Dravor's Christmas Wishlist

So..... Amazon's wish list is great but it's limited to Amazon, so I figured I'd post it here.

Jeep Stuff:
Jeep Rail Tub Guards
Rockcrawler Side Guards
1" Body Lift
Seat Covers, Front Seats Silver/Black
Seat Covers, Rear Seats Silver/Black

Computer Stuff:

D-Link 24 Port GIGE Switch

Logitech Bluetooth mouse for my Dell Mini

GPS Dongle for my Dell Mini

Xbox 360 120GB Drive

Stupid Personalized Ad emails

Now, don't get me wrong, the personalized emails from web based companies I purchased from sometimes are neat. They remind me of birthdays coming up, and other great items related to purchases I've made. However, this has got to be the dumbest I've seen:



If it's a child's shoe, why would I need to buy the exact same shoe a year later? Do they think I have dwarfs as children? *No offense meant to any dwarfs who may read this. But seriously, be a bit more selective on the personalization.

Marcus' Weight Loss / Health Challenge

All,

As you may/may not have known, the increased work load and stress over the past 12 months have cause me to gain back quite a bit of weight I had originally lost. After my latest Dr's visit I weighed in at 179 pounds, a bit up from the 158-160 pound weight I was carrying when I was regularly going to the gym.

My blood work also came back with high blood sugar, and high cholestorol.

So now it's come time for me to prove to myself, and the world, how some exercise, hard work, and good eating can allow you to drop weight.

My end goal weight is 155 pounds.

To make things a little more interesting, I'm comtemplating the following:

Allow folks to sponsor me, with a $ per pound lost by the end of the year. All money sponsored will be donated to either the American Heart Foundation or the Ronald McDonals House Charities.

Let me know what you think,

Gym starts tomorrow, the quitting of soda starts today.

Funnies with the kids

I'm pouring a bath for alec, and help him get out of his clothes and his diaper. He goes ahead and steps over into the tub by himself. His eyes get big and he says "Hot, Hot", so I quickly help him out. Sure enough the water was a bit warm.

What does Alec do?

He leans over the bathtub and starts blowing the water :)

Hot food, hot water, how simple things are as a child :)

Camping soothes this savage beast....

So what does one do after their National Soccer team faces a 1-0 defeat in the Euro Cup? Well, take a short vacation in honor of their adopted homeland's festivation of freedom. Yes,I made up the word festivation, it's a combinement of festival and celebration :)

We left Ashburn on Thursday, picked up the camper, and headed to Pohick Bay, one of Virginia's Regional park's near Lorton, Va.mm I was bit put aside from leaving our normal camping grounds at Low Water Bridge Campground, in Bentonville, Va. That campground is right next to the Shenandoah River.

This place is actually quite nice. They sell firewood, for $4 per milk crate, fit as much as you can. The only note of caution is many of the electric site are rock/gravel only, with no grass nearby, so pick spots around the center playground area if you have kids.

One nice feature is the re-opening of their pool at Pohick Bay. They've added a kid section in the low water area, and it has a pirate theme. The place is called Pirate's Cove, and for 2 adults, 1 child, it only cost us $9 for entry since we are also camping here. Caleb loved the water slide, and it's very kid oriented which is nice.

We ended the evening going down to the marina on the bay, and watching as Ft. Belvoir's fireworks show went off without a hitch over the treeline in the distance. There were not too many people there and it was very nice.

Our Saturday got a late start due to a early morning thunderstore. How ever, later in the day I got to take Caleb out on a Pedal Boat. He was quite excited, until he realized the real speed of the boat :) He wanted "one of those fast boats over there". I guess I need to start making more $ to make the poor chap happy.

So I'm ending our weekend here, with a fire going, and blogging next to the fire. Which just goes to show, you can take the geek out of his working environment, but you can't get the IT out of the geek :)

Good news as well, the water pump on the camper does work, suppose having the damn think level helps quite a bit :) It made it easier to wash dishes and clean feet, and even give the boys an impromptu totally nekkid shower :) We really need to get one of those shower enclosures. It just beats going to the showers, which are filthy on a wet day, no matter where you go.

So in the morning,we unload the camper, de-popup it, and head home.

Cheers all,

-Dravor

TOR TOR TOR!!!!!!!

Germany just beat Portugal 3-2 in the Euro 2008 Quarter Final. We were the under dogs but we went quickly up 2-0, before Portugal made it 2-1 before half time. Germany then made it 3-1, and with a few minutes left Portugal made it 3-2.

So we win, we go on to face the winner of Turkey/Croatia!


Congrats to Ballack, Scheinsteigher, and Klose on their goals!

-D

Tim Russert, A True Pioneer

Today this country, and the world lost one of it's finest journalists, fathers, and political geniuses we have seen. I always enjoyed watching Tim Russert, especially on Meet The Press. While over the years many networks, journalists or anchors have favored certain politicians or political parties, Tim always grilled everyone equally.

He had a way of forcing candidates to re-evaluate their statements and comments over the years. If you suddenly switch your position on a stance, he was there to ask you why. He could take the toughest political decision and situations, and convert them into thoughts that made sense to the rest of the country.

It's during the next five months that we needed Tim Russert the most, and he will missed. It is my hope that we can find someone with nearly half the heart for politics, life, and family as Tim had, to carry on. Tim was straight forward with his questioning, and got the answers we all needed to make our decision.

My thoughts and prayers are with Tim's family and his family at NBC. He will be missed by me, and keeping up with Politics will just not be the same.

Tim,

Thanks for the memories.

God Bless!

Dell and Price Mistakes

If you shop Dell quite often, you will know this issue. You go to Dell's site, and see their "Dell DEAL OF THE DAY!" The price looks amazing, better than at your local store, so you get excited, and go ahead and purchase the item.

You get your confirmation email, even get your scheduled shipping date. Now you are psyched, a PS3 and two games for $291 shipped. Granted Walmart is giving out $100 gift cards with the purchase of a 40GB PS3, but this deal is nice nonetheless.

So of course the day of the proposed shipping date, the order get's delayed. Then a few days later it get's canceled because it's on back order. Interesting, one would thing they would of had enough product for their big "Dell DEAL OF THE DAY" sale.

What's worse, when inquiring about re-activating the order, Customer Support tells you:


Dell records indicate that the item PS3 Bundle in the order number 333373110 is currently backordered and hence it was cancelled. Please be informed that as we are into customer care and have limited access to place an order, I request you to please contact our sales department at 800-284-3355 extension 72-61843 and have the order once again placed.

Of course, the problem with this is that the item is now $120 more.

So, ok I get it, a price mistake, it happens. How is it, that this happens on a nearly regular basis? Would you not simply warn the person making this mistake, and then fire them the second or third time around?

Where is the QA being done after changes are made to the site?

It almost feels like a good way to get customers to your site, in the hopes they buy other things, just to kill the attention grabber. Retail stores have been using sales on big items for years to draw in customers, and then make the money on the sale item up in other more profitable items the customer buys.

So one has to wonder if Dell is simply doing this to draw traffic, or just has a team that cannot manage to double check their sale pricings?

Granted, I credit Dell for finally giving me a $100 coupon for my troubles, even though the PS3 will still cost me $20 more than before. But even that that took time in email responses, and filling a Better Business Bureau complaint. It's not like I'm trying to get Dell Products for free, I just want to purchase, what they advertise, and actually receive that product and have it shipped.

Point is, if you have a Price Mistake that you made, stick to it!

-Dravor

The not so Geeky Geek Squad

Recently, I had to go back to our local Best Buy to pick up our Dyson vacuum. It turns out Dyson has a deal with Best Buy, where you can simply return your Dyson to Best Buy for warranty/repair issues.

Not only is it aggravating that only the "Geek Squad" personnel can walk the ten feet into the "back area" to get my vacuum, but even worse there is only one person there. So myself and a female customer in front of me wait for the gentleman to finish off with the other customer.

After a few minutes the other customer just leaves, and wait another ten minutes, being ignored by the "Geek Squadist". When I finally pull aside a Manager to ask for help he says:

Best Buy Manager: "Oh Bob is our Geek Squad Associate, he will be happy to help you"
Myself: "We'll, the last customer left 10 minutes ago, and "Bob" has not said one word to us".
Best Buy Manager: "Bob, could you help these customers out?"
Bob: "Sure thing boss"
Bob : "Hi Mam, I've actually been working on your laptop for the last few minutes, and it will be done soon!".
Female Customer: "Well you said it would take 30 minutes, it's been 45 minutes now..."
Bob: "I'm sorry mam, one of the platters on your drive is dying, so it's taking somewhat longer to run the test" < ???? >
Female Customer: "Can't I just leave the drive here and come back tomm?"
Bob: "Well mam, if we do that, I'd have to check it in, and that is a lot of paperwork. Let's just wait a few more minutes and it should be done."
Female Customer: "But if it doesn't finish soon, won't you have to check it in anyways?"
Bob: "Well yes, but I assure you, it will be done soon. It's just that messed up platter."
Myself: "So Bob, if one of the platters on her hard drive is dead, shouldn't you be replacing the drive under warranty, and check in the laptop anyways?"
Bob (Looking confused, and flustered): "Well... uh.... it's not actually the platter.... uh..... the drive is fine it's just running slow.....yeah yeah the platter is actually fine, we won't have to replace the drive."
Myself: "So the platter isn't dying and the drive is working?"
Bob: "Well yes, the platter is ok. ummmm... it's just running really slow"

Bob walks back to get my vaccum.

Myself to Female Customer: "Be careful, this Geek Squad Member is as much of a Geek as I am a Senator"

So remember, just because a store has setups like Geek Squad, Firedog, etc does not mean they really have more understanding than your typical teenager. Who would you rather try and recover your data on a failing hard drive, someone making $10-12 an hour working at a Big Box Retailer, or something with the experience to help you save your data. It may cost you a bit more, but in the end, isn't it worth the price when you can be sure your problem will be fixed, and your data won't be lost?

Nothing against working retail, I did it in my younger years, but retail and disk content recovery just don't jive well together.

-Dravor

Germany Beat Poland!

Woohoo, Lukas Podolski scored twice, and Germany beats Poland 2:0 in the Euro 2008!

Cable Card, Fios, and Vista Media Center

As some of you know I am a big HDTV buff, and love watching HDTV. I also am a big fan of Microsoft's Media Center, which allows your PC to act like a DVR. I prefer it's functionality and features over those such as TIVO, or features that your Cable Company's DVR has. Some of you may have seen how we have organized our DVD Collection on the disk of a server downstairs, and any Vista Media Center PC in the house can view those DVD's.



Here is a picture of what the DVD Gallery menu looks like:

This allows Caleb, or anyone in our household to pick a DVD via the DVD's Cover Art, get information on the movie, and also play it. No more kids scratching up dvd's, or dvd's being left around all over the house. This can be done on any Vista Premium/Ultimate install, as long as you have enough disk space for the DVD's.



The entertainment center is also new, we got it on clearance at Walmart for $79. It moves the TV up high enough to where the kids won't accidently hit it, and I will no longer have to clean up fingerprints on the tv daily. The TV is a 32" Westinghouse 720p LCD TV.



Here is a picture of one of the best features of this entertainment center, it has a moveable arm, allowing me to move the tv to the left or right, depending on where we are in the room. This pictures also is HD MTV viewed via Vista Media Center.

