Carolina is closed until 11am tomorrow as of now because of incliment weather. We're supposed to get ice and/or snow tonight. If the weather folks here are wrong by just a degree or two, we could actually get a few inches of snow.
Hopefully we'll wake up tomorrow morning to a lot of snow and ice and the University will be shut down all day.
Especially since I'm taking Friday off work already, means I won't have to go back until Monday. I'm taking Friday off to bring Christina's car into the shop and have a few things looked at.
Her car wouldn't start yesterday after work... it tried and tried and she said the Security light was flashing too. It's most likely the battery again... I had to replace the battery and posts because of corrosion a little over a year ago I guess. But between the battery and the recall on the hazzard light relay this car has always had electrical issues. Anyway, I might be able to clean up the battery and posts, check the battery on a charger to make sure it's good, and tighten everything down and that might take care of that...
The bigger problem is that the cooling system needs to be flushed badly. GM uses Dexcool and there's all sorts of issues with leaving Dexcool in there too long, which of course we've done. Unlike changing the oil regularly, flushing the cooling system isn't exactly something you think about all the time. Anyway, there's a buildup of gunk and goo in the overflow tank and it complains about Low Coolant every few months. So, I'm sure there's going to be issues when they flush the system with corrosion. Hopefully it's not too bad.
And on top of all of that, it's at 77,000+ miles and so I'm sure the timing belt is due by now.
Well, from my last post about waiting for the new computer parts to arrive to this post about my new motherboard going back to Newegg.
Everything was working well the last week or so until the BIOS update for the motherboard went wrong last night. Now it shows the inital splash screen when it turns on and nothing else. Tried everything that can be tried, so I'm just RMA'ing the board back to Newegg.
Sitting here at home waiting for my computer parts to arrive. UPS is slow out to our area, always at the end of their routes.
The new system should be a lot faster, especially when trying to work with the large video files. Speaking of which, I hacked my older Tivo last night. Now I can run a network cable to it and connect to it from my computer and just drag shows over. Saves having to play them in real time through a capture box onto the computer... much better. Of course, there's no hack available right now to do with that with my newer HD DVR from DirecTV, but give them time...
Robert also got back to me at work and said he's looking into getting me that new laptop, so I might get an upgrade there also. I've noticed mine's getting a little slower and it's just about out of warranty, not to mention the whopping 5 minutes of battery life it is down to now. I'm going to get something a little smaller than the laptop I have now. Instead of a 17" screen and heavy with a bad battery life (even when it was brand new it was barely 2 hours), I'm going to get a Dell D820 that doesn't weigh as much and has a 15.4" screen instead and should get 4-5 hours of battery life brand new.
Work has slowed down quite a bit the last week or so. *knocks on wood* Let's hope it stays that way for a while so we can get caught up. I'll be glad once my computer swap outs are done, those football games are ripped to DVD properly, and we're caught up at work. The rest of the late Winter, early Spring should be pretty uneventful... good time to get caught up on a lot of different things I've been putting off because of how busy we've been.
Oh yeah, just in case anyone can't copy and paste that website Nicki posted from over on my Zonkboard comment box over on the left, here's the link to "Cute Overload", a website so cute you want to throw up:
Ordered some stuff today to update my home computer and I emailed a Quote from Dell for a new work laptop to my boss last Friday. It was about time to upgrade both... especially watching how long to took to render and encode a 10 minute video on my home computer today.
Haven't found out about the work laptop yet... hopefully I'll know more this week. Dell was offering additional discounts to University purchases this month to try to meet some sales goals and push some additional systems out the door. Ended up getting an extra $200 off the price we'd normally pay at USC and around $520 off retail price, so it's a good time to buy at work.
We got some freezing rain yesterday morning - not nearly enough though. Carolina was on a two hour delay though, so I guess I should be happy we even got that much here. Not that it would have mattered for me, I had a dentist appointment yesterday morning anyway so I wasn't headed to work regardless.
Spent last weekend working on a couple different projects. I finished installing the new Sirius radio in my truck. Had to pick up a 12v outlet at Radio Shack for $7 and connect it and hide it behind the dash so I could plug the radio's power plug into that. Also got an FM modulator that makes it sound better than just using the wireless FM transmitter in the Sirius radio. NPR complained to the FCC about the power output on devices like Sirius radios, so all new receivers in the last year or so output far less power on their wireless FM transmitter, so you end up with a lot more static and hissing if you use that now. Plus, you cannot choose a channel lower than 88.1Mhz on the new radios because of the new regulations. On the older Sirius model radios you could choose frequencies lower than that.
