Time for an update -

My new computer shall be arriving soon – in pieces; that I will have to build together into one intricate, yet delightfully powerful gaming powerhouse. And this is the whole package deal, with the monitor and everything, since my last computer (and the one I’m currently using) is a laptop. Not many laptop parts fit with regular PC parts, unfortunately. Luckily, I’ll still have a backup/portable computer if something does go awry.

The price was steep, but not as steep as it would’ve been if I purchased everything in a bundled package. Partially, this was because I overestimated the price on some things and decided to go for more quality and faster items/chips. It’ll work out great for me in the long run, with some overclocking here and there. Speaking of overclocking, I can safely do that and have a nice and cool environment, apparently. With 4 fans in the case, plus another few here and there, I’m not sure how loud it’ll be, but the cooling is a definite plus.

I’ll bring more in depth reviews of the products and their price once I get the computer and assemble it. Perhaps I shall write a post on that computer, perhaps not. We shall see.

Camera Blues

In other news, my FujiFilm S700 Digital Camera broke down on me and gave me an infamous “Zoom Error”. I tried all the suggestions, replacing batteries, shaking it up a bit, hitting it against an object (said to work, but it didn’t). The problem was probably due to the two tiny gears inside the camera that controlled the powerful 10x optical zoom that somehow got misaligned. Either way, it was too much of a hassle for me to try anything else, so I returned the camera back to Wal-Mar and it was easily taken back since it was under the 30-day warranty (yeah, it broke down that soon). I took quite a few good pictures with it, though, and you can view the results on my gallery. The other problems I noticed with it were that it blew out highlights like none other and had a few problems with purple fringing (things that you can find out on any camera review site, really). And when taking scenic pictures (of buildings, especially), the picture would get distorted in a bubble fashion, making the object look bloated or curved depending on the picture.

The good part of the camera? The price, being only ~$200, the quality with 10x optical zoom and 7MP pictures, and of course the size was quite manageable. Other things included the camera taking 4 AA’s, an SD or xD card, and having a nice viewing LCD screen.

My next camera will probably be a Canon Powershot or a Canon Digital Rebel; still weighing the options of both.

Well, it’s been a while, I must admit. So much has happened yet it seems all so normal now. Why haven’t I updated my precious blog? Well, time constraints were just one of the many issues. Laziness was another. But now I’m back, and hopefully I’ll be updating my blog a bit more regularly, now that I have a cause and all. Somewhat.

So, new things, well, firstly, a newly acquired host. Somewhat paid host. It’s free, advanced, and more details can be found on the first news item of austrian.uni.cc. A lot more details there and such. And links to the gallery that I set up can also be found near there.

What else? Well, the new job, of course. I’m actually employed in two places, it’s just one of them never called me in for work quite yet. I’m a web developer at Eastern Washington University, and also a tech-support kinda guy. The second job I have is kind of a sub-job of my primary web-developing job – to be the University Honors Webmaster. It’s a little less glamorous than the title actually sounds. At least it still pays well enough.

Finally finished my freshman year of college – pretty much went through the whole year and got Dean’s List awards from my department (Computer Science). I just find programming to be simple, challenging, and fun. And I just love to see people squint in confusion when I start talking about Euclid’s recursive algorithm.

So, now, for the purpose of this blog, I’ll have it maintain its blog status but I’ll integrate more technical stuff, possibly something like programming tips, or pretty much the stuff I’ve already been putting on here, except not as lame or outdated.

