Vista + XP + Hibernate = Dead Computer

Well it finally happened, dual booting Vista and XP has now hosed my desktop. It appears that at one point when I was using XP it got hibernated instead of properly shutdown. Turns out that if you do anything to XP's disk when it is busy hibernating, such as run a program from the disk it doesn't wake up very well.

Rather it boots, then explorer just keeps restarting every 10 seconds until you shutdown. But that's not all! If you manage to shut the system down during a brief moment when explorer is up it marks all your disk as dirty. Then on the next boot it runs chkdsk, which somehow goes through your OS file system and does some magic. So that when XP tries to boot again you're left with a mouse cursor, and a giant black desktop until force a restart. Ohh did I mention that safemode also gives you a giant black desktop?

Well at least XP didn't eat Vista so my computer isn't totally dead. Only Vista is a giant dog on system resources and so doing anything, like gaming really sucks on it. I guess it's about time I reinstalled XP 64 anyway. I just hadn't planned on doing a big backup/reinstall this week.

I might as well throw this out there. Should I bother putting XP back on or should I switch my desktop over to Linux?

Reasons to use Linux:

• Works well as a desktop
• Could maybe actually do work related to my research on Linux
• Can play UT 2004
• Not Windows

Reasons to use Windows:

• I can play games other than UT 2004
• Desktop is primarily used for gaming
• Really all I can think of is I like gaming
  

Cooking at Home

After eating out most of last week, or eating whatever was easy to cook (like hotdogs). I decided today to make some good food. So tonight is Indian food night. Of course I'm making Chicken Tikka Masala which is about as Indian as General Tso's is Chinese. That doesn't stop it from being good.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Serves : 4

Ingredients

6 Chicken thigh pieces (boneless) (Or use some boneless skinless chicken breasts)

Marinade

• 6 tbsp. Yogurt
• 1 tsp red chili powder
• 1 tbsp Garlic paste
• 1 tsp red chili powder
• 1 tbsp Garlic paste
• 2 tbsp Ginger paste
• 1 tsp Cumin Powder
• 1 tsp Curry Powder (Garam Masala)
• 4-5 tsp lemon juice
• Salt to taste

For Gravy

• 2 Tomatoes(chopped)
• 1 Onion
• 1 tsp Ginger-garlic paste
• ½ tsp. Cumin powder
• ½ tsp. Coriander powder
• ¼ cup Milk
• 1 tsp Sugar
• Salt to taste

Directions

Chicken tikka masala is a two step process, Tikka and Gravy. Grilling the chicken definitely flavors this dish but if you do not have a grill, you could use any oven too. Once you have your chicken grilling, you could start the gravy process in parallel. (I usually just cook the chicken in a pan)

1. Cut chicken into smaller pieces. Drain any water.
2. Mix all ingredients for the marinade and add chicken into it. Set aside for at least 1 hour
3. Grill chicken on hot grill (barbecue) to golden brown. Baste butter (or oil) frequently to ensure that chicken remains tender and moist. Do not overcook.
4. Heat oil and add ginger, garlic paste. Fry a little and add chopped onions.
5. Keep heat on high to slightly caramelize the onions. Caramelizing onions enhances its flavors for this dish.
6. When onions turn golden, add chopped tomatoes and keep frying on medium heat until the oil separates.
7. Add cumin and coriander powder. Mix
8. Add salt and sugar and drop the chicken tikka pieces in it.
9. Let it simmer for 5 minutes on low heat and let the flavors mingle a little.
10. Increase heat to high and incorporate milk slowly. Stirring continously.
11. Once the gravy is of right consistency, reduce heat to low. Prepare any garnish
12. Serve with basmati rice. In the event you don't have basmati rice, white rice will do.
    

(Another hint, if you decide to cook basmati rice you should rinse it as it's a very starchy rice. Rinse it with cold water until the water stops being cloudy.)

I'd have a photo of the food, but my one camera has a dead battery, and my good camera's busted.

Podcasts

Today I thought I'd mention a couple of interesting Podcasts.

The first is the MPR's "The Current" Song of the Day podcast. They feature a variety of music from both local (MN) and other artists. The music tends to be pretty good and given they release one song every day it doesn't take long to accumulate a nice collection of free tunes from them.

