PS260

PS260

This is just a quick post with a link to blog I found eariler.

I was messing around on StumbleUpon and came across a movie trailer parody of The Shining. It was hilarious so I started digging around on their site. Eventually I found their blog and it's full of parodies of different movies.

Check it out it's funny.

Walking Pneumonia and My last few days

Well to be honest I'm not much of a writer so I will just sort of ramble and hope that this all makes sense...

The other night I woke up around 10 pm for work. I had a really bad pain in my left shoulder and my chest hurt a little. Ever since I compounded my spine when I was 20 or so I never really pay much attention to back pain though. So I got ready for work and made it through my shift only dropping to my knees once with pain. Over the last Year I have had a few days here and there where the muscles in my back would basically tense so much that it felt like my muscles were going to rip right off of my bones. I have a bad back and I'm no spring chicken anymore more of a fall duck LOL :) So I wrote it off to getting old and paying for my craziness when I was younger.

After getting off work I was supposed to go help a friend move a couch probably about 50 feet into a garage. The crappy part is I never even got that far. Within an hour of getting off work it happened again my muscles constricted to the point where I fell to the floor in pain. I'm not sure if I passed out or not - basically I don't remember.

Now this next part I must tell you that I do not goto the doctor I avoid it at all costs I haven't even taken antibiotics since I was around 16-18.. That being said the pain spread and my chest became so tight that I couldn't breathe and my left arm was in such pain I thought I was having a heartattack. Basically I was the most scared that I at 33 have been in my life.

I looked at my friend and said words I swore I would never have to say, Call 911.. I lied there on the non moved couch waiting for the ambulance to come - my first one... They came in and put me on oxygen and took my pressure and decided I should goto the hospital cause my pressure was 156 over something or the other. Over a hundred though whatever that means...

On the way down they asked me questions and I ended up with three nitroglycerine sprays under my tongue. At this point they too believed I was having a heartattack - I'm 33... Holy Shit... So I get to the hospital surrounded by nurses and doctors asking me questions and trying to figure out what I was saying because the pain was so severe in my chest and back that I could A. Barely speak and B. I was delirious..

I lied there for 2 hours thinking I was dying. They were afraid to give me anything until they knew for sure what was wrong. Finally some guy takes me for a Catscan that's right I don't have insurance LOL A Catscan with some special tracer stuff through my iv so they can look at my chest cavity better.. After that fun I was taken back to my lil corner of the icu and waited for the results..

After all of this the hours of laying there thinking of people that are dear to me and that I may never see or speak to them again . The doctor comes in and tells me I have walking pneumonia.. Shewwww But It ******* Hurt ! After talking about it for awhile we come to the conclusion that I have been carrying this for about a year.

For those of you who speak to me on a semi regular basis you maybe thinking huh.. Makes sense now I swear that guy always said he wasn't feeling well.... Tada ! LOL :) So anyway I have walking pneumonia and today is the first day I haven't screamed from the pain in my back ... That's where I've been .. Sucks huh ? LOL

Cleaning Metals with Electrolysis.

e·lec·trol·y·sis (-lk-trl-ss, lk-) n:

Chemical change, especially decomposition, that is produced in an electrolyte by an electric current.

That's what I've been up to the past couple of days. Elecrolysis is a pretty neat little hobby. It sounds all scientific and technical, but it really isn't.

I use electrolysis to clean coins. I'm not a coin collector or anything though. I just found a few coins that were minted the year I was born and wanted to clean them up really nice.

I'd heard about electrolysis for cleaning metals on tv shows and in school a few times before. So I thought I'd use that to do it. I started searching around a little and found a great tutorial on the practice at G0 Metal Detecting.

I found pretty much everything I needed to make my electrolysis kit laying around the house. It's just a glass jar, a stainless steel washer, a 12v AC/DC adapater, and two allegator clips. You need water, salt, and lemon juice to make the electrolyte solution when you've got everything else ready. The only thing I had to make a trip to the store for was the allegator clips.

