Another Word for Nerd

I recently got my $40 digital TV transition coupons, and found that the local H.E.B. grocery chain was selling a digital-to-analog TV “converter” (it’s a tuner with RF and AV output) for $40 + tax.

A few days later, I came home with a pair of the converters for a grand total of $6.60. On my way home, I stopped by Electronic Parts Outlet and picked up a couple pairs of “rabbit ears” antennas and a matching adapter (spade lugs to F-Male).

Tonight I unpacked it all to try things out. I’d first thought about running the AV output into a box I have that takes composite video and gives VGA out, but that would leave me with no audio.

Digging through my junk box, I found a little 3.5″ LCD display that takes AV in and has a speaker. Bingo!

I present the Ten Dollar Digital TV:

Philco TB100HH9 Converter Box: $3.30
Antenna and adapter: $6.70
Junky LCD Display: Free

Warning: Political opinions ahead.

I had $29 bouncing around in PayPal, and for a week or so had been debating what to buy.. Gun stuff, books, etc. - but hadn’t been able to decide on what to spend it on. Last night I finally spent it on stuff from store.barackobama.com.

This year is the first time that I’ve ever donated money or contributed to a political party, because this is the first year that I’ve seen a candidate that actually offers hope for the future. I’d previously donated $10.01 to his campaign back in February, and will be donating more before November.

In 2004, I switched parties and voted for Kerry simply because he was running against Bush. In 2008, I’m voting for the candidate that can pull us out of this mess.

I ended up just breaking down and doing it myself.

Here’s the 8926A (Omega-style bezel) with the new green bezel insert:

I’ll probably swap out the black bezel insert on the 8926C with a better black one this weekend.

I sit and think about getting older.

I turn 34 later this year. Everything between age 21 now has just been a blur. Too much of being a workaholic. Too much waking up on a Thursday and thinking “The week’s gone by already?” Too much time spent not accomplishing anything that really matters in the long run other than paying bills and getting by.

I’m seven years older than my parents were when they had me.
I never thought that I would own a house - but now I’m in my *second* home.
I’m making four times what I did in my first “real job” at ioNET in 1995.

I never thought that I would find someone to spend my life with who could put up with my quirks, hobbies, and tendency to be a workaholic. I’ve been with Amy for TEN YEARS now - a third of my life - and we’ve been married for seven of those years.

I don’t “feel” like an adult. I still feel like a kid who is “managing to get by”.
Does this ever change? Do you ever grow older and finally feel “grown up” and mature?

I’m having a heck of a time finding a jeweler or watch repair place to do a simple bezel insert replacement on a pair of Invicta 8926 watches (Rolex Submariner clones). I’ve got the replacement parts, I just need someone with steadier hands to do the actual work of popping off the old insert and gluing the new one in.

When the inserts arrived in the mail last weekend, I took everything to my normal jeweler, the Jared location at Gessner and I-10. Their watch repair person said “Sorry, we’re not an Invicta dealer, I won’t work on them.” I’ve done thousands of dollars of business with them at that location, but their refusal to do a 5-minute job on a $100 watch (when they know I’ve been considering the eventual purchase of a $6K watch from them) made me REALLY frustrated.

I then headed home, and realized that Houston Jewelry was in a strip mall a couple of blocks from the house. I stopped in, explained the situation, and that I just needed a simple part replacement done. The lady I spoke to said “Sure, we’ll work on anything - leave it with us and we’ll call you on Monday with an estimate, this shouldnt take them long at all.” I just got off the phone after they called (note that it’s now Tuesday) and they said “Sorry, we don’t work on Invicta watches.”

Why is it so hard to find someone in west Houston that’s willing to take my money and do this simple 5-minutes-per-watch part replacement?

Heck, I’ll even provide illustrated instructions!

I have the manuals and serial cable pinouts for nSTOR CR8e RAID arrays up for download:

http://www.mrbill.net/nstor

I managed to get these out of nSTOR (or whoever owned them at the time) four years ago when I was trying to reconfigure a unit but did not have the manual or console cable.

Someone emailed me to say that they’d found them useful, but only found them because I had mentioned the URL in a mailing list post from 2006. This should help anyone trying to keep their arrays running.

Added two handgrip rails, a vertical foregrip, a Hogue rubberized pistol grip, and a BlueForceGear Victory-series two-point tactical sling.

I’m ready for the paper target zombie hordes!

The 20″ iMac Core Duo has found a new home with a friend. I bought it the day the Intel-based iMacs were available (January 19, 2006) and it was my main machine for just over two years.

Just finished a data migration project at work that took up a lot of weekend and evening hours, and this is the first weekend I’ve really had “to myself” in the past two and a half weeks.

I’ve been reading a lot, and even picked up MORE Mack Bolan books at my new favorite used book store here in Houston, Quarter Price Books. Check them out if you’re tired of Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Half Price Books and just want the fun of browsing through stacks and stacks of stuff that isn’t remainders and unsuccessful titles.

The second box of books arrived this past Monday.