So yeah, there ya go, more to come soon.
-Alex

Having sold my old car to a dealership and traded off with my mother’s Toyota Camry (nice V6 btw), I also lost an essential part of me…or sort of me. In any case, my new car lacked an MP3 player of any sort and could only play conventional CD’s which are a pain in the butt to burn over and over again in comparison to just burning a CD filled with MP3′s. So of course, one needs to remedy the situation, and as such, I decided to go out and get some other kind of MP3 player that you could actually carry around with you and listen to once you left the car. Add to that the ability to carry all of your music on something, not just one MP3 CD at a time, and not have to switch CD’s while your out in traffic trying to look at the snowy Spokane road. I don’t know which is worse, the snowy or the Spokane part of that. Both combined just makes it disgusting. Anyways, I took one good look at the iPod and basically crumbled in disgust. It required iTunes (which I’ve had very bad experiences with), couldn’t play my WMA files, and converted all of your music from your computer to a jumbled up disorganized version onto your iPod (don’t believe me? If you have an iPod, go take a look at the files yourself and see that all of them have been put into 2 letter folders at random with some random name for each file in those folders. Luckily the ID3 tags are all still there, but I’d rather not deal with that mess). So were there any alternatives? Of course! Microsoft released their first generation model of the Zune, which could take my WMA files along with the AAC’s that the iTunes loved. Add to that the fact that had a bigger screen (same resolution as the iPod for video viewing, though), no weird scroll wheel ordeal, and wi-fi capability. Yeah, they put in a wi-fi card to have Zunes connect to each other and share stuff. Currently, the sharing is limited by DRM, but if something like Linux ever gets put onto the Zune, the DRM thing won’t be a big problem because it won’t even exist. The possibilities with linux are certainly interesting but it would be kind of hard to use the wi-fi with anything apart from other Zunes
(connecting to something like a router and trying to use the internet with only 6 buttons would be kind of hard, unless there was like an “on screen” keyboard). The storage amount remains the same as a standard video iPod (30GB). And an interesting tidbit that also stunned me once I bought the Zune and was fooling around with it – while an iPod cannot play music and do other things while charging through a USB cord by means of a computer(from my experience), the Zune can. Its nice playing Oblivion and listening to my Zune at the same time without wasting any battery life (which is 14 hrs on it). But what about the part I really care about – the price? Well, eBay is a good friend of mine, and $200 dollars seemed to be quite a bargain. In stores, the Zune regularly costs $250. That’s all well and good, but I still also need someway to hook it up to my car, in which case I plan on getting an FM radio transmitter from one of the Zune car packs (since the CD player in my car doesn’t have any type of inputs other than a CD, and radio, of course).

So basically, Zune FTW. Better clarification – Zune without DRM (Dumb Retarded Monkey) FTW.

Well, I went back to my old high school with my friend Trevor to go and watch a basketball game. What I wasn’t expecting to see was this horror parked in the lot. The paint was…pink…and…black and…white. The back part of the car (the tail lights) could actually be pushed in. It was covered in grime and dust. The things on the side of the car (okay, I’m not a car person so I don’t know what they’re called, those tube like things sticking out below the car door) weren’t welded on, they’re STRAPPED on. The inside is even worse, the seats are dismounted and the dashboard is a horror to look at. But apparently, people still drive this…thing…around town. If I had to drive it, I’d personally take a gun, put it up against my head, then point it at the car’s gas tank, and then shoot. Yeah. Enjoy.

Ah, now I just downloaded w.bloggar, great little blogging tool, me likey. No more blogger beta crap, although I’m still on their servers in a way.

So back to the lake cabin, we got there safely at about 11:30 at night, and started moving our bags and groceries into the cabin. We then needed to turn on the propane heater for warmth and the water heater for, well, warm water. Both became problems for us however. The water heater could be turned on but we soon found out that the pipes had broken and there was some minor leakage. So, we had to completely turn off all the water and pretty much go without any kind of tap water for the weekend. This caused two major problems – first of all, no showers, and secondly, no #2. Then the regular propane heater was a problem too because the propane tank was refilled and as a result, all the pilot lights went out for all the heating stoves. We of course, had no clue on how to turn the pilot lights on, so we decided just to head off to sleep and see this situation out more thoroughly in the morning. Until then, we put up a little electric heater and watched our breath as we fell asleep…

