Well today was interesting. I decided to call around for conduit and the big chains of course only carry .5" and .75". Jeff suggests Viking Electric so I call what is listed as their current location and ask about flexible ENT. They say they have it and so I head out on a road trip. Their address is University Ave and clicking the map links confirms it's just off it so I drive up their and can't find it. I did manage to find the new offices of a place I worked at once which I had never been to since they got an actual office, and stopped in at a bank to deposit some checks. End up calling and asking where they are and they're actually located in Blaine up off 35W and J. Not sure how that ended up not getting told to the phone company, but oh well... I get there and they have 2" flex steel but nothing nonmetallic. They can get it from Eau Claire for the next morning, but at this point I don't want to bother and figure metalic will be fine and get a 10ft length of it. Then I stopped by Home Depot and picked up a door jamb kit and a trim kit for around my rack. After some final measurements I'll hopefully get it all cut so it'll fit and then stain it tomorrow and get it installed later this week. On my way back from all this I grab the mail and it seems like a big stack. Get it inside to the light and see lots of mail for the former owner. I got the notice of forwarding and the post office acknowledges it too, but this is the 3rd time they've managed to not forward it since I've been here. Oh well, at least I know the procedure now. Bundle it up with a note and back in the mailbox it goes. Finished off the night by watching The Game. Interesting movie, although technically the DVD wasn't all that great. For starters it's a scope movie and it wasn't anamorphic. The story was semi-interesting though, but the last bit of the ending is done way too often in movies and could have been left off. His phone looked a lot like the Q phone so I wasn't all that surprised at the whole no reception a lot thing. Those things were top of the line with all the latest back in their day, but I had two of them and neither worked very well at all. Oh well, phones are better now, and they don't make you pay $300 for them after the year service agreement either.

Day started off with a trip to Salem Baptist. Ended up talking to a former coworker for a bit about some major changes that are probably happening at work since he's looking at them as well but from a slightly different perspective. That was interesting. After that I ended up making a bit more of a mess. Ripped out the outside part of the closet wall, including an outlet that was on it and the conduit from the previous box to that outlet. Then I assembled the rack and realized that it is 1/4" too wide to fit the opening. Of course this isn't a matter of cutting the opening slightly wider, as the opening is defined not by drywall but by a stud and a steel pole. I'm really not wanting to have to replace more drywall than necessary here, so moving the stud becomes a bit harder, and moving the steel pole is pretty much out of the question. This is what sawzalls are made for though. The nails were pretty easy to cut, although given that I had to cut to within a quarter inch of some loose wire made it a bit harder. After that it slid back an inch or so nicely and attached right back in place. Rack is mounted now and fits very well. A note with the assembly is I'm mounting this semi-flush with the wall so I had to make a slight modification to the attachment positions since I can't have the base sticking 5" out into the room. It appears that they thought of this and both the top and bottom extend the same amount from the end of the rails, so a quick swap of the rear top and the front bottom works great. Unfortunately since I didn't have any of the nice trim I'm eventually gonna want around it it's probably gonna get taken back out and put back in tomorrow. Somewhere in the middle of this process I went to do a little shopping for 2" flexible ENT. I came up empty handed (the biggest Home Depot carries is 3/4"), so if you know of a local source let me know. I need 10, maybe 20 feet, so I really don't want to order 50m online. Unfortunately the place it's going I have about 3ft clearance above and maybe 10" below, so rigid is out of the question. Conduit would be nice, but if not oh well. I ended up getting myself a nice fishtape and a set with a bunch of drillbits and a ton of screwdriver bits that was on sale (There's like 10 #2 philips 1" bits, which seems excessive but is actually very nice if you've ever done a project involving inaccessible places and bits). Also picked up a replacement blade for the sawzall since I bent the current one I've been using (they don't tend to last long either, and it's not like I haven't used it a bit). Stopped by and visited the family a bit after shopping, and picked up a hole saw attachement for the drill as well as some screws for the aforementioned stud. After cleanup from all the mess decided to sit down and watch another movie. Picked 28 Days Later... which is a great movie I'm surprised I haven't heard more about. When at the beginning I saw the promo thing about from the same diretor as The Beach (which I thought really sucked) I wasn't too excited. At least they kept the animated dream scene and the other crazy semi-animation to a limited extent in this one (that one video game scene still haunts me). The one thing they movies have in common though is a great soundtrack selection (although why does that cost almost as much as the DVD?!?). This movie also has a great soundtrack from other perspectives as well. They do a good job with keeping the surrounds natural and not over-used like a lot of movies. It's also designed to take advantage of a system that'll handle a lot of dynamic range and bass. From totally silent to a guy running up behind you and jumping on you as you spin around and it sounds like it's actually happening. :) It's a shame they didn't have a DTS mix. As for the alternate endings I'm not so big a fan of the filmed ones. There's a storyboard one (yea, there are 4 endings) which is interesting and is very accurately labeled as a radical alternate, but has to have one of the funniest quotes about why they didn't go that way in the end. Hmm, today was tiring. I think tomorrow is gonna have to involve less stuff.

Well, Avalon is effectively done. I did a bit more fighting with the backup server, and now it is being backed up. Once that's done the rest can go on as normal. After that whole issue I went shopping and bought a 1000ft box of Cat5E and a 500ft spool of RG-6/U. Wasn't in the mood for making too big of a mess drilling and pulling cable, but did figure out where I'm gonna run the cable (it'll be easier than I thought it would be). Since I got a bunch more DVDs in the mail, I finished off the day by watching Se7en. That's a good movie.

Well, today I slept in a lot which was nice. Put together some of my Christmas presents which included lamps and tables. Started putting away the other stuff too - still not sure where some stuff is going. When going out to retrieve the day's collection of netflix movies I discovered that my rack and shelves arrived. A bit surprised since apparently they never knocked or rang the bell - they were just stacked up outside the garage door. Actually I have no idea when they came since the web page hasn't been updated yet. Anyways, I was rather surprised when I opened up the boxes to see Middle Atlantic stuff since I had searched for the cheapest possible and got a good deal (and I thought it was decent when I thought it was generic stuff). Not complaining there though - I mean how many racks come with not only the wrench to assemble themselves, but also a longer wrench that's straight and designed to go in a power drill - plus screws and other extras. Of course I wasn't expecting it to arrive so quickly so didn't have anything ready. So I went into the closet in which it's eventually destined to reside, and ripped off the interior layer of drywall on the wall which will have the rack as well as the ceiling. Tomorrow I'll consider mounting it in there if I get the other stuff I need. Of course this little acceleration also means I get to go shopping for bulk cable tomorrow to wire the place and put in a big order for patch panels, jacks, other cabling, etc. Should be interesting when that arrives. The evening consisted of Panic Room. Not a great movie, but I didn't think it was all that bad either. I'd say it has an interesting story, and is reasonably well done. While I don't think the soundtrack was all some people hyped it up to be, I don't think it deserved the bad reviews it seemed to get either. Oh well. That Avalon thing - it seems that one of the tape drives decided to shut down, and even after reactivating it hasn't figured out how to mount a tape. At least the thing was far enough it's a couple "simple" copies to complete so it can wait from that perspective. Looks like the backup people will have to fix it before we can back stuff up though... :( Hopefully tomorrow will be the end of the Avalon saga.

Today was another day of sitting around watching Avalon. And starting new restores where others failed. Mike and I decided that it's probably time to talk to Veritas again. Hopefully between a combination of copying and restores Avalon will be back up and running tomorrow morning though. I started off the morning by heading to the parents house since the family was lighting the advent candle during one of the services. After waiting for them for double the time I spent driving over there, we left and arrived basically on time. A lot longer than my normal 2 minute ride/drive to church. The whole candle thing went pretty well, and I didn't have to say much. After church we stopped by Arby's to grab lunch and then I got to go home and do the whole Avalon thing. Pretty much just surfed avsforum most of the day, although did end up rearranging my room a bit. The bed sits high enough for the receiver to sit underneath it and still have breathing room, which is nice. The dock for the Karma can then sit on the headboard and connect to power, audio, and eventually ethernet for syncing. Watched Requiem for Murder which was an OK film, pretty decent as far as Canadian ones go. Sorta weird in that the movie started off with what looked like a pretty bad revealing of characters, but then it ends up being someone else. They never address some aspects though including anything after the other guy gets arrested though, so sorta leaves you hanging. So quite a while back I posted a link to a simple page mainly to link a picture together with the name Paul Boyum as far as a certain search engine is concerned. Anyways, google managed to pick it up and Paul discovered it today and wasn't to pleased. So I had to make a little modification and another link and we'll see if it goes up in the results. Betsy did a really good job on it so it'd be a shame not to show it off, right? :) In other news, Solstice Backup is quickly losing points on the reliability and speed issue. If it has any points left to lose...

I managed to get up on time. Really didn't want to though. My internal clock is so messed up it felt like both a Monday and a Friday today - that's messed up. Today was the ITS Christmas party with the usual white elephant gifts. I ended up with a rather interesting gift that is now hanging up in my office. Maybe I'll get a picture of it up here soon. It's definitely a use for AOL CDs that I hadn't thought of. Did a lot of miscellaneous things today, including getting ready for tomorrow night. Should be interesting, since it looks like the backup had issues. Of course I can't get into the server and the email provided absolutely no information. Finished off the evening by watching Caddyshack II. It's a pretty funny movie, better in some ways than the first, but not as good in a lot of ways too. Oh well, it was worth watching. Tomorrow is C1, which I've been wanting for like a week now. About time...

Tuesday went well. Slept in a decent amount because of the expected staying up halfway through the night. Then I finally went and bought a new mattress and boxspring. It was about time since the old one was pretty much falling apart (big holes in the side of the boxspring, edges all ripped, etc). I think that thing must be almost as old as me. Anyway, somehow I managed to get delivery on Wednesday, which was cool. Then headed to Home Depot to register my input on the color of paint going in my brother's room in my house (he didn't like the blue for some reason). Of course I also had to get everything out of that room. Then ended up going to Dave's to watch Tommy Boy with him as well as Brie and Ryan. When that finished up it was around 9:30 so time to head over to to Bethel since we were leaving for the movie at 10. Everyone showed up relatively on time and we gave the student workers who were working a hard time for not going to the movie. We ended up getting to the theater at around 10:30 and they let us right in, which was rather surprising. Another cool part was they had Code Red slushies - more caffeine to enhance the movie experience. The movie was 11:59, and actually started relatively on time. They had trailers and stuff of course, but the number of them was surprisingly low, not that I'm complaining. The movie itself was good, although I'm still not sure of the ending. They skipped a part of the book that in my opinion is a major part of the whole point of the book. Of course they said that they'd be doing that since the beginning, but I figured that meant they would end the story right before it. Nope, they had to just jump over it and do other stuff, making it seem like that never happened! Anyways the movie and ride home were rather uneventful, other than I was wide awake and everyone else seemed sorta tired. Of course one person in the group was already sick and two more were sick today, so hopefully that trend doesn't continue. Ended up going to bed around 4:45, which I didn't think was too bad. Until my phone rings at 8:30am. The delivery people are at my front door wanting to deliver the bed stuff. And the guy told me to call after 8:30 to find out when they'd be delivering it... At least that was only like 10 minutes so I promptly climbed back into bed and slept until something like 1pm. By that time my mom and brother were going on the painting and the house started smelling a bit - oh well. Spent a lot of the rest of the day relaxing, although I ended up returning a lot of voicemails too. I'm not the biggest fan of the phone so sometimes end up getting a bit behind there. My new drivers license arrived today, which sorta surprised me. At the place they told me they were running behind and the temporary thing only lasted for 30 days so I'd probably have to go back and get it stamped. Of course then a week later it arrives in the mail. Oh well. Talked to JoeBuck as he was heading off to go and catch his plane. That means he's gonna be back here soon, which is cool. C1 on Friday! Went shopping and put together everything for the bed which means I have a place to sleep tonight, which is good. Finished off the evening by watching X2 with my brother. He hadn't seen it before, so that was cool. That movie has a pretty good soundtrack - lots of explosions and good environmental sound if a bit exaggerated sometimes. Now I wonder if I can get up in the morning...

Sunday started off well with another trip to Salem Baptist. Of course Dave had to go look at houses again afterwards... My brother came over to watch the game and bring over some stuff though, and ended up helping to clean up the place. It didn't take too long, although we managed to clog up the vacuum enough that it overheated and cut off twice. Unfortunately a thorough cleaning involves a 24hr drying period, so just a cooldown happened in the middle. When I emptied it and washed everything it definitely had collected a lot of dust though. Assembled my DVD/CD rack and started filling it. Looks like I need at least one more, if not two. Or I need to resort to more dvd wallets... Anyways, after a little shopping settled in for the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring. Dave and Jeff came over and joined in the fun, which was good. I discovered that I need to deal with some doors and their rattling in the frames though. Monday went pretty well. Some building servers, lots of patching, some planning for updates, and some adding additional IP addresses. I'm still not sure about this weekend. Hopefully it'll go smoother than it seems like it will. It was also full day #2 with the Karma at work, and works great, no glitches. I think I last charged the thing Saturday or something, and it's still well over half left... Anyways, tonight was v2 of the trilogy, with the extended edition of Two Towers. Jeff came over and eventually Dave came and joined in right before the big battle sequence. Very enjoyable time, and ready to watch the third one in the theater. I've decided against reading the book tomorrow though, mainly because I want to sleep half the day. I've been dead tired the past couple nights, and going to bed relatively early. And since this movie doesn't start until midnight... Anyways, off to start that sleeping in process.

