K7AKM

Pictures: My Flickr photostream

This is not meant to be a “review” or an article about ECCC. It’s just what I experienced while I was there, as I can remember it after a four hour drive. I attended three panels out of the 20 or so panels, so I can’t speak for any of the other programming.

Let’s just say that after spending four days at Dragon*Con, I was dreading two days of ComiCon. These fears were apparently unfounded. ECCC is not D*C, or even a “mini-D*C”, it’s a convention for comic books. Despite some last minute hiccups involving my lodging (which were resolved by making a phone call to the Hilton and reserving a room), I got into Seattle pretty early on Saturday (noon-ish), then wandered over to the convention. Stood in line for maybe 15 minutes, got a pass, found Liz (well, she found me…creepy stalker time), wandered the show floor for a while. D*C seemed…like a madhouse compared to ECCC. Sorry, but it’s true.

Tried to go to the Jewel Staite panel, totally revealed how much of a moron I am by pronouncing her last name wrong (I know, totally fired… >_>;), ended up not getting into that panel, so instead we sat in line for the DC Nation panel. Now, I’ll admit that I’m not a comic book guy. I can identify the “big” stars, but I couldn’t tell you plot lines, identify supporting characters, or anything, but I was entertained by DC Nation. Of course, they had a lot of “So this one character that appeared as a supporting character on page five of a co-feature last year, he’s been gone for twenty years, are you going to bring him back and give him his own weekly serial?” questions where the panel was like, “Wait, what?”, and a lot of “So what happens in the next issue?” questions where the panel was like, “Uh, find out next week…you know we can’t answer that…o_O;”

After the convention stuff on Saturday, grabbed stuff to eat (I think Liz is scared of my truck now -_-;) wandered downtown Seattle to take some pictures, ended up throwing away a lot of them, then went back and crashed at the Hilton. Got up Sunday morning, stopped at Starbucks (so many, srsly…had Wil Wheaton walk by me in Starbucks, though), wandered back over to the convention and plopped ourselves in line for the BSG panel. Promptly got told we should go ahead and go sit in the panel beforehand because they weren’t going to clear the room (something of a con foul, in my book, but I can see their point), so we sat through a panel on how to make webcomics, which was actually pretty good. I’m sure they realized that a lot of us were just in there for the BSG panel, but we were engaged, at least.

BSG panel was awesome. Well, it wasn’t so much a panel as Aaron, Tahmoh, Michael, and (I’m sorry random guy whose name I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t place you) going, “We know how awesome we are, there’s no need for us to tell you about ourselves for 40 minutes then ten minutes of Q&A, let’s just go with the frakking questions!” Lots of good questions (No, Michael Hogan’s character (Paul Tigh) did not know that Kate Vernon’s character (Ellen Tigh) would be coming back in 4.5 as one of the “Final Five” after she had been poisoned; Aaron Douglas would pay money to see Tahmoh in spandex and singing in a Joss Whedon musical à la Dr Horrible; Lee should have been a Cylon; Tahmoh will beat you to a pulp if you attack Grace Park, even if it is a scene in a show), some random Dawlhaus questions (Tahmoh sez to give it a chance…apparently Joss Whedon had to make some pretty serious changes at the request of the network and that seems to have jostled things a little). I really wanted to ask how far out the final five knew they were the final five, but we were limited to one question for time’s sake. That panel could have been two hours long and still had everyone’s rapt attention. They’re all class acts, but Aaron Douglas is outright hilarious. He probably could handle a 50-minute panel all by himself and have a total riot at it. At one point, he grabbed a little kid who had been sort of wandering towards the stage with a camera, set her on the table and helped her take pictures of the crowd (that’s your “D’awwwwwwwwwwwwww….” moment, ladies and gentlemen). But apparently he’s always on his Blackberry on set (maybe someone will post a video of the panel?)

