Cleaning Costs

So Merry Maids came by the house today to provide an estimate for their house-cleaning services. It sounds a little costly to me: a one-time fee of $200 to clean the house from top-to-bottom, then every two weeks, they'll clean the place for $95. I don't think I'll go for it, but I'll let Heidi decide if the cost is worth it. I'll keep shopping around too - I'm sure I can find some cheaper labour.

Ass-fu#&ed!

Now what do you suppose is going on here?

Shizzy's Mailbag

This is kind of funny. If you have a minute, check it out:

Shizzy's Mailbag

Cleaning Service

Is it considered lazy to hire a regular cleaning service? Since Heidi started her new job, the house just hasn't been the same. I think if we could have somebody come in and tidy, mop, dust, clean the bathrooms etc, we might have a little more free time. Most importantly, I will not have to do any of the above-mentioned chores. It's not like I do them now, but with a cleaning service, I will not have any guilt for not doing them - and that's really what matters here. I bet cleaning services are extremely over priced. I'll look into it and report back.

Christmas Gifts

A strange thing has occurred this year. I don't really want anything for Christmas. In years past, there has always been something that I've wanted. It was almost always some kind of geek gift. If I didn't get it for Christmas (usually Heidi would get it for me), I'd just go buy it myself. But this year, I really can't think of anything I want. I've become much more money-conscious of late, and that has certainly helped curtail my desire for high-priced items, but I don't think that's the main reason. I think the real reason is that I'm becoming more practical, and I know that these gadgets would get limited use if I was to get one. I already have too many gadgets just gathering dust.

Now, if only someone would by me that 55" Sony plasma TV I saw the other day...

Staying up late

Ewan goes to bed between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m. Over the last month, his sleeping habits have deteriorated greatly. It wasn't that long ago that we could just drop him in his crib at 9:00, say "goodnight", and we wouldn't hear a noise from him until 8:00 a.m. Now when we put him to bed, he says, "stay, mama stay", or "dada stay" and he wants one of us to sit beside his bed until he falls asleep. If we leave, he throws a royal fit - kicking and screaming and the like - until we come back. Of course, we realize that by actually coming back into the room at his "request" just worsens the situation for future bed-times. However, for our sanity, it's just easier to sit there for 5 or 10 minutes until he falls asleep. One of these days, we'll just bite the bullet and let him scream his lungs out until he falls asleep or passes out.

Heidi goes to bed at about 10:00 p.m. I must admit, I will often stay up until midnight or later just because it is so quiet once those two have gone down for the night. Those couple of hours are the only time in the day that I can sit down and do what I want to do. Usually it entails watching some TV show I recently recorded, reading a magazine, or reading and writing useless blog entries like this one.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

I went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra last night at the Frank Erwin Center. This is the second consecutive year in which I've gone to see them. Once again, I was very impressed. For me, any live show with a significant amount of pyrotechnics is enjoyable. I'd probably go see Celine Dion in concert if she had fireworks.

Some families make it a Christmas tradition to see live shows, like The Nutcracker Suite. For me, I think I'll make it a tradition to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Once Ewan is old enough, I'll certainly take him with. If you have the opportunity to see them this year, I highly recommend going.

Santa Clause

If he's all-knowing, then why does he drive around on the back of a firetruck and wake up my kid while he's napping? Damn you Santa Clause. I dare you to come down my chimney this year...

Death of a Legend

I just heard on the news that "Dimebag" Darrell, was shot and killed while performing with his new band, Damageplan, in Columbus Ohio. Apparently, some lunatic stormed the stage with a gun and fired several shots at Dimebag before turning on other band members and the audience. He was eventually killed by police. It's reported that one other band member was killed.

If you don't know who Dimebag is, he is considered a legend in the guitar world. He became famous as a front man for legendary metal band Pantera. He recently started this new band with his brother. I have the Damageplan albums, along with a Pantera album or two. I must admit, even though I'm not a die-hard fan, I'm pretty saddened by the news.

