harrywynn.com

Twitterbook Update

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:21:00 +0000

So I've been updating my status on Facebook with some regularity recently, but also wanted to do the same with Twitter, without having to post the same thing twice. I stumbled upon Twitterbook, which pretty much did what I wanted it to do, but with one flaw: it will keep updating your Twitter account with the first item from your Facebook status feed as often as you execute the script. I was executing it every 15 minutes through cron, which meant it was updating Twitter with the exact same thing every 15 minutes.

Henceforth, I updated the script to write the last update out to a text file, so before updating Twitter it will check the content of the text file against the first item in your status feed, skipping the Twitter update if it's the same. It's a small little tweak, but one that I felt was necessary. If you're a Twitterbook user, you can get the updated source code here.

Mario Kart Wii (Continued)

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:37:00 +0000

After witnessing the abomination that is the Nintendo friend code system, I decided to put together a site allowing you to trade friend codes with pretty much anyone. All you need to do is visit mariokartfriendcodes.com, enter some basic information about yourself (Mii name, friend code, etc.) and start sharing with others. I also put together a Facebook application that ties into the data on the site, in turn automatically showing you which of your Facebook friends are registered with friend codes as well as allowing you to schedule races with any of them.

Take that Nintendo!

Gas Guzzler

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:21:00 +0000

Last May I bought a TrailBlazer SS. I knew when I bought it that the average MPG was not going to be good (I get about 12 MPG consistently). Still, it doesn't make you feel good when you read an article entitled Trade-in Value of SUVs is Crashing and see a picture of your beloved ride.

Mario Kart Wii

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:44:00 +0000

Is awesome. I've owned/played every Mario Kart game to date, and have to say this is the best one yet. Playing by yourself isn't as good as with 10 people on Mario Kart 64 in college, but it's damn close. The Wii wheel is surprisingly easy to use and responsive (I have another wheel I bought for Excite Truck, which is not as good). My advice is to use manual drifting to get the full effect of the game, as automatic drifting sucks and is for losers.

If anyone wants to challenge me to a friendly contest, my friend code is: 3609-1730-3077

See you at the track.

Why Dell Is My Bitch

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 03:13:00 +0000

My wife had been asking me to buy her a laptop for quite sometime, which I had been putting off like usual. "I'm waiting for a coupon code" I told her (and one finally showed up in my inbox the day after I decided to finally order it). A few days later the laptop arrived at home, which made her happy.

So I started it up to remove all the crap Dell installs on their disk images, to find no bloatware at all. This was a pleasant surprise. What wasn't pleasant but certainly a surprise is when it blue screened 10 minutes later. Weird I thought, but I moved on with installing some applications on it for her.

A few minutes later I got another blue screen. I've seen enough of these to know that one of the sticks of RAM was bad, so I called Dell tech support, which I absolutely hated. I won't get into very much detail on this, because frankly it's rather boring. After deleting some registry keys, and me asking why the hell he thought this would fix a hardware problem, I told the tech support guy that I didn't have time for his nonsense anymore and hung up.

The next day there were more blue screens, and a lot of them. So I called tech support again. This time they took my suggestion and prompted me to run some diagnostics on the memory. All of the tests passed, but I still insisted I was right, and that the memory was bad. Apparently I began to get a bit hostile with the woman I was speaking to, as she told me her manager was interested in speaking to me.

After the manager got on the line, I told him I was not going to re-install the OS like they wanted me to, and that I just wanted the RAM replaced. He was insistent that I do what he wanted, and I was insistent that he do what I wanted. This got us nowhere, so he suggested that I speak to his superior.

Two days later, I get a call from the super secret tech support manager person. If you're keeping track, I am now at level 3 support for some memory that must have cost them no more than $.50 to obtain. He again insisted that I re-install the OS, at which time I actively refused once more. I was told I would not get replacement memory if I didn't at least try, so I agreed to his demands. However, instead of actually doing it, I ordered some new memory myself.

Two days later I had new memory, and a laptop that no longer blue screened when doing such simple tasks as sitting idle. I wrote the level 3 tech support god, but he never got back to me, which is what I expected to happen.

Never one to leave well enough alone, I decided to start guessing what Michael Dell's email address was, and plead my case to him. After a few hits and misses, I finally hit paydirt with michael_dell@dell.com. The day after I sent out the email I was contacted by one of Dell's minions who offered to finally replace the memory for me. I received the replacement memory the next day, at which time I threw it in my box of spare parts, still in their cute little protective anti-static bags.

You might be asking yourself why I went through all of this when I was just going to fix the problem myself anyway. Well, friend, it was all about proving I was right, and it only took three hours of my time to do it.

