Argh, it looks like I'm going to end up now as 3 for 6 in my football league. I just finally got things setup too, so it'll be close if I manage to make the finals at this rate. Hasselback as QB, Deauce McAllistair and Ahman Green for RB, Chad Johnson and Roy Williams on WR, Vinatieri as kicker, and the Ravens D. It's a solid looking team, right? But somehow I keep getting smacked down - especially by one woman who managed to get the 1st round pick, then 3rd round, then 1st round again.

It's taken me quite sometime to get this team together, now let's just hope the pull it out for me.

All of these in one backpack:

• An iPaq
• Dual PC-card sleeve for ipaq, GPS Unit & Orinoco wifi card w/ external antenna
• An iPod
• RIM Blackberry phone

Now, my problem - keeping all of these devices properly charged at all times.
Well, really, thats not the big problem, everything but the ipaq is good for at least 12 hours - but since I plan on embedding these devices into the backpack, I'd like to find a simple sleek solution for plugging them all in with a simple cable outside the backpack.

As an added bonus, I'd like to rig up some sort of UPS which would keep the batteries charged for a bit after I pull it off the grid.

Anyone have any ideas on a good way to do this? I've been knocking around a few ideas, but nothing has given me the big "AH HA!" that I'm looking for.

ALSO - is it possible to connect several iPaq batteries in parallel? That might do the trick, but I wonder if the ipaq would know about the extra power. Damn, I wish I knew more about electricity.

It's a good thing that along with this ipaq 4155 I was given an older 3xxx series (Mainly, because the 4155 doesn't have a sleeve for PCMCIA, and it's internal wifi chipset doesn't work with ministumbler)

Greetings, Fellow slashdotians.

I have re-classed my Journal away from the usual droll tales about everyday life into something more useful: Hardware Requests

I've been thinking of taking a vacation this November, and as such would like to pick up the parts I need to finish up a nice slew of hardware hacking projects! Below is the list of what I need - I don't wish to pay a whole lot, so if you want me to pay much more then shipping, well then I'll probably have to pass.
Part of the reason I'm doing it this way is lack of funds, the other part is because I might not be looking for parts that are easy to find. Either way, here's the list:

• 1 Etch-A-Sketch - large, in my dreams the actual screen would be 15"
• 1 Set-top DVD Player - Circa 1998-1999 or so. It needs to be single disk, and big
• iPaq or some other device that will run GPS and NetStumbler - this I know I'll pay more for, but I don't need one in awesome shape, just something that works (A small laptop would work to, I'd reckon, but not have the batt life)
• 1 old Digital Camera, around the 1.0MP range. To be scavenged for a time-lapse photography project

More to be added later.

If you think you can help out, please email jpavleck(AT)Gmail.com

It's my birthday tomorrow - I'll be 28. Help me celebrate by buying me something. (This is like the 4th year I've posted this, and it never happens - I'd probably drop dead if it did hehehe).

Oh, how am I celebrating my birthday weekend so far? Well, I'm babysitting our company's core application and trying to keep it running good until we get into our maintenence window. (P.S. - I hate Weblogic. Hate it so very, very much. Then again, we are on an old version - the newer, nicer ones aren't approved to run our app. *sigh*)

What did I get for my birthday? (Well, a day before my birthday)
The Clerks 10th anniversary edition DVD, Clerks X
The Simpsons, season 4
Jersey Girl
and
Clerks the Cartoon - Uncensored DVD
(Can you tell I'm a Kevin Smith fan?)

I also got my free ipod this week from FreeIpods.com - so I was totally tanked ab out that. I'm so happy Gratis Internet and their promotions aren't scams. So feel free to help me get a free flatscreen or a free PC.

Anyway, have a good one guys!

Oi! Now even my GF has a Gmail account via her blogger account, and I'm still out of luck here. If anyone would be so kind as to send an invite to jeremy(at)pavleck(dot)com I'd be forever grateful!

And now I'm off to bed hehe

It's not everyday that your place of employment is parodied on TheOnion.com.

I particularly liked this part:
Then, in the spring of 2003, fraternity members hacked into the web site of rival University of Phoenix Online, erased its mascot, and placed a downloaded version on their own web site. Although no one was ever charged with the theft of the copyrighted clip art, the online fraternity was warned that further misbehavior would result in serious disciplinary action.

hehehe - sometimes I love my job. Ok, well, most of the time I love my job! And if you're in the Minneapolis, MN area remember; we are hiring!

