I helped my 12 year old cousin buy a new Powerbook and it arrived this week.
It's his family's first Mac. A nice addition to their stock of computers which include like 7 PCs, 2 Sun Workstations, some Sun Enterprise Server, and a giant RAID array. I'm saying all this to show that he's definetely been exposed to computers.
Nevertheless, he calls me this morning.
Him: Hey, how do I connect to my wireless network?
Me: In the upper right hand corner, there's a wavy looking thing. Click on it.
Him: I know. There's one option. It's my neighbor's wireless. How do I connect to mine?
Me: Do you know the name of it?
Him: No.
Me: Do you know if it's hidden?
Him: I don't know.
Me: Wait a minute, do you even have a wireless network in your house?
Him: I don't know.
Me: Call me when you find out.
What's up with that?
Asking "Mom? Where's my Porsche?," doesn't mean I'll somehow end up with a Porsche.
I got the hospital bills.
The total (I went twice that week) comes out to a little over $25,560.
This includes a stack of blood tests, 4 CT scans, a xray, a ultrasound, and stuff.
An note called "contractual adjustments" is what I'm guessing a UHC/Good Samaritan Hospital discount deal totals to about $9,600.
That still leaves UHC forking over about $17,000.
And my part of these bills? $0.00.
UHC, you guys rock.
When I was a kid, I went to Taiwan. There I had those little yogurt drinks. When I got back, I remember being estatic that my mom had found places to buy that stuff here. Even now, I still periodically get those despite them being little more than watered-down yogurt and sugar. Nevertheless, I still love that stuff.
So, it's about a month since I got back from Japan and all of a sudden I feel like drinking one of the sports drink type stuff I had there. Yesterday, I was almost about to go to a Japanese supermarket despite crazy traffic on my way home just to see if they had any of them. For some odd reason, the electrolyte drinks appeal to me in that they have a light taste opposed to the heavily sugared drinks most normal Americans drink. And they're healthier than yang-le-dou.
Well, I did just that on my way back from buying batteries for a model airplane. I went to a small produce store at about Stevens Creek and Wolfe. Inside, they had one little cooler with various drinks. Most of them were bottled green tea or Calpis brand yogurt water. Out of the category of drinks I was looking for, they had only one: Pocari Sweat. And while it tastes roughly the same as Dakara and Aquarius, secretly, I was hoping for one of the other two. I don't even know why. Maybe it's the name. Would you buy a drink named "Pocari Sweat?" Or rather, would you mind people asking you why you're drinking something that has "sweat" in its name?
From what I could tell in Japan, Pocari Sweat and Aquarius both have very similar electrolyte blends and may be a bit more salty. They're made roughly the same as Gatorade but without the artificial flavoring and probably less glucose as well. Dakara is slightly different; assuming I didn't read it incorrectly, it's more like a dietary supplement. Something about calcium, magnesium, dietary fiber, and other stuff.
Anyways, at $2.20 a bottle, I don't think I'll be buying this stuff too often. Perhaps at some point in time, I'll go check out a few other markets if I pass by them.
Considering that I watch movies and anime on my old 550mhz G4 Cube often, I periodically have with files encoded using multichannel AC3. And while I could just watch and listen in stereo, it'd be nicer if I could get surround sound on my Mac without having to buy a expensive sound card.
On a whim, I did some google searches and found that OSX 10.4's CoreAudio features the ability to aggregate sound devices. I thought this might be able to get me the equivalent of a surround sound device by just pairing up normal sound cards.
I attached an iMic to my G4 Cube along with the normal Cube USB speakers, went to /Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup.app, and made myself an aggregate device with the two USB sound sources. The speaker setup was set to quadrophonic. The iMic was connected to earphones for a test, and later a set of speakers.
After the setup, I loaded up a file with a AC3 sound track in VLC and hit play. A problem with an aggregate device is that there are no volume controls. You have to select each of them in the Sound Preferences and set their volume independently. But, in this situation, discovering that was still quite useful. I tried alternating muting and turning up the volume on the two pairs of channels and noticed that the tracks are indeed different.
I guess you could say this looks like a success. However, I probably won't be continually using it since USB audio sucks out too much CPU power. And because I'm using a G4 Cube, both my audio devices are USB.
Update 20060417:
For mplayer (cuz it sometimes plays better than VLC) to use this, here's what I put in the config file:
channels=4
softvol-max=400
af=channels=4:4:0:2:2:0:1:3:3:1
Heck yeah! I woke up this morning to find that my right eye is less swollen today! Which means I can see! Sorta. My left eye's still pretty bad.
Wednesday totally sucked cuz both my eyes were swollen to the point that I couldn't see anything. Most likely an eye infection or something. Tuesday and before, it was mainly my right eye swollen. So assuming my left is following my right, I might be able to see in a relatively normal manner tomorrow.
Since I couldn't use the computer until now, I'll drop this one off too:
Tuesday evening, I went to the doctor to get my bandages off. When I got home, I looked in the mirror and saw what was under the bandages for the first time. My reaction?
"WTF HAPPENED TO MY FOREHEAD? HOW COME NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THAT ONE! IT'S HUGE! How did THAT happen? I thought it was just my eyebrow!? Holy shit, I look like... like... dammit, I don't know what I look like!"
Before going to sleep, Mom asked if I wanted to take a picture. I declined. Knowing I look like a prop from Resident Evil sucks enough.
.....like bowling or minigolf.
Anyways, on Sunday, I went to play Basketball in the afternoon with some of the Saratoga people. One of the guys charged me, knocked me over, and also managed to hit my forearm hard enough to strain the group of muscles needed to control my fingers.
So we somehow decide to play football.
Since I can't catch because my right hand's useless, I'm assigned to be blocker. While on defense, I'm about to rush the QB when Sanders throws the football to Joe who's right behind me. I turn to run for Joe and collide into Albert. Albert's glasses took most of his half of the impact (supposedly the frame's destroyed), I got cut to the skull near my eyebrow.
I left the hospital at midnight with 3 layers of stitches, a large bandage around my head, a prescription for more Vicodin, and a brace for my right arm.
While my right arm's better, the bandages are so tight they're giving me a headache. My scalp is numb, but itchy from the dried blood. But if I try to scratch, I don't feel the scratching, just even more itchyness.
The area around my right eye is still swollen, making it hard to see.
On the upside, my friends came over to hang out yesterday which made my day much better.