Just a simple screen capture…

All I wanted was a simple screen capture of a scene of a DVD I have. I thought that every DVD player in a PC would have a screen capture built in. Not so young grasshopper.

I tried WinDVD & PowerDVD with no luck. I spent 3 hours Sunday night trying to get a capture. I searched and read tons on the net with no success. I had someone at work try with a new Apple Gwhatever Mac with the new spanking DVD drives. No luck.

Aaron at the office did get a screen capture with the WinDVD version supplied with the new Dell computers. I tried upgrading at home to it, no dice. “This computer is not a verfied Dell computer” appeared on my screen as the setup ran. Fuck you Dell.

So I delved deeper into the haxx0r depths and found DVD Genie. This sweet piece of software ‘fixes’ various DVD player software and enables more functionality. In my case, it turned the screen capture feature on in my version of WinDVD.

Go my minions. Download and be amazed.

BTW, here’s the screen capture I wanted. Kewl logo huh?

How to put a 2×4 into a truck properly

Here’s a helpful hint for all of you loyal readers.

When putting lumber in your wife’s Jeep, do not attempt to put the entire 2×4 inside the car. Attmepting to rest the wood on the front dashboard is VERY DANGEROUS. You can easily crack the front windshield.

Then you get an unpleasant feeling in the pit of your stomach and worst of all, you have to tell your wife you broke her car.

I do recommend discountautoglass.com if you do need a repair.

Heed my warning or suffer my fate!

Woot!

I got home yesterday to find Fedex package waiting for me.

My copy Quake 3 Arena for Linux had arrived.

Yes, I’m a happy puppy. For $10, everyone should buy one.

Monday Morning

One more day until my wife returns from her 12 Quilting Expedition to Kentucky. I cannot wait… I am a man who needs his wife.

This morning I awoke and got ready for work. The girls were sleepy because of the birthday party and trip to Santa Barbara yesterday. Around 8AM the biggest awoke and wandered up front. She asked for breakfast. She said she wanted cereal. I asked if Cheerios was OK. The mature 5 year old informed me that Cheerios is for ‘babies’ and that she wanted Alpha Bets.

I headed into the kitchen and saw water on the floor. A lot of water. The sink that the washer empties into had been plugged by a stray sock. I headed to my bedroom, stripped out of my work clothes and into my shorts. I returned to the kitchen to battle the water and drive it outside. The 5 year old said, “Daddy, I’m thinking that I want to play in the water.” I sent her to the living room. Kids these days. Cheerios no good? Soapy laundry water fun to play in?

In other news part of geeklab.net is up. It’s run by Ellis, formerly of GeekNews. Check it out and stuff.

I wrote another Ultima story. If you don’t play UO I doubt it’ll make sense.

The price of RAM

I was going through some paper work when I saw this old receipt:

IF you can’t read it clearly, it shows I bought two sticks of 8 Meg 60 ns RAM for $87.09 each in 1996.

An 8 Meg stick of RAM for 87.09. That’s $10.89 per Meg of RAM in 1996.

Today, according to www.pricewatch.com, a stick of 256 Meg of PC133 RAM costs $42. That’s $0.16 per Meg of RAM in 2001.

The cost of RAM in 2001 is 1.5% of the cost in 1996.

If we do the math and extrapolate the RAM cost per Meg out 5 more years, we see that RAM will cost $0.0025 per Meg.

That means that a Gigabyte of RAM should cost $2.50 in 2006.

I figure that people are willing to spend about $50 on RAM for their computer. R33t hardware dewds (like me) willspend much more, but the average person will spend $50.

In 2006, $50 should buy you 20 Gigs of RAM. It boggles the mind…