I will be out of town and likely without internet this weekend, so don’t expect to hear from me. Hopefully, I’ll have some more in-depth posts ready for you all when I get back. I’m also hoping that there will be less pollen in Virginia Beach than there is in the DC area.
Long day at work today. Our file server is having issues. No data loss, but I don’t see the resolution yet. And the server room air conditioning blows right in front of our rack. It’s only 71 degrees in the room, but it’s really 65 and breezy where I stood most of the day. Hopefully, I can update this post tomorrow and say everything is back to normal.
Today on my way home from work, I turned my car over 50,000 miles. She’ll be 5 years old on October 28. While we’re on the topic of cars, I’ll add that I’ve never paid $3 or more for gas. Given that the average price in the area is about $3.10, I may have to break that before the end of the summer, but I’m hoping to hold out.
I updated last night’s post about General Sada. Trust me. You want to listen to the recording.
My least favorite part of working at Digital Sandbox is the commute. This morning, I had my fastest morning since we’ve been located near Worldgate. It was about 40 minutes. My commute typically takes between 45 and 65 minutes, usually about 55 in the morning and 45 in the evening. The office is a little over 20 miles from my parents’ house in Springfield. That’s Washington traffic for you.
On Monday, I started my fourth summer working for Digital Sandbox. The commute gets a little worse each year, and the current office is a little farther from my parents’ house than either of the previous locations I’ve worked at. One of my personal conditions on going back this summer was that I would do something to improve the commute. The radio gets worse every time I come back, and I stopped listening to it on an at all frequent basis in January 2003. My CD player is a good friend, but I’ve wanted a wider range of options in the car. I decided that I would either get an iPod or XM radio for the car.
Either would have to be properly installed and look good. Also, because of its trapezoidal shape, I didn’t want to replace the car’s head unit because a replacement stereo wouldn’t look as nice. That meant that my best option for getting the sound into the head unit was the PIE HON-AUX98 input converter. This little box plugs into the CD changer input on the factory radio and tricks it into thinking that the CD changer has a disc loaded and playing. On the box, it has a set of audio inputs that can be used to get the iPod or satellite radio sound into the head unit.
Now that I had the problem of getting the sound into the car system solved, I had to choose between iPod or XM. The XM hardware has really come down in cost–I almost bought one over spring break, but in the end, I decided that I wanted to be able to listen to my podcasts in the car. The original plan was to buy a black iPod nano and attach it between the steering wheel and the climate controls. However, two things foiled that plan. First, the iPod nano is slightly too wide to fit in my selected space. Second, the price difference between nano 4 gigabyte ($250) and iPod 30 gigabyte ($300) was low enough that it made me want the larger capacity. My iTunes library is currently just under 19 gigabytes, so I could fit all my music on the 30 gig model. However, for just $100 more, I could put all my music and all my data files (~30 gigabytes) on the 60 gigabyte model. With my academic discount, I bit the bullet and went with the biggest one of all: the iPod video 60 gigabyte, plus a gooseneck car mount/power adapter, a case, and the input converter. I didn’t seriously consider other mp3 players because I use iTunes and very occasionally the iTunes music store.
When I returned to the Washington area on Sunday, I had all the parts waiting for me in boxes. Got the iPod syncing with my computer. Getting the car apart was another story. Two hours after starting on the car project, I had a working input converter. However, the second power outlet that I tried to add ended up stuck in my dashboard, half in, half out. Trying to put the second power outlet in also resulted in a blown fuse, making both power outlets useless.
A week later, I finally install the audio jack in a panel near the original power outlet, where the iPod holder now lives. I also relocate the second power outlet to under the dashboard at floor level on the passenger side of the car. With both jacks installed, I’m able to put the car back together for now. I’m going to find a plastic panel to replace the one that I drilled the hole in, but other than that, everything is installed and working well.
Click an image to enlarge
Tonight, I heard Iraqi General Georges Sada speak about what God is doing in Iraq. Sada is an evangelical Christian, who was a top advisor to Saddam Hussein, and should have been killed many times for things that he told Saddam. He told many interesting stories about how he met Saddam (giving him a ride home in 1965, when he was carless and not in power) and how the stories that we hear about Iraq over here are not accurate depictions of how much of his country is today. Also, thousands of former Muslims are giving their lives to Christ now that it is legal for them to do so. Sada recently authored a book that explains Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (both chemical and biological) and what he did with them before UN weapons inspectors returned in 2002. Even though the interview with him is over an hour long, when the audio is posted on the web, it will be a must listen. I’ll post a link when it’s available.
UPDATE: Download the audio here. MP3, 19.1 MB, 83 minutes.
Now that I’ve had her for a week, it’s time for me to introduce the newest member of the family. Meet Marzipan. She’s a 60 gigabyte black iPod Video, named after the Homestar Runner character of the same name. Yes, all my computers have Homestar Runner names.
The King of Town: the heart of Project 503, my arcade machine–Dell PIII 450Good quote from Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins. One of my largest frustrations is when someone has all the information available to them to make an informed decision, but chooses to not even look at the information, and instead makes a silly and uninformed decision. Alternate expression: “I’ve got my mind all made up, I won’t let the facts confuse me.”
The Washington Post reports that the UN wants the military prison at Guantanamo Bay closed down and all the prisoners either tried or released. Guantanamo Bay is something that makes me embarassed to say that I’m an American. We’re supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but humiliating and possibly even tourturing prisoners is cowardly.
As a citizen of God’s kingdom first and an American second, I believe that we need to take a stand and tell our government that situations like that prison are not acceptable. Holding people for an extended time without trial is not the American thing to do, and it’s certainly not something that is pleasing to God. It’s time for our nation to repent of our mistake at Guantanamo Bay and to make things right with those people who were held there.
I liked this quote from Michael over at You Can Know God:
Waitresses make $1.50 an hour and a share of the tips, bringing them up to a “normal” hourly wage. But the tip is arbitrary and changes from night to night. That defeats the intention of a gratuity, which was to give the server a little something extra. A restaurant doesn’t pay the employee the fair wage, but counts on the generosity of the patrons to make up for their low wages. What other industry operates on this kind of pay scale? What if we lowered the salary of other people and made them count on tips to make up the difference? I think this might work for politicians.
See his full post here
I’m alive, but a little behind. I’ve been trying to sort through my emails and get the number still needing response down to zero, plus barely sleeping. It’s been a rough past week. A lot of vtONE stuff came up, and I said goodbye to a number of friends. Congratulations to the VT class of 2006. Come back and visit!
I’m back in the DC area for about five weeks of work at Digital Sandbox. I start in a few hours.  After that, I’m hoping to go to Colorado for a week with my family. Then, I’ll be back in Blacksburg in early July.