Eric Faller

31Jan/07

Broken Wii

Doh. While fooling around with my homemade Wii component cables I accidentally broke off the Pb and Pr pins of my Wii's YPbPr connector:

Broken Wii

Trying to fix it just made it worse. I only have the Y signal left, so mini-Mii is angry now that he only shows up in black & white:

Angry Mini-Mii

Filed under: Electronics, Games, General Comments

28Jan/07

Signs you might be a Seattle yuppie

#17: Your car has both high-performance racing tires and a ski rack, and you don't see anything wrong with that.

GTI ski rack

Filed under: Car, General, Humor Comments

23Jan/07

Emergency Resource Guide

I just got this Emergency Resource Guide in the mail from the "Washington Military Department Emergency Management Division":

Emergency Resource Guide

It contains lots of useful info, such as what to do when you cough, in case you dropped out of school before kindergarten:

What to do if you cough

It has 41 pages of advice about how to deal with everyday dangers such as:

Terrorism (advice: "Be aware of your surroundings")
Accidental Poisoning
Pandemic Flu
Radiation Exposure
Bomb Threats (questions to ask: "Where is the bomb?" "Where are you?")
Chemical Agents
Anthrax
Botulism
Pneumonic Plague
Smallpox
Tularemia
Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers
Methamphetamine Labs (wtf?)
Earthquakes
Tsunamis
Volcanoes
Government fear-mongering

Oh wait, that last one wasn't on the list

Filed under: General, Random Comments

19Jan/07

Ads on Amazon boxes

Is nothing sacred any more? Even my beloved Amazon boxes now come plastered in ads..

I weep for the future.

Amazon box ads

Filed under: General, Random Comments

15Jan/07

Today on my way to work I saw a guy walking around with an Emmy statue. I wish I took a cell phone pic, but I was driving. It was the last thing I expected to see - quite bizarre. He must have been one of the people that collected Microsoft's Emmy awards (Microsoft winning an Emmy? Weird, I know, see here: http://cesweb.org/attendees/awards/emmys.asp).

Emmy

Filed under: General, Random Comments

9Jan/07

MSDN Magazine article

Today I got my dead-tree copy of my first 'real' published magazine article. It's in MSDN Magazine and is about the new UI in Microsoft Office. It made the lead article for the February 2007 issue, and they even used a diagram I drew on the cover. Sweet!

The article title ("RibbonX API: Extend the 2007 Office System With Your Own Ribbon Tabs and Controls") was obviously written by editors, but that's OK

MSDN Magazine Cover

MSDN Magazine Article

Update:It's up on the MSDN website now:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/02/RibbonX/default.aspx

Filed under: General, Programming Comments

8Jan/07

New bulb! Finally..

Bulb

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Fight the bad Sony customer service and 'lost' P.O.s;

Rage, rage against the dying of the projector light

I thought that poem would be more interesting than it is, but oh well

Filed under: Electronics, General Comments

7Jan/07

The Many Moods of Eric

A coworker recently complained that it's too difficult to tell whether I am in a good mood or a bad mood. My response of "Well, I'm not exactly an emotionally extreme individual" apparently wasn't very helpful.

So, for future reference, I present this diagram:

The Many Moods of Eric

Filed under: General, Humor Comments

5Jan/07

Deformed fork

At lunch today I got a plastic fork that obviously wished it was metal instead. (ha ha, horns, get it? never mind..)

Deformed fork

Filed under: General, Humor Comments

4Jan/07

Super Mario Bros

I'm ashamed to admit this in public, but I don't recall having ever beat the original Super Mario Bros back on the NES when I was a kid (without using some sort of cheats), despite having played it for hundreds of hours on end. World 8 was just too difficult.

Today I downloaded the Wii "Virtual Console" version, played it through and beat it on the first try, and only died once (on the last boss).

I'm not exactly sure what to make of this. I have not played the game in more than 15 years, so seemingly the ability to beat the game is unrelated to having played it recently (though I did eerily remember the locations of every single powerup and warp point as if it was just yesterday).

I suspect that I must have much better hand-eye coordination and timing now than I did when I was 5 years old, because it seemed much easier to control Mario this time around, especially through all of the tricky jumps which were so difficult back in the day. The strange thing is that I don't remember having felt like I had "bad" coordination back then, but I must have. I guess 15 years of playing video games is useful for something

Super Mario Bros