It’s going to be pretty big, that’s for sure…
Author: chuma
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Dear FedEx: I love you.
So what’s been going on around the house lately?
The garage door opener stopped working. Well, to be more specific, the safety sensors that detect something obstructing the door stopped working. This may have had something to do with the combination of:
- They weren’t installed correctly in the first place: they are mounted on the floor instead of on the track, and the brackets are bolted directly to the concrete instead of on a wooden block as the instruction state.
- We cleaned out the garage on the weekend and used the hose to wash it out. The sensors probably got splashed in the process. Strangely, it didn’t stop working until the next evening.
So anyways, a flurry of inquiries, store-checking and phone calls ensue to get it fixed. Sure, I could get a guy out who could install new sensors, but no one is home during weekdays, and it was going to be over $120 plus tax for that. No frickin’ way. I’m not incredibly cheap but I don’t like being ripped off, and when I knew that this was a 15-minute job and some guy with a van and a tool belt is going to charge me $65 for the privilege, no way.
After checking every Home Depot and calling every garage door place around (none of which will sell me this part directly), I ended up calling the manufacturer, Chamberlain, to order it. Well they were very frickin’ friendly, the part was reasonably priced, and 2-day air shipping for $8 sealed the deal.
FedEx blew my socks off this morning when it got delivered THE NEXT DAY, ie. about 45 minutes ago. I was expecting Monday or Tuesday, given the usual customs hang-ups between us and “them”. Sweet. “Frickin’ Sweet!” as Peter Gryphon would say. I even sent those Chamberlain folks a nice thank-you note because, well, good CSRs are the unsung heroes of any company, and I got helped good dammit. Credit where credit is due.
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OMG I finally found this again!
A looooong time ago I was browsing the IMDB randomly and came across an entry for a director – except it wasn’t a director, but rather a pseudonym that was used when a film had been hacked by the producer/studio/whoever so badly that the director refused to be credited for the final product.
However, I forgot where the entry was.
Ever since then I’ve been searching for it, mostly so I could prove it to Sandy. And I just stumbled across it again, so now I’m linking to it, dammit!
The pseudonym is Alan Smithee.
However, after the film An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn was made in 1997, the Director’s Guild decided that the name had been exposed and overused. It was replaced by Thomas Lee. The IMDB doesn’t have a direct page for this name though.
So there. I’m going to do my chores now.
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by the numbers
- Number of couriers I helped at the office today: 2
- Number of drivers who almost nailed me in the GO parking lot: 1
- Number of flyers for real estate brokers in the mail today: 5
- Number of postcards from my sister: 1 (yay!)
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Today is the first day of spring
Why, you ask? Because today the Parks department turned on the waterfall at the Toronto Sculpture Garden. So there.
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Axe Commercial Song found!
Many thanks to visitor “Matt” who said:
“Hey, actually you can d/l the song off the net. It’s called “Factor Miedo” by Cartel de Santa”
Awesome! Thanks! Unfortunately I have been scouring the P2P nets and the normal nets and can’t find it yet. It’s not on any of their albums. Interesting trivia though, it’s also the theme song for “Fear Factor” (“Factor Miedo” == “Fear Factor” en espanol).
First person who finds a link or a download wins a cookie…
UPDATE: no cookies awarded – I found it myself.
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Quote of the day
- “Physics is cool, guy”
- — Albert Einstein
Maybe he didn’t say that. But I think he would have.
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That Axe Commercial
If you live in Canada, and you watch television, you’ve probably seen a commercial for Axe Shower Gel. In this particular spot, there’s a naked man being chased by a pack of dogs through backyards, etc (ostensibly because he was cheating with the dog owner’s wife/girlfriend). In any case Sandy and I loved the music in the background, and as Meatwad would say “the beat is awesome.”
So I e-mailed the people at Unilever (parent company) to find out what the song is. Unfortunately, this is what they wrote:
From: Spcl-ConsumerCentre.CA-LP-Tor@unilever.com Subject: RE: Home and Personal Care related enquiry Date: 29/03/2005 09:27 Hi Victor, Thanks for writing! The song was created for the commercial by contracted composers, which is often the case for advertising. Unfortunately it is not available anywhere else.
Crap.
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notes to myself
How to hack my cups install again to automatically turn on my printer:
cups will send the output using /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
symlink this file to a script that checks the printer status first, then runs the real CUPS parallel backend.
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My GBA Movie Player
A while ago I bought a GBA Movie Player from overseas. Read about it and it seemed like a good thing, plus it was only about $30.
How it works is: there are some programs that you run on your PC to convert media files (images, music, and video) to a special format for the player. Then you copy the special files to a CF card, put the CF card into the player, put the player into the GBA, and then it will play them. And you can convert any video format that you can play back in Windows.
When it works, it works well. The crappiest part of it though is the PC software. It has major issues with two formats:
- MPEG2 files, such as DVD source. They provide a shareware version of the Elecard MPEG2 decoder but once it expires you’re boned. Commercial decoders won’t work with their software.
- XviD files. They just make the converter crash.
However, I just fixed both of these issues and I’m now happy as a clam. Here’s how I did it:
- For MPEG2 I installed this free MPEG2 codec. Works great where ATI and PowerDVD’s codecs are locked down to their respective software.
- For XviD, the trick is to NOT use XviD for all supported FourCCs, and also turn on compatibility mode via the decoder properties. Not sure if it ends up using DivX in this case (which I also have installed) but I don’t care because it’s working!