Cameron's Thoughts

Saw The Passion of the Christ last night with Nickcole and her friend Mandy and her (now) fiancee Tim. It was quite a movie. Very realistic in every respect. I wasn't aware that the movie was going to be in another language. They went as far as to use the native tongue during the time of Jesus. Everything had to be read as subtitles. I usually will completely avoid movies like this since all the reading takes away from enjoying the movie. But, in this movie, it wasn't bad at all. For one thing, there wasn't a whole lot of dialog. When there was, it went pretty slow, so you could still view the movie comfortably. The movie basically depicted the arrest and brutal punishment that Jesus went through in his last hours with the movie finishing with the crucifixion. The movie was almost 2 1/2 hours long, and the movie was basically about the last four hours of his life, so, you can imagine that there wasn't much that was left out. This isn't a movie for kids at all. I really have no idea how they made it so realistic. The scene during and after Jesus was being punished was amazingly real. You can see his body being ripped apart. It's actually quite hard to watch. It really does make you think though. No matter if you believe that Jesus is the son of God, or not, most people agree that the events of Jesus' last hours are pretty accurate and did actually occur.

Here is some interesting news about the FBI searching the ITT Tech headquarters. I wonder what was going on? Maybe they found out ITT Tech is a bunch of lying bastards. It's about time they have paid for their bullshit. Feds serve warrants at ITT Tech campuses

On Monday Nickcole and I went in for Nickcole's ultrasound. We could see the heartbeat already. Nickcole's stepmom Wendy found out for us from the radiologists that the baby was 7 weeks and 4 days along from the ultrasound. That puts the due date at October 9th. So soon.

Today was my first day at CoreComm. It started off with a three hour orientation going over all the benefits and policies. The benefits are actually a lot nicer than I was expecting them to be. So that will be nice. The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. Was shown around the building, received my ID badge to access the offices, and started my training. Got to listen in on some calls with a guy named Ruben. He is going to be training me for the next few weeks. He showed me lots of info and where to find the info in the future. Looks like I won't really know how to do everything at first, but at least I will know where to find what I need.

Tomorrow morning will be my first day of work at CoreComm. I will need to be there at 9 in the morning, which will be different for me. I never worked that early at McDonald's in the last couple years except for few exceptions. I guess I will be working 9-5 all week long during training. Not sure exactly what my schedule will be, will find that out tomorrow. It's strange not really knowing when I need to be to work for sure when this week has already started.

Tonight I ended up buying a new TV and setting that up. Was going to hang out with my friend Patrick and a bunch of other people, but I forgot to line up a babysitter until the last minute, and then it was too late. So, instead I went and purchased a new TV that Nickcole and I have been planning on buying out of our tax refund. It's a 27", so not a whole lot bigger than our previous 25". But the last TV we bought was really cheap, and we bought it before we got married back in 2000. So, it's nothing great. This new one is really nice. It has a flat tube, and 700 lines of resolution with a digital comb filter. I guess that makes signal take advantage of all the additional scan lines since the highest resolution input is 480. But the TV also includes some nice inputs such as component video, in addition to the S-Video, composite video and RF input found on most sets. Our old TV had only a single RF input making it very complicated to get a VCR, DVD player, Dreamcast, Gamecube, digital camera, and previously digital cable all connected.

I have decided to give up on the SB Live card. Not sure if it's just my PC or what. Maybe I will get around to throwing it in another system and see what happens. It might just show back up on EBay. I can probably sell it for more than I paid for it anyway. So now I am just chilling with my AC97 onboard card with stereo output.

I say a link to this site on Daily Gadget a couple days ago, but now even CNN has picked up this story. "Site posts low-tech hack for iTunes giveaway" is basically about how you can see under the cap of a Pepsi bottle and determine if it is a winner or not before opening by tipping the bottle to a certain angle. Maybe I am just crazy, but I thought that this was just pretty obvious. Me and my friends Curtis and Patrick used to do this back in Junior High all the time when they used to do the 1-in-6 wins a free Dew. We rarely had to pay for the pops. Looking back now, I can see this is wrong and pretty much stealing, but at the time I just thought it was cool and fun. I am just surprised it's taking the general public this long to realize this trick, something I was doing as a little boy.

