I got myself a google voice number. It’s pretty cool.
Google would do a better job of describing it than I can.
It’s kind of a pain if you don’t have a data plan though. There are two ways to call and txt people from your phone using google voice. You can use their web interface to do it, or you can use the 406 area code number that google associates with your contacts. It’s pretty amazing. Google owns most if not all 406 area code numbers, and when someone txts your google voice number, it forwards it to your phone from one of the 406 numbers. Then if you call that number or txt them back, google will recognize that it’s being placed from a number linked up with a google voice account. Then it will figure out who it should forward the call to depending on who’s account is calling that number.
Anyway, it’s like an automated call transfer center, and from my experience so far there’s no lag or anything. The only problem is that you can’t figure out what the 406 number for your contact is unless they txt you first. This way there’s pretty much no way to initiate a conversation using google voice if you don’t have an internet connection and the person you’re trying to call/txt hasn’t txted you before. Some sort of 406 area code number look up would be nice, Google.
But still, really. You’re all mad geniuses. Keep up the good* work! (*amazing)
I upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackal today. With my main partition formated to ext4 the sucker boots up in just under a minute. 57.8 seconds to be exact. Something it hasn’t done, well… Ever. And I’ve had this thing for 4 years.
Well, my desktop died again. It’s something major this time. Hopefully it’s some memory that’s gone bad, but if it’s the main hard drive, I lost the new layout I was working on (which I definitely didn’t back-up anywhere), and my install of Windows Vista. Pretty awesome.
Looks like it’s back to Ubuntu on my laptop…
EDIT: After some poking around, it looks like it was one of my sticks of RAM. I managed to find a new stick of 1GB PC 3200 for $4.04. Nice.
This whole summer has been a wash. I’ve been too busy trying to make a few bucks.
I did have a plan to update the site’s design and to write some code, but it just never came about.
Not the end of the world by anybody’s standard, but slightly dissapointing to me.
Good news is that I’m taking a few courses next semester that will at least give me something to write about here. Might even give me an opportunity to do some work on the site.
This isn’t the end of Ol’ Bennie Boy. Not by a long shot.
Don’t turn off your power supply. Apparently odds are good that it will never turn back on. I learned this the hard way. I actually don’t know what I’m going to do about this.
I guess I haven’t been updating this that much. Not that it really matters, I just feel like I should be doing something on my site. I have been thinking of a few projects, I just haven’t had much time for them. The good news is that my last exam is tomorrow at 11:15, and then I’ll have so much free time that I’ll either end up going crazy or doing something halfway interesting here.
So far, I’m enjoying it. Some of it sounds like b-sides from With Teeth and Year Zero, but overall I’d say it’s pretty solid. Of course I’m going to say that though. I’m a huge fan. My favorite track so far is Lights in the Sky, and since the album was released for free, and is licensed under “a creative commons attribution-noncommercial share alike license,” I uploaded it along with five others You can check out Lights in the Sky, Carona Radiata, Head Down, 1,000,000, Letting You, and Discipline real quick if you want.
So let me know what you think, loyal readers. And stay tuned for some stuff that may or may not be interesting to you over this summer break!
EDIT: My exam was actually at 11:45. I’m just real stupid.
My iPod Touch came yesterday. It’s pretty neat, but a huge pain to keep your music library all organized and such. For some reason pretty much every album I upload has at least 1 file that doesn’t have album art for it, even though I went through and told iTunes I had the album art for every damned file. Also, when you have the wi-fi on, it basically destroys the battery life. Not like that was actually a surprise or anything. Wi-fi is one of the most expensive features when it comes to power consumption and portable electronics… Spoken like a true nerd.
Oh well, it’s just an mp3 player I guess.
I found this avatar on the Something Awful Forums today. As it turns out, my friend does this with her face for at least 90% of the time I’m around her. I guess she’s not alone.
I’m going to get this out of the way. I’m a CS major. I enjoy messing around with computers. It’s what I do. I heard that there was a new beta for a popular version of Linux called Ubuntu, or “Your Bum Tube.” Ubuntu is really great because they give you the option to try it without actully installing it on your computer, or you could install it like any other program in Windows.
In my case, I was really tired of my fresh install of Windows XP taking 5 minutes to do anything after I log on, so I opted to do a complete install and throw XP out the window. Ok. That was a really bad play on words, and I apologise. Anyway, I actually installed it on battery power in under an hour. It’s probably not recommended, but it worked. I can say that I did it in the name of science!
I found this avatar on the