that’s right, i came into the office to discover that the closet system i ordered has arrived! excellent! now it’s time to clear out the closet and figure out how to get this all to work. darn it! i just returned paul’s stud finder to him too! now i’m going to need to borrow it again…or find someone who has one…

the closet system is HEAVY. each box is 20 pounds…and i bought three boxes. and i’m going to have to lug them upstairs… still, it’ll be cool to finally be able to organize the closet. i guess this sort of incents me to do laundry and sift through all of the things in the closet that i’ve been trying to ignore for a while now. =P

now that i’ve had a couple of nights to play with the ps3, i have a few new observations:
1) the 40 GB model only comes with 2 USB ports. rock band requires (up to 4) USB ports to play. one for each instrument. the rock band kit comes with a guitar, microphone, and a drum set. this means that out of the box, you cannot play rock band with more than two people with a 40GB ps3 unless you have a USB hub. luckily, i had bought a cheap unpowered USB hub years ago that seems to work just fine. i don’t think it’ll power the drums, but the mic and guitar work off it just fine.

2) a good blu-ray movie is stunning, but not all blu-ray movies are stunning. watched talladega nights (leslie bibb is ridiculously hawt in the movie, btw) and the quality of the video was a little grainy and gritty for me.

3) i hate that the ps3’s only media streaming method is via a UPnP media server that is DLNA capable.

4) divx/xvid video playback works great. there doesn’t appear to be any quick 30 second/10 minute skip forward or backward, though. that really sucks. i suspect it is because a streaming server is being used, but i’m not sure if that’s just because my streaming server doesn’t have that feature or if that’s the way the technology works. either way, i’m bummed because the solution i have right now is probably the solution that i’m going to end up using forever.

5) i really love the logitech mediaboard pro keyboard.

i know, i know. it seems like all i am talking about these days is the ps3…and i haven’t even gotten it yet! it was supposed to be shipped on saturday to the office, but for whatever reason, they didn’t even make a delivery attempt to the office. because the package was delivered by fedex: home delivery, i won’t get the package until tuesday because fedex: home delivery only runs tuesday-saturday. this was a little tidbit of information i wish i knew before i got all excited that the ps3 was coming today.

ho hum. now the day is going to be spent in disappointment.

i’ve been talking about how i’ve been pretty unhappy with our master bedroom closet for some time now. i’ve also been talking about how i am going to install some kind of closet system in our master bedroom. one of the biggest things that has been holding me back is that the price of the fancy closet systems are ridiculous! we’re talking about thousands of dollars for some shelves, rods, and drawers.

our master closet is actually pretty spacious. i would say that it’s about 12’x10′ big. it doesn’t FEEL that big when i walk in it, but i have always felt that there has been a lot of wasted space in the closet. two of the walls have a rod that runs the length of the wall. one wall has two rods placed one above the other along the length of the wall.

i saw a sale on the rubbermaid configurations closet kit that had convinced me that it was finally time to order a system. i also ordered a tie/belt rack, so once all of those this stuff comes in, i’m going to clear out out master closet and install this new system. this is supposed to be a customizable system, so you can place the rods and shelves wherever you’d like. i’m pretty excited. we’ll see if all of this amounts to a more organized closet.

the problem with game consoles is that even after you buy the console, that doesn’t mean that you are done buying all of the other accessories needed for it.

the sony playstation 3 i ordered comes with:
1) 40GB console
2) 1 controller
3) spiderman 3 blu-ray disc (yay, my first one!)
4) A/V cable

the accessories that i think i absolutely need for the ps3 are:
1) another controller (maybe up to 2 more after that if there are good 4 player games). i’m actually going to see if i can get these controllers through some kind of sony promotional offer, though, instead of spending $50 a pop for each.
2) HDMI => DVI cable (i don’t have HDMI ports in my receiver)
3) TOSLINK to optical audio cable
4) rock band (because you know, once you’ve got a system that is rock band capable, you gotta get it)
5) nyko remote control + IR dongle

the accessories that i want and am going to get are:
1) bluetooth keyboard. i have decided to go with the logitech mediaboard pro keyboard. i know, a keyboard is probably not necessary, but i have to be able to play with linux on the ps3
2) controller charger
3) 7 port powered USB hub (yeah, 7 might be a little overkill, but i’ll be set)

after all is said and done, the ps3 sure costs a lot of money!

now that the blu-ray/hd dvd war is over, it’s time to settle down and get a blu-ray player. one of the compelling reasons why hd dvd was popular amongst the next gen format adopters is its significantly cheaper hardware costs. with players getting as cheap as $100, hd dvd hardware is certainly far more attractive than the $300-500 blu-ray units. in addition, the blu-ray players seem to have a lot of forward compatibility issues. because they were rushed to market, some players don’t seem to be upgradeable, while others suffer from some performance problems. ridiculous!

