Cosplaying at Java

For those who might be reading this that aren't "in the know" (At Northern Arizona University), we have a 24-hour coffee shop and smoothie place. It is to be referred to as "Java" because that is what we call it. One of my favorite activities at Java, is Friday or Saturday night Smoothies, right before all of our mealplan meals are about to roll over. The best thing about this, of course, is the fun we have in the process of getting the smoothies.

For example, the first time that Jim, Justin and I did this, we became Tim, Jeff, and Corey. Then, it was Jeff, Tim and Cory. After this, we've decided just to use false names - It's a fact of life that the friendly folks working at Java don't check the ID card that you use to pay with. So earlier this evening Jim, Justin and I went under different names.

Jim went as "Drake" with his Silent Bob trenchcoat, and the sunglasses. Justin went as "Mordechai" - which happens to be the name of my D&D character from high school.

I went as Jeff, because that was a name that they had given to both Justin and Jim. I was wearing my beige khacki/carpenter pants, and my blue sweater. Quite honestly, it felt very generic. It was interesting. I have actually begun thinking of what a generic type of person like Jeff might do... I might write him into a short story. Maybe he'll be generic in Gotschland, or maybe just generic in the insane land of people who I've invented. He can live in England with "ML5" and "Joerg Berliner"

Next week, we are all going as Andy and we are all ordering the same type of smoothie. We may even be honored by Jacalynn's presence, though she said she was going to go as Jack.

Reflections on English105

Traditionally, I've considered myself to be a decent writer. In fact, I would say that I've done fairly well in a variety of English classes, involving both composition and literature, even a combination of the two. Because of this, I find it odd that a class with "English" in its title happens to be one of my least favorite this semester.

I think I know what it is, though. This class requires more, and a diferent style of. off the cuff awesomeness than high school classes did. I am used to coming to class on a regular basis (perfect attendance for 3.75 years, anyone?) but I'll admit that in high school, the accepted standard is for a teacher to stand in front of the class and essentially feed you. In my English 105 course, we are required to come to class prepared to make stuff up right away, and continue making stuff up until we have it right.

Or so is my perception. I think that the problem with this is that we still end up accepting the instructor's idea of correct, we just happen to be filling our heads with a whole lot of incorrect before reaching correct. This may help some of us who are more keen on the methods of this type of instruction, but at least half of my particular class has left the building just thanking God that they've come to a Liberal institution where they apparently (or so they think) won't have conservative stuff jammed down their throats.

So far, English 105 is both frustrating, and highly comical. With luck, it'll become less frustrating and more englightening and comical as time goes on.

New Desktop

New Desktop,
originally uploaded by Cory5412.

The desktop picture here comes from Justin's new PC. I stole the picture from it.

On the note of that PC... it's some new Compaq Presario. It's like, only the 2nd brand new PC I've ever seen from its purchase at an office supply store, to it being set up in a dorm room (Or any room.)

One thing that amazed me was how... generic it really is. Its enclosure has very few amazing identifying features, and is otherwise the same in a world of now black boxes. The box is surprisingly small... I remember the box that my Gateway PC came in being... fairly huge.

Carrying the PC wasn't a problem, we carried it from Staples to IHOP where we ate and waited out the rain, then we carried it into WalMart, where we had to explaint to everybody that he had bought it at Staples, then we had to buy the monitor (a 17" CRT). Bringing that 17" CRT back to his dorm was the hardest part.

It was an interesting day, to say the least. I decided that if I ever need a super-cheap x86 box, I might get the same thing Justin bought, it's Vista-Capable, and has a Combo drive... Maybe I should look into Pirating Vista then.

First Week Done

I am posting this on the Saturday Morning after the first week of classes at Northern Arizona University. It's definitely been an interesting week, and I already have classes which I'm sure that I love and I will do awesome in, and I also already have classes that aren't my most favorite. In the next few weeks, I'll do my best to post about my favorite classes, places to eat, etc. I also hope to begin posting more pictures (from Flickr, of course) to the blog.

ContactSheet 213

ContactSheet-213.jpg,
originally uploaded by Cory5412.

This is one of the crazy things that I do. I create contact sheets of all of my photos. This is number 213 of 215, and that's just so far. As you can see, the numbers are almost, or in excess of 6,400 - that's how many pictures I have total. Each on has its own number. Nifty, eh?

I do them in black and white, or I have done them in the past in black and white, but shortly I'm going to start doing them in full & glorious colour!

The other thing is that I print all of these - I printed 210 or so of them with an Apple LaserWriter 4/600PS, and I'm going to be printing later ones on the Xerox Phaser 6120. Fun will be had by all. I have a 3-hole punch and I actually fill binders with these. I have "PhotoBook Volume I" which is Pages 001-200, and has images 00001-06000, which is highly entertaining. I have started on Volume II, which will be Pages 201-400, and Images 06001-12000 (ish). 12,000 Photos is a lot, and somehow, I bet that I'll have that goal reached by the end of this school year, if not by the end of the semester.

I do this all on the 500MHz PowerBook G3, or soon a 450MHz PowerBook G4, my Nikon D50, and Photoshop CS2.