Sunday is my last day of work at McDonald's. Going on nearly six years of working there it is going to be a big thing leaving there. It is hard to imagine how well I know some of the people I work with. There are a number of people who have been there since before I started as well as a number of people who have worked quite a bit of that time. Many of these people I know almost their complete life stories and how they feel about so many things. I know these people better than my own family. So it is hard to just say "Bye" and just leave. But it needs to be done. I have to remember that this is just a small phase of my total life. While right now, this job seems like everything there is, many years from now those six short years will seem insignificant. I can tell this as when leaving high school almost four years ago, at that time it seemed so crazy not to see these people that I had spent the past 13 years with no longer. But only a short time later, school seems like a distant memory and I really do not miss anyone. I still am friends with Patrick, and I still see a few other people from time to time. But that's it. All just a distant memory, as my years at McDonald's will still be.
Anyone who is reading this might be wondering why I am reflecting back at my years at this fast food job almost in a positive way. Well, I am, but not the actual job itself. It's the co-workers who made it a great place to be. Not all of them, and probably not even the majority. I guess eventually you just block out the negative and the whole crappy work day is hidden from long term memory. I mostly just remember the good times, and the funny times. There are so many things that happen there, involving employee's or customers. Lot's of unbelievable stuff. And no, there is no memories of people spitting on food, or picking up food off the floor and serving it. I have never seen anything like that happen.
Maybe I will post some of the memories that stick out, but not today. Today the whole thing will me leaving has really started to come to reality. Today was the last night that I would close, which is what I usually do. It was also the last time I would work with some people like Bob and Pat. It's weird to think I will never work with them again. So, this is all really coming to reality inside my head, and I have to get ready for the next step in my life.
Future, here I come!

I have just listed an Atari Retro card for sale on EBay. It's an MMC card and works in any Nokia Series 60 phone (except the 7650) and works on Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) 2002 machines and up with SD card slots. Also works on all the PalmOne OS5 models. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the Clie since Sony had to use the Memory Stick. This item will be listed until about this time on Sunday.

I haven't been to many states really, and Illinois and Missouri hardly count since the highway on the way to Texas just barely passes through them. I'd make a world map, but other than these few states I visited, I have only gone to Canada once, and that was for about 15 minutes.

create your own visited states map.

OK, I bought a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 card. It's one of the older ones. I have had problems with the sound stuttering ever since I installed it. It will play fine, but every 30 seconds or so an annoying buzz or skipping of the sound will occur. I have tried a number of steps in order to trace the problem, but so far nothing has worked. (The OS is Win XP BTW)

• I first tried reinstalling the device drivers. That had no effect, so I went and made sure I had the latest drivers and I do.
• I then went ahead and updated the motherboard drivers. That also had no effect.
• Since I needed to anyways, I went ahead and reinstalled Windows. I normally wouldn't have given up so quickly, but I planned on doing this within a few weeks anyway. Still, same results.
• So, I made sure to reinstall all the drivers. I also had some trouble with my NIC card since I installed the sound card. I had an onboard NIC and a PCI NIC, so I just removed the PCI NIC.
• I moved the sound card to a different PCI slot since after removing the PCI NIC, the IRQ of the onboard NIC and sound card were the same. I have now verified that nothing shares any resources with the sound card.
• I also went into the Control Panel, then Sounds and Audio Devices. I went to the Audio tab, advanced properties and turned down the hardware acceleration. This seemed to work the other day, but now I am having the sound problems again.

That's everything I have done so far. I kind of stuck now. Has anyone else experienced similar troubles or am I missing something obvious? I have also posted this at ClieSource hoping to get some more input on this.

This is funny!

Today I added a feature to allow a "sideblog" or "blogroll" to the side of this site. Actually, I will just be posting links to threads at ClieSource that I find helpful, funny or just crazy. Just threads I like for one reason or another. But, it's all automated and very easy for me to post to (otherwise I would never use it. ).
Special thanks to David Raynes and his the MTOtherBlog plugin for Movable Type.

Is my Blog HOT or NOT?
I have entered this site to be rated by whoever. If you like this blog, (or even if you don't) rate it so I know what people think. Give it a bad rating, and I will hunt you down.

I will be starting a new job soon. I will be working as phone technical support at CoreComm. I will be starting there on the 24th. I don't know if I'll like the hours though, I will probably be working 12 noon - 8PM. That will basically take up my whole day. But, at least I will be working somewhere where I can move up and advance my career.

I think I have solved my problem of my sound card. It didn't require the Windows reinstall (though it needed to be done anyway, that sound problems just pushed me over the edge). After reinstalling Windows, the sound card still stuttered. Guess what, all I had to do was go into the Control Panel, then go to Sound and Audio Devices, then go to the Audio tab, then the advanced settings. Turned down the hardware acceleration one notch and I was all set. I am very happy now, it was too quiet around here the last week.

