Cameron's Thoughts

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Unless your planning on buying the FM remote thing for your 5th gen iPod, don't get the latest firmware update. Bottom line, it sucks. The version 1.1 software is supposed to fix some bugs and add support for the remote. I didn't notice any bugs before, but now, after updating, when I hit the center button while playing music to rate songs and things, the wrong screens show up. Sometimes it will show the rating screen three times in a row. But, even though the rating is showing on the screen, you might adjust the volume or the tracking on the song. I guess this is the only thing I have a problem with right now, but, when I got a new computer, I don't have any of the rating info, so I have been re-rating all the songs, and this is making it annoying.

Now, I'll start by saying I am not real big on watching children's movies. But, there are a few I do like such as the Lion King and Shrek. But, Saturday night after work, Nickcole and I decided to go to the movies. There wasn't really any outstanding movies playing, but I noticed that there was a 3D version of the Polar Express playing at the IMAX theater. I have never been the IMAX as it has mostly had movies that I haven't wanted to see. And anything I did want to see was just a normal movie blown up for the bigger screen. But, based on the previews, I knew the Polar Express had some pretty impresive animations, and to see it in 3D would make it worthwhile to pay the extra charge for going to the IMAX. Now, this wasn't cheap. At the Celebration Cinema in Lansing, it was $12 a ticket for adults. But, it was definitely worth it. I could not only believe how good they made the charaters look in the movie, but the 3D was sooooo good. Every little detail was 3D. I was afraid it was going to be something where the 3D was an afterthought and they just had some parts where it looked good, but I am certain that the movie was made with the 3D in mind. Some scenes such as the roller coaster type ride seemed so real. It almost felt like you were really on a roller coaster. The snow looked like it was coming down in the theater. And a couple scenes where there were flybys of train were impressive.
If you just want to see this movie, watch it in a normal theater, if you want to experience this movie, watch it in the IMAX.

Joel mentioned to me that you can get 2GB of free storage on Hotmail with an @msn.com address. There are instructions there how to sign up for that. While it's a very nice offer, though strange that only MSN Explorer users can access that. Maybe there are just testing the service out with those users, and will maybe expand the offer to all users in time. Once GMail is out of beta, the other free e-mail services will need to come up with something.
But I don't plan to sign up for this. It is very nice that it works in all browsers, such as Opera, but rumor seems to be that Opera is working with Google so that version 7.6 will be compatible with GMail.
Not only that, while Hotmail does have some nice improvements recently, the features and ease of use in GMail would make it very hard to switch away from it. Plus, I have already imported all of my e-mail and contacts into GMail, so I don't want to have to do that all over again.

Not an extremely comprehensive site, but I have found it to be informative. If your like me, and still have trouble thinking of webpage design as XHTML and CSS as opposed to old school HTML, then this is the page for you.

On Wednesday I had phone wiring and phone jacks installed in my house. I have now entered 19th century technology.
I have been living in my current place for about two and a half years, and bought it new. Never had any phone jacks, and when moving I decided that I would try the wireless only phone option. So for the last two and a half years, a cell phone has been my only telephone.
There were a few things behind that decision. I already had a cell phone that I never really used at the time. I bought it because I was driving a hour one way to school three days a week. I wanted a way to call in case of something happening. Of course I never did need it. But, I was paying about $30 a month for that, then another $50 for my landline. I then realized that I could by a plan with two cell phone for $70. Cheaper and then Nickcole and I could still stay in touch. To top that, at the time, MCI was my phone carrier. But, they didn't have the ability to move my service. I would have to switch my service to SBC (was known as Ameritech at that time). After they moved my service, I could then switch back to MCI. Plus, all the costs of installing the jacks, wiring and hooking up the service, it wasn't worth it.
Fast forward to today. I have a child. Nickcole always forgets to charge her phone. I worry something will happen and there will be no way to get in touch with 911 or anybody for that matter. I also am planning on getting DirecTV once they get local channels in my area. Should be ready within the next few months. DirecTV requires a phone line to operate. I now work for a phone company. I get a really nice deal on the phone service, so there is really no reason not to have one anymore.
So in an era of computers, satellite TV and worldwide Internet, I now have a landline phone.

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.

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.