Anyway, long story short, it sounds a lot better now with the FM modulator. Only drawback is when the Sirius radio is on, all other FM frequencies are messed up. So to listen to terrestrial radio stations on other channels, you have to turn the Sirius radio off first. It was much nicer just being able to switch presets to listen to different channels but leave the Sirius on to see what songs are playing on it in case I wanted to switch back. I guess the best way to connect a Sirius radio is into your AUX input instead of an FM Modulator, but the Bose stereo system in my Pathfinder doesn't have an AUX input, so that wasn't an option for me.
The other thing I was working on is trying to figure out how to capture video from my DVR in 16x9 format (widescreen). I've been capturing football games for the last couple years from our older Tivo DVR which is all 4x3 format channels. But what I finally figured out was how to capture the 16x9 from the new DVR and create what's called an anamorphic DVD. The benefit of an anamorphic DVD is that when you put it in a DVD player that's been told it has a widescreen TV on it, it shows the entire 16x9 video in widescreen format... however, when you put an anamorphic DVD in a DVD player that's been told it is hooked up to a 4x3 normal TV, it will letterbox the video with a black bar on the top and bottom. Took way, way too long for me to figure all that stuff out. I usually figure out technical stuff pretty quickly so when something takes me 3 or 4 days to learn it tends to just piss me off.
Sadly, even after I figured out how to capture and burn 16x9 I still ran into a problem... my laptop drops frames because it can't keep up with the video at any decent quality setting, but it does a fantastic job of capturing if you drop the quality rate down. My desktop computer at home is much faster, so it captures with no dropped frames, but my video card in that computer makes the capture all pixelated and weird. So, the days of my home computer may be numbered... we'll see. Or... maybe I'll just get a new laptop at work... that sounds like a good idea to me... hopefully it'll sound like a good one to my boss when I tell him how much it'll cost.
Oh yeah, one other note from this past weekend... Christina made pasties one night for dinner and they were fantastic. Tasted exactly like pasties should, minus the onions I guess because that would just ruin it anyway.
Long week this last week. At least it ended right... went to a happy hour with Christina and a lot of the people she works with at 4:30 yesterday after work. We left around 11:30 and yes, I'm feeling every one of those drinks today. At least we have a three day weekend, so I'll have plenty of time to laze around.
This afternoon Christina and I went to Kohls to use her giftcard there and she found a couple pairs of nice shoes. She also got one of those plastic grocery bag holders since our cabinet under the sink is a mess with those things.
Also spent this afternoon hooking up Sirius in my truck. We bought another radio earlier in the week, I just haven't had time to hook it up until today. I haven't ran direct power to either of the radios yet, they're both still using the power cords they came with, but eventually I'll hide those wires like I did with the antenna wires. I found out though that the new radio for my truck has a 12 volt adapter power cord that steps down the power to 5 volts... so, I can't just run bare wires to a 12v source. I'm hoping there's a direct power adapter made for this model that steps down the power also.
I can't believe Sidney Rice is gone. He has declared for the NFL draft and won't be at Carolina next season. He's hands down our best receiver and the best college reciever I've ever seen. This year's draft is going to have a lot of wide recievers too so I don't know how high he'll end up going in the draft anyway. For his sake, I hope he goes in the first round, but we'll see.
I still wish him the best in the NFL, but it is beyond frustrating. Last year we had two great defensive backs leave our team early for the NFL. Jonathan Joseph and Ko Simpson both left and had they stayed around for this season we would have probably won 9 or 10 regular season games instead of the 7 we ended up winning. Our defensive backfield was the weakest point this season and in all those games we lost by 7 or less this year that was the reason.
But, they both went on to play in the NFL this season and both ended up starting too, so I can understand why they left... it's just sad though. I wish we had kids who loved Carolina as much as the fans do... then maybe they'd stick around.
Losing Simpson and Joseph last year cost us wins this year... until the team proves me wrong, losing Sidney this year will cost us wins next year...
We had a pair of great trips this holiday season. It's made for a very nice break for us... it'll be hard to go back to work tomorrow.
We flew down to Tampa for Christmas the 19th and spent the week down there. It was rough... 80's the first few days, swimming in 93 degree water in the pool on Christmas Eve, and more good food and cookies than I should have eaten. I'll end up paying for it later in the gym, but it was worth every bite.
The weather wasn't really beach going weather and the ocean was at around 64 degrees, but we did get to make a trip down there one day and I got a handful of beach and bird photos out of it. They're in the gallery linked below.
And here's a second take at the whole 3-generations family photo that we took on Thanksgiving this year. Wasn't happy with that shot, so we tried it again and I think it turned out much better. Click on the picture to go to the photos from our Tampa trip:
And yes, our Christmas tree is leaning... but it's HUGE. Very, very huge... it said 8 3/4ths feet on the tag and it's every bit of that... the Santa topper barely fit.
We got back into Columbia on Tuesday evening after a two hour delay on our flight back. I called up the guy I was getting Liberty Bowl tickets from on our Gamecock message board and met him later that night to pick them up. He let them go for $25/each instead of the face value of $45/each too! We did a couple loads of laundry, packed up everything, got a few hours of sleep, then got on the road Wednesday morning for Memphis.
