Cucucachoo's Blog

Can ya hear me now?

Well that time has come again. That time of year where all I can think about is a little device that fits so nicely into my pocket. Yes, a cell phone. I have this issue with cell phones that most people would call crazy. I can't stand to have a cell phone for more than a year. This is why I don't use Verizon or Sprint anymore. Not only do their phones suck. You can't just switch your phone any time you want. You have to go into the store argue with the sales rep and pay a huge amount of money for a phone, then have the IMEI number switched.

Now I'm not saying that the phones i buy are cheep. But when you buy from your provider they are only looking to secure new customers. And this is why they only give the discount to new contracts and charge a butt load amount to an existing one. So what I do is look around on ebay for a while and make a purchace there. You can get a phone that is normally $299.99 from your provider for a low cost of $250.00 and that includes shipping.

But its only a phone, people say to me. Yeah its a phone, but when you carry it around it gets scratched and banged up. Sometimes they even fall out of fasion. Yes I said fashion. If your going to use a cell phone you might as well make it so it matches your style.

So there are a couple of phones Im looking at. Really two. One is the famous Motorola V3 Razr. The other is also a Motorola but its a V635. I really like both but the V3 is starting to saturate the market and the V635 isn't really in it yet. The thing that the V635 has over the V3 is it has a 1.3MP camera with flash and 8x digi zoom. But it lacks one thing that the V3 has, and that is damn good looks. Whichever phone I go with, Motorola or not, it must have bluetooth and a fast data connection. I can't have nothing keeping me from listening to 97x on my drive home.

So my question to you my only reader. What kind of cell phone do you have. Let me know if you like it or if it sucks balls like my V551 does now. You want to know about horrible battery life, that has it.

The Fall

Out of all the seasons Fall is the best. I love when the air turns cold and the leaves change to fiery reds and yellows. One of the best things is you don't need a coat but would look good in one. Hooded sweat shirts become a normal clothing item and no one seems to mind.

The only problem with Fall is it leads to winter. Which, if you know me personally you would know i hate winter. I don't mean I don't like it but its cool. No, I loath it. I hate the white snow that falls from the sky. Blanketing the earth like a white shroud of death. I hate the ice that hangs off your house like some death spike waiting to fall on your head. I would rather spend a year in my house with no outside contact then to be around for winter. But, that is not possible so I have to deal with it.

But once the wretched snow is gone spring comes. With spring you get flowers and grass and warmer weather where you can wear your hoodie again. Spring leads to Summer and the whole thing repeats.

And this ends a crappy entry to my blog at lunch. I hope you enjoyed your wasted few minutes with me. Bye!

Upgrades or Repairs

Well the upgrading to my iBook has come to a close. This saturday after what seemed like forever I received my hard drive. The reason it felt like forever is because I bought the drive on a Thursday and the person that sold it to me didn't ship until a week later. Even after telling me that the drive would be shipped that saturday after I paid for it. I was quite upset about this when I got the email. But at least the person told me and didn't leave me hanging.

One thing I have to say about upgrading you book to a larger HD is the pure knowing that you don't have to pick and choose the stuff you keep on it. I went from a 20GB hard drive to a 60. Well the actual size is about 55.3, but still! So much room to play with now.

And what would would have made the day even better? Playing a couple rounds of Socom 3 online, thats what would have made the day better. But no! my router went down and will not power on. I plugged and unplugged it and no go. I tried a different power adapter and behold! it works! But the power adapter goes to my modem and not to the router so I can either have online for my ibook, or a network that goes no place. And what makes matters worse is that I cant even connect to the internet with my PS2, or anything else for that matter. The only thing I can connect with is my iBook. Not my iMac(which is weird), laptop, ps2, xbox. Nothing!

So in attempts to buy a power adapter I go to Radio Shack. This crap of a place has a whole wall of power adapters. But none are 5 Volts, 2 Amps. What the shit is that about! I thought Radio Shack had anything you needed like that. I guess they are to busy selling re-branded stereo equipment to care about the more obscure products out there.

So after being shot down at the good'ol Radio Crap I jumped online. I found the same wireless router that I already have on eBay for $2.29 with shipping just above $18. What a bargain! A new power adapter if they had it would have cost about the same thing. So now I just have to find another power cord and I can have my game machines connect wirelessly. sweet!

