izcool's journal

Thursday

Fri, 16 May 2008 05:06:09 GMT

Today has been quite of an interesting day.

I woke up this morning and finally decided that I would go down to the Antioch Township office and pick up a couple of more city stickers, because my dad asked me to. The other week, I picked up two stickers for myself, for the Nissan and the Cavalier, and already put them on the windshields of both cars.

I'm not too sure if I had mentioned this on here, but a few weeks ago my dad bought a vehicle on eBay - a white 2001 Ford F250 standard cab pickup truck, which was in North Carolina. He already recieved the title for the truck (through FedEx) and he hired a shipping service to ship the vehicle up here to Chicago. From what he said to me on the phone, they were supposed to have the thing shipped within 10 days (the shipping service he paid on his credit card), and it's already approaching the 7th day. So, if the shipping service isn't going to deliver it up to us, my dad and I might have to go out to North Carolina to get the vehicle.

My dad already went down to the DMV and transferred the title into his and my name, and changed the registration into our names at my house. So that's why he wanted me to get city stickers, as we'll put an Antioch city sticker on it, after all, it will be registered under my address. (But it probably won't be anywhere around my house, it'll probably sit most of the time in the city).

He bought the truck on eBay because he wants to sell his old Chevy truck that he's had way too long. He wants to sell that truck and get into something newer, that he can actually use for WORK, instead of using his "pretty" truck that he bought brand new. Plus, he wants to fix this white truck (he just bought) with all of the spare parts (tons) that he has in his garage at home, from his truck that he bought new. (Turns out my dad really pimped the hell out of his truck, and he has a lot of spare and takeoff parts).

That's all that I can report on that truck for now, I'll fill you guys in on more about that some other time.

So, after I got the city stickers, I decided to get myself a cheap lunch at McDonald's, after all, I am pretty broke.

I ate the lunch that I took home, and decided that I would work a little on my laptop, as I've kinda pushed that off for awhile now. I managed to get a few software titles installed on it, but it's still not complete. It's better than what it was at earlier. Since I decided to call it quits on that for today, I packed it back up and put it back in the car.

Speaking of which, yesterday, I decided that I would switch cars for awhile. I decided to put the Nissan in the garage and take the Cavalier out of hibernation, as I haven't driven that thing in awhile. Plus, gas is going through the fucking roof right now on price (nearly $4.00 a gallon right now where I live !), and the Cavalier is a savior on gas consumption.

Anyways, I decided to watch The Majestic on DVD, as I bought that at FYE some time ago but never got around to watching it.

Tonight was the night for a new LOST episode, so, for once, I was able to watch it live on TV instead of watching it online. Very good episode, but I'm surprised that the Season Finale is next (2 hour special) as it's only at around 13 episodes for this season ! The earlier seasons make it up to like 22 episodes. What a rip !

Speaking of LOST, I decided that I would start working on the 2nd LOST puzzle today. I have it all spead out on the Air Hockey table in the basement, and I got a bit of a start on it today. I got the entire border done on it, all that's left is the inside of the border. Really, I need to print out a new drawing of the result, as the one I had printed out a long time ago looks like crap, because there was probably little to no color ink in the printer when I printed that out. (If you never knew, the LOST puzzles are supposed to be mysterious, and they don't put the actual result on the box). Lucky for me, I've got Lostpedia to refer to. :)

- Mike.

Quiz

Thu, 15 May 2008 05:47:07 GMT

Just took a quiz, because I'm very, very bored right now.

- Mike.

Yugioh Card

Thu, 15 May 2008 02:01:25 GMT

As you might tell, I'm pretty bored right now. And I have no idea on anything with Yugioh Cards, but I decided to make one.

- Mike.

Kinda Broke

Wed, 14 May 2008 22:02:42 GMT

David did hang out with me the other day (Sunday night till Monday), he slept over. We were mostly chilling out talking about things that we've done lately, as we hardly ever see eachother.

He and I decided to go to the city, as I wanted to show him a little around town, of what I sometimes do. I took him over to MicroCenter for awhile. I hadn't been in there in a long time, and it truly is amazing to see what some of the computers look like in there now. It looks like a lot of the monitors on Windows Vista computers appear to be plasmas or something ? As the color and picture on those computers are truly amazing. It's not like I'm going to be switching to Vista any time soon, but I am seeing that it becoming really popular over there. We didn't really buy anything. We were mostly just walking around to see all of the cool stuff in there.

To be honest, I can remember a time when I went into MicroCenter and was eyeballing the beauty of the Apple Studio Display, which was this monster of a CRT monitor hooked up to some expensive Mac computer at the time. Now that was a long time ago. It seems like that CRT's are a thing of the past.

I went to work yesterday and it turns out that, during the time that I had off (I think it was on Saturday) that they upgraded the CCTV recorder and multiplexer to a newer system, and locked it in a lockbox. Plus they took away the key for it. And the WaveReader program that they used to have on their computer doesn't work any more, so they uninstalled it. Now I don't even know what my boss uses to review the pictures at his house. It's starting to get really creepy as they even locked the DSL router/modem in the lockbox too, so we don't even know when he's watching us. The good thing is that their computer is still hooked up to the internet. That's all that I mainly care about.

To be honest, I'm starting to not like the world that we live in - with all of this shit with surveillance and monitoring. I mean, it's not like I have anything to hide, but I just don't like being watched. It's reminding me of the book 1984 that I keep hearing so much about, with Big Brother and all. :(

It turns out that Stan wanted me to go and buy him 2 cartons of cigarattes, so I went out today and bought them for him. It was around $74.00 for 2 cartons. Now I'm almost broke, until I get my pay check and the money back from Stan on these cigarattes.

So, since I'm almost broke, I decided that I would head back home and work on things around the house for awhile. I'm in the basement right now and I've cleaned up a bit more down here, now it isn't as bad. I really should start working on a computer to donate to the thrift store, as I have way too many. I need to downsize and get rid of the older machines (like Windows 98 machines) as those, to me, are pretty worthless. They're slow, and what would I do with them otherwise ? I'll bundle them with CRT's that I have down here, as I think I'm permanently staying with flat-panels now.

- Mike.

Day Off

Sun, 11 May 2008 05:10:17 GMT

So, today was my 1st day off, which was strange, as I'm not used to having the weekend of no work.

Today, I woke up at around 9AM, and had to do a bit of help around the house. Mainly my big job was to help set up a canopy in the back yard that's been sitting brand new in the box (in the garage) for about a year. It was a bit complicated to set up, because the instructions weren't that thoroughly written. Let's just say that it took us a few times to get it right, and a few hours of our time. But, in the end, it looked good. I just hope that it'll last us for awhile.

I did spend some time in the basement this afternoon working on a computer. I was able to dig up a computer case with half of the components in it, and I had to assemble the rest of it to get it to an operational machine. The case I dug up mainly needed the memory, hard drive, and a new Chipset fan. I installed the 256MB of RAM that came out of my 1st Custom PC, the 20GB hard drive that my dad found for free (out of the garbage from the carwash - thank you !), and a chipset fan that I bought at MicroCenter some time ago for that purpose. So I got one working again. :) Which makes me feel good.

I felt like cleaning up my room a bit today, so I washed a lot of my dirty laundry that was lying about (was running out of clean clothes tbh), and brought a bunch of stuff down to the basement that I'll deal with later.

While I was down in the basement for awhile today, I cleaned up a bit down there today, because it was sorta starting to get a bit messy in my area. Now it doesn't look as bad down there.

I found out on my cellphone that David will hang out with me and spend the night tomorrow, something came up tonight with him. But that's perfectly fine with me. He and I intend on working with some DJ'ing stuff with his laptop and probably doing a lot other than that. I'll just see how it all goes.

- Mike.

