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Okay some crazy good news. I have have finally located a video input card for my computer. The choice is now between USB and PCI, which is cheaper. The CTX MD001 is here! A whopping $33.00 plus shipping and handling at Newegg I plan on getting this when we get back from Hawai’i. This will make converting all our old movies like Carnage: Auf Deutsch and other short skits we made in school a breeze.

Okay so like I really am getting spoiled on internet speed. Until last week, I have enjoyed the usual 3 Mbps download and 25.6 Kbps upload speeds from my cable provider which is now 4 Mbps download and 38.4 Kbps upload because of general improvments to the entire system. But no, I am very satisfied with average so I had them upgrade me for a little more a month to 6Mbps download and an awesome 76.4 Kbps upload. It was amazing how quickly I upload and download now. I had no complaints before but my ping times all dropped and I can do more multitasking. Plus with me working on all those websites, double the up speed is very much worth it. For all the griping I have about Comcast and their cornering of the local broadband market, I must say I am pleased with their service. I am just looking forward to come competition to help lower prices or increase the value of the money I pay them every month.

Also, an interesting article about a potential increase in internet speeds is located here. The major internet communications giants are predicting a 1000% increase in broadband speeds by 2008. Its very exciting technology. Yes, a thousand percent.

sittin’ on that familiar fence
takin’ my time to decide
nothing makes sense
how long to kill my pride?

[Chorus]

© 2005 Michael Hrádek

My wife and I drove around last night. It was good to spend that time together. We also watched a movie called “Napoleon Dynamite” which was funny… at times. The various funny moments definitely out weigh the dull but over all it was a memorable experience. I would say its a good rental for now but I will watch it again and see if I can be convinced to rate it a matinee experience.

And so in my artistic endeavors I have been jotting down lyrics. Its a bit of work. I enjoy it. Its like saying something but with formatting rules. Also, my good friend from Bellingham mentioned making movies. This is very intriguing. We used to make movies in high school about random things. Having fun doesn’t require a budget. As part of the development of the script, I propose we have a group effort. As a matter of fact, we should create a blog anyone can log into and add entries. We could blog a script! That would be amazing and a true collaborative effort. Hmm… the wheels are a spinnin’! Click on IndyFilmDev at the top!

I am borrowing a friend’s album from the group “The Postal Service” titled Give Up. Its very catchy (or rather, well done) and I am really enjoying it. It’s inspiring me to work on my projects. One thing at a time, right?

I decided to cancel my other EQ2 subscription too. I just saved $30 a month. Yay! Its liberating. It was a really fun game. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get into something like that.

I am waiting for cerebral implants and intravenous feeding and hydration to create the ultimate gaming experience where you can lose yourself in a virtual world for extended periods of time. Scary thought. I am sure its on its way though.

My co-worker hasn’t shown up to work on time again. Its frustrating and sad. Its normal to not see them for a few days. “I’m sick.” “I’ve got a migraine.” “My [blank] died.” “I need to take care of [blank].” You see, although my job isn’t my career or anything, I appreciate it for what it is: a means to live. Sometimes people don’t know what they have. The popular phrase “the grass is greener on the other side” comes to mind. I myself have been through many different jobs and this is awesome in comparison to others I’ve had in the past. It just gets annoying when people don’t know what hard work is and bitch about how hard something relatively easy is. Sitting on my ass in front of a computer may be boring, but it pays the bills and I am not sweating on some field pulling weeds or flipping burgers in some grease bar.

