Digital Impulses

The birth of Zeus, my new 24" iMac

So.  Unable to wait any longer before unpacking and setting up the Apple iMac that I would christen Zeus, I arrived home from work determined to clean up some stuff in my office to allow a table to be used as the official 'Unpacking Area' for my brand new iMac.

Having cleared out the area that I needed for Zeus to come to life as it were, I proceeded to open the box and locate the items inside.  As usual, it was pure Apple porn.  There was a white box that contained the keyboard, mouse and documentation (including some software DVD's), a power cable and the computer itself.

After struggling for a bit to get the computer out of the box, I did finally and I was surprised at how heavy it was.  thinking back on it, I really should not have been that surprised, considering that it is an ENTIRE computer all in one enclosure.

Once I had everything out of the box and realized just how truly elegant and simple this beast was going to be to configure, I placed it smack dab in the middle of the desk that was previously occupied by my now-evicted Vista franken-box that I built about 2 years ago.

It was all cake after that:  Plug in the power cable, attach the network cable and plug in the various USB docks and cables that would be in faithful service to Zeus after being relocated from my Mac Mini.

Below is a picture of Zeus in his full glory:

So, now comes the fun part: figuring out the most efficient way to transfer my data from the Mac Mini over to Zeus.  Fun times ahead, for sure.

Memorial Day 2008

Quiet restful day.  Didn't do much all day except for puttering around the house and coming in and out of my office to use my computers.

Finally seeing 'Iron Man'
Later in the afternoon, I drove over to the Pacific Theaters in El Segundo on Rosecrans Avenue to see Iron Man once and for all.  I thought it was a fun, entertaining movie that had a good story and cool special effects.

Robert Downey Junior did a *great* job and I think he has come a long, long way from his dark days.  I hope he continues to do roles like this one.  I wish him well.  He is a great, great actor.

Iron Man is recommended.

Zeus Arrives: 24" iMac is mine, Baby!

So.

After much haggling and negotiating (including the turning over of all income tax checks for 2008), the wife and I arranged for me to receive an early Father's Day present in the form of completely tricked out 24" iMac from the Apple store in Manhattan Beach, at the Manhattan Village Mall.

I waited around on Memorial day for my wife to get home from work and then she eventually prodded me to go ahead and skip on over to the Apple store to make the purchase. Of course, I had already scoped out the configuration that i wanted on this bad boy and decided on the following:

• CPU: 3.06 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
• SCREEN: 24" Glossy widescreen LCD
  
• RAM: 2 GB 800Mhz DDR2 (I will purchase an additional 2 GB somewhere else, much cheaper than Apple sells it for).
• HARD DISK: 500 GB Serial ATA.  (My current Mac Mini has a 300 GB External Seagate and I have an additional 500 GB external Seagate HD waiting (unopened) in a box on the floor next to the Mac Mini.   that will give me a grand total of 1.3 TB of local Hard disk space attached to this machine).
• VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB GDDR3
• SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
  
• Airport Extreme
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
  
• Apple Mighty Mouse
• Apple Keyboard
• Accessory Kit

The way I figure it, this is a machine that I need to use for a minimum of 3 years.  So, I went ahead and maxed out the CPU speed and available video card because those are the 2 items that I cannot upgrade easily.  I can always up the RAM and the hard disk size is unimportant becuase i Have TERABYTES of local hard drive space available to me in my local network.

All of my decisions were confirmed by the local in-store Mac sales rep and he sold me the machine as we configured it on an existing IMac on display inside the store.  Once I had decided on the configuration, he went to the back of the store to get the machine and told me to just wait up front at the register to go ahead and pay for the beast.

Also, with the purchase of the machine, I picked up a subscription to .mac for $69.00 (a $30.00 discount off of the retail price).  When I registered the .mac subscription, I was told at the .mac web site that my account would be upgraded (the extended subscription will kick in, in other words) when it expires in October of 2008.

Walking out of the store with this tricked out iMac, I was surprised at how heavy it was.  It was quite the trip back to the car to put it in the car and drive back home.

Now to disassemble and retire my piece of crap, 30-month old built from parts Vista box and clean up the desk where it was to allow the GLORIOUS ZEUS to take his place as the rightful king of my local office network.

God, I can't wait to set it up and put it through it's paces.  This is BY FAR, the fastest machine I have ever owned.  MUCH FUN to be had ahead,I predict.

YES!

Dominican Republic day @ Dodger Stadium

Just returned from a fun, fun afternoon at Dodger Stadium where we went to see the Dodgers play the Cardinals with Daniel Fajardo and a bunch of other local Dominican Republic folks. It was a special event organized as a celebration in honor of Dr. Camilo S. Jorge in recognition of everything he has done for the Dominican and greater Latin American communities in Los Angeles.

We arrived at the stadium just after 1330 and in the middle of the 1st inning.  The game was very exciting and the Dodgers ended up winning the game in the bottom of the 10th inning on a single by James Looney.

After the game, my son and his girlfriend took off for her house and my wife and I drove home.

After we returned home from the game, I came into my office and after a little bit of surfing the web and relaxing, I called up my sister and pucked her up to go have a little dinner at the Denny's in Hawthorne near the 405 freeway on El Segundo Blvd.

All in all, it was a tiring but ultimately satisfying Sunday.

Busy Saturday

Wow, what a day...

XBox shipped to Microsoft in Texas for repair
The first order of business was that I dropped off my son's XBox 360 at the local UPS office to send to Microsoft for repair.

Copying old VHS movies to DVD
After that I drove over to a video rental store that does movie transfers from VHS to DVD and left two old VHS tapes to transfer to DVD. I was quoted $50.00 and was told they would be ready by Tuesday 5/27/08.