Today

Sat, 10 May 2008 03:31:58 GMT

Didn't really do too much today, but there's a couple of things worth mentioning.

Put gas in the Nissan and got myself some lunch when I was out.

Turns out that I'm staying home all weekend, because Steph's work told her that they didn't need her this weekend. So there's no real reason for me to go to the city all this weekend, so I'll just stay home.

As for tomorrow, it sounds like I'm going to be home during the morning, and later in the afternoon, I'll be chilling with David at his dad's house (I guess) and sounds like I'm going to have a sleep-over with him ? Don't really know what we're going to do, but it'll be something different, of course, since I don't have to work any bit this weekend.

I did a little work in the basement today with some computers but I didn't get really far, because I was so tired. I was exhausted. I'll fuck around with some of it some other time.

The biggest thing that I've done today is that I finally got around to getting VirtuBots and Izcool Entertainment back up, and I uploaded everything to David's account for G-Town DJ's, but it looks like his domain hasn't transferred over yet. On the old server, after I was done with my stuff, I deleted it all off of there. And once David's site is operating on the new server, I'll delete everything of his from the old server as well.

I also watched the new LOST episode on ABC.com today. Very fucked up episode, but I'm looking forward to see what happens in the next episode.

- Mike.

Home

Fri, 09 May 2008 05:33:26 GMT

Well, I'm home right now.

I found out today that the people came over to Sharon's condo and did what they needed to do. She said that she's coming in to work tomorrow. So I'm off tomorrow, and she wants to work the weekend, as we're kinda like "swapping" days. Perfectly fine with me.

Today at work was really slow, didn't really do too much. I did get something done, though. I brought my laptop into the office and booted it up, downloaded some programs from the internet and installed them.

Finally got a chance to talk to Neil, which I hadn't done in a long time. Was great to catch up with him again. :)

After getting out of work, I headed back to my dad's house and picked up my clothes, then drove back home. The sound in the Nissan is fantastic now, now that we've changed the speakers in it. :D It's actually quite enjoyable, I can really crank it in there if I wanted. Much like how the Cavalier's sound system is like (although that one's very good for being all factory speakers).

Here at home, I changed out a chip of RAM that was in my 1st Custom PC. I upgraded that machine from 256MB of RAM up to 512MB of RAM, as I intend on using the 256MB RAM chip in another computer coming up, that I want to try to fix.

For the past hour or so, I've been running the "AM-Deadlink" program that's installed on my computer. It's basically a program that goes through all of my bookmarks saved in IE and checks to see if they're good links, or if they have some sort of an error, mainly like "404 Page Not Found" errors. Turns out that I hadn't run that program in awhile, and there were around 100 dead links that popped up in the results. I checked them all by hand before deleting them, to make sure that they were dead. Two of the ones I checked were good, so those have been saved.

Tomorrow, I want to try to get a little something done with web design work. I mainly want to try to get VirtuBots back up, my Izcool Entertainment site back up, and David's G-Town DJ's website moved to the new server. Once I do, I want to transfer his domain over to the new server. I might even contact Allen (via eMail, txt, or phone, dunno which) and tell him my recommendation, as I think he's paying up the ass for hosting but not really doing anything with it. I think it's a waste of money, if you ask me. I should try to get him transferred to the new server too, as it would make sense.

- Mike.

Work

Wed, 07 May 2008 02:09:29 GMT

So I had to go to work today. It was relatively nice because we weren't too busy, and we weren't too slow. At the end of the day, around 5:30PM, it started to rain for a little while. We decided we would wait it out and close at 6:00PM.

So I went to the thrift store after I got off of work, and bought a couple of things. At the thrift store nearest the carwash, I only bought a small power cable. It's the smallest (shortest) power cable I've ever seen, it's only about 2 inches long. The 3-pin standard wall jack on one end, and the standard 3-pin jack on the other end that would go into power supplies and monitors, on the other end. My good guess is that it was for a power brick, as they're also used there, too. I'll probably find somewhere to use it (like on a power brick), and it'll save space by using less cable, than having a long cable with unnecessary length on it.

After I left there, I stopped into the Unique thrift store, because I haven't been in there in a while. My big buy tonight was from them - it was 2 chips of RAM. Both were PC3200, 512MB, DDR, 400MHz. Both were idential, and they wanted $15.99 each. So I sprung for it. They were both in identical packages, which were from newer RAM. The newer ram was the same type (PC3200, DDR, 400MHz) but they were supposidly 1GB each. So my good guess is that someone upgraded the RAM in their computer and donated the old 512MB chips, of which I bought. The packages they were in came from MicroCenter, as I can recognize the price stickers on it. Someone paid around $100.00 for each stick of 1GB memory, times two.

I'm planning on putting the new sticks of RAM in my 1st Custom PC - as that would be the ideal PC for me to stick these sticks of RAM into. I'd like to take the memory out of that computer and piece together another computer that's in my basement. That's the kind of RAM that I need to finish another computer, that I'm assembling all from parts. That would help me take something that's "worthless" (not working) and get it working again.

I have to work tomorrow, it seems like. Looks like they're calling for rain almost all day tomorrow, but my dad and I have a lot of things that we'd like to do around there, that we could work on. Repair projects mainly, repairing some of the equipment. Perfect time to do things like that, working inside fixing things on a poor day when we otherwise could not.

Here at my dad's house, I finally got around to hooking up the DTV converter box in my bedroom, so now I get all digital channels on that TV. Took me a little while (but not long) and got it all working just fine. I think every TV in this house now has a DTV converter box, pretty cool. :)

When I was at work today, I talked with David a little while on the phone. Started out as text messages, but later he called me and we chatted for awhile. We were mainly talking about web hosting about moving off of Allen's Windows/Plesk server and moving onto the Free Linux/cPanel host that I found.

Oh, and since I've been here at my dad's house surfing the internet for awhile, I found out that Compaq (owned by HP for a few years now) seemed to have acquired theirself a new image, and logo. Just see for yourself.

- Mike.

Few Days

Tue, 06 May 2008 04:43:35 GMT

It's been a couple of days since I last made an update on here, but there's a few things that I need to mention.

The biggest thing that's been happening with me is that everything keeps breaking for me. The other week, the battery in my Dell Inspiron 6000 took a shit. It would flash the 1st, 3rd, and the 5th lights on it, which is an error code saying that the battery needs to be replaced. Wow !

Yesterday, on my way home, I blew out 2 of the speakers on the Nissan. The 2 front speakers. All that was working were the rear 2 speakers.

And when I was out today in the car, I blew out the driver's rear speaker ! So there's only one working speaker in the car right now. Fuck !

But really, we changed the radio in the car the other week, and the speakers are really old. We (my dad and I) were planning on getting them changed anyway, because they're so crackly when you're listening to anything with them.

And the other thing that happened, is that the subwoofer for my Altec Lansing speaker set up (in my room) I think took a shit on me. I had spares in the basement (thank you thrift store !) so I plugged in another subwoofer that I had. I brought the old one down there in hopes of me testing it to confirm that it's blown. If it is, I'll bring it to the carwash and dump it in their dumpster, mark it that it's blown, too.

The nice thing is that they lasted me a long time, I think I got the speaker setup (the one that's in my room) in late 2003 to early 2004, and here it is near the middle of 2008. The nice thing is that the individual speakers (I think they're properly referred to as "satellites" if I can recall) still worked just fine, which is good.

Anyway, in other news, I have to work tomorrow, more than likely on Wednesday, possibly Thursday, and Friday, at the latest. And if that's right, then Sharon will be working for me on Saturday and Sunday, due to the development that I had mentioned awhile ago on here.

