November 2005 Archives

A CD to add to the list

Raul Midon was on Jimmy Kimmel the other night and he definitely has some mad skills. Take him as a combination of like a Jason Mraz's guitar playing and then add in a much more soulful, R&B like vocals. Definitely someone to check out.

Missing Link

Oh my, I think I might have to start a Windows category.

I get pulled in to work on my friends' Windows machines CONSTANTLY. I'm the computer guy they know, so they call me whenever they have issues. One of the big ones recently seems to be the my computer has started to suck (well, it sucked to begin with, but has gotten even worse) calls. Most of the time, this means going in and installing all the latest software updates, cleaning off spyware and adware, setting up automatic updates, etc etc.

One of the biggest issues after doing all this is the lack of a free virus scanner. Most other pieces of the puzzle, I can get for free, but there is no free virus scanner out there. Well, until now. I finally have the missing link and it is ClamWin Free Antivirus. Yay!

This is released under the GPL and is free to download and use. I set it up on one of my Windows laptops at work and so far, it seems pretty good. Best feature thus far? E-mail alerts! This means, I could have my friends' machines send ME alerts when they get virii, so I could go work on their machines as soon as I see this :)

This is a huge step to make my life a little easier when I get stuck working on my friends' Windows machines. Thanks ClamAV team!

LT

Dear NFL people,

LT is NOT, I repeat NOT LaDainian Tomlinson. LT is Lawrence Taylor. Please stop calling this new guy LT.

Thanks in advance,
Skadz

More Bank of America Horrors

I haven't bitched about Bank of America in a while, so I will again today after a horrible conversation with them.

So, I got paid last Saturday. In going through all my bills, I paid off my credit line. In the past, as soon as you paid off your credit line, the money was available, as it should be, its just passing from one part of your account to another.

Well, with the wonderful new world of Bank of America, transferring from one part of your Bank of America account to another takes 1 business day. So, what happens is they fuck you. I went and paid all the rest of my bills, went food shopping, etc etc, and then when all these things caught up on Monday, they charged me $34 for overdrafting my account. Now, there was plenty of money in my account, but because it was in process of being transferred from one part of my account to the other, they charged me $34. Actually, it looks like they hit me twice for the same night. Fucking idiots.

Well, I finally have the last straw of using Bank of America. Have to deal with one little thing and then I will be closing my account.

Making money on the side?

Here's my question. how do people make extra money? Now, I know there are things like focus groups and stuff like that, but I really don't have any interest in that.

I would love to find some quick contract programming work. Something recurring along those lines would be even better. Maybe something like 5 or 10 hours a week. That would be perfect. Is there some place online that I could look at or I could post my resume that looks for people looking for this kind of work?

I already put google ads on my Dream Theater site. Have they dealt with letting bloggers put these ads on their sites easily? I know some people had all sorts of issues early on. I do run AdBrite ads on both sites. Is there any other way to make money on my blogs? Hell, I'd even use products and write about them on a regular basis. Just wondering if there are more ways to make money with this site :)

I started looking at Amazon's Mechanical Turk site. But with rates like $0.03 per task, it would take a while to make some real money. But, if you did 100 a day, I guess you could make some money.

So, besides programming, ads and mturk, are there other ways I can make money sitting at my computer? Are there other ways I can make money in general? Obviously, this is all after hours type stuff, I do still have a full time job, just trying to make a little extra cash (especially with the holidays fast approaching).

Cleaning out the closet

I get quite a kick out of the fact that so many of the blogs I read on a daily basis have pointed to this article over at SF Gate about cleaning out the clutter. The reason I find it so funny is that this has been one of my pet projects since I moved.

I came to the realization when I moved that I really do own WAY too much stuff. Now, some of the stuff I own too much of, in particular CDs and books, I enjoy owning too much of :) On the other hand, things like clothes I haven't worn in 5 or more years, probably just junk :)

I started off by going through my old magazines. Mostly, I was trying to put things on shelves since my apartment was still piles of crap everywhere at this point. I basically threw out any magazines before this year unless I had a specific reason to keep them.

I did keep all the old guitar magazines. I need to go through these as a stage 2 and pull out what I need and toss the rest. Hell, I may even try to scan in what I want/need and toss the whole thing. One of the reasons I always kept guitar magazines around was tablature, these days, that's all online, so the only real thing to keep out of these magazines would be lessons, which hopefully will be a very small amount of stuff.

