Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto

Big props to Dave for this awesome rendering of me as the happy-go-lucky cyborg. I think "Larry the cynical cyborg" has a better ring to it, probably due to its alliteration, but alas, I am not so very cynical and so this is much more accurate.

<---Notice maintenance hatch on chest. This has the extremely usefull features of not only allowing me to work on my wiring and reboot my systems when they lock up, but it also gives full access to my OGS (Organic guts stuff). It can even make light work of weight loss, allowing one to merely open up the hatch and pull the offending tissue out with one's super cool cyborg hand- a feature which, as you can see by this picture, I have allready put to good use.

Also, I'm bullet proof, I think. Few more tests...

Thanks again Dave, your the man.

Peace out,

----Mr. Roboto

P.S.: If you don't get the title, "Mr. Roboto" it is the title of an old song by a band named The Styx. You HAVE to go listen to it. It is requried listening; resistance is futile. If you do not, my evil cousin, Lore, will come and kill you. (Let's see if anyone gets that sci-fi reference....)

New theories of flight: Why didn't I think of that?

This is my brother:



For a period of several days, he continually badgered me about putting up a full description of his craft and it's technological and scientific break throughs. Many an occasion he would come up to me, and with out context start telling me new features of his creation or of motifications to its principles of operation. He wanted for me to be sure to pass them on.

However, so fast is my brother's pace of innovation that I felt hard pressed to keep up. By the time he had atempted to retrofit an electric motor from a totally un-lego toyset onto the orginal body, and to make it spin the propeller by a series of ad-hoc gears, the new creation shared few simularities with the one I had photographed earlier. I checked just now and he has a winged lego creation on his mantle right now, but it is something totally other then what he had made before.

I do think though, that his creation and new discoveries were so amazing that I must put to record what they were, before it is too late. Humanity deserves it.

Let us start off with an illustration of this rocket-sled-plane juggernaut:



















First of all, as you can see, this thing is more loaded the a B-52. There are your normal everyday type of guns- the ones for shooting frontways. He's got lots of those- but of course, he also has guns for shooting directly above you. You know the circles at the bottom of legos? Yeah- in his creation, those are guns, too- for shooting people below you.

Her

Before I go on to the new laws of airflow, I have to emphasize how cool my brother's dual gun is- yeah, not only does it shoot bullets out the center, but lazers out the middle. Can your gun do that? I didn't think so.

Allright, now we get down to the real revolutionary bits of this thing. Noctice the two peices marked "Air Deflector" and "Air trap"? These work as such:

When in Normal flight, the air hits the flat up and down part of the air deflector. This causes it to go almost straight up till it hits a cloud- the air then bounces back down and flows over the wing, generating lift. This is the first aircraft to ever be flown based upon this priniple by the way- we are truly breaking new ground- err, air. Cloud deflection- who would of thunk it?!? Its genius!

The slanty part of the air deflector is for landing. Now this is clever- When you need to land, do you slow down? WRONG! You speed up! Why? Well, you see, as you speed up the air is forced over the slanted part of the air deflector, which pushes it up into the Air trap. The air trap is kind of like a parachute- if you enough air in it at the right speeds, POOF! You slow down extremely fast. And so, when making a landing, you full throttle this little baby until air starts flowing into the air trap and BAM! Your landing light as a feather, nice and easy like.

I thought all of this very clever, though when my brother disccused it with me, I asked him if the idea of a valve or flap in front of the air trap may make things easier. He said "Yeah, I was thinking of that." I think it was I who pointed out to him that if your taking off, you would get air in the air trap. He must have been thinking of this all day, for that night as I was trying to get sleep he suddenly shouted out an idea he had. It went something like this:

Little man:"Zeke! Zeke!!"
Me: "eurghhg, mubgph.
Little man: "Zeke!
Me: "Aughhdmgpph... what?"
Little man: "You know how yike (my brother's way of saying like) if you were trying to take off-"
Me: "Wait, dude... is this about the rocket-sled?"
Little man: "Yeah!"
Me: "Ok..."
Little man: "Well, you know how yike if you are trying to take off you are speeding up and speeding up and speeding up?"
Me: "Yeah.."
Little man: "Well actually if I had the air go up like that it would not work. It would not, because it would be like woOop-EIErrn! It would be like speed slow down so it would not take off."
Me: "Yeah, ok..."
Little man: "Well actually, you know how it yeally (thats my bro's way of saying 'really') would take off then? You know those guns on the bottom that can shoot people? Well actually, those would just all shoot at the same time yeally yeally hard and so it would get up into the air, then it would fly."
Me: "Good idea little man- now I want to go to bed. Its ten o-clock."

