I am making an attempt to setup a test enviroment for my project until I get all of the hardware I need. I've been attemping to setup bluetooth in a simmilar manner to what my gumstix should/will have. It is proving to be a bit of a trick so far. I may just need to slow down and think smaller, if smaller is possible. I may just wait until I get the gumstix and work with that.

Good news my Relay Control board is on the way. January 9th is esitmated delivery date. So it will be hear earlier than I had anticipated. Yay.

My relay control board has been ordered. I don't think I will get it until mid to late January from the looks of things. Looks like the guy who is providing me with my board is going to be gone until January 9th. So progess until then will be quite slow. By then I may even get another component to work with which could help speed things along. There is a small chance it will show up soonish but I'm not counting on it.

I've started a halfassed tracking page for my project. I may take it live once I've gotten beyond concept of project into building and hardware. Then intrested partys could keep track of progress and maybe contribute.

It shall be a long long time before I attend another football related event. I would have been much more entertained if the whole stadium went up in a giant fireball.

I need to go to Ground Kontrol sometime. I saw the place from out side the Fiona show its just behind the Roseland on the other side of the street. Games and beer! Seriously can it be any cooler? Perhaps I will take my self there for my birthday.

New years is rapidly closing in. Do I have resolutions? Maybe. I haven't decided yet. I always think about picking something supid easy like stop smoking then I can't fail cause I don't smoke. But thats just about as easy as not picking anything at all.

I got my anual today. They are cutting it a bit close as tomorrow is the last possible day to get it done. So my raise should be showing up sometime soonish . The raise should help with my projects and some other things coming up as well.

Updated software. It didn't fix the problem. Turns out I had to rebuild the half the crap that makes perfmon work. But now my G15 keyboard LCD does display CPU.

Haven't done the graphics thing yet cause I havent found all the images I want to steal use yet. But use of these images is a ways off anyways I still need hardware to go with them.

The other part of Chris' gift showed up. It's funny and useful. With sections like Friendzone Bridge: Actually more of a refactoring, this includes a variety of tested, reliable techniques for escaping a female’s friendzone designation., goto Guy: Becoming an expert technical resource for semi or nontechnical but toothsome coworkers. Best backed up with a few Friendzone refactorings or Mediator., Trojan Proxy: An extremely effective, low-risk high-planning pattern for connecting through a third-party safe proxy. Strategies include children, pets, female friends, and married male friends. and Pan-Dimensional Renaissance Differentiator: Perfecting the well-rounded appeal women love. Also includes differentiation from other competitors for scarce female resources.

I'm still sleepy and never took my nap.

Didn't sleep so well last night. Kept waking up. Staying out a little late didn't help matters much. But thankfuly work is slower than it was yesterday.

I've got some software to update on my PC tonight and maybe some graphics to make or see if I can solisit graphicaly inclided a friend to do so for me.

I want a nap.

Back at work. It is slow.

I think I came up with a name/acronym for my project. I think I'm gonna order the relay board on Friday. I'm also going to look into using perl or just a shell script to control the relay board rather than the multi script method I've got goint on right now. Although the perl may take longer I think it could be worth it.

Chris will be in town sometime tonight. Might hang out with him after Tiffany and Rachael stop by to hang out with Murray Katt.

Got an invite to go to Portland today late last night. So I went. I also saw Fun with Dick and Jane last night. Lots of BMWs in it some Mercedes too but typicaly the Merc's were driven by the not so good guys in the movie.

Tomorrow is back to work day. Hopefuly a slow day.

Helped Chris fix honey over the phone cause he current has no internet so I couldn't do it.

My achilles kept me up part of the night. I'd flex then wake up from the pain rearnage my self, remind my self to not move that part, then it would all happen again.

I went to Salem gave gifts got gifts took family pictures. Came home hooked up my new keyboard a Logitech G15. It's got a sweet LCD screen on that can be setup to display game stats, email, rss feeds, system stats. It's got some sweet macro keys too. I'm hoping to use for photoshop.

I got some other good loot too. Like a ND filter for mein camera which I hope to make good use of sometime over the summer or spring.

Linux is very cool. I like to call it the manual override OS. If you need control over something chances are you can. It's very flexible. But sometimes the 10 percent rule causes problems. The 10 precent rule dictates you must be at least 10% smarter than what ever it is you are tring to operate. I''ve bumped into a wall with a bash script I'm attempting to write for my project...

Kinda makes me feel like bashing my head on the keyboard or table until I get it... I just want to do a less than comparison on file names and delete files with a name less than a given name. Names are all numeric so it should be easy. But the damn script keeps tring to run the files rather than comparing. It can be put off for a the project is still very young. I'm open to ideas and straight code to help.

In case you didn't see the first time Dusty devided to do it again. Apprently I'm a wizard. I think it's funny.

Exchanged giftswith Cat I now have a strap for my tripod now hauling it around shouldn't be near as much of a chore that it was. I love my tripod but it's not the lightest or most portable one. It is however quite solid.

