It always seems like time slows down when you are anticipating something big. For me, that is happening right now, as I will be moving in only five days!
I have been “stuck” here in Oxford for the past 15 months in a lease that I kinda screwed myself into. I could have gotten out of it, with a penalty fee, but I would have had to sub-lease the apartment and that would just be asking for trouble. It seems like its been an eternity, but my lease is finally up at the end of the month and I will be moving to my new place this Thursday.
The new place is just outside of Memphis, TN which means I will be close to all of my friends again. I am currently an hour away from everyone, which as you can imagine, isn’t much fun. I will be getting my own place (no more roommates, woohoo!) which is MUCH nicer than my current apartment. Also gone will be the ridiculously slow proprietary internet and slacking cable. Oh, and the new place allows pets, something you aren’t suppose to have here… yet many do anyway. I want to adopt a baby kitten
The only thing I will miss here is going to the home football games. But I’m sure I’ll still make it back for a game or two this season, and catch the rest on TV or the radio. Oh, and I hope I get better cell phone reception at the new place. 0-1 bars in my room here = fail.
I spent most of today packing things up. The good thing is that most of my stuff is still in storage, so I don’t have much here to move at all.
Anyway, my next update will be pics of the new place, so until then…
As TMZ first reported, the just-defeated UFC champ was busted this afternoon for alleged felony hit and run. Now we have the details — and they’re insane! Rampage was on the 55 Freeway in the O.C., hit two cars and got off the freeway. The chase was on.
Rampage then began driving on the center divider. But it gets worse. According to the police report, Jackson then drove on the sidewalk, “causing pedestrians to flee for their lives.” He started driving the wrong way on a crowded street, colliding with yet another car in an intersection. As he continued on, running several red lights, his tire disintegrated and he began driving on the rim.
Rampage eventually got to the exclusive Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, where he again drove on the sidewalk, “causing pedestrians to flee in terror.”
Eventually, his car came to a stop and he was taken into custody at gunpoint. Cops took him to the Orange County Jail, but they determined he was “medically unfit” to be booked. Cops won’t say if he was high.
I spent the better half of today moving my main system into a new HTPC case for a review on OCIA.net. I really am not fond of case reviews, especially using my main work system, because something ALWAYS goes wrong. Today was no exception.
I finally finished the transfer and photo shoot, booted up the system, which worked for a few minutes… then the trouble began. The system froze at the Windows loading screen. I shut down, then tried to start up again… FAIL. The system would power on for a split second, then power off. I tried just about everything I could think of:
Removed motherboard from case
Removed add-in cards
Put power supply on PSU tester, all volts were fine
Cleared CMOS
Reseated memory
Reseated ATX and all other power cables
Checked GPU, CPU, Northbridge for excessive heat
Funny thing, if I pressed power then reset , it would sometimes boot but only for about 5 min then randomly shuts off.
I was completely out of options, but something that one of my writers (Rutledge) said got me thinking. He said it sounded like a heat issue… but I had already checked the obvious sources. Then it hit me.
During the move, I had taken the cover off the power supply to blow out the dust inside. Perhaps something happened to the PSU fan while I was doing this…
Sure enough, the fan wasn’t spinning… and this is why. When I replaced the cover, a wire had become tangled in one of the fan blades and I didn’t notice it.
I fixed the wire and everything is working perfectly now. Now that I have wasted several hours… I should probably shower and get some sleep.
One really cool app I have found so far is midomi. It is similar to Verizon’s V-Cast in that it can “record” audio or you singing or even humming a song, and it will search for the artist and name based on that recording. Below is a quick video of it in action.
The program is pretty neat, but far from perfect. I have been getting a lot of “server busy, try back later” messages and also have come across songs that are not recognized. But, not bad for a free app!
I have been spending the past few hours checking out various (free) apps from the iTunes App Store. As you can see from the screen above, I already have several cool apps installed. I made a quick video showing some of these apps in action. My favorite, by far, is Pandora… can you say Satellite Radio killer? Incredible!
After waiting over four hours and constantly hitting the server, I finally made it through and got my first gen iPhone with 2.0 firmware activated.
I had a bit of a scare when I first saw this message, but luckily I was still able to activate without a problem.
Success!
Time to play with some apps!
I recommend just continuing to try and activate - eventually you will make it through. Or, if you aren’t that patient, maybe try again later this evening.
I actually should have seen this one coming a mile away, but eh, perhaps the anticipation of a new OS got to me.
I woke up earlier than normal to install the 2.0 software on my first gen iPhone. It took a few clicks of the “check for updates” button, but soon I was off to the races, happily downloading the 200+ MB 2.0 firmware update. Things were going as planned until the update finished and I needed to log into iTunes to activate the phone.
