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After the truck accident, I acquired my first Bluetooth capable phone when replacing the one that was destroyed in the crash. I bought a cheap headset for it. It was awful. People I talked to heard themselves echoing in their conversations and using it in a noisy truck environment was impossible due to the background noise. When I went to work for Hornaday, I began saving all of my loyalty points with Travel Centers of America for the purpose of getting a professional grade Bluetooth headset. About a week ago I finally hit the magic number; I had saved enough to give me a $100 in store credit. I settled on the BlueParrot B250-XT and it.is.awesome. It was $99.99 with "truckstop markup" so basically I got for about 7 bucks in tax. Now I'm gonna save them up and get a free GPS system.
You may recall me recently celebrating the one year anniversary of smoking cessation. I decided that since I've successfully kicked the habit to allow myself to occasionally enjoy tobacco. The problem is that cigarettes go stale and have become very expensive, so I had been tossing around a couple of ideas for using loose tobacco, like making my own cigarettes or possibly a pipe. Last week, I bought a carton of 200 filtered cigarette tubes, a 6oz. pouch of tobacco, and a simple machine for putting the latter into the former.  The three things cost me $14, $8 of which was the machine. The first cigarette I made was awful, I didn't put enough tobacco into it and it was all squishy and burned hot and nasty. The second I made I went overboard and it was a chore to drag on it. I finally got the hang of it, though. It's fun making them, but at the same time, it'd be a chore to make 20-25 of these a day for a habit smoker. The first week I had it, I smoked 4-5 cigarettes - because I had it in the truck with me. Now it's sitting safely at home. The plan is to maybe smoke one or two on the weekends when I'm home.
I'm stuck on the road for the second weekend in a row. I did get to stop in Frankfort twice this past week and spend the night, though, which makes this a little easier. I've already done the driving that needs to be done and have nothing to do tomorrow. I'll probably sleep in, treat myself to steak and eggs in the truckstop restaurant, then lounge in the truck all day. - Tags:gear
- Location:Canton, OH
- Music:that your daddy's gonna take us in, baby, 'n take care of me
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Last night, I rode The Dragon. 
Why is fruit punch red? Rather, why do we universally accept that fruit punch is supposed to be red?
If, like me, you use multiple computers, you may find the Firefox add-on Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) useful. Utilizing their servers for storage (or a server of your choosing if you're paranoid about these sorts of things) it synchronizes your Firefox bookmarks on as many computers as you care to install it on. It also has the option for synchronizing your passwords; but that I am paranoid about, so I've never tried it. The bookmark syncing though, is a wonderful thing. It's become one of the three things I immediately add to Firefox on any computer I setup for myelf, along with Down Them All and Ad Block Plus.
Over the weekend, I bought a pickup truck.  It has 320k miles on it and set me back 400 bucks. I've been wanting to get a second vehicle for a while, preferably a truck for the occasional hauling capacity. As tight as finances have been, I wasn't sure I'd be able to swing it, but the guy I bought it from is a good friend of my brother's and was willing to take some of the money now and some of it later. He even told me to not worry about putting myself in a bind and to just give him the rest whenever I could. The motor seems solid but the transmission is a little flaky. Bajillions of S-10s have been made over the years and my brother does auto salvage as side-work, so keeping it running shouldn't be too much of a chore. If the transmission goes, I can just drop another one in.