Of course, I encourage anyone to find this out for themselves. I think its fair to say that everyone has to go out and try new things and stuff. If I had to deal with customers as before, I too would have probably left. Customer service is the lowest form of servitude I have experienced. Its voluntary torture. Calls centers, restaurants, sales, checkout clerks, and whatever else that requires servant to payee interaction is terrible. There are exceptions and I am sure some people get a kick out of this but in my honest opinion, these are really the worst. Taking that phone call in a call center is like playing Russian Roulette. You never know who the next caller is going to be. Its going to be either a pleasant, yes sir and yes ma’am or a f%*k you, I pay your wages, give me some %*d damned service! It goes the same for any customer service related position. The levels of stress ascoiated with this position are unfair. Customer Service should be a required high school class so that everyone, even the sons and daughters of rich parents attending a private school, knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

Maybe I and the others like me that feel about customer service are unique. Or perhaps my attitude towards customer service is the way my co-worker feels about this database management job. Maybe I am a sadist and enjoy the pain of sitting in front of a computer for hours. Maybe the constant flow of numbers and letters across the screen is the flogging of a dominatrix. A painful pleasure. Maybe I am the one that’s sick and wrong.

I suppose we are all unique. That’s good. But I still hate customer service.

While typing this, my co-worker has called my boss (who is a real softy and has a hard time with discipline) and told my boss that they slept in, will take a shower and see how they feel. (ie: not gonna make it in) The irony!
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I recently obtained a copy of Mark Knopfler’s album Shangri-La which is rather good. I like the song “Boom! Like That” but the other tuens are fairly memorable. After all this trouble I am still deciding wether or not I like this new setup for my website.

Our puppy Kiko is turning out to be a bigger responsibility than two people living in a small apartment are willing to grasp right now. I suppose in a way my wife needed to learn that for herself (yes, I didn’t really want a dog in the first place) so she is looking for a new home for the canine friend.

Its Sunday and work was empty. I came in to work a few hours and make up some lost time I missed Wednesday. My Perl learning has slowed down a bit. We are switching servers here at work and a lot of preparation and testing has to be done so I and the others who mentor me don’t have a lot of time on our hands.

I mentioned this before (I think) but I finally canceled one of my EverQuest 2 accounts. It was liberating. I have so much to do producing records, writing music and recording, playing piano, webs development, reading and just enjoying real life that building a charecter virtually seemed wasteful. Its hard to balance because I still play games but at least I am not paying for them monthly. Ugh, tough choice but it is done.

The site has been changed a lot! Improvements! Changes!

I decided that I did not like the way the site flowed so it was time to do a major revision. iFrames are cool and all but I hated having the double scroll bars on the right. So here is it… top frames pointing to everything. This new blog system is really cool. You install it on your host and then set up the php pointer files and import your old blog and voila!

Let me know what you all think.

Somewhere along the line, someone decided that the millions of chipsets that are produced at VIA don’t need to be strictly PCI 2.2 compliant. I spent this weekend updating my home network. My puppy Kiko decided that the 100 foot LAN cable running from my cable modem to my router was fun to chew on. I suppose I could have replaced or even repaired the cable but the wireless solution seemed to solve more than just my broken connection. My wife would be relieved that the cable was gone and I wouldn’t trip over it every day.

Anyway, the Netgear WG311T netcard was my first choice. 108 Mbps type G, it was what I initially purchased. I would play Counter-Strike: Source for like 15 minutes and bam… hard freeze. I restart and same thing. After doing research, I find out that the 108 type wireless NIC cards have an issue with VIA chipsets. The NIC chipset by Atheros doesn’t communicate very well supposedly because of the PCI problem mentioned earlier under stress loads (like gaming).

So I took it back and got the 54g which features a T1 chipset. Works like a charm. It even has a better connection to the router. The numbers like 11, 54, and 108 are the transfer rates between other wireless computers on the network. 54 MB per second is enough for anyone. If folks bring over a computer to a LAN, I will simply either buy a couple USB wireless NICs to use or get a couple long cables to set up temporarily.

I have successfully switched from Blogger to my very own internal PHP driven blog system. I hated the formatting and the required link back to their system. This gives me more power over my posts. So, please feel free to check it out! You can still go to the old blog here but I won’t be posting there anymore.

It was actually very interesting to import this to this blog system. I had to format the old blogger and publish it in a strange looking format.