My project has come to a stand still until pay day. I'm basicaly to a point where I need hardware to work with. This project may span on for a months. It's gonna have to go like this buy something, test it, modify code or hardware, test, rinse repeat.

The gumstix I want is back in stock. But no money to buy it. But I might with my next check come the end of the month. If not the gumstix then the relay board maybe both.

It seems some spammer has been spoofing my domain to send spam so I'm getting a lot a lot of OTOO messages and bounce type notifications even a "fuck you "from someone. If it keeps up I'm gonna turn my catchall off so all those messages just bounce off me as well. Fuckin' spammers.

My little project is coming along. I've got a couple of the scripts written, mostly. Somewhat tested. There will be a race condtion that I'm not going to bother to fix nor am I sure I can fix it. But this race condtion is nothing as chances of me ,who will be the designer, the engineer and end user triggring the event are going to be quite low. Even if I'm not the one operating or using the system at the time there is about a 2 second window for a problem at a pre-scheduled time and the only ways it will be a problem is if there is operator intervention or a doublebooking, which may not even be possible due to the nature of the control device.

Anyways my project needs a name. KITT and KARR are out they have been taken. An acronym would be good. I'm taking suggestions. It will be able to start, stop, lock, unlock, my car on a schedule or an another remote interface.

Outlook is the new email client we use at work. I spent just over a year using Lotus Notes for email and technical refrences. Now I must use 2 tools to do the same job that we had Lotus Notes doing. So my already taxed box at work has to take yet another hit buy running another resource hungry package. Oh well, apprently it's in the name of money progress. Now I must learn new shortcuts like ctrl+Q to mark a message as read. Where as in Notes I could use the insert key to toggle a messages read status.

It was like 50 degrees out this morning which is 20+ warmer than it has been some mornings. At first I thought I was feeling warmer because of the cloths I was wearing I did not figure it was warmer until I looked at the temp. readout in the car and saw 50. As long as it keeps the snow and ice away I'm happy.

While at work yesterday I checked on my badwidth usage at home. I saw a sudden drop of traffic. I didnt think much of it then I got home and one of my machines had gone off. My server was still up I proceeded to checked the UPS status logs and graphs. Power had gone out for about 40 minutes. I love being able to gleem such information with a click or 2.

I plan to finish my x-mas purchases today. YAY!

I found 4 channel relay control board that I will be ordering later for my project. Most of the ones I'd found thusfar have a) been kits I'd have to build b) too expensive c) A and B.

The relay board is really the key piece. I can start testing and some limited prototyping once I have it. I can see if I can get it to push buttons like I will need it to. I will then need to figure out how write scripts for it to do various tasks.

It's come back. I've been futher researching the use of a gumstix for use with my car. I ordered a book which details control of a remote controll car from a computer. It cost around five bucks so if it uses anything other than the serial port it's not a problem. It has a few other hacks too that could be fun later on.

I've still got many dollars to spend on this project and most likely months as well but I'm gonna do it damnit.

I'm still working on it but so far it includes
Black cars go faster.
Free software works better (read that how ever you want)
For each bad day there is ususaly a good day.

So last night I ended up in portland to hang out with Chris and Cat. Had sushi. Chris shopped but bought nothing. I've still got my mom to buy for.

I don't like sleeping on floors, much too hard.

Work was less unbusy today.

I need a new fog light bulb and lense or housing. Another thing on the list.

that is all.

Extra slow today at work over 3 hours spent not talking to customers but waiting for them to call. I like it when it's slow some get bored I however love it. Talk with people nearby or find other ways to goof off.

Bought gifts for a couple others. Still need to cover at least 1 more.

No progess on project I spoke of earlier. Maybe tomorrow if not tomorrow much later like new years.

I've got yet another geeky project idea. I need to go to radioshack and pick up a few parts then I shall try my idea. Then if my idea works I shall share it with the world. I may work on it tomorrow or after new years. I'm gonna need to make a shoping list after I take a look at the devices involved.

I've got a few other ideas that involve things I cannot afford, time, tools, equipment, hardware, software. Well you get the idea. This idea is quite simple compared to some of the others I've had.

Stuff has been slowing down at work for the season. This also means we get many lackys on the phones who don't have a clue as to what they are doing. It's very annoying.

Christmas shoping is hard and kinda sucks to do. I love my people I have to shop for but I hate having to figure out what to get them. I like seeing them get the gift and them using it or what ever. I've still got a couple people left.

I bought my self a cap and gloves at REI last night. In an attempt to stay warm while out side so I can spend a little more time outside and not feel like a Bensicle. At least not as much of one anyways.

My gloves will hopefuly not hamper too much dexterity so I can still work mein camera, changes my lenses, manipulate my tripod etc all while keeping my hands warm or at least warmer than they would have been with out them.

It's times like this I almost wish I a) took an electonics course in HS b) still had Alex around. I don't think they would have let me take an electonics course in HS cause I don't think I had the math prereqs. So Alex would be the guy. The guy was insane in mostly good ways. Built robots, could solve complex math problems with a single pencil, program like a machine, and run like the wind. But he is off in So Cal at College, or in Salem.

What prompted this? I want to inferface a yet to be purchased gumstix with my car. Cron jobs for starting it Monday-Friday. Buletooth detecion of phone for unlocking it. Maybe audio over ride on the stereo for when it detects my wireless handsfree in use. Alas I need to find a way to inface with all these things. I have got some ideas but no answers nor all the know how to do all the coding I'd need/want to do. My brain keeps returning to this idea it will stop for a month or two then comes back. So I will mostlikely be persuing this idea in another 4-6 months when the idea comes up again and my bank account can stand it. But it is something I will keep researching until I can do something about it.

I got Nathan's WRT54G working as desired. I tried calling to let him know but no answer and I don't like leaving messages so I didn't. So I will try later or just take it to work Monday.

I had been getting quite frustrated with the process and linksys again. Until these routers I had really disliked linksys. I'd never had a good experince with their wireless devices until fairly recently. I think the cisco buyout helped them out some too.

I'm needing food.

New glass for mein camera. Maybe a nice 200mm L lense or a stubby little 55mm
maybe a 85mm USM deal. I can't afford none at this time. Well I could find a way to fake it, get a credit card, dip into my overdraft protection type moneys, stealing, a second job. But I won't be doing any of those things. Maybe sometime next month or the next.

A company I will call borbis is lame and needs to get the right kind of support for a company of their size. It would be something like a billionaire buying a used geo metro then getting angry when he found out it would take a couple weeks to rebuild engine. And he wanted it fixed on the spot. I is not a perfect analogy but you get the idea.

I've been feeling not so good about work while at work recently. The company is doing new things that I don't feel are good for the company or workers. The company thinks they are good for the company and the customer too I'm sure. The changes started with the charging for soda and are currently at layoffs which is something the company had previously managed to not do. Reason for lay offs is supposedly that the company didn't meet certain goals so it had to cut 2%. Removing people from the pay roll is easy but won't really fix the problem. Sure cutting a redundant possition here and there, the 1 manager of the other manager(not plural) who manages some supervisors, again you get the idea. But hackng 2% to make for goal not met seems a bit off to me. Why are there people in training when people's positon in the department they are being trained for are being let go? I only knew one person who got canned I knew of a couple others but never spoke to them. Also lets not forget the 5 or so VPs that have left the company in the last 12 months. I my self have not heard anything offical about the 2% but thats what I heard and these are mearly my observations. Something is wrong.

The good news is someone else considers pictures of cars to be art and is selling them. Yay.

I think Nathan is cursed. Every wrt54g he has had touched has had problems. I've done 2 others with no problems. I've spent the past 3 hours working on the latest one and it doesn't want to play nicely. I got it to reflash once then it promptly stopped giving out addresses and would not allow wired connections and wireless was spotty for a while then it was just not working. I did manage to restore it to a supported firmware.

I'm not done with it yet but I've got to do some more research. Damn this is a pain.

I found a patch of ice this morning on my way to work. I deviated ever so slightly from my normal path to get to the free way in hopes of being able to beat a bus to the on ramp. Came around a corner and slid about some by the time I realized I hit a patch of ice things were fine and I was moving in the proper forward motion. Wonder what it looked like to other drivers on the road.

I am affraid it is time for new tires. An alignment would be in order as well. Then sometime in the newyear breaks will need to be done as when my car got her checkup in October she had 50% up front and 75% in back. So that will absorb some income once I have some to be absorbed on my car again.

Here is one of the pictures of the view from the place I helped someone setup in Portland. Nice place really.

Is it really moving if it is setting up your other home? I think of it more as setting up. Sure we moved a few boxes but the bulk of the boxes were new furniture that needed some assembly. So I helped a friend set his place up over the weekend. I got a couple pictures of the view but not much else. I had hoped to wonder around portland with my camera but people made plans and other people showed up and other plans had to happen and so forth.

Nathan has got another WRT54G to get setup as a bridge. I was also quite delighted to find linksys is going to keep providing a hackable device. With WRT54G V5 they changed them to no longer be hackable. Now they will be selling the WRT54GL the L is for Linux.

I'm ready to go home. Sleep some more. I was already worn down a bit then went to Portland and froze while I was outside. Not to mention the late night and busy busy days.

Went home from work at lunch. Not sure if I am going to in tomorrow.

Setup automagical downloads for some TVshows from torrents after I forced my self to get up after 5pm from my go-home and nap nap. Here is a how to.

The Captain came overand hung out with the eggnog so I drank them.

It's cold out. I don't like the cold. The problem is I hate buying clothes. So most of my wardobe is at least a year old if not more, and does not include many if any winter type clothing. I have no gloves, no boots, maybe 1 sweatshirt, 1 pair of warm socks, I have warm cap type thing that I never returned to Chris from halloween. I am simply not prepared for much cold weather and I don't want to spend the money on clothing, when I could spend it on anything else. This may be the winter to actually buy something for the long cold spell that is winter in Oregon.