Axodys

I was pretty disappointed with the outcome of today’s NBA playoff game, especially the final shot. Live by the three, die by the three.

I could really use a tape measure right about now. I’m still in the process of getting my apartment properly arranged and I’m going to have to purchase some kind of table/desk combination to place all my computers on soon if I want to properly finish the task. Ahh well, maybe later. Time for another summer league game.

Wow! From the looks of things Jabber has come a long ways since I last looked in on it. For those of you wondering just what I’m talking about Jabber is an open source project aimed at creating an open-standard, open-source, XML-based Instant Messaging platform. In plain terms Jabber allows users to communicate with ICQ, AIM, and various other Instant Messaging platforms seamlessly using one client. While it’s much further along on the Windows and Linux side of things, there is an early working Mac client called Jabbernaut. Head on over to Jabber Central for more info and check out The Five Painless Steps to Jabber Nirvana.

What started out as a gorgeous June day has ended up cloudy and overcast. There doesn’t seem to be much chance of rain at the moment though which is kind of disappointing. Cloudy without rain is just a bit underwhelming.

Today I learned a very valuable lesson about SCSI II connectors when a professor’s scanners stopped working properly: Always check the pins! Somewhere along the line a couple pins on the connector cable he was using got mashed together and not only prevented the scanners from showing up on the SCSI chain, but damaged every female connector on the scanners that we attempted to connect the cable to.

Even though I live five hours from Seattle by car, going to this dinner did strike me as something that I’d like to do. Alas things like my job and reality in general tend to get in the way of things like midweek roadtrips. I’m sure I’ll get a chance to meet Dave and company somewhere down the road though.

Last night I went ahead and picked up an Epson Stylus 740 at Costco and saved about $15, but I waited until today to purchase the necessary USB cable and give it a test run. The good news is that the test photos I printed out using the supplied glossy photo paper were as good as I had hoped they would be. The bad news is that I decided to save a few dollars on the USB cable and bought one that I now realize is awfully short at a measly 20″.

I stopped by CompUSSR this afternoon to look at printers and computer oriented toolkits. They had a pretty decent toolkit for about $100, but I didn’t end up getting it, as buying a printer is actually more of a priority these days. I’m leaning towards the Epson Stylus 740 as it’s inexpensive, yet still capable of printing photo-quality pictures given the proper paper. The main downside to the 740 and the other Stylus models in my experience is their cartridges’ propensity for drying out if not used regularly.

I’ve got a 4GB ide hard drive sitting on a shelf at home so I decided to do a little research and see what kind of ide pci cards are available for the Macintosh. What I discovered was fairly disappointing. While PC users can pick up a fairly powerful Promise card for $28 at buy.com right now, Mac users are stuck with the relatively pricey TurboMax UltraDMA ATA/66 which is going for $145 at OWC at the moment. Rumor had it last year that a company was developing the necessary firmware for Promise cards, but nothing seems to have come out that yet.

Most likely I’ll still end up getting the TurboMax (unless a cheaper alternative appears) simply because the price/capacity/performance combination of IDE/ATA/UltraDMA completely blows SCSI out of the water these days from what I’m seeing at OWC.

Last night after work I had around four hours to kill before I had to go coach a summer league basketball game so I decided to run out to Barnes & Noble to see if I could find a couple books I was looking for. Driving on I-90 during the 5 PM hour can be a little treacherous, especially during a rainy day like yesterday, but I managed to survive long enough to reach my destination. Unfortunately they didn’t seem to have either one of the books I was looking for. In the end that didn’t stop me from finding a couple other books that should suffice for the time being, but I was still somewhat disappointed.