Kahm's Korner

hmm a hodgepog of stuff

kahm005@aim.com — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:13:54 GMT

Wow it's been so long since I have been on here I almost feel bad.

But not really.

Work:

The library recently upgraded their database and web server. Not that it's an improvement in the 'website' itself. It's pretty horrid. However the new server's mean that we can maintain current software support.

At any rate the upgrade was a great success. :) The people at The Library Corp have done a wonderful job on our upgrade.

I'm picking up my HTML book again and trying to strengthen my knowledge and start using a little CSS. Why? well knowledge is power and I need a little power. :)

There is a lot of drama in the local paper's and online sources lately about our director and the board of directors and blah blah blah.

I seriously think .... Well that's annoying LOL. I don't really know what to think. I'll just wait and see I guess.

Been working out at the YMCA when my schedule permits. And there have been some improvements. Well so I am told by other people around me. I'm glad just to be more active. The past couple of weeks have sucked. Too much going on to go regularly.

Went to the Dentist for the first time in Several years. Results. 2 small cavities. And I need two (2) root canals. UGH. I think the one on the bottom is the worst. It's actually started bothering me more over the past day or so... hmmmm I don't think it's going to wait much longer.

Chiropractor
yeah I had a little back pain that was suspicious and I thought you, "you know? too many people are depending on me now. I need to quit messing around and go." Ok I went and the X-ray scared the crap out of me LOL. He threw that x-ray up there and my spine was soo crooked I said, "OH Damn!" My hips were a little off. It was a very noticeable curve of the spine. I just hope all the visits will help. I have to say. I have not had a single head-ache since I have been going to the chiropractor. Which is nice. :) Now, I only hope I can afford all this. LOL

Well not really. But i will go as long as I can afford it. I have to budget my meds in there as well. So I need to do a balance check and make sure i don't go over my limit on my card. :)

Kids

Kids will be kids.

I am coming to terms with Nick's abilities and disabilities. It's hard for me to accept that there is something different about him. And that he sees things in a whole different color/spectrum/light whatever, that i won't/can't/don't see. I am still learning. i will always learn. I have no choice. I love them both so much. All I can do is try.

Pets
Our dog p-chan threw us for a loop the other day. He was really favouring his left paw. We examined it but found nothing wrong with it. So... off to the vet. Turns out after testing the poor doggie has lime's disease and another tick born blood disease. We were going to have him in in Jan anyway for some loose teeth but figured what the hell. And took care of that as well. They cleaned his teeth and pulled a tooth and took care of a hot spot on his back. It sounds like we are horrible dog owners. However we are constantly cutting burs and grooming and pulling ticks off. I know. We need to get the frontline stuff going again. And we do have it but still. There was a few months without it and well :( he is suffering for it now. :( we feel really bad about it. And are making it up to him.

Our cat has been doing fine.

Jess and I have been talking about getting a cat for my mother. I think it would be just the thing to help keep her company when she is home alone.

Well I think that's enough for right now. :)

--EOF

Update - 062109

kahm005@aim.com — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:31:14 GMT

Ok. so here it it. Fathers day. My boy's are sleeping late which I enjoy. I feel they will be up very soon. It's after 10 in the morning already. I have been waiting for this age for a long time. The lazy days of summer. Where you get to sleep late and no one is trying to get you up early. It's funny how when you are in school you look forward to Summer and when you move into the working world you view may change. I find summer to be nice and hot. I don't mind the heat really. Though it will make me cranky. Currently this morning I am enjoying the silence and catching up on some much needed facebook work. Ok not really. I don't do much on facebook to be true. I usually update my facebook by other apps that I have been using for years. I hate to double post stuff. I've been using facebook for years so I am not about to change. it does what I want and conveys what I want to say.

I had a little bit of computer work fall into my lap. The first one was a Dell Dimension 2400 I think. P4 2.53 with 128MB of ram. No that isn't a typo. It was running windows XP with 128 MB of ram? DDR no less LOL I bout fell out my chair. While it is possible to run XP with 128 MB of ram it is like pulling your hair out waiting for it to do something. :) I had some extra ram Laying around and fixed the problem. The problem was easy to fix once I could see the problem. Now it took me something like 45 minutes to get the machine to a point where I could actually see something on the screen. I had to reload the video driver as I think the memory for the video was shared with the system. It was a bit glitchy. It is working much better now with 768. I would of put in more if I had it laying around but you do with what you have. :) It's a happy little machine now. It only had a 40 GB HDD but as two people use this machine and the Hard Drive was only half full I didn't feel it warranted an upgrade.

The second was the wife's laptop hard drive. She had been complaining that it has been too small for a long time and we have wanted to upgrade to a 7200 RPM 320 GB drive for along time. Well money is tight and we had a 320 GB 5400 RPM drive. I used a couple of free to home user apps to complete this task. They are:

Self Image

and

EASEUS Partition Master

Self Image was nice because it imaged the drive inside windows to a USB drive. If you have ever used Norton's Ghost app then you know this has been an issue for the older versions. I do not have any newer versions of Ghost because, well just because. I have seen that Ghost 14 will backup to a USB drive as a scheduled task but ya know what? I don't need to back up my drive that often. Maybe once a month if at all. I really don't store anything important on my computer. And what I do store can be saved to a flash drive not a hard drive image.

You all know that I like to run different OS and I am currently running/testing the Windows 7 RC. I am confident that I will upgrade to Windows 7 when it becomes available/When I can afford it. I have not had any major problems with it. I did have a little problem wtih it and Trillian Astra Beta. But as Astra is still in Beta I don't think it is a real issue. Everything else has worked. I am currently trying to run Free Realms on it and as I ran into a permission issue on my hard drive in general and not with the program I think it should be ok.

The Permission issue I think spawned from the fact that I had disable UAC (very easy to do in Win7) and it had created a problem some place. It was easy to re-enable and that fixed my permission issues.

The other thing I did was updated my drivers for my video card(s) Nvidia has actually released some drivers for Win7 now and I am giving them a run.

OK here is another piece of software I discovered this week. Cyberlink's Media Show Espresso. Retails for about $40 but if you do any amount of video transcoding and you happen to have a decent video card(s) in your system then this software is an awesome must.

It makes use of your Video card's processors to help speed up the process. Put it to you this way a 30 minute program took me 6 minutes to convert from VOB to MP4. Very nice indeed.

Ah well I think that's about all I have going on at the moment.

My brother had a bit of bad luck the other day. As he doesn't have a wife I think he is trying to make one LOL.. No just kidding. He likes to do home automation. It's a side hobbie of his. So his media center/Home automation system up the chuck the other day. He did have a relative recent backup and was able to get a lot of it back up and working. The computer was a complete loss. Ebay to the rescue. he was able to find an older model Dell to take the reigns. I kept telling him to not get a celeron for this type of application that it would benefit more from a real P4 at least. So he followed in suit and got a P4. The system is working a lot better and the sound card is of higher quality then his last one so there are less problems with his computer hearing him. I think it will be a fortutitus failure.

Ah well thats enough of that. :)

Catch you all around somewhere.

