I love gadgets. I really try to be practical about the gadgets I buy, but this is a subjective statement. My ideas about practical may differ greatly from the vast majority of you out there. Somehow I manage to save enough money to pay for a year of college, but just barely. The portion of my paychecks that are not spent on Mountain Dew and snacks is left over for gadgets. I have managed to restrain my self to some degree here at college, where the paychecks are always smaller and need to go more places.

I am very appreciative of my early experience with pocket knives, and leatherman tools. Yet my first really electronic gadget in the modern sense was an mp3 player. I decided that I needed a Rio 500. Whenever it was that I bought it it was available in a bulk price of like $140. Seemed like a great deal for a 64MB flash player.

I loved that little thing, it was so solid and compact. It had a slot for Smart Media cards. That particular media was really nice because it was so thin and small. I took that player all over with me for a year, and popped ear buds in whenever some particular teacher was getting really boring. I eventually wore the thing out and it just sorta quit working. To even get it to turn on I had to jiggle the battery just right. It was really done for when it would no longer let me transfer songs to it. Everytime I plugged the USB cable in the thing turned itself off.

I really miss that thing and have considered going to find one just like it to see if I can get one for a lot cheaper. If I decided to get an MP3 player I would probably want a harddrive based one like the Creative Zen. You see, I have already had my iPAQ 3635 for a year and a half now and am very very happy with it. I laid down top dollar for it and wasnt going to pay for a seperate player when the iPAQ would do jsut as well with a CF card in it. Now the iPAQ is frustrating me, when playing mp3�s it tends to run the batteries completely dead without telling me. This is bad, that means I lose everything since the last time I had backed it up. The iPAQ is a Jack of all Trades, but certainly not a master of music playing. I doubt I will actually buy anything soon, my bills and expenses are starting to add up. I have little to spare for the next few years.

My advice for the day is: �When in doubt, use your fire breathing war elephants.�

Do you know what I think tastes really good? Any guess? Well, I�ll just have to tell you then. Steak. Saturday I ate about 1 and a half pounds of wholesome Nebraska steak.

Allow me to lapse into [narrative mode].

We were huddled together around the glowing coals of a grill trying to ignore the biting cold and the wind that howled through the trees. All of us were intent on our objective; no creation of God or man would come between our steaks and us. Eighty pounds of juicy Omaha sirloin tip were sitting in a large bucket of marinade. The aroma of the spices and Worcestershire sauce inundated our senses, blocking out much of the world around us. The paltry heat from the charcoal was just enough to make steam rise from the wet slabs of meat as light snow flakes landed on man, meat, and metal. The intoxicating aroma was enough to drive a man crazy, and the flickering coals were dying out as the night progressed.

The heat of the coals had begun to wane after only one small group of steaks was cooked. To rectify this situation we made use of the majority of a bottle of lighter fluid. Most of us retained our eyebrows, and enjoyed both the flash of heat and the excitement in a man’s heart that accompanies such a large burst of flame. After dumping another pile of fresh charcoal on the short lived blaze we placed a fresh batch of bovine flesh on the fire, and gave the charred and chemical scented steaks to the few men who were foolish enough to be away when we revitalized the fire.

When at last the prime choices of meat began coming off the grill we all experienced a profound joy in their consumption. The steak went from the grill to our hands, and then directly between our gaping jaws. The pink juices that leaked out of the meat ran over our hands and down our chins. These rivulets of tangy marinade and the various bodily juices that had remained in our dear departed mooing friend were largely unsuccessful in escaping us. Each man licked his fingers clean and grinned, waiting for more steak to finish cooking,

This continued for several timeless hours of shivering and bonding. Perhaps we felt a primal connection with our ancestors and all the many years they had spent eating partially cooked flesh of a wild creature over a fire in the cold and the dark. Though we were separated from our ancestors by centuries of technological improvement and development, that brotherhood of men was able to forget the worries of the modern world, if only for a few hours until we had filled our bellies.