Well, as I have now installed w.bloggar my Windows reinstall is complete. This is a task that I rarely get the energy to do, but it is now done. I still have my old Windows install on my other drive, just in case I didn't feel like finishing. It's also nice, since all my files and such are easily assessable via my other drive. That made the Opera browser install a cinch. Just copied my profile folder over and my custom setup along with all bookmarks and all my mail was restored exactly as they were. And I am a data junk collector. I have every e-mail from as far back as 2000 (well, not the spam, otherwise I'd have a 120GB drive full of mail.) So it was important that I didn't lose anything. I have also reinstalled all the essential apps such as instant messengers, video and imaging apps, and most of my Internet stuff. I still have to install my Clie stuff and my Nokia 3650 stuff (fuck, I don't want to deal with the Bluetooth install again ) So, I still have work to do, but I have done enough today.

Hailey and Ash are good friends

Hailey pulling Ash's ears

He doesn't mind though

I was just reading this article about the upcoming Cobalt OS and I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed. PalmSource didn't add the updated GUI. I didn't mind that so much as long as they were too busy getting everything else working.
But, I also read that they support higher screen resolutions (up to 32000 x 32000!) but they don't entirely support them. The article said that the OS doesn't completely support VGA and a licensee would need to make some changes for full VGA support.
Plus, there is NOT support for switching between landscape and portrait modes. As Ed mentioned, he was told there would be support for that, and I could have sworn I read that in some document that described the OS6 API. I wondered what happened.
I also posted this at Cliesource to see what other people think about this.

Here are some screenshots of the new Palm OS Cobalt (formerly known as OS6). These are from Palm InfoCenter and there are a couple more at their website. PalmSource didn't make quite the interface overhaul they had originally planned, but it seems they will wait until the update to Cobalt is released since they didn't have time to rework the interface yet. I think the minor updates they did give a fresh look to the OS while keeping it's time tested simplicity.

Images from Palm InfoCenter

The next two Operating Systems from PalmSource have been announced today, Palm Cobalt and Palm Garnet. Palm Cobalt was originally thought to be called OS6, since all OS's prior have been named by there version number. But, PalmSource has decided to change that. That is because Garnet is actually a newer version of OS5 specially designed for use in smartphones. PalmSource thought it would be better to show that the two OS's are designed for different uses while both being up to date. If they were simply called OS6 and OS5.4, then the smartphones would have trouble selling with an 'old' OS.
I personally don't know if this is the best strategy. Microsoft has done something like this by having Windows Mobile and Windows Smartphone OS's. But with Palm OS market share dropping fast to competitors such as Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian Series 60, I don't know if this is the best time to segment their main products. Time will tell.

Eating some lunch right now, and this Bowl Appetit stuff is good! Just add water and microwave and it's a good hot meal. Even better, it only cost $1.28 at Wal-Mart. A whole meal for a little over a dollar. Eating the three cheese kind right now, but I'm gonna have to get more of this stuff.

Just testing a video posting. This video (and any other I post here) requires Quicktime 6.5 to run. It was taken on my Nokia 3650.

OK, so the pictures a bit blurry.

Today Nickcole found out she is pregnant again. She had a home test taken, and then one at the hospital. The one at the hospital said that not only is she pregnant, but she is about two months along!!
I'm still kind of shocked over this. I wasn't planning on having another child so soon. Hailey and this new baby will only be about a year and three months apart. More info to come...

Well, I haven't yet gotten around to reinstalling Windows on my PC. Some friends wanted me to hang out the other night, so I did that instead. I did however clear one drive and move all my files off if it. I also repartitioned my drives. Now, everything should be pretty easy. Disconnect my drive with Windows that I am currently running, insert the restore disk, and restore my PC. Unfortunately, since I didn't build this computer, it has a restore disk instead of an actual Windows CD .

Well, pretty soon now I am going to being the process of reinstalling Windows on my computer. Right now I am backing up all my old files from my 30GB drive to my 60GB drive and going to install Windows on the 30GB one. I'm not sure the speed of the 60GB drive, I will check it out in a bit, but I know the 30 is 7200RPM so it will be fast. Wish me luck!