--OUT

Update for June er something

kahm005@aim.com — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:36:38 GMT

Well I finally got one. A new phone that is. I have had a hate on for my old one because it didn't have some of the features, gadgets that i had wanted. I got a decent linux box up and running at home which will make editing videos a little easier now that it is stable with Ubuntu 8.10. 9.04 isn't quite there yet.

Went Kayaking a couple of weekends ago and I really enjoyed being on/in the water. It was freaking cold but I enjoyed the warm sun. I was smart enough to wear swimwear so that it would dry out quickly. I am so eager to get back on the river again to see if I have improved or just got lucky. I know what i am doing to do different this time.

Speaking of that Linux box I need to go tweak it a bit and see if there are any updates that need to be run. I don't think there should be because I ran the Mini installer which loads it from the internet. I can hope anyway.

Your monthly update er whatever...

kahm005@aim.com — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:29:56 GMT

So um... yeah...

Let's see. I want to build new computers it's not funny. I have a linux machine that I need to beef up a bit but it will do for the moment. I cannot figure why it is running so slow with a HT 2.5 GHz processor. Other then the fact that I cannot get the darn thing to HT. Sigh. I need a bios update and I cannot figure out how to run that just right now. I know there is something in there that will let me run it. I think that may fix my issue with the HT issue.

I've started to create little short term daily to do lists. Things that I need to get done in a single day to keep things moving at work. So far it is making my days more productive. I am beginning to believe I am seriously ADD. So I just need ways to stay on focus and on track on projects.

I am on 2 different types of over the counter meds for my allergies. They are working but they do nothing for my sinus swelling. ugh. So I get a clear nose and still cannot breathe.

Went to see the new Star Trek Movie. Awesome! I liked it. They made it plausible. Now I want a series. Sigh, if they don't screw it up.

There are a lot of movies coming out this year that I will enjoy watching. i think I am going to try and finish Grindhouse at some point this week. I started it on Netflix but I haven't made it back to finish it.

Been trying to figure out how to run a Raven Shield server for my group. So far it is working but I need to get more maps and to clean up the server.ini file so that it has only the maps I have in there. That way it will be a little more stable and friendly to deal with.

----------------
Now playing: Nine Inch Nails - Echoplex
http://foxytunes.com/artist/nine+inch+nails/track/echoplex

a good day

kahm005@aim.com — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:38:46 GMT

I had a good day today. The weather was awesome! I got out and down to my mom's house today. Worked on a computer and had lunch with the boys. They wanted to go to the Park so I loaded them up and went to the park and they played and we walked the trails and I walked around and they ... walked the trail again without me... Wouldn't bother me too much except for the creek/river that is down there. There is a dam there and that makes for unpredictable water levels. Especially after all the snow we had up in the higher elevations. Luckily it wasn't too bad but still enough to get me fussing a bit. So we walked around a bit more they played a bit more and then we left and went to the store. Got makings for dinner and went to my mom's house where I nudged the machine I am working on a little further along. We're 17 minutes away from finishing the install. I wish I could of saved some files on it but the customer said they didn't care so I went ahead and wiped the machine. Every time I tried to copy files though it kept disappearing on me in windows. It was weird.

I hope the drives are ok. There are two and what I think happened was, the raid configuration tried to kick in or someone kicked it out not knowing that doing so would cause the system to become unstable. I think what I will now is just format that second drive once windows is installed and make it a secondary drive. I'll still see if I can recover anything off of that drive but I didn't see anything when I had it hooked up before.

As I set here with the windows open and the fan on in my old bedroom I am reminded of all the living and growing up I have done in this room. If these walls could talk they would get me into a lot of trouble. Oh well they can't and I can just remember is all.

Talked to my friend Shawn and found out that he was in town today so on the way out to the park I swung by his mom's place where he was visiting and caught up with him. It was good to see him again. I need to spend more time with him when life permits. He is a proud father now so he will have even less time. Well it's time to get dinner started.

Coolness! I think.

kahm005@aim.com — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:21:58 GMT

Windows 7 beta - It's good! Mostly...

kahm005@aim.com — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:43:02 GMT

Ok. I have been running Windows 7 for about five days now. The consensus so far? It's GOOD!!!! Well mostly I mean it is Beta software. There are a couple of things that I would like to see in the final version and I am sure they will get there at some point.

Installation for beta software was uneventful. This is a good thing. Setup detected all my hardware and installed working drivers for everything. So far stability has been spot on! I have not had any problems with the system that I haven't done to myself by loading 3rd party software. Magicdisc for mounting ISO files hosed my system a bit but a quick restore point later and I'm up and running. PowerISO seemed to work for this so I can't complain too loudly about it.

Bluetooth just freaking works!

Here's a little back story. When I wanted to listen to music or anything from my computer through my Bluetooth headphones I would have to turn on my headphones, go to the Bluetooth software and find the device and connect it manually (not sync just connect) then I would have to change the sound driver config under Sound's under the control panel and select my Bluetooth headphones. AND any open audio apps would have to be closed before they would use the new sound equipment.

I was happily surprised that after syncing my Headphones to my laptop all I had to do is turn on my headphones and the software took care of the rest. Everything synced up and connects and I didn't have to close any audio programs. It just transitioned over to the Bluetooth. I'm very happy with that.

HomeGroup

This technology was originally meant for Longhorn. It was a simple set of networking tools that make sharing files in a home environment much easier. Here's the deal.

Say you want to share a file with your wife. Well without HomeGroups this is what you had to do.

To keep it friendly, you had to create a user account on your computer that had the exact username and Password that your wife used. Then you had to give her full access (yeah my wife is a geek as well) then when you create a share you have to add her under the share and under the security for the file/folders. If she ever changed her password on her computer you would have to change it on your computer to keep things in sync. Now add a couple of kids on there... and we have a mess of passwords and policies and rights and such...

What HomeGroup does is make all that transparent. So I would setup HomeGroups on my computer and then on her computer and with the HomeGroup key and password you would setup a trusted connection between the two computers. At which point the HomeGroups services would take care of syncing password and account information to all the other machines on the network. So creating a share gets a lot simpler and you don't have to run your own Domain Controller to provide this kind of access. I am looking forward to retiring my domain controller at home. :) Maybe repurpose that machine.

Internet Explorer 8

UM... yeah... it's there... but.... sorry guys I love my Firefox too much. I love the apps you can install for it. That is why I side with Firefox each and every time. Plus it's more secure and faster then IE xx. I have about 4 key things that I run in Firefox that I can't live without anymore. Twitter, gmail, google reader and of course Foxmarks.

IE 8 had some interesting features like a system for suggesting similar sites based off the sites you visited. I don't see why this can't be duplicated in Firefox. I'm not sure it hasn't been. I give them an 'A' for effort but they still have yet to win me back. The only thing I really use IE for is logging into my work mail because we don't have an updated version of Exchange at the office. We're looking into getting Exchange 2007 at some point which will pretty much kill most of my need for IE.

