New Motorcycle

The day has arrived! I am a motorcycle rider again! Today after work I went to Performance Honda of Raleigh and bought myself a Honda VTX 1300C cruiser.

My Honda VTX 1300C

The picture kinda sucks since I took it when it was already getting dark outside. The bike fits me prefectly, and is a blast to ride. It’s got plenty or torque, and doesn’t handle as slugish as you’d think a 600+ lb bike would. Man I love this thing…

Bored…hmm…ooh! How about my favorite movies?

I was bored and wanted to post something. So, I figured, why not post a list of my top 5 favorite movies? Now keep in mind that I am a movie junkie. There is a metric buttload of movies that I like. I could have a top 5 list for about every movie genre, and every movie budget category. This list is a collection of movies that make my top 5 because they mean something to me; not just because they’re a good, fun, escape from reality.

5. Grosse Point Blank – How can you not like this movie? I mean com’on… It’s got John Cusak, Dan Ackroyd, guns, and a great “dark comedy” vibe. I feel this is John Cusak’s best movie.

4. Donnie Darko – This film is in my Top 5 because it’s so different. I like “different” movies; movies that make you think. This is one of those movies that you watch with a crowd, and an hour after the movie is over, everyone is still discussing the meaning of the movie. I dig that.

3. The Girl Next Door – I like this comedy a lot. Granted, there’s a lot of hot women in the movie, and that’s always a good thing, but the main reason I like this movie is that it’s a teen comedy that isn’t trite, and has a lot of heart. I can relate to the main character in this movie a lot. (Not with his porn aspirations obviously.) He’s the guy in High School who always followed the rules, and was an all-around good kid. That was also me in High School, and in retrospect I should have been raising hell and having fun like everybody else. (Damn parents and their morality! 😉 )

2. Big Fish – This movie is incredibly imaginative, with great characters and great visuals. If you don’t feel something at the end of this movie, you have a rock for a heart. I relate to this movie a lot because my father died when I was 15, and the father-son centered plot connects with me.

1. Almost Famous – I love this movie. The best part about the movie is the characters. They’re extremely well developed and “real” feeling. You experience everything that they do, from the comfort of your theater seat. Hell, even the jerks in the movie are likable. This movie is loosely based on Carmeron Crowe’s life, so that adds another dimension to the film. Like I said, I love this movie.

New Monitor for my MacBook

I purchased a new LCD Monitor today for my MacBook. It’s the Samsung 940BW. Office Max had it on sale for $200, which was a great deal. I got the last one. It’s a 19″ Widescreen LCD with VGA and DVI inputs. (VGA and DVI cables are included.) The Mac’s OS even had a color profile for it, so I didn’t have to worry about syncing up the colors with my MacBook screen. The picture quality is great, and the refresh rate is REALLY low. It’s pretty dang bright too. If you’re looking for an inexpensive LCD monitor to extend your laptop’s desktop space, I highly recommend the Samsung 940BW.

Greg’s Macbook

My friend Greg is having the same problems with his MacBook that I was. I attempted to post a long comment on his Blog providing him with more info on the problem, but then decided to just post it here for everyone to read.

It’s a logic board problem. I spent a month troubleshooting why my MacBook would shut down randomly, and it truly is a random problem. I could never reproduce it “on command.” The closest I came to reproducing it regularly was to run “yes < /dev/null" in a terminal and max the processors out. It tended to make the shutdown occur. On the Apple discussion boards it's now known as the "RSD" problem. If you take it in to the Apple store, they'll fix it on-site and if they have the logic board in stock, you should be able to get it back in a couple of days. One of the theories as to why it takes so long for the MacBook to start showing this problem is that the first run of MacBooks just run too hot, overly stressing the logic board's components. By the time Apple released the MacBook firmware update (which makes the MacBook run a lot cooler) it was too late. (Granted, this is just a theory- but since Apple has given no official word on the cause of the RSD it's as good as any other explanation.) Make sure that once you get your logic board replaced that you upgrade it's firmware first thing, just to be safe.

MacBook Fixed

For almost a month, my MacBook has been randomly powering off. After some research on the Apple dicussion boards, I discovered that it’s a known issue with the first set of MacBooks’ logic board. So, on Tuesday I took it too the Apple Store to get it fixed. To my suprise they actually gave me the option of shipping it off to AppleCare, or letting them fix it in the store. I told them to go ahead and fix it in the store. So, yesterday I got a call from the Apple store informing me that my MacBook was ready. I thought, “Awesome! Only two days!” So far, so good. I maxed out the processors on my MacBook for a while yesterday to see if I could get it to power off, to no avail. Good job Apple store! You’ve fixed my MacBook! I hope it stays fixed…

Amplifier Classes

For years now, I’ve loved tube guitar amps. (I’ve owned 2.) When it comes to choosing an amp, I always just played though the amp at the music store to see if I liked it’s tone, and researched the amp online. I’ve always heard people talk about their, “Class A” amplifier, or their “Class AB” amplifier but never knew what it meaned. Understanding the different amp classes can come in handy when looking for an amp that fits your tonal, power, or durablity requirements. Thanks to the following webpage Google was good enough to find for me, I now know what the different classes are.

http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/guitars/guitar-amps/buying-guide.php#3a

Safari and Downloading Embedded Video

Here’s an example of how brilliant Safari can be with the use of it’s activity monitor. Do you have a video on YouTube that you like and wish you could save to your computer without using a screen capture utility? Here’s an easy way to get what you’re looking for. Open Safari’s activity monitor window while the video is downloading and find the video file in the activity list. Then Option+Double-Click the file and Safari will begin downloading the video via it’s download manager. (If you do this from YouTube the file will be a “FLV” file, but that’s fine because iSquint will convert that into a more usable form for you.) Neato huh?