I have very little patience when it comes to ordering things online. It might be because of TigerDirects super awesome shipping seeing as they have a warehouse in Chicago. 99% of the time I get my orders the next day using regular shipping so I am a happy camper.

What have I bought that is making me crazy now? I bought a MacBook Pro from Apple. Thats right, I have moved to the dark side. I might consider beeing a little more patient as it says its “custom configured” but all they have to do is throw on a glossy screen instead of the anti glare screen. I have replaced laptop screens in a matter of 10 minutes (that was the first time I ever did it). I ordered at 7a.m. yesterday and had it been through TigerDirect I would already have it, or at least have the tracking number.

On the upside I did get a $200 discount for working at a K-12 school. After taxes and all that mumbo jumbo it still came out to less than $2,000. Once I recoupe some of the cost of the laptop I will be buying some mac memory from NewEgg to boost it up to 4GB of ram.

Also, I just received (about 2 minutes ago) an email saying my copy of Vista Ultimate is being shipped and should be here before May 2nd. I will probably through that on my Mac with BootCamp for those times when Windows is necessary.

National Guard: I had the first phase (of two) for my Annual Training. This is the “2 weeks a year” you hear from commercials and recruiters. I the days I was there I went through pretty much all emotions. Gladly happy was one of the predominant one. I qualified this week with the M16A2 rifle. My last four rounds was a double feed and caused me to loose those so it brought my score down a bit.

Work: This is going good. Not a whole lot is happening or planned at the moment.

Life: Its nice getting back to civilian life. This morning I was so tired I slept in a bit before going to work. I am still awaiting to see if I get an interview with the 2 government jobs in Lansing. I am hoping it happens but who knows. On Wednesday I plan on buying a MacBook Pro. WHAT!!! Yes, the lower end 15″ model. I have several reasons for doing so but “because I want one” is the main thing. I have also decided to close down FusecHosting for the time being. I am doing this because the ROI is just not enough to keep it going. This means that I will no longer be doing web hosting for anybody but myself. If you need a good web host I suggest EastSolid.com

That is all for now.

Nintendo Nintendo, What can I say but Nintendo. I sent in my Wii this week to fix that nasty “Disc Read Error” it has always had. I believe it was Monday that UPS picked it up but it may have been Tuesday. This morning I see that the tracking says it was delivered so I check the Nintendo website. It showed that it was still not in their system but it can take up to 2-3 days before it shows. They could be busy so it was no big deal. With my troubles with HP lately I am tracking the progress of my Wii quite a bit. So this afternoon when I checked to see if it was in the system it was. YAY! However it gets better. Not only was it in their system, but it was fixed and is being sent back to me. No way! Oh, yes way!!

While I figured Nintendo would do a really good job from reviews I read online there is always that part that worries me. Will it get lost? Will the UPS truck flip over into a river? etc. However so good so far. I am definitely impressed at how fast they got it in and sent it out. It kind of makes you wish Nintendo was a PC manufacturer with that kind of support.

Go Nintendo!

I have wanted to get a media streamer (videos from my computer to my pc) the past few months however I just couldn’t get myself to spend the money to buy one. I found out yesterday that was for good reason too. Why not just make one using existing equipment?

So how did I do it? Simple, I took my xbox (not an xbox 360) which I software modded a long time ago with UnleashX and loaded the XBMC (xbox media center) application. This app allows you to share videos, music, pictures, etc. to your xbox from your computer.

I had a problem with using windows shares with Vista. I read some posts that others were having problems and that they offered a different protocol you could use. This worked and it is awesome. I have movies on my computer but I don’t want to burn them to dvd because of how long it takes to transcode them. So now, I just turn on my xbox, launch the application and pick my movie.

Its pretty cool. If you have a modded xbox you should give it a try.

Site: http://xbmc.org/

This weekend I had some fun up at my National Guard unit. Finally got to train with the 13 Delta’s. Today I was told I was no longer the Command Sergeant Majors driver which is cool. Not that I didn’t want to be a driver, but I would rather do AFATDS than drive a humvee. I finally got put into a section at my unit which was a relief. Before nobody was sure if I was in the command section (being a driver) or the FDC section (being a 13Delta doing AFATDS). I got put in the FDC section which is what my MOS does. Then after being told I am no longer a driver I now really don’t have anything to do with the command section.

Hurray!