Media Player and sound in general

I've already sang my song about the Bluetooth but sound in general is good as well. I like the new streamlined version of Media Player. I eventually got my Vista codec's to work, mostly. Can't fuss about codec's just yet because they are, again, 3rd party. Now, one little problem I see with the current sound system is that when I am listening to an MP3 file in Media player and then a sound from Yahoo! Messenger plays, ie someone going online the MP3 playback is muted to play the wav file from Yahoo!. Then the media play picks back up. It’s like it had to mute the sound to play the file and then unmute. Maybe it's a feature, maybe it's a bug. I seriously think it's just driver issues again. So I won't complain too much.

Boot times

They seem to be equivalent to my Vista boot times, I WILL NOTE: My Vista HD is a 7200 RPM SATA II drive and my Windows 7 is a 5400 RPM SATA I drive. So if the speeds are comparable I am sure that Windows 7 would be faster if it were on the faster drive.

Standby

One little problem I had the other day, was that when I brought my laptop out of Standby the screen was dark. Well that's fine it's power management, but for whatever reason it took like 2 minutes for me to bring up the brightness on the screen. There is the possibility that Window's was trying to reacquire my External HD at the same time. Once the autorun came up the brightness functions worked just like they are supposed to.

Complaints -

I like the new WordPad. It’s very Word 2007 esque. But come on! Spell-check! I know they want people to use their Office suite or Works suite but I can open up 'Firefox' and have spell check, why not for the venerable WordPad?

OVERALL!

They got it right this time. I will be purchasing 4- 6 copies of Windows 7 business or whatever it is when it comes out, for my machines at home. I am very happy with this Beta. Good Job! Now I just need to load a few more apps on here and see if I can screw it up. LOL.

Maybe I'll load Photoshop CS2 on here and see how it does

Its my monthly update. lulz....

kahm005@aim.com — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:42:46 GMT

Well it's my monthly update to Live Journal. Usually I try to update more often but I haven’t had anything really exciting happen lately that warranted a post. Nothing really eventful!

A couple of good tech updates here...

Vizio is now making a sub $200 Blueray player. I hope to have one at some point. I hope it does as well as their TV's have. I have been happy with all my Vizio equipment.

I have been saying that hard drives have been the bottleneck in all current computers. And thanks to the SATA IO group there will be a new SATA standard. Following the standard it will be SATA III and it will be twice as fast as SATA II

YAY!!! 6GB/s transfer! woot! Plus some additions to eSATA and power over eSATA. Hell follow the link and read for yourself.

That's all the tech news I have to report of right now and with CES in full swing you think I would have more to report on. But I haven't had a chance to even read all my news articles. oh well.

Work is going pretty good. Fiber is being installed, computers cleaned for the upcoming sale in Feb and various and as sundry breakdowns that are making things difficult. Unfortunately our vendor is in the midst’s of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy so we are having a hard time getting support from them or anything for that matter. I hope it will resolve itself in the next few months but in that time we will have to make our own repairs. Nothing too major at the moment OR mission critical. All servers are supported by another vendor. It’s just PC's that are the problem at the moment. It's no big secret really you can read all about the current status of MPC here. They are the ones having the difficulty. At any rate it keeps things interesting.

Ok on to other things. Family and kids are doing well. Everybody is happy to be back in school. Kids are happy, mom and dad are happy! Can't really ask for more. Well I could but... let’s not be greedy.

Wow... I just noticed that there is a serious breeze coming in from the window in my kid's room. Need to look into that.

Whew! That’s better. Always helps to make sure the windows are locked to help keep drafts out.

Winter seems to be kicking the rest of the country's ass this year but ... again NOT here! They had snow in Washington State and California and even in the deserts of Nevada!!!! I just knew I lived someplace close to hell. I just didn't realize that I lived right on top of it. We have gotten the most meager of weather. I know most people would be happy but dangit I want some serious snow! Like we use to have around these parts. 15 years ago when I was in High School. Patrick County schools would always be freaking closed due to weather... And we would just get rain. Now I move to the mountains and the weather leaves. Why do you hate me so much winter! GRRR...

Oh well.

Quote of the night from Perfect Blue:
Excuse name spelling. is suck.

Rumi: Anyway, Mima, I'll explain all of this so listen carefully.
Mima: Okay!
Rumi: This is a browser for the World Wide Web. You launch it by double-clicking here.
Mima: Wha? Double-clip?
Rumi: What are you going to do with a clip?
Mima: But...
Rumi: See, next to "location" you enter the URL. It's not hard, is it?
Mima: Come on, Rumi! Can't you explain it to me in Japanese?
Rumi: Boy! Why did you buy a computer when you don't know anything about it?
Mima: Because they said it was easy!

Now you have to realize that this movie was done in or around 95-98

Netscape 3.0 comes up as the browser. LOL She did have a Macintosh Performa... LOL Quickly she realizes that her personal life isn't personal. It's like being Britney Spears and getting a computer for the first time and then googling yourself. LOL Shocking. ^_^

Any rate. Time to post this monster and head for the showers.

LOL

EOF

So it's been a very busy week.

kahm005@aim.com — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:42:59 GMT

So its been a very busy week and a sad one at work.

One of our co-workers Ronald Smith passed away suddenly and without cause at the moment. I'm not sure if the family will release what happened to him or not. It's their right. I am curious as to why someone would fall over dead. In that curious would like to know not creepy way. Still he always had a smile, was always early and was a great guy to work with. Ronald Smith you will be missed.

Now on to the news events.

Personal Stuff:

We were treated to an early snow This Tuesday ( 11-18-08 ) It kept the kids out of school and they were happy for it. We got to play outside for a bit but the wind was too strong to stay out for long. So we cut it short after 15 minutes and came in for Hot cocoa. Mmmm.. After that the kids kept inside and played various video games throughout the day.

Tech Stuff:

Ok here's what i have been saving up for a week or so. There is a lot of technology coming out in the next year or so to keep things really interesting in the computer world. First! Intel's Core i7 is now out in full force at all your favorite vendors and retailers; Newegg, TigerDirect Dell and so on. Prices on machines and equipment are still a bit steep but hell if you have the cash and want to buy something that will stay viable for at least the next 2 years then I will direct you to the Core i7. ExtremeTech has a good write up about the improvements over the Core 2 Duo EE the Core i7's are making. Its almost not fair to bash on a processor like that. And yes all you people out there that have been putting off getting a new computer because of price, the prices on the current Intel chips will come down eventually to help clear out old stock of Core 2 Duo's There is nothing wrong with Core 2 Duo's and Core 2 Quad's I like mine just fine. It has been the best performing processor I have ever had and does a good job. I really can't wait to see this put into the server platform. As my budget is getting tighter I may have to consider going back to AMD for my home PC needs. Not for a couple of years yet but I will be keeping an eye on AMD's performance and seeing if they become a bang for the buck processor again. I know the Phenom hasn't even held a candle to the performance of the Core 2 Duo and the Core i7's have taken a page from the AMD group by adding the memory controller onto the processor (increasing the number of pins to 1013), but I have always had a soft spot for the AMD chipsets. And the fact that they work really good with nvidia equipment. Coupled with the fact that they also have nvidia making chipsets for them still. I have never had a better performer then an nvidia chipset with an AMD processor. I can't sing accolades enough. I'm sure there have been some turdburglers out there but I have had good luck with mine. nuf said.