What's this, new content?

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:11:00 +0000

Yes, I haven't made a post to this blog in about a year and a half. Why would I start again you might ask? Well, because a few things have happened in that time frame, mainly my wife giving birth to our daughter, Kasey Elizabeth, in January. Being a parent is definitely an exciting and stressful experience, so I'm hoping to update on a somewhat regular basis to share my experiences, and maybe even provide a few pointers for other future parents to be out there. So here's my first one:

Rice cereal is your friend

We've been giving Kasey rice cereal in her night bottle since around week 3, mainly for her reflux, but found that it also knocks her out for at least seven hours. Since week 6, she's been consistently sleeping through the night, which we both enjoy.

Of course I'll also be posting about other regular life things, and hopefully some technical items as well. Sometime this week I'll tell the story of how I fought Dell technical support and won.

Wii Wii

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 00:32:00 +0000

I heard it through the grapevine that the Nintendo World store in New York was accepting pre-orders on the Wii. Being I am there quite a few times in a given week, I hoofed it up there last Monday and pre-ordered two. Why two? One for me, one for bling bling on eBay. I can only hope that the supply is far less than the demand. Otherwise I guess I'll just have twice the fun.

Beyonc� Strikes Again

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:15:00 +0000

Beyonc� had a concert in the middle of 44th street this morning, which means that the entire block was closed off to not only motor vehicles, but also foot traffic. Which in turn means that my already long commute was extended even more while I navigated around it. Damn you Beyonc�!

We sent out our official press releases announcing Teacher's Vault to the Weblog Wire on 9/6, and PRWeb on 9/7. So far we've gotten two requests for information from school districts, which is good. We also started a MySpace page to spread the word to education majors either still in college or recent graduates. What better place to find them than on MySpace? I posted a few ads on Face Book yesterday, which generated exactly 0 hits to the site. I think the membership numbers reported for that site are a little off. 20,000 impressions and not one click? Shenanigans.

Seacrest out.

Startup Nation

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:31:00 +0000

Well, it's been quite some time since I've posted here, and it's for good reason. In the past few months, I've started a company with a partner, and have been spending basically every free minute I had working on our first web app. We call it Teacher's Vault, and it launched tonight.

It improves upon the existing system for teachers to apply to open positions at school districts by simplifying the data entry process using fun Web 2.0 goodies. This aids in quicker searches for jobs, and on the school district side, the applicant searches are much more intuitive. The biggest difference between us and the others, is that we give applicants the option of creating an online portfolio right from the site. No one else is doing this right now, which we feel is the biggest selling point to lure both applicants and districts to our side.

I suppose only time will tell.

Ego Boost

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:53:00 +0000

Once in a while I'll Google myself, things I've done, etc. to see if anything new pops up. So this morning I did a quick search for PSP Shuffle. What did I find when I did my search? I found that it's featured as an audio hack in Chapter 11 of Hacking the PSP: Cool Hacks, Mods, and Customizations for the Sony Playstation Portable. I ran out to Borders after work to pick it up and verify it was true. Sure enough, page 151 has a little write up, and page 152 has a screen shot. According to my father-in-law, I'm now his favorite. I think he was saying that just because his other son-in-law wasn't there.

Some of you may have read about the deal that a place called Millennium Music has running. Basically, you send them some old ass CDs, they send you and iPod. As soon as I saw it, I went for it. Today I got my 2GB nano, and all I had to do was trade a bunch of crap I hadn't listened to in years.

I think Ice Cube said it best when he said "I have to say it was a good day".

Weekend Update

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 01:40:00 +0000

The wife had free passes to the auto show in Philly, so we hopped on the train and went down on Saturday. All, in all, I wasn't that impressed, but would have been more disappointed if I would have actually spent money for the tickets. I did, however, get Miss America to autograph a poster made out to Nick Pappagorgio (Vegas Vacation anyone?). Pictures from the show are here.

We also went to the Franklin Institute to check out Body Worlds. Basically it's a bunch of people that they filled with resin, and charged me $27 to look at. Anatomy isn't my cup of tea, but the woman likes it. Sometimes you have to take one for the team, you know?

I got into the Newsvine beta today, so if anyone needs an invite, I'll gladly send you one. Leave a note in the comments if interested.

Stupid Old Hardware

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 00:58:00 +0000

I spent quite a few hours this weekend trying to get a drive I onced used in my Xbox to again be usable in a PC environment. You see, I wanted to install iLife '06 on my Mac, but it only had a 10 gig drive in it. I had an old 40 gig Xbox drive sitting in the closet, which is obviously bigger than the 10. After finally getting the drive unlocked with a small Linux distro I found, and a fresh install of Tiger, I come to find you need at least a 733Mhz G4 to run the apps. My overclocked B&W G3 is 333Mhz and a processor generation behind the requirements. Perhaps a new Mac mini is in order...

