Yearly Archives: 2007
Garcliff 2
Garcliff
The Gateway 2150 (De)repair Saga – Part I
I tried posting this inquiry on some message board specifically intended for dealing with Gateway laptops. But it’s not the most active board out there. And after about a week of not getting any help I thought:
“Protozoic has always given me plenty of love. Maybe they’d have some insight into this whole issue.”
So here’s the project at hand:
We have this old Gateway 2150 laptop that we never used for about 5 years due to the fact that it ran really slowly compared to our newer computers, and had a tendency to crash even when operating standard Windows 98 applications.
Also the battery doesn’t seem to recharge.
And also the fan didn’t seem to come on ever.
But this year I decided I’d try resuscitating the thing. I only plan to use it for word-processing, a little e-mail checking on occasion, possibly to learn linux.
State of Lacey
State of Lacey is an experimental video with a narrative, of sorts.
Unfortunately, for such a short video, the file-size is pretty big. This was due to the fact that there was a lot of visual information and I had to jack up the bitrate.
Cheeseburger
Saw Cheeseburger this weekend. Picked up the album last week. My new favorite band.
Nebraska
I picked up a copy of Tom Morello’s new project, The Nightwatchman – One Man Revolution. For those who don’t know, Tom Morello is/was the guitarist in Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave. Anyway, the album is basically just Tom on acoustic guitar singing activist-type songs. It’s ok; it has its moments. The album has gotten a lot of comparisons to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album, which is really the point of this post.
While always one of my favorite Bruce albums, I decided to listen to it a couple of times recently, spurred on by the Morello album. And I’ve got to say, I think everyone should own a copy of Nebraska. One of the best albums of all time. We’re coming up on its 25th anniversary in September, so pick up a copy at Amazon for $11 or snag a copy at a used record store.
Job Applications
Job Applications is about my other job, filling out job applications.
Vent
Vent is a movie about a fan machine and a man watching television.
Hot Air Balloons in Atlantis
The following passage comes from Shirley Andrews’s Atlantis: Insights from a Lost Civilization.
In 52,000 B.C., as dangerous beasts made daily life miserable in Atlantis, it became important to consult with others, often in distant places, who were similarly threatened. Since those they wished to confer with did not have adequate means of transportation to their country, the innovative Atlanteans devised a method of conveying them. Stitching the skins of large animals together to form balloons, they created unique vehicles for transportation in the air, similar to zeppelins. The shape of the craft was determined by the proportions of the animal from whose skin it was made; therefore, some dirigibles resembled elephants or mastodons, and others looked like giant bears. Edgar Cayce carefully describes the techniques Atlanteans utilized to temper metals to make strong lights braces for these unusual crafts. He says they filled the shells of these immense, strange balloons with a gas that lifted them just enough to move in the air close to the ground while carrying several passengers. He also mentions Atlantean planes, which were capable of traveling underwater and were useful for transporting destructive weapons for fighting the threatening beasts.
Atlantis: Insights of a Lost Civilization, by Shirley Andrews, Llewellyn Publications: St. Paul, Minnesota, 2001, pages 150-151.
I can’t really imagine what the large beasts looked like, but I tried anyway in the picture below. The beasts must have been ferocious.
I should note that the nuclear armament I drew dangling from the hot air balloon might be inaccurate. According to Andrews Atlanteans did have nuclear power which “proved valuable for destroying large animals” (163). Atlanteans dropping nukes from hot air balloons is purely my speculation, but it does seem probable.
Click the picture for a larger version.