Upgrades Part 1

Today I tore into my iBook. I have been watching eBay for a few weeks looking for a new optical drive for my iBook. It came to me with only a CD-ROM and I really missed having a burner and DVD player. My old Compaq had both and I got really used to having it. So on ebay I found a CD-R-RW/DVD-Rom for a measly hundred bucks. Normally you cant get one on ebay no lower than one fifty. And at apple for a new one they want close to two hundred and fifty. So when I found this one I jumped on it quick.

So today I came to work and ripped right into it. You want to talk about scary. This isn't like upgrading a tower where you can just take a door of and whammy it's done. No, there is a few steps you have to do. first, take off the bottom case, then the shield, then the top case then the top shield. Then you have to remove the drive itself, change the mount bracket to the new and reverse process. You also have to keep all the screws in order because there are so many and they all are very, very similar.

After a good 2 hour tear down and rebuild I now have a new optical drive. I tested and made sure that the drive could burn cd's and play DVDs and sure enough, it does. This isn't for the faint of heart when it comes to upgrades and repairs. You can screw up your book and be hosed, so attempt at your own risk.

Next, upgrade the hard drive from a 20gb to a 60gb. And it looks like the airport cable antenna will need to be replaced. It is starting to fray at the connector.

War

No I'm not going to preach to you about my feelings about the war in iraq. Im going to tell you today about something much more important. Socom 3. Socom has got to be the best damn war game there is. I never really got into it before because I was a late comer to the world. When your a late comer to a online war game your pretty much a easy target. You don't know the maps. You don't know the little hiding places people can sit in wait at. It's just harder for you because you just don't know. Well Socom 3 is out and now the maps are new and everyone has to go thru the search and destroy ranks all the same now.

While playing this game you hear in your head mic your team mates. Now I'm a shy person when it comes to talking to people i can't see. Figure that, I will chat a person up all day in the line at the grocery. But get me in a chat room or online gaming and I barely talk. Well regardless, Its a kick ass game that if your not playing you should. So keep an eye out for me. Im usually the guy laying on the ground dead.

Last night I would have to say I played some of the best game I have ever have. You get scored on how many kills you make and against how many deaths you have and if you do any stupid shit like kill a team mate or kill yourself with a grenade. Which, oddly enough i have done many times. Well last night i made 7 kills and only died 4 times. This means nothing because my team lost. But its the best I have done ever. And this only makes me want to keep playing.

I think I'm having Socom withdrawal

Great Pumpkins

This past weekend we took The Boy to Burger Farm on the east side of the I275 beltway. The Wife's sisters and their kids came along also. Now if you can't tell, I'm not a big fan of large groups of kids. Any group that is more than one is to big for me. Yeah i know I'm going to be a daddy soon and the group of my kids will be more than one. But that is something I will have to deal with when the kid comes. But while its only one and the others belong to someone else I can be this way and not feel bad.

Burger Farm was fun they had a hay ride up to the patch where you can pick your pumpkin or pumpkins if you want many like we did. The ride took you past the construction land fill where, if you were on the right side of the hay ride(which we were), you would have a great view of a huge pile of junk. The kids had a blast, although they were good for the most part I still wanted to twist the heads off a few of them. The Wife and I picked out one main pumpkin for carving, and three smaller pumpkins that the farm called "spookers". Of course no pumpkin buying would be complete without the tiny pumpkins. We had to get four.

After the pumpkin patch we came back down to where the inflatable "rides" were. I've never seen so many of the same thing dressed in a different package in my whole life. There was the pumpkin walk, which was like the moon walk but instead of looking like the moon it was shaped like a pumpkin. Of course there was the moon walk with the slide. Then the rocket where the kids climbed about 4 stories in the air and then slid down a slide. All these were maned by teenagers that looked like they could have been other things while the bosses weren't looking. No one got hurt so no complaints by me.

Here are a few pictures from the outing.

From left to right: Barry with baby Jack, The Wife, Brooke, Jackson, Cole, Josh, Dylan, Jordyn, Carrie.

A nice view of a trash pile on our way.

Cole loving his pumpkin.

Tiny Pumpkins.

You can view all of the pictures here.