One thing I will note that’s different from D*C is that ECCC is pretty “family friendly”. I don’t remember seeing a lot of family units at D*C, and I saw a lot at ECCC. Also a lot less costumes, and those that were there were pretty good. Also seemed like if you weren’t “in the convention”, you weren’t “at a convention”…I didn’t see quite the wandering masses of people that I saw at D*C (probably a scaling issue), but ECCC didn’t follow you back to the hotel. Of course, I stayed at a Hilton that wasn’t one of the “con hotels”, so this may have had something to do with it.

I don’t remember a lot of D*C. None of it really stuck…but I will remember Wil Wheaton walking by me, I will remember asking Michael Hogan a question (Mr Hogan and fellow panel attendees: sorry if I seemed a little rude with the “Since you haven’t answered a question…” opener, but it seemed like all of the questions were for Tahmoh and Aaron), and I will remember not wanting to run screaming back to my room in the middle of the day because I was tired of being trapped by the masses. ECCC 2010, we are so there, dude.

Side note: crepes are a delicious thing. Crepes with nutella and strawberries, doubly so, but hard to justify at $7.00 a pop, plus $2.00 for a cane sugar Coca-cola (but so worth it). Subway workers: you’re at work, act like it and pay attention to your orders, not what’s on the radio. You stay classy, Seattle.

Everything appears to be functioning correctly, but if you notice anything amiss, please let me know so I can fix it!

So I’m seriously considering getting my MPA. I think my future lies in working with a non-profit youth-serving organization in some form (currently the Boy Scouts of America), and I think that an MPA would be the ideal graduate degree towards this end. Of course, the query becomes: where do I want to get my MPA from?

I’m currently looking at:

• Portland State University
• University of Oregon
• University of Washington
• North Carolina State University

PSU is ranked 49th in the Nation for MPA programs by the US News and World Report, while UO got 57th, and UW got 14th. UW’s program far outstrips either of the other two, but I also think that this would be my “dream school” application. Well, them and Harvard.

Arizona State seems to have a pretty good program, if the rankings are to be believed, but Arizona is not my cup of tea. Any other programs I’m forgetting/overlooking?

I haven’t taken the GRE yet, but if my GMAT scores are any indication, I’m competitive. Of course, so are all of the other people applying to these schools, so that’s not really much of a plus or minus.

Okay, so the previous iteration was a little cumbersome, so here’s round two:

And the rest of the pictures:

The case is a dry storage box from Joe’s Sports that was like 28 bucks. Used a soldering iron to melt mounting holes in the sides and bolted the TNC and radio into place. The changes that are next up are to mount an antenna connector, GPS antenna connector, serial connector, and Anderson power connector in the little flip-top tray in the top so that I can set things up and keep the lid closed.

As some of you know, I recently purchased a used 1989 Chevrolet S-10 pickup (regular cab, some options). It had a few flaws that I was aware of—being 19 years old, brakes down to “needs some pads”, seems to have a hesitation problem); and a few that I became aware of—brakes were actually “Uh, yeah, replace all four sets of pads, the rotors, and your two front calibers are shot, plus your hoses are pretty far gone”, the heater core leaked like a sieve, AC system is out of whack, oh, and it may and or may not be leaking oil.

I let Midas deal with the brakes, and $900 later, I could actually stop properly. The heater core had been leaking long enough that the front passenger side carpet, padding, and soundproofing were all soaked through. I cut the infected areas out, and figured I’d deal with the leak eventually.

For those of you who don’t know, the heater core is part of the coolant system loop, and happens to be located in a duct behind the dash. The replacement instructions are, paraphrasing a little: drain coolant, unbolt and remove shroud, remove heater core. Installation is reverse of removal. Don’t forget to refill the coolant system with 50/50 coolant. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

What this really should read is: While you’re picking up the heater core and the coolant, go ahead and buy the hoses that connect the heater core—you’ll understand why when you go to remove the core. Drain coolant to a level lower than the input of your heater core, any more than this is a waste of good coolant (or just going to take too long); now, remove the radio and unbolt the main computer from its home (trust us), unplug connectors, set computer and radio aside, then remove access panels covering the last two bolts that you didn’t know existed, undo these bolts (one of which will actually only be accessible because you removed the computer), remove the passenger side cabin light (this sucker burns like fire), unbolt the passenger side of the dash, and while tugging the dash forward, wrestle the shroud out of its home. Set this aside. Unbolt the two copper straps holding down the heater core.

Once this is complete, consume a beer/beverage of your choice. You’ve been working for an hour and a half.. Okay, now, go ahead and cut the hoses off of the core (I recommend just slicing through the hose and then splitting the chunk left over). Don’t bother trying to remove them neatly because you think you can reuse them. They’ve been on the truck 19 years. Now, wrestle with the heater core. It’ll come out of there once you align tab A with slot B. Don’t ask us where these are located. By the way, the heater core is lower than its inlet hose, so it’s actually full of coolant still. Be careful!

Reinstall the heater core. Again, this will all just sort of “happen” as long as you play nicely and remembered to eat your Wheaties. Oh, and don’t forget to tug the wires out of the way lest you wedge one between the core and the plastic housing and can’t figure out why you can’t get the housing to come off. Wrestle the shroud back into place. Reinstall the bolts. Don’t worry about that one you can’t reach and the one whose mounting clip you broke because you didn’t realize the one you can’t reach existed.

Connect the heater core back into coolant loop with the hoses you remembered to buy (you did buy them, right?). Refill radiator. You may have to do this a couple of times, as the heater core’s loop drains into the engine block and you had to drain all that to get the heater core out, remember? Refill the overflow bottle. Go ahead and throw the bottle of coolant in the truck. You’ll probably need it a few times in the next day or two as the air bubbles get out of the coolant loop.

Boy, that sounds like a lot less fun. But it’s also infinitely more useful.

I haven’t seen any strange behavior, but I didn’t totally follow the upgrade rules, so anything is possible. The 2.6.1 to 2.6.3 changes should be minor, but if you notice anything dodgy, let me know!

P.S. We know permalinks are currently defective. GoDaddy appears to do something funky which causes them to become borked whenever you change the setting. It should correct itself in a few hours.

P.P.S. Permalinks are back online. If you notice anything else weird, please let me know. Also coming soon: a proper photo gallery.

I recently started playing FFXI again, which caused my old and busted laptop (Sony VGN-N320E) to get all cranky about it. So, I ended up throwing together a new computer. Behold!

CPU: AMD Althon™ 64 X2Dual Core 6000+ (3.00GHz)
Mobo: Biostar MCP6P-M2
RAM: 4GB Crucial DDR2 PC6400
Video: EVGA GeForce 9400GT (1GB) (2 DVI out, 1 TV out)
HDD: Western Digital 80GB SATA II (7200RPM)
Case: ChenMing Micro-ATX cube w 300W power supply
Optical: LiteOn CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Monitor: Lenovo L195W 19″ LCD
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium

About the only thing it’s missing is a media reader, which may be in the first batch of updates. The video card can access 1GB of system memory, giving it 2GB total to play with. Windows Vista Home Premium sees all 4GB of memory, so it’s not exactly squished for space. The system is not designed as a long term storage vessel, merely the speed demon to handle the heavy lifting. I’ve got a 500GB RAID 1 NAS handling the storage problem, which may go to 1TB soon. The computer is a compromise, as my self-prescribed budget for everything was $800, because that was the “I could buy this same computer for the same price and get a free printer” point, so I wanted to see if I could do it.

I want to color calibrate the LCD at some point. Yes, I know, LCDs are not the most ideal medium to view “true to life” color accurate items, but since I work primarily in digital mediums, and I’m not a highly paid graphic artist, so this is an acceptable level of accuracy. And mine does a pretty darned good job as is, I’m just curious to see how “off” it is.

What would you change/upgrade if you could? Let’s be reasonable: realistic upgrades, not “If you had $500 to spend on this one part, do it!”. No pictures because it’s just a computer. Seriously. It doesn’t glow or blink or anything. It just does stuff. And no, “You’re not getting the most out of that computer with windows, run linux, n00b” is not a reasonable suggestion.

First, a brief disclosure: this is not an unbiased review. This is just a brief recap of the things I like about the radio. And I’m sort of an Icom fanatic, so any “review” would be inherently biased.

