Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I saw that there was a $10 digital camera on sale at OfficeMax today.

You can see the camera here.

There’s a OfficeMax nearby and I called and indeed they had them in stock. They are $15 with a $5 mail-in rebate.

At lunch, I headed out with Brad and Yoshi in search of this ‘too good to be true’ deal.

I bought two. Yoshi bought one.

They are basically webcams that allow you to take up to 27 320×240 pixel images without being connected to the computer.

Here are the images. I converted the 225k bmps to jpgs for web viewing. There is no degradation in quality from this conversion.

We tested webcam mode and it works as well.  So if you want a cheap webcam, this may be your answer.

After reading a few more reviews about Minority Report this morning, I am firmly convinced that America is being drugged.

People seem to think this is a “great” movie.

Unless I passed out and missed 20 minutes of the film where are the plot flaws were fixed, I can’t see why people thnk this was so great. Cool special effects, but the story lets me down.

I wrote up yesterday’s geocaching adventure in the usual story form.

My legs are quite sore today. I need to exercise more if I’m going to do this regularly. Here’s a view from near the top.

Last night, I saw Minority Report with Len. It was OK, but it doesn’t deserve the praise it’s getting from critics. Cool special effects are great, but a plot with huge holes in it is less than I expect from Mr. Spielberg.

If your wife is out of town and took the tweezers with her, trying to use a needle-nose pliers instead is a bad idea.

It’s just after 7PM and I’m still at work. I’m done with what I needed to do, but I’m in no hurry since Michele and the girls are out of town.

I got a little stressed at work today over part of our budgeting process. In normal person speak what it means is that the comapny plans out how much money we are going to spend next year. Seems simple, but it’s not.

I routinely deal with plans and projects that involve millions of dollars. Projects that are under $100,000 aren’t scrutinized heavily. We spend around a million dollars a day in just my part of Disney. The money takes on a unreal feel. It’s like a game.

In private life, the difference between $50 and $150 is huge in my purchasing decision. At work, money flows out like water. I regularly sign invoices for $10,000. Today I signed for a $30,000 piece of software. I gave it no more thought than most people would give the bill at dinner.

We need it, we got the money, buy it.

But when you stop for a second and consider what that kind of money would buy in ‘private life’, it boggles the mind. $30,000 would buy Michele the new Volvo she’s been eyeing. As it is, it will probably take 5 years to pay off a new car.

It’s a strange disconnect with reality. The money doesn’t seem real. It’s a strange game.

Today we got delivery of a few boxes of hardware. Sitting on the loading dock was around $250,000 worth of gear. That’s a fucking entire house sitting outside waiting for us to wheel it inside.

Everything inside the corporation seems like a game. There are rules. There are winners and losers. And most amazingly, there is the rejection of reality. People make decisions based on not what is the best idea, but based on the politics of the company and looking good. For all the financial analysis we do, it’s basically ignored in large part.

The company will issue cost cutting edicts that lower morale and productivity over trivial things like “No doughnuts on Fridays!” while at the same time losing $35 million dollars on a film that any thrid grader could have told them would suck. How many doughnuts do we have to forgo to pay off the decision to make a bad movie?

It’s simply not reality.

It is June 21, the first day of Summer, and it is raining in Southern California.

WTF?

This is an amazing sight:

This is my work email inbox. Typically, I get 200-300 emails per day and my inbox is constantly full. Last week I had more than 300 items in my inbox.

I have busted my ass to deal with mail and amazingly have emptied it.

I rock.

I picked up NWN yesterday.

I got home around 7:30 and let it install while I was making dinner and puttering around the house.

I started playing at 8PM or so. The next time I got up from the computer, it was 11PM. The game is very well done.

I’ll have more to report after I finish the first mission.

Alright, I got off my lazy ass and wrote up a few stories.

First, I did a little Benchmarking. It’s an offshoot of geocaching. You can check out the first and second benchmarks I found.

Next, I planted a new geocache called the Big Dreams Cache on Saturday. You can read the story.

After planting the cache, I did a did a little hunting myself on my seventh and eighth geocache finds.

On Fathers Day, I went down to my parents house. My parents handed me a small present to open. I couldn’t imagine what it was. I opened it up and it was a new Garmin eTrex Venture. I’ve was quite surprised. Remember, I’ve been using a GPS Companion with Michele’s Palm.

Me: Wow, thanks.
Mom: You like it?
Me: Um, yes. It’s great. But…
Mom: What? You don’t like it? You want to take it back? A different color?
Me: No, it’s just that I already have a GPS…
Dad: Yah, we know.
Me: Huh?
Dad: We asked Michele what to get you. She said to get you a GPS.
Me: Huh? She knows I have a GPS…
Mom: Do you want to take it back? Wrong color? [etc…]
Dad: Michele said to get you it so she can have her Palm back.
Me: Oh.
Dad: She said ever since you started geocaching her Palm is never in her purse.
Me: I see. A conspiracy!

I’ll write more on the new GPS once I get a chance to use it.

Lastly, I wrote up a story on my father’s knife obsession. More to come on this topic as I get time.

OK, that’s enough content for tonight. It’s bed time….