Author: Tommy

After looking around at the different "big box" stores around town, Jennifer and I decided on a nice grill to replace my sad, hand-me-down. I have been wanting a new grill for about 2 years now, but just never broke down and got one. Up until last fall I had a grill that was so-so from the previous tenants in our apartment. I started having problems with it so I picked up Notorious' old grill. I never fixed it up, so I've been without a decent grill for several months. (It's been rough.)

Today, we went looking for a replacement. We settled on a nice one from Char-Broil at Home Depot (sry ltd, Lowe's just didn't have any I liked). It has a stainless steel body, hide-away tank storage area and a side-burner (A feature I've been looking forward to). One benefit of the new grill is the 3 burners so I'll have a bit more flexibility in the heat. It also has the quieter electronic ignition, as opposed to the old piezo-electric "ker-chunk" starter (used in so many potato guns). The side burner is also a welcomed addition. No more stinking up the house when frying anything and I can cook a large pot of shrimp or crawfish outside now too. w00t!

Well, it's about that time of year again. Mardi Gras? Valentine's? Nope, it's time to renew my Sirius contract.

I've loved having it over the past year. It's made roadtrips that much more enjoyable. Any news I would otherwise miss I can get on CNN, Fox, NPR, Bloomberg and the list continues. As for music, which was the reason I got it, almost always has something fresh that I want to listen to. No more scrolling through pre-made selections of mp3s for me. In fact, I don't even think I've used my CD player more than a few times over the past year.

I love my Sirius so much I decided to go for a lifetime account. The website claims $499.99 but it's currently $399.99. The payments are spread out over a few months. They take into account any time left on your current plan (I should've done it sooner!) and knock that off your first bill. The lifetime account carries over to the merging of XM and Sirius, whenever that happens, and I'll only see more content on my channel selection, no additional payments required. I'm excited and you should be too.

It wasn't by my doing, but I'm glad it's finally working. The XO laptop from OLPC now has PSK31 available for ham radio operators. Talk about a niche!

Jerry Dunmire, KA6HLD, finally got Fldigi working on his XO and bundled the program as a stand alone activity. For those of you with an XO of your own that want to try out PSK-31, here are the steps included in his HOWTO:
First you must enable the DSP on the laptop:

login as root: su -l (that's a lower-case L, not a 1)

echo "/sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss" >>/etc/rc.local

reboot for the changes to take effect

Once you've rebooted the XO, download and install the activity:

Start the browser and enter the URL: http://www.dunmire.org/olpc/

Click on the FldigiActivity-1.xo link

Wait for the download to finish

Click on the Open button

You should now have the Fldigi activity on the right side of your Activity toolbar. Enjoy operating PSK, see you on 14.070 MHz!

For detailed instructions, click here to read Jerry's HOWTO. Or, if you'd prefer to do it manually (with no Sugar launch icon) there's a HOWTO by yours truly, here.

update: First contact made via XO with WI4USA.

I was looking around on reddit one day and found a story about Stephon Marbury's line of shoes called Starbury. Basically, this line of shoes is targeted for low-income urban youth - they're all priced at $15 each.
He claims they're just as good as higher priced shoes (i.e. Jordans and the like), and there's some debate on the issue.

As you probably know, I'm no baller. I just wanted some cheap kicks and I thought a $15 shoe line was a great gimmick that I must support. I got some low top sneakers that really resemble some New Balance shoes. The best part was, while we were at a Steve & Barry's in Houston, they were having a clearance sale so my shoes were actually $9.

It also happened that Grimlen and Araolath were home the same weekend that I was, and got some shoes of their own. (Araolath got some gaudy baller shoes, grimlen got some sk8er shoes.)

Anywho, if you're in need of some decent, really cheap shoes, check out Starbury shoes.

I've been playing Team Fortress 2 alot. It's a great game. I enjoy playing just about every class on the game. I play Engineer most of the time, although at times I've been known to completely devour the opposing team as a Sniper.

As I was playing earlier I realized that most Engineers place their teleports near the upstairs spawn point in the 2Fort map (I play 2Fort almost exclusively). It really drives me crazy when I get in some teleporter and it takes me to my teams flag room and not to the enemy base (where all good teleports should go). I decided I needed to make it easier on my teammates to know where my teleport takes them, so I made a spraypaint.

I just made it in MS-Paint, set the canvas to the right dimensions, downloaded the TeamFortress2 Font Pack and voila! I has-got custom spraypaint. So here it is, my simple teleporter label.

Grendel sez: I also enjoy these treats. The Sentry Gun decoy (red, blue) and the crouching sniper decoy (red, blue).