Topics topics everywhere, but not a drop to post?

So I didn't expect this happening...

Right now I have three really good things to blog about. I want to do them all justice, but alas, I am a lazy butt.

First of all let me apologize in advance to Anders and anyone else who is still part of the dial-up sufferage- there is alot of pictures here. Here is a tidbit of each of them, and because, as I have mentioned before, I am a lazy butt, this may be all you get. Dissapointed? Well then, beg for more.

Ok, foist of all.... I had aLLLOOT of fun fixing my friends computer...


Yeah... thats on MY computer.... The malware was amazingly agile. Mind you, I had TWO antivirus programs on the computer to stop them from even getting that far in the first place.
This story I suppose would be called "The computer from Hell" or "Galen's Bane" or maybe something like "#@#$%#&$ VIRUSES!" if it had a title. The story it amazing, even though I won in the end... albiet a bit battered, but I won none the less. I have to write this one up later, even if it is just for my own theriputic reasons...

Other good story is of my brothers creation:



This is Little Man's "Flying Rocket-sled-ship". Quite a mouthful, but it well deserves its title. This thing has it all- Shields, machine guns, lazers, redundant gas tanks (and gas tank bombs). My brother's brain has the most amazing blend of imagination and engineering. The best feature of this aircraft is probably its aerodynamic design- no, really. My brother explained to me all about the airflow and how it worked- I think he even taught me some things I didn't know about lift. I'll tell 'em to you later, if I get a chance, as well as give you an entire description of its features and which bricks do which.

Well its hard to top that, but this is something I'm kinda proud of:


My new case! (Thanks Mr. Deer!)

I got that thing wired up last night... though one of the Front usb ports I messed up on.

Oi, so ends my oversized post. If you guys want any more of these stories, either pay me one low monthly rate of $14.95 for the extra content plus a Uttereast.blogspot.com mug, or show me some love in the comments.

----Me.

Big post coming... make a note to not visit soon

Big post coming... for half of you(the geek half), it will be more exciting then the superbowl . For the rest of you, sleep in or visit some other site. Its going to be unapologetically geeky.

In the meantime... My sister got the entire first season of the muppets show on DVD with some of her Christmas money. What a great show! The writing is so great on that program and it's genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. I wish they were still on the air.

This is the opening to one of the greatest shows ever concieved:


And here is a great big group shot:

Wish I could get some good screen caps from the show or even video clips. Maybe later.

Sax player muppet (to dancer with poofy scarf thing): Hey, whats long, hairy and has one eye and sharp teeth?
Dancer: Mmm... I don't know, what?
Sax player muppet: I dunno either, but your wearing it!
Scarf thing: HEY TOOTS! (Jumps off of dancer)

Just you wiat 'enry 'iggns!

Huh... a few cool tidbits to update all 'yalls on.

Lets see.... Foist of all, I auditoned for Pygmalion- this is the orginal play that the movie "My Fair Lady" is made from. I just found out today that I got the part of Henry Higgins- the male lead. w00t! It feels so great to play someone I can be relaxed with. Last time I was prospero, and he had magical powers and was a somewhat complex character to pull off- your always second guessing yourself on stage, wondering "Did I do the staff movement powerfully enough? Did I have a realistic expression for my character?" etc. Before that I was none other then Aslan the Lion. Yeah, the all powerfull ruler of Narnia from beyond the Sea. I have to basically represent a good and perfect God. And a lion.

For this role, all I have to do is be a jerk! A sophisticated jerk with a british accent. I'm very happy.

I'm even more happy for my sister- she got Eliza Doolittle! She wanted it so badly, and I she worked really hard at actually studying the accent. This to is sort of a first for my sis. The last two plays she's had to play the leader of the wolf secret police- really a male character. And then next she played a drunk butler in the Tempest. (By the way- she was amazing at each of them). But not only is this a female part, but its THE main charcter and a charcter my sister has always LOVED and wanted to play. I'm so happy and proud of 'er. Way to go, sis!


Hmm... in other news, I have either misplaced or lost completly my very VERY important software CDs I need for my business. I am hoping they are at my client's house (who I am going to visit Monday) but I am really anxious. I feel pretty stupid- I have basically all the most important ones in there and not having it is stopping me from doing my job properly. If I had to replace them it would take quite a bit of effort and money... If you guys could pray that I find it and also get the computer I am working on right now fixed and out of here soon, I would really appreciate it. Its been weighing on me alot... Thanks.

