Believe in Magic

"Finding Neverland" is one of my favorite movies. Don't ask me why. I get a little choked up when the orphan kids are laughing at the play and thoroughly enjoying their free tickets to "Peter Pan".

But, that's just me.

Last month I wrote about how I don't seem to blog as much now that Facebook has become so ubiquitous. Every time I think of something to blog about my ever so slightly neurotic head takes over and I tell myself, "This may be more suitable for a Facebook status update". Of course, I don't update my status on Facebook either so it doesn't matter. But, it is a good excuse. At least I think it is.

It was on Facebook that a friend of mine posted a link to some kind of Dinosaur humor about computers. It was almost too much to read, but I made it through.

 

The part I am most interested in, of course, if the part that reads, "Soon you'll be staring at an obscure compiler error and no magic will be left in the world!"

This reminded me of the Peter Pan play where Tinker Bell says, "Every time someone says, 'I do not believe in fairies', somewhere there's a fairy that falls down dead." 

I can't help but think this comic is making people believe that the Computer Scientists of the world are destroying magic. This can't be further from the truth. Believe it or not I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science so I have some expertise in my next random goofy opinion.

I have yet to meet a quality programmer who doesn't pretend to believe in magic. We play the online role playing games (if it weren't for us no one would be playing World of Warcraft any more). We go to the renaissance festivals.We've all played Dungeons & Dragons and many of us still do. And we all sit back and try to levitate energy drink cans while trying to solve complex problems. We are also all adept at telepathically telling people to shut up.

I find this comic offensive in so many ways. We are all TOTALLY DOOMED!

Luckily, they posted a follow up comic which almost completely exonerates them. Every quality programmer I've met also believes in this. Of course, we don't talk about it without copious amounts of alcohol.

Go here for your healthy helping of dinosaur comics.

Once A Month

Last year I said I was going to try and blog at least once a week.

This year, I'm hoping to do once a month. Actually, it comes in spurts. I bet I could manage twice a month.

When I'm out and about I have tons of wonderful blog ideas, but Facebook has ruined me. Now, when I have blog ideas, my neurotic mind immediately says, "Is this really enough material for a blog or should I just update my Facebook status and be done with it?"

I need to just list all of my ideas and put a series of one liners as a blog post. But, then that will end up being completely chaotic and how the heck will I ever title the posts?

At the carefully phrased suggestion from Anonymous and to protect my readers from a bad case of context whiplash I have added segues.

For example, the other day I was thinking how goofy it was that people complain that Google or Facebook is violating their privacy and they post it on Facebook. Or anywhere on the Internet for that matter. The fact you think you have any imagined privacy is grossly naive at best. If you don't want people to know what you're doing, don't do anything. If you're truly worried about your privacy you might need to seek professional help. But, for the sake of everything that's logical and sane, don't post it on the Internet. There is no privacy on the Internet. It's like peeing in the swimming pool and pretending none of it gets on you.

Speaking of accidents...

I was also thinking the other day how much confusion mobile phones have created with emergency operators. If everyone has a mobile phone and there is a wreck on the highway, how many emergency calls go through? Does it create confusion? In the old days (before mobile phones) someone would have to run into the nearest gas station, yelling, "Can I borrow the phone?" Or, "Can someone please call 911, there's been an accident!". Now, everyone just whips out their cell phone and dials. If you see someone having a heart attack, do you attempt to perform CPR or do you call 911 and ask for guidance first? Have people died because of this? Have there been any studies?

And if saving strangers from a heart attack is not enough, what about your drinking buddies?

I've discovered a bar that's like Cheers. As in, "everyone knows your name". However, I've got an odd name. When I walk in, everyone says, "Hey" and waves. When Tony walks in everyone says, "Hey Tony" and waves. I'm not sure how I feel about this. As a matter of retribution, I refuse to call anyone by their name either. I just say, "Hey everyone".

We all have friends in low places.

The other day, someone was commenting on how she and I have similar musical tastes. She proceeded to let me hear, "her favorite song". The song kind of made me feel like I was sadly trudging down the banks of a polluted river with thoughts of throwing myself in. Then, when the chorus hits, I can see the cold rain drops coming down like spikes from the sky in an attempt to nail down the lid to my coffin. I was like, "This is your favorite song? It's the most depressing song I've ever heard." She was like, "Yeah, but it brings back memories." I was like, "My gawd girl, you need better memories!"

It occurred to me that I listen to music to make me feel better. I would say I listen to music that makes me happy, but that's not true. I listen to angry music when I'm sad because I've determined that it's better to be angry than depressed. It makes me feel better. But sad songs make me sad. Don't listen to music that reminds you of the time your best mate suddenly dumped you so he could date your other best mate. That's just insane. Go listen to some, "Whatever", by Godsmack! It'll make you feel better!

Backyard Love Affair

I was seriously considering covering some important matter like gun control in this week's posting. I was also seriously intending to post something yesterday so I could increase my statistics for February. Both ideas for seriousness have fallen through. Mostly.

I don't have time to talk about guns. I'll just say they should all have tracking chips installed. If you have the right to own one then I have the right to know where your sorry ass is located.

The housing market in my neighborhood has taken a sudden turn. It has become a "seller's market". Many of you who peruse my postings on a semi inadequate basis know that I've been thinking of selling for several years. Basically, ever since I got divorced. She picked out the house and I got stuck with it kind of thing. It's a nice house. I'm far from miserable. But, I want something that is mine. I've waited too long however so now I am required to want something that is mine and my Gal Pal's.

I've contacted several realtors over the years. The last one I talked to I just told him to keep an eye out for me and when the market changed significantly to let me know. He contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me that the market has indeed changed and there are many more buyers than there are sellers. My house hits the market this coming Thursday!

This also probably means that I'm going to have to live in a rental of some sort because I don't want to be buying when it's a seller's market. I'll sign a year's lease and keep an eye out for when "the market changes significantly".

I got my hot tub working again! I replaced all the electronics and I did it all by my lonesome. Now when I lose my job programming computers I'll switch over to my new job as a hot tub repairman. And by the way, there's a party in my backyard tonight. Clothing optional. That sounded wrong. The hot tub is in my backyard. The backyard of my house. Google's going to hate me again. I can't help it!

Birthday Vacation

My increasingly inadequately named Gal Pal's birthday and mine are three days apart. Since I've known her, we've always taken a birthday vacation.

The first year we went to the Bahamas.

The second year we went to Vegas, but I didn't blog about it. I don't know why. Perhaps because my blog was becoming too explicit and the major memorable thing we did was going to an exotic vampire show. Oh yeah! It was on this trip that I learned how to sit at the bar in Vegas and get free drinks while playing deuces wild poker and make about $10 per hour. That's important!

This year, we took a road trip in the Miata. Tuesday night we celebrated Fat Tuesday at the Razzoo's in Lewisville. Razzoo's is always packed for Mardi Gras, but for the most part this one seemed a bit blah. I blame it on the weather.

Wednesday we headed to the WinStar Casino in Oklahoma. I always thought the WinStar was about 100 miles away. It's about 60 miles from where I live. We arrived early.

En route, we stopped at a AAA to add insurance to our freshly refurbished Miata. I've been a AAA member for about 5 years. Back when I first joined they were saving me darn near $500 on my home and auto insurance. This particular AAA office had a travel agent. I didn't realize they had such things. Therefore, since I was stopped in anyway, I went ahead and booked my honeymoon with the agent. Don't worry. It's a few months in advance. And I didn't really book it with the agent. I mean, I'm going with my Gal Pal, but the agent booked the tickets -- for us.

WinStar casino is huge. But, unless you like gambling, don't go on a Wednesday night. I think most of their events happen Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Wednesday was mostly walking through a forest of slot machines trying to pick out the pathetic people and attempting not to look like one.

I tried my trick I learned in Vegas. You basically go up to a bar with video poker and put a $20 in the slot. Now, in Vegas, this immediately gets the bartender's attention who comes over and offers you a drink "on the house". Not so much at the WinStar. In Vegas, I was also able to steadily make about $10 an hour while sipping on my free drink. It's all about taking the easy wins. This again did not work at the WinStar.

Together, my Gal Pal and I lost about $90 in 2 hours or so. I refuse to lose more than $100 so we were nearing the end of our gambling money. This is when the Gal Pal demanded a dollar to go put in one of those normal slot machines (not at the bar). 10 minutes later she returned with a ticket for $45!

We took the ticket for $45 and found another bar with video poker. She inserted the $45 ticket and I hit the bet buttons. Although it seemed random, I had some kind of strange pattern built up in my neurotic head that was telling me when she was going to win and when she was going to lose. Therefore she played and I placed the bets. Sometimes I'd press max bet, sometimes 1 and sometimes 2.

After about an hour of this we still had our $45. We hadn't lost anything, but I still wasn't making my $10/hour like I did last time in Vegas. Suddenly, the machine lit up and started making this irritating squealing noise. I casually said, "What the hell did you do? Break it?" I looked around slightly embarrassed by all the racket, but I didn't want to lose my $45 so I had to diagnose the problem.

On the now annoyingly loud machine, the words, "Call Attendant" were flashing. Behind the flashing words I noticed that my Gal Pal had somehow managed to get a royal flush on a max bet. I found an attendant. That little fiasco ended up being worth about $1400. Vacation plus extra paid for by WinStar, thank you very much.

Next day we drove down I-40 (Route 66) to Amarillo to see my father. He took me out to eat for my birthday. In case you were wondering, he's as crazy as ever. I wanna be like him when I grow up.

Friday after lunch, we drove to Roswell to visit the aliens. It's a quaint little place. The UFO museum was almost, but not quite stupid. It costs $5 per person to get in and it's almost a waste of time except that you can't really go to Roswell without at least going in the place. My favorite part of Roswell was the Farley's Pub. That says a lot.

Saturday morning, we drove to the Carlsbad Caverns. I can't remember the last time I went to the caverns, but it must have been a long time ago because my memory of them was completely skewed. They were much better than I expected. Well worth the $6 entry fee. Especially when compared to the $5 entry for the UFO Museum in Roswell!

Saturday afternoon we drove through Wink and Kermit and finally arrived in Odessa. From there, we went to see Erika's New Blue Max which had kind of a folk singer followed by two blue grass bands playing that night. I was trying to think of a new name for the venue like, "Bluegrass Max" or perhaps "Max Bluegrass", but nothing acceptable came to mind. Everything ended up sounding like some kind of hallucinogenic marijuana. It's a cool place though. If you're in the area I advise checking it out. It's right off I20 in Midland so you won't have to take much of a detour.

The Miata Experience

I've always wanted to get a 1969 Corvette and restore it. Why, you ask? Because I was born in 69 and the 1969 Corvette had the Stingray body style. I just think it would be cool.

In preparation for this endeavor, I have acquired a 1992 Miata. I wrote a bit about it in my previous blogging.

Here's what it looked like initially before we started working on it:

 As you can see it's a nice faded classic red color from sitting out in the Panhandle weather for the last 15 years or so. The top is literally held together with hot glue and a bit of tape.

We replaced the top. We replaced the pop-up barn door style headlights with a flush mount kit. We replaced the wheels. We replaced the broken power antenna with a raked antenna. We replaced the fuel door with black fuel door. We replaced all the weather stripping. And, we had it repainted.

Everyone I talked to said, "Don't take it to Maaco." I shopped around for a couple of months trying to find a body shop that would do the repairs I wasn't capable of doing myself. I finally ignored "everyone" and took it to Maaco in Irving. Not all Maaco's are created equal. The guys at the Maaco in Irving did exactly what I asked them to do and more and for about half the price of the other guys.

The pictures do not show the new rotors, new brakes, new serpentine belt, new battery and new starter, but believe me, they are also in there somewhere... And for the record, I am not a Longhorn fan. I didn't even realize what I was doing until someone pointed it out at work today. I just like the color and it's not orange anyway. It's Dark Persimmon.

It Burns Us!

In light of my great success installing five little capacitors, I decided to try my hand at some automobile repair.

I have a 1992 Miata. It originally belonged to my sister who gave it to my dad who gave it to me. It's been sitting out in the Texas Panhandle weather for the last 16 years or so. If you are not familiar with Texas Panhandle weather it consists of hot summers, lots of wind, lots of dust, a little rain, occasional hail storms, occasional tornadoes, and yearly snow and ice storms.

So far we've replaced the flip up headlights with flush mounted ones. The flush mounted headlights look better, but I'm not exactly happy about the mounting instructions and the work required to aim them. They haven't been aimed yet so I can't drive it after the sun goes down.

We've also replace the old vinyl top, which was weathered and hot glued to keep the rain out, with a cloth top. I like it much better.

Lately, it has started stalling. It stalls if you are at a low RPM and then push in the clutch. This mostly happens when downshifting in to second gear or first gear and then coming to a stop or slowing down to take a corner. I got to where I'd drive it without downshifting and at least it wouldn't die, but it wasn't as much fun to drive.

I found a website that said you could bypass the computer and adjust the idle to prevent this behavior. On the driver's side of the engine there is a diagnostics box. On the passenger's side of the engine there is a small metal tube sticking up with a black plastic cap on top. In my car's case, the cap was gone. At the bottom of this tube is a screw. Counter-clockwise turns increase the idle. Clockwise turns decrease the idle. It only works when the computer is not controlling the idle.

I rounded up a helper and went out to adjust the idle. The diagnostic box contains two rows of metal connectors. The instructions say use a paperclip to connect the ground to connector ten. The diagnostic box top has them labelled. I put the paperclip in and the car stalled. This made me feel that I perhaps had found the problem.

Now, my helper had to adjust the idle while I monitored the tachometer in the car. But, before that, I yanked the paperclip out to keep the car from stalling. When I put the paperclip back in, I was not very careful. Just next to the connector marked TEN is a connector marked B+. B+ and GND is not good. It burned the hell out of my fingers (which were holding the paperclip). It caused me to think perhaps I had some strange form of Tourette syndrome. I had no idea my brain knew such foul words. Three fingers on one hand and two on the other have, what will more than likely be, permanent scars.

But, I'm no wimpy Tourette sufferer. I found another paperclip and inserted it into the proper spots and we adjusted the idle up to about 900 RPM's with the paperclip installed. Then we removed the paperclip to insure that everything was still copacetic. It was.

Now, hopefully when I drive the car to the body shop later today, it'll run without stalling. I hope. Else the payment of my tender digits will have been for naught.

Five Little Capacitors

I have this Audio Video Receiver I bought about 4 years ago. It's an Onkyo TX-SR606. I can't remember how much I paid for it. Let's say maybe $400.

A couple of months ago it started blacking out whenever I was watching a DVD. I thought it was my DVD player's fault and was researching a replacement. My computer video was working fine. My Blu-Ray player was working fine. Only my DVD player exhibited the problem.

But before I was able to purchase a new DVD player, my Blu-Ray player started flickering. I'd get little white lines across the screen when watching movies. Finally, the Blu-Ray player also started going black during movies. Not just the video goes out, but the audio as well. It's like I was completely losing signals from the players.

All my components run through my Onkyo receiver via HDMI and at this point, it was my primary suspect even though my computer was still working fine. In case your curious, my computer is like a DVR with an over the air digital antenna and three tuners so I can record three shows at once!

I started researching the possibility of buying a replacement receiver, but I wasn't completely happy about spending the bucks for another receiver when this one was only 4 years old.

I Googled for HDMI problems with an Onkyo SR606. Much to my surprise there was a plethora of information. It seems that this receiver is known for its HDMI issues and mine were minor.

I ended up watching this video and then tried to fix it myself. The total cost was about $6 for 5 capacitors. If you watch the video, he'll explain that it's very easy to fix and if you have the smarts to find the video then you're more than capable of fixing it yourself. He kind of irritated me, but since he saved me at least $300, I'll forgive him.

He didn't take into account shaky hands. My hands shake so bad, I was only able to get two of the capacitors on before things got too tight. Luckily I know some soldering experts at work so I took the HDMI board to work and someone there helped me finish.

Upon putting the HDMI board back into my receiver, I was pleasantly surprised to see I had successfully repaired my receiver! No more flickers and no more blackouts.

Some things I learned in the process:

1. Capacitors must be installed with the same polarity as the capacitors they replaced.
2. On the HDMI board the negative polarity is square. The diagram on the circuit board kind of "aims" to positive.
3. You can use axial and radial capacitors interchangeably as long as there is room to solder.
4. The voltage rating can be equal to or greater, but the farads must match.