whenever i make a root beer float, i probably use about 4 times as much ice cream than a typical recipe calls for. this makes for a fantastically creamy and rather largely misnamed root beer float. nothing is really floating in my root beer float, instead it is one big lump of semi-root beer flavored vanilla ice cream.

i never understood how one scoop of ice cream would be enough for a root beer float. it’s the ice cream that makes the dessert! i bought a tub of ice cream and root beer for the office and i thought that everyone would jump at the chance to make their own root beer floats, but this was not the case. i’m surprised, really. it’s free root beer floats, people!

i know that i’ve talked a lot about the dns-323 and how great the NAS is, and don’t get me wrong, it is great, but the one thing that i have really been struggling with is the PS3 support for video codecs. it is something that continues to be the bane of my existence when it comes to downloaded content. for some reason, some of the tv shows that i get are encoded in some kind of variant of xvid that the ps3 just can’t decode.

i’ve finally had it and have decided to build my own HTPC. the criteria here is to create a budget HTPC. though i want it to look good, i want to try to keep it on a small budget. i don’t need blu-ray playback as i still have the ps3, so this is really more of a media extender than anything else. i will install a tuner in it though, so i can use it as a DVR.

here’s what i’ve decided to go with:
antec fusion black 430 htpc case
gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H motherboard
4GB RAM
avermedia avertv combo
intel 2.5GHz E5200 cpu
seagate 1TB hard drive

i’m going with the built-in video card on the motherboard. it’s a geforce 9400, should be plenty for my needs. all the parts are ordered, now it’s a waiting game!

this year, i had a small group of people over to celebrate the birthday party. i’ve stopped counting how old i am, so when people ask, i really have to think about it and count the years.

but this year, we celebrated with a fry party. i asked guests to bring their own item to fry and we had a range from country fried steak to donuts! i actually didn’t end up eating as much as i thought i would, but it was still quite good.

we had three deep fryers going. i couldn’t put more than one deep fryer on an outlet because it kept tripping the circuit breakers. all in all it was good fun.

the la crosse battery charger that i ordered came in today and after about half an hour of trying to figure out how to use the charger, i found out that the 2200mAh batteries that i have been using only holds 150mAh of charge. no wonder they were charging so fast and weren’t lasting long at all.

this charger can recondition batteries, so i’m letting it recondition these batteries. maybe it will bring them back to life. just in time, too, because i will be using these batteries in flashes pretty soon.

i have been wanting to make my own backdrop stand for quite some time now. i’m not sure why i didn’t get around to it, but i finally did this weekend using this guide as a reference.

it all started with a trip to lowes. i bought the appropriate PWC pipes and went around the store looking for an associate to help me cut the pipes. i was informed that they do not cut pipes for customers. bummer! so now i had six 10′ long pipes that i wasn’t sure how i was going to get back to the house in my car.

i bought the pipes anyway, figuring i’d figure out how to get the pipes home. i bought a hacksaw too, so the worst case scenario would be that i would be cutting pipes in the parking lot.

i had a little trouble getting out of the store, though. see, i picked up a normal shopping cart because i couldn’t find any other cart. the pipes were sticking up in the about 8 feet or so and the doors were much lower than that. i ended up using the lumber exit to get out of the store.

once at my car, i realized just how long ten feet was. it’s a lot longer than what would fit in my accord. so, i did what anybody else would do in my place. i rolled down the back seat window and reclined the passenger side seat. then the pipes proceeded to be shoved into my car. sure, there was about three feet of pipe sticking out of the window, but it wasn’t THAT bad.

i drove home mostly without incident. the last turn i had to make was across a major intersection and at the front of the row of waiting cars going in the other direction was a cop. i was scared that he was going to pull me over for having an obstruction extend beyond whatever the legal limit was…and trust me, i was beyond the limit. i drove on the right hand side of the lane whenever i was driving and made it home.

a couple of hours later, i have assembled the stand and it looks pretty good. i’ll take some pictures later when i have a background to hang from it. i think i am going to make a few modifications to the base, though, to stabilize it some. it’s a little wobbly right now, but all in all, i’m very happy with the results. it sort of looks like a soccer goal, though.

oh my god, i am so addicted to this game, it is not funny. i don’t know what it is about this game that is SO interesting to me, but man, it has got me completely addicted. the crazy thing is that it is a very repetitive game. there isn’t a lot of depth to it, but i just can’t get myself to stop playing!

any ipod touch/iphone players out there? join my mob! 153-177-109.

it’s all a blur!

the last couple of weeks have been a real emotion drainer. if it isn’t one thing, it seems like it’s another. my daily habits have dramatically changed and they have changed because it just feels like there is so much change going on.

i think it all stems from work. things feel like they have been crazy busy lately and i’m starting to feel swamped. it’s not the kind of swamped that i felt a few months ago where it got to the point where i almost couldn’t function, but it is starting to feel a little overwhelming again.

they say that with this poor economy that it is a real struggle to find a new job and people are worried about their job security. that may all be true, but man, i wonder if employers see this as an opportunity and decide that it’s time to start whipping the chain.