I had made hotel reservations once we found out where we were going for our bowl game just in case we ended up going. When I made them they had a 3-night minimum so instead of just Thursday night and Friday night I reserved Wednesday as well. Glad I did now, it was nice having the extra day up there... made staying out late on Beale Street Thursday night a lot easier! Our friend Brian made the trip with a photographer friend of his named Greg who called him at the last minute asking if he wanted to go. Brian's wife Debra and their little girl Reagan stayed behind though.
Beale Street was a lot of fun too. We watched the Liberty Bowl parade from the outdoor balcony area of a place called Alfred's. Unfortunately, they ran the parade the wrong way down Beale Street for photos. I thought they'd be running it East and it came down Beale Street going West so the photos are shooting the back of everyone. Still, a few of them turned around and ended up working out okay.
After the parade we decided to get dinner at the "world famous" Rendezvous rib joint in an alley in Memphis. It was okay, but not really worth the 45-60 minute wait. Had a full order of Memphis dry rub ribs that were pretty good I suppose. However, a couple of the guys we ate with had already been to the original Corky's (now a chain restuarant) and even before dinner one of them said if Rendezvous had better ribs he'd lick the floor he was so sure Corky's couldn't be beat. Well, we had Corky's for lunch Friday before the bowl game and I see why he said that... best ribs I've ever had anywhere.
After dinner we bar hopped with Brian and Greg for a while and ran into 3-4 different friends and even our next door neighbor Reggie and his son Harrison on Beale Street walking around. We listened to some music in an outdoor bar for a while and ended up going to Coyote Ugly to end the night. Coyote Ugly was a pretty cool place except for the volume on the music. Now I know the phrase "If it's too loud, you're too old", but this was way beyond that. If I leave with a ripping headache, you know it's pretty loud. But the girls dancing on the bar made up for it... there's a photo or two of them in the gallery below.
Friday morning (late morning) we met up with Brian and Greg for lunch at Corky's before the bowl game and then headed to the stadium. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos in the gallery from the actual game since the stupid Liberty Bowl folks have an AWFUL policy on cameras that lenses can't be over 3" long. So all my SLR gear is ruled out. I'm going to actually buy myself another Panasonic FZ20 just for football games... it might not have the overall quality of SLR gear, but it's got a 12x optical zoom out to a 432mm equivalent with image stabilization built in... so basically 2 times the total zoom of the lens they wouldn't let me in with... but it's all in one smaller camera body since it's a point-and-shoot camera, not SLR. I have some pics on my cell phone but haven't downloaded them yet and they won't be very good quality anyway.
As for the game though... WOW. Very exciting game... had it's ups and downs... Houston's little dink and dunk offense where they run all over and run crazy plays gave our defense fits at times. Thankfully our talent wore them out towards the end of the game, especially on the lines, so we ended up going up by 16 points and held on to win by 8 points, 44 to 36. Gives us 8 wins this year... same as Clemson... after they lost 4 of their last 5 games including getting beat by Kentucky in the Music City Bowl! Now I just need Michigan to win the Rose Bowl today for my bowl season trifecta to be complete!
Friday night after the game we went back out to Beale Street and Greg had an invite to a VIP party and got all 4 of us in. There are twins on our defense, the Lindsey twins (Jordin and Dustin Lindsey). Their family is friends with both a friend of Greg's and friends with a millionaire who rented out the third floor of a bar named Club 152. Cost him $10,000 for the night, but he rented out as a celebration party. It was very cool being up there seeing half the players and team and coaches. Even Spurrier was there for a while right before we left. Not many fans can say they partied with the team after the bowl win! No pictures from the party though because I didn't have my camera and that wasn't the time to be taking a bunch of photos anyway. They were coming to a celebration party to get away from things like that. Though if we would have had a sharpie on us I would have made Christina ask Sydney Rice to autograph the #4 Carolina jersey she was wearing that night.
Our trip back was faster than our trip there, but not as cool of a drive. We zig-zagged through Greenville, SC, Atlanta, GA, and Nashville, TN on the way there and it was 11 total hours counting about an hour of stops. On the way back we just shot down US78 to Birmingham, AL and got on I-20 which runs all the way to Columbia. That route was only 9 hours total with again around an hour of stops. But it wasn't as nice of a drive. Just the view of downtown Nashville from I-440 around the west side city during the blue hour with the sunset on all the buildings was worth that route on the way there. No photo of it since I was driving at the time and Christina didn't have the camera out. Oh well.
All in all it was the best bowl trip I've been on and that's saying something since both Outback Bowl trips in 2000 and 2001 were a lot of fun too. I'm so glad we made the trip now, definitely a good time.
Anyway, here's the gallery of photos from the trip, just click on the image to go there:
