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July 4th pictures

// July 6th, 2005 // No Comments » // Life, The Universe, and Everything, Pictures

Well we had a very nice July 4th. We went over to our old house and drank and got merry. Wait that’s christmas terms… In any case it was fun. We had the second annual (for me anyways) Roman Candle fight… yes, people actually got hit with them. It was great. We tried to blow up a watermelon but had no luck… (fireworks just aren’t as strong as they used to be). The “m80’s” produced little more bang than a standard black cat firecracker… When dusk came along we decided to walk along the beautiful Willamette River (one of the most polluted rivers in America — though it doesnt get polluted until AFTER eugene… so they say) We realized we weren’t going to make it all the way to the fireworks so we jsut stopped at a park and sat there and kind of saw them. The frisbee that someone had was as much fun… it lit up really really well and we could actually throw it in pitch blackness and have a game…

Without furthur words, here are the pictures

July 4th 2005

98|5|1

On a happier note…

// July 1st, 2005 // No Comments » // Life, The Universe, and Everything

Now that thats out of me, I do have some happiness to shed. I have been modifying my old stereo so that a computer would fit inside. This definately called for some major dremel action. Well i had a dremel that was given to me as a birthday present a year or so ago that i had never used so i broke it out and got a diamond tipped bit for it… About 1/2 hour in the dremel died. Great i thought… there went $60. So i went to walmart to get one to use and return when i was done… Then the other day while “working” my ADD kicked in and I got sidetracked (just like I’m supposed to be working now) so i found the dremel website Dremel.com) — very creative i may add, and decided to send them an email… It was a whole two or three sentence just saying i had a dremel that just died. I received back a very nice reply from a real person (no form generated email) and it turns out that they are going to replace not only my dremel, but also three bits that broke in the process of my modding. Waaaay above what I expected. To top it off, they are UPS’ing it to my house and paying to have the other one shipped back. So i just want everyone to know that dremel kicks ass. The first thing i plan to do when i get my new dremel is to buy an India cutting attachment and cut a hole in india so we can throw all the tech support people in it. Then i’m going to get a killing attachment and kill all the companies that outsource their already shitty tech support.

Look out, osterbrink’s on a dremel killing spree.

Dear India

// July 1st, 2005 // No Comments » // Life, The Universe, and Everything

Dear any company that has tech support in india:

FUCK YOU, fuck everyone you know, rot in hell and die. a lot. Please die all the time and don’t come back. I hate you. I hope your company dies too and that it goes to hell with you. I hope that your cat dies too. Fuck you I hate you.

Ahren Osterbrink

Summer posters

// June 24th, 2005 // No Comments » // Life, The Universe, and Everything

Well, i’m heading down to California to see widespread panic in a couple weeks… i HAVE to sell posters to make my money for the trip… otherwise i will become a bum in cali… so here is the poster i designed… it’s not printed yet so i can still make improvements… click on it for a larger version…

Also, some friends back home are going to 10k Lakes in Minnesota… I SOOO wish i could have went… Here’s the poster i designed for them… Once again, click it for a larger version and give me any comments / suggestions please!!!!

HTPC

// June 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // Life, The Universe, and Everything

HomeTheaterPersonalComputer… This is a project that has been taking up a lot of my boring freetime… What I decided to do for a case it to take apart my broken Kenwood VR2080 Receiver. I have hated this thing almost since i bought it. It was a mistake to get rid of my old Denon receiver because this one was more expensive and better looking…

Thats what it looks like… First the remote for it died. Which basically rendered it useless, there are basically no controls on the front panel other thatn power and volume… The remote was very cool but it pissed me off when it decided to break… I looked into getting a replacement, but the kenwood site was setup so that support emails went to a fake email address so i just got a bounce back email… very nice on their part… I found them else where for $150… a used receiver with remote goes for $100 or so on ebay (they retailed for around $800 4-5 years ago or so). So i used it with no remote for quite some time… Then i left for central america.

When i got back, I decided to take the kenwood back out with me and leave my other cheap receiver for my mom… i should have tested my receiver first…. when i got it back out here, it wouldn’t turn on. Well it would, but it would click once and turn off instantly… meaning something was shorting out inside somewhere…. One look inside told me i was way over my head.. a thought of taking it to an electrician to get it fixed… i figured it would be at least $50 to get it fixed, and i was still stuck with no remote for it… I could buy another whole unit on ebay for $100 but i wasn’t happy with it anyways… so i bought a new receiver… A Denon… something of actual quality.

So, i then had this piece of shit kenwood receiver sitting there… One day i decided to rip it apart and fit my computer inside it… My thinking was putting the computer into the receiver would make it so i could have it under my tv and it wouldn’t look like a stupid computer… So i began the best part of the project, ripping the guts out of an expensive electronic device.

(more…)

Joyfulness

// June 15th, 2005 // No Comments » // Life, The Universe, and Everything

Well Ryan just got a callback from Google… He’s been interviewing with them for a bit and had to submit a mock site to them, and i guess they liked it… They’re flying him down to california for an interview on next Friday. Good for him, bad for me. If he get’s offered a job, he’ll take it, and that will basically be the end of working here… so it would be back to the drawing boards… which would alomst 100% mean moving from Oregon… maybe to Maine as i had planned before… who knows. They haven’t offered him a job yet, but if they’re taking the time / money to fly him in, it can’t be too far off… Don’t get me wrong, i’m very happy for him… it just will leave me a shithole of a situation.

lazy post

// June 15th, 2005 // No Comments » // Life, The Universe, and Everything

I just posted this on another site I use… and am copying it to here…

I was looking at tshirts and stumbled across this… I have seen quite a few shirts that attempt to be offensive, but this takes the case… I laughed quite hard at it… It doesn’t offend me, but i think you would get some pretty weird looks if you wore it…