CruizerBlog

The Boring Thread

First off, I am sorry I haven't been here in quite some time. But no one objected to it so I figured you were all OK with it. Since I lost my job, I spend a heck of a lot less time on the comoputer. Usually only a few minutes a day really. But, I seem to have developed insomnia as of the last couple of weeks. For some stupid reason I'll go to bed at a halfway reasonable time, lay in bed until 2, get up and go lay on the couch where I can go toss and turn in all my angerous rage without waking Christina, lay there until 4:30 or so, then suddenly wake up when the suns already up. If i had a job, this would probably be killing me. So instead, I'll kill you with useless crap!

So let's see, what have I done over the past month and a half I have not been working. Well, my dad and I built a shed. He's retired now, so he doesn't work so fast, took us three weeks. He'd show up at my place at 9ish, we'd go out to breakfast, get materials, then start working about 11ish or so. But I'd work him until dark, which at that time was 6 or after. Mom thought I was slave driving him, I don't think so.

We removed the old shingles and re-shingled the roof. Had a few extra people helping with that one, which took us two weekends.

Halloween Decorations! You cannot forget those! I made Hell's Mailbox, hurray! It was cool. And I redid Mr. Pumpkinhead. Before he looked kinda childish, now he looks mean and scarey! I have pics but have not put them online yet. Plus we did the inside of the house this year too. It was pretty killer.

Rewired the computer room. There are no grounds for any of the electric sockets in this house, so I am switching out the non-grounded sockets with grounded ones, and putting in a ground wire as well. Whoever did the electrical in this house needs to be shot, seriously. It sucks. I want to redo the whole thing. But for now, it's one room at a time, when I get to it. But I actually got all of my computer stuff in the computer room too. I had to take one computer desk apart to fit it in here (it's been sitting in the living room since we moved in), and I had to take the other one apart and rebuild it to a right hand configuration. As before it was on the left side of me, now, due to room space/requirements, it's on the right. So whenever I get a job that i can work from home, I am all set!

Been getting ready for Christmas too. I love Christmas! The animated lighting is getting an all new, more high tech setup! If everything goes right this year, we'll be able to add dimming to the lights, and I will have a 10' tall Mega Tree! WOO HOO!! last year the total amount of channels we had for the light setup was 16. Just to put things into perspective, the Mega Tree I designs will use 48 channels itself. It will be a three color tree. It will be AWESOME!!! So yeah, i am about to finish up the circuitry on that and hopefully get it all tested this weekend, then I can start hanging lights!

The garage. The garage was the storage pit. It's odd shaped, funky, and sucks. I totally hate it, not enough room for a good work flow. So I did what i could and started putting things away. Once I was almost done, I realized the L-shaped workbench i was going to build wasn't going to be enough work space, so I moved some shelves and redesigned it. I'm on day 5 of the garage, and I should finish up today.

I bought a new computer for the Christmas lights, well a bare bones kit anyways. So I need to get that together and get XP loaded onto it. The motherboard in the DVR computer is bad as well. It likes to randomly freeze up, restart, or just plain 'ol shut off. And when it looses power, the CMOS resets itself (it's not the battery, I've replaced that). So my Friend Russ' friend gave me a new motherboard to use. I put it in tonight, and it doesn't seem to recognize my chip. The chip I have is an AMD Athalon 300+ XP, the one that came with the motherboard is an AMD Athalon 1500 XP. I think there is an upgrade issue there, like the used board I got is not compatible with the chip I have. So not fun. But the new computer, well the new computer is an AMD Athalon 3500+ 64! With a 1000Mhz FSB! WOO HOO can you say FAST! I don't have it running yet though. I need a chip fan first. But I do have computer parts and pieces all over the living room floor! Christina will be happy to see that, I am sure.

Well, if you have read this far, then i congratulate you. I didn't even want to keep typing about 3/4's of the way through, but I didn't see a need to waste all this useless information.