« April 2006 | Main | June 2006 »
May 30, 2006
The expensive part of loosing weight.
Here is the part of weight loss that no one talks about, the part that is now costing me a small fortune: re-buying all your clothes. Absolutely none of my clothing I own fits property any more. This became painfully obvious when I bought some new clothing for the first time in a long time. I had forgotten how proper sized clothing is meant to look and feel. Now I realize that I must re-purchase just about every article that I have in smaller sizes. Else I look like a unkempt ragbag.
Posted by binhqx at 8:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
No cookout for me.
I looked all Memorial Day but could not find a cookout to crash. Maybe I will do better next time.
Posted by binhqx at 3:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 29, 2006
What type of animal is binhqx?
Lindsay brought her friend Stephanie to the party on Saturday. She was trying to get to know the rest of the group quickly by asking introspective questions. One of them was: "If you where a animal what would you be and why?" I could not think of a good answer at the time, so I just left it in the back of my mind.
So I have been mulling over this for a few day new and have a answer. I would a wolf and here is why;
Most of the times where people think of wolves they of their brutal predatory nature. However, that is not the aspect the relates to me. I was thinking about the ways and whys wolf's social structure. The lone wolf is fairly good at its job of survival. It can find supplies of food and resource it needs to survive without too much struggle. However the the ability of a single wolf becomes amplified when it belongs to a wolf pack. In a wolf pack, the individual abilities of each wolf complements the rest of the group and vice versa. The pack can take hunt pray much larger and more dangerous then a single wolf can. A large wolf pack can take down a moose or grisly bear. The pack can defend its territory and protect its members from outsiders.
Do that is how I see myself, as a single wolf in a pack. A pack made up of family, friends and anyones else that I care for. Once another individual is in my pack, they can reap the benefits of my abilities and I can be supported by them. In the end, with others I can accomplish tasks that would be impossible to do by myself. These mutuality supporting relationships are my most treasured possession.
Posted by binhqx at 1:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 28, 2006
Pedro is here!
Pedro (a.k.a pappel64 of medaverse.com) has arrived from Puerto Rico! He is looking to be in good heath. Like myself, he started playing DDR regularly and the resulted are quite visible. I plan on on making sure that this vacation is not a vacation from DDR. In fact I want to intensify his workout. Combine it with some slight dietary changes, and he will be looking really good by the end of the summer. It is exciting to have a friend hanging around for the summer, there are so many things to do.
Additionally, Matt is back from his training today. So now it is a constant party at SB's place.
I do not have any plans nailed down for Memorial day. I hope I can find a cookout to crash somewhere. I have not had a cookout from a long time.
Posted by binhqx at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 27, 2006
Bachelor/Bachelorette for Jack and Lindsay.
Tonight is a combination bachelor and bachelorette for Jack and Lindsay. They are to married on June 3th. The party will mostly consist of going to Boston Jillians and have a general good time.
Update (post party):
k, I admit it... I got blitzed. However, we all had a really good time sending off Jack and Lindsay's single life. Next weekend they will be joined in matrimony.
Oh, that reminds me, we need to pickup the wedding present.
Posted by binhqx at 2:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 26, 2006
Movie: Save the Green Planet!
On friday, the guys watched Save the Green Planet!. The plot synopsis for IMDb is as follows:
However that barely covers where the movie takes the audience. IT covers so many genres: Horror / Comedy / Drama / Sci-Fi / Action / Thriller / Mystery. It is hard to describe, you just need to watch/endure it all the way to the end.
Points for creativity of the story though.
Posted by binhqx at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 25, 2006
The lease is signed.
SB and I signed the lease on the new place today. To conclude the deal I had to pay first month's rent, last month's rent, and the security deposit. SB conveniently forgot his check book so I had to pay the full amount myself. Do not worry, I will be extracting SB's half from his hide at my first opportunity; he will pay (insert manic laughter here).