What's New

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:12:00 +0000

1. I got a new pair of kicks yesterday. My previous pair were getting quite odorous.
2. I got an HDTV over New Year's. I finally got around to getting an HD cable box from Comcast today. I'm glad that I did.
3. I decided to learn Spanish. Now I just have to start and I'll be on my way. At least the hardest part is out of the way.
4. I got a Nintendo DS with Mario Kart. If you are a Mario Kart fan, then you must get one as well.
5. I bought and modded an Xbox. If you have an Xbox, you should do this. Running everything off of the drive is sweet.
6. After I published this the first time, the majority of my previous posts have gone to that great blog in the sky. Thanks Google!

I95 + Friday Afternoon = Bad Idea

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 22:34:00 +0000

I headed up to the New York Auto Show on Friday, which was quite vast and interesting (pics here). I realized yesterday I didn't see Mitsubishi, Subaru and other overseas manufacturers. Either they left town early, or I was just too entranced by the surroundings. At any rate, I thought by leaving early (before 2PM) I'd beat most of the traffic out of the city. I was right, until halfway down the turnpike when we stopped dead. I cussed and frowned, and an hour (and 2.5 miles later) we were moving again.

Thanks to Comcast, I now have a nice 4 meg pipe coming into the new place. I also signed up for a Vonage account, which works suprisingly better than what I thought it would. So long Verizon. You can shove your crappy DSL and phone service where no light should ever shine.

Doh!

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 14:52:00 +0000

While cleaning 10 months worth of dust out of my main computer yesterday, and drilling a hole in the back for the switch for the neon light, I sat it on my office chair to go grab something. As I walked away, I heard what seemed to be a very heavy item hit the floor. That very heavy item is now a very heavy paperweight. The force of the impact rendered my machine unbootable. It won't even POST now. I poked and proded, fiddled and faddled, and then I ordered a new board. The good news is that it's $30 cheaper compared to when I ordered it originally. The bad news is I had to order it in the first place. I'm hoping that fixes my problem, because if the chip is snookered, that's a place I don't want to go.

I also ordered a TiVo Friday night (which made ordering the board oh so more painful). I figured if I need to set it up via a phone line, I better get it and do it while I actually still have one (we're moving in two weeks and saying goodbye to residential service).

New Member Of The Family

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 03:20:00 +0000

This past week I added another member to my every growing puter family:

It's six years old, it's a Mac, and damn if it isn't heavy. A hearty 27.5 pounds stock. It runs OS X fairly well considering I only have 128MB of RAM in it, mainly because that's all I have that it will actually run with. Appartenly these systems (and OS X) are very picky when it comes to RAM selection. For $99, I guess I can't complain too much. I'll have to find some Apple approved memory for a future upgrade. Speaking of upgrades, I also had to score a new KVM switch. With six systems total now, the 2 port just wasn't cutting it anymore.

I sure have been posting a lot of pictures lately. Now if I can manage to remember to turn the camera off after transferring the pics, I could probably get rid of that pesky dead battery problem that's been affecting me lately.

This Post Brought To You By NES PC

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 23:53:00 +0000

Well, I've finished it, for the most part anyway. I still have yet to get the controllers to work, and there are a few other touch up things I'd like to do, but the NES PC is now functional:

At the last minute I decided to head down to Radio Shack and grab a blue LED to replace the stock red one. I like blue.

In other news, I've started using Napster To Go, which kicks ass. Unlimited songs for $15 a month? Now that I'll pay for Mr. RIAA assasin.

Emaculatin'

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 13:52:00 +0000

After two days and many naughty words, I finally have Pear PC running Panther on my desktop:

Actually, getting Panther installed was the easy part. That took around 30 minutes. It's being able to actually get out to the net that causes all of the grief. I finally figured it out after chaning my network addressing scheme, installing a virtual ethernet adaptor, enabling ICS and running a proxy for the emulator. Why did I do this? Why not I say.

My NES PC parts are on the way, and I will have all of them by Thursday. Yesterday I went to Radio Shack and bought the parts I need to hack together the control ports to work, and I picked up a Dremel at Home Depot the other night for my gutting needs. This project has been a lot of work so far, and I haven't really even started it.

Doublin' Up

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:57:00 +0000

Today my better half decided she wasn't going to use her computer until we moved, so I had no choice but to do the following:

Life is so much simpler with dual monitors. I have some crap here, some other crap there; I'm not sure how I ever got along without two at a time. I better not get too used to them though. I'm sure I'll have to give the one back once we relocate.