Anyway... Have any of your employers been parodied like this?

Hey guys, though I'd throw this out to all of you. If you are interested, or know of someone who is, email me at jeremy(dot)pavleck(at)capella(dot)edu - the link to the open IT jobs are here and we are looking for:

Software Quality Engineer - Performance Automation
Software Quality Engineer - Functional Automation
Technical Support Analyst
Systems Administrator

Please note this is a Windows shop and adjust resumes to reflect that. This is an awesome company to work for, free college (From BS to PhD, all gratis), ESOP, 401k, etc etc etc and the people are great to.

Here's some more info for the system admin position:
It's more or less a jack-of-all-trades position, in fact all of the system admins are like that. It's for a newish department, so there's a lot of room to grow. You don't have to be an ace, but we'd like someone with experience in some of the aspects of what the job description entails plus:
VBScript, Perl, MRTG, Cacti, WIKI experience and experience with monitoring several hundred servers.
One of the new roles assigned to the new Sys Admin is my backup, I'm the systems management guy and we use MOM, WhatsUp, Servers Alive, and a lot of OSS/Homegrown apps. I'd especially love someone with web application programming to help implement a new contact list.

Hey, the job comes with a new color BlackBerry! Email, phone, and internet everywhere!

Hope someone out there is interested!

After 2 years of unemployment (Well, besides consulting - but you know how tough it can be to be a consultant these days!) I'm blissfully happily employed!

You're now looking at the Systems Management Engineer for Capella University - an online .edu that is right under Phoenix in terms of users and such. It's fully credited, the place just seems pretty cool, and above all - FREE COLLEGE!

Funny... I was bitching about not finding a good job due to my lack of a college degreee, and now I'll kill 2 birds with one stone - and to top it off, the pay is better then at my last full time job!

I do have to move from Milwaukee to Minneapolis though, which isn't all that bad - I grew up in MN. I start the 29th - March has always been a good month for me *shrug*

I'm really loving Firebird and Thunderbird - moreso Thinderbird though.

  For years I've worked in MS shops so I've naturally turned to MS for my needs - IE, Outlook, etc.

  Well, the past couple of years I've been unemployed/self-employed (Depends on which hour/day/week it is) and so I haven't been as involved with MS technologies as I once was.
Recently my server admin switched us over to IMAP - which wasn't a problem for me. I used Outlook express and received my email as usual, life was well. Until I became a list mod for OOo.

Oh sure, things where fine - I adapted to the influx of mail, though I was disappointed in the lack of a good free spam plugin for OE as well as the inability to apply mail rules to IMAP accounts.

Then MyDoom came.

All of a sudden the mail surged forth unabated! The biggest offender? Not the virus, not in the least. It was all those damned inconsiderate email administrators that leave on the "Tell people they sent us a virus" switch. We're talking about receiving something in the range of 500 emails an hour - 1/2 being valid, 100 or so MyDoom and the rest AV auto-replies. OE was dying! So I bit the bullet and installed full blown outlook.

  Damn have the times changed. I absolutely hated it. It was slow, bloated, inefficient, and sucked the life out of my machine. Not to mention it couldn't quite handle that flood of email I was receiving, the STILL inefficient spam plugins and the horrible mail rules.

  So I said, "iirc, Thunderbird has everything I'm looking for". So I went and set it up - and I'm loving it. It's fast, efficient, clean to the point of almost being sexy.

Oi, I only wish I would of found it sooner!

After 3 years, my desk chair is dying. About a year ago the vinyl covering on the armrests started cracking due to it hitting the edge of my desk all the time. Now just recently the back is refusing to stay straight, it constantly bends back about 15 degrees. So I get up, and bend it back in again, only to have it bend out again when I sit down.
So out came the duct tape. Huge swaths of it reinforcing the back so it stays relatively straight. I was worried I'd end up breaking it due to metal fatigue from the bending cycles.

So now I have both armrests covered in a healthy amount of duct tape as well as the back. It looks so sad and pathetic - but I love this chair. It's got 5 large rollerblade wheels on the bottom which makes it fly over everything - carpet, power cords, cat tails, etc etc.

The one thing I learned through all this is that duct tape isn't all the same. I've taken a liking to the premium Duck brand tape. It's quite sticky and seems stronger and thicker then the cheaper brands. I only have to fix the tape on the armrests once a year or so because of it. With other brands, it was more like once a week.

Then again, maybe I should just get a new chair.