The Life and Times of a Cable Jew

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve realized that I’m going to be needing a new laptop and have done some research. Tak has reached the end of its life and there’s a couple of glaring points showing this:

1. The wireless is next to nothing - sometimes doesn’t even notice that I’m within 10 feet of the AP and I can see it.
2. My laptop has cut me - this requires some explaining. The hinge that is attached to the screen is metal connecting it, then plastic on top of that. made up of durable plastic. Or rather, what I’m sure WAS durable back when it was still being made roughly 3-5 years ago. The hinges have both broke and the only thing keeping the screen from falling off are 4 screws going through the metal in the hinges. I was getting it out one day and happened to hit it just right so the plastic from the hinges scraped and drew blood. Fun!
3. Ethernet port doesn’t work - It hasn’t since I bought it back in July of 2006.
4. Of the two USB ports, one of them doesn’t work - Same with the ethernet port.
5. Processor - Old Celeron… What can I say? it sucks.

I was wanting to go with one of the netbooks. I had done this comparison at the beginning of the year, but things have changed considerably - namely, there’s MANY more options to choose from. I looked at several devices, the Acer Aspire, the Asus Eeepc line; namely the 1000H, the Lenovo IdeaPad S-10, and the MSI Wind. I finally chose to go with the S-10 after several days of decisions and changing my mind. What I was looking for in a laptop:

1. 10″ screen - the smaller 7″ were just too small. 10″ is probably going to be one of the better spots for netbooks for a bit. All of the 10″-ers run at 1024 x 600 resolution.
2. Decent processor - I was wanting to go with the Atom, as it is crazy power-effecient. I know that it isn’t going to be all that and a bag of chips, BUT I’ve been using an old celeron… I mean, c’mon. It can’t be much worse!
3. Hard Drive - I know, solid states are all the rage - however, I am probably going to have a running backup of all of my programs for school, all my homework, homework that I’ve collected from other people, etc. A solid state drive is slower for large files but faster for small files, has MUCH less space, is MUCH more expensive (when looking at $/GB), doesn’t really give a whole lot of power saving (some in fact use MORE power than a standard HDD), don’t have moving parts, and are more slim. I like the save on money and the space a standard HDD gives me.
4. Wifi reception - I’ve read that the S10 has the best range for the current line of netbooks. Another nice thing.
5. Webcam/speaker - all of the ones I was looking at all had 1.3 MPixel webcams built in. Definately cool.
6. Small - the S10 is 1″ thick… Seriously. That’s just cool.
7. Overall - From what I’ve read, the S-10 just “feels” the best - “it doesn’t feel like a toy” from what I’ve read and feels better when compared to the 1000H.
8. Battery - The S10 has only a 3-cell battery, which lasts about 2:30. The Eeepc 1000H lasts roughly 7 hours on battery with bluetooth and wifi turned off from comments and about 4-5 with them on. This is one of the only places the S10 fails badly. The good news that Lenovo has promised a 6-cell soon. I’m fine without it for now, but I may upgrade in a year or so if needbe.

I’m confident that I made the right choice of the 4 laptops. It really came down to the 1000H and the S10. In the end, price made a huge difference and tipped the scales in favor of the S10 over the Eeepc.

Yesterday, Linz and I celbrated us being together for 1 year. We went to Atlanta and watched the musical Wicked. We made it within SECONDS of the show starting, thanks to google maps telling us to drive through downtown Atlanta. Literally, the usher told us where our seats were located (5th row from the front, on the right hand side - partially obstructed, but still good seats: were on the furthest to the left of the right - confusing, I know, just follow along) and followed it up with “you have about 10 seconds!” we figured that it was just to get us along, but right whenever we found our seats, the lights dimmed and the opening number started up. We both loved it - if you do get a chance and like musicals, I don’t think that you’d regret it.

One thing that really bothered us both was that we saw people have popcorn and soda in the second act of the performance. It really was a “uh… this isn’t a movie theater - it’s a higher class than that!” kind of moment.

