Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I’m sure that in some sort of karmic revenge for my joke about the Mac, I spent a bunch of time working on tech issues at home.
Michele’s CD-ROM had been acting up and she had complained that her CD burner wasn’t fast enough (8x). I ordered a pair of matching black Lite-On drives. They arrived yesterday and I began the install after the kids went to bed.
As expected, after booting with the new drives installed, the BIOS hung during POST and didn’t recognize the drives. First, I reflashed the BIOS. No luck. then I swapped out the IDE cable with a new one. (How nerdly am I for having spare IDE cables lying around?) That got them working. The DVD playback software and Nero burning software installed smoothly. Getting a copy of Nero included with the drives was a great deal.
I copied a mix CD at 48x speed to test things out. Three minutes to burn a CD. Nice. As I type, Zoolander is playing on her computer.
On the girls computer, the mouse stopped moving left and right. I popped it open and found a small ecosystem of dust bunnies inside. I cleaned it out and it still didn’t work well. The girls took the mousepad into the bathroom and washed it with soap in an attmept to help.
I opened the mouse and had to realign the IR sensor to get things working well.
Most importantly, last night Shadowbane broke.
Shadowbane downloaded a patch and afterwards the program would crash when I tried to enter the world. After some research, I had to rollback Nvidia drivers from 43.45 to 41.09. Finally, the precious had returned to me.
I powerleveled from 6 to 11 last night. If not for all the tech issues, I could have been level 15 easy…
Time for work. Have a good day.

UPDATE: This post was an April Fool’s Day joke. Settle down.
I declared victory and made a decision. After asking many people about how to best do this video capture/DVD burning thing, decided to go for what they suggested.

I’m playing around with the DVD thing again at home.
It’s just not working well. If I get the drive connected well, the software hangs. If the software is working well, the drive isn’t ready of the DVD+RW is fubarred.
I need to figure a better way out to do this.

Feet
First of all, here’s the big news: Audrey Diggs is walking! Yes, the stubborn one has made the leap to walking. Go check out the dramatic movie footage. Mrs. Diggs doesn’t have perma links, so look for the Sunday, March 30 post. Woo hoo!
Friends
On Saturday, Len and Monique threw a huge Crawfish Boil party. There was over 150 pounds of crawfish.

For those that haven’t been to a crawfish boil before, it’s a ton of fun. Once the crawfish are dumped on the table, everyone rips them apart with their bare hands.
I took a bunch of pictures and made a quick slideshow.
Food
Today was a recovery day from the party. Michele was on Day 5 of the Glendale Quilt Show and the girls needed a break. They played with the neighbor’s kids and had fun in a wading pool. We had five ripe bananas, so I decided to make Banana Bread.

Mira helped me with mashing the bananas and eggs together. Here’s the recipe.
Ali G DVD
I spent some time today trying to record episodes of the Ali G show into the computer. After several false starts, reading of manuals, and test recordings, I was finally able to get some decent work done. I ended up using the Ulead DVD Workshop program. It’s got a 30 day trial, so I can see if it works for me before I buy it. The program costs a lot, but may be worth it if I can make a DVD of our home movies.
Once I get the process down, I think it will be easy to turn video into DVDs. There’s a lot to learn about the technique, but the current tools make it simpler.

Thanks to James at ConsolationChamps, I’m messing about with Blogshares.

It treats weblogs like traded company stock based on linkage or something. I’m still checking it out. Go claim your blog and most importantly, link back to me that you found out about it here. (evil grin)
As of today, Cruft is worth $1402.26
I’m going to try to manipulate the market: Bloggus Caesari, 8 Bit Joystick, Crookdimwit

Today the Kansas Jayhawks play the Arizone Lusers. I am very much hoping that Kansas wins. The Diggs are huge Kansas fans and winning would make them very happy. In addition, if Kansas wins, it gives me a very good shot at winning a NCAA tourney pool.
So please, dear Cruft readers, send your win mojo toward the Kansas players today.