Today, I got a computer from the basement working. The other day at the thrift store, I bought a $10.00 motherboard, which had the CPU mounted on it. Basically, it's a Mini-ATX AMD motherboard, the CPU that was on it is an AMD Athlon 700MHz CPU (Slot A ?), and had no RAM. I provided the RAM, I put 128MB on it for now, and I put a 20GB hard drive into the case. I installed Windows XP Professional on it but I'd like to get the rest of it working again, too. Turns out that the last motherboard I bought from the thrift store was junk, but this one turned out to be okay, actually.

As with web site news, I've decided that I'm going to move out of the Windows / Plesk server that Allen's running, as I can't stand that system. Linux / cPanel is much better, as that's what I've been used to for years and years. I've found a web host from Google that offers free cPanel hosting with no ads, (NovaHost) and I've gotten an account from them sometime in December, but I've not persued in doing anything with the account I had with them. Now I'm finally deciding to use it. Later on, after I get VirtuBots back up on the new server (right now it's on the old server, it's way too late in the evening to fuck around with that), I might have my friend David register an account with them for his DJ website. I think it'd be best. I mean, after all, they're giving it away for free. You couldn't ask for any better than that.

- Mike.

Sigh

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:56:14 GMT

Well I'm at my dad's house on the computer. Haven't really done much today, to be honest.

I think I'm letting a lot of people down right now with VirtuBots. I just read a post on the DiscussionBoards on there that someone thinks that the site is dead, and I do understand what they mean. I just haven't been much in the mood for programming anything, but I should get the ball rolling on there again.

That's making me a little depressed because I remember years ago with GiroPets I was much more on top of things, I was more inspired to get things done on that site. I don't know what happened to me, but I think I'm really losing my touch.

What even makes me more sad is the movie AntiTrust, because, in that movie, it's all about Open Source and how a lot of the characters are developing all of this great software, bettering the world. The opening sequence (few minutes long) is really great. That's probably my most favorite movie of all time. All of those people are doing things great, I used to be like that, but I've, erm, just...lost my touch.

I think it's because, over the years, I've found more and more ways to slack off rathar than doing anything great. Sites like LiveJournal, YouTube, IRCimages, and Wikipedia are part to blame. What else to blame is DVD's, movies, TV shows, and other such things that get in the way. I remember a time when I was working on GiroPets every day, for hours on end.

What happened to me ? Have I reached a point of no return ? It seems like that every time I try to get my act together, I fuck it up shortly thereafter.

I know that I can get a lot of people to come to the site - if I really wanted - which is by listing the site on TopWebGames. That's how a shit load of people came to GiroPets in the first place. But if I do that, and all of these people realize that the game is a waste of time, with no updates, then they won't come back.

So, I haven't listed it. I haven't done anything to promote the site whatsoever, and I won't until things truly have changed and I do get my act all back together.

What's even scaring me even more is that I think Web 2.0 is going to put me out of my time, because all of this shit with all the fuckin CSS, XHTML, XML, AJAX, Object Oriented Programming, and "social networking sites".

On a lighter note, I think that the 2nd Seti@Home machine I set up is working okay. It seems to be pushing out Work Units faster than the 1st machine I have set up, despite the clock speed is slower. Perhaps it's because the 2nd machine is a P4 and the 1st is a Celeron.

As with today, I had to go to work, only worked till like 2:30PM, as we closed early due to poor weather. For the rest of the day, I've been with my dad. My dad and I finally mounted the replacement left front fender onto the Nissan, and got rid of the old one with the rust and the dent in it.

- Mike.

Quiz #3

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:24:16 GMT

Taken yet another quiz. I'm really tired, might hit the sack in a minute.

Your results:
You are Jin-Soo Kwon

Jin-Soo Kwon		45%
Dr. Jack Shephard		44%
Hugo "Hurley" Reyes		43%
Sayid Jarrah		40%
Michael Dawson		40%
Ana-Lucia Cortez		36%
Sun Kwon		35%
Claire Littleton		32%
Walt Lloyd		32%
Shannon Rutherford		24%
Kate Austen		20%
Charlie Pace		20%
John Locke		20%
Mr. Eko		20%
Boone Carlyle		20%
James "Sawyer" Ford		14%

You have a very short temper and are very protective over your valuables, however you try to help others when you can.

Click here to take the "Which Lost character am I?" quiz...

- Mike.

Quiz #2

Fri, 02 May 2008 06:52:41 GMT

Another quiz I've just taken.

