oops

According to Mark Wheat on 89.3 the Current, this week is National Turn-off-the-TV Week. I guess I screwed that up by getting sick and spending the last 1.5 days in front of the TV... where basically once I went through everything on my Tivo, the only options are hours-upon-hours of interior design shows, soap operas, or infomercials. I chose the former... but I guess in hindsight, I should've just tried to finish off Quicksilver. (Very good btw, basically historical fiction...)

For anyone who might be interested, I just received my calendar from ShutterFly. Oddly, they express-mailed the calendar by itself, and I haven't yet received the miscellaneous prints I also ordered. No complaints, just weird. Anyhow, I'm not very impressed for $25. Basically I'm paying for hard-stock paper, average inkjet printing, and a white spiral binding you can probably get done at Kinko's. I understand there's labor involved, and I wouldn't say it's bad by any means, but even though it's essentially a one-off job, $25 is a bit steep.

I also just learned about smugmug.com which hosts pictures and lets others order their own prints of which you can take profit from. Of course that "pro" service charges the photographer an additional $100 a year, so you'd have to be a bit serious about it and actually try to turn a profit.

Ultimate in Geek Humor

If you've played 8-bit Nintendo, it is impossible not to find this funny.
http://gprime.net/video.php/nintendothemesacappella

Just ordered my calendar from ShutterFly -- for $24.95, it better be at least somewhat professional.

Nothing to Say...

As I've stated before, I only like to blog something when I feel I have something to add to it, or some point to make, or whatever... it wouldn't feel worthwhile to me to sit down and write a diary out. Sometimes it can be fun to read others' blogs as such, but it's just not me. Anyways, in an attempt to flatly contradict what I just wrote -- here is one of my "projects" that I am trying to resolve:

I have a townhouse that was built in the mid 1980's so picture lighter wood than the 70's, but still some fixtures and other various interior elements usually found outside the house. I wish I would have taken a picture of the previous bedroom lighting fixtures that I removed last year. These were presumably purchased by the previous owners. Think bad seashell motif in a pseudo-chandelier form. But I digress.

Being a guy, I have no interior design ability whatsoever, nor do I really desire to have any. If I paid someone a bunch of money to come and redesign a room for me... I probably wouldn't be able to say if I liked it or not until it was done and I could actually see it.

The project that I am slowly getting around to describing is deceptively simple. I want to paint my office (ex-bedroom) a color that one would think "studio" or creative space or whatever. If someone walked in, if they immediately thought that I was one hell of a creative genius, that would be a bonus.

My current progress is basically about 10 different paint chips hanging on the wall... obtained during trips to Home Depot for other items. I own the house, so yes if I fux0r it up, I can always re-paint blah blah blah... but somehow this is just too difficult for me.

More Long Beach Pictures

I'm trying out PBase's hosting service -- I get like 10 MB and 30 days... so here you go:
http://www.pbase.com/mattg42c

Be sure to click "original" format -- as the resized versions are less impressive.

Awesome Trip

LBGP 2005 - 01
Originally uploaded by MattG42C.

The camera was worth every penny. I don't have a lot of time to think of what to write here. I'm going through about 500 pictures from this weekend, among other more important things.

My goal is to come away with a poster print and a calendar from one of those online sites. Has anyone uses ShutterFly to create a calendar?

More later...

Los Angeles - Take 2

Well, I leave for LA on Friday and the forecast looks great. Oops, I just jinxed myself. Anyways, it's Southern California, it can't rain all the time, right?

Anyways, I am very much looking forward to this. It's the first time I will have gone to the Long Beach GP, and since it is the season opener, it's even more exciting. I hope I will end up with enough good/great pictures to do a calendar and make a couple near-poster size prints. I encourage everyone to watch it on NBC on Sunday - 3pm CDT... or check out Race Director on Champ Car's website, supposedly they even added real-time telemetry.

I will need to come up with more topics to write on eventually, I sort of hate to do the "today I did this, yesterday I did that" sort of thing unless I have a point...

NotSoPowerBook

Thursday of last week I sat down to use my PowerBook on my cheap IKEA desk, (next to my slightly less-cheap Best Buy desk, containing my PC.) As I reached towards the laptop, a large bolt of lightning arced from my fingers to the touchpad. Smoke rose and flames erupted... *ahem* okay, not exactly. I got a mild shock from my computer. This was not the first time this had happened.

Those of you familiar with the latest generation of PowerBooks know that their cases are made almost entirely out of METAL. Metal is known as a good conductor of electricity, a flexible but strong material; used in wires, automobiles, skyscrapers, etc. Laptop computer cases... not so much.

Bottom line, after resurrecting the computer from sleep mode (involving the dreaded forced-power-off,) I went to click some things, and lo-and-behold, the button was not working. Oh, it was mechanically moving up and down, but nothing was happening on the screen. In fact, if I held it over menu items, they would work -- so it was stuck DOWN. After about two hours of resetting this, and rebuilding that, still no dice. I quickly re-learned that trying to use an Apple without a mouse button is something like trying to ride a bicycle without a front tire...

So I brought it into the Apple Store "Genius" at the Mall of America... I decided that my threshold for pain was about $200. (Note: I had not opted for the 2-year AppleCare warranty...) I figure the machine is worth probably around $1100 or so at this point. I'll pass on telling the whimsical conversation with the genius, mainly because I don't remember half of it. Final price tag: $325 if they send it away to Apple, $270 if they fix it there.

Now, once the parts came in - they actually fixed it in just over an hour... I was at the mall for another event with friends, I actually got a voicemail while in the bars on the top floor, saying it was done. When I got down there, with a mild buzz, I inspected the laptop, and made the Genius reseat the F2 key, as it was skewed, but it worked.

While I was waiting, both dropping it off and picking it up, there were at least 2-3 different people bringing their iPod in with problems. One guy had a battery that lasted only an hour, another could only use it for about a day at a time before having to reformat the unit and reload all of his songs. Of course, all of these were also out of warranty, and the best the genius could do was offer a replacement for $250. Note that brand new iPods are about $300. Hmmmm... coincidence?

Obviously, all electronics are going to have issues, and music players as popular as iPods are going to expose them in higher numbers. But, given my experience with the PowerBook, it makes me wonder how much priority Apple gives to design over quality. In other words, are they skimping on quality components, construction, and QA testing to give us shiny things that look good? It wouldn't be the first company...