National Bike to Work Day – May 15th

May 14, 2009 Wayne Zimmerman Leave a comment

I would just like to remind everyone that tomorrow is National Bike to Work Day. For all of you out there that haven’t tried biking somewhere in a while this is a perfect time to start. I am on vacation at the moment but I still have not forgotten that it is Friday. Here in DC the local bike Bike and Roll Rental Shop will allow you to rent a bicycle for free all day on Friday if you live in the DC and will use it to commute. I don’t know what they are doing back in Texas but anyone that hasn’t ridden since they were a little kid needs to give it a shot. It is a great way to get into shape and save some money on that daily commute.

If you are needing a bike, Craigslist is probably the best way to get one for cheap, especially right around when students are moving out. If you are curious about what a good brand is or if a certain one will fit you, feel free to contact me or comment this post.

The Bryan/College Station area is a great place to bike as many road in College Station have dedicated bike lanes or sidewalks. Bryan is less formal about bikes on the road, however I’ve found all kinds of ways between towns on the bike. My suggestion is to just give it a try, it isn’t for everyone, but it sure does make you feel like you have accomplished something and the end of the day.

Ready for a Little Vaycay

May 11, 2009May 20, 2009 Wayne Zimmerman 1 Comment

Today I leave for parts of the country unknown (to me at least), I am headed to Washington DC. This swamp is home to our congress, president and many other crazy agencies that I’m sure are watching me type this blog post. We plan on checking out all the cool monuments that our tax dollars have purchased and maybe hassle our representative about some governmental issue that currently escapes me. In any case, I’m sure Jen and I will have a good time discovering the city and how to get around using their subway system. The one crown jewel for me on this trip I am looking forward to is the Smithsonian, it should be quite the experience at least that is what I am hoping for. The weather looks like it will be okay, we will have a few rainy days but there looks to be plenty of inside activities to do once we get there. We are technically staying across the river in Arlington, VA so we will get to commute in everyday as well. Here is wishing that all our luggage makes it and our flights are not delayed. Good Day.

Waiting on the HTC Touch Pro 2

May 5, 2009May 11, 2009 Wayne Zimmerman Leave a comment

Here in the past year I joined the smartphone crowd by the university paying for my data plan. I am currently with AT&T and enjoy their coverage and speed for the most part. It seems to be faster in larger cities but College Station is special in the fact that we have extra capacity in the summer and a lack of capacity the rest of the time. We do have 3G here for AT&T and on a good day my Blackjack can load up most webpages in just a few seconds, of course I have been using just the Internet Explorer WAP browser that comes with all Microsoft Windows Mobile Phones. Although I can’t get full webpages like on other phones like the G1 or iPhone I have been rather happy with it for the most part, but I am ready for an upgrade according to my contract and my preference.

I am very sure that I want a Windows Mobile phone, even with the limitations of the OS. Lots of people complain that the OS is not built for touch and generally hard to use. Well the way Windows Mobile works makes sense to me because I have been using it forever. I bought a Dell Axim X5 Advanced the day they came out, and ever since then I have been sold. It works just like Windows, I just don’t understand how people can’t understand that just like every other Windows computer you go to the Start Menu to find your apps. Then again most people that buy smartphones never added apps until an App Store made it too easy to buy applications. I hate any app store that has rules about what they will and will not allow in because a carrier may not want it running on their network or that it might compete against an application that is builtin to the Phone’s OS. This makes a very slippery slope of soon you won’t be able to use the apps you want on the hardware or network you want to use it on. But that could be a whole other post, I am unhappy that the Microsoft App Store has so many limitations that help protect it’s sub par media player and other software.

Anyways, it isn’t the software that sells me, it is the WVGA touch screen with the slideout keyboard. I think it will be cool to see what developers will be able to do with a full sized screen on a mobile device. The keyboard also looks large enough for me to handle, the one on the Blackjack is a little small and I keep finding that I mistype things because my fingers are a bit too big. I defiantly do not want an onscreen keyboard. I’ve support iPhones at work and find them to have the most horrid keyboard ever, I have a hard time typing configuration information for the device and I can only imagine if I had to type on it everyday and how bad that would be. The other thing I don’t like about Blackjack is that I have a hard time getting to certain numbers and symbols that are much easily found on the Touch Pro.

