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What else is new? On call all this week for work, so I’m kind of in standby mode all the time. Gotta go to sleep early, eat well, avoid drinks….you know sometimes a constant state of preparedness can be more draining than an actual event. Guess that falls under the stupid but true category.
- Best 11 seconds I’ve spent all week, Hamster learns about inertia.
- Jimmy Kimmel’s best of unnecessary censorship.
Not really sure which of the two are best, but I’ve watched that damn hamster like 5 times….

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So one of the last things to do in order to get that room painted and done was to paint the door. You remember….we ordered 9…or enough to replace every door in the house.
Guess what, painting a 6 panel door is really really hard to do by hand. Both Jen and I took a turn at putting a coat of latex paint on it, and it’s just back breaking.
Queue the . Now this belonged to Jen’s father, and her mom was nice enough to ship it to us so we could use it on the trim and other things a few years ago. I tried using it when doing the office, and it just didn’t work right for us. So it’s been sitting unused in a cabinet for a while now.
Well, yesterday I got an idea, that maybe we could give it another shot. But the problem is that these things just aren’t neat….they get paint everywhere. And it’s way to cold to paint outside, plus I really don’t want white grass. So I thought, why not try to make a paint booth in the basement out of plastic drop cloths that we had lying around (never were gonna use them, red rosin paper works better).
Many staples later, this was the result:

Know how long it takes to paint a door now using the power sprayer? 5 freakin’ minutes baby!
And the results look 100% better than using a brush. Of course, now I’m covered in a fine white mist slightly….but man…super cool. The only real trick to make sure you thin the paint enough to come out evenly….otherwise it’ll never work right.

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God…I hate to paint so much.

In other news, while picking up painting supplies at Home Depot we tripped across this deal:

$99 bucks for a Husky 1750 PSI pressure washer….man, you just can’t pass that buy.

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I’m not sure about the idea, but I’m sure Jen would win gold at it. Of course, I also sure that I’d hate to be the judge in that category. The instant replays would probably kill my appetite.
- Super cool 2500 megapixel picture that’s zoomable. Really cool, haven’t found anyone naked yet, but you can really get super close.
- Who said curling is a boring sport? There’s plenty of excitement with all the yelling going on, challenging teams, oh yeah and the naked guy with a rubber checking taped to his groin wearing a diaper and clothespins. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that was orginally part of curling all along.
- A computer desk built around a treadmill. I swear to god I was just thinking about this very idea this morning…of course except with an elliptical machine.
- Man found guilty of felony aggravated animal cruelty for kicking and killing a 9 week old kitten. I’m just gonna throw this out here….if anybody did this to my cat, I’d end their life. There are differences between hunting for food and killing a 14year old girls domesticated pet. And while there are people who would say that 3 year max sentence is a little high, I would counter with the fact that people who senselessly abuse defense animals are usually not the material you want out in the gene pool.
Still playing with that Netgear SC101, but so far so good. The temp in the equipment cabinet has only gone up 3 degress higher than the outside temperature. Even though I’m transferring 28gb’s of MP3′s to it right now (which should take about 1 hour and 20 minutes).

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Got a new toy…errr…valuable tool today. Picked up a Netgear sc101 from circuit city. They had a deal going where it was only $99 after two mail in rebates. Been looking for a network based storage solution for a while now to backup mp3′s and email files. Computers are cheap, but data is priceless.

Plus I think it makes toast somehow. Now I can make delicious toaster strudels at my desk without having to endure the hardship of physical movement.

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Probably a few years ago, I bought the cheapest controller I could find at the time for a Sony Playstation 2. It was a , and it was just for when Jen and I were messing around with fighting games, nothing major.
Well since my dual shock died a few days ago, i’ve been forced to use this to play Star Ocean. And I’ve come to a conclusion about it.
It sucks donkey balls.
I can deal with it being a huge xbox wanna be, or the sluggish D pad, but when my characters magically decided they want to always run to the right that’s just to much. Even reseting everything to force a recalibration of the controller didn’t fix it. Every now and then, for some unknown reason, the left analog joystick would just think it needed to be registering me pushing it right. Even when the knob was perfectly centered. This is something I can only attribute to cheap parts, or a defective analog joystick module. Eitherway I don’t care….I just couldn’t barely stand to play with this damn thing, and almost took a hammer to it the other day. It’s basically a worthless turd if it doesn’t control the damn character right.
So basically I’ve got one fried dual shock controller, and one good for nothing piece of shit Madcatz controller. Even though I’m planning on investing in a Logitech Wireless controller here soon…having a backup is still preferred, and of course necessary for 2 player games. So it occured to me…what are the odds that the analog joysticks are built with the same physical specs for each controller? Maybe I could take the analog joysticks ouf of the playstation one (shock destroyed the IC, but probably not the controls) and put it into the Madcatz.
Turns out you can….just a simple matter of soldering. So let’s take a look at the comparisons of the circuit boards:

So as we already know, everything matches up perfectly. But the two joysticks were obviously made by different companies. So the only real next step is to remove the parts out of the Sony controller using a solder sucker and copper braid, and then put it in the Madcatz….pretty straight forward:


And the finished product, a Madcatz Dual Force 2 with the analog joysticks from a Sony Dual-Shock:

ya can’t even hardly tell….and it works like a charm. Anyone need some dual shock parts?

