Stardate 62669.14 - Calling All Nerds

I love my HD Television (Panasonic), I love my HDMI receiver (Onkyo), I pretty much love my HD DVR (Scientific Atlanta), and I am ok with our HD cable (Time Warner). But for some reason, when Gossip Girl (in HD) has been recorded from CW11 onto the DVR, we get periodic sound drops during re-play. It is driving Cheryl nuts. The only thing I found through Google was someone in New Jersey who had similar issues and they stopped when he upgraded to 1.3a HDMI cables.

Has anyone else experienced something like this? If so, what was the fix? I'm dreading contacting TWC about this because I anticipate them not being very helpful.

Thanks!!

NYC

Stardate 62398.66 - Frak

Today we got back from being out with Loren at the Sesame Street park in PA and the Dell Inspiron E1705 had an error message about not being able to boot. Odd, since it was running with the screen saver on when we left. To make a long story short, here is the problem:

*** Hard Drive - DST Short Test ***
Test Results: Fail
Error Code 2000-0148
MSG: 0: IDE ERROR: Status 3E No additional sense information

The laptop will not boot from the hard drive. And if I boot from CD-ROM I can get to the Hard Drive but I cannot see the "Users" directory at the root level. To make matters worse, the backup (which seemed to complete successfully yesterday) will not permit me to restore. It just does not show any restore points available, even though I can see the data files on the drive for yesterday. I tested the restore function back when we first got the drive, but it failed a couple of months ago and I had to scrap the backup data and start over and I apparently never re-checked the restore to ensure it was working property.

We're completely screwed. We'll loose months and months and possible more than a year of photos if I cannot get the data either from the hard drive or from the backup. I'm going to call the tech support line for the backup software tomorrow, but I'm not anticipating any luck with them. My next option is to send the drive to one of those data recovery outfits and spend whatever it takes to get the data back. (Anyone got any suggestions as to a good place?)

I am ready to throw the laptop out of the window and into the courtyard below. I've now spent the past 3 hours trying to fix this, to no avail.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

NYC

Stardate 62126.84 - Finally!!

Finally, the High Definition DVD format war is over and I can make a purchase. Goodbye, HD DVD. Hello, Blu-ray!

NYC

Stardate 61971.62 - Another Bubble?

Thanks to Jess for finding and posting this, and yes, I get the irony of blogging about this video...



NYC

Stardate 61939.38 - Loren's "Boat"

When we purchased our new Panasonic 42" flat panel plasma HDTV for the new place, it took me a few days to get rid of the box. At some point Loren became interested in the box, and wanted to play in it. I put the bottom part on the floor and told her it "looked like a little boat". She spent the next two days spending all of her time at home in the box, wanted to be read to "on her boat". She didn't even watch a Dora episode for 2 entire days! She wanted to play "in the boat"! Of course, now I have a huge box that I'm not sure how I'm going to get rid of...maybe she'll lose interest soon.




NYC

Stardate 61817.38 - Digital Ethnography

Jessica Stover posted this video on her blog. As a parent of a very young child, I often wonder how different things will be for her in college than they were for me. As an example, when I was in school only Engineers and Computer Scientists had computers - the Apple Macintosh 2 for CS majors, and the IBM PS/2 (XT) for Engineers. I didn't have an e-mail account until my senior year, and that was on a mainframe and required special formatting to get out onto the Internet. I had a 1200 baud modem to visit bulletin boards and to get hints for games. Professors handed out everything hardcopy, and used blackboards or overhead projectors. No-one had a cell phone. Things have changed so much in just 15 years. How much more will they change in another 15?



NYC

Stardate 61695.6 - Neverwinter Nights 2

A little over a month ago I wrote about how I was starting to play Neverwinter Nights 2 - a computer game I purchased some time ago and started but never had the time to complete. Well, I finally played the last hour of the game today.

First, I'll say that I loved the game overall. The NPCs had real personalities, decisions you made in the game caused you to gain or lose influence with them, and at one point you gain a keep and staff and have to repair/upgrade it--which I thought was one of the coolest things ever. Overall I highly recommend the game. It provided quite a few hours of enjoyment and was a nice mental break over the past month.

However, I was somewhat disappointed in how the NPCs were handled towards the end of the game. There was a lot of good material early in the game, but you quickly ran out of fresh dialog options with the characters. For example, I was pursuing a romantic relationship with one of the female characters and some of her dialog seemed to imply it was possible, but later I found out there was only one female NPC and one male NPC available for relationships--regardless of what may have been implied in earlier dialog. As another example, the female NPC I did end up in bed with constantly refused to tell me about her Druid "circle", even after we found out what had happened to them and resolved that quest. I still got the same response from her after that event as I received before the event. It was an early warning that as the game progressed the amount of time spent on it seemed to decrease. This was especially evident at the end of the game.

