Category Archives: Journal

Clearing out cobwebs

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In classic blogger form, I apologize for the length between actual posts. I long ago set up automated posts that compiles my activity on various services, but I doubt anyone actually reads them. I mean, I doubt anyone is reading these posts but, I digress.

In time since I last posted, Nicole and I managed to not only find a house for sale, but we also bought it. We’ve started renovating it preparing for our move with happens in a couple days. We’ve even started a blog about the process.

I’m still working at the awesome Substantial, though at the rate they’re growing, it feels like I haven’t met even half the people that now work there. I’m also still working for Wizards of the Coast, albeit even less than I was previously, as I’ve requested to be put on the back burner while we work on the house and try to get moved in. I’m also still doing work for Nology Media at times, and their growth rate is probably double that of Substantial’s. In any case, all that adds up to me being incredibly busy. Any free time I have lately is filled now with playing Black Ops, usually for an hour or so, just to get me away from a keyboard and mouse (Magic Trackpad, actually, but you get my point).

Because of how busy I am, many of my side projects are suffering greatly:

  • TweetMe.TV has barely left the planning stage1.
  • TweetMe.me has been in barely maintenance mode.
  • Prototype Apps barely has a working alpha, and I’ve already considered switching technology.
  • Seek and Destroy is also undergoing a technology change.
  • Validate on Save has had more work done by contributors than myself lately (yay open source!)
  • and there’s a bunch more (probably on my github that I haven’t touched in a long while.

Ah well, maybe I’ll be able to get to some of those this summer2.

In other news: I started drinking this Peanut Passion smoothie from Emerald City Smoothies for lunch. They’re ridiculously good. Nicole put together a recipe so I could make them at home. It goes something like:

  • 1 banana
  • 1 half pint of strawberry yogurt
  • 1 half pint of milk
  • 2 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter
  • 2 tablespoons of granola or cereal

Blend together until smooth. The measurements aren’t exact, you could practically use any amount you want, it will most likely come out good. I usually throw in a tablespoon of grape or strawberry jelly as well. A coworker at Substantial, Shawn, suggested we get a hand immersion blender; we did that, and we basically just toss everything into a large enough cup and blend away.

  1. Developing for Twitter lately seems to be hit and miss. My guess is they’re making it harder for Twitter clients to compete, but anyone else wanting to use the Twitter platform is getting caught in the dragnet. ↩

  2. hahahah! ↩

Comcast’s New Enhanced Security

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Comcast added some extra security measures recently that practically blocked us out of our own account. It’s a long story, and while I’m sure you’d love hearing me complain about it, I’m just going to skip it.

In any case, I got this sent to my comcast.net email address this morning:

Dear MATTHEW AUAYAN,

Our records show that you recently changed the email password on your account. If you did not authorize this change, please call Comcast at 1-800-COMCAST and we’ll be happy to assist in any way we can.

Your security is top priority at Comcast! To learn more, visit our FAQs at www.comcast.com.

Best regards, The Comcast Team\r\n[EventId:60097249:/EventId]

I bet when my Comcast phone service goes out, they diligently call me on my Comcast phone line to notify me of the interruption of service1.

  1. After getting home yesterday, it turns out our modem resets if you try to make any calls or receive any calls. I called in to report it, and scheduled for a tech to come down and replace it. I hung up, thought that was that, until I got a voicemail from Comcast saying they couldn’t confirm the appointment, so while being sarcastic in the previous paragraph, I wasn’t too far off. Luckily, I had my number changed to my cell phone, but unfortunately I have spotty reception (AT&T *cough*) at the house (hence the Comcast voice service), so it got kicked directly to Google voice, née GrandCentral. ↩

This Weekend…

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…I worked over at Wizards of the Coast. There’s a Grand Prix tournament (record breaking turnout this weekend) for Magic: The Gathering over in Madrid, so I was all UTC+1. During my downtown there on Friday night / Saturday morning, I played Sins of a Solar Empire, and on Saturday night / Sunday morning, I built a very simple MVC-style templating system for a friend.

After work, I played Modern Warfare 2 (on the PS3 — you can probably guess what my PSN name is) and set a personal kill streak record (22 kills!) and played a match without dying.

I reapplied thermal paste on Nicole’s MacBook. I don’t know why, but from the factory it looks like they applied thermal paste like its purpose was to insulate these chips.

Last December, my nephew accidentally bumped a table, causing a glass of water to spill right into the back vents. I took the MacBook apart completely, hunting for liquid, but I’m guessing a combination of Nicole’s quick reaction, winter’s insanely dry air, and the insanely hot wood stove at my parents’, and just taking it apart took care of it all. Of course, I didn’t have any thermal paste at the time and combine that with the incredibly thick layer that was laid down… you can imagine it wasn’t doing it’s job very efficiently.

I figured out the best thing to use to apply thermal paste is the back of a plastic spoon. While I’m at it, allow me to also give you a couple more, what the french call, le pro-tips:

  • Use tape, sticky side up, to keep screws from getting lost. I also keep the screws arranged analogously to their spatial relationship of the machine I’m taking apart. Keeps me from getting lost, as well. A large magnet might work as well, but I’ve got a semi-irrational fear of large magnets in proximity to computers1.

  • Stick a small magnet on your screw driver to temporarily magnetize it, to keep the tiny little screws from falling off and into your machine. Yeah, I know what I said in the last tip. Please also note that I qualified that with “semi-irrational”.

  • Backup before you do any of this. In fact, backup before you backup.

Now, I’m blogging it up while eating a bowl of ramen, as if I were some sort of nerd.

  1. Unless you’re talking about an insanely strong magnet sitting on top of your hard drive, you’ll be fine. If you want, see a guy destroy his drive with a magnet, watch this video (I doubt the magnet erased any data; the drive was probably destroyed by the magnet pulling the read/write head right into the platters. ↩