Hobo boots and humanity.

Check out this sweet deal:I call them my hobo shoes, and they rock my socks like it was their job. Which, I guess, technically, it is...

These are rare find for me you see- My feet are so ridiculously wide that I generally have to speacial order them- haven't bought shoes in a store probably since I was 10 or so. But here these shoes were- just sitting on a rack in Goodwill, waiting for me to come and claim them in all of their awesomeness. There wicked tough, espeacially for something that is used. I think there sides are made of leather. I dunno, but if I had to hop a train I'd say that at least my footwear would look authentic.

Ok, on to other matters.

Today I have been simultaniously in awe and in disgust of humanity. I read all about how we irradicated disseases and I took in many works of art- great marks of our achivement. But then I have also seen depravity seemingly incarnated in people. Jerks- men with such obviously low ambitions and methods. People that litterally disgust me. *sigh*But we are all of the same stock.

Welcome to humanity. Welcome to sin and to cities that don't sleep. Welcome to the good neigbor and the sex offender. Welcome to a human nature- seemingly good intentions, yet wicked to the core. And its in us. Good times!

So I just re-wrote the above paragraph about 4 times because I suddenly had a whole bunch of poetic inspiration. I think perhaps next time I will post a poem worked out on that concept, but for now I must turn in... I have an audition to try out for tomarrow!

All for access

Hey, check out this:












No, this isn't a bomb- its a "password retrieval" tool. Or at least, it should be, when I'm done.

More info later- I just had to upload these picutures cause they look so darn cool!

UPDATE:

To paraphrase NASA- "Dude, we have success!"

I feel very sneaky indeed. Look at this thing:









And a close up for the geeks (hi Anders!):










Here it is installed:
SO...Let me give all the non-tech readers a chance to log off now. Y'all gone? Ok.

You see, like I mentioned in earlier posts, I got a Toshiba laptop that had a busted up screen and a bios password stuck. Normally, you can just reset the password by taking the battery out. They must have hid a battery somewhere on this thing though, and if you look online apparently Toshibas have more security features then most- in fact, some of them will encrypt the hard drive with the password in the bios. Pretty crazy, eh?

So anyways, I got this one from a client. I don't think he even know what the password was, it probably was set by the IT team at his work. After the battery didn't work, I did some research and found out there was a 'back-door' for password retrival: short a bunch of pins on the printer port. I told my dad about it and he said "Sure, you can just whack one of our extra cables up." But then he found this crazy connector you see (sans the wires; I added those myself) and said I could use it. Dude, its like a parrallel port breadboard! Only problem was that pin one didn't have a little plug, but my dad tinned it up and sodered a wire to for me in a snap. I stripped a bunch of telephone wire and made the connections- actually I way overdid the wire. I realized that half way through I only needed one wire per connection- duh! I was putting a wire in each whole then twisting them together. I only needed to do this for the first one though, because it had three pins together instead of 2. Live and learn, you know.

Here's a really crummy quality picture of me and my winnings:

Its not the photographer's fault BTW, just a crummy camera.

Uhh.. the END!

Ha! New post!

Ahh, another great latter hour post. Or rather, early hour; it is 12:41 right now. Do you know where your kids are at?

My January, like life itself I suppose, has been an awesome mix of rush-rush-rush adrenaline and sheer boredom. I had two PCS I had to fix right now, a play to write, and an economics final to study for. But now? Right now I'm literally waiting for a battery to drain. I'm having a stare out contest with this laptop, you see- I want to access it, and it wants to lock me out with its password. I needed to cut off its life-source- and thats just what I'm doing. Its won't remember what its password was when I'm done with it. I am just watching it die. Sucker is making an awfull mess of it... won't just go out, nOOooO! He's got all these capaciters and what not. He's gonna make me wait. So- wait I will. I can outlast you, you here!

Sorry people, I WAS trying to make a non-technical post, but it just happens! Whaddayaknow?

Of course non-technical things have been going on. I got to see not just one but TWO of my co-op's performance's of It's a Wonderful Life- and what a job they did. Truly amazing; I can tell they pushed themselves very far indeed. A musical, by jove, and a brilliant one at that! Its cool to see your friends sing like that- man, I just love this group. Us homeschoolers have got it going on, I'm telling you. I feel like I've known these people all my life. I just click with them, its awesome. Even the adults I have fun with.

I cut my hair the other day. But instead of just showing up with my hair cut, I taped it to my dew rag and put it back on my head. The results were hillarious- I think it was worth all that time of growing my hair just for this prank. My favorite was Mrs. Grimes, who has always said to me that "I am supposed to cut those things off when I see them on animals" (she is a vet). I saw her come in and I asked her if she still didn't like my dreads. She of course said yeah I said do you want to shear them off? She said "Oh can I?" and I said "Sure, in fact, just pull 'em out right now. Go ahead." She played along, but when she reached for my hair it just came off in her hands. She screamed and jumped away. It was the best.

Uhm... seeing as I am waiting for this battery to give up the ghost, I think I will take an opperutinity to give you all (all 2 of you) an Hair FAQ.

How long did it take you to grow it out that long?
Something like 1.5 to 1.7 years. Longest it's ever been, maybe ever will be.

Why? WHY??
I just sort of did it half out of lazyness and half cause it was fun. I have had big hair before but never this big. My afro was ridiculous!

Why did you want dreads?
a) They would get the haid out of my face a bit
b) They would make me look more like a hobo, and, I mean come on, who doesn't want to look like a hobo?

Hobo's are the bomb. I think I'll have to do a whole post dedicated to hobo culture and why their so awesome, but for now I will shut up because I believe my posts are to akin to books then blog entries. Heres one more hobo picture to sign off by:


----Zeke

Telephone problems from the abyss!

Hey everyone! Even though at this point, I believe 'everyone' refers to a maximum of two people...

So! My day today was like a marbled cake, if the two flavors in the cake were small random emergencies and sheer boredom. If this cake had frosting, I guess it would be a small amount of study time. What, you don't get it? Ok, let me elaborate:

Today I was supposed to go into Salem at 10 to get the front end of the van aligned. My mom took my dad to work, but when I she got back (at about 9) she said I was supposed to call my dad and confirm that it was actually at 10, since he wasn't sure if it was ever finalized. "Oh- and before you do that," my mom said, "you have to fix the telephone line. Dad said he forgot to switch something back over last night and we don't have dial tone. He said he knew you would understand it." Huh, ok.... You see, since I have my own phone number for my business, the phone either rings regular, or rings with two short rings, which is my line. In order to not confuse everyone, we have a little box sort those out so that my calls only go down stairs to my business phone. This box was spazzing out- trying to pick up several times a second, so after fiddling with it for a while, I had disconnect it to get the phones working.

Then I realized it was like 10 minutes before I had to be there. Ugh...I don't even know where it is yet! I figured that out from google, and I realized I was going to be late. We call up the place and move it down to 12 (they are on lunch break at 11) . Then I get a call.

The call wasn't for me. In fact, it wasn't for anyone in my family. The call was for "Mrs. Matilda". They asked if they had dialed such-and-such number, and I said no and what my number was. "Oh, were sorry. We must have dialed the wrong number." I hung up, but thought it was weird- they were from a hospital or nursing place or something of the sort, all very professional- not the type to call wrong numbers. Then a few seconds later, they call again. This time she says "I KNOW I dialed such-and-such numbe-" and suddenly an old ladies voice comes on the line and says "Hello?" "Hello, is this Mrs. Matilda?" There is some confusion as all three of us are talking, and then she hangs up. I said that we were having trouble with our phones and asked if the lady from Londonderry. She said yes. "Ok, thanks" I said "we seem to have some problems down here. I'll try and get it sorted out with the telephone company."

I call my dad and tell him whats going on. "Hold on," he says "let me see something... yeah, your not coming from our phone number." We try calling our phone number and nothing happens... he has to call poor old "Mrs. Matilda" to ring my phone. Unfortunately, sometimes she picks up. This is akward, to say the least. She usually ends up hanging up. Its very weird though- I dialed 0 for the operator but after I finally got to talk to someone I had the wrong phone company. fooey.

This made me a LITTLE late for my appointment. I confess I pushed the speed a bit to get there on time, but hey! I didn't. I couldn't find the sign for the last street I supposed to turn on. I ended up eating a whole bunch of gas up as I drove every which direction and then finally got BACK on the highway and retraced my steps. Ugh. Now I'm at the shop 40 minutes late. I apologize. They guy behind the counter smiles and says he can still get me in but it will take a while. Ok, I think... I've got Bio homework.

I sit down to do it... theres some really weird tv shows on. The first one is all this hokey paranormal stuff. I I was trying not to listen to it but I think in the end the concluded that we might have come from mars. On a meteor. Boy, that would have been fun!! It stinks no lifeform was advanced enough to film it. I want to see that ride!