We woke up the next morning and decided to go to Yokes to take care of our #2 problem. Once finished, we went over to clayton burger and ordered ourselves some breakfast – it was pretty darn good, too. If you’re ever around the Deer Park area, make sure and stop by, good food, made pretty fresh. Anyway, we came back to our cabin, and finally figured out how to turn the pilot light on the heating stove on, so we had a good primary source of heat. Well, that fixed one of our problems, but the pipes still couldn’t be fixed until later that week, when we weren’t going to be there anymore. So for all our watery problems, we had to either go back into town for the #2 or go to the lake for the #1 (although Josh found quite an interesting way to use the #1 while partially inside the house…no more details on this one). Time for the hanging out then, since all was set. We started out by playing multiple rounds of halo in which either Josh or I won (shotguns, swords, juggernaut, slayer, all kinds of variants went on) and then once we got done with that, we went and watched accepted on my laptop with my Uber-cool speaker system. Basically, we just hung out all day, ate food, played video games, talked about what guys talk about, bugged Josh when he was talking with Courtney (it was quite annoying when they talked for hours on end, and even more annoying when she called him at 7 AM the next morning – I just wanted to go and start beating Josh up for his girlfriend waking me up, but was too tired to do so). Yeah, pretty much that was it for the main highlights, went back to town, took a shower that I desperately needed, and that was that.

Mmm, the end of the first semester of college. And now I have a month off to bore myself with, yes, bore myself I shall. Not much has happened between the last time I wrote a post, or maybe tons has happened, it all depends on your perspective. Like if you usually have crazy stuff happen to you on a daily basis, you know, like your house flooding, your sister coming back into town to live with you again (this is a married sister, btw), a myspace whore deciding to delete their myspace (and never really ending up doing it, mr. computer literate ^_^), going skiing for the first time in your life, and getting a cool new cell phone (and voiding the warranty on the first day because Verizon is a monkey about not allowing file transfers on their Razrs’). Its all about perspective and what your current view of reality is based on your current mood, emotions, heritage, etc (not saying that all “truth” is relative based on an individual, but that it is in fact a distorted image based on the individual’s biases). And that brings up plenty more philosophical discussions that I’d rather not get into right now.

So Robert, Josh, Trevor, and I decide to head out to Robert’s lake cabin to…well, hang out and play video games. It’s December after all, so we can’t really swim around or go on the boat, especially since parts of the lake were already frozen over. The trip to the cabin was quite treacherous, again, on one of the worst highways in the state at night with fog and plenty of black ice to boot. I mean, honestly, could it really get any worse than that? Oh yeah, Robert was driving (I do have to give him props though, he did drive pretty well). While in the car, we made a deal with Robert to not play a certain game if he agreed not to say “your _____” the whole time up at the cabin. Needless to say, he complied, because the “game” was not something that he wanted to play. <_<

…off the topic, I had just written a whole couple of paragraphs and blogger decided to randomly erase them while I was typing out a third. Well, this is the last time I’m writing with these $*@(# blogger tools, switching to something else…

Part 2 of this post coming up when I can find such a tool, and when I get over the fact that I lost 15-30 minutes of my life typing up something that got erased. Yeah…that might take a while

This was too funny to resist putting up. One of those things that you won’t forget when you’re the one trying to explain things with people who don’t know computers or the internet outside of myspace. The scenario is trevor has a trojan on his computer that displays porn pop-ups. Should it be cleaned with antivirus or spyware? I dunno, I hadn’t personally seen it so I told him to get both.

