AllisonYax.com – Page 57

I got prizes!

Prizes, Hits, and River of Time.

Friday morning, I received a brand new airport card, so I can go online wirelessly. It’s very cool. And, I got a refurbished 10GB ipod, also very cool. Next, I need headphones. The earbuds bug me.

Just yesterday I received more hits than normally in 2 weeks. MacRumors had a poll as to whether or not visitors have a blog, I responded yes and posted address. The result was 17 new visitors from 3 countries.

Haven’t made it to River of Time yet. Busy with new stuff. Definitely going tomorrow though. Havent missed one yet.

Ok, I guess thats all. See you on Tuesday, will try for a post bigger than this and previous.

See ya,
nick

Johnny 5: “KO Derf.”
Fred: “That’s Fred.”
Johnny 5: “That’s what I said, Derf.

Uhm, uhh. No, I got nothing.

Cleaning, Refurbs, Gaming, River of Time, and Anniversaries.

Hello all, happy hump day!

I cleaned up my HD last night. 700MB cleared away. I also organized a lot of stuff that was just laying around, and backed everything up to CD. Its weird, there is NOTHING on my desktop. Looks freaky. Might need to create some empty folders just to look right again, or put HD icon back on desktop. Then again, I’m sure I will mess everything within a few days.

Apple sold that 20GB ipod about 20 hours after I posted that I would buy it. They did get some 10 gigs back in, but they’re the windows version. If you have windows, and are looking into an MP3 player, this could be good news for you.

Nintendo GameCube is down to $99.99. Wow, I paid $299 for my PS2, can’t believe systems are going so low. Next generation PS should be coming in about a year or maybe 2, others follow another year later. Also, there should be a portable PS coming!

I really don’t have much more. Haven’t been doing much lately. Stayed up till 10:30 this morning doing backup, then slept till 5. I’m so sad.

River of Time is this weekend, and A&W closes this weekend. I am going to River of Time, if you want to make plans, I would be happy to go with whoever, or I will just see you there.

Ok, see you Saturday, issue #44. 50 is approaching, thats about 6 months! Actually, 6 months will be November 27th. Hey, next post will be the 4 month anniversary, cool!

See you later,
nick

There are no stupid questions,
Just inquisitive idiots.

Can I write for 3 days before the post?

Constant blogging?, Google, Site/Blog update, You don’t answer, Obsession, Fox is funny, I killed the Apple Store, Our second star, Tim, Conclusion.

This is my first try at writing stuff as I think of it, for 3 days, then posting it all as normal. If it works out, I may stick with it.

HUGE news: I’m on Google!
I fixed the counter so it counts both the website and the blog, and when looking at the visits, I noticed it was listing google searches as the referring URL. Sure enough, if you type “nslyax” on google, you get my blog! (along with some macrumors forum posts and my completely unused geocities page) the search terms I have been found by include:

“airport card” ser*al number: google.com
people counters: google.com
site:homepage.mac.com unpack G5: google.com
iblog ser*al: google.com
s*mc*ty 4 ser*al number: search.yahoo.com
number s*m c*ty 4: google.fr
isync motorola v120: google.com

Awesome, huh? You can check them out yourself. Just click the counter, click “details” on the next page, then click the number before the domain (i.e. chartermi.net, etc…). You can also click “Who’s On” to see who’s been on in the last 20 minutes, including you!

Other site/blog updates include a link back to the homepage, and I posted the new website, which is frame-less. I hate frames, but at the time it seamed like the best choice. They are gone now though and I am glad. let me know if you prefer it or not. I don’t know why I say that though. Nobody has ever said if they like a change or not, or answered any question I post. There not rhetorical people, I really want to know (I give credit to jason for applauding the new post summaries though). Also, I have accepted that the website doesn’t matter, and that I might as well post everything on it as a blog entry and leave a link on the front page of the blog. But what would be the fun in that? Another question is weather I should gizmate the website (yes, that is a word, because I say so). I could add a comment system, or a poll, or whatever. Let me know.

