brainscat.com

A pure Java implementation of me was released this Friday on Android. Thanks to Jamie Rytlewski for pointing this out.

It’s been a long time. If anyone knows what this is from, please tell me.

Short Version: If you are considering a case for a new computer, and value customer service, I highly recommend Antec’s P180 case. Not only is the case extremely thought out, but Antec’s customer service kicks ass.

This past year, I recently built a new computer, and chose to house it in an Antec P180 case, based upon what looked to be quality construction, and a very well thought out design. Honestly, it’s the first case that I’ve actually *enjoyed* using as cable, fan, and drive management have been easy as pie.

Though, in the past few months, I’ve been feeling the crunch of space on my hard drives, and after I tried to install a new drive this past few weeks, I realized I had misplaced the HDD screws. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big problem, as I have tons and tons of hardware from old computers, but the drive bays in the p180 are special. You see, the drives rest on these silicone grommets that isolate the drive from the metal, and consequently help keep the computer ninja-silent. This means the screws have to be extra long, and normal drive screws won’t do the trick.

So, dummy old me, who can’t keep track of his screws looks all over online, and couldn’t find the screws. In desperation, I created a service request on Antec’s site asking if there is a way to buy the screws. The customer service rep asked me for my address and how many screws I needed.
Three business days later, I recieved a priority mail package with all the screws I needed, even though I was willing to pay.

So, thanks Antec. I appreciate you spending the money to make me happy, and show me I’m a valued customer, even though I’ve only purchased one item.

Phone support clocked in at two calls of approx 2.5 hours total, only to have no Level 2 support solve my problem.

Taking matters into my own hands, and after much experimentation, I discovered, apparently, my issue with the Zune software not being able to connect to my Zune device, seems to have stemmed from the fact I had Visual C# Express installed. So, if you’re having problems where you can’t get the software to connect to the device, but the device is clearly recognized by the Device Manager… try uninstalling software you don’t need.

So, I guess it’s not Vista 64’s fault, but probably the Zune software’s inability to check certain necessities of its environment upon install.

but regular 32-bit vista loves it. Wish me luck in my future phone-support hell.

Update: Wed Nov 14th 12:37 AM EST – After a lengthy support call, everything is still the same…. but the support agent told me to call back in a few hours, after they had updated the Zune software. Awesome.

Now, I love Google Reader and I’m sure many of you do too… but I still want to be able to backup my blogroll. Does anyone know if Google offers an api or webcall to get your OPML file? My search skills have failed me, and as of right now, the only way I can seem to get OPML feed-listing is by logging in and using the “Export your subscriptions as an OPML file” link.

I need to revisit my previous post about OneNote and the MS Office blog integration…

Apparently, using lists screws things up to holy hell. There were tons of malformed <p> tags, a bunch of whitespace, as well as complete disregard for switching from numeric order lists to alpha ordered lists, when nesting lists. Manual intervention was needed to clean up the gobs of whitespace strewn about my last post on fatblogging.

So… needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend using OneNote/Office’s automatic blog posting feature for anything more than the simplest of posts.

So, in the same vein as Jason Calacanis and other overweight people before me, I am going to open myself to Internet ridicule and glory by posting regular progress about my personal weight loss journey. Yes, I’m going to Fatblog. Truthfully though, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t’ think the benefit to others and myself wouldn’t outweigh the personal humiliation that comes with declaring to the world that I am indeed fat, and I do indeed require outside help.

Sure, I could get by without doing this… but it’d be slower, and quite frankly, the only thing I care about is losing weight. So, without further ado, here’s the quick state-of-my-union.

1. I was up to 229 lbs at my highest. Last time I weighed myself… I was at 209. I don’t really know where I am right now, as I don’t own a scale.
2. My main attempts to lose weight have been primarily through not eating like an idiot. I got this high by eating whatever I want when I wanted, and partying like a madman earlier in college. Now, I:
   1. Try to select lower fat foods, high fiber, high protien, etc.
   2. Log my daily food intake. This keeps me thinking of what I’m actually eating, and makes it much easier to say, “No.” If I eat it, I have to write it down.
   3. I’m attempting to stay under 2000 calories a day, realistically.
3. I’ve been battling shin-splints while trying to run. Finally, I’m doing better, as I’m running very short distances compared to how I used to run before my weight gain. Adding 60 lbs is really really hard on your feet.
   1. For those who care, I’m at week 3 of the Cool Running Couch to 5k plan.
   2. I use motion control shoes (Brooks Addiction 7)
   3. I’m attempting regularly stretch on off days.
   4. I ice after running.

My friend Nate insisted I post this to my site for safekeeping, as the joys of having a piece of security software share your name need to be kept for the ages. An article on slashdot maintains,

“Seems like the Storm botnet that was behind the last two waves of attacks is also responsible for this new kind of social-engineering based attacks, using spam to try and convince users of the necessity of using Tor for there communications. They “kindly” provide a link to download a trojaned version of Tor. “

Why on earth is accessible spelled with an ‘I’? I can’t fathom why, and I hope some really smart person who understands word etymology reads this. They probably won’t, but at least I’ll feel better by throwing up this Internet Hail Mary.

I would think that it should be accessable, not accessible. Why must things that are *able* to be accessed be described by a word that makes little sense to me? Bleh.

So, apparently, OneNote has a feature that lets you blog something automatically. This post right now is a result of OneNote’s “Blog This” menu option. I clicked the button, it started up a cracked out version of Word that may or may not be Word 2007 (I’m an ignorant Word 2003 user). As excited as I am about more OneNote integration, because I am a OneNote addict, I’m a bit scared, as there are a *lot* of formatting options.

“Lotta formatting options?? That sounds great!” I think… but my skeptical self bets that this post is gonna consist of some crazy ass MS XML embedded into a normal post, which means, this will be the first, and last time, I use this feature. Let’s hope, of course, that I’m pleasantly surprised, and I don’t have to worry about OneNote generated stuff clashing with my own style sheets on my blog.

On the upside… you might like this tool because it took all of 15 seconds to set up w/ WordPress, and it also grabbed my whole category list, so it’s easy to tag posts with. Methinks, editing and then copy and pasting from word as text will work well enough for me in the future. I guess I should bold and test other formatting stuff too.

Edit: Holy crap. It’s sane XML. It works. I just edited this post in the same document… and republished. Maaagical.

Edit 2: Background and highlighting test, which I’ll probably never ever
ever
use anyways.

Edit 3: I broke it by messing overlapping background colors and highlighting. Made it throw in an extra line break.

I haven’t heard of this bug in Firefox before, but it sure is interesting. This comment was found in the source of the podcast feed for David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done”

This is 512 bytes of nonsense, since the Firefox 2 developers, in one of the strangest decisions ever, decided they would obsolete XML styles by overriding them without permission. Furthermore, the developers appear to be disinterested in fixing this. Therefore, we use the unofficial workaround, which includes filling up the first 512 bytes of a document so that the sniffer doesn’t encounter the RSS tag. I really enjoy using Firefox, but this particular behavior really annoys me! Anyway, since I’m almost at 512 characters, I’m going to ramble on for another minute in this comment, and then, without further ado, present you with a valid XML feed.

Also, Hi. It’s been a long time. Things have been good here.

The Revolution has been renamed to “Wii” and all I can hear is this song.

Update: I’m not the only one who suffers from this affliction.

I’ve been completely bored with the music I’ve been listening to. Worse yet, I’ve found it exceedingly difficult to find new music which has caught my fancy.

Thankfully, lifehacker swung in on a rope and saved me from musical monotony. In a mouse-click that was as whimsical as any mouse-click could ever be, I was introduced to one of the finest net inventions ever, Pandora.com.

Pandora automagically serves new music to you (that you’ll like) based a favorite band or song of yours. That’s it. Feed it a song or a band, and it feeds you musical goodness. Lots of it. Emphasis on the good. You know those buffets in Vegas that have great food, for cheap? Well, this is that, but for music on the Interlink, for free.

I recommend you give it a go.

If Pandora catches your fancy, you might also sign up at last.fm, which is a similar music service, but differs in a few ways.

• Last.fm keeps track of what you listen to.
• Last.fm can keep track of what you listen to if you install a piece of software into your favorite player. Don’t worry, it’s painless.
• It then recommends music based on all of this. Like Pandora…

If you like both Pandora and last.fm…. enter pandora.fm
It’s pandora, but it talks to last.fm. You get the benefits of both. Oh-so-slick. I’m in heaven.