My other, youngest brother is relocating back to central Kentucky from eastern Kentucky. For the time being, he's going to crash in our basement until he decides where he's going to land. He's already secured employment in Frankfort and will be helping-out with some of the expenses when he can. I hope he decides to settle in Frankfort permanently. It'd be nice to have him in town. In the meantime, it's going to be a blast having him stay with us. | |
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 You may recall that in my wreck last year, that my trusty Durabook was smashed to bits and that I bought a gargantuan, behemoth known as the ASUS A7S. What you may not know is that it was a thorn in my side for a very long time. I was having some serious performance issues when playing video and audio media. I couldn't watch/listen to anything because the sound kept skipping and was jittery. At first I thought that maybe all of the naysayers about Vista were right: that it was more than an OS, it was a POS. I decided at that point to wipe it clean and install XP. This proved daunting since this machine was not supported with any XP drivers by ASUS. Finally though, I managed to get all of the hardware working properly. And yet, I still had the same issues with audio/video. Even worse, I was getting some really weird problems with the system clock losing time, on the order of HOURS over the course of a day while running. What you may not know is that, this past fall I bought a couple of cheapo, light-weight Dell laptops: one to replace Welf's aging HP and one to serve as a more portable alternative for me. While I love the 17-inch screen that the ASUS provides me while on the road, it's rather cumbersome as a true laptop. Taking it into a truckstop to sit in the diner was an ordeal and lounging about the house with it wasn't exactly convenient or comfortable. But I also had in mnid that, once I had the Dell in my hands, I would wipe the ASUS, reinstall the Vista Premium OEM and get with ASUS about checking out the hardware, as it still had over a year left on its two year warranty. All the job changing and holidays got in the way of me doing anything with that until a week or so ago. In the meantime, I had been rather impressed by Vista's performance on the little Dell I was using. It came shipped with Service Pack 1, though. So, when I reinstalled Vista on the ASUS last week, I decided to take another run at trying to sort-out its woes with SP1 in place. My experience with ASUS hardware has always been good, and I was having a hard-time believing this was a hardware issue. To cut to the chase, after updating Vista with SP1 AND after updating both the video and audio drivers I was still having the issues with playing media. I finally decided to look in the "Sound" category under Control Panel and immediately noticed that it was showing my speakers TWICE. I right clicked the first of these and chose "Test". It played its little tones with the annoying skipping and jittery-ness. When I tested the second one though, it was clear as can be. I removed the offensive set of speakers and rebooted and it's been fine so far. Along the way in my little odyssey to get this laptop running properly, I spent a lot of time reading about Vista, especially about tweaking Vista. Despite the wee Dell's favorable performance in my eyes, there was something about Vista that irked the shit out of me: my hard drive seemed like it was constantly thrashing, especially after a bootup. This was also true on the ASUS. I know how to fix that now, so keep reading. The biggest complaint that a lot of people have had about Vista is it doesn't feel as snappy and responsive as XP. I felt the same way, too with my first Vista epxerience. I even disabled the Sidebar and Aero hoping for performance boosts and was left feeling disgusted by the whole thing. Sure those are just pretty things, but right now I'm typing this on my ASUS with Aero & Sidebar running with a 2% CPU and under 40% 1 GB RAM being used. Maybe you already know these tips and tricks, maybe you haven't had to make the move to Vista yet. I do know that this quick and dirty tweaking job will make Vista scream if you have adequate hardware in the chassis. I've actually begun to prefer Vista over XP. 1. First of all, go to Control Panel & turn off Windows Defender. It's a useless piece of shit that does far more harm to the performance of your machine than any beneifts you may get from it. This is the number one reason why your hard disk thrashes in Vista (or XP for that matter). 2. But let's take it a step further. Either from the super-cool search bar in the Vista start menu, or using the "Run" option if you've reverted to a more classic look, type in "msconfig" and hit return. Alternately, it's located at C:\Windows\msconfig.exe (or whatever drive your Windows folder is on). A window which says System Configuration should open.  Click on the tab that says "Startup". Look through it, find Windows Defender and uncheck it. While you're here, look through and see if there are any other annoying programs listed here that are loading when you startup that you've never figured out how to keep from doing that. Now you know where to find them. 3. Next click the tab "Services". We're going to disable the following services. I'll also give a brief reason of why it's safe to do so and what you gain from it. Computer Browser: This is a backward compatible service for pre-XP machines on a network. Unless you are operating some ancient box with Win98 on it on your home network, there's absolutely no reason to have this running and it's just wasting resources. Turn it off. Superfetch: This is the main cuplrit on causing your HD to thash after bootup. What Superfetch essentially does is learns all of the programs and files that