Most people love bubbles. People love to give bubbles to kids. There isn’t a birthday party in America when one of the goodie bag gifts is a small bottle of bubbles.
Everyone seems to think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.
‘Cept me. I hate them.
Bubbles are always a mess. Kids spill them everywhere. Cleaning up soap is pain, it just makes more soap. I have declared them an ‘outside toy’.
Today, Mira walks up to me in the study with an open bottle of bubbles in her hands. She asks for a bubble wand. I tell her to take the bubbles outside and I’ll get the wand for her. She says, “NO Daddy! I play with bubbles inside at school! I’ll be careful.” I again tell her to take them outside. She begins to get angry and yell, but I am firm in my insistance she go outside. She gets angrier.
Then she drops the full bottle of bubbles on the floor. It spills everywhere. She looks down, looks up and me, and says, “Sorry Daddy.” and runs off.
Did I mention I hate bubbles?

Thank you Kansas! Thanks to the Jayhawks, I’m now in third place in my NCAA tournament challenge. If I win I get 11 DVDs… If Arizona loses, I’m pretty much golden…
Fun with DVDs
I’ve been playing around with DVD burners a bit. I borrowed a DVD+RW and made a couple DVDs. I was suprised to find that neither the PS2 or the Apex player could read the disc. The computer can read it, as well as a Sony player at work. I guess the compatibility stuff does matter.
Perhaps the DVD-R people are right. More research is needed.
Quilting
This weekend is the Glendale Quilt Show. Michele is quite involved and has been working hard for weeks. She even got elected VP. The show is kicking into high gear and she left home this morning at 6:20AM. I’ll be ‘the mommy’ according to Mira until the show ends on Sunday.
Michele tells me stories about the lack of organization and it actually makes my stomach upset. “No one ordered tables.” “The women were up in their rooms sleeping when they should have been at registration.” Ugh…
She didn’t get home last night, so I missed the SoCal WUG meeting. There’s always next month. That left me time to play…
Shadowbane
Yes, I actually stayed awake and played the game. I got used to the basics of control and did a bit of ant killing. Of course, in short order, I died.

Soon enough I started leveling up a bit and grouped with Yoshi & Mocker. As a team, we racked up the exp & gold. By the end of the night I was level 5. Not bad.
OK, time to go get the kids ready for school.

I fell asleep on the couch last night reading the Shadowbane manual. That’ll teach me…
In other news, my wife completely rocks. Her’s what she brought home to me last night:

This is why I married her. She understands my needs…
Weblogs
I’m proud of my friend Alan who made his own cantenna and wardrove from his house. Good Job!
It looks like the Courtney’s man Kevin has his own weblog going now. Always good to have another tech weblogger out there. Go give him some love…
At Wil’s site, I saw a link to an interesting conversation about why we are fighting in Iraq. Good find Wil.
MLP
Best of Craig’s List – I like this one the best.
I need a good reason to build a cardboard computer.
80 hour Tivo Series 2 for $250
OK, time to get ready for work…

Here’s my question: Why does customer service at store for geeks suck?
Today a new game, Shadowbane, was released. I saw an ad for it at Fry’s in the newspaper. As expected, when I went to Fry’s at lunch they acted like I was asking for the Easter Bunny. There were of no help. I stood there trying to call other stores looking for the game and none of the other stores even picked up the phone.
Typical.
Almost every geek store you go to has terrible customer service. Radio Shack, Fry’s, CompUSA, Best Buy, etc… They all suck.
Other kinds of stores usually have good customer service. Shoe stores, music stores, and even supermarkets have better service.
Why do stores for geeks suck so much?
The only good news is that Mister P. found a store that did have the game and bought me a copy. He rocks!
Pride
On another theme, I’m very proud of my eldest daughter, Zoe. For a while now she’s been saving up money in a special box. Yesterday, I had to return the Gamecube game we rented to Blockbuster. She said she wanted to keep it. We discussed it a bit and she said she wanted to use her money to buy the game. She had savd up $31. I told here I’d cover the rest if it cost more.
We drove to the local Gamestop store and she walked in with her money in a clear box. Her eyes went wide when she saw all the games and systems inside. I saw my genes in action in her. She talked with the woman behind the counter and soon enough, Spyro – Enter the Dragonfly, was ours. I was so proud when she put her box of cash on the counter and said, there’s $31 in there.
When we got home, she told me that saving money was good and that she had big plans when she saved up more…
Next
There’s more on my mind, but I’m going to go read the Shadowbane Manual instead… Later.