it hasn’t been all bad. there have been some nice high points lately too. a week or two ago, my thursday night volleyball team won playoffs. it was my first season with them and i don’t want to point fingers or anything, but what was the only thing that changed this season? =P they say that it has been a four season drought since they have won playoffs. so it was nice to be able to help the team win and there was some good volleyball played as well.

i also got the opportunity to go bowling last week. that was fantastic, but i went bowling with a bunch of people who are all phenomenal bowlers. i was at the low end of the bowling crowd, but i still bowled my average of around 140 or so.

not a whole lot else going on, though. work is work. we’ve got a new dog staying with us for the night. he’s just crashing at our place after getting neutered. poor guy doesn’t feel quite the same and has thrown up a few times today. i was fortunate enough to catch him before he threw up and had him go outside the first time and…get this…i caught his vomit in a paper towel the second time. i know that that should really gross me out, but it all seemed rather normal to me. i guess that’s what happens after you’ve fostered 20+ dogs… i’m just glad that he didn’t throw up on the carpet.

we went to sonoma over the weekend and brought koda with us. koda was stressed out the entire weekend. i don’t think he knew what was going on. he seemed kind of lethargic the whole time. he didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat when he usually does, and overall i think he was just uncomfortable with the whole notion of a vacation.

maybe he’ll loosen up next time we go somewhere. he was fine on the car ride up though.

sonoma was a grand old time. we went wine tasting (at dog friendly wineries!) and bought some treats from a dog-only bakery called three dog bakery. pretty cool.

we were supposed to be charged $75 for a cleaning fee for having koda stay with us in the hotel, but the hotel didn’t charge us. we also got a 15% discount at the spa there so all in all the trip was a little cheaper than i expected. a good thing in these tough times!

i know, i know, all i can talk about is how great the iphone is and how it has changed my life. i’m sure that it is probably completely uninteresting to hear about what cool things you can do with your iphone, BUT, there are some cool apps that i would definitely recommend checking out if you are an iphone user.

App Store apps:
facebook – seems to be pretty obvious what it can do. i like that i can easily upload mobile photos to facebook. i don’t like that they all get lumped into the mobile photos album. update your status, see what else is going on in the world of facebook. pretty handy.

wordpress – update your blog from your iphone. i’m still not that great with typing on the iphone, but each day is better than the day before.

IM+ Lite – it is the best free IM client i’ve used so far. it seems like everyone is in love with the beejive client, but i refuse to pay $10 for an IM client. that is ridiculous. this is a place where i feel that apple really dropped by the ball by not including some kind of native app built-in.

google mobile app – the refined search tool in this app alone is worth it, but access to other google properties are nice too, i suppose.

to do’s – a simple, but great to do list.

usa today – this is probably my favorite news app. just feels like a nice polished app.

midomi – want to find a song that you only know the words to? hum it to your iphone and it will tell you what it is. pretty neat.

tmz – for all your celebrity gossip news.

yelp – this is actually surprisingly handy. i have become a stronger yelp user now that it is more available to me when i’m just looking for something nearby.

uhhh, non-App Store apps?
Not that i would advocate jailbreaking your iphone and not admitting that i have jailbroken mine, there look like some cool apps that haven’t gotten onto the app store.

cydia – THE installer for all your jailbroken apps. a must have.

sbsettings – one touch toggles for wifi, 3G, edge, bluetooth, brightness, volume, sshd, and more!

categories – add folders to put your apps in to organize your apps instead of having pages and pages of apps. i hear there’s also a 9 page limit. i don’t have quite that many apps, but this will help if i ever get there.

openssh – ssh into your iphone. not terribly useful, but you can also sftp into your iphone. now THAT’s handy.

whatIP – find out what your ip address is so you can ssh to it.

clearcam – take many photos at once and auto-stich them to create a high-res photo from your iphone

cycorder – record video on the iphone!

xGPS – GPS with voice instructions! why this wasn’t included with the iphone is a mystery. using this app, the refresh rate is kind of slow, so i think it’s a quality issue which is what prevented it from being put on the iphone at launch.

memtool – see how much memory apps are consuming, kill tasks, and free up ram.

sysinfoplus – all the info you could ever want about your iphone

touchterm – ssh client for your iphone.

backgrounder – force applications to run in the background instead of closing on exit. be careful, you can run out of memory quick!

statusnotifier – be notified of calls, mail

winterboard – springboard themer, allows you to theme your iphone.

makeitmine – i hesitate to put this on the list because it’s kind of lame, but this allows you to change the carrier and banner text at the top of your iphone. don’t like AT&T in your header? put whatever short string you want there.

any other must have apps? let me know!

it is fantastic that the iPhone has a mail client and right now I have it checking four email accounts. the problem is that for one of my accounts, I get a lot of spam. a lot.

it looks like the solution for this is too forward all of your to a gmail account and let gmail filter it all out. a little bit of a crummy workaround but I guess that is what I am going to have to do.