I need to do a whole thing on the entire method, including a tutorial and everything, because what I have found is that this is a great low hdd-space and low computing-oomph method to managing large numbers of digital photos. I simply do the thing with them that somebody might do to a bunch of film negatives, I make contactsheets and put them in a binder. :D

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Vista Pre-RC1 Invitation!

I got an e-mail in my inbox inviting me to the Vista Pre-RC1 test. Naturally, I took Microsoft up on this offer within moments of recieving it, and I am currently in the process of downloading the offending operating system. I will be installing VPC7 on my powerbook g3 shortly, and trying this out. I wish there was some soft of "insane projects test lab" I could use on the campus to do something like, actually install Vista Pre-RC1 on real hardware. I'd love to see the results on real  hardware, not just in VPC7 emulation on my powerbook g3. Though, my results should prove to be fairly indicative of the status of Vista on "old hardware" (think of my setup as a slow Pentium II with 4meg S3 Trio graphics, and only 128 or 192 megabytes of memory.)

"Vintage Mac"

This is an interesting thing that LCGuy pointed me to - the first of the dualprocessor PowerMac G4 systems are now officially "Vintage" along with such venerable machines as the b/w g3s, the firewire powerbook g3s, and other interesting pieces of equipment.

It's interesting to see the change in attitude about any given piece of equipment, from the day that macworld prints their glowing review of the latest professional desktop or workstation, to the point at which it's considered to be "vintage." For what it's worth, I do remember reading about b/w g3s and early g4s while I was in elementary school, in macworld and macaddict. I was always super-excited to read about the latest revision, update, price-drop or speed-bump.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304210

I wonder if this could be any potential indication regaurding  the type of hardware that Leopard will easily run on, not that I'm particularly interested in that, after a) the fiascos I've had with Tiger, and b) with my slow hardware.

Interesting things to say the least.

Mac Pro, No more!

For what it is worth, I've decided to go ahead and not get a Mac Pro. I still have all of those job applications in, and I will still probably be saving for a new computer, albeit a bit slowly. Instead of a Mac Pro, I am going to see if my parents will be willing to bring me my PowerMac G3 and its monitor, and I'll be using either the Power Macintosh G3 for OSX and photoshop stuff, or the PowerBook G3 for that, and the other of those two computers for OS 9.

Loads of fun with old technology!

New Printer

I talked to dad today, and have just placed an order on a new printer. It's a Xerox Phaser 6120 from Xerox. No auto-duplexing built in, but I can do manual duplexing page-by-page when needed, and I can order the duplexer later on.


Everybody, get ready for a special 2nd run of 3am! In full glorious colour!

At NAU

I apologize sincerely for not having anything up for awhile, I seriously have several blogPosts from the past few weeks that are on my computer, and that I fully intend to put up.

 

Anyway, I'm at NAU and I've met a lot of awesome people - mostly through Glenn. I've already met several people through him, and I already have lots of ideas for photos to take here.

 

Tomorrow, I am heading to Target to see if they have a particular printer, and then to see if I can put it on layaway until Dad gets here on Saturday. That one's a network printer. However, I'm going to look at campus surplus sales too, I may be able to find an excellent old LaserJET or so in there. Glenn and I have discussed it - if I do, we will probably share it, and the printer will be our sexy printer ho, and we'll all print our long books and stuff on it - Of course, Glenn will be buying some of the toner. :)

 

Sexy printer hos aside, I am amazed with Target, their online store has laser printers, VOIP phones, among other crazy things - They don't have the brother printer I wanted, but dad and I talked about it and I may get a Lexmark E210n (I think that was the model number) It's only three digits of modelnumber powah, (vs. the HP LaserJET 1022, the Brother HL-2040, and the Xerox Phaser 6120) but it's an "n" model which means it's networkable, and it's lexmark, which in the laser arena is okay I hear, I have no personal vendetta against them.

 

As far as getting a MacPro goes, I'm still not sure, I'm fairly certain that I want it, but I'm not exactly certaon on how I'll get it, etc. The desks in Reilly hall are not as big as in Sechrist, I think, so my estimations are wrong, but a printer, and my stereo will fit on top, and there's definitely room for an LCD monitor, be it the nice 20" Cinema Display, or the cheapest dell 17" LCD (which is not that bad, actually), I don't know if I can go back to a CRT for my photos, unless it's suepr-nice and gargantuan, which won't work well with NAU.

 

Anyway... I'm rambling. :D

 

http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~clw249/

Just a note on the Mac Pro

Yes, it looks almost exactly like the Power Mac G5
Yes, it is a Revision-A product from Apple, Computer Inc.
Of course, I don't have $2500 to drop on a new computer right now.

But I still seriously believe that this machine will be my next Mac. It will be a significant upgrade from the PowerBook G3 and PowerMac g3 I am using right now. A collective... 10.66GHz of Woodcrest (XEON 5100) awesomeness, how can you deny that? I honestly think that the Mac Pro is slated to become one of those machines that's around ten years past discontinuation, still chugging along with every imagineable upgrade, with a few software hacks, running the very latest version of Mac OS X and a variety of applications, with users still reporting that the machine is very useable.