(10:01 PM) Alex Chernikov: but the weird thing is
(10:01 PM) Alex Chernikov: if you actually type out your msn password for your account into the messenger window, it’ll turn into a bunch of stars
(10:01 PM) Alex Chernikov: ******
(10:01 PM) Alex Chernikov: see?
(10:02 PM) Alex Chernikov: i hate that
(10:02 PM) trevor stewart: weird
(10:02 PM) Alex Chernikov: my password is actually pretty common to type
(10:02 PM) Alex Chernikov: like a common word
(10:02 PM) Alex Chernikov: so whenever i want to say ******, it turns out in stars
(10:02 PM) Alex Chernikov: ******!!!!
(10:02 PM) Alex Chernikov: gah
(10:03 PM) trevor stewart: lol
(10:03 PM) Alex Chernikov: didnt fall for that one, now did ya?
(10:04 PM) trevor stewart: stop it! it is pc genius vs. pc literate….of course i’ll believe you
(10:04 PM) Alex Chernikov: illiterate
(10:04 PM) Alex Chernikov: ok, change that
(10:04 PM) trevor stewart: hey…i’m not dumb…..i’m average
(10:05 PM) Alex Chernikov: yes, you know how to use myspace and you only get trojans once in a while
(10:05 PM) Alex Chernikov: makes you quite average id say
(10:05 PM) trevor stewart: lol thanks

…some time later…

(10:23 PM) Alex Chernikov: on the other hand, those popups will stop you from getting on myspace in class
(10:24 PM) Alex Chernikov: which equals better grades
(10:24 PM) Alex Chernikov: nothing will help you trev, not even reformatting your computer
(10:24 PM) Alex Chernikov: sorry, its a lost cause
(10:24 PM) trevor stewart: really
(10:24 PM) Alex Chernikov: better luck next time?
(10:24 PM) Alex Chernikov: and the trojan is airborn
(10:25 PM) Alex Chernikov: so every laptop that enters your house that you think about using for myspace at college will get that infectious trojan disease
(10:25 PM) Alex Chernikov: and the hardrive will fill up at the brink of destruction
(10:26 PM) trevor stewart: are you serious?
(10:26 PM) trevor stewart: plz say no
(10:26 PM) Alex Chernikov: WTF!?!
(10:26 PM) Alex Chernikov: AIRBORN TROJAN!!!

Well, I am here at Robert’s lake cabin and I am just sitting here at my computer with nothing to do, although I am very tempted just to jump in the water and start swimming. So far, the activities of the day have been waking up at multiple times in the morning (either because Robert’s bed was squeaking when he was moving around in it or because the fridge turned on and was really loud every 30 or so minutes), taking a shower, eating, playing with the computer, jet skiing, eating, and typing up a new blog post. Unfortunately, the tranquility of the day was ruined by the “Three BWitch Club”, one of which has not shown up…yet. Yes, the Three BWitch Club…explanation:

The Three BWitch Club
-by Reality Corp.
All is quiet and fair in the lovely city of Spokane. The residents are enjoying a nice evening of peace and quiet…until…
Bum bum bum ARGH THEYRE HERE!!! THE THREE BWITCHES ARE COMING! THE THREE BWITCHES ARE COMING!! The City of Spokane leaks into a riot fest, everyone holding a pitchfork or torch going after the three evils. One on one, the Bwitches are no match for intellect, cunning, or brute force – but when they’re put together…well, they just lower the room’s IQ into the negative range. But that’s all it takes.

Yes, but who are they? Their names are Cody, Sarah, and Chelsea. That is all that is known about them. That is all that should be known about them. See this post’s HTML code for more tidbits.

Back to the story
…Well, I just got back from swimming, and guess who showed up…the third one – Cody. Meh. They’re getting too much attention on my blog already, so I shall cease. And yet another few hours have passed (this would be my third time sitting down to write this post). Since then, I’ve gone jet skiing again (falling over quite a few times, just because turning a jet ski at 50 miles an hour with big waves created by other boats kinda makes the laws of physics work in mysterious ways. That, and it’s kinda fun to hang in the air for about three seconds and then hit the water, momentarily skipping off of it and being plunged into it), and to a Shock’s game at the Spokane Arena. The game was quite exhilarating, as we watched to the last second to see the winner…the game was close – the Hawks could win the game with a two point ball, but then at the last moment, they failed miserably and the Shocks won with a score of 69 to 68 – or at least that’s what it was with ten seconds left and with them having the ball in their position. Either way, they’ve won, no doubt about it. By the time we came back to the cabins, it was 10PM and it was still extremely hot outside. Which made it even harder to fall asleep, even with a fan blowing on me constantly.

