Weekend Drive with T-K-S

We decided to break-in Toph's new Ford GT as well as bring Kara and their son Sebastian around San Francisco for their first time. Having just recently moved from New Jersey it seemed like a good thing to do on this fine sunny weekend.


















First stop was Pier 39 where we had late lunch of clam chowder. We then walked over to the SSN Pampano submarine and the USS O'Brien to take a few pictures.


















It was getting cold around 4pm so we drover toward the viewing area across the Golden Gate Bridge.























That being done we found ourselves at the HomeDepot on Hamilton (right next to Fry's Electronics) and did some hardware window shopping. Here's Mig mopping around.

Overall, a good day.

Update: HP MediaSmart EX475

Alright y'all .... after poring through the forums for a tip (no, the HP site is only good for basic configuration instructions) I came across a mention of successful restore when someone used an unpatched Windows XP as the client -- so you have to be vulnerable to fix this damn unit? Thank God for firewalls then.

But guess what, I work for an anti-malware company. Part of my lingo is "patch, patch, patch, ... and patch!". That saying, I don't have an old unpatched copy of Windows XP since my oldest is a least SP1. I dare not install Windows 2k its already 2 years away from being 30 years old in dog years :-(

Then it came to me. My son inherited an old Compaq Presario 2100 with (dare I hope) an outdated version of Windows XP. In fact, better than that, I had patched it previously but never took the time to take stock on the different but it was running Windows XP Home. So since he was grounded for the day anyway (kids these days need to take a breather from being online constantly ... but I digress) grabbed the unit it plugged it into my secure network and voila, THAT worked! WHS Connect installed flawless. To that I say ^$#$%#$%^&!!!

So to those who are stuck up creek's ville for solution, try Windows XP Home. It is after all technically what should be connected to Windows Home Server :-) *sigh*

-----------------------

My 1TB is filled up. Thats one of the major questions I had with this unit, does it use RAID or what? Apparently its using something similar but of course using Microsoft's implementation of dynamic drives -- meaning it generally splits the total volume by half and creates a copy of everything. Effectively, that meant I really had some 500GB of Seagate Barracuda SATA v11 drive space left. *sigh*

Time to move files around again and I'm anxiously waiting for my supplier to sell me some cheap 1TB storage. This holiday week Fry's is selling a WD 1TB for about $179.99 but am looking for something cheaper. After all, if I were in Singapore or Malaysia or Taiwan these drives would probably cost half that sale price!

The hunt for storage space goes on NOW.

Update: Sony PS3 Firmware 2.35

Last Wednesday, I updated my 60GB PS3 using the latest firmware download from the official Playstation site. Little did I realized that doing so would temporarily put a halt to my hi-def video appreciation due in fact to the HDMI output not working ^$%#$#%^%!

I was doing alot of other things during the day and I did a few basic cable checks to see if anything was loose ... nope. So next thing I did was pore though various forums if anybody had experience the same and a few apparently said it was a bug for a bug fix to fix GTA4 issues running on 60GB PS3's (that being it affected me as well). There and then I started looking for solutions to possibly downgrade the firmware and apparently the only way to do so would entail sending the unit back to Sony or getting an Infectus mod-chip -- a $50 commitment of sorts not including installation and shipping costs. No way was I gonna mod my PS3 which Sony has so nicely already opened up for 3rd-party installation of alternative OS (yes, I've got Yellow Dog Linux 6 running!), so I decided to leave it at that and wait for a fix probably coming out in a month for v2.4?

On Friday I made half-way attempts to swap back the original internal drive I'd upgraded from to 320GB but paused when I realized that the firmware wasn't installed on the disk but in the PS3's flash memory. Oh crap! Scratch that.

This morning though, just before leaving for Home Depot at lunch to get a grill I made one last ditch effort. What if I reset to factory settings? One forum post which talked about trouble shooting no component video output issues (with the same update) mentioned this in passing. Could it be......?

YES! I reset everything to defaults sans formatting the whole drive and loosing my save games and it WORKED! Whew.

Thats it folks, it appears that similar to firmware updates on mobile phones (like my N95) you'll need to go back to the general profile. In this case, reset to factory defaults every time you do a firmware upgrade in the off chance that some settings don't get migrated or get messed up during the update. :-)

Now I'm set for a kick-ass audio-video display for Memorial Day guests in a few hours to keep guests entertained.

HP MediaSmart EX475

This is probably my 2nd system reset attempt tonight and its driving me nuts!

After seeing my friend's Joe and Laura's use of the EX470 for their web server use I decided to look around for similar products.

I've already got a Promise NS4300N which also serves as my FTP and file storage backup, just recently upgraded to have an iTunes and BitTorrent plug-ins (and before that my lowly LAN|Drive was dong all the FTP and file sharing).My blogs (this one included) are happily hosted by Blogger. To reach me on whatever protocol I've already used DynDNS to redirect wherever. My trusty old Netgear WGRv4 has been so far redirecting all traffic where it needs to. So why even?

The answer is simple. Even after switching to Gigabit ethernet my NS4300N wasn't performing to the standards. File transfers were ok but iTunes took a little more buffering time. Besides, I technically don't own it and so it makes sense for me to move all my personal stuff off of it in the off hand just in case, you know?

Looking thru an online bulletin board I happened on someone selling about a hundred bucks cheaper than what I would pay even if I did go with Fry's sale price this weekend. Justifying the need vs cost, I went for it.

The big problem here is that the EX475 (a 1TB implementation of the EX740) had already been pre-configured for someone and I didn't want to have to call the seller until the last option After all, this gadget guru wasn't going to give up on a system until it gave way to splitting its innards ... which is really close on this system mind you.

------------------

Its almost 4am, time for a nap.


(image courtesy of HP.com)

Sony Playstation 3 version 2.35 Firmware

Oh just great ^&%^$%##@%^^#&^ :-(

I clicked on System Update today to download the v2.35 firmware and it appears it may have just KILLED my HDMI connection. Sony, what's going on?!

Apple Time Machine, Back to the Past

Thats right, the first thing about the Macbook Pro to blog about is the backup software called "Time Machine". Its an interesting concept on Mac OS X similar to System Restore on Windows XP with a plus.

The main complaint so far has been that Apple wants you to use their own brand of backup drives (a) when the reality is that most modern homes right now are probably running a NAS or other network storage device. What is worse, if you do decide to do option (b) then you may end up having to format that external storage using the proprietary Mac OS X file system.

Thats easy enough to fix by modifying a registry entry to allow an unofficial modification (c). Not one to be limited, thats exactly what I did to redirect storage to my Promise NS4300N. The transfer time over the network though is understandably slower than direct plugged (and even worse if you're really pushing your luck like I am via wireless-N).

PSP Games: Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squad

I was getting frustrated not having finished the line-up of games on my plate. The first time I popped the UMD cartridge in my eyes were already droopy and almost dropped my PSP at some 2am in the morning. Alas, am getting old and thankfully perhaps games are not just a means of stress relief but a sleeping pill these days.

On the 2nd night of playing (which was nostalgia ending up at the Battle of Endor) I was surprised to find the game end all of a sudden. Its like I was catapulted in the air without a trampoline to catch me. That was just a few hours ago at 1am .... :-(

So I am happy to have finished the campaign version, am off to try the multiplayer version and see what the PSP Network has to offer as a compelling game arena for the full Playstation Network; but unsatisfied with how bried the story line is.

Until next bedtime story!