Monthly Archives: March 2008

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

Bodies the Exhibit

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So, my wife and I went to see Bodies the Exhibit yesterday (Friday) at the Carnegie Science Center and it was interesting from what I saw… but the overall experience sucked.

Apparently they had several high schools there and many, many people also. I bought the tickets at the beginning of the month actually hoping we could avoid the crowds, they mention if you buy your tickets before you get there you won’t have to wait and you can avoid the crowds. Now I understand that they need money etc, but it seemed to me that they were just letting as many people as possible in there at the same time.

Each exhibit has a display card telling you what’s going on, and some have a few of them, it was pretty much impossible to read the cards with people standing in the way, literally pushing you out of the way and being generally ignorant. It was so crowded that when you moved you bumped into someone or they bumped into you, and of course no one said excuse me, they basically gave me a dirty look like I was in their way and how dare I try and even look at something they are looking at.

And of course the high school kids that were there were all immature, laughing, giggling and of course pointing out the male and female reproductive systems. One guy was going along and actually fingering the vaginas when he could get to them, and pointing out how great of a job they did at shaving the pubic areas of the women on display… mind you you’re not supposed to touch the displays at all, there are signs all over the place regarding this.

The entire thing took us less than an hour to get through and the experience was not worth the $47 for the tickets and parking on top of that.

I really couldn’t get to see much of what I wanted to see, it was just the most miserable experience I’ve been through regarding the Carnegie….  I can recommend NOT going to see bodies unless you know there won’t be lots of people there, it’s just not worth the money you’ll pay to deal with that…

I was very disappointed at how unprofessional the entire thing was, the Carnegie is usually much better about there exhibits and such.

Articles/Editorials, Giveaways

Giveaway of the Day

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So a couple weeks ago I ran across a site called Giveaway of the Day, and it’s web address is http://www.giveawayoftheday.com  imagine that right?!

Anyway, the site is actually cool and useful, everyday they feature a new free version of a software product, Today, March 28th they are giving away StarBurn v.10, which is a basic CD/DVD burning suite, but it also supports HD and Blu-Ray as well.

The only catch is that with the free software there is no technical support and no updates, but eh free is free right? Also you have to install and activate/register the software the same day.

They give away some good stuff actually, usually it’s a very useful program like StarBurn today, Driver Magician on the 26th, Partition Table Doctor on the 25th. It’s not just utility software either, there are even games and things like the Easter ScreenSaver as well.   I’ve got it bookmarked and check it now everyday, so drop on by and check it out, you never know what you’ll find…

G.I. Joe

G.I.Joe and Cobra Blueprints batch 2

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So here we go with batch number 2.. and I found some more while I was scrounging around that need to be scanned in yet.. and I found a bunch of toys as well and figures intact with all parts… well not the figures, not sure if I have all the accessories with them but at least they’re still together..

but here’s batch 2, starting with Cobra this time, and they open to large images as well…

ASP and CLAW

  

Cobra Hydrafoil and Water Moccasin

 

and now for a bunch more G.I. Joe ones:

Bivouac Battlestation and Bomb Disposal Vehicle

 

Falcon Glider and SHARC

  

Headquarters and Polar Battle Bear

 

Sky Hawk and Tactical Battle Platform

  

More later…

G.I. Joe

G.I.Joe and Cobra Blueprints batch 1

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Now that we’re adults and the nearest thing we come to “playing” is when we play poker with our buddies some nights, it’s easy to forget the toys that helped shaped our childhood. I had a rude awakening on this.

So having kids I decided to go down my Moms house and raid the attic to see what toys I might have that they’d like to play with, my Mom kept quite a bit of my stuff down there, she’s the type of person who thinks it that sort of stuff might be worth something someday or if I have kids they might like it…

I found a whole bunch of my old G.I. Joe stuff,  I had forgotten that I used to have my Moms boyfriend laminate the blueprints that came with each toy for me, so they are in excellent shape, so I figured why not scan them in and share them..

Here’s the first batch of them, I’ve got a whole lot more to scan in yet though:

(you can click the pics for hi-res versions, and they’re big average 4000+ x 6000+ resolution is size!)

First is G.I. Joe scans then a few Cobra afterwards…

Ammo Dump and Wolverine

FLAK Attack Cannon and Checkpoint

Forward Observer and HAL

Machine Gun Defense Unit and MANTA

MMS and Mortar Defense Unit

VAMP and RAM

SLUGGER and Whirlwind

Weapons transport vehicle

and here’s a few Cobra Scans:

landing craft and rifle range

FANG and HISS

as I said I’ve got a while bunch more yet to scan,  some are really big so I’m not quite sure how to scan them in yet….

