No, not that kind.

This weekend I went on my innagural trip through the Ballard Locks with my boat. Quite the adventure.

Originally I had planned on going with Mike Neil to a class on how to go through the locks, however the weather was just awesome on Sunday and we had a gorup of friends that had been through the locks before with us, so we thought... why not?!

The weather was great. With the canvas up to block the wind we got pretty warm. There was almost no wind, so the lake and sound was very calm, pretty much perfect conditions for our first time through the locks.

Before we went into the locks we discovered that the boat behind us contained one of Megan's coworkers, Brent Kawaguchi. They were on a Boston Whaler Conquest 28', which is our friend's dream boat.

Just before we got into the big locks (the Ballard Locks has a "small" locks for taking boats with a <12' beam (or something like that) and a "large" locks that can probably take a 40'+ beam boat.) an alarm started on the boat. Initially I thought it was the CO detector so we vented the cabin and kept driving. It was LOUD!

After a few minutes we called the dealer (luckily they where open) and after some debugging identified that I was low on drive lube. Interesting not, it is basically a completely critical fluid to keeping the engine running and has no gauges and the first sign of a problem is a massively loud alarm. On top of that the resevior is labeled "Drive Lube", and you actually need to put "Stern Drive Gear Lube"... i guess the manufactured figured that you should omit every other word when labelling the engine.

The night before going through the locks we met some guys who used to volunteer at the locks and we learned the most important rules: 1) always obey the lock workers, 2) always tie up the stern first, 3) for any other questions refer to rule #1. These three rules helped us greatly when going through the locks. The workers there are great, helpful, and know what they are doing.

After going out to sea, we immediately headed to Shilshole Bay to find the mysterious "drive lube" to silence the incredibly deafing alarm. Luckily there is a West Marine about two blocks from the marina that had everything we needed. Everyone from the fuel dock people to the West Marine folks were super helpful. Made it pretty much an uneventful event.

We then buzzed down to Bell Harbor Marina right on the Seattle waterfront and had a late lunch at Anthony's. At about 4pm we got back on the boat and headed back home.

Coming back through the locks we had a boat try to raft with us that lost engine control and started to spin out of control. In this case we (with our total experience of 1 locking) had to wrestle the boat to us. I was very happy that we have a lot of long lines on our boat.

Pulled back into our home port around 6:30, just about 9 hours after we left that morning. A big trip, but hell-a fun!

One feature missing from the boat was a GPS. Since we intend to take the boat out into the sound and up to the San Juan islands, I felt a good GPS was a requirement. That doesn't remove my requirement to keep charts and learn how to pilot with manual instruments (including learning the difference between deviation and variation when dealing with a magnetic compass).

I debated a bunch of which unit to get. The 260 is a small boat and doesn't have any dedicated space on the helm for a GPS, so a nice console was pretty much out of the question. I was torn between getting a larger (5") display with low reslution (234x320) and a smaller (3.8") high resolution (480x320) display.

The decision was between the Garmin 192c and 276c. I got to see the 276c in action the other day, a friend uses it for snowmobiling. The 192c is definetly a more special purpose device, dedicated to marine navigation. The 276c makes tradeoffs for portability and multi-purpose (it does auto and marine navigation).

In the end I went with the 276c. Going with the portable one meant that hard wiring electrical on the boat was optional (I'll probably still do it, but it doesn't block me know) and that I have more flexible mounting options (today I used it on the boat with the automotive mount).

After some problems with the software (the bits in the box are massively out of date, but most of the updates where either available online or free to get shipped), the unit is great. The PC software enables me to set marine and auto way points. The auto mode rivals some of the best integrated nav systems (except for the screen), and the marine mode is fast and nice.

Next I need to drill some holes in the helm and put the marine mount up (more permanent), and then i'll have to decide if I want to run power... hmm... I should make the call on power first. I'd hate to have to move the mount because I put it somewhere that I can't get power too.

I've started plotting my route from Kirkland to Friday Harbor for our summer vacation. Now I have to decide if I take the inner route (east of Whidbey Island) that is longer (~88 mi) or the outer route (through the San Juan Straights) that is shorter (~72 mi). I think the outer route is more direct and faster, but I'm worried about the boat handling the more open sea. Staying inland of Whidbey will be a (I think) more comfortable ride, but I'm guessing that we will hit more slow zones. It looks like the inner route would add about 1 hour to the journey.

As warned earlier, I've started my new hobby.

26' (LOA) 2000 SeaRay 260 Sundancer

It has the small engine (260hp, Bravo III), fresh water cooling, heat, head, shore power, etc. Pretty nice starter boat, good for weekend camping trips, should work to get up to the San Juans. Got a great slip as part of the deal in Kirkland.

