Trey’s Blog|brain spillage!

Pulled from a daily devotional:

Sometimes we come to an unhappy place in our lives. If we examine ourselves on those days, we will most likely discover that the things that make us unhappy are the fruit of the choices that we made earlier.

Today can be a new start. I think God gave us twenty-four-hour days because He knew that was all we could handle. His mercies are new every morning (see Lamentations 3:22-23). You can start over this morning and live today for the Lord. Determine to follow wherever God leads you, and do whatever He tells you to do. You can expect better tomorrows when you live right today.

One thing I’ve kind of lost track of in the last two weeks is living each day to the fullest. Before this point, I would often send simple messages to people (often random friends) stating Happy Monday or Tuesday or whatever day it was. I would typically get a response back like “Thanks!”, but on occasion I would get someone asking why I sent them that. To those people I would tell them that each day we wake, we should take full advantage of the opportunities the Lord has given us. He chose to give us more time to impact others lives. We should celebrate these opportunities. As I rebuild my faith in the Lord, I think this outlook will grow exponentially. I’m thankful for what I have today.

As many of us work our way through life, we never take the time to notice those around us. We take for granted the people that are in our lives and we don’t really appreciate the impact they have. In many cases, people may step out of our lives, and we don’t even realize they’ve gone.

If we all just take a moment to look around, you may notice those who are around us. Each and everyone one of these people has impacted us in one way or another. Some people will enter our lives and remain there for a long time, while others come in quickly and leave at the same rate. Both cases have changed how we live. That impact could be small, or it could be large. Sometimes our musical tastes are broadened, or our food tastes expand to new things. Sometimes our whole perception of life is altered. Regardless how these people have affected our lives, they have. These changes are very important and should be appreciated. These people no matter how minute the impact, should be appreciated. We should take some time out of our day and tell someone around us that we appreciate them. We need to tell them before they leave this intersection of our lives.

A dear friend of a friend, once said, “Good people change the way you live.” Kyle could not have been more right. I never had the opportunity to meet Kyle Ritcheske, but he had a trememdous impact on many lives. He was good people. I hope all of you realize what good people you have around you and don’t forget to live.

I just purchased my first computer in 2 years.  For me, this is a big deal.  That last computer was a Mac Mini that I still use quite a bit.  Since the purchased of that Mac Mini, I decided I would not purchase a computer other than an Apple.  Just before Black Friday, I purchased a refurbished MacBook Pro.  Why refurbished?  While I really appreciate the design and software provided by Apple, they are very proud of their products and charge the end user for that.  A refurbished Mac puts the computer in my price range.  Is it worth it?  Well, that really depends on the user.  I’m completely happy with my purchase.  It works just as advertised.

This purchase made me realize something.  I’m very fond of most Apple Products.  In my collection, I have a MacBook Pro, two Mac Minis, an Apple TV, an iPhone, an iPod Touch, two 4G iPods, a 1G iPod Nano, and a 2G iPod Shufle.  Though it is not a complete collection, I think Apple has done well to get my money.

The Apple TV always seemed like one of those devices that didn’t quite fit my needs.  It lacks one very important component from being a good DVR, the actual TV tuner to record from.  It lacks one thing from being a super DVD player… the DVD player.  So what is it good for?  Streaming media from the Internet or your home network, and it does it well.  Out of the box, this device is very polished, but limited to YouTube as its source for Internet media.  While this seems nice at first, it gets old very quick.  This is where the ATV USB Creator comes in.  This project has tapped into hidden resources of the Apple TV by exploiting a USB designed for Service Only, and opening up capabilities that were disabled by Apple.  Probably one of the most important features is enabling SSH on the Apple TV so the device is now reachable via command line as well as through SFTP.  The feature that caught my interest was the ability to add applications to the set available through the Apple TV interface.  More specifically, I wanted to install Boxee to gain access to Hulu.com through my television.  Boxee is in Alpha testing at this time, but I was given access to test, and test I did.  Though the occasional bug does popup, its performance is very good.  The only issue I’ve found is getting a decent wireless connection from my office to my television downstairs.

Would I recommend the Apple TV?  If you are really into media and streaming media (videos, music, photos) to your television, and you’ve bought into the Apple way of doing things, this is a great addition.  Otherwise, I would suggest a Linksys or Sonos media device.

Would I recommend Boxee?  If the performance only gets better with Beta and Public Release, I can whole-heartedly recommend this as one of the best media center applications available.

NOTE: I got my Apple TV from Craigslist, and for quite a steal, I think.  I paid $140 for the typical $229 device and it is in near mint condition.

When I first became aware of QAM, I connected my HDTV to see what I could get. I was surprised to find some channels available in HD that I didn’t receive OTA. For example, I was getting USAHD, TBSHD, TNTHD, ESPN2HD and Music in HD. For local networks, I received all but PBS in HD. Comcast has since shifted the channels 3 or 4 times and removed all HD channels except NBC. I’d like to know if there is a rhyme or reason to their QAM programming or if it is just considered leakage? It certainly is good to know that Comcast could offer a full HD package without renting a cable box. BUT that wouldn’t make them money, would it? I’d be happy of they just offered a standalone HD package like Dish Network’s TurboHD.