It is interesting, this will be the first time since I payed tuition that I spent more money I make this month. Good thing this is a rare occurrence. My true nature is to save money like a pack-rat.
Now that the lease is signed, we will have the place in no more then 30 days. Then its move-in time again.
Posted by binhqx at 11:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
My blog is being spammed to death
I had to turn off commenting for now because of the excessive amount of spam I was receiving. It looks like i was getting about one every 10 seconds. After a few hours I had a lovely mess of spam to moderate.
If there where any real comments, I am afraid they are lost in the spam purge. Until I find a way to fix this, I will be leaving comments turned off.
Posted by binhqx at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 24, 2006
I'm a uncle!
Today, my sister-in-law, Jenn, gave birth to a baby boy.
So cute!
Posted by binhqx at 11:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 23, 2006
We are going forward on the rental.
Ann called up today and stressed that we need to make a decision soon.... like now. So we are going to do it. We have a appointment to sigh the lease on Thursday. The one other place we had to look at was very very nice but out side of our price range.
Once we have the lease signed, the previous tenets will have 30 days to leave. We will move in after that.
I guess all there is to do now is give the new place a name.
Posted by binhqx at 5:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 22, 2006
A week of decisions.
Ann got back to us and would be willing to sign a lease with us.
However, a new place just turned up. It is bigger and better but more pricey. We will take a look at it and see what else happens this week.
Posted by binhqx at 3:52 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 21, 2006
Weekend update 5/21
SB, as well as everyone else from work was out this weekend. So it was my job to make sure the cats where fed. Cap and I decided to do something productive with our free time and moved the rest of BS stuff from the Chateau to his house. We are getting real good at moving stuff.
Perhaps we should become thieves. Rent a moving van, back it up to a house with no one home and just completely unload the place in a few hours. If someone sees strangers unloading valuables they become suspicious. If they see everything being carried out, it looks like they are moving. I digress.
On friday I got all the tenant applications in Ann's (the landlord) mailbox. On Saturday I called her to see if she received them. Ann was surprised how fast we got the paper work back to her. The property is nice and I would not want it to slip through our fingers just because we where lazy about doing paperwork. She said that she would fax them to her tenant checking company on Monday and have a responds by then.
Posted by binhqx at 1:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 20, 2006
Finaly got my hair cut.
I still have a busy summer ahead and the poor student look just was not working for me any more. So I decided to have my hair cut. I could have gone anywhere, but I had a bit of a strange request. I wanted a style that is low maintenance, cool in the summer heat, and looked good. However, I did not know what it should look like. What i needed was some professional advice from people who know hair. That is when I found Sanctuary Hair Studio.
The prices there are a bit steep for you average trim, but this was a more then average. My hair had grown to over a foot long. I did this because I wanted to donate it to Locks of Love, a charity that makes hairpieces for children undergoing cancer treatments.
I had scheduled a appointment with Christina for this morning. Sanctuary is a really nice place, the people there are friendly and the atmosphere is relaxing (it also helps that the stylists are cute). I gave my request and requirements to Christina. She was a little puzzled at first, but after a little thinking and consultation with other stylists, she came up with something. Of course to start off, I had my hair donation lopped off with one big snip.
note: Locks of Love requires donations to be 10 inches long. That should tell you how long my hair originally was.
I little while later it was done and I am happy with the result, take a look for your self. I am not doing a before shot because I am embarrass about how it used to look.
Christina gave me some advice on how to keep it looking good and I left feelling a little cooler. I would recommend Sanctuary for anyone who needs a little change of looks in there life.
Posted by binhqx at 8:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 19, 2006
The Da Vinci Code: not as bad as everyone says it is.
I went to see the Da Vinci Code movie last night and I must say it is not as bad as everyone is saying it is. I was expecting a visual tour of the people, places and ideas presented in the book and that is exactly what I got. The movie was very faithful to the book, perhaps too faithful. Dan Brown likes to use long dialogues to explain complicated theories and history. This makes for good reading, but on screen it feels more like a lecture. Some, like me, enjoy a good lecture, but it is probably more then most movie goers can take.