For some reason I need to have an internet obsession. There really isn’t that much to do online unless you do a lot of the same thing. Just this year I have obsessed over:

S*mC*ty 4
Rare Apple items
Any new Apple product
Mountain Bikes
Bike Trails
Delta Classes
more…

Currently, its getting a $169 refurbished ipod from Apple (more on that below). Most of last year was based on wanting a new computer. And btw, still no SC4cd2.

“Fox News, Fair and Balanced Hurricane Coverage.” Yeah, we don’t want to be prejudiced against an ACT OF NATURE! I like Fox news, more than the other news channels, but come on.

I wanted to buy the refurbished 10GB ipod on the Apple Online Store. It was only $169, which is $230 less than when new. But, I hesitated and they got sold out. So I was waiting for some more to come in, and I was going to order one ASAP along with a $51 airport card, at $28 off. It sold out too. So I was considering, since I have an MBNA rebate that expires on 9/28 that I would buy the 15GB which is the newer model, but costs a whopping $279. Hey, I get $25 off though, and its a 15 and the newer model. It sold out too. So, just to put a final test to my powers, I am going to publicly announce right now, that unless one of my previous goal models becomes available by 9/28, I will buy the 20GB previous model for $269. Now, lets see how many hours until it sells out.

Have you heard about them wanting to crash Galileo into Jupiter? Well, they do, it’s almost out of fuel and to prevent the slim chance that stowaway microbes may inhabit Europa, NASA plans to turn Galileo into Jupiter and let it burn up on entry. Thats crazy enough, I mean what are the chances of microbes surviving 14 years in space, and then making it to Europa. It gets better though. A group believes that since Galileo is Plutonium powered, the heat of entering Jupiter’s atmosphere will set off an atomic explosion. Then, since Jupiter is mostly hydrogen, it will go into nuclear fusion, creating a new star, or simply exploding.

NO!

Heres why:

The plutonium of Galileo is the wrong isotope, it is incapable of fission.
The arrangement of the Pu on Galileo is wrong. It is in linear tubes, and would need to be in a sphere to enter fission.
The hydrogen on Jupiter is the wrong isotope. For fusion to take place, you need Deuterium or Tritium (hydrogen with 1 or 2 neutrons, regular hydrogen has 0).
To maintain fusion, you need “critical mass”. Jupiter is WAY under critical mass, which means the heat from any fusion that takes place would push away all the other hydrogen, stopping the reaction.

And there were a few more. A better description is available here. I just found it amusing.

What else.

My cousin Tim is in town. Arrived Thursday, leaves Monday. Came for his parents surprise party.

I think thats it. I’ve been writing crap for 3 days, and see I have quite a buildup. I can’t think of much else to add, so I guess I just need to post it all. If I try this again, I will need to work on organization though, because its just kinda here-and-there.

Ok, ttyl,
nick

Every cloud has a silver lining,
And each year millions die of lightning strikes trying to reach it.

Hello World!

Blogger posts, New site, Apple updates, Spam, Hurricane, Cousin, Caps lock, post length, Yous.

Hi, and welcome to another action-packed episode of Nick’s Rants.

I spent about 3 hours copy-pasting and formating the HTML from old blog into new posts on this blog. They have original formating, original links, and original typos. I titled the ones I posted on blogger’s site, and left the Kung-Log entries with their original title. The only real modification is I fixed the first link I made, to Vervante’s website (I guess that means my contest is over). They are listed as being posted on their original date, and contain the original post date and time in the summary. By the way, ALL posts now have a summary, should make it easier to figure out what your in store for.

Also, almost done with the new website. Essentially the same as current, but no frames (which annoy me) and is easier for me to play with. Expect it to be up within a week or so.

Apple released new 12, 15, and 17 inch PowerBooks Tuesday morning at 4 AM EST. I was actually going to post that right away, but held off. Also, the Bluetooth Keyboards and Mice debuted. Overall very exciting. See Apple’s site for the details.

