Livin it One Day at A Time

I have two two websites I read somewhat regularly. Uncrate and The Awesomer Well, it led me to one of my favorite other websites, “The Onion.”

Well, this one was gold, listen to the very end, where the creation of “The Apple Store”

So..

I could be spending time working on the house.. You know, painting, cleaning out the garage, paying bills, selling my plasma so I can pay my little brother for buying electrical stuff, vacumming. You know. That kinda stuff.

So I get home on Friday.

And my wireless isn’t working.

And this is a catastrophie..

Wait. Scratch that.

It’s a national disaster.

So I do what any self respecting geek would do. I go online, get the firmware upgrade for the router, save my old config, and upgrade the config.

I then restore the old config.

At this point, a big red light starts glowing solid.

In my profession, big red lights are not something you hope for every day, in fact they are bad. To give you an idea of how bad, go watch a episode of Battlestar Galactica, which is a geek’s show. Notice the mechanical Cylons.

Do they have nice green eye thingies? No.

It’s a big red light.

That’s the stuff of a geek’s nightmares.

And it’s staring me right in the face.

At this point, I have a choice. Throw the router in the garbage and buy a new one.

Or spend two full days, and a night using a paperclip to short out parts of the flash on the motherboard.

I think you know which one I picked.

And it didn’t involve garbage.

So this morning, I had a idea hit me. And I got in, through a kludgy system of shorting the board, upgrading linksys firmware, upgrading to a mini dd-wrt firmware (all this over wireless, which is a big no no) and finally upgrading to a standard firmware.

And after four days of red light. It’s green. And I’m a freakin genius.

In the midst of the move I decided to get an ipod to make the bachelor pad even schwanker.

You know because every bachelor pad needs to be schwanky.

So I had been looking on slickdeals.net (looking for cheap stuff since I have joined the ranks of the house poor). Anywho I saw a listing for refurbed iPods. Interested, and thinking I had more money than I did I started looking. Oh and prior to this I was what I call an anti apple snob. I had my alternative mp3 player and I would look down at the apple fanboys who constantly talk about the wonderful iPod. So this was a big step for me to be looking at an iPod.

Thought process went something like this.

“ohhhh. I need to get an iPod classic. I need to have 160 gigs of musical fury (those of you who know me know I have lots and lots of music).

Then it was “I want to see if there is a player with an even higher percentage off”

Then I found the iPod touch. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s an iPhone. Just without the the phone.

And the GPS

And the camera

So I was looking at it, with it’s wonderful rebate, and I start looking at forums. In the forums I see talk about jailbreaking

Hold the presses! Jailbroken? That means I can hack it!
Oh me likey. I hack stuff

TiVo? Hacked.
XBox ? Hacked.
Other stuff? Hacked.

So …..

I waited for it to arrive

And fedex didn’t leave it for me. More waiting.

So I got it. Jail broke it. And I am writing the blog post from the touch right now. I am a convert. Whenever AT&T gets to my place. Adiós Verizon!

The sad thing? I really don’t get a chance to listen to it that much.

Maybe I do need to get get an iPod classic……

I know. Blantant begging hasn’t helped on the blog. Begging for iPod touches got me nothing. But hey, it’s Christmas time and no time is better than now to start a list of material positions that I’m not to proud to beg for (and recycle last years list!)

First off though, I’d like to be serious. The cat in the above picture attacking my shoe is Zappa. He’s quite the crazy cat (plays fetch) and does other non cat things. I mean, heck, whilst Cat-Sitting him and my friends other cat, he protected me and smacked the other cat who was hissing at me. He’s got class, and he has a place in my heart (which isn’t really hard, considering I’m a cat person). Lets just say we are buds.

In the last week he got a blood clot in the back of his legs and he’s been at the vets. Its been touch and go, and he’s been incurring bills as he’s had to stay at the vet. If you like cats, if you like craziness, or think that this time of year is when giving is needed, and that there is a little crazy cat(and owners) that need some holiday cheer, and for something to go right for them, please consider clicking on the paypal button below and helping out this little guy.

It’s tis the season, right?

And now for my recycled last year list of stuff that I will continue to refine until the day where I get stuff!

Remember: I’m a nerd of many colors: (This Means I’m all types of nerd, Cooking Nerd, Photo Nerd, Pinball Nerd, Belt Buck Nerd. The list goes on)

Cooking Nerd:

• Alton Brown Salt Cellar




• Bundle of 3 Salt Cellars




• Alton Brown Plunger and Plunger Jr.