As far as the performance, everyone was great except Tom Hanks. His performance was good, but falls flat when compared to Ian McKellen, Audrey Tautou, or Jean Reno. Tom spends most of the movie acting like the clueless american tourist, never quite delivering as well has his European costars.
The movie also put a little too much effort to keep itself politically friendly. Most of the time is spent tearing apart the the Christian church then the last 1/10 is nothing but back treading and spin to keep the whole thing Christian friendly. This was done to some extent in the book, but the movie puts extra emphasis on it.
Over all I liked it. Personally I would have been just as happy with lecture from Dan Brown and slide show about reinterpreting history and writing fiction about it. But I just like lectures.
Update:
I just remembered that I did once have a lecture from Dan Brown. It was one summer at Phillips Exeter. It was all about the NSA and cracking cryptograph with powerful super computers. It was just after he finished Digital Fortress. The lecture was quite interesting.
Posted by binhqx at 9:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 18, 2006
Why can't we be friends?
Cap made this video to illustrate the unexpected alliance between Nintendo and Microsoft. Apparently everyone agrees that the video game market is big enough for two companies without them having to compete against each other. I am apt to agree with that assessment.
Posted by binhqx at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 17, 2006
House shopping day one.
Today we checked out the first house on our list. The house is a 1890's Victorian that was converted into a duplex. It is located in the historic district of Dover. The location puts all of downtown Dover with walking distance. When we arrived, Cap, SB and I met Ann, the landlord.
She brought us in and showed off the place. The first room is a three season porch (spring, summer, fall, but too cold in the winter) that leads into the main foyer. On the right is the living room with bay windows on the left is the dining room.
Through the dining leads to the kitchen at the back of the house. The second floor is just the same as the first except for a additional bathroom. The way the rooms are situated makes fro one of the quirks of the house. The rooms on the second floor are not connected by a hallway. They just have doors from one room to the next. It is posable to get from one end of the house to the other without waking trough someone's bedroom though. it involves walking down stairs across the dining room and then taking the other stairs back up. So who ever gets the master bedroom will have to live with this to get to the bathroom.
There is a third floor, but it is unheated so it becomes cold in the winter. During the summer it should be usable space as long as the windows are kept open for ventilation. The third floor cannot be used as bedrooms because there are no fire escapes.
The basement runs the length of the house and should be suitable for DDR. The basement also has its own exit to the shred back yard. The available parking is a bit of a nuisance . The driveway has enough space for four cars, but they have no way of getting around each other. So it will be first in last out.
The neighbor on the other side of the duplex is Ann. She seems nice and would make for a good neighbor.
I would take this house of we get accepted by Ann. It has its quirks, but the location is great.
Posted by binhqx at 8:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2006
House shopping starting tomorrow.
SB and I have some leads on some housing now. They are both in town Dover and should fulfill our requirements. We plan to view one of them tomorrow and drive past the other one. I will be able to give more info when I see them.
Posted by binhqx at 8:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 15, 2006
Frustration finding a new place to live.
The water is down to just one inch. Now I can turn my attention to other issues, like finding a place to live.
My criteria has not changed: it must be within 20 minutes drive of work and have a place to play DDR without disturbing other people. The DDR part means I need concrete floors or a basement I can use. This makes finding a place a bit tricky.
I would like to use my original plan of renting a house with 3 or 4 friends. But I am having a hard time finding too may house for rent around here.
Posted by binhqx at 11:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 14, 2006
Mother's Day
Today is Mother's Day. So I sent my mother this card I made. It is not very traditional card, but I do not have a very traditional mother.
She is so special and caring for me even from miles away. I wanted her to know that without supporting the greeting card industry. That is why it is best to spend a little time creating something unique to express exactly what I feel.