Friday was sorta slow. Put together the drive cabinet for the Avalon replacement which took a good chunk of time, so that helped a bit. Also poked around with HTML applications (the IE things) some more. It's pretty cool how easily some stuff can be done, but sorta scary too. The security implications of how it's started are sorta scary. At least it looks on the surface like execution from inside IE still prompts the user. Friday evening I started doing codec comparisons between mp3, ogg vorbis, and flac. Flac by far wins, and there are distinct differences between mp3 and vorbis. I'm used to the mp3 artifacts a bit so they sound more normal to me, but I think long term I'd like the vorbis better. And the fact that q6 vorbis is around 192kbps and compares with 256abr vbr lame encoded mp3s is nice too. I tried varying the bitrate a bit and have to say that q4 sounds a lot like 128kbps mp3s, which reminded me how much I hate those things in headphones. They just destroy the music... Saturday I was planning on getting up by 9 since that was the beginning of the install window for Comcast. Of course the doorbell rings at 8:50, so I had to get up quick and go let the guy in. Install went smooth, although those things take forever to download the software they run. The installer said it bugs him since they could easily let them all sit for a bit in the warehouse and not have to do that. I had all the cables needed to hook it up, but he gave me a 12ft cable with component video and 2 audio RCAs too since they normally use that. Not a bad dela there. The guy knew what he was doing and was cool to talk to for the most part. Other than he plugged the digital audio into the wrong plug (we fixed it by switching to optical right away, but I discovered it later). Since I only have the lowest basic service I currently just get the OTA broadcast channels in HD. Of course all the rest of the analog channels look pretty decent since the tuner is nice. The box is a Motorola DCT5100, which is pretty cool. Looking through the diagnostics menus and stuff that thing can handle lots of stuff. It has an integrated docsis cable modem, but it's only used for it to talk to the cable co. Unfortunately it's IP is listed as 0.0.0.0 in there. The box itself supports Firewire and ethernet (although neither is installed), as well as usb (which is installed). It also has some pvr options and support for hard drives. Too bad this box is leased from that perspective, but that's probably a good thing since I doubt it would be cheap. It has DVI output so maybe I'll play with that eventually. A bonus to this whole thing is I get all the digital music channels too just for having the box. Haven't looked to see if anything is good, but we'll have to see there. Digital music feed, with digital output...hmm... I wonder if the song data is available by text or if it's only video. Screen scraping and OCR would be possible but probably too much work. Anyways, after the install more sleep was necessary. The next task was to put in this thermostat that's been sitting on my counter for the past week. It's the old programmable one from my parents house that was replaced by a newer model. That went pretty smooth other than the fact that the old one was screwed into the drywall with tiny screws and was more held on by paint so it's a little loose, and the fact the new one has two totally separate electrical systems I had to jumper. It seems to not be reading ambient temperature right (it was reading like 8 degrees warmer than true - interesting when I have the house set at 64 normally), but hopefully that'll be fixed soon. After that went shopping and got some rugs. Now hopefully my entryways will stay somewhat clean, and I won't be tracking mud everywhere either. Also picked up some cheap dvds for the price of renting since I was at Walmart. There are occational good ones, but I have to say there's a reason most of the ones that are still in the bin are there. From there went to the parents' house and picked up my server machine and some other miscellaneous stuff. After that to home and watching extra features. I got Two Towers Extended, T3 and X2. Nothing spectacular on the last two. Finished off the day by watching Caddyshack, so I got that going for me, which is nice. Funny movie, although sorta odd in parts, and short. Successfully avoided another day of cleaning, although gonna have to do that tomorrow before people get here. :(

Tuesday was interesting. I got to work in under 10 minutes, although it sounds like other people had it a bit rough. I got to have fun on the roads too, since nobody had plowed yet. Lunch was at Culvers which is always fun. Work involved fixing little things, as well as planning the replacement of Avalon (the student file server). It just has to last another 9 days... Then there were policy discussions. Those are always fun when faculty are involved. My team pretty much always agrees on stuff, it's getting it through that is an issue. Going home was more fun since stuff still hadn't been plowed. I think I spent most of the night reading forums on that mp3 player though (yea, I ordered it). Wednesday I tried to sleep in, but woke up on my own around 9. I guess I'm too used to not sleeping in during the week. Managed to get a little more sleep and not get up for a couple more hours though. Then did some general cleanup and went to go buy RotK tickets. Had to do a little shoveling first though since they got around to plowing and there was no way I could get through the mound at the end of the driveway. Cleared an 8x8 square of of snow about a foot thick which got it back past the plow stuff to the regular stuff my car could go through no problem. Anyways, got the tickets through the student association so got a discount there which was cool. Then was geting my address updated at the DMV, which involved waiting for more than twice as long as the actual process took. Apparently they now just do a duplicate card thing so no hastle of going through the picture and vision test and other stuff. Plus it's only $8 rather than $18.50 or whatever the normal price is. After that I grabbed a pair of the Entra Ones and a receiver and headed off to the ITS Student Christmas party. Watched the new How the Grinch Stole Christmas movie. It was funny how many movies they refered to. I especially liked the extended part ripping on Episode 1. Now I'm tired though, and have to do a few things before sleep. :(