Finally, the ending was pretty poor (I'm talking about the very, very end). It seemed like they ran out of time and had to throw something together really quickly (like over a week-end, and that is being generous). The voice-over at the end was one you hadn't heard at any point in the game before, and it was not a professional voice actor--I think it was Larry from Accounting. They were setting up for the sequel (due in October), but the ending nevertheless was handled very, very badly. I won't go into details so as not to spoil the game for anyone still playing (most people purchased and finished it at the end of 2006, but you never know), but I was very disappointed at the end - both in how the story ended and in its execution. (And for those of you who care, I was playing a character that ended up Lawful Good at the end, and yes I know the Evil character ending is supposed to be somewhat better).

Regardless, I still give the game a thumbs-up overall. And I'll probably get the sequel next month.

NYC

Stardate 61596.82 - Patch My Game

Before Loren was born I wasted a great many hours playing computer games. When I look back on all that time, I am constantly reminded of things I might have accomplished (learning to sail, writing a book) had I not been in front of a computer.

When it is cold outside and Loren is napping on the weekend, however, a computer game is a nice temporary diversion. Now that I no-longer can spend an entire afternoon playing a game, I find that the mental break for a couple of hours every couple of weekends is a nice thing. So a year or so ago I purchased Neverwinter Nights 2, the sequel to a game I loved and played start to finish 3 times over the past 6 years.

It has been a year or so since I played the game last, so when I sat down this weekend to play it I clicked on the "update" button. One hour and 15 minutes later, I am still waiting for all the patches to load.

Now, normally I like it when they add features and correct bugs and improve the engine and interface and all those things game makers do, but I've spent more than 50% of Loren's nap - more than 50% of the only true leisure time I'll have all day - waiting for a year's worth of patches to load.

Depressing. If the game wasn't so damn awesome I'd given up 45 minutes ago.

NYC

Stardate 61167.47 - Calling All Blackberry Users

Attention all geek friends of mine, and any non-geek with a Blackberry, and any random reader with a Blackberry.

I'm thinking about purchasing a Blackberry, but I want to know if people have any particular praise or scorn for specific models.

I'm also thinking about purchasing either an unlocked phone or a Cingular-specific phone from eBay since my Cingular contract is not up for another 10 months. If anyone has any experience in purchasing phones not from their cell provider and actually getting them to work well, I'd appreciate hearing your story.

NYC

Stardate 61014.06 - Technology Marches On

From Good Morning Silicon Valley:

September 13, 1956 - IBM uncrated the RAMAC -- the world's first hard disk. It was 5 feet square, weighed a full ton and stored just 5 megabytes of data -- barely enough to hold a single song in MP3 format. My how far we have come in 50 years. Hitachi announced Thursday a 1-terabyte hard disk drive. Just 3.5-inches in diameter, the drive can hold about 250,000 MP3s.

NYC

Stardate 60924.19 - Movie Review and Happy Birthday

Yesterday we had an exciting trip to Costco, followed by a trip to Home Depot for plastic storage containers, which we proceeded to fill with clothes that Loren has outgrown. Today we took a brief trip out to NJ to deposit the storage containers in Cheryl's parents' basement. They were off to a Polka concert this afternoon and invited us to attend, and as excited as we may have been about the invitation, sadly we had to beg off due to Loren's short attention span. ;-)

On the way out of town to NJ this morning, we stopped at B&H so Cheryl could pick up her birthday present, a Cannon Powershot SD700 IS. A birthday present that she researched, she selected, she physically went into the store, and she purchased. My role in this gift was to say, "Yes, I agree we should get a small camera," and to drive around the block with Loren while she picked it up, taking care not to accidentally turn onto the approach for the Lincoln Tunnel. I like these types of birthday presents!!

I guess I'll still get her a little something as a surprise to unwrap on her actual birthday, however. The background on this gift is that Cheryl decided we needed a small camera to compliment our Cannon S2 IS because "In public I can manage Loren or the camera, but not both!" We think managing both will now be possible with the smaller camera. Here are two pictures of Loren from the new camera. Please disregard the Cheerios stuck to her clothes, as she had just finished dinner!

Changing gears somewhat, we also saw Panic Room this weekend - half on Saturday night and the second half on Sunday night. I gave it a thumb-up, but Cheryl gave it a thumb-sideways. She said she may have liked it more if we hadn't recently seen Flightplan, also with Jodie Foster and her "child" in dire peril. I liked the movie but felt the last 60 seconds or so fell flat - my same reaction to Flightplan (see my review here). I think it is worth a rental, just don't get it and Flightplan in the same short period of time!

NYC