Dumping Grounds

• A pile of old software manuals
• More of those cables (expect this for a few days, I have a LOT of them)

I have the following games available for the upcoming Dallas Stars season:

Mon, Oct 23 7:30PM Vancouver
Mon, Nov 20 7:00PM Colorado SOLD
Fri, Nov 24 7:30PM Los Angeles
Wed, Dec 6 7:30PM Phoenix SOLD
Thu, Dec 14 7:30PM NY Rangers
Sat, Dec 23 7:00PM Edmonton
Tue, Jan 9 7:30PM Phoenix
Mon, Jan 15 3:00PM Los Angeles SOLD
Tue, Feb 6 7:00PM Minnesota
Sun, Feb 11 2:30PM Colorado
Fri, Feb 23 7:30PM Anaheim
Sun, Feb 25 2:30PM Vancouver SOLD
Fri, Mar 2 7:30PM Columbus
Sun, Mar 18 7:00PM Phoenix
Mon, Apr 2 7:00PM St. Louis SOLD
Fri, Apr 6 7:30PM Anaheim

Good seats, basically the first row of the upper deck, in between the blue lines. $74 per game. E-mail me ( mcave at matthewcave.com) if interested or leave a comment. First come, first served.

No, I have not forgotten about “Crap I threw Away Today”

I was simply out of town for a few days, and have had a little bit of a hectic time since I got back.

Tonight it resumes. Today’s casualties:

• A floor fan that Delaney chewed up the cable when she was much younger (and was lucky she didn’t the get shock of a lifetime)
• A pretty sizable pile of networking cables that my current computer could not use even if I wanted to (AppleTalk, 10-base-2 Ethernet)

I think I have already posted that I sold my Powerbook. I was using it as a front end for MythTV in my living room, and it had been a source of some level of frustration. Intermittent lock ups, pauses, and the ability to crash the back end (which was upstairs) all had me spending far too much time fiddling and troubleshooting my setup.

Well, now, it’s gone.

I have been giving some thought to possibly using some of the money that I got from the Powerbook to buy a Mini, which would fit the bill of DVR front end MUCH better than the Powerbook did.

Then it occurred to me that I had a really old G4 Mac upstairs that had been unhooked for maybe two years. I wonder if it could run MythTV. Heck, at first, I wondered if it even had DVI. Yes, it had DVI, and amazingly, it runs MythTV like a champ. I am truly amazed. It’s digitized video from analog cable… no one is going to mistake it for HDTV… but it looks as good as my TiVo.

I also (since the G4 has no wireless capability) moved my AirPort Express downstairs so I could plug the G4 directly into it. This was, I was sure, going to degrade my wireless network considerably, as I used the AirPort as a repeater in the middle of my house.

I could not have been more wrong. Moving the AirPort Express downstairs was the perfect move. Not a single crash so far while streaming Myth video. There are occassional pauses, but these are usually when the Mac is trying to do something in the background (This is one slow computer, 400MHz, and Myth is all it can do at one time) and right at the very beginning of a video, while it is still caching.

All in all, I’m thrilled. I have the same capabilites downstairs I had before (with the exception of the power to run games… which I have never done, not even once) and I have a bit more green in my pocket. Not to mention that I have one less computer upstairs gathering dust (which is almost like throwing something away).

Right?

And I posted this entry from my living room couch with the wireless keyboard I already owned, using my LCD TV as a display. You may not be impressed, but I think it’s very, very cool.

Not to mention, it has rained ALL day.

It has been a very good day.

Well, here’s today’s list:

• A docking station for a Dell portable I no longer own.
• A wireless router that no longer works.
• A power brick for some unknown appliance.
• A microsoft mouse that died some time ago.
• An ethernet cable that worked fine, but the little plastic notch was proken on one end, so it didn’t snap into place.

Today’s crap list:

• Two mementos from my company for being on an account 8 years ago. And I wasn’t that involved on the account even then. Gone.
• A battery holster from a portable computer I no longer own.
• A pair of dyed purple shoes that once belonged to some woman who lived in my house. (My best guess: my sister)
• Two boxes from old CD-burners I bought.
• A grocery sack full of old cassette tapes.

And as a special treat today, I’m going to make a trip to the dump to get rid of some things formerly featured on the â??soon to be crapâ? list:

• Four fluorescent light bulbs.
• The kids’ bike left in my yard (damaged beyond repair)
• probably some old computer parts.

I know that I’m using up too much crap on one day, and I won’t have stuff left over for tomorrow… but on top of all that I sold my venerable G4 Powerbook yesterday. Complete with all the packing materials! See one person’s trash is another’s treasure. To the recipient, it was just like opening a brand new Powerbook. To me, it was getting rid of a few extra boxes and some styrofoam.

You didn’t think I would keep this up for even one day, did you?

Well, today I raided a closet that I have not been in for years, assuming that anything in there could be safely thrown away.

• a stack of old floppy disks (I don’t even have a computer that HAS a floppy anymore)
• a pile of crap from high school, including a note from my ex-wife where she threatened to break up with me… ah, if I had only known then what I know now… /sigh
• a ton of really, really old insurance bills
• a notebook from my recruiting trip to the University of Texas
• a bunch of old bubble wrap
• a cardboard box to carry all that crap in

This weekend, most of the stuff from yesterday’s Soon to Go list bites it.

New stuff soon to bite it

• a stack of old 45s (hell, if you are under 28, you probably don’t even know what a 45 is.)
• exactly how many editions of Trivial Pursuit can one person own?

Nobody browses over there yet, so I figured I would try to steer some folks in that direction.

Couple of cute pics of my dogs.

Go see: http://www.matthewcave.com/

And I certainly would not complain if you clicked on an ad. Or two.

A lesson I have definitely learned from my weight loss adventures is that it’s not how much you can do toward a goal in one day, it’s the little bit that you do every single day that is effective.

To that end, I’m going to put some public pressure on myself to get rid of some of the junk in my house every day. Not a lot, just some. I’m literally going to try to do this every day.

Hence, Crap I Threw Away Today. My (hopefully) daily listing of things that I have been hanging on to for no real reason other than the fact that I am a terrible pack rat. Stuff like food wrappers, general garbage, and stuff in my fridge doesn’t count. This is all junk that I have been hanging on to for some period of time. I’ll also list things that are going to go, soon, unless someone wants them.

Today’s List

• the box my 30GB iPod came in
• an old EverQuest manual
• a halloween costume my sister once wore (she lived with me for a while)
• a box that contained the motherboard that became my MythTV computer
• some old 10-base-2 ethernet cable

Soon to Go

• an assortment of Appletalk cables
• at least one, maybe two Macintosh Duo 230’s
• a Macintosh Quadra 800
• a Mac clone that contained a PowerPC 604e chip
• several ADB keyboards
• maybe an ADB mouse or two
• an old Sanyo stereo
• a Sony DVD player
• a boy’s BMX bike that was left in my yard
• 4 8-foot flourescent light bulbs

No, I do not think that all of the Soon to Go items hold any appeal for anyone. It also serves as a â??To Doâ? list for future days for me.

While I thought it was nice until today, I can now explain to anyone considering an HDTV why they should get one in only one word.

Football.

Wow. Everything from the pre-game show to (most of) the commercials looked terrific. Although why the Best Buy “We pledge to do HDTV right” commercials were in standard definition, I have no idea at all. That seems kind of like featuring the 2004 model in a Ford truck commercial.