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Tag: me

  • wow, the end of Ch@b

    karl sent me the news…

    99% of the readers of this post have no idea what i’m talking about, but, to those of you that do, this is truly the end of an era, even if that era ended for us long ago…
    no more Ch@bTalk, URL Chat, and, if i read it right, no more MyRooms… all those things we spent so many late frustrating hours for months trying to figure out… i remember clearly Curtis announcing he had finally figured out how to get it to work, even making a long-distance phone call to japan (jeez, that was almost five years ago)… then, months later, after everyone had given up on it, Vegitto figured out the way to open Ch@bTalk to the masses… the controversy over the selling of ISAO ID’s, people stumbling through the programs to create them for everyone… and, speaking of frustrating, trying to teach people how to use it… they were certainly our most used guides… then came DreamPassport Premier Ch@bTalk and all the amazing features and having to feel around in the dark all over again to work out all the buttons (the definitive exhaustive guide created by the guy at this keyboard)… JavaCh@b and then DPPC and no one believing Danny that he got it to work until he finally posted a screenshot of it running on his machine… hours spent on the URL Chat at ISAO, trying to get someone who could translate for our guides… months of trying to carry on conversations with people who spoke little to no english, but, needing their knowledge so continuing to try… and several times that it was declared that it was now impossible to create new ID’s, yet, someone always found a way… and, of course, several Ch@b directories, just so you could actually find people to chat with…
    Drobb was the first person to Ch@b us… minutes after posting our number in the original DCBG Ch@b listing…
    when i installed ICQ on my psion, i even switched out all the sound files with Ch@b sounds… and, here a few months ago, i dusted off my old generation 0 dreamcast and logged into Ch@b to check my messages and just see who might be on…
    man, i can hear that god-awful music that played on DP3 when the client would open and close when you went in and out of the email client… sometimes blaringly loud because you turned the volume way up to hear the quiet VoiceCh@b someone sent you…
    and who can forget “HALLO! HALLO!”, no matter how bad we want to…

    those glory days were great while they lasted… and now, one more piece of those days is about to expire…
    glad i was there for it… we really did make a bit of history, even if no one knows but us…

  • Engadget 1985

    amusing attempt to re-live the old days…
    [via Waxy]

    for the record, at that time, i was in the early stages of my techie journey with a TI-99/4A (with the 128k (?) memory expansion, disk drive, voice synthesizer, 300 baud modem, printer – ah, what i wouldn’t do for a pic of my old desk), i remember reading computer magazines back then and hand-typing basic programs they had in there (they did NOT come with disks, though, you could order cassette tapes with that month’s programs on them, as i recall)… some progs were so big, they would publish them in parts, so, you had a month to type in all that stuff and then wait for the next issue… i guess i was eleven years old when dad bought me a book called something like “Beginning BASIC For Kids”, which taught me about strings, variables, boolean – i still remember some of the little visual aides and such from that book… after that book, my fate was sealed… for years to come, my notebook full of programs and notes was my best friend… i remember many junior high lunches spent with a mile-long print out of some program i had written, scrutinizing every line, command, subroutine, trying to debug the thing, comparing my original notes, looking for typos, looking for incorrect goto line numbers, any clue as to why it isn’t working…

    a misspent youth, to be sure…

    i spent most of my non-programming time playing scott adams text adventure games, but, i did my bbs time, as well… on one local bss – i wish i could remember the name – i had been caught cheating at tradewars… selling secrets back and forth – had three accounts, one for each opposing faction and one to collect my hush money payments 🙂 neither team ever figured out who their rat was, but, the sysop did… somehow it all worked out that he gave me co-sysop access and i eventually worked for him at the computer shop he ran… dick scheffler was his name…

    on a bbs called “the twilight zone”, there was this little game where you could win more access time (you see, folks, you connected to a bbs using a phone line, so, they limited access to users, usually starting at a few minutes a day for new accounts, and there were things you could do to earn access minutes), this was a “guess the number” game… so, i had, say, 30 mins access time per day… so, i would log on and go straight to that game and try to win more time… but, in 30 mins, i could only guess so many numbers and may guess the same one more than once (it was a three digit number), writing down each number i tried ate up even more of my precious time… sooooooo, i wrote a little prog that could try out numbers WAY faster than i, a mere human, could punch them in, read the results, try again, etc., and would never repeat the number it had tried since i started it…
    as i recall, i got busted using that, too…

    and, you know, bbs’es live on, both dial-up and via telnet… when i got my psion 3c here just 3 or 4 years ago, i didn’t have any internet software for it, but, i did have a modem and a comms program, so, i got some bbs phone numbers, dialled them up, searched their files sections, and, after trying several bbs’es, eventually found an ftp client that i downloaded, then used it to get the rest of what i needed from the ‘net…

    annnyway, fun article… the “oh, let’s make fun of 80s tech” joke gets a bit tired, but, this one is not too offensive…

    btw, my brother got a “petster” for christmas one year, more like ’87…

    oh, and, before i go, it would be a crime to bring up bbs’es and not mention textfiles.com and the bbs documentary… which bbs documentary? well, THE bbs documentary, of course 😛