OK, In other tech news, there's an interesting article over at PCWorld about how Windows 7 is Windows Vista under the hood. Well duh. We knew that there would be no major overhaul of Windows 7 as they have tried really hard to get the Vista platform down and all the bug's worked out of it. And I am running Vista Business on my laptop now and I have to say that it is doing a good job at not fscking up! That said the article goes into the ins and outs of Windows 7 and how it is with a few questionable additions that may doom the damn thing the same as vista.. Didn't vista have some new features that didn't take off well? This article was really good at getting under the 'hood' so to speak of Windows 7 and comparing it to Vista.

Bottom line: So far, Windows 7 looks, behaves, and performs almost exactly like Windows Vista. And it breaks all sorts of things that used to work just fine under Vista. In other words, Microsoft's follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues. PCWorld - Under the hood of Windows 7

One of the interesting things in this article is a Windows 7 Compatibility Calculator so you can avoid that whole Vista Capable Snafu that also plagued Windows Vista.You have to jump through some hoops to get it to work and install but the results will be helpful in determining if it's time to upgrade to a new computer or hang on to what you have.

The long and short of it? eh I'm taking a wait and see stance; Which means that when Windows 7 comes out I will give it 6-8 months before upgrading to it on a test machine. I might even wait longer then that. You know the old saying no matter how much you polish a turd its still a turd. But if you set on it for awhile it may be a worm shiny turd LOL I'm starting to develop some love for the google interface. Now if Yahoo would do something like copy Google's documents and Excel stuff and give everybody 5 Gb of online storage yeah then we would have something.

Moving on. The next big thing in hardware I believe is this little tidbit from Sandisk. Explaining in basic terms the updates they have come up for SSD File systems. Calling it the Extreme FFS (Flash File System) Let me see if I can dumb this down a bit. ALL file systems in existence are designed for 'ROTATING' Media! Every single one. FAT, FAT16, FAT32,NTFS ext2, ext3 ALL OF THEM!!!
But Brian? So what? It can't matter that much right? LOL yeah it can. If you have a SSD (Solid State Drive) that is using Rotational file systems it will be inherently slow. SSD's don't rotate! This Extreme FFS takes into account that its not rotating and uses the most efficient means possible to store and retrieve data. In theory you should see random write speeds increase by a factor of 100 over rotational media.! I have long thought that the hard drive was the last bottleneck in computer technology. They also have created a new term you can expect to see more and more as SSD drives become cheaper and more available. vRPM which is the 'Virtual' Revolutions Per Minute. As RPM's were a way to judge speed of a drive in the past vRPM will convey the same information for Solid State Drives. See? I see a bunch o glazed over looks. HAHA just nod and keep on reading.

Now, if I said you could transfer 25 GB to your USB Hard Drive in say... oh 70 seconds. Would that be worth anything to you? Go ahead I wait for you to see how long it would take with your USB 2.0 devices (13.9 minutes) or your Fire-wire 1200 systems(MAC People) Ok Fire-wire 1200 may be decent but I see a lot of vapor and not much physical hardware. OK. USB 3.0 is due out in the near future and will be an update for Vista and be in Windows 7 by it's ship date. USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible with all your old USB 2.0 and 1.1 devices so there is o special ports or anything. The USB 3.0 cable will look a little different (they can be seen at TFOT) There were some problems with spec availability. Basically Intel was dragging its feet in showing its hand and the other vendors (AMD & nvidia) were getting a little testy about the lack of details about the new update to USB. There was some dirt thrown around about that. ars technica has a nice writeup on the details of the whole thing. So we should start seeing things around or after Christmas. I can't wait until consoles like the PS3 start popping out consoles with USB 3.0 and SSD's that would be a helluva box eh?

To sum up, what it comes down to is with the advent of SSD drives eliminating the bottleneck in hard drives, Intel's new Core i7 Processors, Vista as it is, Windows 7 to come, and USB 3.0 you are going to see a solid jump in the performance of all new computers coming out. Should you wait to buy that computer? eh It depends on how future proof, which is a little lie we all tell ourselves so that we feel better about chucking out $2,000 on a new computer! Will it be fast and amazing? oh hell yea. but you have to ask yourself that all important deal killing question...

DO

I

NEED

IT?

Well do you? In most cases, unless you are a heavy gamer or like to render your on animated sequences then probably not really. This technology will only improve the industry and make things more reliable, especially the Solid State Drives. But if all you are going to do is write stuff in blogs and emails to family and friends and do a little work then well maybe you want something like this.

Asus - Eee PC Netbook with Intel® Atom™ Processor N270 - White

First I do not work for BesBest Buy get anything from them for this. I just find cool stuff and post it.

These little Atom Processors go a long way in making ultra portable devices very very powerful with a small power penalty. They will run for hours on current technology.

And with new technology coming out of Korea you can expect to see Lithium Batteries that are 90% efficient.

more efficient = longer battery life

So instead of that little EeePC running for say oh 4 hours try something like 8 or 12 hours. That is longer then you can stay in one place without suffering some severe back pain. :) I don't care where you work even the Lazy-z-Boy store.

Who knows maybe batteries will become obsolete one day. Mojo Mobility has done some great work with induction charging. What is really great to notice about these devices is the size. They have gotten them this small and at 70% efficiency. Can you imagine induction charging stations in your house and car? Instead of having a tangle of cables and wires hanging all over the place you could just throw your phone on a table (special table of course) and it charge from there. I'm sure the proponents of induction energy will complain, radiation blargh blargh. But such a small field should pose any possible long term effects. I could see cars maybe as a detractor but we will have to wait 10-20 years to find out if we start growing extra parts we don't need. It would be really cool if we could apply this technology to laptops and just have the batteries or the laptops recharge while we work on them at our desks.

You know what's better then an Atom processor powering your little EeePC? A Dual-Core Atom Processor! That's right, Intel in its wisdom has decided to make a Dual-Core Atom processor. Dubbed the Atom 330 this little bundle of joy addresses all the shortcomings of the original Atom 1.6 GHZ processor. Check out the benchmarks over here at pcpro.com. Its a good write-up and doesn't pull any punches about the abilities of the 330 when compared to the N270 (the single core Atom Processor) They mention the Via C7-D for good measure as it's the only other mobile processor on the market besides Intel's ARM processors. It's good to note that the reviewer does point out how the single core Atom eeks ahead of the Dual core Atom. Of course the reviewer does say it could be the result of the new chipset that is running the Atom 330. We would have to wait and see on that. I am sure it's something like that and will have to wait for all the benefits of the Dual Core Atom to be filled out. In all other areas besides the office department the Atom 330 performs better then the Single core N270 and the Via C7-D. It may not be super stellar but I think we can expect some good things from this budget little processor.

Now we come to the:
Software of the week!

This weeks mention is FreeRinger. A web based calling service which allows you to make Free calls to Telephone numbers in more then 30 countries throughout the world! Skip on over and check it out.