Where I live (Katy, TX), Wal-Mart has a policy of price-matching local grocery stores advertised specials in order to compete, but many times I’ve noticed that the day the new grocery ads are released, Wal-Mart doesn’t seem to have any stock of those items the other stores are placing on sale.  This could be attributed to anything.  Perhaps the other stores are placing them on sale because they need to get rid of the inventory and Wal-Mart sensing the same need has already done so.  I find that hard to believe, but I guess it is possible.  My conspiracy theory is that Wal-Mart pulls items off their shelves to avoid price matching.  I’m pretty sure it is not all products because that would be too obvious, but if they pulled those items with the least amount of markup, this avoidance could save them a bundle.  Has anyone else noticed this?

Before I get any remarks about the most recent hurricane causing empty shelves, I’ve been noticing this for about a year.

When the Roku box was released allowing Netflix users to stream Watch Instant content from the Netflix servers to their TV, I thought to myself that if the box could stream content from hulu.com, a site featuring more current content as well as many old TV shows and movies, I would definitely make the purchase.  Current episodes are now available for streaming, but it is not from hulu.com.  Apparently Netflix has struck a deal to offer current episodes from popular shows through their Watch Instant service.  This would directly compete with hulu.com unless, of course, this is the technology they are using.  I haven’t taken the time to compare the two because Netflix doesn’t offer a Mac OS X option for Watch Instant.  I’ll stick to hulu for my day-after TV viewing, but that roku box suddenly became more appealing.

Anyone reading tech news has surely heard of Roku’s latest offering, a Netflix set-top box (running Linux) that allows the user to watch movies and TV shows from their Watch Instantly Queue.  Although I think this device is great, I think Netflix Watch Instant content is still lacking, and until Roku offers content from other sources, I won’t be adding this device to my collection.  I’d really like to see Hulu.com step into the mix.  I’d buy two boxes immediately if Hulu was combined with Netflix in the next firmware release.

As some of you may know, I’m involved with the local YMCA in several programs.  In fact, most aspects of my life have some tie to the Y.  I’ve got my daughters in a Parent-Child Program designed to build the relationship between parents (fathers in this case) and their children.  With this solid relationship, our children should have the foundation to grow up to be great leaders in their communities.  I’m also apart of the Langham Creek YMCA Board.  Being on this board is an honor for me, and I really enjoy seeing the positive impact we have on the community.  We are currently running the Partners Campaign, which collects donations to help those less fortunate in our community participate in programs offered by the YMCA.  It is very fulfilling helping others, and I have found the YMCA to be a great outlet for this.

Things I’d like to get. I know this list can seem infinite at times, but for some reason when my birthday or Christmas rolls around, I can’t think of anything.

• another Tivo (preferably HD)
• an AppleTV (Take 2)
• PED3 for my iPod Touch
• Any Apple notebook G4 or Intel
• Blu-ray DVD Player (with Profile 2.0)

This time my random thought came from a friend of mine, Jason Brinkle.  He had an interesting question about stuff we put into our bodies and their impact.  He asked the question, is eating a fatty dinner (i.e. Chicken Fried Steak) equal to smoking a cigarette as far as the health impact on your body?  Both share the fact that the user has been educated as to the long-term effects, and both still choose to consume.  I had never given that much thought, but it is a very good point.  Circulatory health or Respiratory health?  What do you think of the comparison?  Leave a comment.

Since starting to pay attention to the HDTV advertisements lately, I have noticed a feature that is being mentioned quite a bit. That feature is the QAM tuner, which comes integrated with most HDTVs. I had never heard of it until recently, and decided to look it up. I was surprised to find out that the QAM tuner can receive unscrambled television broadcasts sent by the cable provider through the standard cable lines. If you are wondering what this really means, it means that most cable companies are satisfying their FCC obligations by providing more broadcasts (some HD) outside of those being broadcast through your current setup. Extra Channels? Not really, most are just the same as you find on your Basic Cable package, but this varies on location, not just city. Specific areas can vary as well. For the record, I’m right between Katy and Cypress, Texas, Northwest of Houston and our cable provider is now Comcast (formerly TWC).

With my current setup, I have Basic Cable, with roughly 70 channels, and I have an OTA (Over-The-Air) HDTV Tuner pulling my local network broadcasts, which is about 10 channels. To my surprise, this Samsung HDTV Tuner I’m already using has a QAM tuner as well. I ran the cable line into my tuner and had it search out channels available. I found about 50 channels being broadcast between what we consider channel 75-100. I know that sounds like strange math, but anyone who has dealt with OTA broadcasts will confirm that many channels will feature subchannels. Our NBC affiliate has 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3. None go higher than X.3 with OTA, but with QAM, many will go as high as X.11, thus cramming many channels into the 25 range mentioned above. Of the 50 I found, only 5 were being broadcast in HD, but the good news is that 4 of those 5 I didn’t have access to prior to this. The new channels I found were USA HD, ESPN HD, National Geographic (in HD), Music In HD. The other channel was PBS, which I had access to with OTA and I must say, they do a phenomenal job with providing good HD content separate from their standard broadcast. Strangely missing from the HD broadcasts were the other major networks, NBC, ABC, CBS, WB, etc. I’m not going to rule them out just yet, because they may not have been broadcasting those particular shows in HD, but it was 8:00 PM CST when I did my test. We’ll see when I try again.

To find about more about QAM Tuners visit WikiPedia.For a good list of HD Channels and their listings, check out CNET’s HDTV Listings page.