Well the next gathering will be at our house in two weekend for the carving party. Lots of beer adults, apple cider for the kids, and cutting open the tops of pumpkins and scooping out the guts. Good family fun.

Turn It Off

One thing that burns my ass is when your you're sitting in a movie theater and someone's cell phone rings. Not only does it ring but then they answer it and just sit there talking. It wasn't bad enough that your phone rang but now i have to listen to your conversation about how your babies daddy is a dead beat and he best be bringin' you your monies. Like him not giving you money is your problem. Try getting a J-O-B baby so you can T-C-O-B. Instead of blaming someone else for your problems.

Of course there is also the times that your you're on your phone at work and someone's cell phone rings. Not that that's a problem. The problem is when it rings so freaking loud that the customer on the other end can hear it like its in his pocket. Can't people just put the ringer on a middle level. Come on, you keep it in your pocket, if you can't hear it then use the vibrate function most phones come with now.

And then there is the guy that is on the desk phone and then his cell rings. Of course its turned up so the dead can hear it. But does he silence it? Hell no! he lets it ring and ring and then says "huh" and "what" to the person on the desk phone. It just drives me nuts because I can only think of the poor person on the other line trying to convey his problem and has to keep repeating themselves because ass muncher wont silence his ringer.

On a pleasant note, its friday. Which means tomorrow is Saturday. And that means I'm off work and don't have to pretend that I'm happy to be somewhere. Because I'm always happy being at home with my wife and boy.

---Edit thanks to Dave I had to make grammar corrections---

Trash

Ever since I bought this old iBook I have not had to put up with the crap that comes with using windows. Under windows your forced to wait deal with painfully slow boot times. You also have to deal with all kinds of drivers and other software to do something as simple as print a page or maybe get pictures from your digi cam. Well if you have a Mac you dont need to deal with these problems. Infact, after upgrading to Tiger, the boot time went from a few moments. say like 3 minutes, to 1 minute. I kid you not. I can push the power button and its up and going in 1.05 minutes. I timed it, yes I'm that big of a dork. I love my Mac and will never go back to using windows, which takes well over 10 minutes to be usable after power on.

So after thinking about it for awhile I have decided to get rid of all my old PC hardware that has been stacking up in the basement. You wouldn't believe the PC grave yard I have down there. People over the years have given me their old machines because they either grew tired of having it around or they purchased new. I have boxes that have 486 processors in them. I have ram that at one time would have cost 35 dollars a chip, and lets not forget you had to buy them in pairs. It's nothing more than a big pile of junk. So over the next few weeks I will be gathering up these machines and trashing them. Drilling holes into hard drives so trash pickers wont be able to pull private info off them. Goodbye Mr. Gates, I have a new business man to admire. Your arc enemy

I will however, keep one windows machine. My old Compaq Presario laptop. It doesn't seem to do to bad and I would like to keep it for back up purposes. One can never know when they may need to torture themselves to remind why you left in the first place. Plus, some things I can do faster on the windows box right now and I also have a few Sim games I enjoy that I cannot on my iBook. But when I get my new iBook I probably will be selling it as I will be able to play the games on it.

Corpse Bride

Went to see Corpse Bride this weekend. It was really good. I was expecting something of the same thing as Nightmare Before Christmas. I was happy to find that it wasn't. Unlike Nightmare, Corpse Bride had a straight thru plot. There was less singing and was not so choppy of a story line as nightmare. It was a good story and worth the money spent. If you were thinking of seeing it i would suggest doing so.

We went to see the movie with my highschool friend Justin and his wife Amy. They are always a pleasure to be around and have always had great storys to tell. He is the guy that won the Brian Wilson contest. If your curious about what it was all about then check out his site at PlaceLogoHere. After the movie we had dinner at one of my favorite places, Margaritas. If you have one in your area then you must check it out.

We then came back to our place to sit by the outdoor fire place thing that we received for a wedding gift. I've been dying to use it since opening the package. We didn't have any wood, but that didn't stop me. I have some 2x4s that were splintered apart so i cut those into pieces and burned those. It's not like I could use them for anything else.

Oh well, that is my uneventful weekend. Sunday was "take my ipod to the apple store" day. It's always a full day it seems. The Genius Bar seems to always be packed and the wait is forever most times. But once it was done i got my iPod and i am a happy music listener. Hooray for me