a geek and his life
Archive for September, 2005
my time was off?!
02794 days
in geeky
not sure why a non-active directory install of windows xp doesn’t default to syncing time off some microsoft service (windows update, for example), but it doesn’t.
i recently rebuilt one of my home machines and just realized the clock was off. it was 2 minutes slow relative to my shortwave-mastered desk clock.
during this install, i’ve been making an effort to add to a setup script, such that i don’t have to try to remember how to resolve all the annoyances. this example is:
w32tm /config “/manualpeerlist:clock.sjc.he.net clock.isc.org” /syncfromflags:MANUAL /update
w32tm /resync
in other words: sync off ntp and to use a stratum 2 clock and a stratum 3 clock that are both very close to me, network-wise, then to sync.
i may post the whole damn script, when after i run across everything that annoys me in the default xp install.
reorg
02799 days
in life
posted without commentary… mostly.
strange things are afoot at the circle k; pretty significant reorg a few rungs up the corporate ladder.
i’m now in the “Microsoft Platform Products and Services Division”
final
02800 days
in life
returned from a wonderful weekend with nicole and the kids in idaho falls to find the court accepted uncontested judgement in my mailbox.
my divorce will be final on friday.
head filled stuffed with cotton
02806 days
in life
i’m heading into work today, despite not feeling all that much better. it’s been over a week; isn’t that enough?
oh well, i got laundry done.
i pulled off a halfway moveable type 3.2 upgrade, the other day. i’m probably going to export the entries, tar off the static content and start over, with a new “mt root” or whatever they call it (base directory?). the nasty hacks i threw into the default templates and my poor css still linger. reverting to the 3.2 shipped templates and css leaves some bizaare remnants in the permalink line including double percent signs (“%% PM”) in the date.
under the weather and eggs, take ii
02808 days
in life
blue’s laying eggs again. three the last 48 hours. my brother asked if i was eating them. ew.
i’ve been nasty sick for almost a week and my sleep schedule is all whacked out. i forced myself out of bed at 10:30 this morning, knowing that i need to get back to normal hours.
capable of almost nothing else, last week, i watched the majority of season 2 of buffy and 5 or 6 episodes of jon pertwee era dr. who. i got mono when i was 15 or 16 and watched an entire week of doctor who, since then all the other doctors seem “wrong” for the part. side note, the new doctor is really good. if you haven’t seen the first season of the new series and want to, tell me. i *cough*divx*cough* might be able to help you figure something out.
back to laundry. oh, and i need to grocery shop, too.
sirius satellite radio
02809 days
in geeky
i bought a sirius satellite radio. local radio is pretty good, but the content on sirius is suprisingly good.
purchasing it for home, i wasn’t particularly excited about any of the off-the-shelf offerings for tuners. none of them fit with my pc-centric entertainment. i vaguely remembered something about a company called “timetrax” that was doing pvr/tivo-style software for sirius and xm. i looked them up and found that they produce both software and hardware. so… i bought a full “kit” from them including everything needed.
their hardware is a small black box about 2 inches by 2 inches and maybe 1.5 inches tall. it is a usb device, powered by a 12vdc 2 amp wall-wart transformer with an 1/8 inch mini-phono audio out. the usb, audio, and power are on one side of the box with the opposing side housing a 14-pin block molex looking connector. it’s designed to plug into a car tuner, in place of the “sirius connect” adapter.
typically, one purchases a car tuner for use with a given (in-dash) head unit. sirius manufactures one tuner and adapters for jvc, kenwood, and alpine. the tuner and adapter mate at the 14 pin connector with metal flanges and screws to secure the two pieces together. timetrax takes the place of the adapter and presents a usb interface (actually, rs232 over usb) to their software. this allows them to change channels and pull information off the tuner, just like an in-dash car stereo does (artist/track info is displayed on most head units). pretty clever.
their software called “timetrax recast” works for both the sirius and xm flavors of their hardware. it presents a fairly simplistic ui with everything you’d expect from a radio (signal strength, channel info including chan. name and genre, artist, track title, “presets”, etc.). the software begins buffering a song when the track info changes and “records” an mp3 or wav either when you hit “record” or based on your white/black lists (“record this song anytime it’s on” or “record everything except this song”). id3 tags are stamped into the mp3 and the tracks are organized based on user-defined preferences for directory names and structure.
the hardware’s fine, though the plastic case isn’t secured to the tuner, at all. the software is complete and utter crap. it’s needlessly show and cumbersome, it hangs, and the recording mechanism creates big hierarchies of empty directories.
it is remarkably cool to stream music off the satellite to work via shoutcast at higher quality that sirius’ online stuff.
more about my impressions of the sirius service, itself, later. i’ve also discovered an excellent alternative to timetrax; again, more later. now? i have to do laundry.