After that, we went to the Melting Pot for dinner to celebrate my b-day today. It was VERY good. We had (among other kinds of meat) shrimp and duck for our main course, and both were simply amazing.

For everyone else, you can celebrate my birthday by turning your clocks back an hour.

PhreakNIC 12 was… AWESOME. I met a couple of cool people that I was afraid to talk to before (Irongeek from www.irongeek.com, Scott Moulton from www.myharddrivedied.com - both who were VERY cool to talk to), some old friends from previous cons (all of the Nashville 2600 guys, Strick, TelcoBob and some other peeps that I just can’t remember names for at the moment), caught some good talks (Scott’s “10 things you didn’t know about hard drives”, the intro to LiVes by Sorteal, TRiP’s legality of wardriving talk, IronGeek’s talk about keyloggers, SkyDog and the Hacker Consortium guys for their talk on setting up a hackspace, Darren Kitchen from Hak5’s talk about hackers in the media, Decius’s drunken rant, Intx80 from DualCore’s performance, and Ashley Schwartau’s documentary Hackers Are People Too. Whew!

There are a couple of pictures from the con - I didn’t get much this year as I was working A/V most of the time. I actually had alot of FUN workin’ A/V, what can I say?

I do reccomend people watch Hackers Are People Too - it’s pretty good. The best way to describe it is “shedding light on who hackers really are, from the hackers perspective.”

I did get to have some fun and be a part of the “six legged dance party” which you can see in a picture. I couldn’t help but enjoy feeling the bass in my chest.

Well, enjoy the few pics I’ve added at the album.

We made it up to Nashville for Phreaknic allright. It is rainin’ abit and nasty outside, but all in all looks like it’s going to be alot of fun. I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for nearly a year. The schedule looks like it’s going to be filled with alot of good talks and everything and can’t wait for everyone to get here!

In news regarding my wisdom teeth, I had stitches in one of my sockets. These stitches were the self-dissolving kind, so they’d go away with not doing anything. Cool idea. Lately, I’m feelin as if I have something stuck in my socket where the stitches are. I am fairly sure that it’s just the stitches aggrivating me, but it doesn’t really make it much better - just kind of annoying

I’ll probably update later on tonight or tomorrow with stuff of PN. I brought my camera, so I SHOULD have some pics after this weekend to share with you all.

For all that know, I had my wisdom teeth out yesterday. Of the surgery, I remembered going in, filling out a last form before I get put under and they do the operation, getting an IV, and the anesthesiologist(wow, I spelled that word right the first time!) telling me that I’m going to feel it in my arm and that some people feel it cold, others hot. I felt it going in and a very cold sensation and then must’ve been knocked out HARD. I don’t even remember closing my eyes. I woke up in the recovery section of the building and heard Linz come in. “Do you know who this girl is?” I definately knew who she was and I was feeling a little loopy. I tend to be a very happy drunk and I guess that when I’m put under general anisthesia I am about the same!

I’ve been taking it easy in general and Linz has been a HUGE help. I keep having to change the gauze in my mouth, but that’s something that they do tell you that you have to do. I did see something about using a damp tea-bag instead of gauze, but that was just somewhere on the internet and wasn’t going to bother with it. Then I saw in my post-operation instructions that they even said that a damp tea-bag can be used in place of gauze. Interesting. It tastes about as you would expect - your saliva becomes saliva-tea. It’s not that pretty. Then again, it does help stop the bleeding, so that’s always good. I’ve been given some good drugs so I’m not in any real pain. The hardest part of this so far is that I can NOT suck anything.. which means my way of eating pops, drinking liquids (not even through a straw, just from a cup) is not a good idea to do. Ever try drinking from a cup without sucking any? It’s not easy!

Today is mostly going to be spent trying to get some rest and watching an older TV show that I had never gotten around to watching - Eureka. It’s pretty good for a TV show, and even better when you consider it’s a Sci-Fi original!