I've also decided to build a PC into an old Nintendo NES case. My mom found my old broken one in the basement, which produced a humorous conversation:

Me: Did you find that Nintendo?
Her: I found a Genesis box that was empty, and a grey box that says Nintendo on it.
Me: Does it have power and reset buttons on the front?
Her: Yes.
Me: Then your mission was a complete success.

Pictures will follow (as soon as I actually order some parts).

Eat A Gun Like A Man

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 09:48:00 +0000

Via Yahoo!:

GLENDALE, Calif. - A suicidal man parked his SUV on the railroad tracks and set off a crash of two commuter trains Wednesday that hurled passengers down the aisles and turned rail cars into smoking, twisted heaps of steel, authorities said. At least 11 people were killed and more than 180 injured.

The SUV driver got out at the last moment and survived.

Simply stunning. Who the hell try to kill themself by parking their SUV on train tracks (besides this guy)? You wash down a bottle of pills with a fifth of Smirnoff, or eat a gun in the living room. Amazing.

White Doom

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 15:57:00 +0000

It's early. It's snowing. A lot. New York has a blizzard warning, which sounds somewhat scary:

Lost or disoriented? No thanks. I'm glad I'm not in the city today.

In other news, thanks to this guy and some Bluetooth hacking, I've been surfing the web through my OGO on the bus ride home. I wonder if AT&T will get suspicious due to the fact my data transfer rates are higher than normal for just chatting:

I suppose only time will tell.

I'm The One On The Right

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 02:48:00 +0000

Every day on my way to the office I work at in New York I pass Good Morning America. Monday I finally decided to go in and check out the show. I must say it's pretty interesting to see how the whole show goes down, and what you don't see when you're sitting back watching at home. So far I've gotten pics taken with Diane Sawyer, Charles Gibson, and most recently Sarah McLachlan. I don't think anyone interesting is going to be there tomorrow, but I'm definitely going to start checking the schedule more often to see who I can add to my photo collection. It appears as if I am already hooked on celebrity photo opportunities.

New Toy

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 01:11:00 +0000

I finally got around to getting an MP3 player, and no I didn't get an iPod. $300 for a 20 gig? I don't think so. Instead, I chose to go with the Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 30 gig. Here's what I think:

The software sucks, plain and simple. I used to have an old Nomad II, and the software for that sucked as well. The synchronization feature is useful, only if you want to get a song on the player that isn't already there. If you updated the ID3 tag on your puter, and want to update it on the player, it ain't happening through the synch. You need to delete it from the player, then re-transfer for the update. That blows. Nomad explorer will only work if you have an explorer window open already, then plug in the player. And after you're done using it, you'll need to restart to do anything useful with your puter. I don't like that.

The screen leaves something to be desired in the dark. The black font on the blue background is a bit difficult to see on say a crappy bus coming out of NYC at 6:00 PM in the winter. In daylight, however, it's pretty good.

The sound quality is excellent (if you don't use the included earbuds. Do yourself a favor and pick up a $10 pair of Sony earbuds to replace the crap ones you get with the player.). It comes with Creative's EAX whatnot, which I don't use because I don't need 2Pac sounding like he's kicking a verse from the Men's room. If you're into that sort of stuff, you'll be thrilled.

Songs are organized and searchable by artist, album and genre. The find feature works very well, although it becomes a bit cumbersome if you're doing a complex query. Two or three letter searches are a breeze. Creating playlists is simple, and the shuffle feature works better than I had anticipated. The navigation semi-wheel on the side takes a bit of getting used to, but afterwards becomes second nature while using the player.

I haven't had time to test the battery life as of yet, but I'll be sure to push the advertised 14+ hours to its limit. The unit is a bit bulky (7.something ounces), and it is somewhat of a handful (literally), but at $200 (with a $20 rebate if you shop around), you can't beat it.

Overall, I recommend you go out and buy this unit if you're looking for a solid player with plenty of storage for the price point, and you don't mind getting harassed for not getting an iPod. Don't worry, you can laugh and point at your friends when their battery croaks and they have to get a warranty exchange, meanwhile you're out buying a $20 replacement and popping it in yourself without fear of voding your warranty.

How To Save Money Next Chirstmas

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 16:54:00 +0000

Merry/Happy Whatever

noreply@blogger.com (Harry) — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 03:41:00 +0000

Whatever it is you may celebrate, enjoy it, for Monday it's back to work for all of you! (Unless you have off for something like vacation days to use before the end of the year).