Got a nice deal on a SB Live 5.1 card off of EBay. Only $10 with shipping. It was advertised as a Sound Blaster 128 card. I just wanted to get a card that had support for rear speakers since I got a Creative 4.1 surround sound speaker set for Christmas from my mom. I'm not a big audio fanatic, so I had just been using the stereo sound that came built into the motherboard on my PC. So I was very surprised to see the card was even better than the one advertised.
I have had a little trouble with it though. I think there is some sort of resource conflict. Most likely with my NIC. What happens is, every time I start my computer up, I am not on the Internet. What I have to do is go into the network connection properties in XP and disable the connection, then re-enable it. Then it works fine. But, I have to do this every time I restart. I tried moving the NIC to another PCI slot, but that didn't help.
My solution to that for the time being is to use the onboard NIC. The story for that is a strange one too. My PC came with an onboard NIC like many PC's do now. Remember that big power outage that hit the northeast in '03? Well, I was on the edge of the outage (my town didn't lose any power, but many of the nearby cities did.) Instead, we had just lost power for a few minutes, then go hit with a nice surge. I have surge protectors on all my equipment, but maybe they are getting old or something. Because my speakers on my PC made a deafening screeching sound. Then I noticed my NIC was no longer working. I quickly replaced it with a PCI NIC to get back on the Internet. But, I then realized from time to time my onboard NIC was recognized by Windows. What happens is, if I restart the PC, the NIC is gone. If I completely shut down, then it will return on next start up. Annoying, since I usually just restart because I don't want to wait for a shutdown to occur to restart. It takes about three minutes for this piece of shit to shutdown.
So, anyways, I at least have a backup network solution for the time being. But, the sound is still having some trouble. It keeps having this trouble where every 20 seconds or so, it will freeze up for a second and make a terrible jittering sound. This makes listening to music impossible. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and even updated my motherboard drivers. I think the next step is a Windows reinstall. Not just because of this, the whole computer is just running like crap lately. Too many programs installed and a number that have been removed, but probably not all the way. Somehow almost 35GB of this drive has been taken up, and that is in less than a year. I have other drives filled with data from the past. What is taking up all that space?? I have no idea.

It's not very often the little town of Charlotte see national news, by today my place of employment, the McDonald's of Charlotte was seen on the front page of FoxNews.com. The story can be seen here.

For all of you looking to boot Bush, don't forget to vote in the Democratic primaries. In Michigan they are February 7th, I just got done voting online since I applied for a little while back. I hope someday the actual elections are online because it was nice and easy to vote from home, especially with a little one to take care of. I voted John Edwards. He actually seems to care about real people, not just letting the rich get richer. He has some good idea's on what to do with advancing the economy, and I think if anybody has a chance to defeat Bush, it's him.

Dang, this is some strange shit: The BBC is reporting there is a parrot with a 950 word vocabulary that is able to create sentences and even shows a sense of humor. Also of strangeness is that the parrot was showing signs of telepathy. The article says:

"In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards. Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance."

Very odd. I wish I had a parrot like that.

After being discovered a couple of weeks ago, Sony Japan has announced the arrival of two new Clie units, the TH55 and the TJ37. There is also info about a TJ27, but it looks like Japan won't see that device. Also of interest, it seems Sony is going to give Japan, American, and Europe all different devices with different wireless setups. It seems like in Japan, only the TH55 is getting WiFi, while in the US, both the TH55 and TJ37 are rumored to include it. The test devices the FCC seen also had mention of Bluetooth, so it's quite possible that feature will only be seen in Europe, like they did with the NX73 being BT only in Europe. There is also a nice Flash demo of the TH55 on Sony Japan's website. Here are some specs from ClieSource Clié TH55 - OS: PalmOS 5 (Ver.5.2.1) - CPU: 123MHz SONY Handheld Engine (same as the UX-series) - Memory: DRAM - 32MB / ROM - 32MB - Display: 320x480 / 65536 colors - WiFi: 802.11b - Clie Organizer - 0.31 megapixel - digital camera (640x480 max. resolution) - MQV (Quicktime), MPEG-1 Playback - Voice Recorder - No mention of Bluetooth although some images do have a Bluetooth LED. - 2.89 in x 4.78 in x .62 in (approximately) - Comes in Black or Red

Recently I have been thinking about getting a DirecTV system. I currently have a basic cable package and looking at what DTV has to offer, I can get a ton more channels for the same price. And all digital. I was using digital cable a little while back, but I had to cut back on that to save some money. I do miss it a little. Plus, right now, you can get a system with a 40 hour TiVo built-in for only $50. DirecTV only charges $5 a month for the TiVo service too. Usually it is more (I think $13). TiVo is something I know I will want to have eventually, and the DirecTV setup is the way to go. It has multiple tuners so you can record while watching TV, or record two shows at once. Not something you can do with digital cable. You might notice that I have a little ad to the side of my main page. I added that for two reasons. One, to help support this site. It doesn't run for free. But, secondly, it's a real good deal, and I want to pass this on to others.

Got some smilies working on the journal here!

That's all I got so far. Special thanks to Brad Choate and his MTMacro plug-in for Movable Type. Also, thanks to the girlie matters website for having the instructions laid out in a way I could understand. I had all the macros set up, I didn't realize I need that 'apply_macros' tag to be added. All better now.