So… a little time has passed, and I’ve acquired a couple of new toys. Some are more “practical” than others, while some are just plain cool. Among the new acquisitions are: a toaster, a toaster oven (they’re quite different), and a 20″ fan for the living room.

One of the cooler things I got (well, I actually got two) is a Samsung CLP-500 printer. This isn’t just any printer. It’s a color laser duplex printer! Yes, it does color. Yes, it’s laser, and yes, it’ll print on both sides automatically! Best of all, this thing retails for about $400 or $500 here, and I found two of them being sold for a grand total of $200! Yes, $100 each! They each came with new black toner cartridges too, each of which is worth $150. I’ve already tested out just about every single feature there is, and needless to say, it’s just wicked. It’s a bit big though…

Another cool thing that I found was a used XBox. Somebody was selling just the console, without cables or anything, for $50. I offered $40 and he took it. Great for me, since I once had an XBox that died on me (I fiddled to much with it… ) but I was left with all the accessories - and the 160GB hard drive that came with. I also found a guy who would install a modchip in it for $50. Since I have no idea what I’m doing, and I didn’t want to break another system, I gave in and paid him. Voila! I have a brand spankin’ new XBox Media Center - which is the only reason I bought the thing. The XBMC is great because you can watch all your ripped DVDs or TV shows on your TV instead of on your computer! A much better way of enjoying your TV shows if you ask me. It’ll also play music, display pictures, etc etc etc, all in a very friendly user interface.

The only thing that had me bothered was the GPU fan. I, unfortunately, happened to get a v1.0 XBox (there were versions all the way up to 1.6). The 1.0 version was the only one that had a GPU fan - the others just had a beefier heatsink. XMBC has the ability to monitor and display your CPU and GPU temperatures, and both were hovering around the 40-42C mark at idle, and 45-ish while watching movies or listening to music and having visualizations going. I was trying to figure out how to quiet the damn thing because it was loud to the point where you’d hear it while watching a video - GRR! In the end, I ended up removing the fan and just seeing how the temperatures were. They didn’t change at all!!! Lucky for me! Yippee!

The last snag I found with my setup was that the chamber in my “entertainment unit” was getting pretty warm, since there was no open vent for the hot air to get out. It’s one of those cheap old cupboards with the particle board (?) backings - you know, the ones that are halfway between wood and cardboard. I traced out the size of a 120mm fan that I had lying around and started hacking away. After about 15 minutes, I had a nice hole in which I could stuff in this fan. Last summer, I had made a small circuit that would take 12V from a power brick, and run it through two voltage regulators - an LM7805 and a LM7812. At the outputs, I hooked up 4 wires and a molex connector that I had ripped off an old dead computer power supply. Plug the fan into the circuit, flick the switch, and tada!!! A custom ventilation system for my entertainment unit.

Phew… that ended up being a longer post than I thought it would be. Oh well! Thanks for reading!

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So, some people already know this, but I got myself a new car! I’ve been looking at the ads on CraigsList for a little while now, just to find out what the market is like. I was hoping to get something relatively cheap, but something that still had some kick under the right pedal.

I managed to find a nice guy who was selling his 1991 Honda Prelude. Everything seemed in good shape, but I had it checked out by BCAA. It needed some new front brakes, and an axle sleeve, but otherwise, everything checked out. I got the work done yesterday, as well as a transmission fluid change. The car drives like a beauty.

I also installed an iPod adaptor for my JVC stereo. It lets me not only play music through my stereo, but also control the iPod from the stereo controls. I routed the iPod cable into the glove compartment, so you can’t see anything.

For more pictures, check out my photo gallery.

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So, I went to the bank this morning to see if I could get a student line of credit for this next year. I’ve just finished my undergrad and I have the letter of acceptance from the faculty. I’m thinking that as an engineering student with a known income that’s greater than my tuition payments, I shouldn’t have too much difficulty. Right?

Wrong. I meet with a relatively friendly lady, who asks me the usual questions about this that and the other. She asks me if I have a letter of acceptance to the university, which I do, but she finds the one snag I didn’t think about. The letter is based on the condition that I graduate. I’m quick to reply that I just recently got my grades back from last term, and they’re all passes, so that shouldn’t be an issue. I even offered to log into my student account so that she could print out an unofficial transcript proving that I’ve completed my degree. Nope… not good enough.

Then she says, we can start the application process and then fill in the last piece when I have the actual real letter of acceptance, not this “Yup, you’re in as long as you pass” document that I have (dispite the fact that I passed). I go along with it, figuring that it’ll be less time I have to spend later. We look through, and the only existing source of credit I have is my Visa card (which is currently at a negative balance). She tells me that I don’t have much credit, and that it might make it a little harder to get the loan…

How is a person supposed to get credit if you don’t give them a chance? Isn’t that the whole point? Me having credit means that you trust me to pay you back later, but how can I gain that credit if you don’t lend me a little bit now? If you don’t want to lend me the full $55K (which is what she was suggesting), then lend me less and don’t give me such a hard time about it.

Gah… I needed to vent.

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So… I’ve only got about three weeks left of my undergrad. I’m really dying here. I just want it all to be over.

Things that await me this summer:

• Setting up a 20 node computing cluster (each node has 8 cores)
• Scuba Diving trip to the Red Sea
• Month long Europe trip with friends
• Starting on graduate studies work
• Road trip with my girlfriend

So… you can see that I’ve got a whole lot more things that I’d rather be doing than the end of this degree. Grumble…

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I GOT IN!!!!

I just got an e-mail from Dr. Konrad Walus of the Electrical Engineering department here at UBC telling me that he just signed off on my application for a Masters of Applied Science. I’m gonna be working on a pretty wicked project, and I get to manage a computing cluster.

Needless to say, I’m excited.

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