you open most often and pre-loads them into RAM after bootup. Depending on the amount of memory you have or how much 15-20 minutes of disk thrashing bothers you, you may consider turning this off. Once Superfetch has finished loading the programs into memory, your disk will stop thrashing and it won't be an issue anymore, however, you do have all those programs just sitting in memory all the time. You will get a performance boost from the programs you open most, but you might also see a performance gain in memory intensive applications if you have some extra memory to play with. For me personally, the jury still out. After having Superfetch off for a couple of days I've turned it back on to see if I notice a difference. Windows Defender: Yes it's a service, too. Kill that shit. Windows Search: No, this won't disable your ability to search the internet or your computer. All this does is disable the Windows Indexing Service. The Indexing service combs through all of the files on your computer and indexes their file names. Additionally it indexes all or portions of their contents (text, metadata, etc) and caches all of this information into a single place in memory. This way, when you search for something, it can first look to see if it is in the index in the memory cache, rather than searching your entire hard drive(s) for it. Only if it doesn't locate it in the cache, does it begin an actual search of your disk. Sounds like a neat idea right? It is to an extent, but it means that the indexing service is constantly making additonal reads from your hard disks everytime an indexed file name, or content, is changed, which means more thrashing. I recommend minimally changing the settings of WHAT is indexed if you're going to keep it. You can find Indexing Options in the Control panel. You certainly should not be indexing things like, oh I don't know, your Temporary Internet files directory. But what I really recommend is consider how often you realistically use the search function to find a file on your computer, and how important in those instances it is to you to have to have it instantaneously found. One final note: if you use Saved Searches or Virtual Folders in Vista, they both depend on this service to operate. Personally, I don't like the idea of depending on a "folder" which is generated from a cache. When I look in a folder, I want to see what's physically residing there. But that's for you to decide. If you're a little wary of completely disabling these services, you can go to the Services Managment program and switch them all to "Manual" rather than "Automatic". 5. If you opted to disable Windows Search, let's take it one more step further. Open up Windows Explorer or My Computer and right-click on a hard disk. Choose properties. On the main properties window, all the way at the bottom, you'll see a checkbox for "Index this drive for faster searching". We've already disabled the service so it shouldn't matter, but, just to be safe... make sure it's unchecked and have it apply to all subfolders/files/etc. on the resulting screen. Do this for all the disk in your PC. Now reboot and enjoy a much more tolerable life with Vista. While there are many, amny other way sot tweak Windows Vista, doing just those few things will make a world of difference in the performance, and may even change your opinon of it. I know it did me. | |
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 few weeks back I posted an entry about my new lappy, with the promise of posting about the other new gear that I acquired as a result of my insurance claim. If there's silver lining in all of this, it's new toys to play with, if nothing else.
My phone, while not completely destroyed, was badly damaged in the accident, so I had it replaced with a fancy new slim one with a lot of bells and whistles my old one didn't have, most notably: stereo Bluetooth and an mp3 player.
 It has other fancy things like a camera and video recorder, but as you might expect, they're pretty much worthless. Coupled with a 4GB microSD card though, it makes a decent little music player. It even has a built-in FM transmitter so I can beam it right into a radio. Now if they will start making cell phones with fax capabilities (send a jpg/receive a jpg) I'll be a happy camper. Why don't cell phones have this yet? In the wreck, my trusty Sony headphones were destroyed. I could have replaced it with another nice set of 'phones but opted instead for a cheap Sennheiser headset...  ...and these BlueAnt headpones, that'll work with the Bluetooth in both my laptop and my phone.  The sound quality in the Sennheisers are so-so, but I wasn't expecting much out of a $17 pair of headphones. The BlueAnt's sound isn't awesome or anything, but they have good general clarity and a decent bass response. I've been using them a lot in conjunction with my phone to listen to music while painting at the candy factory. You can't see it in the photo, but it also comes with a removable mini-boom mic for telephone application. I'm not a huge fan of the "urban-style" design and they can get uncomfortale after extended use, but if you're in need of a Bluetooth stereo headset, I'd give this my personal endorsement. Finally, I lost two portable DVD players in the crash. So I got two of these bad boys:  While I think it's pretty nifty that they have docking stations for iPods, it's a worthless feature for me because I'll never own one. It does however play Divx/Xvid from disc or SD card, which was the selling point for me. It also has video/audio in jacks, making it usable as monitor for a gaming console. I got a few other things in the settlement, like a couple of power inverters and a new aircard for the laptop, but there's nothing particularly interesting to say or show about them. This was the fun stuff. Yay me!
