB, MP3)

Yeah, that’s more like it. At least I have some sort of “helpful” diagnostic tool for the Apple guys to figure things out with, in case it decides to behave when it’s there (like when I had my video corruption problem - I thought to use that crappy movie mode on my point+shoot).

Ugh, hopefully I can drown out that godforsaken noise without pissing off the neighbors.

Yeah, three weeks was worse than I thought. When all was finished downloading, which took a several hours, it was no less than 9GB and 150 episodes - quite a few days worth of new content as far as raw play-time, which should last quite a few commutes.

And damn, just missed what looked like a possibly-decent coffee maker in the Woot-off. I mean, it might be crap, but for $25 shipped with 72 coffee pods and a steamer, I can’t go that wrong. But five seconds too late, so it doesn’t matter. Grr at having to change the shipping address. But not grr at having a half-decent paycheck. If only the currently-wooting Razer mouse was a full-sized bluetooth one - what I’ve been wanting for quite some time (the only option seems to be the piece of garbage that is the Apple Mighty Mouse - shame on you Logitech, Microsoft for not making a proper option for me).

Okay… turns out that not having access to my fileserver (which hosts my iTunes library) for three weeks wasn’t so great. Not that I didn’t know it would suck, but the insane queue for podcast downloads was well beyond what I could have imagined. Over fifty so far (thankfully, many of them are fairly small, like the Daily Giz Wiz), with plenty of video content. Enough that it’s stalling the hell out of iTunes - apparently it doesn’t like a download list long enough to kill off what’s left of my hard drive. Well, I’m not sure about the actual space, but there’s over fifty downloads waiting, and there are plenty more that still have the ‘GET’ button next to them, because for some reason best known to itself, my copy of iTunes likes to ignore my “download all” preference.

At least the downloads off the TWiT network are moving at a semi-decent clip here, unlike at school where they always crawled. Looks like I’ll have plenty to keep me entertained on my drive into work for the next five years or so.

Yeah, I’m sure it took long enough, but it was only pretty recently that I got an Xbox, and even more recently that I actually got the original Halo. Quite worth the $15ish I paid for a used copy. Next up: finish Halo 2, then snag a modchip and get XBMC running.

It’s just amazing how quickly free time disappears when working full time. But so much rewarding than school. Which reminds me… need to open up a bank account down here as Chittenden doesn’t exactly reach the next state over.

Who would have thought that making a decent-looking little hardware center/multimedia rack type of thing would be as simple as setting up a few cheap chrome shelves from K-mart? For about $70, I picked up a pair of three-tier racks as well as a two-drawer unit. As of now, they’re holding my Xbox, PS2, Wii, system selector, speaker control pod, a plethora of controllers, the games, and the 24″ Dell display I use to actually play them.

Give it a try if you’re so inclined.

For a small room, it’s not a half-bad setup. Of course, it would be a whole lot nicer if all of my games weren’t in a different state, but there’s not much I can do about that at the moment.

Cable guy came around earlier today and switched on that cable internet connection - no more stealing the neighbor’s WiFi (thanks, linksys, you’re always a good neighbor). Giving it a good testing with some pr0n movies bit-torrent perfectly legal checking of my RSS feeds and other such boring nonsense.

Now I’ve just got to deal with hooking up the rest of my crap… three consoles, two LCDs, several missing cables, and only a small WalMart night-stand to put everything on. And I need to find a strip outlet again… I’ve got a dozen or so outlets in my room at the new place, but apparently half of them are wired to the light-switch for some reason beyond my scope of understanding, and the last thing I need is to turn off the light and kill my computer at the same time. I really should get a UPS considering how much electronic crap I’d rather have not die on me, but I’ll wait until I get my first paycheck from ALIS to see if that’s going to happen.

That’s all for now - back to something more regular once I get settled in (which will last all of a couple months, since this is just a temp. appt. before we decide on a proper house, which may change again for me if I relocate for other business reasons). I just hope my $19 K-mart chrome wire rack isn’t the undoing of my $800 24″ LCD and all the consoles sitting underneath it. Eek!

Or not…

Since I’m a-leaving Babson, they want my laptop back. Fair enough. It would have been nice if they told me before I left campus though, seeing that I’m already working full-time a decent distance away and they’re closed at all of the times I’d even possibly be able to make it there. Maybe the quick morning run to the local FedEx or UPS is in order, as I received the following message on May 14th:

This is an automatically generated e-mail.

Before your separation can be processed, you must return your laptop to the Horn Computer Center Help Desk. If you have any questions, please contact laptopservices@babson.edu.

Additional notes: User in posession of B06-0636. Laptop due back to ITSD as of 5/12/07. MF

ITSD

Yeah, it’s due back two days before they sent me the message. And apparently if I don’t get it back to them this week, there’s no removing the $2000 charge they pre-emptively placed on my account (for a laptop that costs about $1100 at retail).
This after being explicitly told by my class dean a couple weeks ago (during that meeting where she wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to shoot up the school) that I could retain my laptop over the following year while on a leave of absence without issue, and certainly without hint of a $1050 leasing bill. Thanks, Jamie - I know you read once in a while (at least, you did until I dropped out of the place).

More musings later on… like once I get a working internet connection (once again, yay for Ecto and local drafts). I’ve had to mooch WiFi since I got to the new building since the cable guys aren’t showing until Saturday. But said WiFi seems to have pretty decent bandwidth, although is fantastically patchy (five bars from my room, none from the kitchen that’s twenty feet away). Decent upload by the looks of it, so I can finally give video chatting a try. For business purposes, amazingly enough.

Oh yeah, not sure if I mentioned xPad (recently on LH or 43F), but it’s a nice lightweight little note-taking/almost-GTD app. getxpad.com - free, for Mac OS X. Basically just TextEdit with some organizational features, but they seem quite useful.

and discrimination is running rampant. Not so many years ago, our country was divided into shades: black and white. Now our country is truly divided by color: red and blue. And it’s not only okay, but seemingly encouraged.

Listen to the news (or any program that either tries to pass itself off as such or merely offers any sort of political commentary), and mentally substitute in ‘black’ or ‘white’ whenever you hear a term pertaining to one’s party (or a derogatory slang in case of ‘damn treehugger liberals’ and ‘neocons’). Holy shit was that racist - kick that guy off the air pronto, right?
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And not too bad, considering I had to be up at the crack of dawn. A bit slow, but it should end up being a bit more interesting than the video store thing. If nothing else, I’ll get paid, and it’s something to do over the summer. Sounds like things will get insane when they move into the new building, which is soon. Yay?