Idaho Trip Report

I woke up around my usual time Saturday morning, thought about trying to get another hour of sleep before hitting the road. The act of trying to make that decision was enough to get me fully awake, so I got up. I had finished getting everything packed the night before, so all I needed to do was shower and load up the toiletries in the suitcase and go. What a huge difference it was to load the car this time. One small carry on sized suitcase, the laptop backpack with assorted electronic distractions, and the car was loaded and I was ready to go.

First stop: the gas station for coffee and a Hostess apple pie. The GPS was set with a destination 2100 miles away, and for the first time, it refused to give a ETA. The iPod had 130 episodes of the Skeptoid podcast that I had found the day before, and I was rollin’.

I left West Virgina in the dark, and Maryland went by the same way. The sun came up, as much as it was able, in Pennsylvania. Not a whole lot to say about Pennsylvania, the countryside may have looked a lot nicer if the skies weren’t so grey. There was a nice tunnel that I think was the Allegheny Mountain tunnel or something that I liked, but I am about four years old and think tunnels are cool. Yes, I did in fact honk.

Ohio didn’t offer much either, and the only thing I can really remember from Indiana was the GM plant with an empty parking lot. It started to snow in Illinois, and I was starting to get tired. I was wondering if making it to Nebraska was going to possible before stopping for the night. After passing Chicago, the roads were starting to get bad. There was just enough snow sticking to the ground to kick up some filthy water on me windshield, but it was cold enough to freeze my washer fluid. I decided to stop for the night and make this a three day trip instead of two.

I woke up the next morning to a temperature of 11 below zero, with the wind howling to make a wind chill of 25-30 below. I went across the street to top off the gas tank and get coffee, and the pumps were so cold that it took twenty minutes to pump eight gallons. Once I got on the road, I started counting the cars that had run off the road and had to be abandoned. After a dozen in the first six miles, I quit counting, but I estimate I saw at least 50. The wind blew all day, hard enough that it dropped my gas mileage by almost ten miles per gallon. I made it to Cheyenne, Wyoming and stopped for the night.

I woke up really early, my sleep patterns were still stuck on Eastern time, and hit the road. The wind was still really bad, but that’s normal for that highway. The difference this time was the blowing snow across the highway. It wasn’t sticking, but there was so much of it that the road wasn’t visible at times. I got to the last major turn off to a 200 mile two lane highway through the middle of nowhere. About twenty miles up the road, snow started falling hard. This time, it was sticking. I was limited to about 40-50 mph. I was stuck behind a guy in a truck that was apparantly more nervous than I was, but he finally pulled over and I was able to see more than a couple of hundred feet. I drove cautiously, since the roads were getting slick, and ran parallel to a river. I finally made it to the last junction, where I could turn right and drive twenty five miles over a steep, windy mountain pass, or turn left and go 50 miles over a not quite as steep and windy mountain pass. I asked the clerk in the store what the pass was like, and I was told that chain law was in effect. This meant that the pass was closed unless you had chains on your tires. I went around the longer way, and got to the start of the other pass. There was a big sign there showing that road was also under chain law. Now I had another decision to make; either try the pass, or drive another 90 miles out of the way. The problem with that was that by the time I got around to the last remaining open road, it could be closed too. I risked the pass. It took forever, and I was a bit white knuckled the whole way. I made it to my parents house, and sat watching TV with my Dad for about an hour and a half. That was when we saw that all roads into the valley were now officially closed, even if you have chains. I Han barely made it. In another post, I will talk about the other blizzards that hit while I was visiting.

Blogging as a Geek

I have spent quite a bit of time on this blog talking about my personal things. Especially my relationship troubles, past and present. I have talked a little bit about my past, and a bit about political and theological views I hold. Today, I am going to take a break from that and be a total nerd/geek/dork.

