travis' brain dump

Whatever happened to the ideal of Saturday morning cartoons…. the way I remember them? I mean, you almost jumped at the chance to get up and see them, there was something new and interesting all the time… and it was quality… even the pointless cartoons had a point, a message or something… at least that’s the way I remember them. Now it seems not only the quality of cartoons have gone downhill, so have the quantity. It reminds me of how movies have taken a downhill turn as well… *shrug* Guess the world really is going to hell in a handbasket and the media is leading the way huh? haha

Feeling pretty good today. Much better than yesterday thankfully. I hung out with Kate and Mark for a while yesterday afternoon which was fun. It took my mind off of feeling crappy. I went and layed down after they left and ended up crashing. After passing out and taking a nap for an hour or so I felt good enough to go hit a big dinner party with some friends that I haven’t hung out with in a while. It was nice to do so again. A little hectic with 9-10 kids running around but hey, when you’ve got 6-7 families there I guess that’s doing pretty good. LOL Overall it was an awesome time which left the night feeling pretty good. The food was AWESOME! Tom, you and your wife really know how to cook that italian buddy!! Got out of there around 9ish… came home to a quiet house and talked on the phone for a while until I was about ready to pass out… awesome end to what started out a crappy day. 😉

Today… hmm well, I dunno. Things that were roughly planned don’t look so promising… *shrug* S`ok, I’ve got enough stuff to do… Laundry, yardwork, house cleaning… oh yeah… loads of fun. But hey, at least I will wake up on my birthday with everything done. 🙂

Well, I better get to it. I’ll write more later if I’m bored. 😉

Two more days… and I’m two more years from hitting the three-oh mark… I guess considering I never expected to hit 21 I’m doing pretty good huh? lol

For the record, I feel absolutely horrible today. Stomach is a wreck, body is rejecting the thought of moving and overall I generally feel like a truck hit me. Sorry folks, it’s not a relapse of my hard partying days – I almost wish I could blame that for the way I feel right now. At least I’d know the cause. I doubt it was dinner last night – that kind of issue usually sets in somewhere in the middle of the night giving a nice abrupt end to what would otherwise be a wonderful sleep. I should call Kate or Mark and see if any of them are feeling ill… that will rule out dinner… hmmm … I will discover the culprit… Oh yes… I will.

On the positive side, I am feeling better than I was this morning… the nausea subsided and I only feel like a truck hit me. I think I hear my bed calling… soon enough. Arwen is sitting in front of me watching a movie. What a day for her not to have gone to daycare. Although it is nice to be with her. She’s trying to make me feel better doing silly little things. She’s such a wierdo … wonder where she gets it … hehe

Well, I better get some things done so I can find my way back to my bed sooner than later. 😉

You know it often amazes me that as time progresses I find myself looking at all the aspects of this blogsite. Perhaps its the fact I’m using it more or otherwise just coming up with new ideas but I find myself revamping the back end almost constantly. Different approaches to what and how certain things can be read or how they are categorized is almost a constant changing progress. To the effect of these changes, I’ve done the following:

Added ‘ Tech Stuff ‘ Category – Ok, so this was necessary as it seems I’ve crossed a threshold… I’ve posted three tech related posts and now it requires it’s own category. LOL

Added ‘ Humor ‘ Category – This too seemed necessary, however it seems there will be some cross pollenation between General and Humor anyway, so bear with me. 🙂

Moved Some Posts – Some posts have been moved to ‘ Private ‘ status. The reason for this is simply, I don’t want crawlers picking up some of my posts. While there are posts that still have passwords on them, the ones that are Personal and simply sent to ‘ Private ‘ are viewable if you have a login into the site. *any* subscriber who has been authorized is able to view those so long as there isn’t a password. If you happen to be looking for something, for whatever reason and can’t find it, just mail me. 🙂

Adding pictures – Yes, I’m going to try to continue update pictures… I’ve got plenty, just need to get em up. :) 

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Trying to take a little more time for life here… I guess it seems I’ve been kind of living in a little box for a while — according to Andy that is. I love how he explained it last night. paraphrased ->  ” I just sat there and watched, I knew you were still with us… but much longer and I’d have had to step in and kick your butt. ” Thanks Andy… glad to know you’d have beat me down, that’s what friends are for huh? Still, there is a part of me that is still grinding on things and is a bit disturbed. I’ll figure it out. That’s what I do right? At least I’ve got reinforcements called friends, I love you guys. 🙂 So, go right on with your threats Andy… I’m ready for ya! lol

Today has been a good day so far. I hope it stays that way. 🙂

Ok, for all you xbox 360 owners out there that use it as a media extender this one is for you. 🙂

http://www.runtime360.com/projects/transcode-360/ <- go there

In my quest for viewing DivX encoded movies on my xbox through media center I had run into much frustration. The blasted ‘ cannot play file format ‘ messages that would appear when trying to watch things I’ve encoded in DivX were really irritating me. So, what does one do? Well, you could always re-encode or convert the file to another format…  Since I prefer DivX and Microsoft simply doesnt support it on their device, Transcode was a great help.

** btw, there is a really good tool for doing conversions -> http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/Xbox360/index.html 

All you do is download it and install it on your media center. It will install a plugin for you into MC that you can select when preparing to play a movie. Simply hit the info button, select ‘ Transcode ‘ and the DivX file plays. Pretty awesome huh? Only catch I’ve found on Vista is I have to have an instance of Transcode loaded up on any logged in profile running in administrator mode. Not really a big issue since my MC system is also the primary tower/desktop downstairs…

It’s still got some quirks and bugs to it, but considering how easy it is to use and the fact its free, I’m not complaining one bit. So many other methods and routines are just a plain pain in the butt. So if you’re struggling with the whole DivX issue. Go give this a shot.