Robots among us:

It should say something about a society or their shopping complex rather, if you have to have little directory robots to help you find your way around the place. hmm...This little guy seems ready to do the job!

And you may have noticed that the spam coming to your inbox has decreased. If you are like me I rarely notice the spam count in my folder. I just dump it when it gets ridiculous, apparently A security company has been monitoring a shady Internet Provider by the name McColo Corp and as of Nov 10 over 75% of spam was shut off. It was like someone turned off the fire hydrant and all the spam dried up. If you are interested head over to the article at the Washington Post for more info.

And finally for our Video fun of the day we leave you with a nice clip from WinHEC showing off an Eee PC device stage demo.

--OUT

Things and stuff going on...

kahm005@aim.com — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:22:20 GMT

Subject: Things and stuff going on.

Well. Voice recognition was fun to play with but I soon learned that it is nowhere near useful just yet. It recognizes words and such but not voices specifically. Meaning that in a crowded living room the computer will just do whatever it hears. Strangely enough they haven’t figured out how to cancel out what is coming out of the speakers. There needs to be more work in this department before it will become a viable technology.

In other news, I have finished upgrading to the new version of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex which came out earlier in October. I will admit that I couldn’t do just a simple upgrade. Oh I did at first; however my networking stopped working due to some issues with Hamachi. It looks to partly be a known issue but I didn’t have time to figure it out so I just wiped the drive and did a clean install. I backed my files up across the network first. I don’t have that many files on my Linux box, just some various images and a scattering of documents. I do like the fact that Ubuntu installs will look for other installs of OS’ and pull your documents and stuff over from them. It makes for easier transitions and less hunting for files on other drives. I am going to try it again and see if I can get Hamachi loaded, but I will do it a bit smarter this time and make sure I can uninstall the thing if it bombs again. I can usually get one good run out of it and then it never quite works right after the initial install.

Other things in technology are as follows:
Intel is coming out hard and fast with their new processor line named Core i7. The processor is due out around Nov 17. These will be quad-core desktop models. 920, 940 and 965 Extreme. 2.66 GHz, 2.93 GHz and 3.2 GHz respectively. Prices are set, mainly for OEM and system builders, $284, $562 and $999 again respectively. If you look at the reviews of the processor even the 920 is something to behold! I won’t go into all the details but if you are interested then follow the link to a really good read on just how these bad boys from Intel will shake up the processor world again.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2333764,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532
Now it may be happy circumstance that the next line of processors from Intel and the next OS coming from Microsoft both have a ‘7’ in their name but I will let it slide… for the moment anyway. Suffice to say I have seen some reviews and demos of the upcoming OS and it sounds like they are getting their act together. If anybody can remember the Windows ME days of really flashy interface and some cutting edge ideas that just didn’t pan out due to lack of infrastructure, code base or bad timing then you know what I’m talking about. Remember how much better Windows 2000 was then Windows Me? Well I think Vista is like a combination of the two. Vista, from my accounts has always been stable. I have had my problems with drivers like everybody else but once I got my system up to date and run all the Windows updates I have been pleased with Vista’s experience.
I just read recently that Cnet has confirmed a release date for Windows 7 for mid 2009. This is very interesting as most of the media execs in the upper echelons keep saying sometime in 2010 for the new OS. I think there is a desire to get behind vista and on to what will matter in the future. Microsoft is trying so hard to keep up with the change of technology that they are starting to stumble.
In yet what might be another mistake by Microsoft, Steve Ballmer has dismissed the Android (read as Google OS for Mobile phones), calling it “Financially unsound”. That like saying. Well gee your so far behind just don’t try at all. I mean if everybody took that kind of attitude then nothing would get created. In related news I noticed that the iPhone, a rather Android like smart phone, just took over the #2 spot in the Mobile division. They just bumped RIM (read as blackberry) to #3. Guess who’s next. It is good to have companies like Google making OS’ for phones. Keeps Microsoft doing what they need to stay viable in this market, coming up with new ideas and useful features. Unfortunately their corporate structure is what is causing some of their problems. They are cracking the whip over their developers asking for new and innovative ways to use technology. The problem with that is its like getting testimony through torture. Change will happen but not because it’s better but because the creator had no choice. Create something new or get out. This unfortunately makes for a very stressful environment and causes stagnation through fear. It’s sad but there it is.

I have also recently read an article about the acquisition of Gateway professional services by MPC is in serious trouble. MPC was removed from the NYSE and at the time was trading for only $0.04 a share. What does this mean to me? As we have nothing but Gateway machines at our Libraries for patron use it means that we may have a problem with ordering replacement parts for our Desktop and a possible loss of a vendor. I worry about the support more than I do the loss of a vendor. We can always find a replacement vendor but parts well that’s another issue.
That’s going to wrap it for this post. Catch you all online.

--OUT

It's getting easier

kahm005@aim.com — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:37:20 GMT

It's getting easier to use voice recognition. However I still find it annoying to have to switch to notepad every time I want to make an entry. And an AGP to copy and paste all the text AGP and then switch back to my blog entry.

For the most part working inside notepad seems to work best. I can equate this to working with the Dvorak keyboard and having the wrong driver. It kind of works but it's really annoying to use. One of the redeeming features is the mouse grid feature. Sure it's faster to use the mouse to click on something but if you're trying for hands free experience mousegrid will get you there.

I can see this working for email, in which you get it trained to your vocabulary such as special words, key phrases, Internet speech. I will tell you that speaking as a complete departure from typing everything. Once they get the bugs worked that it will be faster than typing.

I'll keep working with it and keep everybody up to date.

In the wee hours

kahm005@aim.com — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:16:23 GMT

Here I sit in the wee hours of the morning, talking to my computer. I really need to go to bed, however I'm having too much fun with this.

First impressions, I think dictation will work well for live journals and blogs, however I do find annoying but I cannot dictate directly into the message box. As it stands, I have to open in notepad, dictate what I'm going to write, and then copy and paste it into the message. OK so it's one extra step, but the novelty of being able to dictate what I'm thinking, not that I'm thinking that fast, seems to be an interesting idea.

I wish I had more things to talk about, however its late I'm tired.

--Out

hello world

kahm005@aim.com — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:52:50 GMT

Hello world.

Well this is the first, I'm actually making a post with vistas voice recognition software. Of actually stayed too late today and I will probably be in trouble when I get home tonight. But I thought this was so cool I would give it a shot. So far this is been an interesting experiment. I like the concept of voice commands, but it's a little awkward to get used to. I know the more that I use it the better it will be and that if I can get past the initial learning curve it may be a useful tool.

One of the things I don't like about it is its inability to interface with blog sites. You can navigate most pages by speaking keywords on the page, however when it comes to entering text for a post you actually have to open notepad and its dictate your post there. I mean, that's a little annoying, but it's not the end of the world. It will however make you a better speaker, because for this to work it has to have clear speech. What may actually end up happening however is that you will start to say things like punctuation marks in your sentences. So you can imagine that would be kind of funny. LOL
Another thing I wish it could be an easier, it is is hard to type emoticons. Maybe I need to look into making macros for this thing. I've read online that it is possible.

