A Heinz Post

I call this my Heinz post. How come? Why, because I have to Catch up, of course!

The last post would have been okay I suppose, had I followed it up soon with another one and another one that were just the same style. But left as a final note on a marriage, it is a tad underwhelming. My apologies.

Because of the lateness of this post, I will change from doing a play-by-play recap of the previous day in a roughly chronological order, to simply giving you the highlights from the days I didn't blog yet. I will even add bold headers to the different sections as a gift to you guys, so if you get bored of reading geek stuff then you can skip to right where you want to go. Okay... commence tomatoey sauce- NOW:

Keep'n it White and Nerdy
Originally, dX wanted me to bring down my computer, so we could kick it in Counter Strike like old times, but I told him their was no way I could seriously game on that thing. It is...lacking. I am too ashamed to even post the specs on this blog...not that I game very much these days anyway, but I do appreciate and use the power usually.

I have been needing an upgrade now for awhile, so one of the ideas I had was that I could build a system while down there and ship it back. But when you boiled it down, it really didn't make any sense- I would be paying way to much, rushing myself into the purchasing, limiting my choices, and probably end up using some of the money I wanted to use for his gift. I didn't decide this, though, until after I got there, so I had brought my own optical drive with a windows XP CD, as well as a spare hard disk of questionable lifespan. But thats another story.

And so, being the easy going guy he is, dX took the news in stride. It turns out, he had accumulated a collection of computer pieces since he had moved out there, so we decided to REALLY kick it like we used to: Spend some quality time with the hardware on a makeshift bench, and Electro-static precautions that would make a QA representative faint. I'll spare you the details of building the box, but it was a lot of fun. dX and I hadn't really gotten down and dirty with a system like that in awhile, and we both agreed that it was our quickest build ever- when we actually sat down to work on it, we finnished it up in a few hours. And it was unnaturally fast- we had scrounged up 128 MB of ram, and put it in a 400 mhz P2 system with a crummy old 32 MB ATI card, but the thing FLEW. I kid you not; it was more responsive then my current system at home. And oh yeah; we loaded it up with XP. I cut down the services that ran considerably, but still- it was an impressive feat. I used it as my own system, and when I left he gave it as a gift to his sister.

People who don't smoke and cars that do
The night before the wedding, dX had a little party with me and a few friends. I hate to call it a bachelors party because of all the pejorative connotations that come with that term, but thats what he called it so that I suppose is what it was. Basically, it was a bunch of guys, hanging out, laughing, eating pizza and dorritos, and playing Game Cube. It was alot of fun.

A guy named Fritz and I both needed to get some money from an ATM to help pitch in for pizza. Since Fritz was was the first one there, we decided to all duck out for the errand and get some snack goodies while we were out.

"Can we take your car- is it running okay?" dX asked.
"Well, the radiator is a bit leaky... hows yours?" Fritz responded.
"Oh, just a leaky radiator? Psh, my alternator might be going..."
"Okay cool, we'll take mine".

Ahh, those fateful words. The radiator turned out to be more then a little issue, and it got very bad by the time we had got to our first stop. Steam was coming steadily out from the hood. We decided to stop by an auto store. They were pretty sure it was the cap on the radiator, so we picked up another of those and some radiator fluid. When we added just a little bit of the fluid, the thing fired up like a smoke generator- steam clouds erupted violently into the night. It did this for several minutes, until it was finally cool enough to put the fluid in. There was much laughter, and I was heard to say "DUDE- where's a camera when you need it? I'm SO blogging this."

We finally got the fluid in the radiator, and it seemed to improve with the new cap. We drove a very short distance to Wal-Mart from there, and as we were cruising through the parking lot, Fritz kept looking back in the mirror. "Dude," he said "Am I smoking?"

When we parked and got out, we found- quite graphically- that we indeed had been. It wasn't like something was on fire, it wasn't a black smoke- but the tail pipe was emitting enough emissions to make Al Gore cry. dX thought perhaps the O2 sensor was faulty. I just sat back and wished I had a camera again- the smoke from our tailpipe was even more fantastic then the radiator. It rose slower and lingered more. You could literally see our trail from the auto store to Wal-Mart, rising slowly into the heavens. When we drove, it must have looked like we were the world's slowest rocket powered car.

