What was his project?

He wanted to stream a webcam pointing at a computer screen displaying a real-time graph of the temperature/ph of his fish tank. It was explained to him that there were better ways to get the data on the website than a stream of a computer screen.

November 19th: I get my coffin.

November 20th: It will go out at 8:30AM. COME HOME SOON, 360!!

What the hell TOOK so long to get an empty box to me?

People keep quizzing me on why I want to move to North Carolina so badly. To me, it’s not so much that I want to move out of New Jersey, but that it’s gotten so expensive to live here that I don’t know what else to do. I’m in a job that, while it’s not horrible, is slowly shriveling my soul. I can’t do support as a full-time thing anymore. There’s no creativity in it, just repetitive motions and repeated admonitions from my mouth and out their ears. While this job is soul-shriveling, it’s a state job. The benefits are fantastic. Healthcare is not an issue (except when they drag their feet getting your newborn onto your plan *grumble*) . The salary is OK. It’s more than a lot of people I know make for a single income.

But in this lousy state, it’s not enough. I don’t want an eighty year old house in Glassboro for $200,000. It’s not where I want my son to grow up. I don’t want to live in a place where the population density is to the point where if I want to avoid living up someone’s ass I have to move to the Pine Barrens or Millville. If I get this job, we’re moving, and it’s not without regret. I love New York City at Christmas. One of my favorite memories is when Aimee and I went to see the BNL Holiday Show, and we took the train in from New Brunswick, and got on the subway, walked across the street through crisp winter air and saw a great little show. New York positively crackles in winter. And it’s not to say that I don’t love Jersey at Christmas either.

It’s just a lot to deal with. I’ve been thinking about it for a long, long time. Yeah, Jeff got to me a while ago, but it took until I had a family to realize it. I joke that the streets are paved with gold in North Carolina, but to me it’s not so far off the truth. It’s a beautiful place to live. It’s a place I can afford to buy a great house for m son to start his life in and it’s a place where very close friends have done great things with their life.

And that’s where we’ll do it too.

*Because I’ve done plenty of interstate moves in my life with my family, just not as the primary person actually initiating and preparing the move. QED.

Sony just announced they’re dropping the 20GB PS3. This is on the heels of the XBox 360 Elite being announced at a $479 price point. I’m the first one to admit that the Elite offers nothing that I want or need: HDMI is a moot point as I have VGA input on my Westinghouse 42″, and the bigger hard drive means nothing since I don’t download all that much stuff.

With the loss of the $499 PS3 from the lineup, it makes the 360-PS3 gap even larger. Most people don’t look at details, but for the hard-drive conscious folks, they’re going to look at 120GB on the $479Elite and wonder why they’re only getting 60 on the $599 PS3.

Have you ever even heard of the blu-ray? It’s the FUTURE!

It boils down to a list like this, and about $900.

The video card is bang-for-the-buck, RAM and hard drives don’t count for much anymore…the nice bit is the Core 2 Duo. Always go for the 1GHz front side bus, you know. Faster FSB the better.

There was a resounding raspberry from the entire channel. I did it anyway.

About an hour after I started the upgrade, it was ready for the final reboot. It comes back…

and bluescreens, with an auto reboot.

It does this about 10 more times without me actually noticing it’s done it.

The one thing Microsoft’s gotten right with Vista so far is that it doesn’t nuke anything during an in place upgrade. I successfully rolled back to XP Pro and went back to living in the now.

Eff Vista.