Posted by binhqx at 12:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 13, 2006
Indoor swiming pool
SB and I where generally happy with how dry we where keeping the basement of the Château. There where a few damp spots here and there during rains storms, but nothing major.
That was until we got home this evening. In the basement we found a brand new indoor swimming pool. It was only a few inches deep and as cold as ice, but we could make due. Seriously, there was two inches of water in the basement. The same basement the contained SB and I's most prized possession, a pair of Cobaltflux DDR pads. However, we had used some old foam from dead DDR pads as shock absorbers for the Cobaltflux. The foam had just enough buoyancy to keep the Cobaltflux just above water. So there they where, floating like two buoyant angels in a flooded basement. I'l never complain about those old foam pads again.
Flooding must be a common problem in this house. The basement has channels cut for water flow and there is a sump pump in a corner. We fired up the pump and are now watching to see if the water level drops.
Update: 2:00 AM
The pump is not doing much to effect the water level. In fact, over the last four hours, the water is up another inch. I suspect that there is simply more water coming in then the pump can put out. This is deeply worrying too me because the rain is not likely to stop for another three days.
As you can see there, SB stays cool as a cucumber even as the water get higher.
This may be the last straw for SB and myself. We where considering the fact that we may have to leave the Château due to personality conflicts. Now we are considering fleeing and taking permeant residents elsewhere. Someplace dryer would be nice.
Update: 11:00 AM the next day,
Around 8:00 AM the water reached 8 inches. Luckily Pete came to the rescue. He brought a second sump pump and we put it to work. Now we are staying ahead of the flood, the water has dropped 2 inches in the last three hours. At this rate, we will have the place empty later today or tomorrow.
In other news, SB is checking around the internet for a new place to live.
Posted by binhqx at 11:31 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
May 12, 2006
That D-Link is a smart little router.
We bought a D-Link DI-634M router to replace our Linksys that we where so unhappy with. It was working out great except none of our VoIP devices where able to work behind it. We tried every NAT Traversal trick in the book, but nothing made the VoIP phones work.
So finally I broke out Ethereal and took a look at the packets. What I found is the DI-634M has a undocumented feature for NAT traversal of SIP devises. When I attempted some NAT traversal techniques, it interfered with D-Link systems and caused it not to work. Once I turned off all the NAT traversal on the phones, they started working perfectly.
It is nice that D-Link has done this for us. All thought i would like some notification of this feature without inspecting individual packets.
Posted by binhqx at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 11, 2006
LD8051D are realy BVA8053R?
I while ago, my company bought a whole lot of Leadtek LD8051D VoIP adapters. These little boxes can be hooked up to a internet line and a telephone to make VoIP calls. Shortly after, we discovered that Leadtek was ending support for the LD8051D and we should not expect any updates or bug fixes.
However, I was tooling around on the internet today and found a post on the siphone forums. It stated that the old LD8051D could be upgraded with the latest BVA8053R firmware. I could not believe it, si I gave it a try. Lo and behold, it works. Now my LD8051D thinks it is a BVA8053R with all the new bug fixes and features.
How cool is that?
Posted by binhqx at 6:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 10, 2006
The Second Greatest Material on Earth.
Everyone knows that Duct Tape is the greatest material on earth. But do you know what the second greatest material is? That title belongs to Epoxy.
Unlike traditional glue, epoxy uses a catalyst to facilitate the hardening process. This allows them cure very quickly in any condition.
This stuff is great, it will stick anything together with only minutes of setup time. I have used it to turn a three legged coffee table into a four legged coffee table. Then I just poured a little into the stairs to fix a squeaking step.
If you ever need to stick two things together, there is probability a epoxy just for the situation.
Posted by binhqx at 2:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 9, 2006
Perhaps I can do a bit more.
