Has anyone noticed? The first pic added July 3, with daily postings through 8/5.

I am now the proud owner of a full height telco rack. I have been keeping my eyes peeled for ones on Craigslist as of late. One came available, and I availed myself of it. So, that was yesterday; I picked it up. Today, after spending some 4th of July time at a friend’s house, I went to Home Depot to procure myself some casters. Now, I know that I have some pretty good friends in the caster business, but I wasn’t really in the mood to wait, so I bought me some overpriced casters (~$28 worth). It is worth noting the wood, nuts/bolts, screws, and casters cost me more than the cost of the actual rack ($53 as opposed to $50). I made 2 critical missteps in the building of my rolling telco rack. First, I thought I had everything worked out beforehand, and I was close, but added 7 inches when I shouldn’t have. So, the boards are a little longer than I would have liked. And second, the holes for the casters are spaced on center roughly 3 1/2″ apart. Now, for those of you following along at home, this would be the width of a 2×4. So, I wound up basically toe-nailing these very large lag screws in. Which I guess worked out in the end, because looking at it now, the weight would have been poorly set, and might have caused trouble down the line. So, it ain’t pretty, and it’s rather tall, but it is more steady than I thought it would be. Well, that last part didn’t make much sense, and neither did the original design, but the actual implementation works, so there you go.

Like most things, since I bought the rack, I’ve spent another $50 on extra parts, and now I’m pondering rack mounted power, nice rack mounted switches, chair mats for my casters, cable management, rack screws, and the list goes on… Once I get everything racked, I’ll see about posting some pictures.

I figured I would share with the world, knowing how all the ladies love a man who has his own telco rack… in his living room…

Yet another weekend has gone by without me going through my backlog of photos and lining them up for the photoblog. I guess I’m a little overwhelmed by the sheer number.

The rest of my weekend was quite good. Went to a lan party Friday night, riding Saturday afternoon, an early 4th of July party afterwards, and rested today, watching some Studio 60, Sabrina, and The Unforgiven. Sabrina was good, and The Unforgiven was ok, but I think I mean to get Unforgiven, not The Unforgiven. Silly me. I thought that the episode of Studio 60 I watched might have been the last, and looking it up now, it was in fact the series finale. Sad that it didn’t work out for Aaron and Tommy, but I suppose that they’ve had other good runs.

If you ever have the opportunity to lounge around in the pool for half of the day and into the wee hours of the morning, I highly recommend it. I don’t recall ever doing that before, but it really was posh. I suppose it’s like being at the lake, but this was somehow different. I dunno. Anyway, highly recommended; esp with some good and very chill friends.

The regular lake party was also this weekend, and even though I couldn’t be there, I did manage to help Drew and Nancy find their way. I don’t know what the odds are that when you call me I’m not sitting in front of a computer, but Nancy managed to, and caught me driving to this party. I was, though, able to help them get to the party, with my trusty stash of maps to basically everywhere I’ve driven in the past many years. I’m pretty sure I would have no problem finding Max’s lakehouse or even getting to that particular barn for barn dance. At one time, I could have driven out to Max’s blindfolded, but I would imagine now I would have a little trouble remembering the exact roads to take. Although, I bet I could find my way, if only by my gut. So, I was driving up I-75, while looking at hand drawn maps and nice maps of Texas. An odd experience to be driving, giving people directions in another state. Chalk up another good story.

Technorati Tags: photoblog, lan party, movies, pool party, directions

I don’t know if I’ve ever really compiled a favorite movies of all time list. I searched for 2 seconds on the blog and didn’t find anything. I somehow stumbled upon this question at work some time ago, and didn’t have a readily available answer, so I’ve put some thought into the top few, and I’ll give them here, in no particular order:

• Garden State (2004)
• The Apartment (1960)
• Roman Holiday (1953)
• Dial M for Murder (1954)
• Rear Window (1954)

Technorati Tags: favorite, movies

Jessica and Mike
Sarah and Jarrodd
Chad and Elisabeth
Drew and Kellie
Colby and Elysia
Dan and Paige
Brittany and Nate

Babies:
Laurie
Laci
Summer
Becky
Mindy

Technorati Tags: babies, engagements

For my own future reference when trying to re-encode video (to a dumber mpeg4 implementation for my linkplayer2) with multiple audio tracks all at the same time:

ffmpeg -i 1x01\ Space\ Pilot\ 3000.avi -f avi -vcodec divx -b 1133k -acodec mp3 -ab 128 output.avi -acodec mp3 -ab 80 -newaudio

Be sure to verify video playability, quality and audio sync.

Technorati Tags: re-encode, reencode, encode, video, audio, tracks, multiple, two, mp3, avi, bitrate, ffmpeg

(a half-update as blatantly stolen from Robert’s facebook)

Ed and Kristen – May 19
Michael and Erin – June 8
Josh and Jaimie – June 16
Josh and Katie – July 7
Sam and ??? – July 7
Pat and Jennifer – August 4
Ben and Lou Lou – August 11

Smosh, just found your new blog. Will be keeping tabs. I know you’re on your honeymoon and all, so when you get back and check this, please leave a comment with some gift registry info, so I can send you guys something.

Update: Nevermind Josh, I figured it out.

Congrats! Sorry I couldn’t be there to throw stuff at you. :) I know you guys have a wonderful life together ahead of you.

NO!!!!! Goodbye, Mr. Wizard. You will be missed.

I really hate it when I can’t shake that sinking feeling in my stomach. I helped tow a co-worker just after work. Nothing happened, but it was definitely a little hairy at the onset (while going down what turned out to be a much larger hill than I thought — at about 30–35 mph). I took some turns a little wide, since we were moving so fast (so we got honked at a little) and at the end of another hill’s climb, we had a good number of cars stacked up behind us. We finally got to our destination (with a U-turn even), at which time I was informed that towing a car like that is illegal in Georgia. So, no harm done and no tickets, but it was a little loose and fast for my hindsight and definitely harrowing at the time. It seems like the older I get and the more experience I accrue, the more I can play things much more by ear and worry less about being absolutely perfect and seem to get away with it. :)