*Tell Everyone About Yourself*
Time started::	1:36AM
Basic About you:
Name::	Mike
Gender::	Male
Height::	6' 4"
Eye color::	Green
Hair Color::	Brown
Age::	18
Birthday::	June 11, 1989
Lefty/righty/ambidextrous::	Righty
Piercings::	None
Tatoos::	None
Zodiac Sign::	Gemini
Ring Size::	?
Grade::	N/A
More about you:
Are you named after anyone?:	Nope
Do you live in the moment?:	?
Do you consider yourself tolerent to others?:	Sometimes
Do you have any secrets?:	Yeah
Do you hate yourself?:	Sometimes I feel down on myself
Do you like your handwriting?:	Not especially, but it's okay
Do you have any bad habits?:	Not as many as I've had before
If you were another person, would you be friends with you?:	Probably
Any regrets?:	Selling GiroPets. :(
Do you think life has been good so far?:	It's been pretty fair to me
Are you confident?:	Not all the time
How long does it take you to shower?:	10 minutes
What color is your room?:	White
Where do you want to attend college?:	I attended at DeVry University for awhile
Do you...?
Smoke?:	No
Do drugs?:	No
Drink?:	No
Go to church?:	No
Sleep with stuffed animals?:	No
Take walks in the rain?:	If I have to
Talk to people even if you hate them?:	At school I did, sometimes
Drive?:	Yes
Believe in premarital sex?:	If it's true love
Want to get married?:	Not right now, but someday, yes
Want to go to college?:	Not too sure if I want to go back
Want to have children?:	Someday
Sing in the shower?:	No
Get along with you parents?:	Most of the time I do
Get along with your sibling/s?:	Most of the time I do
Color/highlight your hair?:	No
Like coffee?:	Eww
Wear makeup everytime you go out?:	N/A
Love roller coasters?:	The ones that stay right-side-up
Like to cook?:	If it involves the microwave, yes
Have you ever...?
Hurt yourself? :	Yes
Been out of the country?:	No, but I'd like to go to a few other countries
Been in love?:	Yes
Done drugs?:	No
Gone skinny dipping?:	No
Had surgery?:	No
Played strip poker?:	No
Been on stage?:	Yes
Pulled an all nighter?:	Yes
Gone one day without food?:	Can't remember
Slept all day?:	Yeah, unfortunately
Kissed a stranger?:	No
Had a dream that came true?:	Probably, a long time ago
Broken the law?:	Yes
Stolen anything?:	Yes
Been on radio/tv?:	Yes, Jerry Springer. :D In the audience, though
Been in a mosh-pit?:	No
Bungee jumped?:	No
Had a dream that kept coming back?:	Not for a long time
Gone out of state?:	Yes
Live in other states?:	No
Eaten an entire box of oreos?:	Yeah
Had a movie marathon?:	Yeah
Spun until you were immensely dizzy?:	Yeah
Been on a plane?:	No, but I'd like to go on one. Just so long as I don't end up like the people on LOST lol.
Ran into a wall?:	Yeah, ouch
Been rejected by a crush?:	Yes :(
Cried in public?:	Yes
Cried over a movie?:	Yes, I always cry at the end of "Deep Impact". It's so sad.
Pranked called someone?:	Yes, Dunkin Donuts
Gotten a cavity?:	Yes
Shopped at Abercrombie and Fitch?:	Once, with Neil lol
Broken a bone?:	No
Fallen from a tree?:	Yes
Passed out?:	No
Been to a theme park?:	Yes
Eaten sushi?:	No
This or That
Pepsi or Coke::	Pepsi
McDonalds or BUrger King::	McDonald's
Chocolate or Vanilla::	Vanilla
Black or White::	White
Burgers or Hot dogs::	Hot dogs
Boxers or breifs::	Briefs
Book or magazine::	Magazine
TV or radio::	TV
is the glass half empty or half full::	Half empty
sun or moon::	Moon
hot or cold::	Hot
romantic comedy or thriller::	Thriller
waffles or pancakes::	Pancakes
Florida or california::	Florida
Black and white or color photos::	Color photos
The city, the beach, OR the country::	The city
Tennis shoes or sandals::	Tennis shoes
Sweet or sour::	Sweet
Private or publie school::	Public school
Cappuccino or coffee::	Eww, neither
English or history::	English
Science or math::	Science
Do you believe ...?
in miracles?:	Yes
in magic?:	No
in God?:	No
in Satan?:	No
in ghosts?:	Yes
in luck?:	Yes
in love at first sight?:	Yes
in Santa?:	No
in the Easter Bunny?:	No
in witches?:	No
that it's possible to remain faithful forever?:	No
in wishing on shooting stars?:	Yes
that cussing is a necessity in life?:	Yes
yourself?:	Most of the time
Love and all that -
Do you consider love a mistake?:	No
If someone you had no interest in had interest in dating you how would you:	?
Do you prefer knowing someone before dating them?:	Yes
What is worst about the opposite sex?:	Trying to break the ice
Who and when was your first crush?:	Zoila, a girl I knew from like the 3rd grade.
First thing you notice about the opposite sex?:	Their personality
Right this moment...
What are you wearing?:	The clothes I had on from yesterday (haven't gone to bed yet)
What are you worried about?:	About what kind of a job I'll have later in life
What book are you reading?:	Haven't read a book in a long time, but the last one I opened was "Mo' Urban Dictionary" from UrbanDictionary.com
What time is it?:	1:48AM
Are you bored?:	Yes
Are you tired?:	Yes
Are you talking to anyone online or on the phone?:	No
Are you lonely or content?:	Lonely
Are you listening to music, if so then what?:	Hootie & The Blowfish - Time
The Last...
Dream you had::	I dreamt that I was at Navy Pier with Melisa, a girl I knew from Franklin Park. We went on the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier and made out as it went around. It was fantastic.
Nightmare::	I can't remember
Time you cried::	The time when I sliced my hand open with a razor knife
Movie you watched::	The Matrix Reloaded
Movie you rented::	Haven't rented a movie in a long time, I can't remember
Book you read::	Mo' Urban Dictionary, from UrbanDictionary.com
Word you said::	"Wow"
Time you laughed::	This afternoon, when I was with my dad
Person to call you::	My dad
CD you played::	A mix CD that I made, in my car
Song you listened to::	Hootie & The Blowfish - Time (I'm playing another song right now)
annoyance::	Working with David's laptop, it was being such a pain in the ass to us
IM sent or recieved::	To my friend David, on MSN, this evening
Time you yelled::	I can't remember
Person you yelled at::	Still can't remember
time you were a skirt::	Uhh, never
time you fought with your parents::	I can't remember
Time you wished on a shooting star::	I still can't remember
Thing you ate::	A bowl of Fruity Loops, when I was watching LOST this evening
Time you showered::	This morning, before I went out with my dad
Nail polish color worn::	Uhh, never
Your favorite:
Type of gum::	Grape gum
Restaurant::	Portillo's
Season::	Summer
Type of weather::	Sunny with a patch of clouds
Emotion::	Laughter (Having a good time, when life's worries don't seem to matter)
Color::	Blue
Perfume::	Don't exactly have a favorite
Candy::	Kit-Kat's
Pizza topping::	Cheese
Fruit::	Apple
Veggie::	Don't exactly have a favorite
Type of cake::	Vanilla
Magazine::	PC World
TV Show::	LOST
Day of the week::	Monday
Month::	June
Holiday::	Birthday
Number::	7
Sport to watch::	Not really into sports
Flower::	Poinsettia
Finally...
Time Finished::	1:57AM
Take this survey \| Find more surveys Bzoink - The Original Survey Site

- Mike.

Quiz #1

Fri, 02 May 2008 06:27:45 GMT

I'm kinda bored right now, so I'm going to take some quizzes. It's been awhile since I've done any. This is the first of, erm, a few, that I'm going to do.

*Random quiz about yourself*
All about you
Name:	Mike
Age:	18
Gender:	Male
Current level of education:	Some college
Current occupation:	Cashier
Birthplace:	Chicago
Sign:	Gemini
Hair color:	Brown
Eye color:	Green
Nicknames:	Mike
Favorites
Color:	Blue
Vehicle:	VW Bug, looks like a fun car to drive
Season:	Summer
Temperature:	80's
Drink:	Soda
Food:	Beef sandwiches
Movie:	AntiTrust
Actor:	Terry O'Quinn (John Locke from LOST)
Actress:	Lindsay Lohan (From Freaky Friday and Mean Girls especially, she's so HOT)
Animal:	Cats
This or That
Pepsi or Coca Cola:	Pepsi
Adidas or Nike:	Nike
Black or White:	White
Hot or cold:	Hot
Pink or blue:	Blue
Silence or noise:	Noise
TV or Radio:	TV
Animals or Plants:	Animals
Cars or Trucks/SUVs:	Cars
Typing or handwriting:	Typing
Take this survey \| Find more surveys Bzoink - The Original Survey Site

- Mike.

Worked Today

Fri, 02 May 2008 04:08:08 GMT

It was a bit unexpected today, but my dad called me first thing in the morning asking if I wanted to work with him for awhile.

Turns out that the boss ordered him to go up to the garage in Wisconsin to pick up some equipment, and load it onto a trailer, and my dad asked if I wanted to tag along to help him do this. So, sure, why not ?

He picked me up at around noon from my house and gave me a box of the things that he pulled from the garbage the other day, and I looked through it really quick. There was a credit card reader in there, with no shell around it. There were 2 hard drives, they looked to be in pretty good condition. There was a big-ass PIN pad that looked like it came from an ATM machine (kinda looked like this), and a small little circuit board. The back of the credit card reader was a USB connection, and there was also another USB connection on the back of the PIN pad. I told him, by my first glance on the PIN pad, I said that it was most definately from an ATM machine. I believe that some ATM machines are run by computers, thus the reason for USB ports on some of the components and on the credit card reader, and the reason for the hard drives. I tried plugging the credit card reader and PIN pad into a USB port on my computer, but it doesn't work natively, I'm guessing that it needs some source of power in order for it to be recognized. I'll probably give the credit card reader and the PIN pad back to my dad, as I have no real use for it, lol. I let him keep the little circuit board as I have no clue as to what it's function is. I'm only keeping the hard drives, they're probably good. I'll find something to do with them.

So we went off into Wisconsin for a few hours. The things that we had to load onto the trailer wasn't too bad, it was actually interesting for once, doing something else than what I'd normally expect to do for a day's work. Turns out that they also had a lot of white towels up there too, so my dad had me load them into big garbage bags to bring back to Chicago, as the box that they were in was all torn up. (They used to sell white towels in the store at Express Car Wash, but we sold them all out just recently). My good guess, is that over the weekend, I'll have to stock the store with some of the white towels, to have them for sale.

When we were done with whatever we needed to do in the Wisconsin garage, we headed back to Illinois. My dad dropped me off at my house and he continued back to Chicago.

So, ever since I've been home, I've been watching some of Lost Season 3 on DVD's, catching up on what I've forgotten about the show. It really has helped watching the entire show all over again, as there's so many things that I've completely forgotten about.

Over the past few minutes, I've been looking through some really old files from my computer, deleting what I think has now become worthless to me, stuff that I don't need any longer. I'm surprised at some of the things that I've kept over all these years.

- Mike.