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I guess photoshopping olympic stuff is now a habit for me.
And why is so damn interesting…somebody explain that one to me…

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Last night I was playing Star Ocean: till the end of time and I moved over to reach a remote control real quick. When I picked the controller back up I got this massive shock from it (the humidity’s been real low here lately).
It killed my controller

Now I have to use my crappy backup guest controller….feels all weird and stuff in my hand, and the analog controller is to touchy.
I guess this isn’t as uncommon and you’d think, seems to be a known issue. I guess I’m just lucky I didn’t fry the PS2 itself….oh my lord the amount of suck that would generate would affect the earth’s gravitational constant.

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I wonder what perverted google searches will hit here now
Today we did a lot of work in the spare room, painting and hanging up one of the doors.

Don’t they look nice? Well they are…except some of the hinges just weren’t chisled right (or probably more correctly, jigged right). Plus some of the screws were stripped from the get go. Honestly, it’s really irritating, cause to do it right you have to fix all that before you can hang the door. But we were able to get most of it taken care of I think. And honestly, anyone else would say it looks great. I’m just anal.
Oh, also, a buddy of mine Tim got a new motorcyle a few days ago. Now….I don’t know quite exactly who in their right mind buys a motorcycle in 20 degree weather….but you have to admit it’s hella sweet.
BMW K1200R

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That and other interesting questions to be answered here, on dennisjudd.com!
So, a few weeks ago we decided, that if we were going to paint the upstairs we should replace the trim (cheap ranch crap). The reasoning is pretty simple, Painting it, and then putting it on makes for a real nice clean look, and you don’t have to fuss with tape and painting straight lines. Trust me, if you’ve got the money, it’s the best way to go. Rip off the old crap and put new stuff down.
Well during those discussions turned to door casing, and eventually our unhappiness with the cheap crappy little hollow core doors that all these houses seem to have around here. Then while we were walking through Menards we noticed they were having a pretty good sale on solid pine 6 panel prehung doors. So we did the math, and ordered 9 interior doors with silver hinges (which we would have had to replace anyways in the future) for about $730. We also needed to pick up 50 7′ lengths of colonial door casing, 4×12′ 3 1/4″ wall trim, and 16 3 1/4″ lengths of mdf wall trim (an extra $250)
What does all that look like? I’m glad you asked:

Now, certainly that did not all fit in my little car. So how might you ask did we get this home? Through the kindness and generosity of our real estate agents and their capable staff. We purchased our home from them almost 2 years ago, but they were still willing to allow us to use their truck as long as we simply refilled the gas tank when done. Now, I’m really not trying to kiss ass here, but you simply can’t grasp how nice it is to have access to a truck of that size for free (as long as you don’t damage it of course, are moving locally and call in advance). Of course I’m sure this is only as long as it isn’t abused, but I remember last time I rented a U-haul truck it ended up running me like almost 100 bucks, not to mention the hassle and pain in the but it was to do all the paperwork. I just can’t say enough nice things about it, if you tried it, you’d agree too.
And that was just one of the things we did yesterday, it was really quite a busy day. First we had to stop at our financial advisers to discuss our mutual funds performances (they’ve really started picking up since Nov), then stop by Gamestop to see if they could help me with a little problem.
See, I’ve been playing Star Ocean: Till the end of time and am over 100+ hours now on it. So I was messing around in the Maze of Tribulations when I accidentally caught my foot on the controller cable and made the PS2 jerk to the side….hard. I thought at first that everything was fine, but when I tried to head down to level 4 a window popped up “reading disk data” but unlike other times, it never went away. It seems that since the disk was spinning when it got jerked it hit either the lens or part of the retention tray…there by effectively scratching the living hell out of it. So I stopped by the Gamestop hoping they’ve have one of those thingies (I assumed they’d have one open for store use) and that I could beg them to run it through for me. They didn’t, but the guy behind the counter was super nice and swapped my disk for another used copy they had (even though I didn’t have my receipt from buying it there). How cool is that? I rarely get that lucky, but really it just cements why I recommend buying and selling via Gamestop, they’re usually all really cool guys.
Between getting the truck, and that happening I felt like it was a really good, productive day. Despite it raining almost all day and even hailing. It’s the little things sometimes that can make a lousy day good.

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