I also enjoy listening to the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. This podcast features well Irish and Celtic music and comes out once or twice a month. Unlike the MPR podcast it's usually about a one hour solid block of music. Doesn't work as well as MPR for fitting in with the rest of my music, but it's still fun to listen to.

On a less musical note I enjoy listening to NPR's weekly radio news quiz show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. This radio show features current events, and special guests along with some wacky news. Where else would you ever learn about the Burqini, or scented tires so you can burn some lavender rubber? Plus special guests such as "Elmo", Tony Snow, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer always have something interesting to say.

That's it for now, I might have some more podcast fun later. All the podcasts are available on iTunes along with through the links I've posted here.

The Light It Burns

Well apparently I've finished my transformation into a creature of the night. It appears that spending a couple hours outside in the morning is enough sunlight to cause a large amount of sunburn on my arms and face. Apparently, our ozone layer has shrunk a bit compared to when I was younger as it used to take a lot more sun before I'd burn, that or I'm now a Vampire.

Free TV Online!

AOL now has a free online tv service available at http://video.aol.com/video-category/in2tv/2120 called In2TV. This service bring free and full TV shows to you via the 'net. You can even download high quality versions if you happen to have Windows XP (Mac OS X and XP 64 not supported of course). This service has some high quality shows for free and isn't just full of a bunch of junk.

They have Babylon 5, the old Batman Cartoons, Silverhawks, Thundercats (Ok, these two aren't great but I liked them as a kid), The Adventures of Brisco County Junior, The Fugitive and more. I've only played with it a little bit but so far I'm impressed with the selection given that it's AOL.

High-Def Gaming

My PS 3 component cable has arrived, and I spent last night playing around with high-def. While doing this I learned the following.

1. My Dell 24" LCD doesn't support 1080P over component.
2. High-Def Harry Potter trailers are cool.
3. High-Def games look really nice.
4. PS 2 games look really crappy in comparison.

I tested my one PS 3 game Resistance: The Fall of Man first. This game looks great in high-def. The graphics are crisp, with no noticeable slowdown. While playing online matches it's much easier to pick out your targets compared to on a normal SD TV. Only negatives is that I could actually notice some poor mipmapping on some chain bridges in one of the maps. The quality of the standard def TV makes this completely unnoticeable.

I also gave GTHD a spin. The cars and track all look great. They're all very crisp and the detail amazing. Especially as I fired up GT 4 right afterwards. Comparing GT4 to GTHD in HD makes GT 4 look like complete crap. Doesn't help that the 1080i output setting for GT4 seems busted. Setting it to 1080i makes some stuff look crisper but really does some weird stuff to the graphics. I'm not sure if this a PS 3 bug or just something with GT4. The 480p setting does look ok, but is super chunky and doesn't compare to GTHD. I'm not sure if I can stand the graphics of the game now that I've seen a high def version.

I'll post a few comparison pictures of the what the various games look like in high def later today.

Cable on the Way

My PS 3 Component cable has finally started its journey from Amazon.com. More info on the awesomeness of HD once it gets here.

A New Year

Once again a giant chunk of time has passed since my last post. It's been about 2 months since posted anything here. Nothing to interesting has happened in this time. Mostly I was just busy with schoolwork which is probably not to interesting for others to read about.

So what exciting things have happened in the last couple weeks since break started? I backed my car into a tree causing about $1000 in damages to it. So my car has been at a body shop since the 26th. Apparently, a broken tail light and some small damage to the rear left quarter panel add up quickly. It also appears that the body shop may have broken a door lock while doing their repairs. I'll find out more about that when I pickup my car tomorrow.

In addition to breaking my car, I played some video games (no WoW!) with my family, did some homework, and picked up a 60 GB PS 3 from a local EB Games store the Wed after Christmas. I'll probably put up a review of the PS 3 later. So far I like most of the interface but they do need to add some more features before its media capabilities catch up to that of my hacked Xbox. I also might take a stab of setting up linux on it once I get back to school and can play with it on my 24" LCD monitor.

The one accessory I still need to pick up is a component video cable as they didn't include one in the box. The official Sony one is only about $20 and other offbrands can be had for about the same price. My local Best Buy only carries a $62.99 PsyCable super monster component cable which is way over priced. They also had a $99.99 HDMI cable for the PS 3 which is the same as a $5 cable available online. Since no sanely priced cables were available in my area I need to pick one up in Madison or online.

Trip Album Uploaded

So I've uploaded the only photos I could quickly find of my trip back from CA. You can check out some brush fires in Nevada here. If I come across any other photos I'll add them to the album.

CA to MN

Oct 7, 2006 - 6 Photos

Also if anyone knows a better hosting service with more space let me know, preferrably something free. I've got gigs of photos and manually resizing them or adjusting jpeg compression ratios is a pain. I'm also open to suggestions for software to batch automate such a conversion without messing with the originals.

Been a long while

Well looking at my blog it's been quite a long time since I posted last. While I didn't die during that time I've been busy with school and haven't had much time for posting (that and nothing exciting happens at school :(). Anyhow, I was finally able to migrate my blog to the new blogger beta. So far I'm impressed it managed to migrate my links without any real data loss.

In the last two months since I last posted, I drove from CA to MN. Drove from MN to WI. Had my roommate burn up my apartment's kitchen. Played WoW (acquired my tier 2 epic set). Done schoolwork. Eaten cheese curds. From my trip I have a few pictures of Nevada on fire as we saw lightning strikes start a few brush fires on the way back. I'll try to post something from my trip back over the next couple of weeks.

Quiet week

Well it's been pretty quiet here the last couple of weeks. This last weekend I spent Saturday in San Francisco with a couple of friends from Madison. I managed to get a nice sunburn on my face since I once again forgot to use sunblock. I also learned that it's a long walk from the piers to Lumbard Street, those hills in San Francisco are a pain to walk up.

I spent Sunday in Livermore wine tasting, and it was a lot of fun. Unlike trendy Nappa/Sonoma Livermore has mostly free tastings and some very good wine for reasonable prices. Only one place was charging $25+ for a bottle and their wine wasn't even that good. I spent more than I should have buying wine. Ahh well I'll just have to drink it sometime. The trick now is to get it back to MN/WI without it going bad.

That's it for now. I'll try and post a few pics of San Francisco and my earlier crater trip when I have time.

It went pop when it stopped

Well it seems my air mattress has decided to die on me. As of 6am this morning my mattress has some mysterious leak and loses air at an incredible rate, only silently and without any breeze. Instead the air dissappears quickly from the confines of the mattress and leaves no trace of its escape route. As I haven't had time to find a replacement I get to sleep on the floor for a night. Tomorrow I need to go air matress shopping to find one that fits my bed.

First Repair

My car is going in for it's first service this morning. Sometime over the last month it developped a slow leak in one of the tires. Since driving around on a flat is a bad idea I get to enjoy an hour or two at a tire place while they diagnose and fix the problem.

Stupid Cars.

(Also I'll try and have an update on my trip later, I still have Gigabytes of photos to go through.)

The Adventure Begins

A long weekend stands before me, for four days I have no work, and no repsonsibilities. Starting early tomorrow morning I set out on a long journey, a great adventure.

I venture forth to the uncharted north of the Republic of California, and into the wilds of Oregon. For during my time off I will visit the silent giants standing along the shores of the pacific, explore a cave, and visit an island of wizards.

I plan to document my adventures through pictures and text but it we shall see how things go. With that I shall head to rest before I begin my journey early on the morrow.

I just want you to know who I am

It's been a while since I made a post. Now where do I start. I've been both busy with work and yet had nothing to do while at work? Strange Huh?

Outside of work I've been busy as well. On the WoW front my guild has managed to make it to the final boss of Black Wing Lair, Nefarian. So far after about 5 tries we have him down to phase 2 so we're doing pretty well.

In the real world I've been to a few LAN parties, woke up at the crack of dawn to watch the world cup, and been to a concert in the last couple of weeks. Of those I have to say last night's concert was probably the most fun I've had in the last week or so. I went to the Goo Goo Dolls/Counting Crows summer tour concert held at the Shoreline Amphitheater. Of the two bands I enjoyed the Goo Goo Dolls the most. I'm just not as into the music of the Counting Crows. This was the first time I've seen either of these groups live and I have to say they have a totally different dynamic. During a live show the music has more more energy and yet many of the songs had a different slower pace.

Now I need to decide if I liked the music well enough to buy their latest CD. I almost did the night of the concert but the "merchant booth" was charing over $15 and I wasn't sure if the extra cost ws going to the band or some third party.

I'd upload a few pictures of the concert except I managed to leave my camera at work and so didn't take any :(. I tried to take some photos on my cellphone but it really doesn't work that well.

Uni-Man

On the way to work today I saw someone with a sweet ride on their way to work. It wasn't a ferrari, lotus, porsche, or maserati (those are a dime a dozen).

What I saw was a guy riding a unicycle.

Photo Time!

Today I have a bunch of pictures to post. First I have a bunch of pictures of the top of Donner Pass which is at about 7,000 feet. This pass is crossed by I-80 as you enter California from Nevada.







I have a few more pictures of the pass but I need to find a good place to host a photo album.

In addition to these last photos of my trip I have a few pictures of my apartment.






Finally I have a closeup of that set of Katana's you can see in the first photo. My Dad purchased these for me in Chinatown when he went in the San Francisco Tuesday. They look kinda cool and the whole set cost $26 after tax! If you pull them out the appear to be steal and a bit greasy. They really remind me of practice blades for Iaido but less practical.

Day One

I've managed to survive day one of my summer internship at a small fabless-semiconducter design house. Even so we've had a few interesting changes from last year. Apparently, due to space constraints interns don't get cubes, we get sit in the hall, with a modular desk thing attached to the outside of the cube we sit by. At least the hall we sit in is by the giant glass windows on the side of the building so at least I get some sunlight out of the deal. The downside is that I don't get a desk, just a sort of hanging table without any storage/drawers. Next year interns will probably end up in the parking lot :P.

Another interesting change is that we no longer get phones, instead we were given some usb headsets and use some software phone. To bad the headsets suck and can't pick up your voice at all, don't ever buy a Logitech Premium 250 USB headset. It is impossible to turn it up enough to pick up a voice without shouting. The IP phone software at least appears to work well except for our crappy headsets. This sort of makes me feel like I'm working in a Dilbert cartoon.

In more interesting news I get to do something completely new to me, and once again I'm forced to learn a ton of new stuff. Basically nothing but my knowledge of internal chip code names is useful from last year. But being thrown into the fire is what internships are all about! I also found out some of the work I did last year is still being actively used, worked on and has been slightly improved. Apparently, my internship last summer has had some long lasting effect on what's going on at my employer!

Busy Day

Well today we (my Dad and I) put another 700 miles on my car. We drove all the way from Evanston, WY to Rocklin, CA, crossing the states of Utah, and Nevada. This last trip was a bit more exciting than the last couple, as we got to see some cool mountains and enjoyed a few rain, sleet, and snowstorms. I got the honor of driving anytime we approached mountainous terrain as my Dad dislikes driving in the mountains. This meant I got to drive from WY to the middle of the Utah salt flats, and from Reno, NV to CA.

First I have a few pictures of Utah just outside Salt Lake city at the first reststop after entering the state:




This is a rather pretty part of Utah and a fun canyon to drive down. At one time pioneers came down this same canyon on their way to California and Oregon. The last picture gives a brief glimpse of the road ahead. About 10-20 minutes further into Utah you drive by where the bobsled, luge, and skiing events of the 2002 Olympics at Salt Lake city were held.

Next we have a picture of part of the area where the olympics where held along with a picture of the Great Salt Lake (from a moving car):




Finally, we have a few pictures from the small set of mountains in between Utah, and Nevada. As you can see in these it's gotten a bit colder and it's now snowing instead of raining on us.




That's currently it for pictures. I have a few pictures from the top of Donner Pass which is between NV, and CA but they are on my other camera (and about 5mb a picture). Can anyone suggest a place I can host a bunch of pictures for free? The mountains between CA, and NV are pretty cool but I don't have any pictures of the trip as I was busy driving. My Dad was to busy cringing on every turn to take pictures (it turns out that a Mazda 3 corners really well :D).

After arriving in Rocklin, my Dad and I went and saw the new X-Men III movie after eating some dinner. I'll post my thoughts on the movie later after I've given others a chance to see it first. (One hint, STAY UNTIL THE END OF THE CREDITS)

Night-time Driving

Here are a couple pictures of my dash at night. When taking the photo's I didn't realize my camera would automagically set the shutter speed really low so they turned out sort of blurry.

First is a picture of the dash when you first enter the car:


This next picture is of the dash before you turn on your headlights:


Next we turn on the lights, and we get the blue back:


Finally a picture of the console with the stereo, clock, and temperature readout. You can't make them out since they are all in black on that giant glowing red bar. A tiny bit of camera movement loses the readout: