Life is coming at me fast

So I decided since I listen to so much music that buying an Ipod would be justifiable. My own parents even thought I already had one. So I bought a 60 gig black one that looks fantastic. I put it on the charger last night and plan on setting it up and using it today. I do need to also get a protective case, maybe some better headphones, and perhaps at some point the radio transmitter so I can use it in my car. The one thing I already have is music. I can't wait to be able to use it.. I'm sitting here at work wanting to go home so bad to get it set up.

Lately I've also been looking for an apartment with Diana. We have looked around a bit including looking at a house or two as well as duplexes and apartments. So far we like the Poplar Place apartments out near and on Kirby. If anyone has any suggestions about places to live in East Memphis between Poplar and Highland and Kirby or so, please let me know. :)

Startup School in Palo Alto, CA

The whole Palo Alto/Startup School experience was absolutely AMAZING. I'm going to try to relive it day by day.

Day 1, 4/28/06
I arrived in San Francisco, CA at roughly 11:00AM. After I got off the plane and collected my checked bag, I took the airport shuttle to the BART connection. I got on the BART to go to Millbrae where I met Nick and Doug. I had to rush to get a ticket for the CALtrain so I could continue to Palo Alto, CA which is south of San Francisco. I love their public transportation there! About 25 minutes later we were walking down El Camino Real to our first hotel. This was a nice hotel. $260 a weeknight nice. After putting our stuff down, we decided to walk about 2.5 miles to Fry's, an electronics store. It's like a Best Buy, only bigger, better, and cheaper with more electronics. By the time we got back, it was almost time for the reception at Y Combinator for some selected startup school attendees. They served free beer, wine, salmon, cookies, etc. There were many people there, none of which Nick or I knew.

There were several metal robots there, one of which was basically a copy of human legs. The operator set something and then would gently push the robot in one direction and the robot would shift its feet in order to keep its balance. There was a homemade segway there that we both got to ride. Now I really want one. I didn't even attempt to ride the unicycle segway.. I may have killed someone.

While we didn't know anyone there, we did happen to meet Aaron Swartz who helps the Reddit guys and has his own website called Infogami. We also met a guy named Vinnie Lauria of Meetro.com. Meetro is a creative location aware instant messaging program. That night we rode the train back to Palo Alto and then hung out with him among others. We went to a Sushi Bar where whenever a group of people wanted to do a shot, they would all stand up in their chairs with one person leading, shouting "Sake!" and then the rest yelling "Bomb!" three times and then they drank. The energy in that place was awesome.

Later we went to a bar called Nola's across the street from the Cardinal which is where we stayed my third night. We made it back to the hotel and fell asleep.

Day 2, 4/29/06
This was startup school day. We woke up early and walked to the Stanford campus to the location of the presentations. They went on from 9AM to 5PM roughly. It was a long day. The notes for what happened at startup school can be found here. After that day Nick and I worked on Scenefoo a little, got something to eat at a good Thai restaurant, and then went to sleep.

Day 3, 4/30/06
We woke up early and got something to eat at the University Cafe which was pretty good in my opinion. After that Nick and I decided to go into San Francisco via train to see the city. We saw the city all right. We walked about 7 miles that day from the baseball stadium down to Fisherman's Warf. There we saw these seals that were just sunning themselves and play fighting.

We ate above them in a seal cafe where we could also see Alcatraz in the distance. Luckily we were able to catch the trolley about two blocks from there and ride it back to the train station where we took the train all the way back to Palo Alto. Vinnie texted us and invited us over to drink some beer at the Meetro Headquarters. We accepted and walked about 10 blocks over there. The Meetro crew was just hanging out in front of their place with a sign that said "Beer 10 cents" so we paid and drank.

We talked for a long time, traded stories, bought more beer, and rode in their rickshaw. We had a great time talking about ideas, what Nick and I have been working on, Meetro, the future of the internet startup world among other things. At one point an employee of google came over from across the street to hang out. At about 10:30PM we decided to go and to keep in touch with the Meetro guys. I left the next day around 12 noon.

The overall experience of Palo Alto was a truly inspirational one. Hanging out with people that have similar ideas, experiences, backgrounds, and interests was one that does not happen often at all at least in Memphis. I truly hope I can arrange to visit again, possibly move out there.. where it's a perfect 68 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

Impeach the President?

Apparently there have been three states thus far that are starting to build cases to impeach the president of the United States. Notice it's not the united federal government of America. I'm surprised and relieved that this country can manage to at least start a change for the good. In this article, it says that Vermont has joined Illinois and California state legislatures in discussion about impeaching our current president. It is refreshing to me.. very much so.. to see this kind of response to actions (in my humble opinion) that are just wrong and evil. I've been told that I'm a pessimist at times. This is true. But I'm also trying to move myself more towards a realist. It's better on that side of the fence.

SceneFoo

SceneFoo is finally online, but it's not available for testing yet. It's coming along pretty well and I'm hoping within a month we'll be able to have alpha testing. :D There is still plenty to be done before that point, but the good thing is that we're still moving forward! Peace out.

Startup School

I bought my ticket today for Startup School. San Francisco, here I come!

Indie CD and Things You Should Read

First off, the Indie CD that I put together is finally posted at my other blog: Aural Review. Please let me know what you think.

Secondly, there are two articles that everyone should be aware of. The first is an article written by Bill Moyers. The second is an article about the certain collapse of America. These are really interesting things to think about. If you have a second, educate yourself.

Gearing Up

I'm gearing up to post the Indie music CD that I'm trying to put together. I have all of these sources and have been gathering potential songs for about a month now. I'm narrowing them down currently and I will put them in order then post them online and list the tracks and the bands' websites on my blog. I can't wait and I hope you can't either.

Linux Smartphones

My roommate, Chris, and I recently stumbled across this linux driven phone developed by this company in China called E28 Limited. The phone is called E28 Hawk and it has just about everything. This phone is able to switch back and forth between GSM (standard cellular network) and Wifi (wireless internet, using VoIP). It's a truly innovative phone that has been missing here in the United States. Cingular was supposed to pick up the E2800 model a couple years ago, but I'm pretty sure that deal fell through. You can read more information on E28's website or in this article on LinuxDevices.com.

Primer

Primer is an independent film that won both the Grand Jury Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award at the 2004 Sundance film festival. I was introduced to this movie last night by my roommate Chris. It starts up a little slow. You are introduced to the main cast consisting of four friends who all have full time jobs, but have been taking turns trying to come up with a business idea that will take off. So far, none of the ideas have been winners. They spend an extra 30 hours a week doing experiments in the garage of a generic house in an unnamed town. One day the two main characters Aaron and Abe make an astonishing discovery in the garage. They must decide how to use the device they invented and then how to deal with the consequences of using it.

The actors' dialog was excellent in that it sounded like they were actually talking. This movie was definitely worth seeing. The end becomes difficult to follow which warrants watching it multiple times. Apparently out of the 80 total minutes shot for the movie, only 4 were cut out. That's one hell of a good ratio. I give this movie a 8/10 for it's dialog, budget, and intelligence. Primer is no action or comedy movie, it is for the mind.

WORK!

I have been so busy this week. I can see how some people can't just leave work at work and go home when they know they've worked enough. I have started to do that lately. Letting things go for a while never killed anyone (I don't think). I get about a 30 minute break today because I created it, not because I don't have anything to do. So much stuff to do that its ridiculous. THat's about it.. I'd rather spend my break not writing this blog. ;)

Indie Music CD

I am currently looking through as much of the internet as I can get my hands on in order to put together an indie CD of maybe 17 songs or so. I will post a link to this CD for your enjoyment on this and maybe the other blog as well. I am really looking forward to it. I have gotten about 24 songs so far, but I want to get about 40 so I can narrow them down to the best. Hopefully I'll be done with this in about a month or maybe before. I am looking everyday. :)

Busy Yet Bored

Lately I've been too busy to write on this blog, but not busy enough to not be bored at times. I still don't know how that works. So this is just going to be my current mind dump. I got my KVM switch and it's working fine for my Slackware server and my PC at home. I'm working on securing my lniux box and have implemented several things, yet I realized there's really nothing on it to protect... yet. I have been busy trying to write a good review of a new album by Dave Doobinin on my other blog http://auralreview.blogspot.com/. I am just about half way through with In Search of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality, but it, too, is a little boring at times. One of the main things I can count on to NOT be boring is my girlfriend, Diana.

I have decided to dual boot my PC at home AND my work laptop to both Windows and Linux. Slackware on my work laptop and Ubuntu on my home PC as soon as the new one comes out. That might keep me busy for a while. I still keep up my routine of going to work out 3 times a week. I think I may want to start going to a coffee house with my work pc so I can work on linux, my server, and my work work at the coffee house. Of course they have to have free internet.. so this limits it to two places that I'm aware of in Memphis. Java Cabanna or Atlanta Bread company. We shall see what will come of this. Until then, check out my other blog. I listen to music until I get sick of it just about daily. You never know what you're going to find.

-Pro

Our government/economy is destined to collapse

You heard it here first (maybe). Our government or economy is set for a crash unless those who are greedy and in power do something about it. This won't happen. It's depressing. Too bad money, oil, and greed run this country incorrectly I might add. Every empire in the past has come to its collapsing point. They reach their peak and then begin to fall. Do you think it's any coincidence that the Euro has gained so much on the dollar? Do you think it's happenstance that arabic banks have started changing their money from the US Dollar. I think not. I think it all means something and I think that we should be prepared. I keep getting really bad feelings about the United States. I read an article today about how the federal government won't be able to pay off its debt unless we do something... how is this even possible? We keep spending... but on what? I haven't seen any money go to schools, roads, public anything. I believe power should be shifted back to the states since our name is the United States of America, and not the federal government of america. The government's job is to serve the people, not exploit them. Though I supposed pretty much every government has had to exploit the weak and the poor in order to gain more money and power themselves. Why should the supposed best country in the world be any different? The masses are too fat, happy, apathetic, and selfish to change anything. I think for this reason that the US of A will spiral downward towards a collapse. Even Alan Greenspan retired... I think the economy just about killed the poor guy. There are plenty of signs and there are few options. I don't know if we can make it to the next presidential election. May God have mercy on our souls and our corrupt country.

Trip to Beaufort, SC

It has been yet another week with no blog. Surprising since when I first started this, I was doing almost two a day. I recently took a trip with my girlfriend, Diana, to see my Dad in Beaufort, SC. I didn't even know how much I needed a vacation until I was on it. I shuffled some hours around last week so that I could leave at about noon Wed. 3/8/06. I went home, ate lunch, and packed. Nick picked us up at a little before 3PM so we could catch our Delta flight. Diana apparently hates flying. Luckily we made it fine to Savannah, GA (about one hour away from Beaufort) at about 9PM. My stepmom, Kay, and my Dad picked us up at the airport and we talked for the hour it took us to get to their house.

My dad had a guest house built and barely finished before we got there. The guest house sits back and to the right on the property and includes a single car garage, a small workshop for my Dad's woodworking tools, and a guest suite with a kitchenette. The colors are French, blue and yellow, which make the guest suite look bright, happy, and open. There are many windows in the guest room as well which also adds to the openness.

Wed. night we pretty much got there and unpacked, then went to bed. Thursday morning I had to wake up at 6:30AM to do some work for about 4 hours. This was extremely frustrating considering that my Dad's internet connection kept cutting out since their ISP Hargray is horrible in their area and can't keep a connection. By the way Hargray, it's not CLIENT SIDE you IDIOTS. INCOMPETENT PEOPLE THAT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THOSE WHO KNOW LESS BY TELLING THEM IT'S THEIR FAULT MAKE ME SICK. That being said, I had to 'borrow' the neighbor's wireless. Their wireless wasn't very strong in my Dad's house so thanks to the new and "better" asset management software hogging all the bandwidth, I got cutt offline probably 10 times until it was finally done making my life a living hell. After that things went smoothly. Once I was done with the work, I helped my Dad clean up his office for a new desk so I could set up his computer. While I was doing all this work, I felt bad for Diana who had to entertain herself for countless hours, but I knew I had to work and I'm pretty sure she knew when I asked her to come, though I dunno if either of us knew how much I had to work. Luckily that day we got to take a couple of walks, one to the big dock and one to the smaller one. Later that night we took a car down to Beaufort's downtown area. We ate at a restaurant called Panini's. It was alright, but my lasagna was a little over cooked. There were plenty of shops to take a look in after we ate.

Friday I worked again in the morning setting up my Dad's new office fruniture and computer... then I finally got to a near completion stopping point and Diana and I went to the beach. On the way we stopped at a small seafood restaurant and got fried pickle spears and chicken fingers. The chicken fingers weren't exactly cooked all the way through and I ate a whole one. This made us both lose our appetite. After they took those off the bill and we paid, we continued to the beach. We walked up and down the beach without shoes collecting shells along the way. It was extremely windy that day and a little overcast. We both had on light jackets to shield us from the wind and the sand that it carried. After we collected enough shells, we headed back to the homestead. A little later that night we grilled out steak and greens. That was a great dinner. It was hard to believe that we would be leaving the next day.

Saturday morning we woke up and ate corn pancakes which were quite good. We also got to take a boat ride and check a crab trap to see how many were in it. This day it was very sunny and much less windy than the day before, though the boat ride was still bumpy. We got to see an old plantation house which was very cool. I took my Yashica camera with me so I could get some good black and white pictures. This was one of them. This reminds me... I hope that putting the camera through the Xray machine didn't destroy the film. Oh well, a little late to worry too much about that now. After we got back, we packed and headed out about 1PM to Savannah, GA where we ate lunch and drove around to see all the pretty squares in the downtown area. We also walked along the touristy area on the riverbank so Diana could do a bit of shopping. After a couple of hours, my Dad dropped us off at the airport so that we could come home. We each checked a bag and waited for our flight.

The two flights home were much better than the two going to Savannah, GA. Delta seemed to sense our bad flights and tried to make up for it this time. The flights were fine, but Delta promptly lost our baggage and didn't bother to tell us. We had to go to the window and wait in line to give them our information. This consequently bumped Chris over the free 30 minute time frame for short term parking. Delta says they don't have anything to do with parking and parking said the same thing about Delta when we asked if we could get the ticket validated. Funny thing they're both at the airport. It being completely Delta's fault that we went over the 30 minute time limit, I don't see why they couldn't pay for the parking. Fortunately we got our bags yesterday and they, and everything in them, smell of jet fuel. Thanks Delta.

I don't know what it is about me and companies/corporations, but it seems they always try to screw me (Delta, Airtran, Cingular, Sprint, Buy.com, Time Warner, MLGW to list a few). I guess it's fitting that I am currently employed by one. I really enjoyed the trip and I'm very glad that Diana got to go with me. It leads to a less stressful work week.

AOL Opens up AIM Code

When I saw this article on Slashdot, I must say I got pretty excited. According to Red Herring,AOL is releasing AIM's code, which will provide developers with the code they need to interact with the AIM servers. I'm hoping we will be able to see many many more features on these newly developed instant messenging programs. It makes me want to make my own.. or act on an idea I had earlier with Nick. We will see what happens.. but hooray for open source!

Watching a DVD on your Computer

Watching a DVD on your computer may not be as easy as it sounds. I have been frustrated year after year of all of this software that comes with DVDs to supposedly let you watch it on your computer. All of this software is half assed and my computer has crashed so many times when trying to view a DVD that I bought. I think that it's a load of crap that you cannot watch a DVD you bought on your or any computer. The reason you need this software is because the DVDs are encrypted with CSS (Content Scrambling System). The DeCSS is the program needed to decrypt the DVDs, but is not available free because the people who created CSS wants you to use hardware to play the movie so they could receive royalties on it. Crock of shit. Anyway, now you don't have to have non free software or hardware to play DVDs on your computer. This program is called DVD43. It runs in your background and recognizes when you put a DVD in and will decrypt everything allowing you to watch the DVD in a multitude of media players. While it's not the ideal solution, it's still one that works. Hope you enjoy.

Ultraviolet

Last night the movie Ultraviolet opened. I agreed quite some time ago to see it with Lofidelity at the Paradiso. So we gathered some friends and prepared to be awed by action. It turns out the only thing worse than the acting was the script they were reading. Ultraviolet was THE worst movie I have ever seen in my life and I have seen some horrible ones. The action was not even that good and that is the reason we went to see it in the first place. Everything you have ever heard that made you cringe because it was so corny in other movies was conveniently packed into this one half assed action movie. Ultraviolet is 88 minutes of pure shit. Do not waste your money on this movie like I did.
Rating: 1/10 (The 1 is because I don't see how they could possibly even put this movie out. The fact that they did means they know something I don't.)

Comedy on the Web

In a previous post called Comedy Shorts, I briefly mentioned two websites. One was Channel101.com and the other was Channel102.net. They have some funny skits on there such as The 'Bu, Dick Richards, Private Dick, Wastelander, Locked in a Closet, and more. After watching The 'Bu, and then seeing Andy Sandberg on Saturday Night Live, I was interested to find more of his skits. Today Nick IMed me with a link to a video in which there was a link to thelonelyisland.com. How interesting. It seems these three guys have started really making names for themselves from Andy Samberg performing on SNL to Akiva directing two of the videos from We Are Scientists. Who would have thought?! Anyway, keep these three in mind because I think they can only get bigger and funnier with more direction.

Indie Music and Aural Review

I decided that I need another blog to keep track of the music that I really like and/or want to review. This way I can remember what I've heard and what I thought of it easily. There are so many bands out there that it's pretty hard to keep track of them all, especially when you listen to as much music as I do. The address of my new blog is: http://auralreview.blogspot.com/ so write it down. ;) I'm going to try to do up to 3 reviews a week if possible, but I may slack off a little. So far I like the format because it's pretty simple, but if you have any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks for reading.

Microsoft Genuine Advantage

This article is specifically to tell you how to disable Microsoft Genuine Advantage. You know, the software that doesn't allow you to check for updates without verifying your CD key on the Microsoft Update site. So here we go...
First, you must navigate using Internet Explorer of course to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/. Once you get past installing whatever things you need to get to the page that has two buttons on it that say:
"Express"
"Custom"
You need to paste the following code in your browser's address bar and hit enter:
javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')
This turns off the trigger for the key check. Once you've done that you're home free.
On a closing note, Internet Explorer is awful. Please consider using Firefox for all of your browsing needs that don't include Microsoft Sites. Thank you and good day.