Naturally, I hope that's how mine behaves, because I fully intend to keep it, and upgrade it a bit every few months, or year, or whenever. In ten years, my system probably will have eight monitors, 3 terabytes of hard disc space, 16 gigabytes of memory, and it may be upgraded to the 3GHz or an even faster variant of the Woodcrest. Who knows?

Anixter Warehouse

Today I am at work with dad at the Anixter warehouse. It’s fairly interesting because there are various Frontier guys running around on their side of the warehouse, and I’ve learnt various things today. For example, there’s a company called “Calix” which I need to research. Also, Siemens makes a higher-end ADSL gateway called the Speedstream 5930, it is apparently a business model. I’d love to see what it looks like, and get my hands on one. Unfortunately, I think that those are tracked a little bit more tightly than, for example, the Linksys Wireless-G notebook adaptor that dad has allowed me to try in the Pismo.

Unfortunately, the building has wireless-blocking metal walls, so I won’t be able to take advantage of the card and link right here. However, I was surprised that the computer did recognize the card, and Airport was going to let me connect with it – I think. I am unsure if I’ll be keeping it, closer to the end of the day he’ll either tell me I can pack it in my bag, or to repack it and put it back on the shelf from whence it came.

It’s just too bad that those SpeedStream 5930 ADSL things are probably tracked better than this, or those ADSL pci cards… either would be an awesome upgrade from the SpeedStream 6520 that we’ve got at home now. If it were me, I’d pop the PCI card in my g3 and redo Mac OS X 10.4 server. We’ll see though. There are also wireless-G routers (WRT54G) among other cool things. However, I doubt I’ll be able to nab anything like that. :P I do get to keep the card though, and that has a broadcom chipset, I think… either that, or whatever chip it does have is useable in the Pismo. I’ll test it out this evening.

Long Walk

Today mom came home at about 2:30 pm and told us that we’d be going to dad’s house. Unfortunately, I didn’t prepare properly and didn’t have any real decent spare clothes… I need to wash them shortly.

Anyway, we went to dad’s house, and then I went for a big walk. I did the old 1-mile around the “former forty” (we sold 20 of it a long time ago), then I walked around a different 40-acre set. Then I walked up and onto “something-Griff” road. I forgot its exact name. Then I walked down Kirkland up Patagonia then around some other road whose name I forgot. It was a very long and tiring walk, but I’m supposed to feel good because it counts as having partaken in the activity referred to as “exercise.”

so sick

Wow… It’s been a long time since I’ve been sick, but I think that there is something in the new house that I am actually allergic to, or something, because today, I was ‘sick.’ That is to say… sick in the context of actually puking. It was not that pleasant, but I felt much better after taking a shower, then being outside for awhile. Unfortunately, I’m inside now and within minutes of turning on the PowerMac G3 and being back inside, I felt sick again.

This is frustrating, to say the least. I feel as though I wasted the part of the sandwich I had eaten earlier.

In other news, I saw Roxy from Photo Class at Wal-Mart today, which was cool. It didn’t look like she really wanted to stop and chat, so I just waved hello and went on in.

Moving Help

My brother's friend came over to help, which is awesome because I don't have to unload everything at the new house. It is bad because everything left was little (a few computers were really the biggest thing left.)

Next up is my stereo, TV, the pismo will go in the next trip, my now-disassembled desk, and the chairs, dishes, and vacuum cleaner.

And then the house will be empty.

It's amazing, really.

By the way, if email posting works, I'll probably... be posting a lot more often. I just need to figure out if I want to do big posts, but less often, or small posts, but very often (like I'm doing today)

If there's any reader feedback, you can send it to corywiegersma -at- gmail -dot- com.

Stamp Story

Well, there was the one time when I was trying a mailing campaign in an attempt to rule the world, I licked stamps for like eight days straight. Unfortunately, half of the letters came back because while I was still licking stamps, the US government approved another postage rate-hike. Anybody ever think "That wouldn't happen if I were in charge" ? That was one of those moments for me.

That was, of course, just one more jab in the side, and one more failed world domination attempt. Unfortunate, but true. Didn't you get the memo?

Moving...

Oh, and by the way. We're moving... umm... today. I bet we'll be staying in the new place tonight, actually.

I just thought you should know.

The place is on the corner of Chino and Hassaympa so that it may be easy to find for an interested local party. (Umm... not that I'm throwing a party, per se.)

Using This Blog

I am officially going to use and post to this blog. Supposed advantages are e-mail posting (Have yet to make that work though) and the fact that its not hosted by me, so it is always up. Yaay.

If I linked you to here from mySpace, this is it, you're in the right spot. There will be more eventually.

Potential Revival.

Hey Everybody. I am getting this blog ready again, in the event that I need to use it, which is highly likely. I am doing this because currently, my blog is hosted on my own website, which is at http://stenoweb.selfip.org/ and I update it with iWeb.

However because I am going to be at NAU before too long, and because we are going to be moving to the house soon, where mom might not get broadband internet, I am creating a soon-to-be successor to the blog that I was running using iWeb.

At least one other perk will be the email posting to this blog, and the fact that I don't have to worry about hosting anything, anywhere.