Epic fail on Apple’s part for not beefing up their activation servers in anticipation for such high traffic. They already knew that a ton of people would be activating their new 3G iPhones, and that even more people would be upgrading to the 2.0 firmware on their first gen phones and activating as well.
“Apple has confirmed to us that activation is down, and that customers are being asked to take the phone home and activate via iTunes later. We’re not sure what good that’ll do, since the servers are down no matter where you are, but Apple says it’s “working on a solution.” In the meantime, it looks like the new SIM works in first-gen units, so at least upgraders aren’t totally phone-deprived. Oh, and remember that updating a first-gen iPhone to 2.0 requires hitting the server as well, so if you haven’t taken the plunge we’d say hold off until this all gets sorted.“
Just imagine how ticked some people must be, after having waited in line this morning for a new 3G iPhone, only to leave the store with a non-working phone!
The long awaited iPhone App Store is now LIVE on iTunes! While you can’t install any of the applications until tomorrow (OS 2.0 required), you can still check out the 500+ applications available (many are free) and download them. Tomorrow looks to be a fun day for current iPhone owners as well as those purchasing iPhone 3G.
Speaking of, I originally planned to get the 3G phone but have since decided to hold off. After seeing the limited 3G coverage (none in my current town), I see no major reason to purchase it. I might reconsider once I move closer to Memphis at the end of the month. By that time, there should be plenty of reviews out on the 3G version. But for now, I am just excited about all these new apps and OS 2.0 coming tomorrow. I have already downloaded several free apps (AIM, eBay, MySpace, Facebook, WeatherBug, iTunes Remote, The New York Times, AOL Radio, umm)…
I ended up staying with Adam and Kiwi while they were house sitting this weekend and as luck would have it, the place we were at had a nice pool and hot tub. Kiwi had to work both days so it was just Adam and I. The hot tub had a built-in CD player, so we got some music going and hung out poolside.
I love hot tubs, but I think I took it a bit overboard. It was already 90+ F outside, so it probably wasn’t too smart to stay in there most of the time, but that is exactly what I did on Saturday. By Sunday, I already had a decent sunburn on my shoulders but got right back in the hot tub. After a while, I switched to the pool and lounged in one of those floaty chair things. It was nice to just chill, but that resulted in even worse sunburns on my shoulders and now my chest. Two days later, my shoulders are still hurting but everything else is fine.
I thought it would be pretty cool to try out some cool dunk pics so that is what we did. I had an idea of what I wanted the end result to be, and it came out pretty much exactly as I envisioned.
I set the camera up on a tripod, set it for multiple shot mode, then held down the shutter button as Adam ran, jumped and dunked. The camera snapped pics the entire time. Afterwards, I one of the pics in Photoshop, then brought in another photo on top of it and “erased” his body into the original image. Repeat this process until you have every body shot in place and merge it all together. I could have done a better and more careful job with the eraser, but the errors aren’t too noticeable.
Overall we had a lot of fun. It was really fun to just relax for a change and not do much of anything productive… although I could have done without the killer sunburns on my shoulders!
I have been looking forward to UFC 86: Jackson vs. Griffin for a few months, and that time finally arrived Saturday night. Instead of paying $40.00 for the event on Pay-Per-View, I decided it would be cheaper and more fun to watch it for free at Buffalo Wild Wings.
It wouldn’t be much fun to go with just a few friends, so I invited a bunch of friends - we ended up with nine people showing up, not bad! It took a bit to get our seats, but once Tiffany arrived, she got everything taken care of with the quickness! Way to take charge and get what you want!
The night was going well and I had accurately predicted the winner of every fight up to the main event, which is what everyone was there to see. I had my money on Rampage by KO early on, but that wasn’t to be. The fight actually went the full five rounds and went to the judge’s scorecards for a decision. Both Josh and I had the fight scored 3 rounds to 2 for Rampage, but apparently the judges saw it differently. They scored a unanimous decision for Forrest Griffin! What?!
I recorded the fight on my camcorder and ended up watching it again later that night. The fight was actually closer than I originally thought, but I still think they got the decision wrong. The only thing Griffin had going for him was the fact that he was pressing the action and he had some nice leg kicks in the earlier round that clearly injured Rampage. Had he stayed with those kicks, I have little doubt he would have taken the leg out completely.
On the other hand, Rampage was clearly the more powerful fighter and got the better of the exchanges. He rocked Griffin twice, nearly power slammed him to break out of a triangle choke (the only reason it wasn’t really a slam is because Griffin let go of the choke just before he got slammed) and left him with some nice cuts and bruising all over his face. Rampage didn’t have a scratch on him.
Anyway, below are the results from the TV card, as well as some random photos of everyone.
Sarah and THE WORLD FAMOUS.
Kiwi and Adam.
Astrid and I.
Tiffany and Sarah
Airica and Keith - yeah, I kinda caught him off guard hah.
