Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

I know, this is more a topic for Monday debate/discussion and not Friday night. But I've been waiting on a freecycler with a Blackberry who was supposed to come over earlier.

Apparently the freecycle movement is catching on. Post a wanted or offer notice on the local freecycle list, and see who's interested. Sure beats setting something by the curb and wondering if it's going to be picked up before the trash men get there. And it's supposed to keep stuff out of the landfills.

However, it's been my personal experience that people are no longer in a big hurry to collect their goods. Case in point: Two weeks ago (June 24), I posted a notice for some DS/DD disks. Last week (June 30), I posted a note for some DS/HD disks. I had a few takers and offered to split the lot among the claimants. One claimant has already come by to pick them up. Two claimants asked me to mail the disks to them, which I did. (I fronted the postage, which I should get after all the boxes arrive at their destination.) I've been in email contact with two of the claimants (including the Blackberry user), but due to scheduling and timing conflicts, I've not yet been able to give the claimants their disks. Two other claimants haven't responded to their email reminders from me, and I'm about to write them off as no-shows.

Do people really have a short memory and forget (or delete) their email from previous days? Are people just too darn busy to remember? I really hate having to remind people. Or is it the high cost of gas that's making it prohibitive for people to pick up the items they claimed via the list? I've seen a few posts on the freecycle lists which state that the person wanting certain goods will only travel so far to pick up items. I wonder if that's going to be a trend. If that's the case, less and less people may freecycle.

Now that I've gone through most of my floppy disks, I have two empty media storage modules -- one for CD-Rs and one for floppies. I'm in the process of selling these on eBay. I have pictures, a description of the modules, and the weights of the modules. For those of you have already sold items on eBay, what else should I be doing?

[Updated 14:45 to add links to items]
Exponent Cassetta media storage unit for CD and DVD media
Exponent Cassetta media storage unit for floppy disks

It's time for the Capitol Steps' quarterly radio program, "Politics Takes A Holiday". If your local NPR station doesn't carry it, go here to download a RealAudio version of the program.

http://www.capsteps.com/radio/

Two weeks ago, I ordered a Creative Labs MuVo V100 MP3 player/voice recorder. Creative was running a sale on them; the 2 Gb model was around $30. I wanted the MuVo because it was a combination MP3 player and voice recorder.

It arrived yesterday afternoon. I spent a few hours last night and this morning playing with it, installing the software, and trying to get the thing to work. The voice recorder works, but I gotta crank up the volume to hear it. I plugged it in to my computer, which recognized the device but didn't (and still doesn't) assign it a drive letter. I can plug it into my laptop, which does recognize it and assigns it a drive letter. I tried copying MP3 files to it, but it stopped at around the fourth or fifth track.

I went to Creative's support page. What they suggested didn't work. I couldn't find a phone number for their support, but I found a place where I could send them an email.

I'll play with it some more, but if I don't get results within a week, I think I'll try to send it back.

Has anyone else had similar problems with their MP3 players?

Fri 6/27: Went to Buffalo Wings & Rings for lunch and downloading. (They have wi-fi!) Then did some shopping at Dollar Tree and Dollar General. Then went to a doctor's appointment. Had dinner with the Usual Suspects at Olive Garden, and then saw Wall-E. I liked it; it was cute.

Sat 6/28: Went to the local UU church for breakfast and a little bit of work on the exterior. It rained, so all we could do was to replace nails with screws and cover the screw heads with putty. Drove to Indianapolis for lunch and a ManKind Project Integration Groups Council meeting. After the meeting was over, I received a message from tollers that she was stuck in Anderson while her truck was being repaired. And so I drove to Anderson, and got lost a few times trying to find the O'Reilly Auto Parts store she was at. Eventually, I found her. We went to IHOP for dinner and good conversation, stopped at an ATM, bought a book at Walgreens, and dropped her off before heading home to Dayton. I think she tells the tale better than I do.

Sun 6/29: Overslept. Was late to UU services, but they let me in anyway. Picked up M and had a great time at Splash Moraine. Stopped for dinner at McDonald's. Called my parents. Counted and divided around 200 DS/DD floppy disks that are going to 4 people via the local Freecycle list.

I'm cruising download.com, looking for new software utilities I can download for use on my system. So far, I downloaded the new version of AVG (note: AVG 7.x will no longer be able to get update files as of Wednesday! Or so they claim), WinZip, VLC Media Player, FLV Player, YouTube Downloader, Media Player Classic, Codec Pack 1, and IrfanView. I think most of these are listed in their list of top 25 downloads.