94

Well, at least it's an improvement. This time, I played at Falconhead Golf Club in worse weather than last week. The wind was howling, the temperature was chilly, and there was a light rain. Once again, a couple of holes kept me out of the 80's. Two triple bogeys on the back nine pretty much sealed the 90+ score. I missed several short putts on a few holes as well. On the positive side, I drove the ball well relatively long and straight (uhhhhh...huhuhh... uhhhh... huhuh... long and straight). I'm hoping to get one more round under my belt before Christmas, and hopefully break 90 again before the year's end.

"Pee onna potty"

My son did this for the first time today. I am quite proud, but a little saddened at the same time. Proud for obvious reasons; saddened because he did it at his daycare, and not at home where Heidi and I could have witnessed it. Now, if only I could get Heidi to start peeing on the potty...

KISS

Did you know that I've seen these guys in concert 5 times? Yeah, yeah, yeah... say what you want; but KISS has the best live show you'll see from any band, anytime, anywhere. Unfortunately for me, all the shows I have seen have been since their reunion in 1996. I wish I could have seen them in the 70's, but I was still in diapers. I've seen KISS in the following cities: Toronto, Ontario; Portland, Maine; San Antonio, Texas (twice); and Austin, Texas.

Boo bah. WTF!?

Have you ever seen this show? It's all the rage with the diaper-wearing clique. If you've ever seen Teletubbies, you can appreciate the drug-induced qualities of this childrens' show. It's like Teletubbies on speed. If you haven't seen Teletubbies, that show is like Sesame Street on crack. Of course, I have never taken speed nor crack so my analogies are purely speculative. If you've seen these shows, and have previously taken speed or crack, please comment with your thoughts.

95

Yeah, a 95. I played at Tera Vista, in a friggin' gale. The morning was a cool 10* C (50* F) when we teed off, but that wasn't the worst of it. The wind was howling at 37 km/h (23 mph), with gusts over 45 km/h (28 mph). Needless to say conditions were difficult. That's why I'm not disappointed with my 95.

As is the case with most of my golf rounds, my score could have been considerably better were it not for a couple of holes. I carded a 9 on number 2 when I put my drive in a bunker, shanked my next shot, put my approach into the water, blah blah blah. That was the only disastrous hole on the front, where I finished with 48. On the back 9, I was playing consistently until the final hole. I duck-hooked my drive on 18 out of bounds, and ended up with an 8 for a back 9 total of 47.

On the positive side of things, I birdied one of my most hated holes in all of golf - number 4. It's a 523-yard par 5 that has always given me trouble. I tamed it today and hopefully have gotten that monkey off my back.

I putted well, except for number 7, where I 4-putted! I had no other 3-putts on the day. All things considered, I am satisfied with the 95. It was not one of my best scores, but far from my worst.

Investment update

Several posts ago, I told you about my Freetrade investment account. I'm happy to report that I've officially made my first trades using this account. The transactions went very smoothly. On Wednesday, I bought several shares in 3 different small-cap companies. At closing of the markets on Friday, my investments were up 4.1% on average, verses a relatively flat S&P 500 during the same time period. Of course, that's less than two days of trading (the markets were closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving, and closed early on Friday), and with small-caps, the prices will surely fluctuate 4% quite frequently. I'm in these for the long haul, so I'm not concerned about their immediate performance, but being in the black is always nice.

It would be in my better interest not to scrutinize these investments so closely - but for now I'll keep a close eye on them. Once the investing novelty wears off again, I'll let them ride and only check on their performance occasionally.

Hitting the links

I'm getting out of bed early Saturday morning to go play a round of golf for the first time in months. My tee time is 7:50 a.m. I'll post my score post-haste upon completion. Why is it that I can barely drag my ass out of bed before 8:00 a.m. to go to work, but I'd happily get up at 5:00 a.m. to get in a round of golf!?