• A toaster (yeah, I know, just haven’t needed one

(bought one. It’s all nice and shiny)


• Any of Alton Browns Books (here. and here. and here)
• Pretty much anything from Kitchen Contraptions (ohhh, shiny)
• A Soft serve Ice cream Maker
• Miso Soup
• These cool Cookie Cutter shapes
• More in the Amazon Wishlist

(Go hear, good stuff. Trust me)

Photo Nerd:

• Lenses, Memory cards, bigger bag, books on photography, a cool electronic picture frame.
• I’m really lost for finding stuff online for this one. Maybe a reflector?
• Some stuff in the Amazon.com wishlist

Pinball Stuff:

• One of the Pin Mats for a game I own.
• A pinresptore.com Gift Certificate
• A Bayareaamusement.com gift Certificate here or here
• Or tools that would go with it (like headlamps, or magnetic part bowls, etc)
• Or Parts from Pinbits or Pinball Life
• Iwata Airbrush
• Pocket Programmer II

Home Theater Nerd:

• Costco Popcorn Machine

Belt Buckles & Watches (new obsession):

• Can’t go wrong if it’s Arcade or Sci-fi related. I do most of my shoppin on e-pay

Misc Nerd Stuff:

• Home Made Slankets
• a KILT!
• PocketDish
• Go Cart

P.S. If you can’t see my links in the sidebar, drop IE and get a real browser, like Firefox (muhahha)

I know.

I know.

I’ve been a bad blogger.

Is it because I’ve been obsessing about an Xbox 360 (when in reality, I’ll only play one game)?

Is it because I’ve been dealing with a full personal life?

Is it because my laptop bit the dust?

Is it because I’ve been saving up all my blog energy/creativity to post a obvious “I Want” Christmas List?

Is it because I got a new pinball machine?

The answer is no, no, no, yes, no.

In reality, I don’t know what’s going on, or why I’ve been so lax.

But, if you want a look into my psyche or are after a nerd of your own, you might want to read this little article by Rands in Repose called The Nerd Handbook. He describes very much what I feel myself to be like. Even more when he mentions the Nerd Cave.

I’ll admit it, I have a Nerd Cave. I’ll admit it, because everyone else will tell me that I have one after they read the article.

And family members have been recipients of “The Snap”.

So nice to not be all alone in the world

I’ve been at this point in my life where I haven’t been buying a whole lot.. Some sushi stuff, but not a whole lot.. Recently I decided to buy a new laptop.. And that just hasn’t happened..

And then Apple had to go and release its whole new line of iPods. Now, understand two things about me. First. I am frugal. Friends (Brendo, Tiwire can atest) and family will tell you I am. The common joke during the winter is that when I open up the door to let people in, I’m letting the ice cold outside warm up my apartment (because naturally, I keep the thermostat way down. I have blankets! Why should I care!). Second, I’ve never liked Apple or the iPod. I beta tested (where you work on hardware to find bugs, but get to keep the electronic toys for free – see, frugal) Rios line of hand mp3 players. That was going swimmingly. I was getting all the coolest new gadgets, these guys made my Empeg MP3 car Player (Way before it’s time) and then the Japanese Company that owned them just shuttered the doors.

I was bummed, but I stuck it out. Nothing was better than my Rio mp3 players. Family members started jumping ship like rats jumping off the Titanic. Getting their trendy little iPods. Still. I hung strong. I put more hard drives in my car player, and was smug (Did I mention I got the car player for like 60% off during a firesale? See. Frugal).

Then Apple had to do it. They’ve release the iPod Classic this bad boy clocks in at 160 Gigs, and it plays video. And it can take my entire mp3 collection from my mp3 car player. And to add insult to injury, they added the iPod touchscreen. It’s like the iPhone, but without the phone, which is what I want

So here’s my conundrum. I am too frugal to buy the thing outright. So I have to find someone with an educational discount or federal discount (or find out if work has a discount) or I can pan handle (heck, I added Adsense to the blog, and lets just say for two years, I’ve only made somewhere between 15 and 25 dollars (since I don’t want to break googles TOS, I won’t say exactly how much).

So here’s the deal, you paypal me money, and I’ll start blogging again. Or stop again. I don’t care, as long as I get the iPod Classic.

Kidding.

Seriously, if you have any kind of discount, or know of one, or just want to mock me and my frugalness, send me an email or leave a comment.

I’ll respond.

I promise.

Taking a quick breather..

There’s been a lot of learning, lots of walking, and lots of food.

Unfortunatly, the walking isn’t out pacing the eating.

I’ve been studying for a CCNA test, and just haven’t had time to blog inbetween. But more will come, as will pictures of the beach, late at night.