The next step was trying to get rid of some of the old computer stuff. Mostly, I got rid of a lot of old documentation. I still need to make a second push at alot of this stuff, but it's definitely much more organized than it was before.

The first two steps were done while I was still settling in to the new place. After being here a few weeks, I needed to take a few more steps. The biggest target was my clothes. Now, I have a TON of clothes. I do not have a ton of clothes I like to wear :) I have a lot of old crap still in my closet. I even have a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't even fit anymore. The other huge issue are my sweaters. I have a ton and many of them have been kept for some level of a sentimental reason instead of actual use. A few weeks back, I made a first pass on my shirts section of my closet. I was able to get rid of a ton of stuff. I basically narrowed the closet down to things I wear on a normal basis and dress shirts. I kept all the dress shirts, as they are always wearable and sometimes necessary. Today, I went through step 2 which was pants and sweaters. Both were very easy. I know what I do and don't wear.

The biggest thing that came out of all this clothes cleaning? I need new clothes! I seem to have very little clothing for occasions other than business casual and very casual :) I really need to spruce up my closet some. Hopefully some day soon, once some more money stuff is in order (more on that later).

The last piece I need to go through in the clothes department are my T-Shirts. I will probably get rid of some stuff here, but this will be the most difficult section. Why? Because I can always wear t-shirts :) So, why not keep em?

Overall, this has helped me some. Mostly, it just keeps proving how much of a packrat I am and how much more can go :) The next steps involve going through a lot of old paperwork. I have bills and bank statements and the like dating back to 1993 (and maybe even before). I need to get a shredder first and then I will be spending a whole bunch of time cleaning out my filing cabinets.

Hopefully, by the time 2006 roles around, I will be running a tight ship (and of course have room for a whole new year of crap to fill it up :)

Rhythmbox Breakdown #1

Doc has posted Rhythmbox Breakdown #1. This is intended to be a Wine Weekly News type publication for Rhythmbox.

I've been trying to help out with RB lately to try and get some cool new features tested. The biggest of all of these is Podcast support, which is now in CVS and will be in the next release (0.9.2). Other neat things like last.fm support and audio CD playing have been added in as well. Hopefully, this new outlet of data will help other people to get involved and get more testing and coding going on.

Linux and the latest Quicktime Codecs

Anyone have a clue of how to get these working? When I run MPlayer, I get:

Cannot find codec matching selected -vo and video format 0x31637661.

It looks like maybe I need to re-compile a current CVS snap of mplayer and a cvs snap of ffmpeg, but I'm not sure. Ideas?

Double Anniversary

Well, today is a double anniversary for my quitting smoking. First off, it was two months ago today (on my 30th birthday ), that I quit smoking. I can't believe its been that long.

The second one is that it has been a week since I took off my last patch. I took it off right after getting out of bed last Saturday. The first few days were difficult, but it seems to be getting better every day. If I just had no stress in my life, it would be much easier. Stress definitely seems to be the one thing that really sets me off these days. Even going out and drinking isn't too bad.

I'm still amazed that I have gotten this far. I always thought it would take me at least a few tries to quit. I guess when you decide you are going to quit and really mean it, it's much easier.

Firefox and the Google Toolbar

Testing out some referral stuff.


For Sale

I'm selling my old CD Shelf. It's over here on craigslist.

Puppy Humor

A little girl asked her Mom, "Mom, may I take the dog for a walk around the block?"

Mom replies, "No, because she is in heat."

"What's that mean?" asked the child.

"Go ask your father. I think he's in the garage."

The little girl goes to the garage and says, "Dad, may I take Belle for a walk around the block? I asked Mom, but she said the dog was in heat, and to come to you."

Dad said, "Bring Belle over here."

He took a rag, soaked it with gasoline, and scrubbed the dog's backside with it to disguise the scent, and said "OK, you can go now, but keep Belle on the leash and only go one time round the block."

The little girl left and returned a few minutes later with no dog on the leash. Surprised, Dad asked, "Where's Belle?"

The little girl said, "She ran out of gas about halfway down the block, so another dog is pushing her home."

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This page is an archive of entries from November 2005 listed from newest to oldest.

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