A Matter of “When”

So, I turn 21 tonight at midnight. As you may be unaware of, all persons of 21 years of age or more may consume alcohol in accordance to US law. From what I hear, I think I’m going to like this substance they call “beer”. I am going to be introduced to this “beer” tonight with some fellow members of the Computer Club. If you would like to join us, give me a call. I’ll be sure to post some pictures.

I woke up to a fire on my floor today. I heard the alarm, and thought it was just a drill at first, but then my room started to fill with smoke, so I got my computer and ran out of there. The hallway was completly filled with smoke, and I saw firefighters spraying foam in a room as I ran by. Apparently, their refrigerator caught on fire. Basically, it was something like this:

If you can’t see the video, here’s a link.

So I installed XGL and Compiz the other day. They both rock pretty hard, and it’s a stable enough system for everyday usage. I’m thinking that by the time Vista is finally released, we’re already going to have a better desktop. You’ve probably already seen a video or two of it in action, but I went ahead and made my own video anyway. Enjoy the desktop pr0n!


Edit: If you don’t see the video, click the direct link to the post.

Xbox modding has been around for a few years now, but I’ve just now gotten around to trying it. There are a some really nice modding communities around, and they’ve done a lot of work to make modding an Xbox as easy as possible. Nevertheless, I ran into a few problems along the way.

Along with an Xecuter3 modchip, I got an adapter to allow for a solderless install. It turns out that I couldn’t use it because I have a version 1.0 Xbox. 1.0 Xboxes (Xboxen?) have solder in the holes where the attachment was supposed to rest, so hack and I removed the solder from the holes, but then the solderless attachment didn’t work at all. I tried to solder the chip in using the intended method, but then it would only boot the Microsoft bios. Frustrated, I removed the chip and tried the solderless method again. At this point the xapt3r’s screw to attach it to the motherboard was stripped, so I had to just hold it onto the motherboard with my thumb. This allowed it to boot the modchip. It turned out that I needed to solder 3 additional wires onto the back of the motherboard in order to make it boot the modchip’s bios while it’s soldered in (It has to have a ground signal, which the xap3r provided via a small wire, for it to work). I resoldered the chip into the motherboard and attached the wires to the back. Finally, everything was working, execpt it would power off after a few minutes of usage, which turned out to be a heating problem (I forgot to plug the case fan in ;p ). So, after a long weekend of burning my fingers with hot soldering irons, here is the final result:

teh hax!1
The dvd drive is shot, but I ordered a new on on Ebay. Oh, and since everyone else is probably blogging about it, here’s a short summary of what I thought of Bush’s State of the Union Address tonight:

pros:
-more investments in alternative energy
-more investments in technology
-Bush actually acknoledged that we need to teach more math/science
-Iran is a problem that needs to be dealt with
-The far-left defeatists aren’t really helping the war effort

cons:
-Bush still speaks wierd
-Bush is still commited to keeping stem cell research down

Overall, I thought it was a good speach. He touched on a lot of important issues and commited to cut spending by cutting government programs and taxes, and he talked about his plans to cut the national deficit in half by 2009. If our government can actually pull all this off, it’ll be great (except for the ban on stem cell research. Seriously, what’s up with that?)

PS: I’m going to try to start blogging more. maybe…