As an update on the desktop computer: the new power supply is in (along with some new case fans and a new hard drive I snagged while at Newegg) and it's humming a long just fine. When I consider that between two desktops and two laptops currently in the house, that we have over 2 TB of storage it blows my mind. Remember when a 100MB hard drive would run you a couple hundred bucks? | |
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 elivered bright and early in Renton, Wa this morning and was unloaded quickly. We're picking up a load that's due to be ready by 16:00 about ten miles north of here and taking it to Wisconsin... by Wednesday morning. That's some hard drive'n. Hopefully it will be ready earlier than the appointed time and we can get out of the Seattle area before the evening rush hour. I'm not going anywhere right now, though, as the morning rush is still in full effect. I can see the 405 from where I'm parked and it isn't pretty.
I will definitely be stoppping in Missoula, MT on the way for some of the best tomato soup in the whole world, even if it's for breakfast.
Since blowing the radiator hose on Saturday, I haven't had to replenish the coolant. We've been in generally warmer climates than what we were experiencing in the midwest and east coast, so I'm inclined to believe it definitely had something to do with that.
Inspired by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lossfound, who was undertaking his own OS re-install yesterday morning, I decided to tackle the one I had been contemplating, to see if it would resolve the issue with my Aircard making the laptop crash. It seems to have helped a little, but in the end, I still think it's a hardware issue. It seems that when I stick it in the slot I have to be very particular about how I put it in or else everything goes to hell. I had a similar issue with my ex-wife. Thankfully I've not had to re-install as many SO's as I have OS's.
Speaking of SO's, welfy and I have an interesting development on the domestic front. Her brother (nebreztnem) and his fiancé (smiles_sweetly) both graduated from college last spring. In the rust-belt of western Pennsylvania, job opportunities are somewhat slim. Welf and I extended an invitation to them to come stay with us a few months to check-out the job market and milieu of central Kentucky. With the state government opportunities locally, nearby cities like Louisville and Cincinnati, and the micropolitan areas of northern Kentucky and Lexington all within an hour and a half from our front porch, Frankfort is kinda ideal as base of operations. It would give them an opportunity to see if a move would suit them without the commitment of apartment leases and the hassle of moving a ton of things only to move them back if they decided to return to PA. Somewhat to our surprise, they took us up on the offer. They're planning to come down next Monday, the 19th. The plan is to disassemble the much coveted Guy Room this coming weekend when I get home. They'll essentially have the entire downstairs as their domain complete with their own bathroom. If they decide they like central Kentucky and want to stay, they'll have some time to get on their feet and find their own place.
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 took the additional time-off as a sign that I should probably do something about my tooth abscess/sinusitis. Even though my puffy-ness from a couple of weeks ago has subsided, it was eventually replaced by a headache which is ever-present unless I'm constantly dosing myself with Advil. He was able to squeeze me in at 4pm yesterday to check me out and prescribe a regimen of antibiotics, decongestants, and nasal sprays to combat it. He actually praised me for waiting a few weeks to give my body a chance to fight it on its own, since I'm otherwise an amazingly healthy person. He and I seem to be of like-mind in that too many people seek to over-treat simpler maladies at the slightest sniffle. I've long believed that the current trend of the past 15 years to sanitize EVERYTHING and the over-use of antibiotics has contributed to poorer health, and has not been a benefit. Certainly appropriate steps need to be taken to prevent major outbreaks of E. Coli or salmonella, but goin' all Howard Hughes with the hypochondria and paranoia only serves to weaken the immune system. Personally, I think we're already seeing the effects of this, as its been my observation that we've become less hardy as a species. In another generation, I feel this may come to rue with a vengeance.
 ver since getting the new EVDO Aircard, after accidentally (if not somewhat gloriously) smashing my old one to bits in a laptop tumble, I've had problems with the computer halting in error while the new card has been in use. My fear is that the PCMCIA slot was damaged in the tumble and that the card is shorting somewhere when it's jostled around, yet I've never been able to discern any specific correlation to the computer-freeze and the jostling. I've found Windows XP SP2 to be a remarkably stable OS for the most part. The type of halt I get is a blank, black screen and then I have to to do a hard shutdown and reboot. In my previous experiences with this sort of halt, it's most always a hardware issue. I'm hoping that it's not, and that I just have some nasty registry problem due to the new card and it's drivers essentially being copied over the old one. I've tried numerous uninstalls/reinstalls and firmware updates to no avail. The next step is a reinstall of the OS, which frankly I'm probably due for anyway. If that doesn't fix it, I guess I'm screwed. I had hoped that there was maybe some sort of USB-to-PCMCIA solution on the market, but they seem to be very hardware specific to the card and pricey to boot. I may have to suffer through the year of frugality with the annoyance of laptop crashes. 2008 will mark my two year anniversary as a Sprint customer and should enable me to get a $150 credit toward a hardware upgrade. There is a USB version of the EVDO modem which I might have to seriously consider if my PCMCIA slot is indeed fux0red. That would probably be a more cost-effective solution than trying to repair the slot itself.
 he repairs on Sally were completed yesterday afternoon. After returning from my doctor's appointment and fetching welfy from work, I went to retrieve her and brought her back to the house. I made myself available for a load and made dinner for us and chasinghighways, who had been hanging out with me at the house for the past two days in hopes that the truck would be ready at a moment's notice. Around 9pm, I got a load assignment. We loaded in Columbus around 5am and have begun the 1,100 mile trip to Houston. It doesn' t have to be there until Monday morning, but I suspect we'll be there sometime in the middle of the night tonight. I know LARM is just as happy to be back on the road as I am. Even though he gets PAID regardless while he's in training, it's no fun sitting around when all you want to do is drive, learn, and see the country. On that note, Sally is running rather nicely and I hope that she will continue to relatively problem free for the next few months. She likes to run, and I still have a good deal of faith in her engine. Once she gets going, she has no desire to stop. I just have to make sure that the things she needs to roll are kept in good repair so she can. She's like an aging person who's still full of heart and adventure, she's just getting arthritic and needs a hip replacement every now and then.
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mused in my daily log yesterday about taking a single photo at the beginning of my day. My thinking is that I'll do it from within 50-100 feet of the truck but no more, just a daily record of where I am, visually. I know I'd never have the time or inclination to grab the photo out of the camera every.single.day and post it, so I compromised by making a deal with myself to post them weekly in my journal.
The other issue I was running into is the impractical nature of my current camera. Don't get me wrong, I love the quality and features of my Fujifilm Finepix S5100, but it doesn't serve all of my needs, largely because it is too big and bulky. I have been toying around with the idea buying a small point-and-shoot for some time now. I need something I can shove in the pockets of my cargo pants or in my coat. I need something that can ride on the dash while I'm driving. Since I've been a fan of my current Fujifilm product, I decided to go with the Finepix A700.
It's fully automated, only a 3x optical zoom, and best of all, small and cheap. When I need the extra zoom or manual settings, I still have the S5100. This is strictly for quick snapshots. I put a rush order on it with three day shipping, so hopefully I'll have it by Friday before I go back on the road next Monday.
I tried to take my first daily photo this morning with my S5100, but all my batteries were dead. Maybe I'll take one later when we stop for fuel as a substitute.
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  hile the nearly two weeks spent at home was nice, and getting to spend so much time with my dear welfy, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm glad to have the wheels back on the road. All that time, though, allowed me to work on The Guy RoomTM. It has a long way to go, but Rome wasn't built in a day. We can only hope the decadence and grandeur of The Guy RoomTM can someday give Rome a run for its money.
The basement had begun to collect all manner of clutter from its general state of non-use so I began by sorting, organizing, and finding homes for this stuff. I decided to re-arrange the futon and coffee table and put them on the opposing wall. I also finalized the piecing together of a new PC I had started building, but more on that in a bit. First things first, I got some things hung on the wall, in particular, my Black-Jesus-Hanging-Out-With-Dead-Rappers art that I bought a few weeks ago found a home beside the door leading to the garage.
