fell asleep on tuesday woke up monday afternoon

Sadly I'm not done ranting about alarm clocks. I found a model that looked like it was almost done properly so I decided to get it. You care to guess what store it was at? Best Buy? Target? Nope. Toys 'R Us. I could see going there if I wanted a pirate alarm clock, but why are they the only ones who sell decent normal ones as well?

So I get this thing home and plug it in. It says it has Indiglo. But of course it hasn't been done properly. Instead of lighting up when you hit the button, like in a proper alarm clock, it does an always-on and the button just sets the brightness. Fortunately one of the settings is off. But now if I want to check the time during the night, I have to hit the button four times instead of one. Outstanding work.

I then went to set the time. Pretty standard stuff. Except that it asks for the year as well. I don't need to know what year it is! I just need to know when to get my ass out of bed!!

Fortunately the new alarm clock doesn't seem to have any other stupid functions built in - no temperature or atomics - so I may be able to get some use out of it yet. For the record this is like the fourth time I've tried to replace my old one.

(I can just imagine an Apple alarm clock. Requires AT&T service and WiFi connection, charges you for a $10 firmware update to tell hours in addition to minutes, daily alarm downloads from iTunes store are DRM-enabled.)

While we're on the subject of badly designed things, it turns out that under New Facebook the posted items app won't actually let you post items. It's just for sorting things already posted. Way to put functions where nobody will find them, New Facebook.

The one bright spot in my badly designed day was that more Genesis Coupe news has come to light. It has gone on sale in SK, where the first review sounded pretty good, and a very well put together ad appeared on YouTube. Which is what I was trying to post.

october moon and rusty skies

I am trying to buy a new alarm clock, as my current one is in a bad way and I slept through it on Friday. The difficulty is that I absolutely require Indiglo, and that is exactly what you can't find. I saw all of two Indiglo clocks in stores, one with a ridiculous four-minute snooze and one billed as 'All-Night' Indiglo that never turns off. Which completely defeats the purpose. It's not much better online, where Amazon's results for 'Indiglo alarm clock' are three travel clocks, an iPod dock and a Tom Clancy book. Google chips in with an Indiglo thermometer.

It's also hard to find one that is just an alarm clock. I've ranted before about "atomic clocks." And telling the temperature just clutters up the display for the purpose of telling me what I already knew, that it's warmer in bed than out.

and in a moment i am gone

I am trying to load into my GPS the critical places for my friend's wedding in San Diego. It isn't going well. He is getting married on a beach - apparently beaches don't have addresses. I found coordinates on one website but they must have botched it because I put it six miles out in the Pacific.

My new headphones are too good for work. I can't hear a damn thing with them in. I will save those for the plane and break out the backup pair I also got.

when this is through

I've had my projector set up for my Xbox for a while now. My DVD player is also hooked up but I've never been able to use the upconvert feature. I primarily use component video but the player refused to upconvert except for HDMI, and the correct adapter doesn't seem to exist. I gradually pieced it together with DVI as an intermiediary, but it turned out one of my DVI cables had two more pins than the other so I had to get another adapter. I finally got that and hooked everything up...and it doesn't work. It turns out my DVD player is riddled with copyright protection and refuses to engage the HDMI port unless it gets a handshake from an equally paranoid TV. So now I have to see if I can find an upconvert DVD player without copyright protection.

Traffic was surprisingly stupid today. Going through town I hit every red light except for the ones where I actually wanted to stop - say, to take a picture of the V8 Vantage going the other way. Some cyclist decided it would be a good idea to cut across a busy road instead of waiting for a gap, and I got stuck behind a van with a bumper sticker saying 'SLOW DOWN'. Nobody seemed to know what lane they needed to be in either.

I went to Fry's this weekend for new headphones because my old foldable ones fell apart. I decided to go for the in-ear type, the kind usually blamed for causing hearing damage. I normally hate that type, but that is because I've only tried the hard plastic ones - all the decent sets have silicone padding. Surprisingly, the pair I got has a better frequency response than my old headphones, and since it's in-ear all that sound is pumped directly into my head. I can barely hear myself with them in. It's kind of a pain to get them both in correctly, which isn't helped by the fact that my hearing is very slightly asymmetric. There is still the problem of how to store the damn things without them getting tangled.

to whom speed means freedom of his soul

For as much as I profess to love cars I really have no interest in motorsport. The epic battle of the C6.R vs the DBR9 is pretty much visible only to the Europeans, and rallying is so dragged out it would be impossible to follow when the events are. NASCAR I just find appalling. My only real fondness for the sport was when I found myself in a restaurant in Government Camp watching a Pontiac GXP.R mix it up with some 911s at Laguna Seca. Unfortunately I don't really know what series that is or when it runs, and I still don't have TV anyway.

