Turning 25

I don’t know what there is to say. I’m older. I got some awesome stuff. I went on a treasure hunt. Enjoy some pictures from the event . I’ll have more info on a few of these items when I get a chance.

Kerry got me a huge BBQ, this thing rocks like you wouldn’t believe!

The sign reads “Beware: Poker Players and Loose Women Are Known to Frequent This establishment” (From Keith)

USB Controlled Missle Launcher. Hell Yes. (From Meghan).

My parents got me a new desk chair, but sent me on a treasure hunt to find it first.

http://www.vimeo.com/1051802

A Sign?

HD-DVD & Blu-Ray. In the end the battle between the two formats will conclude when dual-format players are readily available and studios start choosing whichever format is cheaper to manufacture.

But for now there is a battle, one which HD-DVD seems to have at least gotten a jump on. What evidence do I base this on? Its hardly scientific, but head over to Amazon and search for the regular DVD version of “Planet Earth”, or just click here.

As a quick side note… Blue Planet is an incredible series that takes you everywhere on earth, and its truly amazing to watch in HD.

Anyway, back on topic. The basis I have for my “HD-DVD is winning” argument is this, scroll down a little on the page and you’ll see the section that lists “What customers ultimately bought after viewing this item” and you’ll see that 7% of people ultimately bought the HD-DVD version, and 4% ultimately bought the Blu-Ray version.

Scientific, hell no… good enough for me? Of course.

That is all.

Turbo Kitty

It has been a long hard road for Turbo, Chris’ adopted cat. But she could always make you smile.

You can read the whole story of Turbo from Chris’ post last night. My memories of Turbo are mostly from the late nights and weekends over at Chris’ house doing physics homework, when turbo would make it well known to both of us that she ruled the table, not our homework .

My heart goes out to Chris & Michelle, and I too will miss Turbo dearly.

Persaverance

Chris Scott, long time buddy, climbing aficionado, computer nerd (no matter what he says, his username chalkbag225 is a combination of the obvious climbing refrence, and the not so obvious computer/engineering refrence: 225 is the alt code for Beta, ß), engineering student and all around great guy took the time to put together a 20 minute video of a climb that him and his climbing buddy Roy did a few years back. I thought it was pretty cool; in particular I love the soundtrack.

I even went as far as to create a Rhapsody play list with everything except the tool songs (which aren’t on rhapsody) and publish it. If you are interested in giving it a listen on its own, check it out here.

Otherwise, I would highly recommend taking a little bit of time and checking out the video on Google.
If you are a fan of the show Survivor Man, these two parts ( part 1 – part 2 ) reminded me of that show.

Cingular 2125 Review

I just wrote up a review of my newest toy. The Cingular 2125 Smartphone. This thing rocks, and it rocks in a small little package. If you get a chance head over and take a gander. If your looking for a new Cell Phone, and have use for the features a PDA offers, this is definatly the phone for you.
Click here for the Cingular 2125 Review

“Clean Your Desk (no i am not drunk)”

Last night I went over to my good friends Chris and Michelle’s new place to show them the wedding video I made for them, and while I was there my cell phone battery died when I finally got home to plug it in I had two voicemails, and some presents on my desk from my extended roomate family

This is a picture of my desk, with the teddy bear and pair of notes (click for large picture):

My detective skills tells me the first one is from Becca and Cody, the second is from Jenn. They were both folded in half, so there are two sides (and thus two pictures) of each.

By the slurred words on my voicemail, and the mild ramblings of these notes, I apparently missed a good time last night . If I can come up with a good way to record my voicemail I’ll upload it.

Well, I had today off, so I caught up on some sleep and went ahead and cleaned up my desk, so for Becca (because I’m sure she started it ) here is my now clean desk!

And now … Wheels and Tires

I ordered the wheels and tires I’d been eyeing for a long time now. They are pretty wide, and 18″ instead of the stock 17″ so they should change the way the car looks substantially. I picked up a the SSR Professor SP1 wheels, two pairs of 18×8.5 and 18×9.5 with corresponding 225/40 WR 18 and 245/40 WR 18 Avon Tech M500 Tires. Put 1 and 1 together, and this is what you get:

[fa:p:a=car-parts-and-pieces,id=503493649,j=l,s=m,l=p]

Rivercats Baseball Game

I went out to the Rivercats game today, they are the local AAA team for the Oakland A’s and generally not a bad team. The tickets and dinner beforehand at the Rio City Cafe was all curtesy of CJS Lighting. I took my camera out and took about 150 pictures, most of them are trash, so you likely will only see around 25, and for now I’ve only processed 13. Couple of interesting events, a sketchy call at second base got the away teams coach out on the field for a lavishly long yelling session with the ref, that got him kicked from the field, and shortly after the Rivercats loaded the bases and brought home 3 guys on in infield error. But instead of recapping the whole game for you which would be boring, I’ll just show you a pretty picture and direct you to the gallery where you can find the rest of them.

This particular picture was actually a mistake, at least in part. I had the camera focused on the batter, but at the last second as I want to depress the shutter the autofocus locked on to the net and this is what I got. I actually liked it because its something diffrent, its not the typical baseball picture, the focus is on the guy on deck, both literally and figurativly, instead of on the batter. So I’ll step down from my poetic soapbox and let you enjoy the picture for yourself. Click the image to see the rest of the pictures.

Sitting Alone

Philmont Video Capture

Well I have made an initial step towards getting the Philmont 2001 video out to those I promised it to a little over 4 years ago. Tonight I re-captured the entire first tape (2 hours, a 25GB DV file). I finally got to use one of the features on my new Camcorder that was a selling point when I bought it. I am able to connect the old analog camcorder to the new one and the new camcorder does a hardware analog to digital conversion which I can then just send to the computer for a direct capture using Premiere.