I also got Firefox, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader, Apple QuickTime Player, Note Tab Light, OpenOffice, WinMerge, Semagic, Rhapsody's player (I like being able to listen to up to 25 songs a month for free), and Winamp.

Is there anything else on this site -- or any other site -- that I should consider downloading? What are your favorites? I know I asked this before recently, but new and updated programs come out daily.

Over the weekend, I stopped at Target and picked up a Linksys WRT54G wireless router for $35. This one's been on my wish list for a while, and Target had a great price for it. I don't have high-speed internet yet, but in the meantime, I want to be able to use it as a wireless hub between my desktop and my laptop, instead of having to transfer files using a flash-memory drive.

Before purchasing and installing the router, I tried networking them together using my existing equipment -- a wired hub -- but neither machine could find the other. (I really hate the networking in XP; I can't view other machines on my network the same way I could in Win9x. Or maybe I hate it because I don't understand it.)

So this morning, after getting tired of erasing floppies, I put in the install CD and let the upgrade advisor do its work. Problem is, it's configured as if the average home user is going to use it for high-speed internet, so it keeps asking for an internet connection. I know I can log into the router directly via a web browser and examine the settings.

So...how do I do this? Can it be done? And how easy would it be to reconfigure once I get high-speed internet?

One of my decluttering tasks is to reduce the amount of floppy disks I have. I still use them occasionally, but I certainly don't need a boatload of 'em. Before I try to sell them or give them away, I want to wipe them and make sure there are no viruses on them. That may take some time.

I also have copies of old software on floppy disk, including DOS 5, DOS 6, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1. Will I ever use them again? Highly doubtful. But the packrat in me wants to burn copies of the floppies onto a CD for possible later use. (Except for the stuff that isn't Y2K compliant, like Sidekick 2.0. This stuff is so old that the local computer recycler probably won't take them. Would I ever come across an old 486 or older machine? By this time, it would be over 10 years old. I can still keep the boot disks, or if they get misplaced, grab a new one at bootdisk.com.

This is the dillemma I face. I don't want to throw out the floppies and take up landfill space, especially if the disks contain something that somebody might want.

Any takers?

Fri 6/13: Took M to a doctor's appointment in the afternoon. Then went to McD's for lunch before we arrived home for the rest of the afternoon. Having M home with me threw both my schedule and my to-do-list out the window. I received the copy of PartitionMagic I purchased on EBay, and spent some time working on reconfiguring the laptop after taking M home. I completely missed and forgot about dragon_pet's and mrs_keradon's graduation ceremonies. Congrats to you both!

Sat 6/14: Got up awfully early. Went to the Boston Stoker to do some downloading. Went to Batteries Plus to try to exchange the laptop battery I purchased on Wednesday. (It wouldn't hold a charge.) Then went with R and M to the Newport Aquarium, the Newport Italian Festival (M went to ride a few rides), and BB Riverboats. The three of us had dinner at Brio Tuscan Grille. Originally, the trip was only supposed to include the Aquarium, but I later added the dinner as a way of saying thank you to R for her appearance at the child support mistake-of-fact hearing. After arriving home, there was nothing to do, and nothing on TV was worth watching, so I watched The Natural, which I borrowed from the library earlier in the week.

Sun 6/15: Went to the UU Mens' Group and to UU Services. Today's sermon was about Michael Servetus, whom my mind keeps wanting to confuse with Miguel de Cervantes. Picked up M and we went to Splash Moraine, a local waterpark. M got to go on the big tube slide with me this time. Went to Marion's Piazza for dinner and split a large cheese pizza with her. Discovered that I developed a bad case of sunburn on my body, and smeared aloe vera gel on whatever body parts my arms could reach. Called my parents. Tried to unwind by watching the Weather Channel and making a to-do list for Monday.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday dragon_pet!

On a lark, I plugged in my wireless card to my "new" laptop (called "tardis mark III", the Dell Latitude CPx) at home, and saw that all but one of my neighbors have secured their wireless networks. I tried connecting to the unsecured network and was able to get in. Score! This afternoon, I asked one of my next-door neighbors if he had a wireless connection and gave the name of it. He said that was his. I explained that I was able to get into his network, and advised him to secure it by putting a password on it. Amazingly, he doesn't seem to mind me accessing it. I'm not savvy enough (or stupid or malicious enough) to try to get to his computer(s) through the wireless network, which was his concern. (And mine.)

So, what are the ramifications of this? I don't intend to make a habit of siphoning his bandwidth. I'll still make trips to the library, Panera Bread, and Boston Stoker for my heavy duty downloading.