Mom leaves on Vacation to the East Coast
After the errands in the morning, my mom and sister came to pick me up and we went back to my mom's for me to help her load her suitcases and then head off to the airport.  The trip to the airport was uneventful and we pulled up at the American terminal.  I assisted my mom with the curb-side check-in and the tagging of her luggage.  I gave the American porter $15.00 for his help and hugged and kissed my mom good-bye.  That was much less stressful than I expected.

Dinner at Tony's for Feliz's Birthday
This evening I didn't eat at Adela's as today was my mother-in-law's birthday.  Instead, my son and his girlfriend, my wife, her mom and I drove over to the Redondo Beach Pier to have dinner at Old Tony's restaurant.

The food was great, the atmosphere was even better and we had a great time.  After dinner, I came home to wait a little while before leaving for Palos Verdes to play Scrabble with Bert.

Scrabble at Bert's
Scrabble at Bert's was sos-so.  I one 1 out of 3, and that made me 2 out 7 for the weekend. I am not playing badly, it just seems like Bert is on a gold strwak of getting the power tiles and/or incredibly friendly tiles at the time that he needs 'em.  Ah, well.  Nothing for it but to trudge forward and wait for the tide to turn.

A wedding reception and dinner in PV with Bert

So this afternoon after work, I drove with my wife over to a friend's house where there was to be a reception for the wedding of her son to a girl who is a friend of my wife's also.

I knew a few people there and the atmosphere was pleasant enough.  the food was really good and I was able to snap a few pictures of the bride and groom and some other folks there.  After being there for a while after dinner, I took off and drove over to Palos Verdes.

I arrived there a few minutes before 1900 and went inside the house.  Since Bert was taking a while to come down, I stepped into his backyard and entertained myself taking some pictures with my ever present iPhone.

eventually I went back inside and chatted with Bert while he cooked dinner.  We then sat down to eat dinner with his boys.  the food was good enough and there were no issues at the table.  After dinner we got an early start playing Scrabble and were able to get in a rare 4 games.  I won the 1st game but then proceeded to lose the next 3 games.

*sigh*.

Post Career Day speaking at Lloyde High

My mom picked me up after work and we went to the local CVS and I assited her in getting some pictures printed off of the memory card she had in her digital camera. They said the pictures would take about an hour so we left and I promised her I would come and get them later.

A while later my sister stopped by and we made our weekly run to the Barnes and Noble store in Manhattan Beach.  After that, we stopped by CVs and picked up my mom's pictures which my sister promised to stop by and give to her.

All in all, a pretty pleasant day.

Lloyde High School 2008 Career Day

So.

Fighting Procrastination to the very end, this day racd up on me much quicker than I ever wanted it to.  And, par for the course, I had nothing prepared and was rushing around the night before and this morning, trying to throw something together at the very last possible morning.

I raced over to the Northrop Grumman web site and found an FAQ there that was just the ticket.  I printed out the 5 or 6 pages and finished getting dressed.  I then jumped in my car and rushed over to Kinko's where I was confronted with the fact that color copies were.69 cents A PIECE.  That meant that each a FAQ packet was going ro run me almost $4.00 a piece.  If I wanted 50 copies, that was going to be near $200.00

Time for plan B.

Black and white copies  were the order of the day and  turned out to be perfect because the 50 packets,collated and stapled cost me just $14.52.  Perfect.

Rush off to the school and get there right at 0800.  Walk in, greet the organizer and sit down to the Continental breakfast that was laid out for the speakers.  I must admit that I was pretty intimidated by the people of the Armed Forces, with their crisp uniforms, rows of medlas and impossibly shiny black shoes.

Before I knew it, it was time to go to the classroom and the first group of kids were there sitting and looking at me expectantly.  I walked to the front of the room and sorta fumbled my way through the first group, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.  I got through that sort of OK and before I knew it I had spoken to the 2nd group and was fine after that.

I got some positive responses and felt that the kids seemed to be at least marginally receptive to what I was telling them, which was pretty cool.

After speaking to the last group of kids, we walked back to the reception room and had lunch there. I then got a call from my son asking me to come home, as he was about to leave to go take a test and he wanted to see me before leaving.  Iused that as an excuse to finish up my food and excused myself from the school.

If I am asked to speak at the school again next year, I will be sure and be better prepared.  I want to bring business cards next year and bring some trinkets to give away to the kids for paying attention and participating.

I am glad this is done and I didn't seem to blow it too badly.  Whew!  I need to work on managing my fear of speaking in front of a group of people.

Court apperance in Compton

So.

Another day wasted away sitting in Court, waiting for the clerks at the Compton court to scour their computers for my son's reckless driving ticket that he was given back in August of 2007.  This is the 3rd visit to court that we have made and all 3 visits have resulted in the same thing:  "We can't find the ticket, there is *nothing* in the system", etc, etc.

Combined with the fruitless visit yesterday to the Lennox Sheriff station, I have contacted an attorney and will see what it will take in terms of cost to get this issue resolved once and for all.  It's either that or wait for the next letter that sends on this perpetual wild goose chase to some other court in Los Angeles County.

What a mess.

Pending Tickets: Nothing resolved with a trip to the Lennox Sheriff station

This afternoon during my lunch break, I drove over to the Bakery and walked over to the Lennox Sherif fstation to see about getting some answers on the tickets the son and I got back in August 2007 (on my birthday, no less!).

We have been to court twice for this issue and we have never gotten any closure on this issue.  We have a court date tomorrow morning in Compton and we will once again trudge down and dutifully present ourselves tothe court to see if we can get past this issue once and for all.

More to follow on these pages once we return from court.