Not Necessarily Interesting News

Well, I got told by my manager at work that as of January 1st I’ll be unemployed. Again. Along with my office mate. Whee! That’s not all. Last night the clutch on my truck went out. There’s a nice present for a soon to be unemployed person.
When I got home to tell my wife the joyous news about my job she asked what’s wrong with my eye. Apparently the stress raised my blood pressure enough to burst a couple blood vessels in my eyes. Enjoy the pictured goodness. It’s spread more since I took that pic.

Well, seeing as I had to replace the HDD in the iBook anyways I decided to upgrade. I went with a 60GB 5400RPM drive. A decent improvement over my 30GB.
I followed the extremely helpful instuctions found on PB Fixit. They have detailed instructions with good pictures for removing and replacing most any part on an iBook.
When I got to the very last step before removing the HDD, which is disconnecting the cable to the internal speakers I ran into a problem. When I carefully pulled on the plug the entire connector came off the logic board. Crap, I’ll be able to get the new drive in but won’t have sound from here on out. Not really a good situation. The connector is located against and partially under a brace for the case. Now I was going to be forced to completely disassemble the iBook to see what I had going on under there.
I got it apart and took a good look at the connector. It has four connections to traces on the board. When it came off it actually pulled two traces off the board. I knew I didn’t have the tools to effect a repair on that. Time to head to Fry’s to look for a good soldering iron.
I cam home with a soldering station and a couple of long sharp tips as the area I was working in was going to be real tight. Like soldering a thread to a needle. I got the first two contacts re-soldered and all looked good. I was happy. It looked like I’d at least have sound in one speaker. The other two, where the traces had pulled up, were going to be the challenge. I bent the legs of the connector to get as close to the pulled traces as possible. I coated them with a dab of flux and got to business. I pulled out my old printer’s loupe and set it up so I could see what I was doing. It was difficult but it looked like I got them done though I wasn’t to hopeful.
I spent the next hour putting it all back together. In the end I ended up with two extra screws but couldn’t figure out where they went for the life of me. 🙂
I got out the Apple Hardware Test CD and tried booting. I booted up but I didn’t hear the standard Apple boot sound. Crap. I ran the tests and everything seemed fine. I went ahead and installed the OS without problem. At first boot I got the little video they have and, lo and behold, I also got sound! From both speakers no less.
The iBook is now up and running better than new with its 60BG drive and it’s currently restoring from backup. Sweet.

Last week we went on vacation to Orlando. I wrote up entries for each day that I planned on back dating and posting when we got back. On the flight back my iBook ate its hard drive and lost all the posts. I’ll go back and try to recreate them when I have time. Luckily, I had downloaded our vacation pics to the laptop but didn’t erase the memory stick so all our pics, the only unrecoverable data, were saved. Thank God for backups. I backed up the laptop the day before we left so all I lost were those posts.

Today we caught a 6am flight to Orlando for 8 days of fun and relaxation at the Land of the Giant Rat(tm). Waking up at 4am is wrong in so many ways. That’s a bed time not a time to wake up.
We usually come here around the week before Thankgiving but decided to come a bit later this year to see Disney’s Christmas decorations and to celebrate my birthday on the 6th. We arrived around 11am and got to our hotel and picked up our Park Hopper passes. Some friends of ours from Austin also came out for the week but arrived the day before. We called them up and found they were at Epcot so we drove over to meet them.
First stop, Test Track. My son’s favorite ride in all the parks. We hung out for a few hours touring the World Showcase and headed back to our hotel for a rest. After a quick nap we went to Downtown Disney and looked around at the decorations.
We’re turning in early as it’s been a long day after waking up long before dawn. We’ll decide where we’re going tomorrow morning.

Last night we swung by Best Buy to pick up the latest Star Wars DVD. While browsing the store I noticed they had a brand new Xbox 360 kiosk. I got to play a few minutes of Call of Duty 2 and was blown the hell away. I think I’m in love.

It’ll be a while before I own one though for a couple reasons. $400?!?! Ok, you can get the hamstrung cheapo version for $299. To be really useful you’re going to spend back up to, and past, $400 buying things like HD cables and memory anyways. Also, it looks like game prices are going to start at $60/each. By the time you buy the Xbox, an extra controller or 3, and a couple of games you’re passing $550-600. I don’t think so. I guess I’ll wait until they drop the prices on the Xboxes to compete with the PS3 release next year. By then there’ll be a used game market also for cheap games.

