1024 bits

Bluray wow!

2011-02-17T08:34:00.000-05:00

Just happened to glance at the blu-ray prices and wow.. There's an LG blu-ray burner at $80 @ newegg and media isn't bad either.. There are some generic 25gb media for around $1/disc and some better brand name media closer to $2/disc. (Although, you know things are bad when I'm considering RiDATA a better brand name.)

They even offered a combo price of $95.98 for the drive and the 15 pack of RiDATA discs. Sure, you could get a 2tb drive for that but you can buy more BD-R discs later on. I could use this sort of storage to back up stuff like digital camera pictures and games I've bought on steam, etc. Some of those games won't even fit on a dual-layer dvd!

Carbon Motors is coming to Connersville, IN!!!!!

2009-07-29T12:23:00.002-04:00

They just announced it not 30 minutes ago. Carbon Motors will be moving into the old Visteon building in Connersville. They expect to have 1300 direct jobs and inspire growth of up to 10,000 jobs in the local community. I expect that it'll take some of the pressure off of other jobs locally. This is so awesome!! Good luck to anyone who applies when they start doing that. Wish me luck also.

unemployment hell

2009-07-20T15:21:00.003-04:00

Don't listen to any unemployment person who says to wait a week before you start your unemployment filing. The week wait begins after you start your filing, not before.

Also the 1-800 help numbers are worthless. 1-800# = hung up on if I actually want to talk to someone "all operators are busy, press 1 for website, 2 for email, 3 for blahblah, 4 to disconnect.." wait 10 seconds, hang up on me.

http://www.in.gov/dwd/files/Complete_CSS_1-23-08.pdf Very handy guide for starting the filing on the website.

Concept boat

2009-06-20T12:48:00.002-04:00

Brought to you by nerds who have seen way too much Battlestar Galactica apparently. [Link] to article about this on Gizmodo. They're talking about it having a dirty gas engine and a solar powered electric engine but we know the real story here is the design.

yard sales are fun

2009-05-25T22:12:00.002-04:00

Found a Yamaha keyboard from the 80's at a yard sale today for $1. Sure it was dirty as heck but I brought it home and cleaned it up. Found out it wouldn't play though, no sound from either speaker or headphone jack. :( But I managed to diagnose the problem as the volume control slider not working correctly. Once I found the right traces I was able to bypass it and hear the demo song, albeit at full volume. Just need to dig out my soldering iron to make my jumper permanent and I can actually play with it then. Sometime I'll have to dig a volume control or some other potentiometer from something to replace the volume control on this.

Blockbuster leaving Richmond when lease expires

2009-04-18T09:56:00.002-04:00

Link

A sign on a door of the store at 3300 E. Main St. informs Movie Pass and Game Pass members that their memberships will be transferred to stores in Muncie or Greenville, Ohio, on May 3.
The store's last day will be May 10, with May 3 the last day to rent videos, according to company spokesman Randy Hargrove.
"The lease was up and we made a business decision to close that location," Hargrove said.

Yet another business in Richmond closing. I have to wonder if they heard about Cinram and decided to go ahead and announce they're closing too. I've always been a fan of services like Netflix but this is a crying shame for another place of employment leaving.

EDC weighs in on cinram closing

2009-04-18T09:47:00.003-04:00

Link

The (EDC) was dismayed to learn from news media sources of Cinram's plans for closing its plant in Richmond.

In the past, employment numbers at Cinram in Richmond have been subject to sizeable seasonable swings. From previous contact with management, the EDC knew that employment at Cinram could be more than 600 people during full production times, generally in the period from late summer and fall leading up to Christmas.

The EDC had met with local Cinram management within the past year. The company did not share any plans to close. Still, EDC had offered to work with the company to offer assistance that might make it more attractive for the company to maintain its operations in Richmond. The company did not ask for assistance.

In March this year, the EDC heard a rumor that Cinram might be downsizing or closing. EDC staff immediately began to try to make contact with Cinram's vice president and plant manager, John Finnegan. When Mr. Finnegan responded, he left a voice message saying that he could not meet with EDC until the end of April. After that, the EDC requested a specific appointment for a meeting and received no response from Mr. Finnegan.

The EDC is sorry that Cinram did not provide EDC with an opportunity to offer job retention assistance to this plant. The loss of 330 jobs will have repercussions throughout the Richmond community and we are particularly concerned for the well-being of the families that will be affected by this company's decision.

My favorite paragraph here is the 3rd one.

In March this year, the EDC heard a rumor that Cinram might be downsizing or closing. EDC staff immediately began to try to make contact with Cinram's vice president and plant manager, John Finnegan. When Mr. Finnegan responded, he left a voice message saying that he could not meet with EDC until the end of April. After that, the EDC requested a specific appointment for a meeting and received no response from Mr. Finnegan.

Thanks alot John! I suppose you can meet with the EDC in a week or two, right? Since it's not quite the end of april yet huh? Real classy there fella.

laser show in zippo case

2009-04-17T19:27:00.001-04:00

Flip top laser Spiro on "HacknMod.com" from Rog8811 on Vimeo.