Fry's Electronics

So I made a quick stop by Fry's today on my way home from work. While waiting in the rather short line to check out, something occurred to me. What I noticed while waiting to hand over my hardly earned cash is certainly not earth-shattering, nor is it something that I hadn't noticed on previous trips to Fry's.

99% of Fry's employees are physically unattractive people.

Now, I know this is not a particularly nice thing to say, but unfortunately (for Fry's employees - and patrons) it's true. I am not sure why this is the case. Some might say that the merchandise sold at Fry's requires a certain type of person sell it. Perhaps a "nerdy" person is more apt to sell this stuff because they are considered quite knowledgeable in the area in which they sell. The problem is, Fry's employees often know less about their products than my 2 year old son. It doesn't add up.

To further my point, consider this. I can buy most of the same stuff at other chains such as Best Buy, Circuit City or Radio Shack where the employees in these retailers are generally more attractive (ok, maybe not Radio Shack). Walk into Best Buy and you'll usually see a relatively attractive college or high school student working the floor or check out counter. Don't get me wrong - some of the employees at these places are as equally unattractive as employees at Fry's, but the percentage of unattractiveness is substantially higher at Fry's.

So why is this the case? Does Fry's go out of its way to hire these folk? I sincerely believe the answer is YES. My theory is that Mr. Fry (if that's his real name) was himself an unattractive introvert and set out to give people like himself a fighting chance in the fashion-model-Barbie-loving real world.

So the next time you're at Fry's, take a good look around at the staff - if you can stomach it.

Next blog?

Go ahead, click your way to the next blog.

New Skin

I'm sure my regular readers have noticed that I have applied a new template to this site. The old template hurt my eyes. I find this one a little easier on the retinas.

Cheap Investing

After being away from the stock market for quite a while, I've decided to get back in the game. In the past, I used Sharebuilder as my means to purchase stock. It's simple to use, and allows you to buy fractions of shares in companies. For example, if you only have $50 to invest, but the company you want to buy costs $100 per share, then Sharebuilder will sell you 0.5 shares in the company. It's also an inexpensive way to invest - costing as little as $1 per purchase (depending on the type of account you set up, and how many times per month you purchase shares).

The Sharebuilder model requires you to set up a regular investing schedule, which will draw money from your checking account and automatically invest it into the companies you specify. One downside is that shares are always purchased on a regular schedule (always on a Tuesday, at the interval - weekly, twice a month, monthly - that you specify). This does not give you the opportunity to time the market. Of course, many investment gurus tell you that attempting to time the market is a futile effort. Sharebuilder promotes dollar-cost averaging into the market, and when you do this, you don't care about a fluctuation here or there in the market - therefore timing the market is not even a consideration.

With that said, you may be surprised to learn that I've decided to take my business to a new brokerage. While Sharebuilder is inexpensive, and convenient, nothing can beat a brokerage that is free. That's what Freetrade (from Ameritrade) brings to the table. They are a commission-free online brokerage, offering 20 free trades per month. The nice thing is that limit orders are free as well - many brokerage houses charge more for limit orders than market orders, so this is a nice feature.

All accounts opened at Freetrade are margin accounts - and thus the Freetrade business model is revealed. They're hoping that most - if not all - of their clients use margin to purchase more shares of the company into which they're investing. Of course, this is not required - you can put cash in your account and use only cash to invest (this is what I will be doing). They also keep costs extremely low by offering a no-frills web site and email-only support. In setting up my account, I had to contact customer service via email a couple of times. I was amazed with the response time. I would expect perhaps a 24 hour turn-around time for my requests, and for most companies, achieving a 24-hour turn-around time would be stellar. In almost all of my email requests, I received a response in less than 15 minutes! In my opinion, that's pretty amazing.

