Happy post 1200! This post almost isn’t nearly as cheerful as it should have been, and a minor disaster was narrowly avoided. This morning when I came to turn on my computer, moving my mouse didn’t wake it up like it normally would. Puzzled, I reach down to hit the power button. Everything came on, turned off, then came on again but without making any sound or outputting any video to my monitors. Fairly confident something was wrong, I disassembled most of my computer and narrowed the problem down to either the motherboard or PSU. I then went and partially disassembled the server to get it’s PSU in order to perform a test. After finding out what combinations did and didn’t work, my diagnosis was that the motherboard was the culprit. While attempting to find the warranty information for it on Asus’s site, I found a troubleshooting guide that said to try resetting the CMOS. I didn’t expect it to work, but I went ahead and tried it anyway; as it turns out, that solved whatever problem the board was having. For a few minutes I thought I might have to do an upgrade, but my computer lives tonight in the exact same state that it did 24 hours ago.
Having to take apart the server interfered with the DVD conversion process, but it should be up and running tomorrow. I want to make sure I get as much as I can done before Wednesday since my grandparents will be coming then and needing to sleep in the room at night. Having a computer on and making noise isn’t exactly all that helpful to falling asleep, so it shall remain off for the duration of their stay (at least at night).
Personal - Dallas
Among numerous things that I’ve come to realize about my upcoming move is the fact that I’ll be here for the better part of a week with absolutely no form of entertainment aside from TV and reading books. This has led me to start figuring out which of my friends will be in town so that I can be doing things with people rather than sitting around my house all day long. The good news is that everyone I’ve talked to so far will actually be here most of that week, so my entertainment options hopefully won’t be too limited.
In addition to all of my DVD ripping, I’ve also been looking into getting some sort of cataloging software so that I can keep track of all my DVDs in a nicer fashion. The only problem with this plan is that in order to effectively create this catalog, I’d really need some more of barcode scanner. I need to contemplate and decide just how much I really want to make this catalog since getting one of those would cost over $100 unless I went the Ebay route (which is completely valid, but I haven’t bought anything off of Ebay in a very, very long time).
Personal - Dallas
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is, by I guess what you could define as “my standards”, a more enjoyable movie than the first one. I say this because when I saw the first, I didn’t see it as a DVD purchase since I didn’t feel like I’d want to watch it over and over. Ultimately I did get it on DVD after watching it a couple more times, and I’ve watched it once or twice since then too. Since I walked out of the theater today feeling like I probably would get the DVD of this one, I guess that means it has to be a better movie. I liked the continuity they kept between the first and this one, and there was really only one joke that they pulled from the previous one which I felt got overworked a little too much. My score: 8/10.
Tomorrow we’re once again back to my schedule being completely open, but I’m sure that I’ll find some way to occupy my time. We can hope that I’d choose something productive like cleaning, but I think all of us know that isn’t going to happen. The reality is TV and computer, with maybe just a dash of reading thrown in.
Personal - Dallas
I drove basically all over HP today and was reminded, yet again, of how much easier my life would be travel wise if we hadn’t moved. Guess what? Tomorrow, I get to drive back down to HP (well, specifically Mockingbird Station) to go eat lunch with my grandparents and see a movie. All this driving from a person who would much rather be driven around just makes me want to be able to hire that chauffeur even faster.
All of my DVD ripping has made me want to watch some of these movies again, so I wouldn’t be surprised if doing that finds its way into my very open schedule over the next week or two. The benefit of letting Microsoft take care of the moving process for me is that I’m able to do things like claiming to have an “open schedule”. If I was having to deal with coordinating everything that they’re handling on their end, my schedule probably wouldn’t even have time for me to go insane.
Personal - Dallas
So, last night rather than continuing my DVD process, I instead played WoW for a while (ran part of a raid in Naxxramas, the Wrath equivalent of Karazhan) and didn’t feel like ripping discs and setting them up to encode when I was done. So, I’m not going two nights in a row (and missing out on 20 movies!) without converting movies, and I’ve already started my next batch so that a similar situation doesn’t happen tonight. Not that I plan on playing WoW for that late tonight, but other things can come up (like watching Alias, for example).