This is pretty cool. This guy put a tiny spirograph laser show in a zippo lighter.

Cinram using temporary visa employees

2009-04-17T19:07:00.002-04:00

Eastofhuntsville.com

It was just over two weeks ago that local apartment owners began raising red flags about some of their tenants, temporary immigrant workers, were missing. The workers were brought to America on H2-B work visa as temporary help for the holidays at local DVD manufacturer Cinram, Inc.
Cinram is a Canadian company with several locations across the country, their Huntsville plant can be found at the intersection of Moores Mill and Highway 72. The plant located at the bottom of Chapman Mountain experiences a significant surge in business in preparation for Christmas DVD sales and regularly hires temporary workers to ensure adequate capacity.
Late last summer, Cinram made application to fill the Christmas need by bring in 1,500 plus temporary employees from outside the United States. In October the first of the approximately 1,100 foreign workers began arriving from Jamaica, Nepal, Bolivia, Ukraine, and the Dominican Republic.
As attention was drawn to the missing workers, most of whom are Nepali and have left for better paying jobs, the spotlight also fell on the apartment owners / managers who raised the issue. And that light has not revealed a pretty picture in some cases.
Truitt Evans, enforcement coordinator for the Fair Housing Center of Northern Alabama, confirmed yesterday to The Huntsville Times (see Workers' Housing Probed) that they are investigating the living conditions in which these workers were living. Some workers were apparently paying full-price to share an apartment with three or four other workers. Their investigation is still underway.
Doug Wilson is president of Ambassador temporary agency, the company that worked with Cinram to bring the foreign employees into the States. He told the Times that his company has worked with 20 landlords to provide housing upon arrival and has had difficulties with only two. Ambassador inspected apartments prior to the workers' arrival, the real challenges began when apartment owners started competing with one another for occupants.
Wilson goes on to say that despite some problems, bringing in foreign workers helps Cinram keep its 2,500 plus permanent workers and $120 million payroll at the Moores Mill plant.

This is some serious WTFish for me to run across. I'm just looking around for any other online posts about the closure and I find this article from a year ago.

The Richmond plant has been pretty slow for awhile now. We've got a ton of capacity. Why in gods glorious world did they decide to bring in thousands of foreign workers instead of shipping some product to their more idle plants for processing? There have been hundreds of people at the Richmond plant on unemployment for awhile now that could have been working, instead of sitting at home doing nothing for nothing.

Getting laid (off)

2009-04-17T18:50:00.005-04:00

Cinram is closing their Richmond, IN plant in a couple months. Just found out today. That sucks since I'm the bread winner in my house. Hope I can find a job before Cinram closes or I have to be on unemployment for too long. I doubt if I'll be able to pay the bills with just unemployment and my wife's salary.

:(

EDIT: Just want to quote this from pal-item for my own memory:

Company officials told workers and city officials that the Richmond plant at 1600 Rich Road would close this summer, a move that will idle 330 workers, including 259 production workers.
The closing will come in phases, company officials said, with the first wave coming June 16, the second June 30 and the final Aug. 28, according to a letter to Richmond Mayor Sally Hutton.
Seven management employees will continue to work for the company elsewhere, the company said.
Cinram manufactures and packages CDs and CD-ROMs and is the former PRC Tape Co. Cinram, which is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, and bought PRC when that company filed for bankruptcy in 1990.

About half of Cinram’s production workers were members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Company officials in Richmond, Columbus, Ohio and Toronto did not return phone messages left this afternoon seeking a comment.

Computer components are getting cheaper

2009-01-03T11:50:00.002-05:00

Welcome to a headline that is always true. It'd be hard to believe that 10 years ago prices would be this cheap but at the same time not so hard.

It's possible to get a 1TB drive for $100 these days. That's about 10gb per dollar! Less if you find a fantastic deal on Bensbargains.net or wait a few months.

Also with the currect economic situation there's a glut of high-capacity ram on the market, driving prices down. Here is a current deal (as of 1/03) on zipzoomfly for a 2gb ddr2-800 Corsair memory kit for $10 after a mail-in rebate. Of course they get $55 of your money for a few months until you get the rebate check, if you get one at all.

On the other hand, here is a similar kit from ocz for $23 without any rebates.

$10-$20 for 2gb of very fast ram! Just a few years ago, 2003-2004ish I paid $90 each for some 512mb modules. Now it's possible to get 4gb for less than $50. Awesome.

Vote for McCain: He’s just like George Bush, except older and with a worse temper.

2008-10-14T22:48:00.001-04:00

Solar tech with a spiffy headline from Wired

2008-10-08T21:37:00.002-04:00

There's a new Solar tech that's being released by a company named Solyndra. These are cylindrical modules that gather light from many directions including any light reflected from the roof-top. The modules are less affected by the wind so they don't even need to be bolted down to the roof. I imagine they don't need to track the sun like traditional solar panels. These rods use thin-film technology which isn't as efficient as traditional silicon solar panels but they are cheaper to make. Also apparently they are hard to manufacture, but Solyndra has discovered how to do so and remain cost-effective. I'd put money on seeing this guys make it big in this sector.

