spam

Is it me or has Gmail been hammered lately with all kinds of new and crazy spam? Fuck, I hate email.

iPodtastic

Well after fiddling around in the iPod debug menu, I finally made some progress. I got the thing to boot into disk mode after entering a "FW TEST" mode and updated the firmware from there. It appears to be slowly copying my 4000+ song collection back to its hard disk and we'll see from there if it works correctly. The drive makes some funky noises which could be a result of me throwing it on the floor repeatedly in a feeble attempt to fix it. I probably broke it but well, it does SOMETHING now at least.

iPod debug menu

I have been searching for a way to fix my seemingly un-repairable iPod for months now. I had assumed it just needed to be charged from a real electrical outlet. Wrong. Apparently, the problem which my iPod suffers from, is caused by a bad flash of the firmware. There is a secret debug menu hidden which I can access by holding down the Rewind, Forward, and "Enter" keys upon booting. I cannot find any documentaion of the 15 or so utilities available in this mode anywhere online. I'm not sure if it will enable me to fix the iPod yet, but I'm not going to stop trying these options until I get this fucking thing working again. As a side note; don't mess with the debug stuff unless your willing to possibly damage your iPod, and if you do fuck yours up... don't blame me.

sad day

You know it's a sad day when I'm seriously considering the Xbox 360 as my next console purchase. I think Nintendo got it wrong with the Wii, I don't really want to have to jump around and shit to play video games. And Sony, with the PS3, I just don't trust their products anymore after my PS2 shit out on me after 2 years...

Jay buying a Microsoft product??!!?? It's almost unheard of. Of course I won't have $500 for a 360 anytime soon... but Quake 4 is calling to me already...

^Q3Tr0LL3R^

I have some interest in the continued development in the now open source Quake 3 source code. So I began looking around online for projects that may be looking for help in a OSX specific area. I found one (according to their website). icculus.org/quake3, as they call it. I noticed they had some files up and a svn repository for the source. The OSX binary they had on thier site was out-of-date to thier current revisions, so I thought I'd be nice and offer up a up-to-date OSX binary (temporarily located here for anyone interested). Upon sending a email to the mailing list that I had compiled a current OSX PPC binary, I was nothing short of flamed for it not being a Universal Binary (a binary which works on Intel and PowerPC Macs) and my all around not supporting of the x86 architecture which makes up the newest models of the Mac computer line. Truth be told, it didn't compile a Universal Binary out of the box, and I lack the knowledge to change source code to do it. I saw nothing wrong with making my contribution, and saw no reason for the rude comments I received.

I had also posted a question on thier message board previous to all of this, reguarding my creating a native OSX installer for the application. Which according to thier website, they needed someone to do. I was doing that just because I wanted to help out a open source project which claimed they needed the help. When the help was given, they didn't seem to want or care for it. And then had the nerve to tell me I was trolling.

I unsubscribed to thier list after being called a troll and deleted any and all work I had done for the installer and was done with it. This is notably the first time I had attempted to help a open source effort and been shot down for my help.

icculus.org/quake3 can fuck off. I'll stick to id Software's PPC only official release from now on.

home-- home again

Krissy and the baby are home now. The slow road to her recovery begins. It's good to have my family back.

gall stones

It begins friday night at about 1:30am, Krissy wakes up with heartburn. Nothing new, she's gotten heartburn quite frequently while pregnant, so I didn't think much of it. After she took medicine and it didn't go away and was still hurting in the morning, was when we decided something was wrong.

We went to the doctors early saturday to see what the problem was. He prescribed her some kind of anti-inflammatory pills and told her if the pain don't go away by 8pm that day to go to emergency at the hospital. If the pain didn't go away it meant she more then likely had gall bladder stones and needed more testing done.

So, she got taken care of quickly because Sam was working (thanks Sam) and they took her in. After a night in the hospital, a ultrasound and MRI, it was determined that; yes, she had gall stones and yes, they needed to remove her gall bladder. So they decided to do surgery on her.

Now comes to monday, and they did surgery sometime this morning. I am assuming things went well and she is still sleeping because she isn't picking up the phone in her room right now. I hope everything is okay and she can come home soon.

