a “funny” thing happened on the way home…

On the the way home, my rear/passenger tire blew out while on the freeway. The night before I heard a ticking noise but couldn’t locate the source. Later in the evening, I noticed the sound gone so I thought whatever it was dislodged. I heard it again while drive home from work and finally saw the nail head. Arrgh, again! I figures I go to tire shop tomoroow since it was Saturday evening already. Last time (Feb 8 ‘09), the guy at the shop said it was OK to drive on it as long as you’re not losing air, so I didn’t think much of it.

15mins of street and 10mins of freeway, the tire blew after I was changing lanes towards the rightin case the tire lost air. Didn’t EXPECT the blow-out!

Car immediately swerved to the the right, I steered back to the left and braked to attempt regaining control but start to spin back across 3 lanes toward the concert barrier.

My wife woke up at this point in time to see us skidding towards the barrier.

We continued to skid backwards but the momentum was slowing and the car spun alittle more. We finally came to a stop and fortunately, everyone behind us had stopped and there were no chain reactions. Since the traffic had stopped, I quickly saw my chance to drive over to the right shoulder and did.

A good samaritan came up to help and right away open his trunk and pulled out a small floor jack but I declined since I already called AAA. CHP showed up should after the AAA truck arrived.

not been a good tech week for me…

This past 10 days actually as not been particularly good for me.

1. 70% of my Vista PC files/folders disappeared.
2. 2nd iMac super-drive gets replaced only to be be followed immediatley with a constant full fan.
3. daily intermitten DSL connection lost.
4. needed to swap out Comcast HD DVR.

Solutons:

1. Figured out they became hidden some how, so just had to make them visible again.
2. Hopefully Apple will replace the iMac. Had it just 5months and it’s been serviced twice so far (power supply and 2 superdrives).
3. Received replacement DSL modem though old one seems better over past few days.
4. Got different HD DVR box.

It’s got to get better right?

Oh, one thing did work though not perfectly smoothly. I got the iMac to talk to the Vista PC for network printing since they’re in separate rooms. The glitch was getting the PC IP address for the iMac. One digit off = 20mins of trouble-shooting.

Vegas again

Just got back from a short trip in Vegas to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday. Once again, our cab ride from the airport to the hotel was $26 via the “fastest way” requested by my brother-in-law. Ha-ha! And this time, my wife and I paid the return trip to the airport instead of the other way around and the fare was $15. Ha-ha again!

Once at the Bellagio, my wife and my brother-in-law pooled our separate rooms into a 2 bedroom suite. Not only was it a 2 bedroom suite but it had 2 full baths in each of the master bedrooms.

Being the foodies we are, we ate the following:

• Koi, Planet Hollywood
• Bouchon, the Venetian
• Bartotolla, the Wynn
• B&B, the Venetian
• Payard’s, Ceasar’s Palace.

I also went to downtown Vegas. Took the bus from the Ventian and got off at Stratosphere and then walked the 2.5 miles (in 100 heat no less) to the Fremont Experience. Not particularily interesting during the daytime.

72hrs with Windows Vista

Well it’s been 72 hrs since I fired up my “new” (refurb) desktop with Vistra Home Premium and truthfully, it has been as bad as I thought. Of course, I thought the worst after finding virtually no one liking it and of course the clever and not that far off Apple commerical.

My new box is a HP Slimline S3300T (Intel Dual Core Intel 1.8Ghz/2GB RAM/500GB HD/Vista Home) for less than $300. Hard to beat that! I was prepared in the event the Vista was as bad as people say and I thought with a XP system disks standing by.

My core programs and current peripherals installed with little problems.

• Adobe Illustrator 9
• Adobe Photoshop 6
• Brother HL-1440 laser printer
• Canon Lide 60 scanner (utility required update)
• Canon ip6600 printer
• Microsoft Office 2000

Files migrated fine as far as I can tell. They’re backed up onto an external drive regularly, so that wasn’t too difficult.

• Photos: 60,000/107GB
• Music: 2280/19.6GB

Visually, the GUI’s really nice looking (ala Mac) and with a new iMac in the house. Easy to compare.

So far the most annoying thing is the pop-up when you’re moving/deleting/whatever. Again made popuar by the below Apple commerical. XP did something similar but it was generally only one warning. Vista is 2-3 on most things. Haven’t decide yet to disable it or not just yet.

Mobileblogging with iPhone

Well, if didn’t go as smoothly as the 1.1.4 jailbreak with ZiPhone on a PC but I finally JBd my upgraded 2.0 iPhone.

Sure, instead of 15 mins or so it took 4-5hrs with no JB on the PC. Finally gave up and did it on a Mac. Took about 30mins in all.

So now, I have the “best of two worlds” with third party and the Apple App store.

Not too painful. Written on my iPhone.

it’s clear again…

My iPhone’s camera lens is clean again. After alittle reading, it’s seems to be a relatively common problem. I choose to repolishing the lens with toothpaste (gels aren’t abrasive enough).

As you can see below, it worked very well. The Apple store images are taken 2 days apart facing into the light at the same approximate time of day. I didn’t expect much from the iPhone’s camera but it’s now acceptable again.

Timely waiting on that 3G iPhone

Two and a half days after the offical iPhone 3G launch, we joined the droves of the 1st wave/shipment adopters.

After going by the Apple store in Palo Alto at 10AM and seeing a long line and then headed off to the one at the Stanford mall. After breakfast (11AM), we saw what we thought was a short line of about 10 people. That wasn’t the case. They, Apple, split the line into two and the line was actually about 40 deep.

After a trip down South for some other shopping, we decided to skip the Apple store at Valley Fair which is usually a very busy store, we drove back up to Burlingame. It was about 2PM and the line was short. Say 20 people. And not only that, we got a parking space across the street. Ahhh, life in the city. Once in line, the Apple guy said it’d be about2hrs but by 2:35, we were in the door and buying an iPhone.

The good luck ran out there. Apparently, since my wife gets a corporate discount, you can’t buy the iPhone under that rate. Luckily ATT was open and after two calls, we removed the discount so we could get her iPhone. So, an extra 20mins there but still, about 1 hr total time spendt. Not bad at all. On Friday, the offical launch day, people were waiting upwards to 6-8 hrs and then the store may close on you. Close as in its late not we ran out.

Me? I’m happy with my jailbroken 1st gen iPhone and I got it 6 months after the 1st launch.

not yet…

Earlier today, my iPhone crashed (as in no power). You’d think it would happen on Thursday, the day before the new 3G iPhone launch! Obiviously, a programming error on Apple’s part! Anyway, it’s back up and running again. Sorry Steve J.

cholesterol’s up again…

Well after years of a good cholesterol number (180’s), it’s crept back up to 212. Though still not “bad”, it’s higher than I’d like. In fact, it was 186 back in January!

Why’d it’d go back up? Diet in my case. Over the past few months I’ve been eating fries, potato chips and other bad snacks. Also, pasta, burgers and sandwiches (sorry, Jared of Subway) are more on the menu recently. All things that I’ve been avoiding rather successfully for the past 3-4 years. Yes, balance would be smarter and I’ll have some balance with Weight Watcher meals with my wife 2-3 times a week. Otherwise, back to the protein and veggie diet.

So, back to avoidance and we’ll see if I can get back to at least under 200.

roaming around city hall

I was able to get in on a after-hours tour of cityhall recently. You can view more here at my flickr album.