Well, that’s about it, this blog post was quite…productive.

It’s been a couple of months since I wrote a blog, ach! Okay, first off, some betas you might want to know about that have been out for a bit now:

Windows Vista Beta 2
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsVista

This is the up and coming operating system from Microsoft, and its free to use until June 2007. So if you have an extra partition on your hard drive lying around, you might want to check out this graphics heavy but manageable version of Windows (call it Windows XP 2.0 if you’d like, it’s basically what it is, but that’s a good thing). Note: Most programs are still incompatible with this version of Windows (most antivirus and firewall systems, although Microsoft does offer some free antivirus for a year from their website that does work. Also, as far as I’ve tested, Nero burning rom also doesn’t work. Winrar, winzip, and other minor products work, however).

Office Pro 2007 Beta (TR 2?)
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

The next office system from Microsoft. Not much to say here, its your basic Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and any other office program with a snazzy new look and new features.

MSN IM LIVE (8.0)
http://www.msgshit.com/downloads/578/Windows-Live-Messenger-Beta-8.0.0689.html

Apparently, this version of MSN IM is supposed to come out as a Final version tomorrow, so you might just want to wait a day. Again, your basic messenger with new features and a snazzy new look (still has ads, though, so you might want to get the A-patch to go along with it).

As for me, I’ve finally graduated! The countless hours spent in school are gone as now I’m going off into college to spend more countless hours educating myself with stuff that I’ll actually want to learn! Indeed. But right now, it’s the beginning of summer and I’m going out to look for any jobs people might have me do for them. Its kind of weird, I’m not really looking for a job for the money (although it is a great bonus), I’m more looking for one because I can’t sit in front of my computer all day doing nothing but playing Oblivion. Well, okay, I can sit in front of my computer all day playing Oblivion, but I prefer not to. Okay, scratch that last sentence.

Anywho, I’m also a proud owner of a 250GB external hard drive. I’m going to put it to good use and it’ll probably be filled within a week of when I get it (it’ll basically act like the 100GB hard drive I have now – always filled and needs more space).

Spring is coming, but that means a good rain right along with it. It’s only March here in this little humble town of Spokane, but things are starting to brighten up, new passions arise, and the trees begin to bloom – well, that is, if there were really any blooming trees out here. Most of the forest stays green throughout the whole year, so we can always see some hope in this little paradise of ours. Yes, I’m sitting here in British Literature again, looking at my report card with a big B+ stuck on it. Not that I care, but my test grade is about a D right now, so I cannot understand why I would have a B+ overall. Great, I’m probably going to go into academic probation crap, but since I’m not on any sports team, I DON’T CARE. D’s get degrees, as Matt always says, and it’s the philosophy I’m pretty much using for the rest of the year. Not that I want to get D’s, but if it comes to that, I just want to stay enough above not to fail. In any case, though I am not on any sport’s team, I am a manager for Track, but they can not take that away from me, they never will take it from me! Mwahaha. As track manager, I do a wide variety of job’s, including but not limited to setting stuff up, tearing stuff down, moving lots of stuff, taking down times, laughing at the track runners while they squirm in their own sweat, and talking to the other track managers when I get bored. Hey, if it helps pay for my tuition, I’ll do it. Between that and leaving school to travel to other track meets and go to Seattle when the time comes, I’m in track managing for good. The first track meet will be this week and is held at our own little University track. It’ll be a nice warm-up for the managers, mainly because the sun will be shining and we might get a tan (oh the rarities in Spokane, but it is a lot nicer than Seattle with respect to tans, I can assure you). That reminds me of jumping into a freezing river at 10PM when the temperature outside was about 40 degrees or lower. It was cold, and it was at Amy’s house. But it was cold. Once we got out of the water, the dock became quite slippery – the water froze on the dock. Fortunately there was a hot tub which the group ran to and sat in for a while. Also fortunately, none of us got sick from pneumonia and actually felt a little better than we have before. It was a nice, freezing cold experience.