I'll try to get some better pictures up soon. I've taken it out twice so far - yesterday for a training run with a friend that's very experienced with boats, and today with a couple other friends. Today's docking was challenging, took 3 tries to get it in correctly, and I still needed one of the guys to fend off.

Learned something new today - when buying boat insurance, the boat isn't insured until you actually have the insurance. I'm used to cars, where you already have a car policy and just need to transfer it. There you have a window to switch it, where the insurance company will cover you. Because I'm getting a new policy, there is no coverage on the boat until after I get the insurace policy active. No more boating for me until I get the policy number from my agent.

UPS finally delivered by 360 at 7pm tonight. It was quite frustrating, I took the day off in anticipation of it arriving earlier in the day, but oh well... i've got one!

Got the unit setup, connected to the internet, media extender installed on all my PCs, XBox live configured, and Geometry Wars purchased in about the first 30 minutes. Next I did a tour of all the games I had to buy in the bundle.

• PGR3 - eBay
• Kameo - eBay
• Need for Speed - 3.5
• Tiger Woods - 3.5
• Call of Duty 2 - 4.5
• Tony Hawk - 3.0 (only put about 5 minutes into this one)
• NHL - 3.5
• NBA - 3.5
• Amped - 3.0
• Ridge Racer - 3.0

Overall I'm happy with the bundle, except that I have too many games. I'll never get around to playing so many at the same time. Typically I play a game for ~2 weeks, and then move onto the next thing.

More on the 360... i need to get back to playing.

I managed to get in a small window this morning where Amazon has some 360 bundles available, so tomorrow I should be getting my XBOX. Wahoo!

Of course, I had to buy a ton of extra games that I didn't want... in the end I don't think it will be too bad, I'll eBay the games that I don't want, and hopefully get in for around the right amount. Went over to the company store tonight and picked up 3 extra controllers, so I'll be ready to rock tomorrow.

I'm planning on working from home in the AM tomorrow, then playing games for the rest of the day :)

I didn't plan enough ahead, so my preorder at EBX got punted to the next shipment (or sometime in the future). Showed up at the local Best Buy yesterday at noon, and there was already 150+ people in line. Decided that the right call was to try my luck at Costco this morning. Showed up there at 5am only to find 53 people in line (they are only getting 48 units). There was a line at every Target, Fred Meyer, Sears, and Costco we drove by. This is insane.

Anyway, net result, I won't be getting a 360 on opening day. Bummer.

I decided i'm going to get my PSP up and running with video. I ordered a 1GB stick of memory, which should be here in a week or so. Now I need to figure out the software.

My understanding is that there are two main components I need; first, the DVD -> MPEG ripper. Second, the MPEG -> PSP Video converter.

ImTOO offers a suite for this.

There is PQ DVD.

PSP Video 9, which appears to only do the MPEG -> PSP portion.

Chris Prillo just reviewed the PSP Media Manager from Sony (again, for the MPEG -> PSP part)

And then there is the Xilisoft DVD to PSP suite.

What to do? I'm guessing that there will be a bit of a workflow problem here - i really want to be able to rip a couple movies right before I go on a vacation or something, so having something that is easy to operate, potentially supports batching or offline (maybe that can sync to the PSP instead of requiring explicit action?).

Hmm... i'll have to think about this more...

The laptop arrived, as promised, the next day. HP's online ordering was pretty slick. They have some nice services, like sending you a mail when the order gets *processed*, not just when it ships.

First piece of good news - the SD port reads my SD card with no errors. Looks like I just managed to get two bum machines with SD cards from Fry's. Teaches me to buy a reburb model.

Second, these machines are everywhere. The dv1000 is a great machine, and given that Costco carried them for a while, I see tons of friends that have the machine.

Megan is totally loving the new machine.

Tonight I went to Fry's to exchange my dv1000.

First, I should have read my comments first... Ian says:

"My toshiba m200 has the same problem although from what I've read it needs a certain type of SD card, my bog standard ones apparently aren't good enough.."

Which would have been good to know...

Anyway, net result - I go to Fry's and after a bit over an hour I had attempted to use a second refurbished machine and got the same failure on the SD card, and the second machine was actually missing parts. I returned the machine and decided to order a new one online.

Costco's price was a bit higher than HP's direct price, and HP could get the machine here faster. I ended up getting not my exact specifications, because the preconfigured machines ship about 1 week faster. Basically I had to buy an extra 20GB of storage (up to 100GB) and get a 1 year warranty.

My wife really wants the replacement by the weekend (given that we are now having to re-order), so we sprung for next day shipping. We missed the deadline for today's orders by 3 hours, so it should ship Tuesday and be here Wednesday morning. Kinda cool.

