Samuel John Brenneke

Originally uploaded by mbrennek

So in case there’s anyone out there that doesn’t have teh twitterz or facebook, this happened.

• Born at 5:20 am on Nov. 23, 2011
• 7 lbs. 4 oz.
• 22.75” long

OMG now what!?!

I’ve said several times I’m not thinking of baby names until after we know whether it’s going to be a boy or a girl. Even after we agree on a name, we won’t be saying it in public until after birth, but we still need to call The Kid something between now and November.  So for the next 4-5 months, The Kid will now be known as Coco.  It’s short, it’s gender neutral, and it gives new meaning to our Rockband band name I’m with Coco.

A+, would buy again.

I/We broke Beth’s DC-In port trying to shove her broken power cord into the slot. I read the disassembly guide from ifixit.com (always excellent), and thankfully the port gets its own board in the old school 12” PowerBook. ifixit offered a used DC-In board for $75, but a bit of googling brought me to macrecycling.com where I found one for under $50 with shipping.

I ordered Monday evening, it was sent USPS for $4 and arrived Wednesday afternoon.  The part was dirtier than the old one inside Beth’s laptop, but otherwise fine.  I took Beth’s laptop apart in 2 hours, and put it back together in another 2. The “new” port works great.  Thanks ifixit and macrecycling!

Case of the mystery UMSL bill solved.

Backstory: A bill from UMSL showed up for me at my parent’s house from UMSL in late December. I’ve never attended UMSL, I’ve never applied to UMSL, I don’t even know where the UMSL campus is. The bill was for $25, and reason listed was “previous balance”. My parents don’t remember seeing another bill before this one, but who knows. This one arrived in late December, was due Jan 1., and by the time I called their cashier’s office to figure out what was going on, they were closed until early Jan.

My parents got another bill for me this week for $32.something for previous balance + late fees. I called again today and they were actually open, and after listening to a 2 fricken minute recording I finally got the option to talk to a real person. Who forwarded me to a different real person. Who forwarded me to a different real person. Who put me on hold for 10+ minutes. Eventually I got the truth.

It turns out Beth got a parking ticket there in July for being at a meter for what she swears is less than 5 minute past it’s expiration. She was doing bridal party shots scouting photography locations there for a wedding. Since it was the other photographer’s fault that the meter expired, she paid the ticket for Beth.

Apparently the ticket didn’t get marked as paid in the system. After going “unpaid” for an unspecified time, they got the vehicle owner’s name (me) from the DMV, cross-checked it against the entire UM system database, found my parent’s address and sent them a bill for it. OMGWTFBBQ. There are so many things wrong with that statement I don’t even know where to begin.

First, what if there were multiple Matthew Jeffrey Brenneke’s in their system? Do they pick one at random? I know for a fact that there is one that lives in Jefferson City. I guess he’s not a former UM student, but what if he get’s a parking ticket in Columbia or something? Am I going to get another bill for his transgressions if he doesn’t pay his ticket? Or even if he does since they can’t seem to get that straight either? The UMSL employee told me that the address they got from the DMV was my current address, so how/why did they send the bill to my parent’s address? Because I intentionally left that old address in JoeSS/peoplesoft when I left. I don’t think I’ve been on or near a UM campus in nearly 6 years. Shouldn’t that shit expire? Even if it never expires, why is UMSL able to query peoplesoft on former UMR students on any occasion other than when they apply for enrollment? (Side note: how does the UMR CS dept send snail mail to my current address? I never gave it to them or the university, ever).

And why is an organization that is so inept at one portion of records keeping (marking a simple ticket as paid), able to hunt me down and find me when said screw-up on their end happens?

I don’t believe any organization should be able to retain/query my information that long after I have severed all ties to said organization. Time for me to start a crusade to get all Alumni information purged from UM’s peoplesoft bullshit on a regular basis.

And now, it’s on me to find Beth’s friend’s canceled check and show them proof the thing got paid 6 months ago. F U UMSL! I’ve heard enough horror stories from your current/former students to intentionally stay the hell away, and you still find a way to screw me over.

NBC emailer: Cramer’s advice on Today yesterday was like yelling Fire! in a crowded building.

Cramer’s response: What if there is a fire?

Today show host: There’s a difference between warning people of a fire, and setting the fire.

Burn.

My “skillz” from the past came in handy at work for once! I had to take about 30 minutes of footage and cut it down to a short 5 minute video with title screens, a watermark, and a vcd menu using only what was already pre-installed on my FC6 box at work this week. Go-Go-Gadget ffmpeg/gimp/vcdtools!

Just got off the phone with Beth since I’m at work today, so the rest of the story is second hand.

Cuivre River showed up around 9 this morning and cut the power, the electrician showed up shortly after. After getting the old meter back off, the Cuivre River guy(s) noticed that the line heading into the house was pretty destroyed (charred, frayed, etc). They decided it was safer to replace almost everything. So now we’ve got a new meter bracket, new meter, and new lines going from the meter to my breaker box. They finished up and left a little after 11am. The electrician didn’t know how much the parts cost, so he’s going to send a bill in the next couple days.

Now we REALLY don’t have to worry about shitty power destroying anything this weekend.

I was sitting in Busch III last night waiting for the game to start when Beth called. The power was out at home. More accurately, it was out in SOME of the house. Not good news. I got home around midnight after the game and started playing with breakers, seeing exactly what worked and what didn’t. Mapped out the breakers, and couldn’t find a pattern for the life of me.

I called in to work around 10am to say I wasn’t coming in (alarm clock one of the things that didn’t work). I called an electrician after that, and sat around till 1:30pm waiting for him to show up. After playing around with a multimeter and my breaker box for a few minutes, he tells me theirs a problem with one of the rails coming into the house. The first rail is at 122.8V, but the second was down to 108V. We headed out back to check the meter.

He popped open the cover and pulled the meter off the house like he’s done this before. He looked at it for a second and said there’s my problem. The electricity comes in from Cuivre River Electric into the box, through a bracket into the meter, and out another bracket into my house and the breaker box inside. One of the brackets holding the meter in place has worn loose and there is evidence of arcing, and some melted plastic. The bracket must be replaced.

He called Cuivre River, and they will be out between 9-10am tomorrow morning to shut off the power to my house at their green box so that he can replace the bracket. It should only take 5 minutes to do, but it’s too dangerous to try it in the cramped quarters of my meter box, in the rain. I think I’m going to work tomorrow, but Beth can handle supervising the installation and paying the man for fixing our power. The good news is that we don’t have to worry about shitty power ruining anyones expensive electronics at the Halloween party this weekend.

St. Louis has the following DTV OTA channels that come in perfectly clear in LSL:

• 2-1 KTVIDT
• 4-1 KMOV
• 5-1 KSDK-DT
• 5-2 KSDK-WX
• 9-1 KETC HD
• 9-2 KETCKid
• 9-3 KETC 9
• 9-4 KETCDIY
• 11-1 WB11-DT
• 11-2 WB11-D2
• 30-1 KDNL-DT

Unfortunately non of them are broadcasting above 480p right now. I guess I’ll have to wait until this evening for some HD goodness.

BTW: If you’ve got a choice between the WD-Y57 and the WD-Y57732, go with the Y57. The only things the Y57732 adds (besides $$$) is a 7-in-1 card reader and 3 composite imputs instead of 2.

The good

Whisper quiet. Even when the fan(s) do kick on, I have to hold the machine up to my ear to hear it(them).

Rumors of heat greatly exaggerated. It doesn’t get hot enough to burn skin. It doesn’t even get as hot as my old PowerBook did.

The MagSafe power connector is awesome. I accidentally kick/stepped on the power cord 3 times already, and each time it broke away cleanly.

Fast….as long as you’re only doing one thing at a time. See below.

The Bad

Desperately needs more RAM. 512MB just isn’t enough for OS X. I ordered a 1GB SODIMM from Newegg, should be here by Friday.

Had my first crash within 45 minutes of turning it on. I was just running software update and browsing websites and it completely locked up. No display changes, mouse wouldn’t move, harddisk activity stop, etc. Manually rebooted with the power button, hasn’t happened again.

Right-clicking didn’t work at first. The afore mentioned lockup happened while the 10.4.7 install was in the “finishing up” phase. Apparently it was after writing the package receipt, but before adding the checkbox to System Preferences. I manually downloaded and ran the 10.4.7 combo updater and my right-click works now.

Screen is brighter at the very bottom than at the top. I’m guessing that’s where the backlight on the lcd is located.

Overall

Impressed. Definitely glad I sold the old PowerBook and some other stuff to buy this. Glad I bought it during Missouri’s tax holiday too. It doesn’t look like Apple is going to release a Merom based system before school starts, so I made the right choice. Still, I wonder if the CPU in this thing is socketed….