So far I've cleaned three coins. I messed up the first coin by placing it on the positive wire instead of the negative. The object to be cleaned must be placed on the negative wire. When you do it wrong dirt still comes off of the coin, but it doesn't work nearly as well. The coin's finish is pretty much ruined.

When you do it right you'll be amazed by the results. Wipe the coin off with a paper towel or some cloth that you don't mind throwing away. Then polish the coin with metal polish. I use MAAS and it works perfectly.

I wish I had a camera worthy enough to capture pictures of these coins. The camera I've got wouldn't do them justice though. You'll have to take my word. The 1978 penny that I just cleaned for my sister looks like it was minted yesterday.

The thing I like the most about this is that it's fun. The whole process only takes a few minutes and it's really something to see. The coin is constantly fizzing and you can see the "smut" detaching from the coin and applying itself to the steel. What you're left with is a big jar of greenish-black water.

It's simple enough to clean everything up. The grime wipes right off of the steel and your allegator clips. That makes it pretty easy to do over and over again with the same tools.

The AC/DC adapter gets really hot. That's the only drawback. It's pretty cool here in Indiana right now and I'm doing this out in the garage. Having the cool air around the transformer seems to help a little.

If you're skiddish about trying this out then don't be. Everyone's got some kind of metal coins or jewelry that needs cleaned. There's not a more amusing way to do it. You'll have a lot of fun.

Relevant Links:
Electrolysis Tutorial @ Go Metal Detecting
Electrolysis @ Wikipedia

Friday the 14th...

Yeah yeah.. I don't want to be another person complaining about the Blue Screen of Death. I got one similar to the one above this evening. It wasn't the blue screen that made me mad, but it was Microsoft's suggested fix.

Microsoft suggested that I run the XP setup program and place it in Repair mode. I've read this suggestion from them before and ignored it. I should have ignored it this time too, but I was fed up with this particular crash I keep getting.

So I stuck my XP disc in the drive and rebooted the computer. Everything seemed to go well throughout the setup process until just before it finished. The program spat out about five different errors real fast and then finished up.

When XP finally started I was using Home Edition pre-SP1. I knew that meant trouble because half the programs I use require SP2. Those programs weren't shy about letting me know that they were unhappy with the situation.

The first thing I did was run to Windows Update. It didn't work. Internet Explorer just froze up and wouldn't do anything. So I had to end the process through the task manager. I went into IE's ActiveX folder and deleted the Windows and Microsoft Update class files. That did the trick, but I had to wait about five minutes for Windows Update to fully load the first time around.

I thought I was home free after that. I'd thought wrong. The required BITS and HTML update would download, but not install. So I had to find the manual install package on Microsoft's downloads website. Just my luck it required me to validate Windows. I installed Microsoft's Genuine Advantage ActiveX control and to my surprise they made me restart the computer after it installed.

By this point I was pretty annoyed and things weren't looking too good. I went back to the downloads site and found the file I needed again. This time it let me validate Windows and download the installer program.

It worked. I restarted the computer and when Windows booted up it started automatically downloading about ten different security updates. They all downloaded and installed without giving me any trouble.

When they were done I had to restart again. My next trip to Windows Update finally gave me access to Service Pack 2. I guess I'm about back where I was before.

There are a lot of errors in my error log right now, but hopefully they'll go away once SP2 is finished installing. I still don't know if all this trouble has fixed the crashing problem that I was having. I suppose I'll find out soon enough. After all of this trouble it had better work like the day I bought it.

I'll never do this again. There must have been an easier way than practically reinstalling the entire operating system. I just wish the error reports from the crash would have been more specific about what caused it.

Well it's time to install SP2...

It didn't work. After installing SP2 I got another BSOD while Windows was loading. This is ridiculous. I suppose I'll just keep working around them like I have been.

I uninstalled Windows OneCare Live which is a program that I really liked. It was just a little too much for my computer. Most of my recent blue screens have happened while that program was working. I had blue screens before too, but hey I've got to blame something.