After finding how well just DDR works for weight loss, I was thinking about doing a few more lifestyle changes to make it even better. The place to start would be my diet. I know that I like to eat garbage, candy, soda, sugary pastries, etc. DDR does a good job burning those off, but would not it be better to not eat them in the first place?
So I am instituting some new binhqx dietary policies on a trial basses:
1. Giving up all-you-can-eat Chinese Buffet. I have only been eating there every week for about 7 years. The food there is tasty, but far from healthy. Additionally, the buffet style just about always leads to over eating.
2. Replace at-lest 5 meals per week with salad. This should not be too hard. I am always hunting for what to have for lunch at work. Just drop a big old salad in there and I will be all set.
3. Find other way to relieve stress that do not involve food. I have a bad habit of eating any time I feel stressed out. I should start finding other ways to deal with it.
These are not crazy big changes. If I can stick to them perhaps I can shave off a few more pounds.
Posted by binhqx at 5:43 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 8, 2006
One year weigh in.
So it has been about one year since I started playing DDR. So I finally decided that it is time to see just how much progress I have made. Last year around this time I had a physical at my doctor. At thew time I weighed in at 225 lb. The doctor gave me a rather scary speech about heart disease and diabetes. At that point I decided that I am done with my old life style. It was time to do something new.
So I picked up a soft pad and started playing DDR. Like everyone else I stared slow, but playing every night made for good practice. Before I knew it I was playing harder and harder songs for longer lengths of time.
Now it is a year later and I weigh in at 180 lb. That a loss of 45 lb. or about 20% of my initial today weight. No longer am I obese, now I'm just standard overweight.
There is no question that DDR is effective exercise.
Posted by binhqx at 10:26 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
May 7, 2006
Long weekend.
SB, Mike and I have been pulling some long weekends. We spend most of our free time doing anything to improve the Château. Last night we where up till 3 AM finishing the Jesse's room down stairs. It involved filling in wall gaps with spray-able foam and then putting down another one of my puzzle piece floors. It came out looking really great.
Every person who comes to visit expresses their astonishment about how good the place is looking. I have to give a lot of credit to my father who cleaned the place out months ago. When SB and I moved in last month we had a clean canvas to work from.
The result is beyond our exceptions. We set out to create a place where people would enjoy being, so far that is exactly what happened.
It is a odd drive that SB and I have. From what I have been told, people in situations to our own do not take any time or energy to care for their dwelling.
I am guessing the reason why is because we are a bit like Bowerbirds. A Bowerbird is a extraordinary bird found in the northern part of Australia-New Guinea. The male Bowerbird is renowned for constructing elaborate nests. The female Bowerbird will fly from nest to nest to find on the meets with her approval. When she finds it, the builder of the nest will be picked as her mate.
Perhaps SB and I are attempting to show off out domestic skills to attract potential mates. It is ether that or we just like to improve out surrounding to match our taste. We take pride in the work we have done there and the skills we have learned in the process. That is why we are becoming so venomous about keeping it.
Posted by binhqx at 3:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 6, 2006
Home owner tip of the day.
It is useful to leave many small wastepaper baskets around the house. That way there is always one in reach and trash is unlikely to collect on the floor. However it can be a problem to keeping a supply of bags to line each baskets.
So I offer the following solution: Wal-Mart offers "self checkout" lanes where the customer is responsible for registering and bagging of items. There are two bagging stations in each lane stocked with plastic bags. Only one Wal-Mart employee supervises four of these lanes. When he/she is distracted take the entire bag supply of one bagging stations and place it into the bag at the other station with the rest of your purchases .
Now you have a ample supply of plastic wastepaper bags, all clean and hole-less.
Posted by binhqx at 11:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 5, 2006
Writing some Ajax apps.
If you have been hiding under a rock, Ajax is a development platform that uses the javascript XMLHttpRequest API to make application interactivity on a single web-page. A good example of a Ajax application is Google Maps. This program will allows one to view the entire surface of the planet without reloading the page.
