The Duck and I just saw Michael Moore’s “Sicko” on Saturday, and I still haven't recovered. I laughed, I cried, I got mad, and I wanted to change the system. The movie clearly showed that not only do people often fall through the cracks in our pay-to-play healthcare system, but that is the norm. I've always thought of healthcare as a gamble where I was taking the safe bet. Sure, it would be cheaper to pay out of pocket for the few, if any, visits to the doctor I make every year instead of paying a premium every month plus copays. However, at the back of my mind is the fear-- what if something catastrophic happened, and I didn't have insurance? What if I landed tens of thousands of dollars in debt? Well, now I realize that healthcare does not prevent that at all. Plus, now I know that if I am sick, doctors and hospitals may not treat me to the best of their abilities because it would be too expensive. So what am I paying for every month again?
I go back and forth between very excited and kinda sad that the last Harry Potter book is coming out in a couple of weeks. Right now all I feel is happy though, because I finally figured out where I am going to get it.
I have been seeing Amazon and Barnes and Noble advertisements telling me to pre-order for months, but I thought it would be much more fun to pick it up at the store in person. I was even (secretly) hoping for a midnight pickup with a bunch of eager Harry Potter fans, which I have never done before. There is no big box bookstore in town, so I decided to support my local independent bookstore and buy it the day it came out. I finally called today to see if they could put a copy on hold for me and… yes, they are open for one hour at midnight for all of us who want to read until the sun comes up! Who needs sleep anyway?
Today is the fourth of July. I don’t like fireworks, barbeques, or sports (gasp!). However, I have my own idea of a great, festive way to spend the day.
In our household, it is traditional to make blueberry pancakes with raspberry sauce, a red-white-and-blue way to start the day. However, the temperatures are going to go in the triple digits today, so we are opting for a straweberry, banana, and blueberry smoothie instead. It looks a lot more festive before it is blended, so that is the time to photograph.
Since today is celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I think it would fitting to read it. I also plan to listen to a current political speech because part of being a good citizen is keeping up with the issues facing our nation and world. I think Howard Zinn is a good choice because he talks about history and it’s influence on us today. He was a history professor that didn’t want to live in the past, but take an active part in making history. As a speaker he is subdued but powerful, humourous and poignant, and very well-spoken. I always enjoy talks by him.
Sonora, California is a lovely little town known for having lots of shops and good restaurants. However, a vegetarian or vegan may not see it that way. At first glance, the town seems to have mostly red meat and authentic Mexican, neither of which is appetizing to a veg*n. Yet with a little bravery and persistence, I have discovered that you can in fact find vegetarian food in the restaurants of Sonora. Here are some of the places I have found.
*Note: almost every place has bread and/or iceberg lettuce salad available, so I am only listing those categories of food if they are unique in some way. Also, I am going by what is on the menu only. For any strict vegans out there, you should ask your server to make sure there aren’t any hidden ingredients in an otherwise appetizing dish.
It's spring, the flowers are blooming, the leaves are budding, and the outdoors are calling you. However, when you come back inside you may have more than pink cheeks and happy memories. As I found out last week, the ticks are out, and they are on the move.
When I hear ticks, I automatically think lyme disease. Although lyme disease is generally considered to be a concern only back east, the National Institute of Environmental Health Science states that northern California has one of the highest rates of lyme disease. Fun, huh? So let’s get into tick-preparedness mode.
First off, when and where do ticks occur? According to UC IPM Online, April through July is the time to be wary of nymphs. Don’t relax once it cools down a bit though, as adult ticks are said to be most active from late fall to early spring. Wonderful. So which areas should you avoid from November to July? Nymphs like forest litter. The adults are more likely to be found on low vegetation like grass, at areas below knee level. You should also watch out for logs, as research from UC Berkeley found that sitting on logs, gathering wood, and sitting against trees greatly increased the likelihood of encountering ticks.
I finally bought a used Xbox, ripped it apart, replaced the 10GB drive with a 320GB drive, upgraded that god-awful fan that comes with it, popped/soldered in a mod-chip, replaced the ATA cabling, added an LCD panel with USB ports plus mod-chip push-button controls and loaded up XBMC on it. Now it's basically a home theater PC (HTPC) that also plays Xbox titles. (Yes, the USB ports allow for wireless keyboards, mice, thumb drives and so on.)
Thanks to Warwick for the nudging toward checking out XBMC, which totally p0wns, no questions. I would have never done any of this if it weren't for his regular ramblings and extollings of the open source project that really should just complete its port to the PC.
How did it go? Painfully. Man, I don't care what anyone tells you, modding an Xbox can be a real pain in the rear, among other things.
For example, putting this LCD panel:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8692.JPG.html
...on this case:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8695.JPG.html
...resulted in this (photo taken after the initial clean-up):
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8732.JPG.html
By far, the two biggest pains were the front panel disassembly and re-assembly, and the dremelling/grinding/sanding/snipping/chopping of case parts to make everything fit. And there was a lot of that (much more than I revealed in my photo gallery, because taking all the photos would have really slowed the process). Thankfully, making square pegs fit round holes is my specialty:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8755.JPG.html
Of course, I love it when I do a perfect soldering job exactly as my installation instructions show:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8768.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8758.JPG.html
...only to find out that they labeled the *wrong* points on the motherboard as places to solder. :P
Thankfully my de-soldering went as smoothly as my soldering, though at one point my back cramp I've been suffering through decided to give me a massive spasm of pain right when I was about to touch the soldering pen to the board. It took all my concentration not to fling the damned thing while my body wrenched in agony, but that's another story.
So, how many components come in an Xbox? Well here's a pic of everything that was and would be:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8773.JPG.html
Where are all these cables supposed to go anyway?
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8790.JPG.html
Here's the Xbox trial run without the drives:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8798.JPG.html
With the drives, but no lid:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8802.JPG.html
The LCD didn't come out well in this lights-out photo (and I'm sure the protective shipping plastic that I didn't bother to remove doesn't help), but you get the idea of how pretty this thing looks now in the dark here. Also you can see my ugly yellow ATA166 cable that I replaced the Xbox ATA133 cable with for a noticeable performance boost:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8890.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8891small.jpg.html
I found that the RF shielding from the original case was not necessary for RF shielding, but was necessary to prevent grounding problems. There was a large amount of video interference/distortion until I put the shielding into the new case. I used some metal snips to chop out a good deal of the shielding that tended to get in the way of working with or wiring the Xbox. The original configuration is unbelievable painful to try to work inside. My new RF shielding now looks like so:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8889.JPG.html
The finished product (glowing like this in the sunlight no less!):
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8949.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8939.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8954.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8952.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8955.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8961.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8942small.jpg.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8940small.jpg.html
Or, see the whole gallery here:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/
I tried a variety of dashboard replacements, but eventually determined that XBMC (Xbox Media Center) is unparalleled.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/
The dash essentially looks like this and can launch just about any media file under the sun in addition to launching Xbox executables. See lots of XBMC screen caps here to get an idea of what the dash has to offer.
One of the older skins can be viewed here, though this is not nearly as polished as the current default skin:
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_screens.htm
I can launch files locally (DVDs, CDs, hard drive files- AVIs, MPGs, Real Media, QuickTime movies, etc.), across the LAN from my system shares, FTP, etc., or even the Internet. It plays Shoutcast streams, from RSS feeds, YouTube FLVs, whatever. I've got all my Xbox titles loaded on the hard drive, along with a ton of movies/anime/etc. I have my server shares mapped so I can browse music, movies, pics or whatever from the XBMC. So I haven't had to pop in a single disc since I performed the mods. I have the weather and time servers configured. I've totally tailored the XBMC menu layout and system config to my needs (mostly XML files, in case you're curious), and about the only thing I haven't done yet is configure the Xlink stuff to play online, multiplayer games with the free service.
http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/
Was it worth it all? Definitely. It r0xx0rs. Was it fun? Yes. In a masochistic manner of speaking. However, if I didn't also want an Xbox to play with, I would opt for a PC/Mac based media center solution by far. I hate the Xbox case (cooling is horrible, upgrading it is beyond difficult, and working inside it is less than desirable), and the Xbox components are already getting rare to find, so maintenance is sure to be a pain. I figure on just buying another Xbox and stashing it for spare parts. The power supplies and DVD drives are usually the first to go, and they're already difficult and expensive to find. (The third-party knock-offs are supposedly very shabby.)
The following are links to information about selected plants in California, including pictures, descriptions, uses, and historical information. Enjoy!
You can also just google for any of plants and see what comes up. I know quite a few are on Wikipedia.
When taking your SATs, you are asked which schools you would like your score sent to. For me, this was pretty much the first time I had even considered this subject, and I ended up choosing random universities that I had no real intention of going to. I don't think it hurt anything, but why repeat my foolishly unprepared mistake? The time to start applying for colleges is the beginning of your senior year of high school, so the time to start choosing a college is your junior year, at the latest. I'd like to share some thoughts and tips to help you do this.
There are several factors to consider when choosing a university:
1. Cost
One of the first things to consider when choosing a university is the cost of tuition. This can vary widely depending on whether the school is public or private, and whether it is located out-of-state (or even out-of-country). You have to decide how much you can spend, and narrow down your choices accordingly. Private universities are much more expensive than public universities. This can be the difference between $30,000/year at a private university, and $5000/year at a public university for tuition alone. I have heard that the extra money at a private university goes a long way for the student, but if you do not have the money I don't think it would be worth it to struggle with loans and limited grants to try it. Even for public universities, costs can vary depending on the type of school. In California, there are two systems: the UC system, and the CSU system. As far as I can tell, the UC system is supposed to more prestigious, and therefore costs more. CSU schools are less expensive (about $3000/year). Another cost consideration is the location. The cheapest option is to stay in your state, as venturing beyond will require out-of-state tuition for many public schools that rivals the cost of private ones. I imagine attending university out of the country is even more expensive. You can find the cost of tuition on the university's website.
I have been thinking a lot about high school and college, and how I would have done things differently. Back then I didn’t really have anyone to ask, and I would not have known what to ask if I did. In case anyone reading this has a similar situation, read on. I’m hoping this will be one in a series of advice and information posts for high school and college students. This first one is written for high school students that want to go to college and need guidance in classes and extracurricular activities to sign up for during high school.
1. First of all, GPA is important. It is not the most important, but it is up there. I recommend keeping it above 3.0 at least, but preferably 3.5 or above. Good grades show you can attend class, pay attention, think, write, study, and follow directions, which is basically what you’ll be doing in college after all. Good grades may also lower your auto insurance and be something to put on an application for a job during high school.
I have done pesticide research and studied chemistry, and I am still boggled by all this chemical/pesticide stuff. I do have a few quick gems which I have picked up in my studies which I will share with you though:
I highly recommend an article (Parts 1 and 2) by Anne Steinemann that was published last year. In it, she announces that “indoor sources account for nearly 90% of our pollutant exposure” and that “pollutant levels found in typical homes, if found outdoors, would often violate federal environmental standards.” In Part 2, she states that ‘the places that we normally consider "safe" (homes, schools, workplaces, vehicles, public buildings, medical facilities) and the products that we consider "safe" (because they are widely sold and used) are precisely the major sources of pollutant exposures. Yet these sources are virtually unregulated by existing environmental laws.’