  • jesusfreakgeek.com

    yup, i finally bought it…
    jesusfreakgeek.com

    i just couldn’t stand it anymore, it was too catchy, i’ve thought about it long enough, and domain names are cheap…
    it will point here and all email sent to it will forward to my regular account…

    it will be a couple days until that link works, btw – these things take time…

    and people will no doubt rejoice that i finally have a website address that EVERYONE can actually spell 😛

  • give back my psion, no questions asked

    just give it back… no questions asked, simple as that…

    the security screen had my website address, so, there is a chance you are reading this… the screen also has my cell number, so, call me and arrange a meeting, a drop place, tell me what you did with it, whatever…
    i have years of info, email, notes, and more on that device and i need it back… it is worth nothing to you, it is a very old device, no one uses them anymore, you cannot pawn it, no one will buy it, if you want a pda there are many out there that will do what you want, you don’t want my outdated machine that they stopped making in the mid-90s…

    it is valueless to you and priceless to me…

    you left the contents of my wallet; photographs, notes, id, maybe because you understand and sympathize with the value of them, and i appreciate that… but, what is on that handheld computer is worth far more than the contents you left behind…

    so, just call me and let’s work this out, seriously, no questions asked, i just need it back…

  • this space intentionally left blank 😛

    yeah yeah, someday maybe i’ll start posting again… until then, this page serves the main purpose, which is having my contact info… additionally, it has plenty of links i feel are worth sharing with the world and gives me a place to direct people to to get the pics i take and such… the pics continue to get uploaded, but, i am too lazy to name them descriptively these days (or make posts about them), so, you have to REALLY want to see something to go digging in there…

    anyway, i just started a new route/schedule at work, so, maybe i’ll have more time to actually make posts…
    or maybe not…
    we’ll see…

    (of course, you can always check out my old blog from back when i posted stuff all the time…)

  • breaking the silence

    so, do you want to hear a REALLY depressing story about the last six months of my life?

    no, i don’t either…

    and, honestly, i am sick of the story…

    those who were readers of my site know i didn’t really get into my personal life, anyway, so, no reason to start now, let’s just move on to the current status of this site…

    yes, after a long absence, i am back with a new isp, new host, new hardware, and, finally, DSL… due to a new schedule that is overflowing with commitments, my online presence will only be VERY part-time, but here i am again…

    firstly i should say that much of the site probably won’t work right… the chatterbox, the search, probably some links, entire sections of the site missing… oh, and speaking of, due to circumstances WAY beyond my control, all the photos and media files are gone… yes, every pic from the last four years is gone forever, if anyone out there happens to have any copies, make my day and let me know… a while back, i suspected there was a possibility of an impending loss, so, i was able to make a backup of my blog and a couple other text sections of the site, so, they survived… and photos from the last six months will be uploaded next week some time…

    it is going to take some time to get everything up and working again, so, if you go poking around, expect some surprises… i still have to poke around myself and see what does and doesn’t work… and, i just installed the latest wordpress on my server, so, i may switch over, we’ll see…

    anyway, great to be back, even if in a somewhat limited capacity…

  • this night, nine years ago…

    …in an apartment by the beach, i met mary…

    you can read all about it here…

    we married seven months later, to the day…

    btw, since she brings it up in her post, yup, this is what we looked like when we met…
    us on our first date

  • WOO HOO! we finally got a real digital camera!!

    yup, we spent all day yesterday driving all over town, looking for a real cam for the balloon fest tomorrow… long day of comparison shopping at pawn shops, camera shops, even thrift stores…

    the last place we went was a cam shop at the mall across the street from us (after spending some seven hours running all over town) and the guy was great and got us exactly what we wanted… we just told him our requirements, he thought a long moment, reached in the case and pulled out one cam and it turned out to be perfect…

    so, firstly, we want to loudly say BIG THANKS to Wess, the store manager at the Cottonwood Mall Ritz Camera!
    if we had started there, we could have saved ourselves several hours of driving all over town… he was a huge help, very knowledgable, no pushy sales, a real pleasure to do business with!
    he even let us test compatibility with our psion… he took a pic of us on his card, i popped the card in, and it loaded right up…

    ok, so, the camera we got is the Nikon Coolpix 2000…

    everything we wanted (like cf, jpg format, auto-timer, optical zoom, video out) and even does video clips in quicktime format and can make thumbnails of the pics…

    all for NINETY DOLLARS!!

    the next best we were considering was at target, not nearly as good, for $150…

    it is a discontinued model, and we bought their damage protection plan, he claims we can hit it with a hammer and bring it back…

    and we already have two 128mb cf cards for it… (we currently use them in our mp3 players, so, now they will have to do double duty until we get some even bigger cards…)

    but, enough talk, how about some pics, eh?

    i got up at 7:30am (after staying up until 4 playing with the thing) and went downstairs and started getting pics and vids of some of the mountains and balloons and stuff…

    so, to start with, how about that balloon i took pics of yesterday… it went by again today, so, it makes for an excellent comparison example…

    firstly, here is probably the best pic i got of it with the dreameye…

    that was the old and busted, now behold the new hotness…

    and, a close-up using the tightest optical zoom (3x)…

    and those are on the lowest quality setting (1:16 compression) and smallest size (vga, 640×480)…

    and here is a video of it as it vanished from site [QuickTime]…

    now, since this page is pretty heavy already, i am not going to post a bunch of pics here, and i have not yet started using the thumbnails feature it offers…
    sooo, here is where the rest of our first pics and vids are from last night and this morning…
    http://insidiousplots.com/photos/2004-sept-NEWCAMERA/
    i am still uploading stuff and probably will be all day…

    mornings around here are gorgeous with the balloons all over the place and the mist over the mountains and across the city, so, the pics are very much worth taking a look at… there are also a couple vids from last night, like coming down the hill from rio rancho, looking out over abq, which we thought turned out very cool…

    currently, there are pics in all three quality settings, and i took one huge one at the max size and max quality to show what the best this thing can do is (at least, in my unskilled hands)… it is nearly 600k… dpp will not even attempt to load it…

    i see space becoming an issue very soon… however, we will probably be using the lowest quality and smallest size for 99% of the pics…

    btw, speaking of space issues…
       VERY IMPORTANT:
    these vids are like 4-6mb each, they will NOT stay for long (only a few hours), see them while you can, save them if you ever want to see them again, they will be deleted before tomorrow… we are keeping a copy of everything on videotape, but, not the files themselves, we just don’t have the room…
    and remember that they will be trickling in probably all day… i am uploading something like 30mb of vids at this very moment… on dial up 🙁 (so far, it has been taking about 40 minutes each…)

    as you may have noticed, i have created a special directory for all these test pics and vids (/2004-sept-NEWCAMERA)… starting tomorrow, pics and vids will be going in a /2004-oct directory and all balloon fest pic will go in /2004-oct-AIBF, and there should be tons of them as i expect the next ten days we will be taking hundreds of pics of the balloons… who knows how many will be kept, but, the uploading will be probably almost constant…

    we got our first DreamEye on may 25th, 2002, and have used it to take literally hundreds of pics, it has served us well and we loved it so much we even bought a second one a few months ago… but, owning and using them has taught us a lot about digital cams and taking pics, and we simply outgrew it…

    this day is way overdue…

  • links – Freaks and Geeks, chronologically

    The Debut

    Warnings

    Cancelled

    2003 – The Petition

    And It Actually Worked

    2004 – Satisfaction

    Today

    More Stuff/Info/Links

  • start your morning with a heart attack

    so, it was an hour or so ago, somewhere between 8:30a and 9a, i guess…

    i am standing at my espresso machine, waiting for it to brew, and i look up out the kitchen window and there is this HUGE blue hot air balloon… i mean, this thing was CLOSE and LOW… MASSIVE…
    it looked like maybe the pilot lived here and he was looking for a parking spot…

    i picked up my jaw, dashed into the bedroom, “mary! mary! hurry! come look! you gotta’ see this! it’s better than goofy golf!”
    poor girl probably got to sleep about 5a, but, she managed to stumble to the window, i look out the living room window and there is another balloon a little ways out, in the place where i usually see a balloon or two in the early mornings (somewhere around here, you can take rides between like 7a and 10a)…
    i go look out our bedroom window, and AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!, one very low, floating right above our bedroom! dark dark blue, almost black, HUGE, and just hanging there almost right above my head…

    then i come to my senses…

    CAMERAAAAAAAAA!!!!

    so, i run and grab my camera, run out on the balcony, point at the blue one and beep beep beeeeep…
    NOOOO!!!
    so, i run inside, and grab her camera, run back out to the balcony, the blue one is seriously getting away and is nowhere near as close, turn the camera on, sight it up, and beep beep beeeeeep…
    NOOOOOO!!!! DAMMIT!!!!

    run inside, fire up the software, hook up the cam…
    EMPTY???!!! other one, also empty!!

    BATTERIES!!!!!!!

    to the cabinet, stuff falls out, dig up the AAA’s, dump the dead ones on the floor, load up two new ones, run outside and…

    gone…

    run down the stairs, look west…

    nothing…

    south…

    nothing…

    run around the building, look east…

    nothing…

    look around for an animal or something to kick…

    nothing…

    (nothing i feel like getting in trouble for, anyway…)

    go back upstairs, mary is back in bed, sound asleep, i look out every window, nothing…

    like i had only dreamed it…

    so now i sit typing this, going and looking out the windows every couple minutes, drinking my espresso, which is cold after all that…

    next time, dammit, next time…