New Seti@Home Machine

Thu, 01 May 2008 04:05:57 GMT

Well, today, things have been better for me.

The other day when I was at work, my dad realized that the city sticker on the Cavalier was expiring today (this was yesterday he told me this), and suggested that I get 2 new stickers for the Cavalier and the Nissan, to be on top of that before I get into any kind of trouble.

So this morning I went down to the Village of Antioch (town hall) and inquired about buying 2 new city stickers, and apparantly, they signed an ordinance to no longer require city stickers on vehicles that reside in Antioch, as they are tacking a new tax onto the Water and Sewer bills to everyone who lives in Antioch, thereby charging "everybody" for it instead of paying for stickers. I see what they mean by that. But I had insisted that I travel to Chicago all the time, where they're real strict on the City Sticker law. I was told that they didn't have any at the town hall, so I had to go to the Antioch Township building and get them there, for free, as they had other people inquiring about the same thing before. So I went over there and got them, no charge.

While I was out, I put gas in the Nissan, since I hadn't done so ever since I got that car back. My mom had me stop into Walmart to buy her something, which was a Japanese Maple tree. It was around $30.00 (she gave me the money for it) and it was supposed to be for Dave. At the old house in Round Lake Beach, Dave had a Japanese Maple tree in front of the house that he really liked. I thought that was really sweet of my mom to do that.

When I finally got back home, I slapped the 2 new stickers on the cars, next to the old ones. When I see my dad next, he says that he'll take the old stickers off of the windshields, as they're no longer any good.

My dad called me this afternoon telling me a few things. He said that next week, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I might have to work for Sharon. According to Sharon, on those days next week, she has to be at her Condo building as they're doing some sort of maintenance and need her to be able to give them access to her Condo. My dad says that I'll definately be working on Wednesday and possibly Thursday, but Friday at the latest. And, according to her, she'll work Saturday and Sunday for me if I do her days. Perfectly fine with me.

The other thing that he told me is that he found 2 computer hard drives in the garbage at the carwash, along with a card reader and a numeric keypad. According to him, I believe one hard drive is 20GB, the other is 40GB, the card reader has a USB connection on the end of it, and, from what he says, "the numeric keypad is very tough, made of metal and looks like for an industrial use". He says that the 2 hard drives were put into 2 hard drive boxes for new hard drives, both identical, although the hard drives that had been replaced are different. Interesting. He says it's sitting on my bed at his house, waiting for me to work with. My good guess is that I'll put the 40GB hard drive into the eMachines computer that's sitting at my dad's house (in his basement) and I'll probably take the 20GB hard drive and take it home with me. That is, if they work. My good guess is that they do. Still, you never know.

So, I finally was able to do something around the house, for once. I went into the basement and unburied the HP Vectra machine that I wanted to set up for crunching Seti@Home numbers. I wasn't too sure on what I wanted to do with the computer long ago, but I'm finally putting it to use. It fits perfectly on the lower left side of my desk. It's a HP Vectra VL420DT, a desktop PC (not a tower) that has pretty, erm, "OK" specs. I'm sure it'll do fine for Seti@Home work. Pentium 4 @ 1.6GHz, 384MB of RAM, 20GB HDD.

I originally bought this computer at The Salvation Army that's near the carwash. I can't remember what I paid for it, but it was probably some really cheap money.

Later in the evening, as working with the PC got me a little exhausted, I watched "The Matrix Reloaded", which I bought on DVD sometime last week.

The 2nd PC that I currently have crunching numbers for Seti@Home. Sorry about the mess on the floor, that's what I get for living with cats. All that cat fur.
- Mike.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:31:29 GMT

Well I'm in the basement right now, working on a couple of things. I'm a little ticked off because things down here haven't been working out too good.

I was sitting down here for awhile trying that motherboard into another case, and still have had no luck. So I've taken all that I could off of the motherboard (battery, jumpers, memory I put on it, and the CPU that came with it) and trashed the motherboard, as it looks like there's no power going into it.

So after that I tried to change the processor into the computer that I thought it'd be compatable with. Turns out the computer I was going to put that in appears to be dead, too, it just sits there, power on, and nothing shows on the monitor. Ugh. I'll have to look at it to see if I can fix it. No idea when I'll do it but it's another headache I've gotta take care of.

Then I was going to try to put that Pentium 3 1.2GHz processor into that Dell OptiPlex GX150 that I had down here. There were a ton of bent pins on that CPU, and when I was straigtening them out, I snapped one of them off. So the CPU is no good. I threw it out, too. Ugh.

On the other side of things, I did have a little bit of a productive day today. I put gas in the Cavalier, got lunch, and went over to Best Buy, because my DTV Converter Box coupons came in the mail today.

I bought the 2 boxes, one for my dad's house, and the other for the carwash, used the 2 coupons that came in the mail, and used the store credit that my dad had from his converter boxes. (He bought one without the coupons and got store credit from it afterward), and I only had to pay out like $25.00 in the end. I'll bill out the converter box from the carwash and get my money back from it.

When I was out, I stopped at the thrift store, not for long, the only item of interest that I bought was a tiny little strobe light for $3.00. I'm thinking of mounting it on the wall somewhere in my little section of the basement, when we're partying or something I could turn it on, party on ! Or whenever I feel like it, as it is a cool little thing. Was thinking about getting a black light, too, dunno about that yet though.

Seems like more bad than good happened with me today. Oh well.

- Mike.

Motherboard News

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:35:32 GMT

Well, I just spent about an hour on the floor of my bedroom, computer parts strewn all around me, and I think it was a bit of a waste of my time. I've come to the conclusion that the motherboard that I bought the other day might be for shit.

I grabbed the case that had no motherboard in it from the basement, brought it upstairs, with tools, a 2nd power supply (as there was one already in the case), and started working. It wasn't working out too well. I was able to get the thing to fire up on one instance, the CPU fan was spinning, but I didn't have a video card plugged in to see if it was ACTUALLY working correctly. I wasn't able to get it to do anything since.

So I have a feeling that I should just bail out of it, if it's going to be so stubborn, and just keep the CPU, as I'm around 90% sure that the CPU is still good from it. It's a Pentium 3 600MHz CPU, which I think I have a computer that could use the upgrade.

However, I'm keeping the motherboard for right now, as I might fool with it some other point in time. It offers either Socket 370 or Slot 1 on the CPU's. The Pentium 3 that it came with was the Slot 1 type, however, I have a spare Celeron that would fit in the Socket 370 slot.

I'm so tired from all the work that I done with it (which got me nowhere it seems like) so I'll fool with it some other time. If the CPU works, the money I spent wasn't all wasted. I've been hit harder before on other stupid things I've bought, this is relatively minor.

The surprising thing about today is that my dad gave me the Nissan back. My sister was let off of work early this morning (around 10AM), so my dad rushed off to pick her up. He brought her over by my place and told her to take the Cavalier up to our house, so that's what she done. I worked all day long, and I took the Nissan home.

This morning my dad and I were fiddling around with the radio, mounting it into the dash and all. We tried to look into the issue with the backlights for the Heat and A/C controls, but we weren't seeing any obvious solutions to fixing it. So I guess it'll stay like that.

Took us a little while to get the radio mounted really nicely into the dash, because there's the plastic from the dashboard that goes around it. But still, the finished product was decent.

The Sony radio that we put in it is fair, can't really say too much bad about it, it is newer than the old stock radio that was in it before. It has an RDS feature, which is a little annoying because in order for you to read what the song names and artists are, you have to press a dumb "Display" button for it to switch. On other cars, I've seen that it displays it all the time, and changes. On this, you press the "Display" button once, it'll show the track time, another time for the artist, another time for the song name, and another time for the clock. It doesn't cycle through all of that info without pressing any button. How dumb.

