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WEEK 50 2005

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Saturday 17 December 2005

Saturday - I'm in a pretty good mood this evening. A couple of fingers of Captain Morgan in your eggnog will have that effect.

Took some "computer waste" over to the toxic waste drop-off in Palmdale today. Two old laser printers and a monitor. They hold a free collection on the third Saturday of each month for this type of stuff. I have more old, dead, computer gear; but this being my first dropoff, I wasn't sure how much they would take. I needn't have worried, the guy in front of me had an entire pickup filled with monitors, printers, cpu's and televisions. I didn't even have to get out of the Explorer - the help, all dressed in matching spiffy white jumpsuits, emptied it out for me.

Feeling lucky, I snuck in the back way to Sears, and picked up a couple of humidifier filters, and managed to avoid most of the holiday shoppers!

Because, you see, I've mostly already finished my Christmas shopping. I drew my Dad this year and got him (don't tell him,  folks!)  this. Hey, I've got friends in low places....


For some strange reason they a playing NFL football on a Saturday. Weird.


Well, trying to install the Zen Micro on different Win2k box didn't work. The newer box had a minimal installation, really, just the OS and some FORTRAN applications. No go, I saw the same "device not connected" problem as before. Doing a bit of research on the internet (google "groups" mostly) I saw some mentions that it worked better with WinXP, using the Windows Media Player.

Grudgingly, I hooked it to the Sony laptop. Surprisingly, it worked - without any software installed on the laptop! In fact, although the laptop did want to boot into a "sync" mode using WMP, I was able to instead drag and drop MP3 files directly from Windows Explorer. So, now I'll have to see if it holds up any better than the Gmini.


Some random links:

Friday 16 December 2005

Friday -  and, yes, the Zen Micro is still not working. I may try it on a newer computer - I have been using an old box for a long time as my main desktop pc, and perhaps there is some hardware (it's an old D845 mobo) or software (Windows 2000)  issue keeping the driver from installing properly.

Book #49 is Cork Boat, by John Pollack. John starts collecting wine corks as a young boy to make an "unsinkable boat", after a short trip in a homemade boat ( two feet, straight down). Even as an adult he continues collecting, out of habit, and then, with the encouragement of friends and family starts turning this vague life long dream into reality. Quirky and entertaining, it's a wonderful story. Recommended!

Phoebe watches the fish...
Phoebe, and fish....

Thursday 15 December  2005

Thursday - ended the day with simultaneously having: a headache from having my eyes dilated at the optometrist, a head cold, and a toothache. Went to bed about about 7:30 in the evening...

The good news - despite my extreme "long eye" I have no retinal holes, tears, detachments, etc. Which is good. It was a bit of a scare when the first doctor asked another to "just take a quick look at a spot in your left eye's three o'clock". Now I just need to get to an eyeglass store and pick out something nice in the way of frames for the new prescription.

Wednesday 14 December 2005

Wednesday - worked late - I have a visit with the eye doctor tomorrow afternoon, so I'll have to take off work early.

I'm not too happy with the Zen Micro player, already. For one thing, it isn't a fully compatible external storage device! So it doesn't automatically come up as an external device when you plug it in. That's lame. You have to load a bunch of Creative's software - dozens of megabytes - and so far, after two hours of my time, it still doesn't see the player. I think the driver didn't install properly, but since the player is still charging I can't really tell. I've downloaded the newest driver from the web site, and I'll try uploading that tomorrow.

The sample songs and such, already on the player, do play. So, maybe I won't have to go get an IPOD.

Tuesday 13 December 2005

Tuesday - work. Then, in the evening,  I went back down to Burbank to pick up the friend I dropped off last week. Since I was early I went by Fry's and returned the Archos Gmini. I then bought a Creative Zen Micro 6GB instead. We'll see how that goes. I returned home much too late to mess with it....

 Monday 12 December 2005

Monday - work, work, work.

Sunday 11 December 2005

Sunday - Not a lot to say. Hung out with the brother in law. Got a haircut. Helped a friend create a web page (they had Frontpage, but I finally gave up on it and just used Netscape Composer.)

There is a Fry's computer store right across the street from Bob Hope International Airport, and while there last week I picked up a little MP3 player, a Gmini Archos XS100, with a 3GB disk. I wanted a way to store MP3's that didn't require the constant changing in and out of CDs in the car. Tapes aren't bad, but I'm always dropping the CDs. The Gmini was small, it was fairly ergonomic, and cheap.

Cheap as in....cheap. When I got it home I discovered that the earpieces didn't work. I had some spare earpieces, and then I could hear the music. It was a nice transfer, from the CD of MP3s directly to the little hard drive. And they played fine, at first. I had also bought a little FM transmitter, that allowed me to pick up the Archos on my car stereo, and that worked. So Friday I tried out a book-on-tape, Master & Commander, and it worked just fine.

Saturday, I was going to show the brother in law the new gadget - and it didn't work. From what I can tell, the firmware or the hard drive has failed. So, back to the store with it. I'll get another brand, since two separate failures suggest extremely poor quality control.

Picture of the Week

 Mt. Diablo from the ridge route above Martinez
Photo Notes: Mt. Diablo, from the ridge route above Martinez.

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