Found a major annoyance. Junk mail advertising Spam filters. Seriously, what the hell? Someone sends you spam about preventing spam? Thats like a guy breaking into your house to sell you a security system. Well, maybe not that bad, but still. It’s rediculous.

Uhmmmm………….

“Stand back, theres a hurricane a-brewwin.” Nevermind, WWE thing. Seriously though, Isabel is on it’s way, looks like we might get quite a bit of rain. Time will tell.

Also on the way is my cousin, Tim. Actually, he should have landed over an hour ago. He’s in town for his parents 50th birthdays, celebrating both now, about half way between.

The Logitech wireless keyboard I got my mom is working well, except there is no Caps Lock light. If anyone knows of a menu bar or dock item that would indicate this, let me know. I know of some for OS 9, but can’t find any for X.

Is that it? Hmm. Ohh, in going through old posts, came up with the following stats:

May 236 words
June 3280 words
July 3350 words
August 4309 words

Impressive yes? (except the formatting. All fonts should be monospace, its so much easier) Actually, that includes HTML tags, so its a good bit less, I think. Oh well, you can see which months are longer and shorter anyway. So thats something.

This is number 42, and counter on site says 93, I am feeling better about this whole thing. Apparently people are reading. Counter stats list Austin, TX, Great Britain, North Dakota, and Chicago ISPs, and more. Most are CharterMI.net and CMich.edu though, which is expected.

Ok, that IS all.

Til Sunday,
nick

If I wanted your opinion, I would give it to you.

Hello? Is this thing on?

Casino trip, CARS return, Apple Expo, and School

Went to casino with Suchyta tonight, just got back. Had fun, left only a bit behind. I have zero luck.

Crazy Apple Rumors is back from Vacation, after over a month. Just in time to cover Apple Expo in Paris, 3 AM ET, Tuesday morning (about 4 hours from now.) Possibilities include new Powerbooks, new ibooks, new Xserves, new displays, release of Panther, itunes for windows, and a few iapps. Powerbooks are most likely. Too bad it wont be webcast, at least not live. Last years was, its available here.

School is going ok, though Unix becomes more boring everytime I think about it. Should have taken online, she just doesn’t have enough to keep us interested for 2 hours.

Virtual PC is being a bitch about my printer. I may have a fix coming though. More on that later.

Wow, I just realized how little of this matters. Its all crap. Go read CARS, it’s much better. And watch the Gollum video on main webpage, it’s coming down soon.

Til next time,
nick

Uhh, 40? My sad story :(

I have no life, School, Sept. 11th, still bored, and website update.

Here I sit, the first friday after my 21st birthday, at home with my ibook. How sad. Worse still, a female friend of mine, known to be rather promiscuous when drinking, is in town and home alone as well. But no, I sit here online. I need a life.

Anyway, it’s friday night (and the moon is bright, gonna have some fun, show you how it’s done, TGIF. before your time? Nobody remembers, it’s ok.)

Classes are all going well. Have some homework to do over the weekend, but nothing too bad. Mom went to casino earlier this week, nothing big though. Glad to see we all made it through another September 11th safely. Wonder what it will be called in the future? Will it always be “9 – 11” or will we call it “Liberty Day” or something? Or maybe move Labor Day onto 9-11 and name it “Respect-those-killed-by-terrorists-and-those-who-labor Day.” Or not.

I am bored (I’m sure you can tell, more parenthesis than normal, which means more side thoughts, which means I’m rambling and am clearly bored.) I have a headache too. Maybe I have a headache, and thus I am bored, because if I avoid thinking about my head, it wont hurt and so I am thinking about uselessness and making myself bored by not being able to think of things that I could be doing, which would be useful, and thus not of a uselessness nature. Then again, reading that back makes my head hurt worse.

Uhm, zip disks are cool by the way, they got those little crystals in them. Don’t understand how that works, but power to em.

Ok, I don’t want to freak all 2 of my regular readers out and scare them off with crazy rantings, so I am going to lay down.

Website is being worked on, and I mean it. I just don’t want to put up 1 or 2 modified pages and leave the rest, so waiting to get it all done. And at the end of this month I am replacing my HTML archives of old blog with PDFs. Is easier on me, until I can reformat them to iblog style. And besides, you can still read them at blogger anyway. I don’t even know if that will ever go away. Who knows. Also, I will have the 100th hit on my website soon. Thats what the counters stat page says. I guess that includes from when on the blogger page, and on website now.

Ok, bye now, seriously. And I was kidding about the promiscuous girl, she probably not at home by now. SHE has a life.

nick

“I hate that lake, it killed my granpappy. He was sittin there, and he saw his reflection in the water, and he jumped in for him. Drowned try’in to save himself. Damned lake, I hate you.”

Again?

Cool TV shows, School, IBEW test, and ibook ownership.

It feels like I just did this yesterday, oh yeah, I did.

Cool TV show: the Joe Schmo Show. They found some guy and put him on a reality TV show, but its all fake. The other 8 contestants are actors, and nearly all of it is pre-scripted. I don’t watch reality TV, but this is good.

Objective C++ today. Feels like I missed a class between 181 and this. Technically I did, Data Structures should be between, but isn’t required to be. Should come back soon.

IBEW test yesterday was a joke. Gave up to 45 minutes for reading portion, took me about 15 or 20. Math section was equally laughable. I expect an interview in 30 – 60 days.

Re-calculated time I’ve owned ibook last night. 278 days; 39.7143 weeks; 9.26666 months; 0.76164 years. Way too many significant digits, especially considering I didn’t figure in hours and minutes. Oh well.

I keep hitting command – , (comma). Opens the preferences for the open application. Is rather annoying, and it happens almost every time I do a lot of typing.

I think thats it. I’ve been writing every day for, well, this would be the 4th day, so lack of thoughts is kinda understandable.

Ok, night ya’all.

nick

Number 38

SC4, the Rabbit, B-Day, Broken Blog, More B-Day, EBay, More SC4, IBEW Test, New Apple Hardware, Poor Rabbit, School, and Fixed Blog (Thats three days of posts, all in one!)

Well, I spent the majority of last night downloading all 650 MB of S*m C*ty 4, which means I get to spend the majority of tonight finding a ser*al number, which is proving to be much harder. The things I do to save $49.99 plus shipping.

Rabbit seams to have grown in 3 days, weird. Its annoying, mom always wants me to feed it and whatever. IT’S NOT MINE! Gah, not like I know what a rabbit wants. I owned a snapping turtle, my view of baby rabbits is about 2 weeks of food I don’t need to buy.

Only 2 days till my birthday. It was suggested to me that I go sit in a bar at 11 tomorrow night, wait for 12, and order something right away. What bar is open and serving at midnight on a Sunday? I’m sure there out there, but why go there? I have the rest of my life to drink whatever I want, the fact that you can’t doesn’t mean I have to. Seriously though, only a bit over 24 hours, how cool. So I know your all thinking “Man, 24 hours, what will I get?” Well, A good starter is the Sunday papers. Anything from OfficeMax, Staples, Best Buy, or Circuit City thats at least $25 will probably be good. If nothing else, its worth $25 when I return it. Seriously though, there isn’t much I ask for:

Apple Airport Card $79 ($71 for students)
512Mb PC133 1.25″ SO-DIMM $95 (depends where you go)
Coke, or Pepsi (I actually want it now though, not Monday)
A ser*al number for S*m C*ty 4 for mac
Any of the books on my Amazon.com WishList, if you go there there’s some way for you to look at my list, pick something, and have it shipped to me, look around.

Thats about it. Of course, I always accept cash.

And, funny of the week, from Apple’s Mac OS X Panther site:

Unix-lover Heaven
Panther will include a final X11 window server for Unix-based apps, improved NFS/UFS, FreeBSD 5 innovations as well as support for popular Linux APIs, IPv6 and other important acronyms.

Other important acronyms? Is that a technical term? The heck?

Anyway, moving on…

Still no ser*al number. Keep finding them for Windows version too, which seems to have different ser*als. I also learned tonight that I need a ser*al for iblog, as my 30 days seem to be up. For all I know, this wont even post.

Ok, enough for now, I got stuff to do. Need to get back on a normal sleep schedule for school. All 2 days of it.

Night ya’all
nick

…Nope, wont post. Hmm, how to get $19.95 to an Indian bank account at 11:33 on Saturday night, when you ain’t got the money on your credit card. Hmm. Guess I go watch SNL and figure it out at 1.

…Well, its about 8:27:53 right now (well, I guess not “about”) and still no iblog. Tomorrow though the money will be on my credit card. I want to blame it on Lifli for making me pay, but I knew it was $20 and didn’t pay when I could have. Crazy part: Says the program costs $19.95, WRONG! Actually, since developer is in India, it costs 950 Rupees. So with exchange rates as of last night, it really costs $20.79. Now $0.84 isn’t a big deal, but I would like to know about it. Rupees, hah!

My birthday is closer, just two and a half hours. Mom is at casino, the Sunday nearest my birthday seems to be lucky.

Jason was looking at a CD-ROM for his PowerBook 1400, and we found one that’s “Certified Pre-Owned.” The seller guarantees that if you ever find that the CD-ROM was not owned by someone before you, he will give you double your money back. I laughed like hell seeing it, it’s a funny gimmick, I give it that.

I downloaded S*mC*ty 4, which I’ve been searching for for weeks (weird to say “for for”). So I get it downloaded, go to install, and “Please enter your password.” Crap, ok, online for a password. Find one on a website finally, has been about 24 hours since I started download at this point. So enter password, instal commences, and half way through “Please enter disk 2.” Crap crap crap crap crap. Still haven’t found a S*m C*ty 4 disk 2 for Mac. Bastards. I was googling for some info on it, and found a forum where the reviews are “mixed.” Every thing from “My G4 400MHz with 256MB of RAM runs SC4 fine” to “My G4 dual 1.42GHz with 1.5GB RAM chokes on the piece.” Don’t recall anyone with specifics on trying it on a G3, so who knows what my results will be. Definitely not shelling out $50 with results like that though.

Well, school tomorrow, and IBEW test, and birthday, so need sleep. That wont be for probably 2 hours, at least. Oh well.

I do plan to post as normal on Tuesday, and will add to this before I post it. You should be able to read this on Monday though. Weird to write stuff knowing nobody will see it for another day, screws with the “relative dates.” By the time you read this “tomorrow” will be Wednesday and “Today” will be gone. Time is a funny thing.

Ok, adios,
nick

…Ok, 9:44 Monday night. Apple released new imacs and ipods today, but wont bore you with specs, just check apples webpage.

Most un-eventful birthday in history, especially for a 21st. I’m not complaining though, not one for a big party anyway. Woke up this morning to “Good morning, happy birthday, I think rabbit is dead.” It was. Was too young, needed mom’s milk and we couldn’t give it. Wild animal’s should be left in the wild.

Started Unix today, bit disappointed. Working on Windows machines, just logging into a unix server. Oh well. Will see how Obj. Oriented C++ goes tomorrow.

And most important, I PAID FOR IBLOG!!! Which is why you can see this.

Update tomorrow, like it should be.

Bye for the third time,
nick

It begins again

Re-Beginnings, New Rabbit, School Begins, B-Day, Trogdor, and Silly-Putty.

Here we are, the first real post at a new blog. This is number 37, 34 on old plus 2 trials here plus this.

I have a new pet. Scott from where I work was out mowing, and found some bunnies. He was mowing along and found one running in the yard, and was afraid he might hit it, so picked it up and put it in his truck. He came over here, before taking it back, and we had to break it to him that because he touched it, the mom would smell the new scent and shun the bunny. So, being the animal person, I got stuck with it. I really don’t need a 6 week old bunny to take care of, but what can I do? Pretty sure its a boy, no name yet.

I was bored late monday night/Tuesday morning so went online and found my Java homework. I managed to turn in my first assignment before 4 am. Of course, the semester didn’t start for another 43 hours. No f2f class till Monday.

My birthday is just 5 days away. Starting to get excited. Probably get crap for gifts. Notice the gifts just go downhill from about 17 on?

What else… I can never think of stuff to talk about when I’m writing, but say “I should say that” for the three days leading up to the blog. It sucks.

I found the joys of Strong Bad a few days ago. Cool website, especially Trogdor.

Ever make that silly putty type stuff? You mix glue with water, and dissolve some borax it water, then mix the two, and kneed out the excess water. Its kinda cool at first, but I played with it too much and it’s getting kinda tough. Oh well, it was fun.

I’m now taking donations for registering iblog (the program I use to make the blog) and renewing .mac. You can call it a birthday present if you want. And jason, your donation is mandatory.

I have put the Gollum acceptance speech from the 2003 MTV movie awards on my website. Check it out.

Ok, I think thats it. No idea what I will talk about Saturday, but I will be back then. Tuesday though, you can expect news about my classes, birthday, and the IBEW test.

nick

The End is Here

I’m still sick, the end of TechTV?, Lost in the links, Cool show, Website, Reunion, the Move, and Yous.
Blogger Post #34

Number 34, the last blogger blog to be blogged.
🙁

I still have my flu-e-cold-ish-thing. Doing much better though, thank you. Thursday it was just starting, from about 2am to 2 pm friday was the worst, barely breath, coughing, lots of draining, horrible. Started getting better after that (as if it could have gotten worse).

Was bored, so I went to leoville.com, and Leo said that he heard rumors around that TechTv might be sold, which got me all reminiscent of old TSS episodes, when the network was really awesome, as ZDTV. So I go to the TechTV.com and I see they have a WMV of the VERY FIRST EPISODE, EVER. With Leo and kate and UGM 1.0 (though it wasn’t 1.0 yet because there were no successors planned) with an amazing PII 300 and 128MB RAM, WOW. Anyway, so then I see the links to everyones webpages, and go through them all, except kevin’s, because it says it was down and just gives a link to go somewhere else for now. So when I’m on Sarah’s blog page, there’s a link to that same site kevin had posted, so I go there. OH MY GOD! It’s the greatest show ever, you have to watch it. Yes, it’s an 85MB download, yes you need to go get a DIVX player, but its so worth it if you even remotely like this stuff. Oh, you need the link huh, here.

Also, check this out, entertaining at the least.

What else. Hmm. Going to do a lot of work on website soon. I need to. My HTML class isn’t til October, so can’t depend on that pushing me. I really am going to try though, I promise.

I went to a family reunion in Munger today. Not my family, but close. My “Grandpa” Jack was there, we haven’t seen him in years. He lives in a VA nursing home in GR now, used to come over all the time though. He recently recieved a medal for fighting at Normandy in WWII. Here’s the PR. As old as he is, and as bad as his hearing and eyes are, you could see how happy he was to have gotten it.

Ok, I guess thats it. See you Wednesday for my 3rd blog at the new blog. Actually I’m not real sure on numbering scheme. Guess it would be number 37 huh. Yeah, number 37. If anyone has suggestions as to what I should work on, improve, or add to the blog, website, or anything, please let me know.

Ohh, I almost forgot.

1 Nicholas Yax
2 Jason Julian
3 John Pauwel
4 Nicholas Suchya
5 Lauren Somalski
6 Robin Yax
7 Stephanie Ricker
8 Scott Helber
9 Troy Histed
10 Rachael Zieve
11 Barb Courtney
12 Jacob Courtney
13 Connie Yax
14 Danielle Pilon

Thats all of you. Sad isn’t it. Over 3 months, and only 14 people, and I’m one of them. granted, you may have showed other people, but I doubt it. But I guess thats one of the great parts about having a blog. You can say anything you want, because nobody actually reads it. I have IP address logs to prove it. Ok, thats all.

later,
nick

those that don’t believe in war,
remember all who fought and died to allow you that belief.