Anyway, this made for one hell of a fun weekend. Now I'm off to go see her and make sure she's doing okay.

all I want for christmas

So I have found what I need to fix my iMac. The SuperDrive which is broken in mine is apparently a hard item to come by. I have seen it listed for anywhere from $250-$300. Definately not worth the purchase. The cheapest one I've found is for sale here at about $100. Guess I need to start saving my pennies. While I'm in there fixing that, I'll need to re-apply thermal paste too, so I can't forget to buy some of that. Also, I figure I should max out my RAM while I'm taking the machine apart. Which is going to be a 512MB DIMM PC2700 DDR333 chip available here. That will bring me to 1GIG of RAM, which maxes out my machine. Since I'm not able to purchase a new Mac right now, that's all I can do. When I can buy a new machine I'll be looking into a MacBook Pro to save space in the homestead and because Krissy would like a Windows PC... which I want nothing to do with ;)

Of course, I probably won't be able to afford any of that shit for a while. It's nice to dream though.

new tool

Sounding a bit different, definately not like they are getting old tho.  I like it, from what I've heard so far.  What's not to like about tool?

bad apples

So today my dvd drive on my mac decided to eat a dvd and then die.  That fucking sucks.  Now I need to buy a new computer cuz the drive is built into this thing :( on top of that-- my iPod decided to take a shit on me and die too... talk about a bad day.  I don't have money for new computers right now :(

baby pictures

That be my baby. Isn't she the most beautiful little girl in the world? I know; she is. View the rest of the pictures here.

Rae'Anne Marie Lanagan

My daughter has been born after over 19 hours of intense action. The details:

- date: March 25th 2006
- time: 7:46pm
- weight: 7lbs 14oz
- length: 20 1/2 inches

I have to get food and get back to the hospital and I haven't slept in two days but, Krissy did a great job delivering the most beautiful baby girl in the world. I love you both. This is the best day of my life.

the baby is coming!

We are at the hospital in labor with our child right now! It seems I spoke too soon with my previous post. Gotta go now.

castor oil is yummy

Well yesterday was my daughters expected due date but of course, she hasn't been born yet. Actually not much has changed since the last doctors office visit. Krissy is still dilated to one, but her cervix is starting to thin out. Wee've tried everything to move this process along... walks, swinging, eating pineapple, and my favorite-- sex. Nothing has worked. Today at about 8:30am while I was at work, Krissy called and said she thought her water had broke... well I, of course, came rushing home expecting to finally have my baby!

Only when I got home, it didn't appear to look like labor was happening. She seemed fine. So we went to the doctors office to see what exactly had happened. In the end, we came to find out that her mucas plug had come out. Which doesn't really mean that the baby could be coming (depending on where you read, you can come up with anywhere from 24 hours to a week until she could go into labor).

So having taken the day off of work now, I had really been hoping I would have my baby girl today. Well after sex, swinging, a walk, and more sex, and yes a last resort of giving her castor oil which should bring on labor -- or the shits. She's now sleeping. None of the above sent her into labor. It's true, the first baby just don't like to come out.

I'm partially scared to go to work tomorrow, it'll probably happen then. And I'll be much to anxious awaiting something to happen.

one-week

Just a little side note here for historical purposes...

The baby is due in exactly one week from today (3/23), Krissy is still not dillated to my knowledge. The doctor could tell us different tomorrow, I guess we will find out then.

I'm getting very impatient, I want my baby now!

Anyone like to place bets on when the baby will be born? ;)

tech enabled

Technology these days has enabled me the almost completely backwards use of some things.  For instance, I now listen to mp3s in the car on my iPod completely ignoring the cars built-in feature of a AM/FM radio.  Yet, on the computer, I use the internet to listen to local radio stations.  Why is technology such a waste?

my job

Good news today.  I have been working at Guardian Industries as a temporary worker for the past few months and they called me today to enquire if I would like to become a permanent full-time employee!  Tomorrow I will be taking my physical and drug screen test and after that my training will begin in a few weeks.  Then I have to survive for 90 days without a incident before becoming a normal employee.  Hopefully I do good, I need this job, even though this isn't my preferred kind of employment... you just can't raise children without secure work and incoming money now can you? 

mi casa su casa

What a obnoxiously long day at work.

Well, I arrived home to silence today. I thought Krissy would be here, guess she had to work today... I miss my baby. Updated some things here and I'm going to post a link to this on myspace. I'm probably not going to visit that site much anymore, I feel much to childish using that site. I can't customize it how I'd like and it really annoyes me. I like the way this site is set up, the customization I can do and I really like the Dashboard Widgets they have available for me to use. Makes updates a snap.

If you followed me here from myspace, I hope you'll take a look around, bookmark my page here, and maybe even start your own blog too! You can even leave comments on mine if you'd like (although you have to open a blogger.com account first).

Here's to hoping to see you all here!

baby coneys

Just got back from the doctors office.  Todays report is that she isn't dillated yet, so that means there's no baby yet.  duh.  The doctor suggests she go for walks to help the process along.  We celebrated the doctor visit with coney dogs and onion rings afterward.  14 days until the due date, I guess we'll see what happens.  I can't wait for my baby girl to come out and play with me! ;)

more ffmpegX

Well, encoding is now a breeze.  I'm understanding things a bit more, file sizes, video dimensions, audio playback, and more...  I've encoded my favorite scene from Pulp Fiction, but I noticed the audio volume is very low, and the option to normalize audio output is greyed out... hrm... more annoyances.