Monday, April 19, 2010

2010.04.16 Friday

Ahh relaxing day for me. Actually, I woke up and had to take an un-comforting poop, but the rest of the day went well.

Watched some Curb Your Enthusiasm, then went on an errand spree. First stop, Auto-Zone. I took back many quarts of used oil and donated to their big bin, which will eventually get recycled and resold as Auto-Zone oil, or other brands. I also checked out some air filters and oil filters. Turns out my selection of oil filters is rather limited, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Really sucks too, since the style I have only wastes the part that decomposes quickly anyways; it doesn't waste metal every oil change. But the downside is that it takes longer to change and is a bit more complicated. Time is money... Anyways, the air filters are more pricey than I thought. 15 bucks for a disposable paper one, or 50+15 for a reusable with cleaner solution. This is such a tough decision, I will hold off for now. More research is necessary.

After that, quick stop over at Discount Tire Co. for a tire rotation. The guys at this place really rock. Every time I've gone there, they haven't pushed to try to upsell anything. They are just honest about their work. I really commend that, and would take my car back for work any day. They said "if I'm not experiencing any vibrations or handling problems, there is no need to re-balance your tires, unless you really want to, so we'll just do the free rotation and get you back on the road". A+

After that, Academy Sports and Outdoors. What for? Well originally I just wanted to hop in and out for a pair of sunglasses, but ended up looking at new shoes, camping gear, water sports, coolers, fishing gear, and weights. Luckily, I only walked out with sunglasses and a can of bug repellent.

Had some lunch, took a nap. Goofed around most of the evening. Converted some more flac into mp3-v0 so my mp3-player would be ready for the car trip. I started researching things about my mp3-player because part of it doesn't work anymore. The two better selling points at the time of purchase (it was in direct competition with the ipod video, 1st gen) was that the Creative Zen Vision:M had 1. Divx and Xvid support, and 2. FM Radio (with recording). Also, the price was the same, and the capacity was the same, so it made sense to go with something that had more features. Years later, the headphones that came with my player started getting a short, then I went through a pair of etymotic ER-6i's, that lasted for a few years of heavy use, and now I'm on my third set of headphones, Etymotic ER-4s, and surprisingly, everything about my mp3 player still works except for the FM Radio, and of course the player has some scratches. Anyways, long story short: I was looking to see what happened with different firmware releases and modding and whatnot. At some point during the Zen Vision: M's life, they took out FM Radio-Recording ability, but then upon later releases decided to reinstate it. I don't know if the flip flop caused issues, or some electrical shorting, or even just the FM Radio chip died. -- I also found out there is/was quite a community that deals with modding the Zen Vision M. Luckily, I have Version 1 of the hardware, which includes a more reliable 30GB hard drive. A lot of later revisions had hard drives that didnt last as long, or didnt like being jostled around as much. If mine every dies, I can pop it open and slap in another 1.8" hard drive and be up and running in an hour or so. I have also seen people use a Compact Flash card instead of a hard drive, meaning less power consumption and faster loading. Very Cool!

Met up with Kelc, and headed out to BCS for the weekend...

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