Tonight I went to the local Fry's and bought Megan a new laptop. We had been down there before and I knew she wanted the HP dv1000. They had two models in stock, the 512MB 1.6Ghz version and a 512MB 1.7Ghz model that was refurbished. I've never bought refurb before, but at $200 less that the slower machine, I felt I should give it a shot. The sales droid at Fry's was a bit of a jerk - he really strong armed me to try and get the extended warrenty. I've been using laptops for a long time, and yet to be in a situation where I'd want an extended warrenty. *And* the warrenty cost 20% the price of the laptop. ugh.

Oh, and the sales guy told me the laptop came with 1 512MB stick, so I bought a second. Of course it actually came with 2 256MB sticks, so now I have to go and return the memory or buy more or... ugh.

Anyway, we've had the machine for less than 3 hours now, but so far it seems nice. The physical build quality of the machine is adaquate. The keys clack a little bit, the lid doesn't quite close firmly, and the body has a lot of flex in it. However, the industrial design is nice, it's light, and the screen looks very nice.

The amount of pre-installed software is very reasonable, especially compared with the Toshiba M4's kitchen sink approach. The dv1000 boots with only about 191MB allocated, which is nice.

Anyway, Megan seems to like the machine, should be interesting to see how it holds up.

Oh, and as a side note, the Intel 915GM is DX9 capable, but i'm guessing won't be able to run glass in Vista...

Reading through Brian's writeup on his new camera makes me want to get better with mine. When I first got my D30 I worked a bunch on learning to use it, but then fell in the trap of just playing around. While on vacation I had to relearn to do things like exposure compensation, manual focus point control, and AEB (exposure bracketing)... of course if I actually learned how to do manual focusing and light metering I could do a lot better. I think I need to spend some quality time getting back into photography. In the mean time, here are two images from my trip:

First, a simple picture of a church in Rome (I believe):

2304x3456, 24mm, F/8, ISO-100. full resolution (6MB)

Second, a composite picture that I took. Stitched using Canon's PhotoStitch software. I need to do some color correction, but this is the raw image:

8891x3222. full resolution (16MB)

I tried to resist, I really did.

So I'm at Costco on Saturday buying supplies for a BBQ/Baby Shower (emphasis on the BBQ!) that my family and a friend's are throwing for a mutual friend. Right there in the store was a deal - PSP, 2 games, and starter accessories for $320. Not a spectacular deal, but enough to get me to plop it into the cart.

Sitting on the tailgate of the pickup Erick and I busted into the impervious packaging to take a look at the beast. The battery reporting 15% full, with 0:38 remaining. We put in Twisted Metal Head-On and gave it a whirl. Wow.

Net result, I now have Lumines, Wipeout Pure, and Twisted Metal. Wipeout and Twisted Metal were included in the package, and Lumines got really good reviews for a puzzle game (which seems like a good use of the device).

Hardware

The screen is bright, but the surface is too shiney so you get lots of glare. I'll have to try a anti-glare screen for it and see if that helps. However even in bright daylight it is still readable. There are buttons everwhere, and the small analog stick on the front is easily missed by first time users (they think it is a speaker or mic).

Some of the switches aren't very intuitive. The WLan on/off switch looks like it toggles between WLan and Memorystick. There is a button with a rectangle on it, that actually toggles the brightness of the screen. The power button is a flick on, flick off, lock down for "hold". I think I would have prefered a three state switch.

The headphones that came with are OK, although everything about the device is black - except the headphones. They are trying a little too hard at the iPod wanna-be if you ask me. The headphone remote is a nice touch, but the part feels really cheap and light. We'll see how long it lasts.

Overall reasonable ergonomics.

The built in WLan is pretty cool, can't wait to find someone else with one to try it out with!

Sony f#@!king media

I get it, Sony is so cool they can't use any other standard media. Not only can they not use other people's media, they won't even use their own. The memory is MemoryStick Duo, which seems next to impossible to find in 1GB sticks. The media for the games is "UMD" (The hubris to call it a "universal" media disk is just amazing). The UMB is almost as nice as Sony's proprietary Mini-Disk, except that they left a part of the optical media unprotected in the sleeve. ugh.

The size of the UMD is nice, however because of the open hole in the case, you have to keep them in the largish box, or I'll have to investigate a new storage mechanism.

Games

So far the games are pretty cool. The controls take some getting used to, but they play really well. The small screen makes twitch games like Twisted Metal tough, but Wipeout has no problem on the device, and Lumines is very cool. Probably the coolest thing, when you turn the power off it *suspends* instead of shutting down. You can flick the power off in the middle of combat, go back to real life, flick it back on and continue. I wish any other system (any!) did something that nice.

The selection of games right now isn't great. Gamespot's PSP section is anemic, and many of the games are getting pretty low numbers. Final Fantasy looks like it will be super promising. Combining suspend with an RPG that I can carry anywhere sounds amazing. I'm thinking that Tony Hawk might be the next game to acquire, but I'm going to play with these three for a while.

Movies, Music, and Pictures

I didn't buy movies on UMD, but I watched the trailers on the sample disk that came with. The screen looks great for them. Once I get my 1GB MS I'll probably get a ripper and try putting some movies on. My gut says that this will rock as an MP3 player, i'm hoping that i'll end up with the 40GB iPod for "serious" music, but that I can live with 1GB of lower quality music for extremely portable scenarios (airplane?). Not sure if pictures are going to be that interesting of an application.

This device definetly is competitive with many of the consoles on the market today, and from a portable it is by far the nicest one I've ever seen. It's amazing to me that it just blows away the quality of experience that I've seen on Windows CE machines. Animation, movies, music, it all flows seamlessly. I haven't played with a portable MCE device yet, so maybe that will make me feel better.

I think this is just a great product, and a killer entry for Sony into the portable space.

Just picked up a PSP from Costco... impulse buy... need more gadgets... i'll do a full writeup later...

Today I went on a bit of a spending spree... again. I bought a new HD TiVo for my theater. So far it's great. I need to run another sat line to the room and terminate one of the CAT-5 cables for a phone line. The over-the-air is great, the guide is great, and the 250 GB of storage is great.

First question; why not media center? Put simply, media center still doesn't have the wife acceptance factor, and media center doesn't work with DirectTV (not the way TiVo does!).

hmm... no more questions. Got to go watch some TV.

Went night diving on wednesday at cove 2 in Alki. We got in the water around 7pm, which made it dark. Really dark. We did a short surface swim (well, actually a bit of a swim) and then dropped down into 40' of water. The sensation of holding onto the bouy line, which descended into inifinite black, and looking up and seeing it ascend into equally infinite black with a few other dive lights floating around me was amazing.

On our way back from 100' and the "I beams" we got to see several baby squid, one of which perched on the end of one of the dive lights to enjoy the warmth. Probably the coolest thing was a seal that followed us down to about 70' to feed on fish that it would spot in our lights. Very cool.

I did 4 more dives this weekend. Our local over priced dive shop (aren't they all?) had a big sale on Saturday, which prompted me to buy yet another gadget - a dry suit. I'm now the proud owner of the Andy DS1 dry suit. It's basically the bottom of the line of a (I think?) high end dry suit. The dry suit underwear had to be special ordered, but on Sunday I got to dive with the new suit - it's nice to be dry (unlike the rental dry suits).

Anyway... Saturday I did 2 dives at Alki's "Graduation" Beach. Basically nothing to see. The first dive the rental dry suit intake value was sticky causing me to loose bouyency, finally determine that I couldn't fill the suit with any air and had to leave the deflation valve open causing the suit to take on small, but consistent, amounts of water. Net result, the worst dive ever. The second dive was better after some field stripping of the sticky valve.

Today I did two boat dives with Bandito Charters... boat diving is 'da bomb! We hit Sunrise and Maury Island Barges. Both were great dive sites. I did Nitrox for the first time for these dives. I consumed an amazing amount of air and couldn't figure out the issue - until I finally noticed I was diving with steel 80s instead of 95s... all makes sense now. Got to see an octo grab onto my dive buddy. Very cool stuff.

Apparently I can't get enough, and neither can my checkbook. I'm now taking the next series of classes for diving. Nitrox (diving with a different mix of air), Deep diving (going below 60'), Night diving (uhm, diving in the dark), and Navigation (using a compass 101). Once I complete these I will be considered an "advanced diver"... however, as someone pointed out this weekend - there is a difference between an experienced diver and a good diver.

This weekend I got 3 total dives in, 2 on Saturday at Sunrise Beach in Gig Harbor, and 1 on Sunday at Alki. Sunrise was very cool, a 70' long rock wall with tons of octos hiding in all the crevices. Got to see a wolf eel, some nudabrinks (sp?), rat fish, and other pretty cool stuff. Long drive out there and a someone challenging walk down, but well worth it. Definitely the best dive spot I've been to so far. The dive on Sunday put me at 10 total dives - wahoo!

OMG

Oh My God.

Half Life 2 just reafirmed the value of a PC. The graphics are absolutely amazing. Game play is great. Physics engine is fabulous. Story is pretty interesting so far. The Steam distribution is very cool. I'm so happy to finally have a game I don't have to stick a freaking CD in the drive.

Word to PC game manufactures: If you want to compete with console gaming systems learn something here. Requiring people to put a CD into the drive (just like a console) makes people compare you to a console. Why not leverage that $80 250GB hard drive to store the game on and just make it work. Of course, on the down side i'm still having a few whacky audio driver isses :)

I really didn't want to download it. I have Halo 2, GTA: San Andreas, Fable, and Doom 3 all in my "play queue". I couldn't resist though. Too many good reviews. I'm using Steam to download the game as I type. The time calculation is a bit whacky... started out with 153 minutes, now it's up to 175 minutes and going up. That isn't a good sign.

I went diving at Alki "Cove 2", aka Seacrest Park, today for my dry suit certification. Originally I had planned to finish up my dry suit class on 12/5 when I go on a Bandito boat trip, however because I'm going diving at Sunrise on next Saturday I had to expidite my ceritication... Since I already have 12/5 booked with an instructor, I figured I shouldn't waste any time, so I signed up for a Nitrox diving class.

Nitrox is interesting... the basic theory is to avoid nitrogen related injuries by diving with higher percentages of oxygen. Sounds great, except that pure oxygen is also fatal to humans (we breath something like ~21% O2 normally, while Nitrox is typically 32% or 36% O2). So you are a little in a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Too much nitrogen and you get bent, too much O2 and you die. Sucks, don't it.

Net net, once I finished the class I'll be able to safely dive with Nitrox which is (really) safer that diving with straight air - longer bottom time, with less side effects.

Cool stuff I saw: ~5' Octopus, several sunken boats, a MS Intellimouse at 50', and lots of fish.

I'll write a longer entry later, I need to get back to work this morning... Over the weekend I did my 4 (well, they call it 5) dives to get certified for open water scuba diving. Dry suit diving at 8am in the Puget Sound was interesting, and a hell of a lot of fun. The water was a "warm" 53 degrees, and I only got a max depth of 30' in all the dives. My gear I bought worked great, and I used all of it (except for my "dive tool", otherwise known as a knife)... I got to see 4'+ ling cod, sculpins, plumous anemnonies (horrible spelling attempt there), crabs, shrimp, kelp, submerged detritous (stuff <G>), and other divers!

My biggest work item for next dive: buoyancy control. Several times I accidentally popped up 15+ feet trying to regain control.

My biggest new thing I want to do next: Hit 60'

Next classed to take: Nitrox (safety), Deep diving (flexibility), Night diving (flexibility).

I started a new hobby the other day - scuba. I've always kinda wanted to try it, and so I signed up for lessons. It turned out that we were also heading to Mexico (right new Cozumel and Belize) in December, so I figured it was a great time to learn. Of course, I really had no idea how "equipment intensive" (aka expensive) this sport was. I still haven't made it into the open water, but I decided (somewhat stupidly) to start buying gear. So far I've picked up:

• Shorty wet suit
• Fins (ScubaPro Twinjet)
• Mask (I forget the brand, unwilling to go dig it up right now <G>)
• Snorkle (I forget the brand, but a dry snokle)
• Regulator (ScubaPro MK25/S600)
• BC (ScubaPro Knighthawk w/ Air2)
• Dive computer (UWatec Aladin Console)
• Light (UC C8)
• Knife

I also spent a good part of Sunday building a rack system for all the gear to dry in the garage above a bucket to catch the water. The bucket will also double as the soaking/cleaning station.

Megan thinks I've gone a little nuts on buying all this equipment before I've even gotten into the ocean. I agree... however, I think I'm going to do quite a few dives - my goal is to do 100 lifetime dives and then I'll feel "justified" in getting into the sport. 50 dives and I'll be OK with the purchases, 25 and I wasted my money.

Wednesday night I have my final class for certification, Thursday is my dry suit specialty class, Saturday & Sunday are my open water certification dives. I already have a dive lined up for Thanksgiving weekend!

I ended up getting almost a month off in Decemember, I'm going to try and get in 25 dives before the new year (5 for my certification, 5 in Mexico, 10 before Mexico, 5 more somewhere?)... it's a bit agressive, so I'll probably only get 15 or so... the key for me is to get out of the "totally new" space before going down to Mexico. I'm a little nervous about diving with a bunch of random tourists in a resort, where your life may depend on the guy or gal swimming next to you. If I get a couple cold water dives under my belt, I'll feel a lot more confident. Also, I won't look like a total newbie with gear that has never touched the water before ;-)

I woke up this morning around 7:30am and started playing again... for a little while. Had to head out get some food and do some homework for my scuba class (which I realized I haven't blogged about yet, for shame!)...

I love some of the details in Halo 2 - for example, there is no more loading screen - ever (from what I have seen). There are cut scenes, the quick "loading" text, but no more of the 60 second load screen... very nice.

I won't blog about the plot/levels of the game for a couple days to avoid spoiling it for anyone...

Tonight I went to midnight madness at the Redmond Town Center EBX store. They started letting people in at midnight, after, of course, inciting the crowd to a bit of a frenzy with free promotions (bags, hats, etc.). At around 1am I had in my hands a silver cased copy of Halo 2. I had played some of the beta/alphas, so I had some idea of what to expect. I got home and started playing.

Unfortunately I don't have the stamina that I used to, and I need to get some sleep. I have tomorrow off from work. I thought I might head in for a few hours in the morning... that isn't going to happen.

This game kicks ass.

 I haven't even started multiplayer yet (looks like Live! might have been a bit busy tonight). After 2.5 hours of playing, I'm having a blast. Tomorrow I've got around 8 people coming over to the house for a little multiplayer bash... should be awesome!

I picked up the new Grand Theft Auto to pass the time while waiting for Halo 2. I'm also playing Fable. With all my travel recently I haven't had a huge amount of time for playing, but it's nice to have some new good games.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)

True to the other games in the series this continues the tradition of being borderline acceptable. The amount of swearing seems to have increased, and the theme has moved to a pure gang banger model. It's pretty fun, but clearly a game I wouldn't let my young kids play. For me the graphics seem a bit dark, lots of back lit scenes, but still very playable.

Fable (XBox)

I've been looking for a new RPG for a long time, and I really dig Fable. The inital 45 minutes of the game is a bit tediuous, but after that it gets pretty cool. A simple stat system with an interesting moral stat (you can be a good or evil person, your actions decide) is fairly intuitive.

Went on a spending spree at the local Fry's today. Came back with a P4 3.2 Ghz 2GB RAM 250GB HD Radeon 9600 XT 128MB machine, all in a slick shuttle case. Now I just have to do the fun of reinstalling everything and doing data transfer... since I have around 60GB+ of data on the old machine, I think I'm going to crack the case and put the old and new HD in a single machine and do a direct copy.

Scary things... I bought a middle of the road video card, but I still spent $99 (I know, I know, ...) but even games made a year ago can max out the video card. Halo cranked at 1280x1024 can get choppy when there are lots of grenades, etc. Doom 3 has to be run with a lower resolution and lower detail.

Cool things... I finally have a machine with an integrated DVD/CD burner and DVD decoder... previously I had DVD drives without the decoder, or an external USB 1.1 CD burner. Should be a blast to be able to actually burn a CD/DVD in reasonable time.

I'll post full stats later, but it might be a couple days... i tend to get slightly obsessive with new toys :-)

Yesterday I felt like picking up a new game, and I was debating what to get. While browsing around I discovered some really positive reviews for Chronicles of Riddick. Odd, given that movie based games normally suck. When I went to the local game store it got rave reviews from the other shoppers and the staff. What the hell.

The game is an interesting cross between Splinter Cell and Halo. The graphics are amazing, and the fact that they went for a MA game, and kept the swearing in adds to the game feeling very different than typical. Riddick kills people to gain favor with other inmates, acquires a shiv, and beats the hell out of people with brass knuckles. And this is all in the first level!

I still haven't gotten my eyes shined, but the stealth mode is pretty nice. Overall, the game is pretty slick. We'll see if it keeps my attention long enough to finish.

Russell bought his first TiVo, welcome to the club! Of course, I feel that Russell is missing out on the "prefered" TiVo usage. First, DirectTV is the only way to fly. TiVo will actually record the satalite feed directly (since it is already compressed) meaning that your playback is at 100% quality. Second, for your primary TiVo I think you need at least 2 tuners and 80GB min hard drive (I have about 100GB on mine).

People that haven't used TiVo have a hard time understanding. When I got my HD sat reciever it took me about 30 minutes to remember how to watch live TV. My first thought - what are the chances of there being anything to watch on TV when *I* want to watch it? Something a TiVo user takes for granted is that TiVo puts the viewer in control of the TV schedule. I never have to "try to get home in time" for a show.

I wanted to build a coffee table for my office at work... initially the goal was to just build a really simple design and just bang it out. Given that the table was supposed to be small, we figure we would go insane on the wood... the result was an African Paduak top and legs, with Babinga stretchers. I went for fixed tenons for something new, and did a nice route on the top for a good accent. The beaded stretchers and round top don't quite fit with the blocky legs, but it works.

We started with 8/4 stock of paduak that we resawed to create the bookmatched top.  Given the width and density of the wood, we actually double resawed it - first cutting the stock in half with the grain before splitting it. The top is approximately 36"x22", the table is approximately 18" tall. 

Hours in the shop: ~15 hours
Finish time: 3 hours
Tools used: Band saw, router, table saw, double belt sander
Mechanical fastners: 6 figure 8 clips

The paduak is an amazing deep red that I finished with several coats of tung/lindseed oil finish. The babinga is a dark brown.

My friend Erick has a great woodworking shop. Over the past year I've spent a bunch of time helping him build and move from his old shop (a 3rd car stall in his garage) into his new shop (around an 800 sqft shop). Well, a bunch of time helping for me is roughly equivalent to about 1/10000 the total amount of time it took to build the new shop...

For the past month or two I've been slowly making progress on my first woodworking project - a small end table. The goal of the project was to start with something small that I could complete all the way, including "furniture" grade finish. We started with the best intentions... We dismissed ideas like a computer desk or built-in bookshelves as far to grandious for a first project. The end table for my theater room would make a great small project that would require too much materials, time, or skill.

Until we started feature creep... first, we decided the table should be round. Then, of course, the stretchers should also be round. Finally, the legs should taper in three directions and the finish should be a high gloss stain and laquer... Oh, and we decided to make the entire table out of Honduran Mahogany, a somewhat pricey (but not ridiculous) wood that is fairly soft and easy to work with...

During this project I had messed up practically every step.

First step was to make the top. milled some stock into three 6" strips which we glued together to form the round top. After waiting for a couple days we determined the top was slightly cupped, but OK. So I went to work on the top using a jig that I used to make the forms for the stretchers (more later). Of course it wasn't until after I cut the top that I realized I didn't take into account the thickness of the router bit, making the top 3/4" short on the radius - given that I only wanted about a 1" overhang, it destroyed the top.

To build the round stretchers we needed to create glue laminates, which involved cutting a good amount of wood into 3/32" strips that we could glue together. After ripping about 20+ strips we reached the conclusion that they were too thin and inconsistent. Toss that wood.

So here I am, having burnt through about $50 worth of wood. But, I've learned some good lessons. Off to the wood store to get more mahogany.

Measuring more carefully this time. New blade in the band saw. Stretchers come out much nicer, only a few mess ups. Top is looking good - this time we thought aheard and book matched the wood for great symetry of the grain.

We decide to do a three way taper on the legs, leaving the front face nice and flat. Looks nice, but involved some trickiness to get the table saw and chop saw to cooperate.

After that it was just sanding, and finishing... all in all it probably was a 25 hour project.

Hours in shop: ~20 hours
Finishing time: ~5 hours
Tools used: Double belt sander, band saw, table saw, planer, jointer, hand plane, forsner bits
Mechanical fasters: 6 figure 8 clips to secure the top to the base

Construction used loose mortice and tennon to secure the stretchers to the legs, using 0 biscuits. Each stretcher consists of around 6 layers of mahogony that was cut to around 3/32 on the band saw and sanded down to around 1/16 with the double belt sander. Gorilla glue was soaked into all the layers of the stretchers and then they were put in a round form for around 1 day each and held under pressure. When all 4 stretchers where completed they were jointed and cut on the table saw to be made consistent.

The top was a single piece of 12/8 stock (i think?) that I split on the bandsaw, then milled to be glued together into the 16" diameter round top. The top was roughcut on the bandsaw, then cleaned up with a router using a jig attached to a dowel in the center of the top. The top was attached to the base using 6 figure 8 clips, using a forner bit to drill out a spot on each stretcher.

The finish was a oil based dark walnut that I wiped on, and I did 3 coats of lacquer to the entire table, with 6 coats on the top.

From MSN Money...

What should I ask when interviewing a potential advisor ?

1. Who is your typical client?
2. What is your educational and professional background? What certifications do you have?
3. How -- and how much -- do you get paid?
4. Why do you want me as a client? What kind of people do you not want?
5. How often will I hear from you, and what will prompt your calls?
6. Will anyone else be working with me?
7. Can you provide the names of a few clients as references?
8. May I review samples of materials you give your clients?
9. Do you have discretion to act without my approval?

Also, they suggested picking up The Right Way to Hire Financial Help...

For various reasons I ended up getting a small chunk of cash sitting in my savings account. This isn't "big" money by any stretch of the imagination, but enough that I don't think that a 1% savings account is the right place for it. My problem - I've never don't any real financial planning, investing, or anything else like that before. Last night I went to Borders and tried to find a good book.

Wow, talk about bad books - I would say 80% of the books where basically "How to take the change from under your couch and make one million dollars with secrets that Wall Street will never tell you!". Give me a break, I want a book with realistic advice. When I started looking at buying a house I found a bunch of good books, with reasonable advice about interviewing agents, etc.

I ended up getting The Truth About Money, which I'm going to start reading today. Should be interesting to try and get into this a little bit.

From myself :)

"The DaVinci Code - Seems you can't throw a dead cat without hitting this book these days, so I felt I should read it. I got totally enthralled with the story and read straight through it while traveling on Day 9. I'd like to understand how much of the book was fiction, obviously the book is fiction, but it is at least loosely based on some facts (like the Mona Lisa is a real painting!)..."

And Matt says (in comments):

"The beauty of The DaVinci Code was how well Dan Brown authored it. There was a significant amount of fact in it, and I consistently found myself looking at the pictures described in the book, thinking to myself... Wow...

Do a google search on some of the artwork mentioned in the book and see for yourself...

It was so cleverly authored that you could not determine where the fact stopped and the fiction started.

Some things that I got from the beginning of the book... Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion *are* real."