[Link]

Give me liberty or give me death

2008-09-21T23:36:00.002-04:00

Too bad this country is being ruined by people who shout the mantra of "Freedom is not free" and then freely give away their freedom without even a fight.

$100 laptops?

2008-09-05T20:16:00.002-04:00

[Link]

Intel demostrates prototype "programmable matter" tech

2008-09-02T20:51:00.002-04:00

Intel demonstrated a technology that will one day allow you to have shape shifting gadgets. They are working on making very tiny machines with processing power and solar power that are capable of reorganizing themselves on the fly into different shapes. The prototypes are not on that sort of scale by any means today but according to the people working on this, they should be in 10 years. You could have a cellphone that compacts to the size of a pack of gum, then expands to the size of a MID in order to send emails. Very neat ideas, I'm hoping they will be successful in their research.
[link]

Hilarious japanese magician dresses up in old man makeup

2008-08-28T15:44:00.002-04:00

and confuses people, seriously.. watch this

Monstertruck Mower

2008-08-26T17:14:00.000-04:00

On a lighter note:

Stargate Atlantis Cancelled

2008-08-26T17:06:00.003-04:00

Stargate Atlantis, the only currently running Stargate show, has been cancelled. It will finish it's season 5 run and then will move to direct to dvd movies. This has apparently been pretty successful with Stargate SG-1 but it's no wonder why. A full season on dvd is usually $40-50 while they are selling these 2 hour movies for $20 or more. I wonder which one has larger profit margins? They are talking about making 3-4 movies per year, instead of 20 episodes that are usually 40 minutes long before commercials.

The studio has green-lit production of a new series, Stargate Universe, but the rumors of the premise isn't leaving me too excited. Look on Gateworld.net for more information.

Masterbrand Cabinet Richmond, IN closes

2008-08-26T16:50:00.002-04:00

Employees of Masterbrand Cabinet's arrived to work today to find the gates and doors to their workplace locked. Apparently the Corporate office has decided to close the Richmond plant and cut 275 jobs overnight. The story is developing on pal-item.com.

Of course Mitch Daniels is running ads for re-election where he says we can "find 2 jobs for every job that goes away". Given the recent track record in Richmond, those two jobs will be a restaurant, a car lot or a bank. How about some manufacturing jobs Mitch?

Adsense?

2008-08-21T19:35:00.001-04:00

I think I just got denied for an adsense account because I just started this blog and don't have many posts yet.

Page type: We're unable to approve your AdSense application at this time
because we feel that your site does not comply with the Google webmaster
quality guidelines. More specifically, we believe that your site does not
add value or provide unique content. For a complete list of the webmaster
guidelines, please visit

I'm not a spammer but thanks for making me feel like one guys. :(

Emily is not real

2008-08-20T23:51:00.000-04:00

Star Wars Clone Wars

2008-08-16T21:15:00.002-04:00

Saw the movie the other night. It had some nice fights but overall I can't say if I liked it or not. Definitely had a kiddy feel to it. The whole thing is 3d rendered, but with somewhat "stylistic" low-poly 3d models so I felt like I was watching a 90 minute cutscene on a starwars game intended for the original xbox. Apparently it's the first few episodes of an animated tv show that will be on Cartoon Network but strung together. I probably would've liked it better on tv, especially since I paid $8 to go watch it in the theaters. At least there weren't very many people at the theater.

ARGH Harry Potter movie 6 delayed

2008-08-15T17:55:00.005-04:00

Special effects taking longer than expected? Scheduling problems?

Nope!

[Link]

Warner Bros president and chief operating officer Alan Horn said the move has nothing to do with any problems on the shoot of the new picture, which he said had already been finished. Instead the film was being moved to take advantage of a "free" weekend in the busy summer schedule.
"The picture is completely, absolutely, 100 per cent on schedule, on time. There were no delays," Mr Horn said. "I've seen the movie. It is fabulous. We would have been perfectly able to have it out in November."

Delayed to take advantage of a "free weekend" in a busy summer schedule. Yes, delayed from Nov 21st to July 17 2009 for basically no reason whatsoever. What a bunch of money grubbing jerks.

Star Wars

2008-08-13T23:31:00.002-04:00

Going to go watch that Star Wars Clone Wars movie with some friends on Friday. Surprisingly I haven't heard much about it.

Motherboard Walls

2008-08-13T22:03:00.000-04:00

Found this on hackaday. A guy and his friend wall-papered a lab at Carnegie Mellon with old motherboards bought in bulk on Ebay. [Link]

This is an incredibly neat idea and I think I will steal this for a wall in my office when I get around to it. My wife has been suggesting that I do the shiny side of cd's.. This is one better than that I think! Also want to note, those Logitech speakers in the corner are awesome. I have a set.