Almost anything required text input such as instant messengers, e-mail clients (the heart Microsoft products), or anything requiring text input is a pain in the ass. I mean it's almost impossible to swear at the thing. I just tried to spell ass and it spelled apps. This is a work in progress, LOL my microphone seems to be up to the task I'm not sure my patience are. I think I'll give it a shot though.

First impressions are pretty good. It's just going to take some practice and I really need to practice some more.

Ever wonder?

kahm005@aim.com — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:22:38 GMT

You ever wonder? You ever wonder why people do what they do. Take for example McCain and his party. In a desperate attempt to sway the Hillary voters away to his side he went with a woman for a VP pick. Um Hello?! Just because she's a woman does not mean you will get all the democratic women! Women are both republican and democratic as well. Stupid! I mean come on it just looks like a desperate act by a desperate old man... heh old. If he thinks he can relate to what everything is thinking in this country he has another thing coming. I can only imagine his policy on Internet commerce and trade or privacy. He may get the terms but he doesn't get the thoughts behind the process. I find a lot of people of that generation don't understand. Why? Because it's not what they grew up with.
I equate it to trying to run the latest OS on hardware that is 10 years old. Will it run? Maybe. But it will be slow and problematic. I don't want a president who is slow and problematic. I want one that will be able to relate to the times and technology and concepts of the time.

In other news my brother has been fighting with a workstation in his office down in FL. So far it has been one problem after another most of which revolves around Pagemaker and it's inability to work well with other things like.. oh I don't know, networking? (sigh) This has been fixed and things are working really well now.

Been jumpin back in the pond with my Fish friends. I have been absent from the pond for several weeks now due to work and life. It's good to get back in and shoot some people. Really helps the stress level.

I'm tired of the way I look. I set in my work chair and I can feel the arm rests on my sides. It's a constant reminder of how big I'm getting. I have a membership to the YMCA but I never go. I don't like to go alone. Well I have had enough and starting next week (Monday) I will be going 6 days a week swimming for an hour each day. I will also be changing my diet so I hope I don't kill anybody in this transition. I am just tired of it and I am ready to do something about it. I have a good plan I think. It will take some time for me to build up my strength again as I have not been swimming regularly for quite some time. Sure I go to the pool and play with the kids but that really doesn't count as swimming because well hey :) I am usually the foundation of the 4 ft area. So that's decided.

I finally got a netflix account and I am quite happy with the choices we have now. I don't think my kid's get it really but they will the next time a movie they want to see comes out and we can't go. I can go to Netflix and put it on hold for when it is released to DVD. I posted on my LJ that I had my Surround Sound hooked up correctly now. I have all sound coming through it instead of a few items. Now I just need reposition some of the speakers so that they are more in line with the couch then the ceiling ^_^'

Life is very stressful now, I can really go into details about any of it but the level of stress is very high on a personal level. Work is almost nonexistent worry. I will say that everything will settle down in about a week so I am not too concerned.

In other video game fronts I am back to playing Zelda: Twilight Princess. I am trying to go though and get everything. So far so good I have all the bugs which is fun.

In other tech news. I upgraded my laptop to 64 bit XP... Sigh... It was a pain in the ass and 'when' not 'if' I do it again I will more then likely go with Vista. (don't kill me) I'm just tired of XP. Brian! you should go Linux! blah blah blah. yeah you know? I'm running Ubuntu at work... It's fan fuckin tastic. And I use it for my excuse to learn new a new OS and the in's and out's of it. However I will not load it on my laptop because I don't want to spend a month trying to get an app to work only to find out that it will just work the first time and not after that. (Annoyed with hamachi for linux) And apparently nobody has this problem except me. They have similar problems but not mine exactly. I have tried reinstalling and uninstalling and deleteing files and doing it again. What did I get for all my hard work? Hamachi working... ONCE. ugh. I love/hate Ubuntu. I just need stuff to work with the hardware I have purchased, like my Zune. Don't get me started about getting my Zune to play nice with my XP 64-bit there are some things that are better left unsaid. I did get it working and I do like Vista mostly. More then I like Ubuntu at the moment. I have run Vista for almost 9 months (just up to SP1) and I liked what I saw. Unfortunately it is incompatible with key software at the library and I had to do away with it. I will be going to Vista for my home laptop. As my desktop serves as a file server on my domain I will refrain from installing Vista until absolutely necessary (ie a hard drive crash or corruption)

FOR ALL YOU VISTA HATERS OUT THERE!

Yes. Vista has problems. Yes Vista's security was blown the fuck out of the water by a couple of guys who were able to get it to run anything anywhere anytime. But if anybody can remember back to 2002 when XP came out the same thing was being said about it that is being said about Vista now. SP1 has gone to fix a lot of problems. It comes down to educating the user about security and Safe Surfing.

Cleaning keyboards. You should clean your keyboards from time to time. Or at least I think so. I got to looking at my keyboard at work and it was just so... ewww. So I picked it up, as it's wireless, and I walked out of my office and to the work bench about 20 feet away and on the other side of a wall. I go to cleaning it off and I start hearing weird noises from my computer... Once I was finished and I blew the machine out I took it back to discover 7 copies of Outlook open, folders in the process of being renamed and the computer locked. Hahah! this was too funny as I usually have problems with the keyboard working right at my desk. Oh well hehe.

Currently listening :
A Day Without Rain
By Enya
Release date: 2000-11-21

Tech update

kahm005@aim.com — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:06:51 GMT

Well here it is another Wednesday and I am posting about stuff in general.

Tuesday - Tech Update

I took part of Tuesday to update my various technology. One of these updates included updating the Surround sound system for the home. It wasn't much of an update so much as a reconfiguration of current technology to work better then I had currently setup.

I had always thought it weird that I couldn't get the audio from the Cable system to the surround system. I was reconfiguring the video connection on the Cable box because it has S video, no component, unfortunately. So while I was playing with that I found that my tv has an audio out. Well the rest was pretty easy after that. Plug all the inputs into the TV and run the audio out to the Surround sound. It has an optical out but I will save that for another day.

So currently hooked up to the system is a PS2, HTPC with non working TV card (DAMNIT), the cable and the DVD player. I think it is a good setup now that I have it working!

My XP64bit experiment has been mostly successful. Awhile ago I decided to update my laptop to Windows XP 64-bit. I know that this apparently isn't a 'true' 64 bit OS but it is a legal copy and I was able to find all the drivers with a little helpful searching. The hardest part to get working was the Zune software. For whatever reason Microsoft didn't feel like making a 64 bit for Win 64bit. there is a version for Vista 64 bit, but no XP love. :( bastards. Oh well, enough people figured out how to do it so there was a work around. I have a working copy of Zune media on my laptop and I can sync my zune. that's all I care about.

Currently - Today

I am working in the Martinsville Library. We were having some wireless users complain that the signal was too weak in the further reaches of the library.

