• Finally had ramen for lunch after a week of distractions. #
• Just had to cancel dinner plans because we are dogsitting and I have a conference call later tonight. Now what am I going to do for dinner? #

i thought it would be a good idea to add a new post per tweet, but once i enabled it, i saw how spammy it looks and i immediately disabled it. unfortunately, all of the posts were already imported from twitter, so it looks like i’m stuck with the ones that are already there.

maybe in a different life, i would have cared enough to delete the posts, but i’m too lazy to do it now. =P

anybody have any suggestions for who to follow on twitter? surprisingly, one of the most entertaining people i follow is ryan seacrest. !! i know, who would have thunk it?

so after a lot of heartache i’ve decided to build a HTPC. the choice wasn’t easy as i have been using the PS3 for a long time as my media center, but after too many codec woes, i’ve finally decided to demote the PS3 and build a proper HTPC. i’m not sure if i’m done with the HTPC, but for now i’m pretty happy with what i’ve made. details after the jump!

Continue reading the new HTPC →

for my birthday, christi got me the insane canon 85mm f/1.2L! insane, i tell you. definitely a lens that i would never have gotten for myself just because the price tag itself just seems ridiculous, but as soon as i put the lens on my camera and gave it a go, i see now just how sweet it is.

but first, let me start with the cons. the lens is HEAVY. there’s a huge hunk of glass in this fast prime lens. the lens is fat, short, and heavy, but feels fantastic in my hands.

the lens is the slowest focusing lens i have in my collection of lenses, by far. the lens hunts and is poor in low light conditions, which is ironic because the lens performs FANTASTICALLY in low light once focus is achieved.

the pros: the lens is SO FAST. the bokeh is SO smooth. the images are SO sharp. it’s amazing. i’m doing a portrait photo shoot this weekend and it will be my first run through with the lens. let’s see how it works out.

our dog is a very excitable dog who loves to play. whenever someone new is at the door he very eagerly tries to make friends with them. the UPS guy came today to deliver a package and koda snuck past me and darted towards the guy.

i have never seen a guy run SO FAST before. he ran all the way back into his truck and koda thought it was a game and chased him. i chased koda and finally got him, but man, we really need to work on his commands when distracted. next time, i will be sure to keep him on a leash before i answer the door.

looks like everydns.net DNS servers have stopped resolving hostnames at around 4:30PM today. talk about an epic fail, how do redundant systems like DNS fail like this? i hope it’s a massive DoS attack and not just someone making a really big mistake. =P

it’s too bad that all of my hosting for my domains is done through them and now i’m completely down too.

grrrrr.

maybe i should run my own DNS server…

man, how hard must it be to be a salesperson in this economy. i was at fry’s the other day and while perusing the blu-ray section, i was approached by a directv salesperson. she told me that she was invited by fry’s to pitch their services. i told her politely that i was not interested and she left me alone.

then a few minutes later, a different salesperson approached me from the directv group and asked me if i was interested in their services. i told him that someone already approached me and i was not interested. he then asked me if i was informed about their special in-store only promotion. at this point, i was really annoyed and told him i hate directv and i’m not interested.

a minute later, a fry’s associate approached me and asked me how i was doing. i thought he saw my interaction with the directv salespeople and so i told him that i was annoyed at the directv salespeople who were harassing me while i was shopping.

the fry’s associate told me that that was too bad and i told him that they started their pitch by informing me that fry’s had invited them to the store. i told him that i thought they were annoying and he replied that it was his manager’s choice to do so. i told him that he should tell his manager that i thought that they were annoying. he said ok.

then he has the audacity to ask me if i was interested in a fry’s electronics credit card. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? i looked at him and said no. he started his pitch, but you can save 20% off your first purchase. i told him that i didn’t like saving money and walked away.

i know they are just trying to do their jobs, but man, that kind of aggressive sales pitching in-store is enough to turn me away from shopping there.

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.