I think I have finally found the solution to my Media Server needs. I have been looking for solutions for a long time, a “all in one” program that will allow me to have a convenient method for viewing my DVD’s and music, and all manner of multimedia. I found Boxee. This is a great program. It is still in the Alpha stage, but it is already so well done that I am honestly excited for what they would consider to be a “release version.”  In order for this whole thing to make any sense, I should probably explain why this is a big deal to me. First off, I have over 500 DVD titles. That’s titles, not discs. If I counted the discs, it might be closer to a thousand. Many of my titles are TV series, so one title could have seven discs. These take up a LOT of space. When I moved into the house, I had these grand visions of all of my DVD’s on shelves surrounding the entertainment center. I have two shelves that will hold around 250 DVD’s, and they are full. I have half of the shelves on the entertainment center full of DVD’s, HD-DVD’s and video games. Since setting up the shelves and populating them with discs, I have decided that I don’t really like it all that much. Things just look a bit too crowded.

I originally wanted to build a Home Theater PC (HTPC) so I could use it as a home-built Tivo, but I really don’t watch all that much TV and it became less of a priority. But I had been ripping some of my DVD’s for my iPod, and both the PS3 and X-Box 360 would play those files. When I moved, I didn’t have a TV for the bedroom, so I hooked up the Mac Mini in there and was using that as a DVD player hooked to a old monitor. I found that Front Row on the Mac worked really well for viewing the iPod formatted files, but the resolution was a bit lower than what I was happy with. I did an experiment and ripped a TV series to files, retaining the original format, and found that the quality of the picture was great, plus I was able to reduce the size of the files to about a third. I lose some of the features that I like, such as subtitles and extras, but I still have the original DVD’s if I want to view those.

Although Front Row was working great, it wasn’t perfect. While looking around for other solutions, I stumbled across Boxee and signed up to be an Alpha tester. Boxee had several advantages over Front Row, the biggest being file recognition and Internet info. Boxee will identify the file, based on file name, and get information from the Internet regarding that movie. For instance, if I ripped Star Trek VI and scrolled to it on Front row, it would show up as the file name “Star_Trek_VI_The_Undiscovered_Country.m4v” In Boxee, that shows up under the Movies tab, with the DVD Cover picture. When I select it, I can read a plot synopsis, who stars in the movie, who directed, etc. This also works very well for the TV shows I have.

The second advantage was the Boxee connects to many Internet streaming video sites, such as Hulu. Now I don’t even need to buy an antenna and TV tuner cards for a PC to record the few TV shows that I watch. Most of them are available on the Internet for free. I still get commercials, but hey, I would have had those if I was watching TV anyway. There are other advantages, but I will sum it up to say that Boxee is fantastic.

I had a plan that after the holidays, I was going to build a new PC to use for my day to day stuff, then use the old one to build a Network Attached Storage box using FreeNAS. I would use this as a central storage location for all the videos, music and pictures and stream them to each PC, as well as the Mac in the bedroom. I was hoping that I would be able to stream the files to either the PS3 or X-Box to watch them on the big TV, but Sony is more concerned about people stealing their movies than they are about usability. So I would have to make sure that I was using proper file formats, a software server that complied used DNLA that the finicky Sony would accept, etc. I have decided that for now, a cheaper method is to build a basic HTPC for the living room, pop in a 1TB drive to store files. The HTPC will be connected to the TV via HDMI, and I wont have to be in the bedroom to watch my videos. But I can still watch them in the bedroom, because they will be shared out and Boxee will access them. Eventually, I will still need to set up a NAS with more capacity, but I figure that as long as it takes to rip the DVD’s, I will have time before that becomes a necessity. By my figures, I should be able to fit a good chunk of my DVD’s on there, and by the time I am reaching capacity on the HTPC, hard drive prices will have dropped some more, and I can make a HUGE storage container, which I will eventually need if I find out how to do the same thing with my HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs.

When I get back from Idaho, I will run the network cables through the attic, I think I only need to do two, at this point. I have been using Boxee over wireless, but I am going to run Gigabit so there is more capacity for the eventual HD. Plus, its a hell of a lot cheaper to run the cable for the X-Box than to spend the hundred buck for their wireless adapter. I will get a Gigabit switch for the living room, that will run the HTPC,  X-Box and PS3. I will probably put another one in the office, just to have faster box to box connections.