So on Tuesday, the boss updated router in place with a WRT54-GL and we cranked up the wireless signal thanks to DD-WRT. So far I am at the far back of the libray and I have 2 bar's or 11MB. Which isn't too shabby. It's at least enough to keep things flowing nicely in the system. And I have not had any signal drop or problems surfing the web. I am not doing any media type stuff, ie youtube or streaming so I don't really know if I have consistent bandwidth.

UPDATE: Not consistent. :) but good enough at the moment.
UPDATE2: Well Youtube sucks but liveleak worked ok. Hmm.

A friend of mine is taking a database class at her local community college and that has me kind of interested in Databases again. I want to take a class but I am sure that our local cc won't have jack squat.

Oh well that's enough. I think I will head home for some Chili and tortilla chips

--OUT

COOL! Who needs actors! Come on voice actors!

kahm005@aim.com — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:21:22 GMT

Saw this and was like~ COOL! Can you imagine the fun to be had?

This was cool too but its AMD

AMD's new chip - the Radeon HD 4870 X2 - was able to process 2.4 teraflops of information per second, meaning it had a capability similar to a computer that - only 12 years ago - would have filled a room. AMD's chip fits inside a standard PC.

Tuesday!

kahm005@aim.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:29:28 GMT

Oh what a sign that thing's are getting back to normal. So I'm setting here in the coffee shop with my lady and we're just hanging out... Normally this goes much smoother but for some reason they have done away with the coffee table that was in front of the couch... So exactly where are we supposed to put our drinks and munchies... :( awww. Well this almost broke the deal for us today. I will put up with just about anything. I can make it work. My wife on the other hand hates change. There has been and should always be a coffee table for us to put our drinks on. This time however there wasn't one and she had a little fit about it. Quiet subtle. She sat at a table and ate her scone and watched me as I ran the wires for our laptops. I think that once she saw what I had done she was ok with it. But one problem, one thing out of whack and its Katie bar the door. Even now I sense that she isn't entirely happy. That may have to do with the fact that she copied data over to her travel drive and it isn't there now. She was going to work on her audio files for the story she is doing however.... no files no work. So now she has to do real work, like HTML on her website. I swear I hate HTML some days. Not just HTML but my shear lack of knowledge in the whole department. Web 2.0 has made the masses lazy. Give them something easy to do and they will do it. They won't rise to the challenge of doing for themselves.

So I got the kids out the door this morning and to school in relative time, I had to stop to get gas. You know your low when you have to pump the accelerator on a new car and it takes like 20 seconds to get the engine to catch. :) Oh well I got the car started, and I made it to the gas station to fill up. In and out and I got the kids to the school. After that.... SIGH.... I don't freaking care. I am just happy to be sitting here and goofing off today. :) It's like I get a day off for a change. I don't know how long this feeling will last but I intend to enjoy each and every one when I get them. Life is too short to be grumpy and unhappy all the time. Hmmm time for more coffee I believe.

mmmm

Angel's Kiss is some damn good coffee. And they make good blueberry muffins too.

If you are ever in the Stuart, VA area, be sure to stop in downtown Stuart for a good cup of coffee at Honduras Coffee. Their coffee is just awesome. We buy like 3lbs of coffee a month. We don't make it through 3 lbs a month but we try really hard. Usually the Italian is the first to go in the house. We really like the Italian coffee. It's such a rich flavor and just sets so well. We have gotten all fancy too and got a nice coffee grinder so we can keep the beans longer in their nice little glass containers. I'll have to take a picture of our coffee setup. It's not fancy but it sure is nice to grind your own..

One of the little purchases I have made in the past year is a set of Bluetooth stereo headphones. They are great for listening to music. There are better on the market but as an entry level device these work ok. They were like $30.00 and part of the problem is the Bluetooth in my laptop. There isn't an exposed antenna in the system. I have an external USB dongle but I don't want two on my laptop. The batteries in the headset will last about 6 hours and no they are not replaceable. I am sure I will have to upgrade my Bluetooth at some point down the road. There is just so much cool tech coming out I want it all but do I really need it. I seriously have more computing power then I have ever had at home or on the go. I really don't have room to bitch.

Well time to go get some work done. . LOL work. hahah. ^_^

Currently listening :
Deeply Disturbed
By Infected Mushroom
Release date: 2003-07-07

changes in season, changes with reason.

kahm005@aim.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:15:39 GMT

Current mood: adventurous
Category: Life

I was greeted with a pleasant surprise this morning. Crisp cold air. AHHHH. This is what it means to live in the mountains. Cool mornings and modest afternoons, I love the weather. Cooler weather, school starting up, and I get my Tuesday's back. Hmm maybe I'll go do something constructive with my time, read a book, go swimming at the Y or something. Naw I figure the first week of school getting started will require

My current project has been formatting my laptop and getting on the 64 bit band wagon.I loaded up XP 64-bit that a friend of mine gave me awhile back. I made sure to track down all my drivers before I got started. Found some really good resources for the project. It has every fricking driver known to god or man for my laptop in 64bit edition. So it will work just fine. So far I have only run to a few annoyances but nothing that will drag me to a halt.

My youngest son has been unbearable. It started at the begining of the summer and had wound up to an all and all drone now. He bemoans the fact that he can't se his nana every waking hour of the day. Doesn't understand that she had a job to do instead of playing with him all day. And when I come home he want's to call every 5 minutes and talk to her. I'm fine with that but I don't shoot him down. Naw Papaw does that really good. She was feeling sick today and went to bed early so he was crying and boo hooing even through America's Funniest Videos which is his favorite show. I was surprised that he didn't want to spend time with me. Oh well. Its a phase, he will work through I hope. He is having security problems I think. It's a part of growing up and finding your way in this world.

Otherwise things are going really well. (spoke too soon) School is starting up work is starting up as well. I will be very busy for the next few months with upgrades and stuff. Going to try and be better about completing projects that I start. I went around to a bunch of machines that I hadn't finished updating and if I were to download the same software again I would have to update them all over because the software has versioned up since I started the project. Screw that! If all goes well thenI should be able to just make images of the hard drives and update the software in one fell swoop.

Oh well thats enough fun for one night.

--EOF

of vacations and work and life an UGH UGH.

kahm005@aim.com — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:15:08 GMT

Well I returned from my vacation on July 31, 2008. Tired and sore. Took the next day to recover and boy am I glad. You drive for 4 days and see how sore you are :). But all in all it was a good trip. I took my father's ashes to the Lake where we had lots of fun in Florida fishing and such and put him there. So thats done. I can close that part of the chapter.

We got to see a ginormous amount of birds. Wife's says 19 species altogether. She was very happy..

We stayed at the Microtel in Lady Lake. I highly recommend it for just crash space. Contentinental breakfast and the room/bed was comfy. Good shower, AC worked and so did the wireless. No complaints at all. Even had a mini fridge and Microwave. Going to remember that in the future. Price wasn't unreasonable either.

We're planing another trip to FL at some point with the boys. But a few things have to happen first. Mostly money. We want about $3k for the trip.

Once I got back into work again. I felt guilty for being gone for so long. I know I had the time and we were not busy while I was gone. But I will still feel silly for taking a day or a week off. shesh. what a waste of time. But then I don't get out much :P

Blogged with the Flock Browser

7 more days not counting today :) weee

kahm005@aim.com — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:14:02 GMT

Current mood: content
Category: Life

yeah i can hardly wait. Ok I sound excited but i'm kinda numb I guess. I think I will really enjoy the drive more then anything. Really happy at the moment that Gas prices seem to be on the down fall. don't care why just happy it chose now to drop. Haven't been up to anything lately. Oh and just for anybody who doesn't know... I HATE INTERNET EXPLORER!. They do all this crap to make it more useful and make it more stupid. :( I hate being annoyed about stuff that I will set if I want to set. If it's such a great feature... Enable it first then tell me how to disable it. Or Leave it disabled and let the geeks figure it out then give it the ok. Thats the way things work now. and I like it that a ways...
<sigh>

Ok, that's done with. I don't know what it is about Firefox that appeals with me, even when it's being a total bitch and I wanna put it through the wall I still like it better then IE. I have since 2006 with v 1.0. :) I think I like the flexibility of the add-on's and such.

Lets see. Tasks for the day. Get the house picked up and vacuum. yes please... Must vacuum. too much dust Ok. make breakfast/lunch at some point, take the kids to the pool etc etc. visit the folks. Maybe stay the night if everyone is agreeable. I know the kids will be getting up soon. i am just enjoying the quiet. It has taken 8 years for them to learn how to sleep in. haha... no seriously. before they would just bound out of bed at 7 am and I would be like... aw hell now... So anyrate thats the deal for today.

----------------
Now playing: Infected Mushroom - Mtv
via FoxyTunes

Just nine more days...

kahm005@aim.com — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:39:58 GMT

Current mood: excited
Category: Life

Just nine more little days. NINE can you believe it? Well sure I guess you can. I haven't been to Florida in several years. Not since I went to visit my brother at his new place in Florida. That was a bitter sweet trip because my dad was in so much pain that trip that he couldn't sleep. I don't even remember driving down there... I must try to remember the drive better this time. We are going to do a lot of bird watching.... ok my wife is going to do a lot of bird watching. I'm the driver so I get to drive all over creation trying to make other drivers hit me on the way because my wife yells STOP its a < obscure bird never seen before> and snaps off about 100 shots out the window of the car. Oh were ready for this trip. We got the room already, and we got the supplies, Camcorder and such, Camera, Tripod(s) yes multiple ones. One standard and one you hang from the window of your car. So heres hoping my windows survive the trip. The car is in good shape. I will feel better once I get it serviced and the tires rotated, all the fluids checked and topped off. Then I will be ready to go. Must get "OFF" for the trip or other wise we'll come back with some horrible disease :) LOL Just kidding. But bug are a worry for me. I remember that we used to have screens on the front of our cars to keep the Radiators from getting clogged up and causing cooling issues when I lived there and I'm sure none of that has changed. I'll look into it once I get down there. Or at best I will spray down the radiator before we head back to VA.

Oh well back to work.

Currently reading :
Skin
By Ted Dekker
Release date: 2007-04-03

Monay Mornings

kahm005@aim.com — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:24:05 GMT

Monday, July 14, 2008

Monday Mornings...
Current mood: hungry
Category: Life

Well it's Monday. And usually Monday's are a pain in the butt, however for most of June and all of July Mondays have been a nice break from the world. I had a buttload of vacation time at work so with a little prompting I took every Monday off in those two months with the culmination of a week off in July. Even after all that time off I still have 40 hours of vacation time. Now the other point in this is I usually have Tuesdays off so that makes 3 day weekends for a couple of months. :) So this morning I'm at my mom's and we will be off to breakfast once everybody gets up and then a quick stop by the Library to check on some things and then we'll head to the pool for awhile and then home. Once there I just have to take the trash off. Once that's done everything will be cool and I can take Tuesday off an chill around the house for a bit. then its off to work. At the end of the month I am going to take care of some family business that has been weighing heavily on my mind the past few days. Back on Aug 08, 2006 my father passed away and I have had his ashes with me in the car. We have done a lot of traveling but now I am getting the feeling that it's time to lay him to rest and say my final goodbyes. I know sentamental but thats who I am . I plan to take him back to the place we loved the most. Florida. I just seem to recall him having the most fun there and with me. So we're going to visit all of our old haunts and I will drop him off at our favorite lake. We're going down for about 4 days and the wife will get to take pictures of birds. So this is a vacation/funeral if you want to pt a label on it. But funeral is really too strong of a word. I guess I'm searching for closure. I never really mourned my dad like I should and I think that's what has me so low at this time of the year. I've never perscribed to mourning the dead past their death but then I have never had a close family member die. I can tell even in my heart that I am now closing off my heart to my mother in some quiet way to protect myself so that when it finally happens I won't be a non functioning emotional wreck. And she's still doing pretty good. It's a defense mechanism I guess. Oh well enough of that. I am looking forward to driving down to Florida for my first time ever. I have made the trip several times but I have never driven it. Always been the passenger. This time it will be different. I will go places that I want to go and see things that I want to see. And I just love driving through the swamp in GA because of the smell. I know it's weird but I always liked driving through that area.

Oh well its time to go get breakfast.

Later everybody.

Currently watching :
Johnny Test-Johnny Test Vs Bling Bling Boy
Release date: 2008-12-23

freakin tired

kahm005@aim.com — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:19:26 GMT

freakin tired
Current mood: melancholy
Category: Blogging

Ok so after work I am tired right? Right... We had a wii tournament at the Library today and after I got everything done and all the games were played and the tournament done I cleaned up and went to my mom's ... I was so tired I took a quick nap and listened to Galaxy Quest. I am planning a trip to Florida at the end of the month but... I'm not that excited about it yet. I mean I will enjoy driving back to my old home and old haunts but I don't know. I just can't get excited about it right now. Maybe when it's closer. Well time to go home, eat dinner, and keep the kids from killing each other..

OUT

Currently reading :
Carrie
By Stephe

Two Years today...

kahm005@aim.com — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:54:02 GMT

Two years ago today something happened that would change a part of my life forever. On this day in 2006 my dad would fall and break his hip. A month and 4 days from now he would be dead. You know I was hoping for something today but apparently its just not time. I'm traveling to Florida later on this month to scatter his ashes in the lake we used to go fishing at. Maybe I'll feel something then. I didn't cry when it happened and I haven't cried since. Oh I'd want to but the tears never came. Well, we shall see. Today is a day for celebration and explosions and remembering our Independence.

a post!

kahm005@aim.com — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:56:11 GMT

Well here it is... a post.. blargh

Things are going well. Summer is going very well actually. I've taken my vacation time off, all the Mondays in June and July and I'm taking the entire last week off in July as a birthday present to myself.

Been swimming every Tuesday with the boys and sometimes on Sundays. We're doing pretty good the boys are getting better at swimming. And at some point they will swim on their own.

It's been a good summer.

Been playing a game called Star Pirates. Its a simple web based game and a little Raven Shield.

Ended up getting a cell phone finally.

Nothing much going on. Just life.