For now I’ll keep playing with my old-school Xbox and PSP. Those have been relegated to second-class stauts since the release of Civ4 anyways. 🙂

Let’s see. My father went in for his second knee replacement surgery on Wednesday. He now has two bionic knees. Hopefully once he’s all healed up he’ll be a lot more mobile. I plan on taking my son on a hike of the Escalante River basin in a couple years and I hope that my father would be able to join us.

My wife and I have also been busy remodeling my friend Bill’s old kitchen. I guess the former contractor left him a bit high and dry so we’ve come in to finish the job. We’ve spent a couple nights working on it and so far have taken it from this to this. I still need to drop in the sink and the trim work and I’ll be done with the kitchen. We discovered that the bathtub faucets were done wrong and fixed those. I’m sure we’ll find other fuckups before we’re done. The guy did a good job painting but that’s about it. For us, it’s been hard but satisfying work. It’s nice to know you’re good at something else that you can use as a fallback career when/if the tech industry job doesn’t pan out. We’ll have it done in a couple more days.

Today at lunch I bought Civilization IV. I think I know where my nights will be going for the next several weeks/months. I was one of the lucky ones and got their bonus mistakenly shipped French Tech Trees. I really don’t feel like learning French and thankfully they’ve already started shipping out the correct ones upon asking. Sitting on the shelf at home I have Civ I, II, and III. I’ve been anxiously awaiting the shipping of this one. I can’t wait to get it installed and start playing.

Last night we were watching TV and heard a bang and then the lights went out. The living room was lit up by a flash of blue light. I knew what it was instantly. Someone hit a power pole somewhere in the neighborhood.
Sure enough, a couple of kids were drag racing down the street behind our house and one lost control and went off the road and through a power pole. Sadly, he was completely uninjured. So, even though he totalled his car, he’ll still be convinced that he’s invincible behind the wheel.
This happens on a regular basis around here. People see the wide roads and think the 30MPH speed limit doesn’t apply to them. This was the second at that particular spot in the road and I lost count of how many have happened near my house. Just a couple months ago a biker was killed when he lost control of his bike a block up the street and went through a fence. A week after that I had a drunk driver wind up in my front yard.
I don’t know what to do to get them to slow down but the county sure doesn’t seem to care. Occasionally they’ll have a deputy work the street for a day but it doesn’t help.
*sigh*

This past weekend my son and I join the Texas Rovers for a trip to Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi. It’s the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and you’re allowed to drive on the beach for its entire length. Mom stayed home because she had other obligations so it was just a ‘guy’s weekend’.
The drive down was cold, wet, and windy in the Defender. We were bundled up for the 50degree temps that came along with the first cold front of fall. We hooked up with a couple other Land Rovers and headed south. By the time we hit Corpus temps were back up to 70+ and sunny. We finally could shed the jackets. Next time I’ll watch weather a bit closer and maybe put the full top on the truck so we don’t have to freeze. (Read on …)

I took the Defender out to the Texas All British Car Day on Sunday. I also did their road rally on Saturday which was a lot of fun. Got to drive over 60miles of backroads all over Williamson County.
My Defender 90 took First in Class again this year. It’s a kind of hollow victory though as myself and my friend Chris from Texas Rovers were the only Land Rovers that showed up. We were lost in a sea of MGs, Minis, and Jags. So, that’s another plaque to add to the wall even though I felt like letting them keep it. Our trucks are so close that it’s really a coin toss.
I spent hours getting it clean for the show and in 4 days I’ll be taking it to Padre Island to play in the sand. It’s happier dirty anyways. 🙂

The wife and kid left on a cruise to Mexico with my parents yesterday morning. They left on about 15 hours notice. My parents are frequent ‘cruisers’ and got a call from the cruise line looking to fill a boat leaving Galveston in the morning. I guess they had a lot of cancellations and such because of Hurricane Rita passing so close to Galveston. I think it cost a grand total of about $350 for both my wife and kid to do the cruise. Not a bad deal.

I have a busy week ahead of me anyways so it wasn’t bad timing. I had a Land Rover club meeting last night. I’ve got tickets to the local premiere of Serenity with some friends at which a couple of the stars will appear and do a Q&A. Those are the big tickets in town this week selling for over $100/each on eBay. This weekend I’ve got a British Car Show so I’ve got to get the Defender detailed for that. Detailing the Defender consists of washing down the outside, cleaning the windshield, and hosing out the inside. Looks like I’ve convinced a few other folks in the club to show up too. I hope there’s a better showing than the 3 Landies of last year.

Last night, after my meeting, it did feel funny to come home to an empty house. Too quiet. It does give me a chance to watch the movies I want on our big screen at a volume level that I prefer. I watched one of my favorties, Saving Private Ryan, last night and had pictures shaking on the walls during battle scenes. 🙂