The HTPC in the living room will be acting as the file server to hold all the media for both viewing movies and holding the content I want to share amongst the PC’s. It will also serve as the ripping PC. I have been ripping the DVD’s on my main PC, and it takes a long time. During that time, I cant really use my PC for anything put surfing, as the encoding process takes some serious processing power. I am trying to find a good hardware encoder to put in the HTPC to make the process faster. As it stands now, I can only rip a DVD or two a day, so with the number that I have, it would take about two years to get them all encoded. The HTPC will have enough juice to rip the DVD’s to files, while simultaneously playing or streaming others. This will free up my main PC for playing World of Warcraft again.

I am excited to get this process going, and you can bet that I will be doing whatever I can on my trip to save money for this little project. When its done, it will be cool as hell. If you’re a dork.

The Results and Holiday Plans

After posting my dilemma, I received a few emails and a few comments, one of which truly surprised me. Not the content, which is what I expected, but the actual commenter, who I know hates to read anything, let alone some stupid blog. I have to assume that it was a very slow day at work. The opinions were pretty much unanimous, and they all said the same thing: Send a card. The details differed, anything from send a Christmas card to her to send a card to her family. I had pretty much decided what I was going to do before I posted, I was looking to see if there were any adamant opinions in contrast to what I was going to do.  I am going to be sending a gift card from Amazon. It wont be for any extravagant amount, but I have decided that this option strikes a balance between caring and not caring. I was concerned about sending the wrong message by actually going out and buying an actual gift and shipping it. That may have been interpreted as “I still care, I am starting to regret what I did, and here is a gift to give you hope.” Just sending a card seemed too light, as we are still married, and there isn’t, at least on my part, any animosity. The way Amazon does its gift cards, she will basically receive it in the mail with the computer generated note, which will be simple. The reason I am choosing Amazon is because I know she still does a lot of reading on her Kindle, and she can use the card to get books she wants. The reason I am doing a gift card is because it is a bit impersonal. So… I think I have found a balance.

For months, I have been planning on going home to Idaho at the beginning of February. My Mom is turning 60, and there was a big to-do when she turned 50. I guess I assumed there would be another, but it was starting to appear that if there was a gathering, I would have to arrange it. My oldest let me know a few weeks ago that he would be getting out of the Army in time to be home (where all of his, and my family live) for Christmas. That would mean that I would be the only one not home for Christmas. I thought about it, and decided that my Mom would appreciate and enjoy the whole family at Christmas more than she would her birthday. I checked with my Dad, who agreed. I looked into flight and car rental prices on Thursday, and everything seemed to be working out, financially and time, etc. etc. The only thing I had left to do was make sure that I could get vacation time approved, so I had to wait until Friday morning to talk to the boss.

First thing Friday, I do just that. Vacation isn’t a problem, he would approve it in the system “right now.” So I went to my desk and pulled up my saved itinerary. The prices had literally doubled over night. This made the whole trip no longer feasible. I looked into it, checking alternate dates, different airlines, even different airports. Just wasn’t gonna happen, I had waited too long to have my epiphany. So, I checked and got approval for more vacation time, and I will be driving.

Now, this is a long damn drive. It is, almost literally, all the way across the country. It will be either two long, hard driving days, or three not so hard driving days. I think I can make it in two, provided the mid-west doesn’t decide to hit me with big nasty blizzards on the way, which does concern me. The last few times I have made the trip home in winter, the weather did just that. The last time, I was in the worst blizzard I had ever been in. There was so much snow in the air that you couldn’t see more than a foot or two past your own hood. I was literally using a GPS to find an exit. When I got out, there was four inches of snow on the driver side of the car. I don’t mean it piled up on top of the drivers side, I mean the vertical side of the car. Before that night, I had never seen lightning during a snowstorm. It was bad.

So, in two weeks, I will strike out on another road trip, adding a couple of more states to the list of those I have driven in/through. I am in the process of making sure my audio books are all neatly organized on the iPod, and the emergency kit in the trunk is well stocked. I am thinking that one the way back, I may take a more leisurely trip and see a couple of sites along the way that I have been wanting to see for a long time, and I may stop in Chicago to see a good friend that I haven’t seen in many a year.

I should be interesting.