I finally decided to board the geek train after everyone else and watch the first season of Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately I watched half of the first episode at 2AM when I was knocked on my ass by a head cold - that really messed me up for the day. The series started off well enough, if depressing - I had no idea of the premise of the show - but it already seems to be dragging down into the same formula. Oh look, they are running out of another critical resource. Another dozen Vipers out of their ostensibly finite supply get blown up to acquire it. And then Baltar gets caught in a wacky awkward position because he has a Cylon in his head. I looked at some later season spoilers and it sounds like some serious retconning happens as well. I don't know if I'm going to pursue this past the first season.

adventures in upgrading

I finally decided to upgrade from Office 2000. I considered the possibility of buying Office legit, until I saw the $500 price tage for the standalone version. So it's back to piracy then. I got a copy of Office 2007, but it had slipped my mind that Microsoft got the bright idea of changing everything that isn't broken. So I've now acquired a copy of Office 2003, which I use and tolerate at work, as it should be a happy compromise between obsolescent and newfangled. This also gives me access to Access, which should help me with various geeky databasing projects.

I also got my GPS and printer working on Gauss; pretty much the only thing left to change over is the pain of letting iTunes wipe my iPod and resync everything fresh.

superleggera

I saw this Gallardo Superleggera this morning, and was fortunately stuck at the light long enough to pull out my cell phone and take this crappy picture. Getting the picture transferred was another matter, as Verizon forbids it...fortunately I finally had some luck with the hack software. Bite me, Verizon.

On top of that, the Swiss suppliers visiting at work brought Toblerones (probably from the airport), we had Olive Garden catered for lunch, and it was payday. I think I'm going to suffer for everything tomorrow.

grown up in slow motion

I have been reading The Codebreakers, a huge tome on cryptology. I'm still in the old-timey stuff, although there are a couple ideas I haven't heard of before for the basic substitutions. I just got through the general solution to polyalphabetic ciphers, which was interesting.

Now that Gauss is up and running, I installed a couple games that Freeman really stuggled with and Gauss blows them away. That's what I was hoping for.

I've had the radar detector for over a month now. So far it has been totally useless. 99% of what I pick up has been grocery stores, and the two radar signs I've run across caught me off guard. If anything I have been driving more restrained because of the thing - I don't trust it and don't want to be caught off guard, whereas before I was blissfully unaware.

The weather here is back to cool and rainy - so much for the springtime euphoria.

but our ship's not coming back

Gauss has turned into the worst project in the world. Let's review the disasters to date:

Intel are assholes and sit around not releasing the new 45nm CPUs, causing an eight month delay in the start of the project. When project starts, the desired case has gone out of production and has to be special ordered from Buy.com. Buy.com fails and does not actually have the case. Case has to be ordered again from Frys.com.

On the big day of assembly, motherboard turns out to be DOA. Motherboard is RMA'd to Newegg.com, who has run out of that type of motherboard. Have to go to Fry's and buy some other random motherboard. New motherboard works, but Windows XP does not recognize SATA drives.

Got internal floppy drive to hold SATA drivers. Windows XP setup says press F6 to load drivers but does not load USB keyboard drivers until after that. Rummaged up USB-PS/2 converter. Still cannot press F6. Got into menu. $28 floppy drive does not work. Tried flipping the power. $28 floppy drive fried.

XP setup also will not recognize more than 128GB of SATA drives. The solution is apparently an SP2 CD, which I do not have, and requires something called slipstreaming to merge an XP install disk with SP2.

I am never building a computer again.

every color goes where you do

My DOA motherboard just made it to Newegg on Friday, so I probably won't see a new one until next weekend.

I saw a new XJR convertible today. That's the first interesting thing I've spotted in a while, although I did see a Delorean at the grocery store a while ago. I would upload the picture I took, but it's on my unhacked Razr so I am still under Verizon's tyranny.

I was hoping to burn some new MP3 CDs for the Malibu today, but I never got around to it. I don't know how to fix my playlists so I always just stick with the same ones.

you're breaking my flow

I hate April Fool's Day. Just because we've arrived at an arbitrary point in our orbital cycle people take this as license to be a jackass, exploit the trust of others, tell fantastic lies and extract amusement from the suffering of others. I can't trust a damned thing that happens today. Fortunately two guys at work got fired recently for screwing around so nobody was going to cross that line, but my webcomics thought they were being clever by rerouting their links to each other (apparently xkcd's idea), and everything in the car news I read has to be taken with a grain of salt. Which is unfortunate because I want to believe there is a 50/50 chance of a G8 GXP coupe getting built. Or that Audi has finally cracked the twin-turbo V10 for the R8.

i've got to stop it somehow

I spent my weekend playing my new game on the old computer and trying to fix the new computer, which is the opposite of what I wanted to happen. I can't turn my pile of computer parts into a computer. I think it is the motherboard, or maybe I just want it to be the motherboard. I am going to RMA it to Newegg which means at least a week of delay.

she sang a short tune

More Camaro spy shots this morning, although the most entertaining thing was a burn in the comments:

"White Camaro has 1.8 liter four cylinder with no turbo (RS model), and the black one has a turbo charged 2.0 EcoTech (known as the SS "Maximum Bob special edition"). Neither can put over 200 hp on a chassis dyno."