At the bottom of the steps, greeting all entrants to the Domain of Dudes, is a sign that Welf got for me.
Fubu likes The Guy RoomTM, too. She hangs out with me a lot when I'm down there.
So, another thing I added to the room was a fun kitty toy dipped in catnip oils. She had a blast. ( Read more... ) | |
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  or every gallon of diesel I purchase at the major truckstops, I get incentive points at a rate of one cent per gallon. It doesn't sound like much until you consider that I use anywhere from 500 to 1,000 gallons of diesel per week. I try to use a particular truckstop and stockpile them for a year or two and get myself something nice. Last year, I bought a year's worth of air time for this particular truckstop's WiFi service. Since acquiring the Sprint air card earlier in this year though, it's a service I don't utilize as much these days. Certainly not enough to warrant a year's subscription. So, I've been contemplating what I would spend it on this time, as I had nearly $180 of these points.
A few days ago, while on the way to Laredo, we stopped at one of these particular truckstops just outside West Memphis, Arkansas. Inside, they were advertising a sale on Sirius satellite radio equipment, along with a sign reminding that you could also purchase air time with the incentive points. I had no idea. How awesome?
I didn't act on it at the time, and pondered this while making the trip to Laredo, coming to the decision that this would indeed be the perfect thing. I had enough customer reward cash to purchase a receiver and a considerable amount of air time. With the ongoing accrual of points, I could maintain the air time just for being a loyal customer. On our return trip toward Detroit, I made it a point to stop back at this particular location just in case it was local-store special on Sirius air time. Turns out, it applies to both Sirius and XM air time. Sweet! I can't believe I had never thought of this until now.
 Bottom line: I now own an Delphi Roady XT with 6 months of XM air time and only paid $6.40 out of pocket for taxes. That's 170+ channels music, news, comedy, and information at my finger tips.
And 24 hours into it, I've been loving it. Loving it. While I'll be eternally wishing for an all psyche/garage station, I'm more than content with the variety and niche music channels. I've really been digging the old-school hiphop channel. Who's house? Run's house. As a side note, if I could travel back in time to seduce "Big Mama" era Roxanne Shante, welfy would be a lonely woman. The old-school soul, classic indie, and blues stations are fun, too. The comedy channels are a lot more eclectic than I anticipated, with a great mix of new and old material. Right now, I'm like a kid in a candy store and can't keep my hand off the remote, switching through channels going "Ooooo, The Clash!" then "Ooooo, Bill Monroe!" then "Ooooo, Big Daddy Kane!"
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Location: Cheyenne, Wyoming This cheap Dell laptop I bought a little over a year ago has taken a beating. My constant use of it, particularly in a truck which is bouncing down the interstate has taken its toll. A few months ago, I began having trouble with the monitor lid. The wire running from the body of the laptop to the lid had developed a short from the constant jarring. I discovered that the hinge cover was pinching the wire, so I broke off the hinge cover and that fixed it... for a while. The short got worse and I later resorted to rigging it with a piece of plastic strap to pull the wire away from whatever it was shorting against. I'm able to use the laptop, but the slightest movement of the machine will 'cause it to short and the computer to crash. There is no apparent way to get inside the lid where the short resides and my fear is if I go tinkering in there I may damage it beyond all hope. So I've been in the market for a laptop... a durable one. I was at first drawn to the Panasonic Toughbook line. You can drop them, spill your coffee on them and they keep running. They also come with a three year warranty. The cheapest they have in the line however is $1800... a bit more than I'm prepared to plunk down for a notebook. Then I discovered Durabook, which operates under the same principle; industrial-strength casing for laptops used in "rugged" environments.  Newegg has one at a $1050 price tag. In addition to a more durable laptop, I would be getting a considerable upgrade; 2.5 times the hard disk space, twice the memory, and a DVD writer. I'd be taking a slight hit in processor oomph but not much... and it's not like I do any super-duty computing on the road anyway. A cool grand is still a bit pricey for me, hence my hesitation, but I'm going to have to do something and soon, before my current laptop gives up the ghost. The bottom-line is, I can't be replacing laptops once a year at any price. I'm leaning toward this as a solution to that. | |
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