And Rory responds (in comments):

"I was embarrassed when my aunt gave me _The DaVinci Code_ for Christmas. Everything about it, right down to the title, sounded like your typical conspiratorial gobbeldy-gook.

It was with even greater embarrassment that I went tonight to purchase Brown's previous Robert Langdon adventure - _Angels and Demons_.

(Note: I would like to apologize in advance for all the people, including myself, who are about to begin using your blog to post their own impressions of _The DaVinci Code_)

For trash novels, I can't put this stuff down. Brown knows his stuff (some of it), and does a much better job than my friends do of getting me to stay up past my bedtime.

My only issue is all the pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo numerology. I'm waiting to see my local newspaper (The Oregonian) get caught up in the DaVinci Code fever and start printing lotto numbers based on the Fibonacci Sequence and the golden ratio.

But, whatever... Good to relax and get lost in the weirdness for a little while.

Speaking of which, I still have more not sleeping to do with _Angels and Demons_..."

I figure I would just pull out this discussion into a separate post in case more people want to respond without having to read the rather length NYC post...

Joe is working on his new home theater... I have the X1 and love it, so I don't think you will go wrong there. However, now there is a consumer version of the X1 that comes with the right adapters, and a little more user friendly software - the ScreenPlay 4800.

As for speakers, you should look into Paradigm. They are a canadian company that makes a really nice speaker that you can get relatively cheaply - NAFTA even helps you out by making it duty free (since it's a product of Canada).

I've done a bunch of DIY cables, and they aren't cheap. You end up getting a better value for the cables, but you don't save any real money. I know that cables can make a difference, but often buying a cheap cable at target and then upgrading in the future is fine. However, if you are doing an installation (putting the cables in the walls/cieling/etc) then making your own cables is definetly the right call for some of this (not speaker wire - just buy that at Home Depot).

Don't cheap out on the screen. I don't know what a DIY screen will look like, but my GreyHawk from Stewart Film Screens is excellent. Previously I had a mediocre oversized white screen, unstretched, and it wasn't good. Reflective paint doesn't cut it.

Given that I know Joe, I should invite him over to my house to check out my setup... I basically have a great "low end" home theater setup... no component cost more than about $1200...

Played Rainbox Six 3 today for many hours... Fred came over and we played online (there is something fun about being able to yell "get me a beer" at the person you are playing with and having them actually be able to do it <G>)... I agree with the description that I got for this - "Splinter Cell graphics meets Ghost Recon". Very fun, adictive, overall enjoyable. I've really only played online, and I enjoy "Terrorist Hunt" quite a bit, however the player on player action is (typical for me) above my skill level.

Costco, the worlds most dangerous store, strikes again. I went to Costco to pick up some oil for deep frying a turkey tonight... I walked out with a new portable DVD player [moblog]. I'm amazed at how much the price on these units have dropped. 16 months ago I shopped for a portable player, and for a 7" screen it was almost $1000... today I got a 7" player for $280. Amazing.

The screen is OK quality, the battery claims 3 hours of play time (haven't tested it yet), and it is relatively small. Overall a pretty good impulse buy... I'll bring it with me to the PDC to watch movies on the plane. I find a laptop is a little unwieldy on a plane.

The Infocus X1 that I bought for home theater is simply amazing. Right now this is one of the hotest projectors on the market. The price - $1,000 - is a great deal for what you get. Native 800x600 resolution (4x3 for those paying attention) doesn't give you full fidelity with high HD resolutions, but the quality is great.

My friend Erick and I did a side by side comparison of his projector (forget the model, but around $10K) and the Infocus, and also of his Denon DVD player (~$500) and my Panasonic RP62 (~$120).

Erick's projector is native 1280x720, so naturally a true HD signal (1080i over the air, 720p XBOX) looked spectacular on his projector. On the Infocus the 720p signal was softened - since it was a video game it was particularly noticable, however it didn't detract at all. The softening made the image look a bit nicer, but you lost some of the detail. The 1080i signal (over-the-air news) looked amazing on both, but when you walked up closely to the screen you could clearly make out the difference in pixel size.

Basically my summation would be, that the X1 was competitive with the other projector - but it clearly won out in the value category. As a side note, the Panasonic DVD player beat out the denon, mostly because the Denon had some bugs in it's color display...

Granted, Erick just got a home theater PC hooked up - which lets him play HD DVDs that are encoded with WM9 - now that looks amazing on his projector...

Hmm... maybe I should upgrade :)

So the new house came with a "theater room"... basically the previous owner had one of the car spots in the garage converted into a finished room.  The guy left his projector screen, so I figure I had to get a projector :)   ... of course, the house purchase has stretched my finances a bit, so something too high end wasn't going to happen... I ended up ordering the Infocus X1, which (after rebate) is going to be about $899... pretty amazing for an HD DLP projector!