I got the Onkyo TX-SR805 hooked up two days ago, but no real "configuration" done.  I decided to rearrange the entire "theatre room" in the process, so it took a bit longer than expected.  Our room is a bit goofy and it's in a state of flux right now, so I didn't expect much from the Onk right off the bat.  There's no way I can describe the room, so here's the current config... kinda. 

The dead couch is one I'm tossing out, but I have to scavenge some bits from it first, so it's going to be hanging around messing up my acoustics for a while.  But here's the cool bit...

The Onkyo comes with a little tuning microphone.  You plugs it in, it tells you where to puts it and it starts sending sound pulses out the speakers (one at a time).  It listens to the results, figures out what your configuration is, how each speaker performs, what the acoustics are like and then it programs itself to compensate for everything.  It takes about 15-20 minutes to do the minimum of three readings (it can manage up to eight) and then about 5 minutes for it to calculate everything.  Voila!  As good of a sound as possible considering the environment.

I actually had the power go out in the middle of the first session, which sukt mightily.  But, I did it again when the power came back and it did a pretty decent job of managing two issues that I knew I had...  My mismatched center channel (it's an Infinity, all others are KLH) and the dead couch absorbing everything from the rear left speaker.  We slapped in our most recent NetFlix...  PathFinder (horrible movie with mediocre sound, but excellent visuals).  I was quite surprised that the Onk did a phenomenal job of setting itself up and I didn't even notice the dead couch "sound suck".  Job well done!

I've got some more thoughts on the Onk, but I'll tackle them in another post or three.

We had a batch of nasty storms roll through last week and I thought that we'd emerged pretty much unscathed (other than the massive amounts of yard debris to clean up).

Unfortunately, I found out a few days later that my A/V receiver didn't survive the trauma.  We lost power a few times (which has happened plenty before now), but either the surge suppressor didn't suppress enough, or it was just time for my receiver to go.  Either way, it's pretty much dead.  I've got full sound on one speaker, about 20% on another and about 5% on the center.  The rears and sub were getting nothing.  So, I went shopping for a replacement.

I finally decided on the Onkyo TX-SR805.  It's specs blow away anything else in the price range.  It's also reasonably future-proof.  It's a bit more than I need now, since my TV isn't HDMI, but I'm sure we'll get one eventually.  I called Crutchfield for a few tech questions on integrating it with my other stuff and the guy (Dan?) was knowledgeable enough to confirm my choice as a good one.  Order placed, it's on the way.  I'll post some thoughts about it when I've had a chance to play with it a bit.

My attempts at following the podcasters has taught me two things... 

1. In general, most of them are pretty disorganized and they all communicate stuff in completely different (and sometimes strange) ways.
2. I'm way too busy to be able to keep track of them all with any kind of regularity that would be useful to anyone.

So... I'm going back to what I can handle...  Motorcycles, Jeeps, work, photography, friends, gadgets, and pretty much whatever else I have time for and/or feel like posting.  Call it a "friend's blog" or whatever...  In the long run, Google will find it all, so I'm not going to try to "push" my content or anything.  It is what it is and that's just the way it's gonna be.

What's been going on?

Good question...  unfortunately, a lot.

I got another motorcycle, a blue 2008 Kawasaki KLR650.  Sorry there's no link, I don't feel like digging through the Kawi site right now.  Go Google it.  Anyway, it's a cool "little" bike and much easier commuting than the FJR.  Don't get me wrong, I love the "Feej", but it's big and heavy.  Not meant for city traffic and parking on the street.  The K does a much better job with that.  It's light, simple and has very good suspension.  It tears up around town.  Not a ton of power, but enough to get the job done.

I broke the Jeep...  repeatedly.  I killed three universal joints.  One on a front axle, two on the rear drive shaft.  All have been replaced, but it's just not "right" any more.  The front differential is a bit out of whack and needs to be reset.  The rear drive shaft needs to be replaced, but I'm not doing that until I can get a "belly-up" skid and move the transmission higher (that's on the way).  The shocks are shot and the steering stabilizer is wasted (those are also all on the way).  Once I get that stuff taken care of (most of which I can do myself), I'll be getting the drive shaft and front diff taken care of.

The wife is sickly.  Nothing "major", but it's irritating her pretty badly.  Kind of a summer cold thing we think.  Worse than allergies, but not full on flu.  She's getting better though.

Jim and I have finally managed to get together and do some planning for the ride out to Colorado and back.  But that's a separate post.  Next time, perhaps.

Later!

J.C. Hutchins, author of the 7th Son podcast novel trilogy, is starting a project that he calls "Obsidian".  It's based off an alternate history from his final book, where "the U.S. suffered a coordinated terrorist attack, and was plunged into a nationwide blackout. The country devolved into chaos. Power and order were restored two weeks later."

J.C. wants YOUR audio and video from those two weeks!

There's already some content available and some well-known folks are busy conjuring up more...  check out all the details at the linky below.

Become a victim of the OBSIDIAN blackout — and make history | 7th Son: J.C. Hutchins' Podcast Novel Trilogy

As part of his Infected book tour, Scott Sigler is going to be in Houston at Murder by the Book on April 11th.  Some bar stools will suffer later, at Two Rows Bar.  Scott's already hit LA, Seattle, and NYC.  Details are available at upcoming.  Not a whole lot more info than that about Houston... but if you're close, GO!

Over the past few weeks, I've had this niggling little thought zipping around my subconscious nether regions...

"smthng... you're not doing anything useful here and you have no direction".

Nice, eh?  Well, I think I might have finally come up with smthng!  I met Seth Harwood and a few fans of his in Philly last week and it got me thinking.  I know what Seth's up to and I know what Scott Sigler is up to... but I know there's a bunch of other excellent fiction podcasters out there doing stuff that I don't know about.

There are plenty of fiction news sites and plenty of podcasting news sites out there, but I don't know of any that focus on the excellent fiction 'casters (f'casters) out there.  I don't want to wade through 2 weeks of someone's general news posts in order to find out what's going on with the handful of pioneer fiction casters out there.

So, my idea is simply to regularly post what the f'casters are planning.  Which ones will be at what conventions, when and where one of them is giving a reading or pub crawl, what new projects they are starting up that listeners can contribute to, etc. 

If I'm going to be brutally honest about it, I'll have to admit that I'm thinking of starting with 5 or 6 of the big name f'casters that we all know and love...  Sigler, Hutchins, Harwood, Tee Morris, Mur Lafferty, and the likes.  If they're planning on anything else soon, I may toss in a few others I find particularly interesting...  guys like Phil Rossi, Basil Sands, and Nathan Lowell (he's probably a shoe-in... I'm anxiously awaiting Double Share).

I do want to make it clear that this will not be about the podcasts...  I can't improve on their stuff and any comments I have on the content would simply be one idiot spouting off.  I don't need to tell you what Nocturnal is about... Scott can do that better than I.  But, I can tell you that he's doing a book tour right now and should be in Houston on the 11th (personal note: I hate Houston... they rigged the votes for sure...  I just can't prove it yet!)   I can also tell you that JC is working on Obsidian and looking for YOUR content (Mur has done her part, have you?)...  Seth just got back from his book tour...  and Tee and Nathan are both up to smthng, but neither one is dropping many hints.

Anyway... that's the kind of stuff that I think needs to be in one place (along with a calendar).  I haven't found that place yet, so I'm willing to make it.  Yes, it'll be a fair of constant digging around blogs and listening to 'casts on my part, but I do that anyway. ;)  So...

Will it make a web site?

More importantly... will it make a web site that's useful?

Anyone is welcome to leave me some thoughts on the matter.  If you don't want to leave a public comment, you're also welcome to email...  Just click my sig.  Thanks!

--smthng

Ok, so I've spent the last few days getting my online stuff all gathered up.  I'll share with you some of my personas in case anyone wants to hit me up using whatever...

There is a condition though...  if there's anything below that asks for permission, you'd better tell me why you're adding me.  If you just add me and I don't know you, expect to be denied because I think you're a spammer.  With that out of the way...  here I am!

• Google Talk - send me an email and ask, I'm not giving that one out publicly.
• MSN Messenger - smthng@hotmail.com
• AIM - smthngelse1
• Yahoo IM - smthng2002
• Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/people/smthng
• Twitter - http://twitter.com/smthng
• Pownce (not used much) - http://pownce.com/smthng/
• Technorati - http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/smthng
• Main web site - http://smthng.info

I'll add others as I remember them.

Ok, so it wasn't morning.  It was around noon before any of us got moving.  I packed up Blue and checked out and headed over to Seth's hotel.  I parked Blue on the sidewalk (thanks to the valet crew there for letting me) and headed a block or two away to meet Seth, Scott and Mae for breakfast at "Kaye's"...  a seriously greasy spoon.  You know it's a greasy spoon when the bottom of the plate is greasy too.

After a lackluster omelet, we headed back to the hotel.  Seth checked out Blue for a bit and then wanted a ride...  I gave him the shorty helmet I thoughtfully brought along and we headed up the road a bit.  I was going to scare him, but with his extra weight and all my gear on the back, Blue was itching to pull major wheelies (other bikers will know what I'm talking about).  I didn't want to tell him that the front wheel wasn't entirely on the ground when we hit the main straight. ;)  We got up to a reasonable 70 mph just so he could get the feeling of speed, but with an open faced helmet and a wheelie-prone beastie, I left it at that.

We headed back, chilled in the hotel lobby for a bit, then I headed home.

The drive back was horrible.  I was fine until I hit Baltimore, then it started raining.  I've got the gear for rain, so that didn't bother me.  What sucked was that everyone else forgets how to drive in the rain.  It took me almost three hours to get from Baltimore to Springfield...  I don't think I got over 40 mph or got out of third gear the whole way. 

Anyway... got home, put gloves and helmet on the fan (to dry them out a bit) and crashed.  Sleep was over due and very necessary... I had a lot of work to do on the Jeep the day after (Friday) to be ready for the weekend of wheeling.  I'll write that up later.  Cyas!

On Wednesday, April 2nd, I hopped on Blue (my Yamaha FJR1300) and headed up to Philly to meet up with Seth Harwood for his reading of Jack Wakes Up.  My friend Rob backed out (work) and my co-worker bailed as well ("too cold"), so it was just me.  The trip to Philly was uneventful, but nice.  I rolled into the Residence Inn and spent some time discussing what to do with Blue.  Eventually the valet folks let me park her myself in the garage.

I got all checked in and then walked down to the book store early to find out what the setup was like and if I could find parking (no chance).  I also found out that the shoes I brought sucked, so I bought new ones (sucked less).  Early dinner, back to the hotel, then time to meet up with Seth.

The reading was at Robin's Bookstore, which is a strange and interesting little store.  They have a lot of "weird category" books.  Seth showed up and official reading began.  It was a reasonably small crowd, but everyone was sociable and Seth was quite personable.  He read a few parts of the book, which most of us had nearly memorized. ;) 

We hung around the store for a bit, then headed out to a bar or two.  I forget how many places we ended up at, but the first memorable one was the "Locust Rendezvous".  Nice name, eh?  A few pitchers later (and some really bad nachos) had us looking for smthng else. 

Next stop...  "Irish Pub".  That is it's name, not just a description.  A slightly higher class place, but they had Magic Hat on special, so we chilled there for a bit.  

After the "Irish Pub", we went across the street to Mackenzies (or Macdougals, Macgreggors, or smthng like that).  Better nachos, shepherds pie, better service.  All in all... better!

That pretty much wraps up the pub crawl.  I headed back to the hotel (about 4 blocks away) and assume that Seth and crew did the same.  I chilled out at the hotel, did some online stuff with my Eee and then crashed.

Yup, I'm off to see The Palms Daddy... Seth Harwood!  He's a writer (and podcaster) of crime fiction and is on a book tour for his first book...  "Jack Wakes Up".  He'll be in Philly, which isn't TOO terribly far from Washington DC, so I'm headed up there with a co-worker (he'll be on his brand new Triumph Rocket III Classic, which he picked up last weekend) and maybe my friend Rob (he's still waffling).  It'd be cool if Rob can pull the trip off, but no biggie if he can't.  It'll still be better than two days at the office.

We'll be cruising up there on Wednesday to catch Seth's reading at Robin's Book Store, then we'll probably do a bit of bar hopping and just chill out with The Palms Daddy.  Then we roll back in Thursday.  I spent some time this weekend getting Blue Bayou (my Yamaha FJR1300) back in shape and she's purring like a kitten.  A big angry 1300 cc kitten, but purring none-the-less. :)  All of my electrical gremlins from the last major trip have been vanquished, she's got clean oil and fluids and she's loaded to go.  Can't wait to get some gears stretched out on the way. ;)  It'll be interesting to see how quick the Rocket is...  I've never ridden with my co-worker, but he seems like a reasonable guy.  I'll let him set the pace.  I just hope he doesn't think his 2300 cc hunk of British iron can hold a candle to Blue.  :)

Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But, I did get another one of my pictures published. This time, it was from my trip to Scotland. I took a few shots while I was in Edinburgh and one of them is now up on "Schmap Scotland". You can check it here... It's one of the "Our Dynamic Earth" shots. Sorry there's no direct link, but Schmap is a bit odd and they only give me a "widget", which pretty much just advertises them.  But, here it is anyway if you prefer that route...  I think if you mouse over the little marker it'll pop up my picture, but I can't be sure.

The joys of being sick... again.

I've been fighting off something all week...  at first I thought it was the flu, which would have been weird, since I had the flu about two weeks ago.  Now I think it's a sinus infection.  It seems like it's starting to go away, but it's taking its time about  it.  To make matters worse, we've got two people on vacation this week and one other with family he's been having to run back and forth to the airport.  That leaves us very shorthanded, and bosses tend to get real nervous when the "mail guys" are missing.  So, I've just had to suck it up and deal with it...  no time off for me this week.  :(

EeePC camera shot...  pretty cool that this little tiny camera is way better than the one the office provided...  a $200 Logitech critter.  The Logi looks like carp compared to this.

L8rs!

I've been using Live Writer in it's various versions for a while now.  The Writer team recently released the full version (previous version were "beta") and I've been using it for a couple weeks on my laptops.  Unfortunately, I've been fighting with it at work for a while now.

Fortunately, I think I've got it "mostly" figured out.  Before I kick you a partial solution, let me explain the issue first.

Someone on the Live team decided to make a "live" installer.  That means that you can't actually download any of the Live applications.  Instead, you download an installer and then it goes and fetches the applications when you run it.  It uses Windows Update to do this.  That means that if Windows Update doesn't work flawlessly for you, you can't install any of the Live apps.  Behind a corporate firewall?  Got a proxy?  Got a GPO smacked down on you that blocks Windows Update?  Too bad!  My opinion... this is stupid not to offer an alternative.

I hit http://support.live.com in order to see if they'd kick me an installer and got the usual "twelve step" fixing your computer script from the tech who replied...  The usual stuff... turn off AV, turn off your firewall, delete all your temp files, run Windows Update (hah!), remove all existing Live apps, reboot, etc.  I did all this, even though I knew I still wouldn't be able to reinstall any of the Live apps.  Sent back a lengthy reply stating the issue, all the steps I completed, etc.  No reply as of yet.

So... I simply copied the Writer directory from one my laptops.  Here's the bits you need to know...

1. The new version of Writer lives in C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer - go get it, copy it to your blocked machine.
2. You need to create two registry keys (both Reg_SZ) if they don't exist...  HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Writer\InstallDir
   HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Writer\InstallDir
   Set both of them to your directory path (should be C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\ if you're using the normal location.)

Note the two different keys in step two... one is "Windows Live Writer", the other is "Windows Live\Writer".  This is important if you ever install any plugins.  Plugins designed for the older version need the "Windows Live Writer", plugins for the newer version need "Windows Live\Writer".  Also note the trailing slash in the directory path of the value... required!

You'll probably have to reconfigure your blog settings, as they may not copy over.  But, at least it works!

• 0.5 hours checking and replying to last night's emails.
• 1 hour system maintenance...  checking event logs, queues, etc.
• 0.5 hours meeting with boss to talk about vendor
• 1 hour conference call with vendor to talk about why we're not happy
• 0.5 hours with the other team member talking about vendor
• 1 hour team meeting talking about what we're supposed to be doing
• 0.5 hours replying to emails about what we're supposed to be doing
• 1.0 hours lunch (talking about what we're supposed to be doing)
• 0.5 hours with other team member deciphering a batch file that does some really freaky stuff to our mail clusters every night.
• 0.5 hours figuring out how to rewrite said batch file into something that (a) makes sense, and (b) works.
• 1 hour meeting with other vendors who are trying to sell us "cool tools".
• 0.5 hour meeting with other vendors who are trying to sell us "cool tools".
• 0.5 hours replying to emails I missed while in meetings.

Out!

One of the cool things I noticed about BlogEngine.net is that it shows a quick list of how many posts I've put up each month.  Unfortunately, the side effect of that is that it shows that I'm just a big 'ole slacker.

So, now that I have a "measuring stick", I'm going to see what I can do to rectify my post deficiencies.  This is one is all about the blog itself.

Two of the things I don't like are support and "features".  The support is kind of lacking at first glance.  There's a Wiki and a bit of online documentation, but that's about it.  The Wiki is also somewhat, uh, lacking.  There is some decent technical info there, but not a ton of it.  There's very little in the way of "how do I do this" stuff, which is what I'm really needing.  There is also a "forum" of sorts, but it's hosted on Codeplex...  which is not geared for forum discussion.  It's more like a glorified guest book.  But, I guess I'll hang out there for a bit and ask some stupid questions and see what pops up.

The "features" are a bit odd.  The product definitely needs some fleshing out.  For example, there's an option to build "pages" that aren't a part of the main blog.  This is cool (and very useful), but there doesn't appear to be any decent way of getting them IN the menu system without editing theme files somewhere.  I haven't figured out how to do that yet.  Guess I need to go squat in a Codeplex forum for a bit.

Anyway, that's it for now.  I'll probably slap up an non-techie post a bit later this afternoon.  L8rs!