All posts by Kris

About Kris

Hardware hacker, technology integrator, and maker. He enjoys staring blankly at code and voiding the warranty.

Ebay Scam.

rant

I think a scam was just tried on me. I’m researching how it works and what’s involved. If anyone out there knows the details of something like this, or how it goes, please let me know… I smell foul play.

Here’s what just went down.
I was looking for a USB 3.5″ hard drive case. I went to Ebay and did a search. For starters, I found the shipping and handling costs of computer related products outrageous. $15 for handling on a $14 item? I see how they make money. It seems that the majority of auctioneers are using this same practice.

I find what I’m looking for. It’s an aluminum case 3.5″ drive bay with USB cables and software. 1hr 22min remaining – no bids. I carefully go over the specs, and the shipping and handling costs, etc. I contemplate how much this would cost at CompUSA and what little selection I’d have. Plus the time to drive 20 miles to Salem, NH.

Opening bid price is $14.95. It has a “Buy Now!” price of $16.95. I think about how many hundreds of drive bays they had listed and if it’s worth the $2 to secure my purchase. I figure I could use the two extra bucks and match the starting bid of $14.95. I click bid. I go get lunch.
Continue reading Ebay Scam. →

Planning for the trip. A prelude.

travel

road_trip_usa.gifIs this a great graphic or what? I can hear this jingle in my head that sounds like a 50’s TV ad. “RoAd TriP, You ESS AEEE!!” That’s when I knew it would work. When the psychotic jingle popped into my head. “Let’s go! Let’s GO! Get packed! Get PACKED! It’s TIME for RoAd TriPp, U! S! A!” *aherm

Christine and I have been packing stuff into boxes for the last few days. The logistics have been worked out. I have to separate stuff into essentially three piles. (A. Moving to California.), (B. Moving to storage.), (C. Trash, burn, or ebay.) The speed of which I do this will pick up as we get closer to July.

I pulled out the camping gear and cleaned off the bugs from the flatware. ;) I’m starting to make a list of stuff that we will need in the car. The exciting part for me will be trying to cram 100 pounds of electric / computer / radio gear into a 2000 Chevy Malibu. The short list of cool gadgets to have: Digital Camera, Digital Video, CB, FRS, Scanner, WiFi, GPS, probably 2 laptops :D , MP3, USB to Motorola v120 Phone, USB Hanspring data cable, Power inverter, Phone chargers, etc. This will allow us to not only thwart an alien attack, but blog across the US.

So, those of you living vicariously through me :o , or mildly interested in a planetkris road trip – we’ll be leaving towards the end of August. We’ll be blogging the whole way. Pictures, bad hotels, places we hold up, you’ll get it all! Watch for the graphic! “RoAd TRIP, you ess AAEEEE!”

The Dark Tower Series

rave

Childe Roland to the dark tower came.This won’t be so much of a book review as it will be a review of how this series has interested me for many years.

I have begun again. The journey of Roland and his companions across the desert, the forest, other worlds, and other dimensions. I began reading Stephen King back in High School. Some of his work did little to stir my curiosity. “Carrie,” “Christine,” “Firestarter.” Some of his work still fascinates me in it’s complexity. The Dark Tower books 1 and 2 had been out for a while, and in 1992 “The Waste Lands” came out. In a fever I read “The Gunslinger” and “The Drawing of the Three.” I walked right into a trap. First, I was hooked. I wanted more. Second, the third book was a huge cliff hanger. Not a “We’ll see what Roland gets into next week.” or “Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure!” but a plot that twisted and wrapped you up so that you were with Roland traveling into the unknown. Would we crash? Would we be forced into a terrible position? Who knew? “When is the next book coming out?” “He doesn’t know! What do you mean HE DOESN’T KNOW?!”

I cooled my energy by reading “The Stand.” This 1300 pager is not for the big print faint of heart. It’s a great long read. I read it twice. After this I kept up with some of King’s other work. “Dolores Claiborne,” “Needful Things,” etc. I then grew tired of his newer stuff and moved on.

Then in 1997 “Wizards & Glass” came to print. “Did you know there is a new Dark Tower book out!” My remaining High School friends shouted to me on the phone. “Yes… I know…” I sighed. I asked for it for Christmas that year, or my birthday if I remember. I never read it. I mean, I was going to get around to it. I really wanted to re-read the first 3 books. Then hit book four fresh, with vigor! Never happened.
Continue reading The Dark Tower Series →

The Great MP3 Project

creativity

AltoMP3 at work...I think it was back in 1998 or 97 that I put my faith in the MP3 data format. Some of the guys that I worked with at PictureTel were compiling every Rush CD they had and encoding it to a server. This was big stuff back then! The drives were slow, the encoders were slow, the files were big. I mean 65MB for a whole CD worth of music was pretty cool, but you have to remember that we had 4GIG drives in servers, and 1GIG drives in desktops. This is how I was able to obtain everything that Rush ever recorded from the beginning to 1998. It fit on two 650MB CD’s!

It was around this time that I decided to rip everything I had to MP3. The Great MP3 Project was born. After about 20 CD’s I was pooped. (Mind you this took hours – because on a P133 and a 12X CD-ROM it took close to 35 minutes to rip a CD…) I figured if this was ever going to get done – and done right, I would have to make some changes as to how I listened to, and ripped CD’s.
Continue reading The Great MP3 Project →

Up and down.

status

Thunderstorms brought me a new IP last night. I was almost 100% sure that it was because I haven’t paid the cable bill. I have all the domains listed at everydns.net and changing the IP took no time at all. Plus the minute I finished the update – we were back on line. I say “we” because 3 of us use my server for blogs. I’ll bother setting up dynamic IP when we’re in Irvine.

The server will be moving again. Probably this weekend. So don’t be shocked if it’s up and down.

We had a good time in New Jersey for the long weekend. Christine showed me what the jersey shore looked like. I’ve never been out on an actual boardwalk. We had a good mileage test of the rallycar and made it home in the rain without too much drama.

Frontier Land.

rave

wifiI had to pull the laptop out in order to reset a “check engine” code on ze’Neon. It turned out to be “IAT Circuit High.” (Intake air temp high in English.) This was not too worrisome, considering we spent the afternoon puttering around Jersey traffic.

I stepped inside Christine’s parents’ suburban home and grabbed my wifi adapter “for the hell of it.” I restarted the network browser. WOAH! 6 Networks popped up. I stepped out the front door onto the driveway. *refresh* 12 more networks popped up. LinkSys, LinkSys, LinkSys, LinkSys, etc, etc. Only two were encrypted. Oh well, 10 more to choose from. :)

Now I’m sitting in the Kitchen writing this. I’m on a Comcast network. They have a LinkSys wireless router with firewall. Now the firewall is protecting… me. This is an amazing time for the wireless Internet. I can walk up and down main street like a gunslinger, with my wifi adapter and trusty laptop at my side.

As part of the cross country trip, we’ll be blogging it. I’m waiting to pick up a modem cable for my Motorola phone. I have a feeling though, the only thing we’ll need is this ‘here wifi adapter. YeeHAW!