So I thought it was about time to jump on this technology and see what it could do for me. There are plenty of tutorials and example code available for setting up a XMLHttpRequest connection. I just used the XHConn library for its simplicity and compatibility. The back-end was easy enough to accomplish in PHP using Pear's XML Serializer. This made it a cinch to create XML documents from PHP data structures.
The app I made is a in-house account lookup for the SER. It is really cool because it finds all matching usernames to the search string as the user types it.
The whole project took about a day and gave everyone at work a new quick way to find usernames.
The only trouble I has was working in a polyglot situation. All of the interface code is javascript while all the backbend code is PHP. When developing Ajax apps, a developer must quickly switch back and forth between these languages. This can easily cause confusion.
Additionally, generating a document using Javascript's DOM API is not very pretty. The possess of building HTML elements could be greatly expedited with some higher-level frameworks. As it is right now, the simple act of generating a table programatically is unnecessarily complicated.
Posted by binhqx at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 4, 2006
The Linksys WRT54G V5 is garbage.
I have used a lot of Linksys home routers. I used one at my old house and I use two at work. So far I have be very happy with their performance, features and stability. Until now.
We got a Linksys WRT54G 802.11g router for the Château. It was to act as the central hub of all household communications. Right from the very start it was buggy. It randomly stopped routing to machines, it constantly failed to server DHCP and it would simply frizzes up while configuring it.
I was stumped. Why would this router act so badly after so many others work flawlessly. I looked online and found the answer. With version 5 of the WRT54G, Linksys made a major change to the hardware and software. All versions of the WRT54G up to 5 had 16 or more MB of ram and 4 MB of flash running a open sourced OS. In version 5 the the ram was cut down to 8 MB and the flash was dropped to 2 MB. The whole system now runs on a different OS called vxWorks. There is nothing wrong with vxWorks mind you, but Linksys had to dump hardware and software that had years of testing and stability in order to do this. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath-water.
So we will be retuning the WRT54G V5 and replacing it with a D-Link DI-624. That router is getting some very good reviews. The lesson in all of this is: do your research before buying. Even if you thing that a product has a good history, you never know when changes are made.
Posted by binhqx at 1:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 3, 2006
The Château in jeopardy.
I'm feeling uneasy and a little depressed right now. For reasons I can not get in to the Château, as it is right now, is in jeopardy. I know that I will keep living here, but it may not be the bachelor pad I had hoped for.
The fate of all that I worked for rests on a relationship that I have no control over.
In other news, I fix my door so it latches closed now. I just need to pickup a doorknob with a locking mechanism to complete my room portal.
Posted by binhqx at 9:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 2, 2006
What do the neighbors think?
I realized that the Château must be a odd sight for the neighbors. A house that had appeared abandoned is suddenly full of guys. On a average afternoon we will have 4-6 cars parked there. It must look like a there is a constant party going on or something.
In reality all the residents and visitors to the Château are all respectable hardworking adults. We are all over 24 year of age and work full time. I guess the only odd thing about us is the fact that we never got away from our parents homes till now.
I would like the Château to be a open and inviting place for any who need shelter. But there is another part of me that wants to protect it from peoples without social graces. I guess I will stand as sentinel and judge who may enter and who may not.
Posted by binhqx at 5:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 1, 2006
So very busy.
I feel as though I have no time of my own any more. Every day SB wakes me up in the morning so we can car pool to work (good for the environment and the wallet). Then we work till 5:00 or 6:00 depending on the work load. Next we car pool back to the house and Mike and Matt come over. We do stuff together till 11:00 or when people start feeling tired. Finally after that I have some time to do my DDR workout before going to bed at 1:00 or 2:00AM. Then the whole thing happens again.
It look like I managed to eliminate all the down time from my life. I guess I will need to do more blogging from work.
The next job I need to do is repair the lock on my room door. That place will become my sanctuary where I can run and hide when I've had too much.
Posted by binhqx at 4:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack