I think it may be the latter.  I am departing from my usual technophile view of sorts and taking a introspective look at some things that have been on my mind.  A lot has changed over the past few years, frankly, over last six months or so.  It has been a rapid fire of change and I guess that is what life is all about: CHANGE.

Home ownership, bills, working a lot, puppy, more bills, working around the house…  It feels like I barely have time to breathe most of the time.  I guess that is what life is about, the next phase in a way.  Less time for friends, less time for family, building my own family, my own life.  Not being in college anymore is a total departure from what I have been come accustomed to.  It is nice on one hand.. no homework or projects sucking the life out of me..  Now it is just house projects and work projects doing that.  It was a trade of sorts.  I am happy with my job and it is a lot less time consuming than school was.

I was on a walk with the dog last night and I was remembering back when I was in High School; it seems like a lifetime ago.  A different town a different day.  I remember lifting weights in my parents basement at 1:00am listening to the radio.  It was just a neat time in my life.  I didn’t have many worries or concerns; I was young.

I have seen 1:00am only a couple times since I have been out on my “own”.  I think that is good having a schedule and such.

This post has nothing and everything to do with technology.  Technology is a passion in my life and it has taken me to where I am today, but technology is playing a different role in my life recently.  Since I have less time to see people that I have seen for years technology is a great way to keep in touch and see what people are up to.  Actually a friend I had in High School contacted me on Facebook yesterday, which was pretty cool.  I haven’t seen her in years.  She has a cute kid.

I have been on Facebook, Myspace, and other social networks for many years, but I think their role has changed.  I think when I was younger they were an addition to face to face encounters and now they take that place.  It is good, I think, because otherwise I would not no communication with my hectic schedule and life.

I don’t know if I am growing up or growing old.  Maybe neither.  I am changing because life is change.  It’s definitely not easy.  There are so many sacrifices that I am not used to.  With responsibility comes sacrifice to a degree.  I gain so much from my sacrifice though.  It’s a good trade.

I found it quite difficult to find information on how to convert basic cable (plain old cable) into composite.  This is for the folks who have cable, but don’t want to pay for extended services and cable boxes.  There are two verbiages that you will find on your web searches:

1)  Just use an old VCR!
2)  Just use an old computer!

End of thread…  End of post… That is where the story ends and it leaves a lot to be desired.  I have problems with both of these solutions.

1)  The VCR is archaic
2)  I don’t want to leave a computer running in a room that will be used sparingly
3)  I don’t want to wait for a computer to boot up

This can be negated if you have a cable box that already does that.  But there are still people out there without cable boxes.  Or don’t want a cable box in every room or on every device; I’m sure the cable companies want you to.  I can’t seem to justify the extra $30 + fees for the box to move away from basic cable.  Renting a cable box seems like a dirty tactic to me; in the long run they have to make a killing.

I have NetFlix so if I want to watch a movie I can just get it off of there.  Also, there is NetFlix streaming which is awesome.  I do not want to give the cable companies more money – it’s already highway robbery.

The problem with this is that projectors do not have a TV tuner.  It doesn’t know what to do with the coax connection.  Projectors cannot tune (most of them that are out there anyway).  But I believe there is a happy medium… a product by Ambery.com -> Super Video to WXGA Converter.  This device works much like a cable box expect that you can buy it and use it how you like.

It takes a coax connection (Clear QAM), it won’t decrypt any of the pay channels like a real cable box, and converts it to composite, VGA, or S-Video.  Composite will most likely be your best choice for a projector.  I believe they also have one with component connections.  If you are looking for HDMI I’m not sure what will be needed – I’m guessing an upconverter of some sort.

Clear QAM is important.  If the device is not Clear QAM then it will not be able to tune to the cable frequencies.  If you have been looking at the Analog-to-Digital most of the ones that I have found do not have clear QAM meaning they will not work with cable; you will need an antenna to retrieve the signals.

(more…)

After many years in school and working lowly, but rewarding, jobs in IT, I truly feel learning is one of the best attributes that I possess.  It is an attribute that everyone should strive for and keep close to them no matter what.

As I have stated many times before… I am an avid listener of podcasts and video podcasts.  I love them because they help me stay up-to-date in this frequently changing world of IT.  I would have to say my newest vidcast that I have been enjoying lately has been HAK5.  They are just a bunch of real down to earth people talking about technology!  They are a bit goofy but that’s okay with me.  I believe they were recently added to revision3, and I’m quite glad they were.

I really enjoyed the piece by Chris Gerling on reverse engineering on .NET applications (and more).  This is a very handy skill to have especially since I work with .NET.  As I watched the podcast I didn’t think much about it.  I found it to be very cool and engrossing; tres geek.  I like how they broke the segment down onto multiple episodes (inside of being deluged).

Come a few weeks later (now), a couple of the network guys came to my cube and asked me if I could help them with an application a previous developer wrote.  I politely said “Sure! Not a problem”, which they responded with “Great one catch though, all we have is the EXEcutable and we need it ASAP”.  I think that was actually two catches, but anyhow.

I said calm and coolly, “all we need to do is decompile the application get the source code and we’ll be ready to go”.  I suspect it was not the answer they were expecting.  I was calm and cool because I just watched the great hak5 episodes that involved reverse engineering!  Hot dog.  I earned major cred points for my attitude and how quickly I was able to reproduce the code for the problem.

After inspecting the code we found the problem to be a configuration code; not a development bug.  This was such a critical step the problem solving process.  This also proves that learning is a lifelong process that needs to continue beyond school and become apart of your life.

I’ve been quite awhile, but it is time to write again. I have a lot things I’ve been wanting to discuss and explore, but haven’t had the time. Hopefully things should start to calm down again; probably not.

I started a new job as a Software Development Engineer, which I’m quite excited about. I think it is a great start to my career. Though it is tough to be the new guy at a company. Having to prove yourself and your worth is always a challenge, but I think I have a great opportunity to succeed.

Cheers.

Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope everyone has a safe and fun holiday with loved ones and friends.