Now back to the main point of the post. Most of us have cable, and we rent those Settop Boxes from our cable provider. This really works fine with Vista Media Center if you are recording Standard Definition content, but what about HD? The only real solution is the CableCard solution. Essentially one buys a new PC that is CableCard certified, in my case we purchased the Dell XPS 420 with two Digital Cable Card tuners from ATI. Once setup, as you see above, I called Verizon FIOS TV to setup an appointment to install two cablecards. It did take two trips for them to get both cards working. Important Notes are:



1. Update Firmware to latest, 1.16 currently, available from ATI

2. Install all Windows Updates that are available

3. Disable Windows Firewall for the Tuners

4. Disable Antivirus for the time being, some cause issues during install



I was paying $30 a month in DVR and SetTopBox boxes every month, now we pay $8 a month for the rental of two CableCards. These cablecards go inside the two Digital Cable Card tuners, bottom right of the entertainment center with the green lights. Once inside and activated, they can now receive any content that you would get with a DVR or Settop Box, and you can now view this content inside Vista Media Center, and also record anything you want via Vista Media Center. Your recording limits are only limited to the amount of available Harddrive space you have.



Now, with this setup, one TV in the house has cable service, what about the rest? Well, in our Living Room we have an Xbox 360 for my gaming pleasures :) The Xbox360 is also a Media Center Extender, meaning it can play any media files on the Media Center PC in the Family Room, and use either of the Tuners on that Media Center PC. So now, I simply turn on the Xbox 360, have it boot into the MEdia Center Extender interface, and watch TV as I would normally, without a Settop Box.



Here's a pic:

This is a Westinghouse 42" 1080p LCD monitor, displaying Live TV via my Xbox 360 Extender. We also have a custom built Vista Media Center connected to the LCD as well. The main reason for that is that the Extenders cannot playback hard drive based DVD's like you saw in the beginning of the post. Therefore we still use the PC for playing back DVD's at 1080p, and for those times when computer gaming requires a 42" screen :)



Lastly, we still have a bedroom, which is sometimes given to Robyn's grandmother when she visits. Naturally, we want her, or anyone else in the room to be able to watch live tv. So therefore we have another Xbox 360, to display Live TV, or any Recordings, to our old 20" CRT Standard Def TV. I am hoping 2008 will see an upgrade for the bedroom to an LCD TV.

So in short, I've spent quite a bit of money, the XPS 420 was $1300 with the tuners, and a 4 year warranty. The Xbox 360's have their obvious uses as gaming consoles as well as being Media Center extenders. But we now have no more settop boxes we rent, saving us money every month, and we have one central location where recordings are stored . No longer does Robyn have to go through and delete old recordings because the Cable companies DVR only had 160GB's available. We have started out with 250GB in this case, with a 500GB drive soon being added. This is in addition to 1.5TB we have currently for our DVD's. With this setup you also have the ability to setup recordings from the PC, or from either of the Xbox 360 extenders. Currently we have a total of 3 tuners, 2 for Digital/HD Cable, one for the Local HD channels.



The viewing works kind of the way Satellite used to, I have 2 Digital/HD Cable feeds, if someone is on each the computer, and both of the 360's one of them will have the same channel as the other, unless they are using tuner #3 for the Local HD channels. All in all, we do not watch enough TV to have to worry about this, but the cable card PC can manage using up to 4 digital tuners, although they sell at around $300 per tuner.



I should also mention, that the Xbox 360's will need ethernet connections to the Vista Media Center PC, or 802.11A or N network gear, in order to be able to playback live TV, especially any HD content. So far this is a definite plus for us, as it allows us to get away from bad coax cable runs inside of the home, and instead rely on wireless and wired networking to host our TV viewing. It is also easy to move say the bedroom tv and xbox 360 to anywhere in the house, if we feel the need to have a TV there.



So that's my story, I'm happy, and am amazed at how well it is working. I will say, do a lot of research, specifically at http://www.thegreenbutton.com/ before jumping into this. It's not for the faint of heart for the setup, I did get frustrated, and would not recommend setting it up on 4 hours of sleep :)



-Dravor