The only "catch" to opening a Freetrade account is that you have to fund it with $5000 cash (or transfer $5k worth of shares from another brokerage) before it is activated and available to use for investing. I basically moved this cash from my savings account to the Freetrade account, but don't plan to use it for investing. I will set up a regular deposit from my checking account for investing purposes, and move the initial deposit back into an interest-earning savings account shortly thereafter.

Now, it's time to sit back and watch my money work for me once again.

Yellow pee

I don't drink enough water during the day. My pee is always yellow. For some reason, I just can't drink plain old water. I buy that Propel "fitness" water that's sold by Gatorade, and I can actually drink that stuff. However, I dislike the kiwi-strawberry flavor.

If you find that your pee is also too yellow, you should try Propel. I would suggest the lemon flavor, and then you can branch out from there if you desire.

(Note: I do not represent Gatorade or its parent company, Pepsi. But, if you are reading this, and you work for Pepsi, and would like to send me money or free Propel, I will accept your offer. Just don't send any of the kiwi-strawberry flavor.)

Music currently playing in my car

My car has a 6 CD changer. I also have a 20GB Dell DJ that's almost full, but I haven't purchased the hardware yet to use it in my car. I'll get it eventually. Right now, only 4 of the CD slots have anything in them. Here are the CDs currently in rotation:

1. Green Day - American Idiot
2. Chevelle - This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In)
3. The Tragically Hip - In Between Evolution
4. Sam Roberts - We Were Born in a Flame

These are probably the most recent CDs that I've purchaed, and all are excellent. The one that I'm really wearing out is the Sam Roberts CD. It is truly fantastic. I hadn't heard of him until I saw him open for The Tragically Hip a few weeks ago. He and his band sounded great that night, so I seeked out his CD. Since I bought it, the other 3 CDs haven't seen much playing time.

Marry an American

The Presidential election just ended, with George W. Bush winning his second term in office. Personally, I didn't care who won. However, there are many Americans (mostly liberals) who are not pleased with the outcome. If you're one of these people, and would like to "escape", this site might interest you.

Do I hate it when people do this? Yes.

When did people start asking themselves questions and then answering them? I don't know.

Should people do this? No.

Is it annoying? Yes.

Up north?

Is West Virginia considered "up north?" Compared to Texas, I suppose it is. But when I hear somebody say they're from "up north", I assume they mean New England, or Michigan, or Minnesota. I met a lady today who said she was from "up north - West Virginia." I guess it's all relative.

Uh oh...

Well, on Friday night, I tried to install MCE 2005. As you have probably guessed from the title of this post, it didn't go very well. I tried to do an "upgrade" from 2004 to 2005. The first indication that this might not be a seamless installation was the "blue screen of death" (yes, an actual blue screen in XP - the first time I have seen this) that occurred about 10 minutes into the installation.

A few reboots later and a system restore later, I was able to get the system to come back up with some amount of stability. However, even after doing the system restore, certain components of MCE did not roll back to 2004. TV on MCE does not work anymore, although all other functions seem to be OK. Also, it will not run at full-screen resolution.

It looks as though I'll need to rebuild the system from the ground up. I'm not really surprised by this, and I tried the "upgrade" with only a small amount of confidence that it would be successful. Microsoft does not sell this product to the average consumer, so they don't have much interest in making it easy to install.

I had hoped to take care of the rebuild on the weekend, but my whole family was hit by a nasty stomach virus. One day at a time, the bug systematically and methodically took out my son, my wife, then me. Hopefully I'll get to the rebuild this weekend.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Released

I plan to download this tonight and install it in the next few days. The best new feature in the 2005 version is the support for 2 TV tuners. This should now allow me to control both my cable and satellite with MCE. Another cool feature is the Media Center Extender. This piece of hardware uses your existing network to send any Media Center content to a different TV in your house. Sweet - I will now have the ability lay in bed and watch anything I've recorded.

Stay tuned for a full review.

Hockey this year?

It doesn't look good for an NHL season this year. Thus far, negotiations between the players union and owners for a new collective bargaining agreement have not gone well.