Having used the IC-7000 on several occasions, both in my apartment and in the field, I think I can offer a brief review of the pluses and minuses. I have not used it on the HF bands, so I can’t comment on its abilities there. I simply don’t have the technology to string up the antenna required to make that work in a truly unbiased environment. Living in an apartment forces you to make a few compromises in terms of antennas. I have had a chance to use it with a GP-9 (2m/70cm dual band vertical), so I can comment on its performance on those two bands. That being said, let’s begin.

The IC-7000 has a beautifully designed front panel. Some of the buttons could stand to be a little bigger (gloved fingers at 3am when you’ve been up for 20+ hours are a little “big” for buttons a quarter of an inch across). The navigation is fluid, once you know where everything is. Those people who argue that “everything’s buried under menu after menu!” haven’t actually read the manual, in my opinion. I figured out most of the basic “get on the air” commands without the manual and managed to bring up more than a few of the advanced options once I’d read the manual once or twice. Or thrice. You absolutely positively must bring the manual with you to any operation. There’s a reason it’s 70 or 80 pages and full-sized.

Your options on 2m/70cm FM are rather limited: the bandwidth filters are fixed, but they’re all more than sufficient. I was working the handhelds at our recent AdventureTrek with the broadest filter setting and the pre-amp engaged. With the pre-amp off, I couldn’t begin to even hear them break squelch, let alone the actual communication. Part of this is probably thanks to the 16′ antenna on a 15′ mast, but I know that my other radio wasn’t having a whole lot of luck with the same antenna.

The radio has a feature that I was pretty excited about, but also a little bummed about: priority scanning. We were using two frequencies at AdventureTrek. One was the “local” repeater (read: 30 miles away) and the other was a simplex frequency. I had the “A” VFO keyed to the repeater and the “priority” monitor keyed to the simplex frequency. The handhelds were primarily working simplex, but this was something I wanted to play with. The downside is this: when someone transmits on the “priority” channel, you need to manual re-tune to the “priority” frequency. Or, keep the “B” VFO set to the priority and remember to switch back. If the radio could “hold” the priority frequency long enough for you to key up, that would be awesome. I transmitted on the repeater frequency more than a couple of times before I figured this out. It’s fortunate that the repeater was lightly (read: never) used, because I would have gotten more than a few “What are you talking about?” replies, I imagine.

The other thing I don’t like is the mounting position of the mic plug: on the bottom of the detachable faceplate. With the radio sitting on a desk, you can’t have the mic plugged in and not have the little kickstand up.

That’s about all I can think of at the moment…if any more rants or raves come to mind, you’ll be the first to know.

Okay, Verizon. I get it. FIOS is awesome. So awesome you have to tell me about it. Three times a week. But, check this out: I live in an apartment complex. That’s that little “Apt….” deal in my address. The chances of me getting fiber are slim and/or none. Not because I don’t want it (oh, yes, I do), but because I don’t own the building. I don’t even own the interior. If you want to market FIOS to me, sell the property managers on upgrading all of the buildings (or at least D building) to FIOS, then send me your little cards. Oh, and I’m not even in a service area for FIOS yet. Despite being 1/2 mile from the CO (even less by Point A to Point B).

Oh, and you can stop telling me about how wonderful your high speed internet is. I know it’s wonderful. I’m already a customer. And paying for the fastest service I can get. Seriously, would a “IsCustomer” column in your mailing list database slow you down?

Look, when I buy a condo, I’ll harrass the HOA until they let me get FIOS, then I’ll happily give you all of my moneys for the fastest service I can afford. Then promptly violate the Terms of Service by hosting my email server and LAN parties from my condo. Sorry, but with that kind of bandwidth, you seriously won’t notice. You probably wouldn’t even notice over DSL.

The one thing I already don’t like about this condo that I’m looking at is the lack of a deck. It makes putting up an antenna kind of a pain in the butt.

One of my Flickr photos shared under a CC license just got picked up by Schmap Portland. Check out my particular photo here. My photos are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution license, which basically means you can do whatever you want with the photo as long as you tell people where you got it from.

Whee?