With my mind made up, I am waiting for the HTC Touch Pro 2 to come to AT&T whenever that might be, I am hoping for sometime this Summer when Windows Mobile 6.5 finally comes available. So until then just behold in the glory of the Touch Pro 2.

Travel Weekend

April 20, 2009May 5, 2009 Wayne Zimmerman Leave a comment

This weekend everyone was traveling. Jen hit me up on Wednesday for a ride to Houston Hobby Airport. She was traveling to St Louis to see her mom and visit the rest of her relatives. Her niece joined her for the flight and all the great things to do in St Louis. On the way back from the airport I attempted to eat at two Subways. One was super busy and wasn’t worth the wait and the other Subway I was only able to find the sign of where it used to be, so i just decided that I shouldn’t eat out and I should just go home and watch Rescue Me and eat the leftover Jambalaya from earlier in the week.

On Thursday, I took my parents to the Easterwood Airport here in College Station for their trip to New Orleans for French Quarter Festival. I spent Thursday night enjoying NBC’s great lineup of Parks and Recreation, The Office and Southland. Friday Night it was poker night, I was a little late from getting off of work due to making some decisions in the third guy hiring process, I grabbed some snacks and several brews from HEB and went home. Everyone pretty much got here by seven so we were off and rolling. I ended up going out around 2am as only the second one out of the five player game.

Saturday it rained like crazy all morning, and since the Rec Center was busy with a racquetball tournament Judd and I went for a ride out towards South College Station and got 32 miles in. This ties my longest ride ever and puts me on par for my 200 miles a month goal. We also grabbed some Ninfas and they seriously have the best Quesadillas in town, however that left me as pretty much just a waste for the rest of the day. Sunday, I was thinking about going for a ride in Houston down at Brays Bayou, however after so far the day before I my back was quite sore and I really didn’t feel up to it. So I headed to Houston a bit later, grabbed lunch at Subway which was probably the best Subway sandwich I had ever had from there, Picked up Jen around 3pm and was back in College Station by 6pm. I also took care of the dog all weekend so I was back and forth to the parents house a few times.

Monday I picked up the parents from the airport around 4pm and got them home and chatted with them for a bit about their trip. Then grabbed a quick sandwich on sweet bread from St. Louis, and played two nine hole rounds, over at First Baptist Church. The first round I was just kind of learning the course since I hadn’t ever played their before. I believe I shot about 3 or 4 over. The second time around I shot even because I knew where the holes where. Hopefully, my friends and I can make a thing of this because I really do enjoy doing just about anything that has to do with the outdoors, and frisbee golf is quite relaxing and fun at the same time. I also didn’t realized how many courses we have in the Bryan / College Station area we have about 5 or so 9 hole courses and the 18 hole one out at Research Park. Anyways, now I am home watching Southland again for Jen and updating the blog.

Hacked Xboxs Galore

April 14, 2009April 20, 2009 Wayne Zimmerman Leave a comment

A half day for the Easter holiday left me with some spare time. With that I planned to help my friend rebuild his PC back to a functional state by reloading his OS. During this process, and playing some Resident Evil 5 we decided to me up with my girlfriend and a few other of my friends and eat at Cheddars. This is were it got weird. In talks over dinner, we realized that all the media machine issues could be solved by hacking a simple Xbox to XBMC using softmod.

After dinner we found the Xbox in a closet box and search frantically for a power cable, but there was none to be had, however after further investigation we noticed that a Playstation Power Cable was very close and after a few adjustments with a knife we were in business. We rushed to my house to gather the controller, memory card, and game needed to preform the hack and raced back over with an additional Xbox I had for another experiment. It was a hackfest 2 Xboxs were converted into lean mean media playing machines. This inspired our friend rebuilding the PC and decided to purchase one on Craigslist yesterday, which we promptly hacked over burgers and wine. So my total comes to 4 Xboxes loaded with XBMC. I will soon do a write up of a quick process to get it done.

The only limitation we have discovered is with MKVs and high bitrate video files, it seems to lag out. But honestly, it is a 733mhz PIII with an good video card, so the limitations of very manageable. Especially now that you can enjoy all that media that you have spend hours downloading on your large TV in the living room and control it all with the DVD remote that the Xbox has, and you give new life to a game console that would have just collected dust otherwise. ~waynezim