I Want to Ride My Bicycle

Thursday, September 27th, 2007 @ 6:04pm

Obligatory Queen reference here if you missed it. So I’m going to be trying an experiment over the next few months that I have been considering for a while anyway, I just now have extra incentive to do so. I found a program in Birmingham called CommuteSmart which encourages commuters to find alternative forms of transit, either by walking, biking, car pooling, or mass transportation.

They are now sponsoring a program where they will pay you $2 for every trip you make to work using one of their alternate forms of transportation, up to $120 during a 3 month period. Since I have a bike, work is only 1 mile away, and the average temperature has now dropped below 95F, I’m going to give it a shot. So to start it off, I will state my goals.

Starting in October (or later depending on when I get the program information back), my during the 3 month period is at least 40 trips. That means at the very least, 3 trips per week. I need someone to help keep me accountable and remind me. Don’t forget, not only will I be saving gas and money AND doing the environment some good, It’ll also help keep me in shape. So for those of you out there who are reading this, help keep me accountable!

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17 Sites for your Wii

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 @ 9:56am

http://mashable.com/2007/05/09/wii-web2/

Some pretty spiffy websites that were created specifically for browsing on your Wii!

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Black Screen of Death

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 @ 9:36am

See slashdot.org for article.

As per the article, Computer World is reporting that Microsoft has just turned on “Reduced Functionality Mode” for Windows Vista users. What this means is that for users not running authorized versions of Windows, Vista functionality is crippled reducing the screen to a black screen with no start menu and no desktop after 1 hour of browsing.

The problem with this in itself is that Windows itself has had issues authorizing itself. A few weeks ago, the Windows Genuine Advantage had an outage. Not to mention there are a ton of cases where Windows has had “false positives” identifying legal licenses of Windows as “pirated”.

I seriously question Microsoft’s intentions here. I understand they want to battle piracy, which is noble on its own terms, but when you alienate your own legal customers, your business should be at risk. It’s no wonder that XP still retains a large portion of the market share and that alternatives such as Linux and OS X are becoming more popular. If Microsoft does not shape up and learn that you should not treat all of your customers like criminals, some changes could be in store for them in the future.

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More PC Updates

Saturday, September 8th, 2007 @ 9:02pm

Not to bore anyone reading this, since this is mostly for my reference to help remind me what I was looking at, I’m putting up some more finds that I’m considering for my new upgrade.

On the hard drive end, I’m currently looking at a 320GB Western Digital 7200RPM. It’s cheap, and probably provides more space than I’ll ever really need in the near future. Although, with something like this I can now rip my CDs at a higher quality than 192kbps and dedicate a whole partition to just that.

In the realm of processors, I feel like an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3GHz should do the trick. It’s just at 3GHz and still under $200, so you can’t really beat that.

I have not decided if I’m going to purchase a new graphics card yet, and I may hold off on that. I’m currently using a GeForce FX 5900, and it seems to hold its own pretty well. Although, I might be looking for a cheap TV tuner and a new case to house my old components as a home DVR powered by MythTV.

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Appalachian State vs Michigan

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 @ 7:55pm

Amazing, just amazing… Here is the last 1:45 of one of the biggest upsets in college football history. Never before has a 1-AA team beat a ranked I-A team.

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Motherboard Hunting

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 @ 10:47pm

So I’m coming close to finally upgrading my PC after many years. I’ve been looking at motherboards, and may have narrowed it down to the following two selections. The ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe and the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe.

The price range between the two is quite large, $129.99 and $179.99 respectively at the time of this post. While the latter is more expensive, it includes onboard wireless capabilities along with some additional raid options that the former does not offer. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Edit: I’m still looking around for motherboards at this point, as these two seem to have gotten mixed reviews (bad ASUS drivers, non-hardware RAID). I really liked my SOYO motherboard from back in the day, but I can’t seem to find those around anymore.

Update: Found a third motherboard to faceoff to the other two. An ECS KN3 SLI2 which seems to cheaper than both the ASUS motherboards I listed before with as much bang. And it can support up to 32GB of memory. Who knows why I would need that much memory anytime in the next few years, but you never know…

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Invisible Drums

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 @ 6:32pm

Rowen Atkinson in a hilarious skit. Words don’t do it justice, so just watch it!

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In Soviet Russia, Games Play You!

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 @ 10:07pm

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Someone has made a hacked level from Super Mario World where you have to do very little other than push a button here and there, you don’t even have to really move.


All I can really say, is either someone was really bored, or had a little too much time on their hands — or possibly even both!

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Nintendo is King Again

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 @ 9:38pm

Source. According to VGChartz, in a matter of only about 9 months Nintendo has passed the XBOX 360 as the best selling of this generation’s set of consoles. This goes to show that indeed fun may not involve the latest and most powerful graphics.

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Tornados in Brooklyn/Staten Island

Thursday, August 9th, 2007 @ 9:27am

In a rare occurrence of weather in NYC, a F2 twister touched down in yesterday in the boroughs of NYC. According to the article, this is only the third tornado recorded to hit NYC since records were first being kept in 1950.

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