For people that didn’t know, I moved this weekend from Madison and into Huntsville. I have to thank Linz quite a bit - I probably wouldn’t have nearly this nice of layout and organization if it weren’t for her. I also have to thank Brimstone, as it made moving my desk and other boxes much easier with a pickup truck.

Along with every move to a different place, there’s always that awkward settling in time - that time whenever this place doesn’t quite feel like home yet. The only thing that I can really think of is just to give it time: I’m hoping that with this place closer to campus and life, it’d make things easier on people and me.

With Big Spring Jam this weekend, I really hadn’t planned on going until Linz got an e-mail from her cousin. He is the tour manager for Sister Hazel and they were playing last night at BSJ. Turns out, he was able to pull some strings, got in, a t-shirt, got to spend some time with her cousin. Oh, and we got to go backstage during the concert. Completely awesome to say the very least. The only pictures that I got were from my cellphone, but it’s still amazing. The pictures I took are at http://picasaweb.google.com/hgomez/SisterHazelAndBigSpringJam#

There were two other bands that I really listened to after them - Kansas and .38 Special. Both bands are fairly old (in the 80’s), but I know that you’ve all heard some songs by them -

Sister Hazel: http://tinyurl.com/42xx6t

Kansas: http://tinyurl.com/2zvgcb and http://tinyurl.com/2atrg8

.38 Special: http://tinyurl.com/3eqfey

I was also introduced to a couple members of the band and they really seemed cool - I didn’t even know that they were in the band until I saw them onstage!

In other news, I have two exams this week, and am moving next weekend. I’ve also restarted up Twittering. I can be tracked by my username poiupoiu. Mmhmm!

So, if you’re keeping up with my life, There’s a couple of big updates: I’ve bought a new car (a 2004 Honda Civic LX), and just got home from getting my old car off of my hands. I was hoping to sell it to someone who has the time, tools, and drive to fix up my car. If I had the room, time, and tools/equipment, I’d LOVE to actually fix up a car like that. Alas, I just don’t have that kind of stuff. What’s even better is that I was able to sell it to a friend, so I know that it won’t be junked for parts and will have a life after me. … if cars have lives…

I thought it was funny that I put it up for sale on craigslist and then withing 5 hours, I had 6 people e-mail about it. One of the e-mail addresses was from Boeing, another from the US Army Corps of Engineers. Only in Huntsville, eh?

I’m also waiting on getting my title for the new car so I can get my tags transferred over to it, as well as my tags for work and school. It’s nice to have one MAJOR headache gone.

Other stuff going on today is the Makers Local Group is having an open house - if you want more info, check out their site.

Hope you all have a good day today!

Been a little bit since I’ve updated! And yes, things did get worse. I really hope that things are on the path to getting better though. *knock on wood*

The new part is on the car, but there’s another problem with it - it still runs QUITE hot. I’m thinking that it’s either a blown gasket, cracked head, or a warped head. Either way, it’s going to be a pretty penny to fix it. Worse news: it’s a common problem and if it is remotely a head that needs to be fixed, then chances are that there are MANY more issues with it, and I’d end up shelling out WAY more than the car is worth. The good news is that I did find a new car and should have it by Wednesday at the latest - an ‘04 Honda Civic. I originally was completely against a civic, but I warmed up to the idea after I guess I realized that not every Civic becomes a ricer in the end. For laughs of people stupid enough to try to supe up their cars with body kits, I present you with two items for your entertainment: the Laugh@Rice gallery and the Honda ClownCar Wigger Story. I expect anyone reading this blog to stab me if I ever become like this.

I still have a couple of details to iron out, but I’m hopeful and I think things are going to work out. From the stories I’ve heard, Civics tend to run for a long time with a smart driver behind the wheel. I do hope that this is the case and I’m not going to get screwed 7 times sideways here.