the one safe bet appears to be the sony playstation 3. it looks like one of the only future-proof players out on the market…it also happens to be a very good player as well.

so the big question is…if i were to get a playstation 3, what would i use it for?
1) blu-ray player
2) dvd player
3) media center
4) game console
5) linux box

some annoyances with the ps3 even before owning it:
1) it doesn’t have an IR port for the remote control. this requires you to purchase an add-on dongle to make it accept IR remotes (like a all-in-one harmony remote)
2) 40GB model only has 2 USB ports. one of those is already going to be taken for the remote IR dongle.
3) there’s no good wireless keyboard for the ps3 that incorporates the controller buttons
4) vibration in the controllers are gone…so no more rumble…they announced dual shock 3 controllers in japan, but none here in the states yet…

some things that i’m really looking forward to:
1) replacing my xbox media center with a device that is capable of playing HD videos. the poor original xbox just didn’t have the processing power to do 720p encoded video.
2) installing linux on the ps3. why? i’m not really sure, but it just seems really cool.
3) changing my netflix subscription to blu-ray and watching blu-ray movies. i’ve been craving some high def movie watching.
4) rock band. it’s the first game i’m going to get for the console. not sure what other games i would get after that, but this one seems like it is a no-brainer.

some things that i semi-regret now:
1) i probably should have gotten a receiver with HDMI ports. i didn’t think it’d be an issue really, but HDMI (when it works) really does make things a whole lot easier. i just ordered a toslink cable for audio and an HDMI=>DVI cable for the PS3 to my receiver.
2) i wish my tv wasn’t as high as it is. it’s gonna make playing time crisis a pain. (probably my second game for the ps3 =P)

da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da

da da da da!

that’s right folks, the knight rider pilot was on tv over the weekend and we got to see what all the hubbub was all about. i don’t think that i’ve ever seen a two hour long ford commercial before, but wow, it really felt like that’s what it was.

i really, really wanted to love the show. i looooooooved the show back in the 80s and i could see myself getting all nostalgic. it wasn’t awful, but it just could have been so much better on so many levels. KITT was cool, but could have been cooler. mike was…kind of a putz.

and his friend…what is his loser friend’s name? i don’t even remember, but he looks like he’s going to be a mechanic or something. man, that side kick has got to go. he adds no value to the show…except for hostage potential. actually, it should be a running gag that he’s always held hostage. that would almost be funny.

oh well, i had such high expectations for knight rider. hopefully when the rest of the season is picked up and written in it’ll be cooler.

though KITT does look cool, does anyone else have a problem with the fact that he’s a mustang? and i hate, hate, hate the revised red stripes on the front. go back to the one cylon-esque stripe!

we had volleyball last night…on valentine’s day.

we were the only league that had vball on valentine’s day.

while entering the gym, the volleyball coordinator gave roses to every girl who came into the gym.

i turned to our teammates and said, “man, you guys are being shown up by the league!!”

is a costco diamond ring any less meaningful than a tiffany ring? i didn’t say valuable because it seems that tiffany believes that their jewelry is far more valuable than anyone else’s. how would you feel on this valentine’s day, you proposed/were proposed to with a costco ring? would that makes things any less meaningful? does it matter where your ring is from?

i was at costco picking up some lunch and noticed that costco sells diamond rings. a lot of them. one would imagine that the price of the costco rings must be pretty competitive and the value would be reasonably good. i’ve actually heard that costco diaminds are of high quality.

so why is it that the diamond ring counter at costco wasn’t that busy today? why is it that it hasn’t been noticeably more busy in recent weeks?

yes, today is valentine’s day. it’s a day marked with emotions high and low. a day of stress, a day of happiness, a day of high expectations. i was watching tv today and they said that men, on average, spend $136 on valentine gifts. women, on the other hand, spend an average of $68. ¹

valentine’s day is also the #1 holiday for floral sales. while i was driving around today, i saw a bunch of temporary flower stands at street corners all along my commute to work. i guess it’s true, everybody is trying to cash in on this valentine’s day.

some people call today single’s awareness day. i think that’s pretty funny. whatever the case may be, i hope that all of you have a wonderful february 14th.

1. http://retailindustry.about.com/od/sales_holiday/a/valentines_day.htm [↩]

i bought a d-link dns-323 a little while ago. it is an embedded linux NAS device. plop two SATA drives in it, plug it in to the ethernet port and it’s ready to go.

from a performance standpoint, it does reasonably well. on the wire, it does about 10-12MB/s. in my wireless network, it has no problems streaming out the files to my media device. pure speed was not really as important as network storage was for me and this device has been doing great in those regards.

Continue reading DNS-323 review →