My dad says that he wants to get around with doing the fender on the car coming up, but at least we got a little bit of a start on improving the car some.

The other good news is that I got the annoying splinter from Saturday out of my finger this morning. It was driving me nuts, and I was in so much pain when I was taking it out. In the end, I went for the gold and used nail clippers and cut out all of the skin that was around it, and that's what got it out. I hate splinters.

- Mike.

Nissan Updates

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:11:59 GMT

Well it's been awhile since I've had the Nissan Stanza in my posession. For the past 2 weeks (I think that's how long it's been), my dad's had the car. Not really sure if I mentioned this on here before, but Lidia fucked up her car and it went into the shop to get bondo'ed up and painted (again). So, during the time that her car was in the shop, she was driving my Nissan around.

Turns out she took good care of it, despite that she broke the volume/power knob off of the radio. My dad said that after she's done using the car that he'll start to work on it a little, by putting the left front fender on it (that's been in the trunk of the car ever since we bought it from the junk yard), changing the radio, fixing some of the lights for the heater/AC controls, and possibly the speakers that might be for shit.

Lidia got her car back yesterday, and my dad started to change the radio in the Nissan this afternoon. He had this aftermarket Sony radio with 10 presets, CD capability, and the RDS capability, which means that it'll show the song name, radio station name, and artist info if there's any info available. This afternoon my dad was able to hack the old radio out of the car (the original radio) and was able to get the wires hooked up for the replacement. We were never able to fit it into the dash yet, but my dad says that he'll take the car to work tomorrow and work on it a little during then. Since the dashboard is mostly apart already, he says that he'll look into what the lightbulbs might be for the heater/AC controls, and see if he can do anything with that. After he gets that taken care of, he'll mount the radio into the hole where the old one was before.

Coming up, I feel, he'll finally get around to putting the replacement fender on the car and maybe the speakers. According to him, when you have a good sound system in the car, you won't really give a shit about anything else lol. And I feel that's a true statement, too.

I'm looking forward to what might come up with the Nissan soon. I feel that he'll have it for like another week (or so) to try to tweak around with it. He even says that he's tempted to send it into the shop to bondo up the rust holes on the rear fenders and getting them painted. (The rear fenders aren't replaceable like the front ones are). Though I'm not sure if he'll go that far with the car.

But still, he's doing something about it. I'm kinda happy. :)

Anyway, in other news, worked all day long today. We were doing some cars, better business than what the place had for the past few days, I seen (based on the car count sheets I seen).

Only bad thing about today is that I think I got a bit of a splinter from being at work. They have this antique wooden cabinet that the safe in the office is inside of, and has 2 shelves inside of it, too. I ran my hand across the edge of one of the shelves and I got a couple of splinters from it. I was able to get one of them out, but I think I have another still in me. I'm sure it'll come out soon, as if I can remember right, your body pushes splinters out "naturally" as it's a "foreign" substance that's not welcome into your body.

I stopped at the thrift store near the carwash after leaving work, and I only bought 2 things when I was over there. I bought a set of jumper cables (for a car) when I was there (for $6.00, big deal), and my big ticket item today was a Pentium 3 motherboard with a Pentium 3 600MHz CPU for $15.00. I have a few cases around at my house that have no guts inside of them, and I was hoping to piece together a machine from whatever I have. I hope the motherboard and the CPU work, as I have everything else it needs to be a whole computer. It'd help liquidate some of my parts out and get something working, and "useful". This is the motherboard I got, from what I was able to dig up from what I found online.

I'm also hoping to take home the Pentium 3 CPU that's been sitting around here at my dad's house for awhile. It's a brand new 1.2GHz CPU that my dad found at the flea market, and I haven't had anything to put it into, yet. I'm going to put a good guess on that the Dell OptiPlex GX150 machine I have would possibly work with it. It'd be nice to upgrade that computer to a faster chip, to make it more worthwhile.

I'm also planning on getting another machine at my house to work with Seti@Home again. I have a "desktop" HP machine that I can sit on the lower left side of my desk upstairs (I hope it'll fit in that space) that would do great there, if everything works according to my plan. I'm sorta feeling a little "worthless" as I haven't really done anything important lately. I've been really slacking on web design and I haven't been actively involved with Seti@Home in a couple of years, and I've started to make a little bit of a comeback over the past month (I think) by having one machine crunch some Seti@Home numbers. I can give that a good "kick" with another machine.

I'll try to keep you informed as to what happens the next time I'm able to post on here.

- Mike.

Computer Work

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:57:58 GMT

I've spent quite a bit of time today working on a few computers of mine, which I haven't really done in awhile.

This morning I went out in search of some new DVD's, to try to add onto my collection. I've been borrowing a lot of Dave's DVD's and I've realized that I don't even own a lot of the "classics" that everybody seems to own. I didn't even have any of the titles from The Matrix series. How sad is that ?

I took a drive this morning over to the GameStop that's in Round Lake, as they have a pretty big collection of used DVD's over there. They had a deal going on where you buy 2 DVD's and you get 2 more for free, the DVD's of the lesser dollar amount are free. So I got The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and I Robot for around $13.00 total. Since I was in the area, I went to the Walmart in Round Lake and bought "Freaky Friday" on DVD, which I've seen before, but had never owned. (Unfortunately, they didn't have that at GameStop. If they did, I would've bought it there).

I've worked on my laptop this afternoon while I was watching Freaky Friday. I haven't seen that movie since it came out (really) and I forgot about how that was such of a fun movie to watch. That was the good old days when Lindsay Lohan was a good girl, drug free. Also for Mean Girls lol, that was another good movie that she was in. She's so hot in those films. I mean, what guy couldn't resist this picture ? Anyway, I only got a few programs installed on my laptop, not much, I'll still have to install a lot more, though. At least I got something done on it today.

I decided to finally do something with one of the hard drives that I recently bought on eBay. I dug up the Dell OptiPlex GX150 machine I had (which had no hard drive) and I put one of the 20GB hard drives in it. I put in the hard drive that had the Apple logo on it, and I discovered it already had an old copy of Windows on it, so I wiped it clean and started it fresh. Turns out that the Apple-logo'ed hard drive worked just fine in a PC. I thought it was going to be a problem because, before, I stripped some hard drives out of old DirecTV recorders and they weren't compatable with PC's. Believe me, that was a nightmare I had to live through. Good thing is that it worked. I left the seller on eBay some positive feedback, as it did seem to be like a good deal. I haven't done anything with the other 20GB or the 40GB hard drives yet. I will soon.

While I was in the basement working on all that this evening, with that one computer, I watched The Matrix (again) and I Robot (again), which I hadn't seen in awhile. I'd like to look into getting more DVD's for my collection, as my collection is, erm, kinda small right now. I really need to get into a lot of the classics that everyone has.

The machine on the left is the Dell OptiPlex GX150 that I put the Apple-logo'ed 20GB hard drive into. It's a P3 1.0GHz machine with 512MB of RAM (maxed out to the motherboard limit), and now, recently, the 20GB hard drive that I just put into it. The machine to the right was the machine I gave back to Dave's work, as that's where both of these machines came from originally.
EDIT :
Since I had mentioned Lindsay Lohan, I found out last night that on April 15th, Emma Watson (who plays Hermoine Grainger in the Harry Potter movies) just turned 18, and when she was out that day, being 18 years of age, there's pictures floating around on the internet showing up her skirt. My god.

- Mike.

Boredom

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:00:29 GMT

I'm pretty bored, as you might tell -

- Mike.

Flat-Panels

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:58:44 GMT

It's been a couple of days since I last made an update. I'll start from where I left off.

I worked the other day, like usual, it was nice because of the nice weather (I can't get over how warm it is, I'm really liking it a lot, because I've put up with so much shit during the winter), and it was pretty okay for the number of cars we've done, not too busy but not too slow, where we stayed open all day long.