But wait, it gets better- when we headed back home, the radiator problem came back. With vengeance. Whenever we stopped at a stop sign, the steam from the hood would quickly flood the view from the windshield in less then a second, like our own personal fog area. Luckily there wasn't any other cars around at those intersections- we would stop, the view would disappear, we would go, and we could see. As long as we kept going at all, the steam was pushed around us.

When we parked I wished again that I had a camera. The vehicle was a sight to see. Smoke coming out one end; steam coming out the other. It was hilarious. Fritz ended up having it towed out of there in the morning.

Coffee, Coffee, everywhere and all the drops to drink
I think I mentioned before that many in the grooms family work at the a very nice local coffee establishment. Just in case your passing through some time, its called "Harbor lights". Personally, I think it sounds more like a cigarette then a coffee shop, but the atmosphere and quality of beverage more then makes up for the odd name (I mean, its KANSAS- there aren't any harbors to speak of). I told you already about the George's caramel mocha blast. I suppose that the rest of my experiences won't translate as well in print. I'll just say- Its a great place. They have books, and games out for you to use if you want to at both locations. Its a great atmosphere. OH! And I almost forgot-

They make custom soda's there. Yup- on demand. I had an irish creme soda- with (get this) whipcream. The groom's mum told me that about the custom soda's and made me one. I think its basically club soda/soda water with flavor shots on demand. I don't know exactly how its done, but I can tell you why its done- because they taste AWESOME. And whipcreme? On soda?

....

GENIUS!

I told everyone there "The boys back home will never beleive this- 'Whaa? Whipcream in soda? Your making that up!' and I'll be like 'No man really! Thats what they do in Kansas!' it'll be great."

Wedding

The wedding went off pretty much with out a hitch- well, sans of course, the Marriage of dX and his new Bride. But this, I'm told, was entirely intended.

I got to meet Sarah (dX's wife- man that is still weird to say), which was great as until this point I had never had the oppertunity. And she was a great person- Conesiur of coffee and music, edging a bit on the artsy side, yet able to love a geek and even having established some welding skills. I'm very happy for them.

Super duper suite
The wedding wasn't a huge operation, but it wasn't ghetto. It was still very nice, even if the couple wasn't made of money. Nate and I, for example, were basically their getaway vehicle. Get away to where? The Chateau (said with extreme accentation- shut up, its a word now), but of course! They were kind enough to bring up their suitcases and such so we got a chance to see the establishment. It was some high class stuff. The room's looked like something out of the imagination of a Disney set designer- I think their's was an "island escape" theme, complete with a huge front end of a ship that served as the balcony and bedroom, a giant jacuzzi and exotic trees and plants a plenty, shooting from everywhere. There was probably more, but we didn't really hang around to long...

Neil Gaimen Evangelism
I got to hang out with Nate a bit as well, (if you recall in a post previous, I dissconnected his family from the internet using his computer- always a great ice breaker) but that night and the next day, I got to spend some more time with him. It was a blast- Nate is a genius and (I had forgot) an Artist. He sketches quite often, always striving to better his craft. I was almost sure that he would appreciate Mirror Mask. I was going to bring it with me to watch before I headed out, but of course, being myself, I failed to remember to. But things turned out all right; after dropping off the happy couple, we took a jaunt down to the local video rental establishment.

On our way we discussed the pros of wearing suits. Originally, he had protested his general level of discomfort in the suit and that he didn't really look forward to wearing it. But by the time of the wedding, we had both noticed that it was quite fine indeed to be wearing the suits- not only were they comfortable as heck (I know, I know- its a misnomer, okay?), but they also gave us the strange urge to possess and use a Katana, a handgun, or (preferably) both. They just make you feel and look that cool. So on that note, we walked into Hollywood video, commenting that we were probably their best dressed patrons ever and joking to each other that we could just buy the establishment if the lines were too busy.