I'm pretty sure that my only real hope of running a stable OS is to get a new computer. This computer is six years old and it's just not made for today's programs. The parts themselves are starting to break down and stop working as well.

Oh well. I'm back where I began. It looks like I'll be putting ZoneAlarm and AntiVir back on here.

----

Get well soon Sean!

Massive Earthquake Zone in Afghanistan.

I was using Google Earth the other day so I could see the location of that earthquake they had over in Kashmir. As I was looking around I decided to enable the Earthquakes Layer and found what you see above. I looked all around the world and couldn't find a more tectonically active region anywhere.

Each of those red spots indicates an earthquake. The region is located in Afghanistan due west of the Istoro Nal mountains in Pakistan. The faint yellow border you see on the right side of the image is the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

I wish I had more time to research this area because at the moment I'm not even sure what the mountain range is called. One of the biggest reasons I'm interested in this area is because these are no small earthquakes. Without getting all scientific I would estimate the average magnitude to be somewhere between 4 and 5 on the Richter Scale.

I have a Google Earth placemark posted where you can download it here:
Afghan Earthquakes Placemark @ Keyhole Community BBS

MSN Yahoo Messenger?

Microsoft, Yahoo to Link IM Networks
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
October 11, 2005, 8:07 PM

JUST IN Microsoft and Yahoo are set to announce Wednesday a blockbuster interoperability deal that will reshape the landscape of the fragmented instant messaging market. The companies will connect their IM networks so users on each can communicate with one another using text and voice chat free of charge.

More @ Source...

I can honestly say that in a hundred years I didn't see anything like this happening. The rivalry between MSN and Yahoo is almost legendary. I suppose they'll both continue to compete with their separate IM clients.

Now that this is happening I wouldn't be surprised to see one or the other client go commercial. The most likely one being MSN Messenger. That would be a little sad though because it's a favorite for many people. Maybe a version will come out with stripped down features, but a paid version is a real possibility now.

It'll be interesting to see how they market this as well. Is Yahoo going to put big MSN logos on their website? Would MSN do the same for Yahoo? I can't see it. They're still rivals and mentioning one portal on another is bad business.

This is a strange development and it really makes me wonder about a lot of different things. How will the clients do it? I imagine we'll need to enter our Passport and Yahoo ID login information simultaneously to be able to send/receive data from both networks. The only other way possible is if Yahoo were to convert all of their accounts over to Passport. I'm not even sure if that's possible anymore though.

It'll be fun to see how this all plays out. There's not a whole lot of information about it available yet so it's probably still some ways away. I'll be ready and waiting so keep an eye out for more posts about this story in the near future.

Squirrels on Crack Update !!!!

This just in an elite force of squirrels known in the squirrel community as the S.O.C. (squirrels on crack) has moved into south London taking up defensive positions.....



.....as they systematically go from garden to garden searching for there precious rock ..... Londoners have been seen running from there homes screaming in horror as high elite military squirrels bust through windows and doors looking for booze and prescription drugs for when there coming down ... Fires can be seen raging from the air as news choppers try to catch a glimpse of this amazing event.. Crazed high squirrels can be seen dancing around burning trash cans ..... More at 11 ....

Squirrels on Crack.

From "The Register"
Crack-crazed squirrels terroise South London
By Lester Haines

Stop us if you've heard this one: crack-addicted squirrels are terrorising Brixton in Sarf London in a desperate search for a fix, eschewing their traditional nuts and digging up residents' front gardens in what appears to be a credible zoological threat to the Yardies' hard-drug hegemony.

Yup, crack dealers and addicts have apparently taken to burying their stashes in people's gardens in the streets around the centre of Brixton after a police clampdown drove them from the thriving commercial heart of the popular London district. Locals have spotted squirrels digging in the same gardens, prompting speculation that they are already addicted to rocks and will in due course take up semi-automatic weapons and launch a violent challenge for the whole trade in illicit narcotics, as is the local custom.

MORE @ Source...

It was just a matter of time. I always knew squirrels were going to be trouble someday and now just look at them. It's not like they needed any extra energy.