Fear not though. There will at least be a couple of weeks of some of the best hockey seen since the Salt Lake Olympics. The World Cup of Hockey begins on Monday with the top 8 hockey nations in the world competing (Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, and USA). The Canadians and Americans are favoured, but there are probably about 5 teams that have a legitimate chance.

Heading home

My wife and I are leaving on Saturday for a 10 day trip back to Nova Scotia. We'll be spending most of our time in and around Halifax, which is where my wife grew up, and where we attended Dalhousie University (back then though, it was called the Technical University of Nova Scotia - it has since been amalgamated with Dalhousie, and has become the Dalhousie Faculty of Engineering). We'll also make a short visit to my hometown, Port Hawkesbury.

On our way to Port Hawkesbury,we'll pass through the little town of Antigonish, where I spent several years at my other alma mater, St. Francis Xavier University. Although it's a very small university, it has had great national success in both the academic and sporting arenas. St. FX has been selected as the top university in Canada for undergraduate studies for the past two consecutive years, and its hockey team is the reigning national champion.

Random thought

I have lots of these, but I don't post them. I'm going to start, beginning with this one:

Don't you hate it when you go to a public bathroom (like the one at your place of employment) and you go into a stall to take care of business and you sit down and the seat is already warm? I hate that... it gives me a weird, uneasy feeling.

En Francais?

Why the French? Because I was in Montreal last weekend. It's a very cool city. My French is terrible. Luckily, most people in Montreal can speak English, however it depends if they "want" to speak English when they're speaking with you that matters.

My Media Center PC - Part Trois

Back to my video woes...

So I stuck an old ATI video card into my new system to test if the poor S-Video output on my PowerColor card was due to the card, or something else in the system. Well, this old card's output looked immensely better. However, the card is quite old, and not compatible with XP MCE, so I can't use it permanently.

So, I went and bought a new "built-by-ATI" video card at Fry's and installed it on Saturday. Everything looks great now through this new card. I am still forced to use S-Video since my TV won't do 720p, but I'll have to live with that until I can upgrade my TV.

My Media Center PC - Part Deux

Well, the DVI-HDTV converter finally arrived. It sucks. The noise still exists (although to a lesser extent) and the only usable resolution I can display on my TV is 720 by 480. I think this is because my TV is older, and doesn't support a 720p input.

Now this really, really sucks. I have spent too much cash on this system for the results I'm getting. My next step is to go get another video card and hope that its S-Video output is cleaner. If it is, and it's usable, I'll keep it and try to return the PowerColor video card and the DVI-HDTV converter. Ideally, I'd like to get myself a Samsung DLP TV like this one, which has a DVI and VGA input, and supports a much better resolution than my current TV. Unfortunately, I am not about to shell out nearly $4k, just so I can have a better Media Center experience.

At least at the current resolution, it makes for decent TV viewing, and I can take advantage of MCE's PVR functionality. However, I was hoping to do a small amount of gaming on the system, and that does not seem possible. The games I've tried to play thus far automatically adjust the system resolution into a state that is not compatible with my TV. Damn.

FS: One Toshiba 50" TV.
WTB: One Samsung DLP TV.

My Media Center PC

As my faithful readers already know, I am in the process of assembling a Media Center PC. I am nearing completion of this endeavor, and I must say, the experience has been quite rewarding endeavor (uh... no, not really).

It took me about two weeks to gather all the parts and a few non-sequential hours to assemble the system

Here is a list of components that make up the system:

Motherboard: ECS KT600-A
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Memory: Generic 512MB RAM
Hard Drive: Western Digital 250GB EIDE
Optical Drive: NEC 8X Black Dual Layer DVD+/-RW Drive
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon 9600Pro 256MB
Input Devices: Gyration Media Center Remote & Keyboard
Case: SilverStone SST-LC03

I am still waiting on one thing to arrive. It's the DVI-HDTV converter from ATI. I placed the order with them over two weeks ago, and they "lost" my order. I called them yesterday to find out what was taking so long, and they couldn't find my order in their system. I am somewhat sympathetic since I work in the e-Commerce area, however it is quite unacceptable to lose an order. They quickly created a new order, and gave me free shipping, so I suppose that will have to suffice.

After building the system, I was anxious to connect it to my aging 55" Toshiba rear-projection TV. After dragging it all out into my living room and connecting it, I was disappointed with it in a few areas:

1. The S-Video out on the video card is wickedly "noisy". The picture as it appears on my TV is not at all clear. Based on the "frequency" of the noise, I think it must be one of the four fans in my system generating some EM interference that is being picked up by the video card and sent to my TV with the actual signal. In trying to diagnose the source of the noise, I unplugged the case ventilation fan and the video card fan. Neither was the culprit. I haven't tried unplugging the CPU fan, and the other fan is inside the power supply. I can't really unplug the CPU fan (or maybe I could... just for a second) and I can't turn off the power supply for obvious reasons, so I am not sure what to do next. I am not overly concerned just yet because I am not expecting this noise to be an issue through the DVI output. When my converter arrives from ATI, I'm expecting the picture to become much better. However, if the noise somehow jumps across this D/A conversion and shows up on the TV, then I'll be getting a new video card.


2. Noise of a different type. The system is too darned loud. The loudest fan is the case ventilation fan. The other fans aren't too bad, and the power supply is very quiet. I think I'll try disconnecting the ventilation fan and just monitor the CPU temperature for a while. If it rises too much, I'll have to replace this fan with something much quieter. Hopefully there is enough airflow in the case and I won't need a fan at all. But, I'm expecting it to get rather warm in there, so I'll probably need something else.


3. The Gyration mouse and keyboard is disappointing. If you're not familiar with this technology, it really is pretty cool - however there are aspects of the suite that disappointed me. You basically control the cursor simply by moving your hand - no wires, no desktop required. That part of the mouse works well and I'm happy with it. However, the mouse is touted as a Media Center mouse/remote control. It has a few buttons that are supposed to integrate with Media Center and control certain Media Center functions using buttons and "Swipes" (this is where you make a quick gesture with the mouse in mid-air and it will do something specific - like go to live TV). The buttons are very difficult to use without accidentally clicking other buttons on the mouse. This causes weird things to happen, depending on what combination of buttons you accidentally pushed. The "swipe" thing is just stupid. I really wanted it to work since it could essentially add 8 or more "buttons" to the mouse to do different things without needing the keyboard. However, at the time of this writing, I just can't get the hang of it and I will probably give up on the "swipes".

Despite my negative comments, there are many good things about this system. From a performance perspective, it is more than sufficient. I don't have time to play many games, but I tried out Tomb Raider 2 (since it came with the sound card), and it ran just fine. I will certainly try out a few more once I get the DVI converter, because right now I can't watch it for any significant length of time before my eyes start bugging out of my head because of the noise in the display.

I've also been ripping all my CDs into WMA format. Usually, the system can rip an entire CD in under 3 minutes. Since the CPU utilization stays relative low (<30%) during the ripping process, I assume the bottle neck is in the rate at which the data can be transferred from the drive. I've been asked why WMA and not MP3? There are a couple of reasons really - WMA is a superior compression algorithm (audio quality to file size ratio), and I don't use any devices that require the MP3 format (well, my wife's car has MP3 decoding built-in, but we've yet to use it). So far, I've ripped about 140 of my approximately 400 CDs.

Enough for this post... it's been sitting here in draft mode for over a week. I have some updates to write, but I'll do it in a separate post.

Blogging, eh?

Wow, my very first blog.  I have no idea what kind of things will get written here (assuming I write any more than this original post).  I think the only reason I even started this is because my friend, Eric, has a blog and it got me a little curious.
 
That's all for now... check back occasionally to see what words of wisdom I have come up with while you were away.