I’m a retard

I hate it when it’s the little things. Apparently I’m an idiot. I formatted the inline_captions tags incorrectly and that’s why they weren’t appearing. That’s fixed and so is the italics in IE issue. I have no idea how I did that, nor do I care. So, those links to the right… enjoy them.

Bang your monkey.

Random 10

Random 10 – Use your favorite media player, select your entire music collection (if possible), randomize or shuffle the list and then tell us which are the first 10 random songs it picks out. Music, even random music, tells a lot about a person.

1. Syntax – Bliss (Felix Da Housecat Dub)
2. Dropkick Murphys – In the Streets of Boston (live)
3. Underworld – Rez/Cowgirl
4. Green Day – St Jimmy
5. MXPX – Middlename (live)
6. Miles Davis – Boplicity
7. Elvis Presley – I really don’t want to know
8. Reel Big Fish – Ban the Tube Top
9. Alkaline Trio – You’re Dead
10. Frank Sinatra – All of me

What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
38.7G. It was close to 50 but I had to make some room.

The last CD you bought was:
Nat King Cole – The World Of Nat King Cole

Write down five songs you listen to a lot or mean a lot to you:

1. Dropkick Murphys – Amazing Grace
2. Stevie Ray Vaughn – Texas Flodd
3. Less Than Jake – Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sell Outs
4. Paul Van Dyk – We Are Alive
5. Frank Sinatra – They Can’t Take That Away From Me

Matt out.

Burn me baby!

My new DVD burner arrived the other day and now it’s sucessfully installed in it’s new home. I opted for the NEC 3520-A. It’s a 16x DL burner and got highmarks from both AnandTech and Toms Hardware. It was also half the price of the Plextor I wanted. I realize the Plextor is the Porche of optical drives, but $150 for a DVD burner when all the others are $50-60. Come on guys, that’s not right.

Regardless, it’s a sweet drive. I’ve already test burnt a half dozen things. I had 8x disks that burnt a full 4.7G in about 6 minutes. The 4x disks I had averages about 12-14 minutes. That’s not shabby. It’s also extemely quite. I didn’t realize it was burning the first time until the light started blinking.

I’ve also installed the old drive in my 2nd machine. It’s hard drive will be formatted shortly and I’ll probably install my old TV tuner card in it and turn it into a media PC. I might even install Media Center Edition on it if I get bored. It’ll fit nicely into my entertainment center. I already have a wireless mouse and the appropriate AV cables to hook everything up. All I need is to find my video breakout box with the svideo inputs. It’s somewhere in the closet. After that it would just be a matter of getting the video drivers to display correctly on the TV. It could be cool.

In non-computer news, we’re going to another Aeros hockey game tonight. I’m not sure who they’re playing, not that it matters anyway. The game starts around 7:00.

I’ve also got the links at the top of the page fixed and should be linked to content shortly. Also, “Recent Links” is installed and you can see it in action over to the right side of the page beneith the archives and links. It’s a updatable list of links I find as I’m browsing around. I’m working on adding text descriptions to each link so it’ll be a little easier to figure out what they are. If you’re look at them in IE, the font is apparently larger and italic. I have no idea why. In Firefox it’s the same font as the links above it and its the same size. Not that it looks bad in IE, it just doesn’t look as it should. Not that I care how things look in IE, but it’s text for heaven’s sake, you’d figure it could at least get that right. Stupid IE.

Desktop Customization

I’ve been asked in the past few days to try and explain this whole “desktop customization” thing. I’ve tried to find a reason for it, a reason why I enjoy it so much, but I can’t. All I know is that it’s easy once you get the basics down and that there are so many basics to get down that the web litteraly contains thousands of pages devoted to mundane things like changing and icon. Group those with sites about background wallpaper, helpful widgets and windows themes and you have yourself a community. A friggin’ huge one. Sites have been created to round up folks like me and provide a sort of group theropy by letting us show off all our cool ass desktops in monthly threads about desktops themselves.

It’s an odd hobby I admit, but believe it or not it’s one that I enjoy. I suppose I enjoy the challenge of hacking Windows to bits and redoing everything that could possibly be customized. That, and on the rare occasion that someone sees my computer, I love to get those “what operating system is that” or “how are you doing that” comments. They hit the floor when I tell them that pathetic old Windows is running and OSX-esque dock bar, interactive icon labels, a media player strait out of a scifi movie and that half my desktop moves, blinks, jiggles or is interactive in a dozen other ways.

Anyway, I figured I’d write up a little guide to help explain all this and break down the past of customization into easy to handle chunks. So, press on dear reader, click that read more button…
(more…)

Rodeo 2005

Rodeo. A foreign word to most of us, ingrained social event for Texans. You can’t be in Houston without going to the rodeo at some point. Last night six of us went for this years festivities. I’ll break down your average rodeo for those unfamiliar.

Rodeo – noun:
A yearly event that may contain any combination of the following: calf roping, bull riding, trick horse jumping, hat and belt buckle vendors, beer, tacos and any type of food imaginable “on a stick”, immediately followed by some sort of live musical performance typically, but not exclusively, by a country western artist. May contain additional carnival attractions and games as well as frightening “carnie folk”.

It’s actually a tad more involved than that, say, about 72,000+ people worth.

Last night was fun. Interesting and different but fun. We actually went to the rodeo on Black Heritage Day. The musical performance was Alicia Keys and the crowd was quite heavily populated with thousands of 16 year old black teenage girls. It wasn’t all bad. The performance wasn’t as horrible as I imagined, she has a talent for the piano. unfortunately the acoustics in Reliant Stadium suck huge panda wang. It was horrible to listen to. Echos, bad bounce, distortion, the whole deal. Worst possible audio setup I’ve ever seen. The stadium is designed to make football games seem loud. That has the side effect of unnaturally amplifying concerts to the point of distortion.

The audio was quickly made up for with a “yard” long margarita. The sausage-on-a-stick and pizza-on-a-stick helped too. Oh, and lastly, to everyone in Houston, Funnel Cakes suck. You people don’t know what you’re missing. Fried dough is where it’s at baby. A funnel cake is fried dough’s poor white trash cousin.

It was certainly an interesting evening.