[/narrative mode]

Well, that was fun wasn’t it? That is a very romantic image. Surely I have conveyed the essence of masculine emotion. I think I should get back into a writing class or something next semester. I don’t seem to have enough outlets for this overflowing font of creativity. Perhaps I feel compelled to be this wordy because I am so proud of the websites fairly refined Content Management system. Anything less than flowery speech would not do my journal true justice.

Though you may not perceive it, the English language is it�s own universe. The system of words and phrases with which we communicate is truly massive. The literary tools with which we can explore our lexicon have expanded greatly over the past several centuries. A simple thesaurus or a dictionary are often the most valuable instrument a writer can possess. Being an amateur social commenter and diarist, I myself greatly appreciate the complexity of phrase structures, despite my apparent lack of grammatical finesse. The Visual Thesaurus offers a truly innovative view of the universe of the English Language. My aptitude for spatial perception is complimented with this progressive representation of how words interact and define themselves.

The presence of such an amazing tool is all the justification that is necessary for the very existence of technology.

Examples of my verbal prowess can be found throughout my ranting on this site, though I have yet to make my oldest entries on this site available through the new database system. Perhaps I will some day be happy with my website in that fanciful place of possibilities called the future. Hope for that eventuality has forsaken my heart.

Well, I am still in love with me beauty of a computer and have gotten the hardware and modding bug. I spend several hours researching the possibilities of my new computers motherboard and I just start getting lost. I start looking into hardware mods, my ASUS P4B motherboard supports a proprietary thing called an iPANEL(it actually a P4B-LA, but that suffix seems to not exist, I find no mention of it on any web site, it must just be an OEM brand). Anyway this drive bay unit is an LCD and LED monitoring device for CPU speed/temp/voltage along with fan speed. I know this information is available because it is displayed in the BIOS. Obviously that information does me little good there. I want to be able to see that from a desktop monitoring application similar to gkrellm. My look into getting lm_sensor to work left me reeling at my Linux inadequacy. I�m sorry but recompiling my kernel with new modules is something I simply don�t know how to do properly, not for a lack of effort though.

My Solution to this dilemma was that I could use the iPANEL, uh oh, no free drive bays on my mid-tower. Well, I wanted a cool lian-li case anyways� so i might as well get a window kit too� if i have a window i need some cold-cathode lights for my case�. and a window etching is a must have. All of a sudden I realize I don�t need all of this stuff, my HP Pavilion case isn�t all that bad even for a mid-tower. My next option is getting an LCD box that works through the serial port, hey thats a great solution. pcmods.com has a nice little jobber that should work very well. If I can assure myself that it will work for both Linux and windows than I may by that sucker, It�s a little pricey, but still cheaper than my scott e-vest.

I first saw these things in a review from pdabuzz.com when I first purchased my iPAQ. After I saw it mentioned in reviews of the latest major tech shows. I went back to their site and found that they dropped the price considerably. So I had and attack of impulse shopping and had one sent to me. I must say that I really love it, I wear it for college a majority of the days of the week. Hey, I am a geek and proud of it, this vest is what people at work know me by, I like it. Oh and it is just as frustrating as the gadgets It holds. As soon as I have it, the evest v2.0 is announced! Honestly its more like a version 1.2 but I wont hold that against them. The biggest feature that I missed in my evest is zip-off sleeves, this is included in v2.

Tonight I was reviewing the 3 high-end hardware items that I have wanted for my new system. An ATI All In Wonder RadeonDV which is the coolest video card around, with a TV tuner and a full range of inputs and outputs you couldn�t ask for more. Except for a price tag that is less than $400 :( Also in my line of sight is a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Ex. This is the highest end sound card you can get, it is really probably for professional audiophiles only. It is the version with an external connections box since I don�t have any spare drive bays, nrgggg! This item prices out at a little over $200. To go with that sound card though would be a nice set of THX and DTS 5.1 speakers� hm.. that will be aver $300 for top of the line. Ouch, I think I�m going to curl up in bed and plan for a better paying summer job.

Sure it�s been, lets see� oh, a few moths since my last entry; but I�m not quite dead yet. Well, since September I have had a lot happen, relating to computers and technology, I acquired for the hefty sum of nearly $500, one iPAQ. This machine is amazing, If you are looking at buying a laptop you should really contemplate just getting one of these. After buying a few overpriced accessories you can have all of the capabilities of a laptop with the sleek and small form factor of a top-rate hand-held. I�m not going to get into all of the messy details of comparing the iPAQ to a palm device, but lets just say that if you want power and high-end usability the iPAQ series is a great option. That was back in October, for Christmas I was gifted by my overly generous parents with a brand spanking new hp desktop (19 inch monitor included)

P4 2.0 GHz

DVD

CD-RW

100GB HDD

512 MB RAM

nVidia geforce 2

All of this awesome hardware came with Windows XP preinstalled. Yeah, no choice in the matter. Well, after aproximately 3 weeks of messing around with this new reason to bang my head against the wall, I bought Mandrake 8.1 and was thourghouly surprised. The biggest thing about Win-XP is the immediate hardware recognition. Installing my numerous peripherials was a breeze! I was of course concerned about this when switching over to Linux, but decided to just go for it. Oddly enough all of my peripherals are fully operational in Linux. Mandrake 8.1 installed cleanly and recognized nearly everything. My CD-R was recognized correctly and works just fine with eraoster. My DVD player works, but it took a little IRC tech support to figure out that my DVD drive was symlinked horribly, I have to browse through about 8 subdirectories to select the device node in ogle. My SanDisk CF card reader works and i just mount cards like any other drive. I have tried out 2 different digital cameras, both are fairly easy to access with gphoto2. The one interesting bit is my iPAQ. Technically I cant synchronize with it�s UB cradle but I can easily transfer files using my CF card reader.

So Linux is a success, but I am frustrated by interfaces yet again. KDE has by far most complete desktop with excellent features and programs including excellent anti-aliasing which works in my favorite browser: Opera. Unfortunately KDE is but-ugly, and resembles Windows a little too closely for my tastes. Of course Enlightenment is better in many ways including usability and graphic, unfortunately I miss the features that make KDE great, including anti-aliasing. Don�t tell me to use gnome with E, cause gnome has bought the big one for some reason, it just dosen�t load up correctly anymore. When it was working it still had problems such as a lack of a working ppp dialer.

As for HP, well they have started doing something very annoying, they do not actually distribute install cd�s for windows xp. That�s right, if you want to format and dual boot your machine then you are required to get the CD�s from hp through tech-support. The windows xp recovery information is kept on an �emergency partition� this is where they tell you to do a system restore from. I see why they do this, 1.) Its cheaper to not make as many cd�s, and 2.) Many, many people lose their recovery cd�s. It wouldn�t be as much of a problem, except there is a $9.95 charge to send you the cd�s for the software which you actually already purchased.

Well, it�s been interesting for sure, and while messing around with a nice digital camera I was borrowing(and the help of the gimp) I came up with this pic here.

I obviously have a lot to say today since it has been a while since I�ve updated this page in a month. I have been in the process of moving it and merging it into bothanet.

It�s only been a few day since everything changed, On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 war was declared on the USA through a vicious and well executed terrorist attack that left thousands dead or missing, the horror of this event is still truly more terrible than I care to contemplate. It has been heralded as the second Pearl Harbor, although the nature of the attack is more like the Lusitania (majorly civilian). The cold blooded murder of American Citizens will not be tolerated. Our nations full military strength will rain down upon the perpetrators of this atrocity. It will be awefull. By the self righteous retaliation that will surely ensue we make ourselves sink to the level of these cowards. The issue of pacifism is insanely frustrating in this instance, our resolve and patriotism is strong, we will fight, and yet more American citizens will likely die. Words are insufficient to fully express emotions. A clear historical picture of this event and the ensueing violence that I forsee will be a far cry from what reality is right now. On the other hand, with politics and governments reality is generally an illusion.

I really dislike banner ads, first of all: I almost never click through them, as you may have noticed hobbiton has just begun useing popup windows on their free hosted site, sure I could pay like 7 bucks a year to keep them away, but I am lazy and poor. I am sick of popups and am worried now that yahoo advertisement sizes have grown incredibly large.

One thing I may consider is placing a banner ad at the bottom of the page and only selecting banner ads from sites that I like to visit, simply because that method would be a little easier than making a links page.

ARGH! While I am writing this I am unable to connect to my ISP. What do they think they are doing bringing there servers down for maintenance so darn early (11:55PM)? Man this has me ticked off but I guess I may just have to upload this tommorrow. The funny part was that I had just started loading slashdot and then for no apperant reason Windoze bluescreened on me and when it came out of that it froze up totally. After I rebooted (again) I discovered that windows decided to simply crash upon learning that my internet connection was lost. Wow, this OS sucks. I sooooo want a new computer that I saw at best buy for my own linux machine.

I really dislike banner ads, first of all: I almost never click through them, as you may have noticed hobbiton has just begun useing popup windows on their free hosted site, sure I could pay like 7 bucks a year to keep them away, but I am lazy and poor. I am sick of popups and am worried now that yahoo advertisement sizes have grown incredibly large.

One thing I may consider is placing a banner ad at the bottom of the page and only selecting banner ads from sites that I like to visit, simply because that method would be a little easier than making a links page.

OK, I am incredibly stupid, lets just say that record of no vehicle accidents is at an end. I drove for nearly a year with nothing happening, now bam! Well, at least nothing serious happened and there was no serious damage. In the meantime I have put together a page full of quotes from me that I have jotted down on my various PDAs over the years. Quotes.

Yeah! I am back from vacation and it was great. I went out to the Denver area and visited some old freinds, I had a good time despite the long and arduous drive across Nebraska. I even got to go white water rafting for the first time, next up: kayaking. I posted some pictures from my vacation, I was planning on doing it anyways but its also at the request of a foreign friend. Photos

I dont entirely understand how games have exponentially increased the requirements for propper operation. All of the latest games have stunning 3D, but they require a very advanced video card generally. Only a few years ago we had every game using software 3D rendering, none of this direct hardware stuff. The crazy thing though is that people try to remake old dos games into new possibly multiplayer games, and they require tons of RAM. There is a multiplayer version of Liero that was made, it isnt 3d or anything special like that but it ran incredibly slowely on a 450mHz computer. The original Liero ran just fine on a 486, and was amazingly fun and addictive.

I finally got Unreal Tournament which is hailed as the best multiplayer 1st Person Shooter around right now. I am beginning to realize that all of these games are exactly the same! They have all the exact same premise and weak story line. On the other hand whenever I play UT for a while I begin thinking about Tribes, yes thats right UT has better graphics but the gameplay just sucks compared to Tribes. I havent gotten to play Tribes 2 yet because it wouldnt run on my computer (ARGHH!), besides from all the errors that people were getting, I believe that Sierrra released it while it was still beta. So far as I know Tribes is the best 1st person shooter to come along so far, hands down. And as for gods-eye-view strategy games: no, not Command and Conquer, Total Annihilation was by far the best strategy game. Some people would disagree with me and claim that honor for AoE II, but having played a great many of these games I think that Total Annihilation offered the best gameplay ever in a strategy game. Think about it.

Am wonerink why am not updatink this site more often. Yah, dis is supposed to be a german accent. Though I am told that my German accent sounds very distinctly Austrian, apparently this is a bad thing according to German citizen who informed me of my accentual deficiencies.