However, the new pics do show pillarless windows. That's something. It looks like they also fixed the ugly tail light chrome on the black model.

Also seems like Newegg has already sold out of Q9450. I'm going to have to keep my eyes peeled for when the Q9550 hits.

yorkfield

I am tired of waiting and waiting for Intel to get its act together about the new processors, so I went to Newegg and bought everything else I need. It's some fairly serious firepower, with the exception of the $85 stand-in CPU.

the walls suffocate

I've overslept my alarm the past two days. Fortunately nobody at work notices if I am ten minutes late. However, the time has come to resolve this annoyance. The problem is not that I forgot to set my alarm clock forward, but that it has picked preciously this time to have the snooze malfunction. This may be due to a low battery, but since I can't be sure I need to set an emergency backup clock. The emergency backup clock is atomic, or rather 'atomic'. One would imagine using an 'atomic' clock would be simple:

Step 1 - IT SETS ITSELF.

Unfortunately the reality is more annoying. My 'atomic' clock had apparently most recently decided daylight savings does not exist, and since "it sets itself" I have no manual override to set it ahead one hour. Instead, I have to remove the batteries and put them back in to trigger the autoset. This autoset receives information via radio waves, and as I've covered in previous rants EM waves are unable to penetrate Lake Oswego. In the meantime it thinks it is midnight on January 1st. I have been successful in the past by putting it in the window, but tonight I have it fully outside and it receives absolutely nothing.

am i still asleep

Bad things are afoot. Leftlane is talking of rumors about GM making a hybrid Camaro. What the hell. It might mean a hair more mileage and instant torque, but it will add weight, they will strip down the rest of the car to compensate and it will still be way more expensive. As if the V-8 weren't already far enough out of reach.

don't know where to begin

GM has decided to break my heart and canned their plans for a GTO cousin of the new Camaro. That means GM really is starting to kill off the fun stuff. They are blaming CAFE but they might just be saying that to cover a cost-saving move. It doesn't matter. I am seriously disappointed.

So that means I have to hope the new Camaro will work for me. Alternatively...the Hyundai Genesis Coupe also sounds interesting. I don't know much about when it is due but I will have to give it a look as well. The reports are now saying it will be powered by a V6 and not a V8 though.

Also, the first Challenger and ZR1 were sold at an auction, each for roughly 10 times their expected retail price ($400k and $1M respectively).

but i think we can starve the city from our minds

I kept all my CD keys in an Excel file. It seemed a good idea at the time to encrypt it, but I apparently needed to back the keys up when I did the reformat. Now the file is inaccessible and I've lost almost all of my serials.


I'm trying to get used to the RAZR. It's annoying because I'm not able to strip away the stupid Verizon branding yet, and the $50 Motorola software I bought is useless and won't install, and the speakerphone is crap and the menus are stupid.

One thing that does work around here is the Malibu. I took it in for a checkup today and they couldn't find anything wrong with it. I also got new tires, finally. They're called Firehawk GTs. I may do a shakedown run tomorrow.

nowhere near here

My luggage finally showed up yesterday. I promptly went looking for more trouble, which I found in Xbox Live. It turns out that you can easily renew the Gold subscription through the Xbox itself, but in order to cancel and go back to Silver you have to call up an idiot in India. The Indian guy took all my personal information and my credit card number before transferring me to the guy who actually did the work. After getting that settled I decided to remove my credit card number from my Xbox Live account, which is an even murkier procedure. This necessitated another call and the first guy I got was a jackass who put me on hold for 45 minutes before I hung up and tried again. The next guy was much more helpful but even so it takes a full billing cycle to process. The moral of the story is that Microsoft is really scummy and you should go with the prepaid cards in stores because when those expire they can't start screwing your credit card.

2008

2008 has not been kind so far. My computer got bogged down with some nasty malware, my diploma still hasn't come in the mail.

The worst offender by far though is Southwest Airlines, notably their Chicago branch. They caused my flight to be late out of Detroit, then they told me I only had 10 minutes to catch my connection, then the connection sat on the ground for an hour waiting for luggage to be loaded, the plane ended up having some loser with a peanut allergy on board so nobody was allowed to eat anything, and then when I finally got to Portland my luggage was still in Chicago.

The luggage office told me my stuff would be on the first flight to Portland the next morning, but as it turns out they can't find their asses with both hands so my bags were still MIA last night until 11PM when they tried calling me to say they turned up, even though I had gone to bed at 9 because I am still jet lagged. Southwest then tried putting my luggage on a midnight delivery truck so I have a voicemail from some Russian truck driver at 2AM wondering where I was. I appreciate their urgency but that was a little silly.