Anyway, I tried to stuff little pieces of toilet paper in my ear for ear plugs. Wow, that sounds even stupider when I type it out. You may have guessed it; they were not exactly the best sound insulators ever made. I got some bio studying done, but then there was this B crime thriller on. At first I watched it every now and then, but then this BUTT UGLY woman seduced a really nice lawyer type who loved his family and it lost all credibility for me. I mean, this girl was UGLY. And I use the term 'girl' lightly. It could have been Trent lott under all that makeup for all I know. I effectively stopped watching it for awhile, but then an hour later this really cool detective guy comes into the story that looks alot like Pigeon John. The movie still stunk though.

After that, I went over to a computer store and got some stuff- a cable for a customer's computer, and some compressed air and a flash reader for me. The reader was on sale for 5 bucks and I had store credit to burn. The can of air is the biggest I have ever bought and I have a strange pride in it. I think I will probably waste it on people though...

Then I went to goodwill and bought me some random music (An old Michael Card CD that I hadn't heard before and some random artists I had never heard of before). One of the girls that worked there said "Oh my gosh, you cut your hair!" That was interesting. Apparently she remembers me for my weird hair. I said sorry.

Wow, long post. Originally today was going to be like a paragraph and the post was going to be about the whole week. Bah, its to long. Maybe I'll throw it in later. I got to start REALLY writing now- for my play writing class.

---Zeke

So this is what they call "Blogging"

(Sorry Becca: This post will probably mostly bore you! You have been warned... )

So.. cool last couple of days. I've totally been geeking out over here at the lab. At first I felt overwhelemed because I hadn't done much PC work recently then suddenly I had two computers that were overdue 'in the shop' so to speak. One of them was from a client I never worked with before, and I'm always nervous to make a good impression. But it all turned out good in the end. I fixed his laptop- and as part of my payment, I got his old laptop.

It's Toshiba Tecra 8100. 700Mhz, not bad, and a DVD drive. Through a kind of long process that I don't want to go into, it also now has a 60 gb hard drive. Only big problem is the screen is shattered. I originally figured I'd hackjob (read:duct tape) a lcd screen on to it, but when I got home, I realized something: My dad's old laptop that stopped booting was a tecra 8000- the model right below mine. I looked it up and the screens seem to have the same specs... so. This week I will attempt a transplant. :D

I got the idea sort of after another awesome geek thing I did this week. My dad's programming friend pulled two 160GB hard drives out of a dumpster at his work. One of them spun up but seemed to have deep media problems, the other one had physically burned out- you can see the place where the chip smoked the board.

So- me and my dad have often speculated that if we needed to recover data off of a drive who's controller board (the little ciruit board on the hard drive) got blown by static disharge or whatever, you could probably swap the controller board from one that worked and it would work out. There are a few problems, we figured, with this idea: low level formatting writes bad areas of the disk to the card allegedly, and that would be different for each disk. But, I tried it anyway.

I removed the screws so lovingly placed there by the cheap overseas labor and carefully removed the ribbon cable (making sure not to repeat my performance of the xbox incident, where I broke the connector clamp). I swapped out the boards, screwed it back in, and fired it up on a test box (no way was I giving the drive a chance to fry my power). And... hey! Whats this? XP? 2000? Its right there- apparently what the company had on it originally! So... 160 GB of space. Thats alot. I don't know if its mine yet though; the programmer handed me the drives and said "see if you can fix these". He might want it for the startup we were working on still... we shall see.

So. Its been good.There are other things too, like agape starting up again which is just so much fun- I love all my new friends over there! Homeschoolers are cool like that- most of them have this vibe about them that just clicks with you, like you have known them your whole life. I love it. Good stories, but, guess what? Its 2:06! So thats it for this post!



----Zeke

"Twilight is gonna' get your head right."

Repicheep's landing.

I have arrived. The water is sweet, and the colors brilliant.

Err... actually I am planning on making this my more general purpose, 'me' blog. I my loving my Voyage of the dawn treader theme though... we shall see.

If by chance you want weird, deep, mind-thinking-things, go to www.xanga.com/eewah
That is where I am really deep/weird. Its sort of my poetry sort of stuff

Anyway... So. Welcome to my blog. I am really a mouse, and I am really going to cut you up with my really little rapier if you don't stop laughing! I'll TAKE YOU ALL ON!

Oh, and BTW Becca- I made this 'cause of your site. Your either, "Your welcome" or "I'm sorry". :)

At least now I can comment...

Looking forward to a great blogger experience,

---Repizeke (Haha!)