I’m finally done with the baseball DVD project, so all I have to do tomorrow is go deliver them to people. That’s really the only thing on my agenda for then, but does there need to be any more? After all, I’m in effectively my last ever month of summer break, so I think I deserve just a few days of near complete laziness.
Personal - Dallas
Rather than going to work with Mr. McDonald on Wednesday, I’m going to do that tomorrow instead. So, this week will be slightly off for me, but I think I’ll be able to handle the switch just fine. Of course, I say this now, and Wednesday morning I’m going to be thinking that it’s Thursday.
Next week my grandparents from Arkansas are coming to visit, and we’ll be eating at Benihana sometime next week once they’re here. I have to make sure that I get in my last meal at all of the places I like to eat in Dallas because who knows if they’ll have them up in Seattle. No, searching their websites to see if they have a location in Seattle is not a viable option. My way is much more interesting.
Personal - Dallas
I started ripping my DVDs or our server again last night (mainly because whatever is on there is going to be the only digital media I have access to until I get my permanent apartment in Seattle), and I discovered that doing 10 a night is a very convenient number to do. As it stands, each conversion takes approximately 2 hours, so by the time that batch is done, I have a few hours left to rip the next set and start up the next batch. This process will be interrupted slightly when my grandparents come to visit next weekend (as that means the server has to be turned off since it’s in their bedroom), but I might still be able to get in a couple during the day. With 10 a day I should be able to safely get through my entire collection before I move; I may have quite a few DVDs, but I don’t have that many.
On Thursday I’ll be going downtown with my grandparents once more before I leave for our (almost) annual trip on the DART Rail down to the West End to eat at Spaghetti Warehouse. I think this will be the only time since I got my DART pass from UTD that I’ll be using it. Oh well, it’s not like I had to pay the student fees or whatever for it, right? I’m going to miss my scholarships…
Personal - Dallas
I’ve solved my DVD menu quandary by deciding just to avoid the issue all together. Crayton helped me come up with this new alternative when he came over to see all of the main videos strung together. My plan had been to try to make a final “credits” video set to music also, but I realized that I can pull off what a bunch of movies do and have the credits running side by side with the extra video footage that I wanted to include which wasn’t going to be set to music (primarily because the conversations are way too funny). My only big issue here is that I’ll have to do some more editing of these videos (or else the credits would have to be really, really long) rather then my initial plan of just throwing them unedited onto the DVD.
This next week will likely include a day at the movies, tenatively scheduled for Thursday. While there are many out that I want to go see, the candidate up for review will be the new Night at the Museum. A return trip is possible for next Saturday, but that’s looking off a little too far in the future at this point even for me.
Personal - Dallas
Facebook launched their latest (misguided) feature tonight, allowing people have usernames for their Facebook profile. For example, mine is now facebook.com/jguebert — why people need this feature, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s now there. What ever happened to Facebook being different from MySpace? At least they’re not allowing background customizing yet, that might be the last straw for me.
Little did I realize that getting the baseball videos done was arguably the less difficult of the two parts of this project. Now, I get to try to figure out how to make the menus of the DVD. If all esle fails there won’t be a menu and the movie will simply autoplay, but that’s no fun. Beating my head against Photoshop for multiple hours isn’t fun either, though, so I might just go with other people not having fun over me not having fun.
Personal - Dallas
I’ve been forming a binder with all of the important emails, documents, etc. that Microsoft has been sending me as far as my move next month goes. The vast majority of this stuff I’ve simply been printing out, hole punching, and sticking behind a new divider. Perhaps seeing as how right now is just about the one month mark, I should actually start reading most of this stuff. You know, to see if there’s anything I should actually be doing.
If today was supposed to be a normal day, then tomorrow is an even normaler day for me. Having nothing to do is quite satisfying and relaxing, and I’m making sure to enjoy it while I still have this luxury. I forsee in the not too distant future that I will be wishing for multiple days like this, but there won’t be any in sight.
Personal - Dallas