If you haven't seen Mirror Mask, I'm very sorry but there really isn't any good way I can explain it. I just ask that you go, look at the trailer, then rent the movie. Heck, you can even watch it for free in semi cruddy quality on Google Video, legally. Or, preferably, buy and watch the DVD. Whatever you do, watch this film- then you will know that it is indeed an amazing movie. And it will seen a foregone conclusion, that yes, OF COURSE, he loved the film.

And you would be right. He found it quite impressive. I also evangalized Regina Spektor to him, which I wasn't as sure about. But he recognized and appreciated her genius as well. He was fasinated by how expressive and subtle her face was in the videos. "I have to try and sketch her" he said.

And that, in a nutshell (a very large, approximately 2000 word nutshell), was my trip in Kansas. Happy? Good.

So. What happend with you guys while I was gone?

My summer so far acording to me.

So... I don't really think I am going to do a proper farewell post to the school year. Mostly because my sentiments have been echoed allready by all my friends- basically, go here or anywhere else in my blogosphere where people mention the end of Agape and my sentiments are very much the same.

I suppose I must elaborate a bit though... So, this was my first year at the co-op. I didn't really know exactly what to expect. Beleive it or not, when I'm in a totally new surrounding with all new people I can be intimdated. I don't like to show it and I suppose I'm not technically shy, but its just as awkard for me to try and strike up a conversation cold-turkey as for anyone else. But given enough time, I can make aquantinces anywhere. For some reason I thought there would be alot of HS steryotypes- very steady people; well educated, formal and intelligent but eccentric in nothing. I think my first guess was that 40 to 60 perecent of the people in the co-op would fit this mold, with a strong representation of these characteristics in the leadership.

Boy was I wrong. This group has blown me away with how awesome they are. They are my type of people; I don't know how to describe it. I '"clicked" with so many of them instantly. Knowledge is there, as is to be expected, but so is that weird sence of humor that draws on knowledge, and eccentric interestes abounding. I am frustrated because words are failing me(or perhaps at this hour, I am failing them...) But the point is, I didn't just make aquantinces- I made REALLY GOOD friends. These people felt like just that- a people, if that makes any sence. I relate to them on so many more levels then I do with any other group. They felt like old friends instantly. How else could I have relationships that are intergal to who I am with people I have met only two semesters ago?

I shall miss everyone, yes- but I am always on the AIM network or Gmail and with technology it never seems that there is such a gap between people as once there was. And of course, I'm not making a plan of avoiding my homeschool brothren all summer either- I shall be meeting up with you all as often as I can.

Which is not for the next 2 weeks or so, with limited exceptions. We have a sort of soft stop-order on extranious activites since we want to get our house in working order for the summer. (We still have some flood stuff to work out, though nothing major.)

I have much planned for this summer- I am going to World View Academy once again (and now some new friends Agape are coming too!) as well as going to Inside out Soul festival. In about three weeks I am going on a bike trip with my friend for 5 days. I'm really stoked about it but nervous all the same as I have to make sure both me and the bike are in working order. My friend is coming up all the way from Kansas for this afterall. Between all this I will also be stuffing my summer with as much Math as I can stomach. I need to catch up on that badly, and the classes I have picked out for next school year will fall through if I don't.

Of course, all that anticipation, but nothing exciting has really happened yet. So far the biggest event was my computer crapping out. Yeah, my main operating system hard drive had served me faithfully for over 5 years, and it began going into its death throws two days ago. Alas, we morn for the drive but move on with our lives. Knowing myself, I have stopped storing anything of value on my main disk along time ago. All my personal docs, movies, pictures, music, etc. are on other drives. This is good.

I'll probably be posting back from Frankenstien (the name of my main computer) soon. I just grabbed a drive we had laying around from a scrapped project and slapped it into my box. Things are looking good. Next post should be from the other side.

--
Oh, and don't mind the spelling errors please. Its 12:31 and I have no spell checker on this box. Yes I know there are online options but I'm TIRED. Goodnight.

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!

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."