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

Windows Vista- 1yr later

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Well I’ve been using Vista Ultimate for about a year now, off and on, I have it installed on a second hard drive in my system so I can switch them when I want to use either WinXP or Vista. I’m using mobile racks with power switches on them so I can just turn one off and the other on to use the different operating systems.

So far I’ve ran into no real problems with Vista, and I just can’t figure out  why everyone is constantly bitching about using Vista?!

I remember when Windows XP came out, I got it two days after it came out and it was a nightmare…  I couldn’t use my scanner for about 8 months until they came out with a patch for XP, my printer at the time was a new Hp Photosmart brand, I had just got it about two months before XP came out, it was newly released so I figured there shouldn’t be a problem, well I was wrong, I lost most of the functionality I liked about the printer. Yes of course about two months later HP came out with a workaround for using the printer with XP, but still I didn’t have the functionality I wanted, I could use it as a basic printer but that’s not why I bought it, it cost me a little over $200 (after rebate of course) for this photo quality printer that became a standard inkjet printer under Windows XP.

of course there were many, many, many other problems  I ran into as well with numerous other compatibility issues with software, games and other hardware, with Vista I have no real problems like I did when I installed XP. Sure there are a couple goofy things but hardware wise everything I have worked as soon as I installed Vista.

I just can’t figure out why everyone bitches about Vista, as I said I did not have any of the problems I had when I upgraded to XP. My Vista installation was smooth and basically problem free overall.

All of those people out there complaining about Vista are the same ones that complained about XP when it came out, but now they’ve just changed their tune to Vista. They were saying the exact same things about XP when it came out, but yet I can’t see a basis for their complaints, at least from my stand point that is…

I think those bitching just don’t like change, or maybe they can’t handle it?!

Articles/Editorials

Life and 400 Reviews posted..

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Yep, I just got done posting the 400th review on DragonSteelMods,  nothing exciting though, just a 92mm fan from Scythe. It’s kind of exciting if you’re into the technical aspects of it all, it uses Sonys Fluid Dynamic Bearing and PCB that Scythe tuned to their own needs.. so that’s rather cool, considering that I never knew Sony had anything to do with fans..

I was planning on doing something else ‘special’ for review for the 400th, but life is just too busy, and I really don’t have anything ground-breaking or amazing to review.. Sure I’ve got quite a few things up on the block for review, but nothing amazing as my little site just doesn’t rate getting anything really cool for review…

I got the TRUE, (Thermalright Ultra Extreme) CPU Cooler for review, but that’s kinda old, many sites have reviewed that… but I did finally finish up my C2Q CPU Cooler roundup, I just need to compile everything into nice neat little graphs and get it posted….

but oh well, another year goes by I guess…

Articles/Editorials

Laptops and Pawnshops

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So my buddy just picked up a semi-new laptop from the pawnshop, his daughter wanted one and he felt it was time to upgrade his old one so he got a Dell XPS with Windows XP MCE on it. Not a bad little laptop, dvd/rw in it, P4-mobile CPU, it’s fine for what he does with it, basically watches movies with it and hits the internet via dialup (yes he uses dialup).

So of course he comes to me with the laptop and asks me to clean it out and install anti-virus etc on it. He told me the guy at the pawnshop ‘cleaned it out’ already, but I found out all he did was run Disk Cleanup and delete a few things in the My Pictures folder.. and that’s it… Apparently the previous owner was very much into porn and filesharing, there were literally hundreds of porn movies on it along with a couple hundred mp3s. He also had limewire and morpheus installed as well.

Now if you’re going to sell a laptop wouldn’t you format the drive or at least make sure everything is gone? I found pictures of him and his girlfriend on there and videos of him and his girlfriend doing things that I really didn’t want to see being done… I found records of AIM conversations and all kinds of personal things on there, now if I was the nefarious type of person I could have had quite a bit of fun with this stuff, I’m sure the folks over at Pornotube etc might have liked the homemade movies of him and his girls and the ones of her stripping for him, of course not to mention all of the personal data that was on it…

there was so much there it was amazing that it was left on there for anyone and everyone else to see.

Of course though it’s all deleted now, but if someone else other than me would have gotten that laptop bad things might have happened to this guy and his girlfriend and his friends as well.

How it got to the pawnshop I’m not sure, but they do their part in getting id, filling out forms etc and waiting the 10 day waiting period before turning around and selling it, so no one claims it, it then becomes available for sale or purchase.

apparently this guy was/is a college student and he used it for school work, but most recent things I found on there was dated 2006 so who knows where the laptop has been for the last two years…

but my buddy got himself a decent laptop for $300 at the pawnshop…

So of course the lesson for today would be:

Don’t sell your laptop at the pawnshop before you make sure it’s nice and clean, or format the hard drive!