Last week, I addressed to my dad about some lightbulbs that we needed at this house for the arcade machines in the basement, most specifically, the Tekken 3 machine and the Pinball machine we have. The two lightbulb numbers I took down were #555 and #755, as those were the bulb numbers for the lights that light up the Quarter slots on the front doors of those two machines. At the carwash, they have an electronic vending machine outside that sells some products, and the circuit board that controls the buttons for the machine (think of it as a very fancy candy machine, but for sales other than candy) that needed to be repaired. My dad took the circuit board to a vending machine supply place to have them repair it, as that's what they do. At that facility, they also sell gaming arcade things, which would include those lightbulbs. He bought me the lightbulbs for our machines when he was over there, and, when I came home from work on Tuesday, I opened up the machines and changed the bulbs to ones that work. Those coin slots on those machines probably haven't worked in years, but now they do. Since we've put a new game arcade machine in the basement, that machine also had dead lightbulbs for the Quarter slots as well. Good thing that my dad bought more than I had needed, so I changed those bulbs too. The bulbs were really cheap, only like $6.00.

Unfortunately, I haven't received my DTV coupons in the mail yet, but I'm hoping that they come in sometime this week, because I'd like to buy those 2 DTV converter boxes to set them up at my dad's house this weekend and at the carwash.

Also, unfortunately, I haven't been able to give those hard drives I bought from eBay a go yet, but I hope to do something with them coming up. I still haven't left any feedback to the seller of the hard drives on eBay yet, but I'm sure they'll be OK. I should just go ahead and leave him some positive feedback as he did pack them really well and the shipping was quite quick.

I did, however, get my laptop working with the 80GB hard drive that I stipped out of the laptop I got not that long ago. And the 60GB hard drive that I pulled out of David's Acer laptop did work, as I got Windows XP Professional installed on that computer. I only got some programs installed on my laptop, not too much yet, but I did get all of the Windows Updates installed on it. I also have to pull up some drivers that I missed, the Card Reader specifically, but there might be another I missed. Then I'll have to do the same procedure with the other laptop, but less programs I would say, as I probably won't use that as much.

Also, when I got off of work on Tuesday, I stopped over at the thrift store that's down the street from the carwash and I got pretty lucky. The electronics behind their counter were 50% off, so I bought 2 flat-panel monitors from them. They were both Dell flat-panels, oddly, and the both of them combined cost me around $110.00. The first one was a flat-panel just like the one that I use at my main machine here at home, which is a Dell E173FP. It's 17", it was made sometime in 2004, it's in pretty good physical condition, but there are two problems that I can note from it. It's got probably 15 dead pixels in it (two "lines" towards the middle on the right side, on top of eachother, about an inch apart), and the backlight on it doesn't perform as bright a picture as the same monitor I use for my main machine. The dead pixels aren't so much of a big deal to me. Still, it's not a bad screen. I've put it to use on the other desk that's here in my room, which is home to my Dell Dimension 4600C computer and my 2nd Custom PC. I replaced an older ViewSonic 15" flat-panel that was there before, which was made sometime in 2002. The other flat-panel is 15" in size and it's beige. My guess of it's manufacture date was sometime in 1999 or 2000, I'm putting a guess on 2000 though. I wasn't able to hook it up to a computer with Lavalys Ultimate Edition to see what model number it is or when it was made. But still, it's a nice screen. It has a pretty good picture on it and it offers both DVI and VGA inputs. The front of the screen looks a lot like the old Dell CRT monitor that I had with my old beige Dell computer, which was a Dell E770P monitor. I have a lot of old Dell catalogs, I had a look in the oldest one I have, which was from October 2000, and they were selling that 15" flat-panel for probably around $1,000.00.

When I was over there, I also bought a couple of inkers for the printer in the basement. They also had WarGames on VHS, which I'll leave at work (as I have my own little "stash" of VHS tapes at work).

That's around all I need to report, for now.

EDIT :
Okay, a little research from Wikipedia is making me believe that the Beige Dell Flat-Panel that I have is a Dell 1501FP, which I think is one of their first flat-panels. I still need to research into as when it was made, which, again, I'll find out from Lavalys Ultimate Edition.

- Mike.

Spring !

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:32:31 GMT

Well, well, there's a lot that I've been up to since I last blogged on here.

I'm so glad that it's finally SPRING ! The weather is so nice out right now. Oh my god, my wait for nice weather is finally over !

First thing is that I worked all weekend, which was good, because I hate having to work short days.

On Sunday, I had to help Dave and one of his relatives move a new game arcade machine into the basement. He bought it awhile ago on Craigslist and it sat in the back of the truck (in the garage) for a long time, a few weeks I think, and it's finally now in the basement.

Awhile ago, about a week ago I think, Dave sold one of the slot machines on Craigslist. It was the first slot machine we ever bought, which had some problems with the coin slot. That was probably a smart move, to be honest.

Since his relatives were over yesterday, we partied in the basement for awhile. I played my favorite slot machine down there - I was so happy. :) I played a little Tekken 3 for awhile and only got up to around Stage 7 before I wasn't able to do much more than that. I gave up around then.

Something I didn't expect to happen last night - well, just happened. My friend David sent me a text message around 8:00PM asking what I was planning on doing for the rest of the night. I replied back saying that I wasn't going to be doing anything at all. He told me in the next text message that him and Ken were going to stop by for a few hours. Around 10:00PM, they did stop in. I was really surprised.

David's new bf Ken is really nice, he was much nicer in person than I ever expected him to be based on what I was told before. We hung out in my room for awhile. I gave David all of the music that I pulled off of my parts Dell Inspiron 6000 - since he's in the DJ'ing business. I gave him probably around 1,700 new songs, which came out to around 7GB worth of music.

When he came over, he brought over his broken Acer Aspire 3000 laptop (that his dad kinda destroyed) in hopes of us trying to get it to run again. He and I thought that the hard drive in the computer was fucked, so I told him that I would trade him his "broken" hard drive (which was 60GB) for the 60GB hard drive out of my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, as I was going to be taking the 80GB hard drive out of my new Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop (the one that has the broken screen), thereby upgrading my laptop with the bigger hard drive.

So we did just that, but, apparantly his computer was still having the same problems as it did before, but we were able to get Windows XP to install on it 100%. The only problem is that it looks like only half of the laptop works now, while the other half just sits there like it's dead. His keyboard doesn't really work on it, the wireless card doesn't work on it, and the touchpad doesn't really work on it. The machine seems to work "okay" with a USB mouse and USB keyboard, and we tried to take the machine apart to see if it's a loose wire or something, but we didn't really do too good on it. We just screwed it back together and we're not really sure what to do with it.

But, I have a feeling the hard drive that came out of his laptop is "okay", and I'm in high hopes of getting his hard drive to work in my broken Dell Inspiron 6000 (the one with the cracked screen). It'll be good for something, I guess.

Good news - I received my packages in the mail this afternoon. I got my 3 hard drives in the mail today. They look okay, and they were packed really well, but I'm not too sure about one of them because it has an Apple logo on it, making me think that it might not work in a PC as it's a hard drive intended to go into an Apple computer ? So, for right now, I have them sitting in the basement until I'm able to put them into 3 computers that I have that need hard drives. After I find out that they work, I'll leave the guy I bought them from on eBay some positive feedback. I'll probably do that tomorrow or on Wednesday.

I also got my "Trackdown" (aka "Takedown") DVD in the mail today. :) Yeah, like I said before, that DVD is almost impossible to find anywhere. And it was brand new in the shrinkwrap as I was told when I placed an order for it at Family Video in Round Lake Beach. I think it was worth buying, to be honest.

I'm awaiting something else to be coming in the mail coming up. I'm looking for the DTV coupons that I ordered online to be coming in. My dad placed an order for them (on his address) around the same time I did, and he got his last Saturday. And he used them to get discount on DTV converter boxes. I ordered the coupons as well, and once I get them, I'll use them to buy 2 DTV converter boxes, probably one of them will end up at the carwash, and other will end up in the bedroom at my dad's house.

So, as of right now, I'm installing Windows XP Professional on my laptop, with the 80GB hard drive in it. After that finishes I'll probably do the other laptop, just to see if it'll install Windows XP Professional (at all). Not too sure on that hard drive as David's dad dropped the laptop and the laptop's been fucked ever since, so I wonder if the hard drive will be alright.

That's around all that I need to report on here.

- Mike.

Updating

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:57:13 GMT

It's kinda been awhile since I really made a post on here. I've got a few things to mention.

First thing is that I just bought something on eBay - the first time in a long time actually. I bought a set of 3 hard drives (one 40GB, and two 20GB hard drives) for around $50.00 plus shipping, as I'm really running low on hard drives here at home.

Today, I went out for awhile and did a little shopping. My mission was to try to find some posters for LOST, but apparantly I can't find any anywhere. I've tried Walmart in Antioch, the Walmart in Round Lake, and the Kmart in Round Lake, too. None of them had any. I might buy one online as I think it'd be interesting to have one, pin it up on the wall somewhere.

My time out this afternoon wasn't all wasted. At Walmart, I bought "13 Going On 30" on DVD for only $5.00. I kinda wanted to see it but never did. Might play it sometime coming up, not sure. At Kmart, I bought "Short Circuit 2" on DVD for about $7.50. I have the first one and thought it was pretty good. I watched the 2nd movie this evening and liked it somewhat better than the 1st. And since I was in Round Lake today, I stopped into the Family Video store over there and bought a couple of DVD's, too. I bought the 2006 movie "Pulse" (good movie, only for like $4.99) and I bought "Track Down" (aka "Takedown"), the Kevin Mitnick movie. They didn't have it in the store, but I paid for it and it's going to be delivered to me as a brand new DVD. That one was around $13.00 ? The Kevin Mitnick movie is almost impossible to find anywhere, and it's a good film.

Didn't get up to much else other than that today. Tomorrow, I might go in the basement and clean out a space for one of the freezers in the garage to go into the basement, as that's what Dave has been pushing me to get into for awhile lately.

- Mike.

Weekend

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:11:54 GMT

Can't really remember when it was I last made an update on here, but I guess it's about time to blog again.

I just want to get this out of the way, as I just did it, and I might forget to mention it otherwise. I just signed a "Save Windows XP" petition, because it sounds like Microsoft will pull Windows XP off of the shelves, sometime in June it looks like, in favor of the newer operating system, Windows Vista. I signed it because I despise Vista and support XP.

As for this last weekend, I didn't exactly work that much. I brought the Nissan with me on Friday to my dad's house, and the car stayed down there, apparantly. Long story, but I'll make it short. On Saturday, it was really rainy, shit weather for business, so I left work at 10:00AM. I bought myself some lunch and made it way back to my dad's house. As of last week, Lidia really fucked up her Toyota Camry, she sideswiped it against another car, and she wanted it to get repaired. They had to replace the right front fender and the right mirror, and it needs a lot of paintwork, because there's like a million other places on the car that she got scraped up, too. So her car will be gone until this Friday, and she's borrowing my Nissan until then. Yesterday, on Saturday, my dad and I took a trip up to my house and retrived the Cavalier for me to drive, while Lidia's borrowing my other car. I wasn't too hot on the idea, because, to be perfectly honest, she can't drive worth a fuck, and has really bad judgement. I let my dad know that and somehow he told that to Lidia, and she told him, to tell me, that if anything happened to the car she'd pay for it, like if it got any scrapes and dents.

Now, as for today, I didn't work too long either, because I got dragged into going to my half-sister's daughter's 1st birthday. (Corina's daughter Kailey, who I guess you'd call my half-niece). It was nice to see some distant family members at the gathering. They had good food and my mom didn't want to go, so I had to go there with Steph and bring a big bag of presents for Kailey. All-in-all, we had an okay time there. Only thing is that I haven't really done too many hours at work this week, only around 15 or so, so my check will be relatively small.

As with work, I found out that Stan bought a brand new computer the other day. He spent about $960.00 on a HP computer at Circuit City the other day. I don't know much about it, but as far as I can gather, it's got a Quad Core Intel CPU in it, a 750GB SATA hard drive in it, 4GB of RAM, a TV tuner, a LightScribe DVD burner, and, of course, Windows Vista Home Premium. As for hardware, it came with the tower (of course), the keyboard, mouse, but no monitor. Much like I've heard from other people (like my friend David), he's having problems with his programs with Vista. The biggest thing is his program for burning DVD's. Which I think is a version of Nero he had from his old computer. I told him that I'd burn him the copy of Nero I had for my DVD burner, and see if it works. When I go to work on Tuesday, I leave the install CD I burned on the desk for him to use when he's over there next.

Stan says that he seen the same computer at Best Buy, but at a higher price, so that's why he opted for Circuit City. Personally, I think he spent a little too much for that computer, but hey, it's his decision. Stan says that he was thinking about changing back to Windows XP on his new machine, but he says that he's afraid that if when he installs Windows XP on it, he might lose his Warranty, and there might be no drivers for that particular model for Windows XP, either. Plus, according to him, he didn't get a re-install CD for Vista.

From what I gather, Stan really trashed his old computer. He said that it was getting really slow for what he was wanting to do with it (mostly burning DVD's), so he decided to overclock the CPU that's in it. Turns out, that when he overclocked the chip, he kinda fucked up the motherboard, as a lot of the components don't work anymore for it. He said that the keyboard and mouse ports don't work, the USB doesn't work, and a couple of the RAM slots don't work either. So he plugged in a PCI USB expansion card and has been using a lot on USB. It sounds like it's a pretty beat up machine, so I guess that's what made him want to buy a new one.

Speaking of my friend David, I talked to him today on MSN for a little while. Turns out that he lives all the way over in DeKalb, which is really far west and south of where I've really ever been before. The farthest I been west was probably in McHenry, where he used to live, before he broke up with Kyle. He now lives with his Aunt and works for Chase, I guess they have an office building out that way.

He says that he wants to claim the rest of his stuff from Kyle's house, and pay me a visit, or that we should hook up sometime and do something, as I haven't seen him in months on end. He says that he's got all of his DJ equipment at Kyle's house and Kyle doesn't seem to want to give it up, but I'm sure something will happen where he'll get it all back. I'd really like to go and chill with him, but it'll probably take some time as we live so far away from eachother now.

- Mike.

Dream

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:45:16 GMT

Oh my god.

Last night I had the most wonderful dream of my entire life.

I dreamt that I was at Navy Pier (in Downtown Chicago, which is a big pier on Lake Michigan) with an old friend from Franklin Park, Melisa. In my dream, we weren't going out. We just went over there to kill time as we went there with a group of people, and we sorta ventured off into our own ways. Melisa seen her ex-boyfriend and (in the dream) she was single, so, to make her ex gealous, she made me hold her hand to make it seem like we were an item. Oh wow, did it feel wonderful. Her hand was so much smaller than mine and when she was holding it, she seemed to have a thundergrip.

We were walking to the Ferris Wheel then, holding hands as we were walking. She then said "Hi". And I knew I was looking forward to what was coming up. So I said "Hi" back. We talked for a little while and, when we finally got onto the Ferris Wheel, we made out for the longest time, as the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier takes a really long time to spin around. Oh god, was it wonderful.

That was the best dream I ever had in my life. It's a damn shame that it never happened. :'(

However, it made me feel better about myself that love still exists for me out there, as I am still a human being, I just gotta find it lol.

- Mike.