ChiperBlog

Monoprice.com ROCKS MY WORLD!

chiper — 2007-08-17T00:37:00-0700

Last week, Robbie at work told me about this new site he was using now for all his cable purchases, Monoprice.com. He was going through them because they had Cat6 cables at really low prices.

Tonight I went on there to look at getting some audio cables, 1/8" to RCA adapters. They had them, at just $1 for a six foot length. ONE DOLLAR! Even the best price I've found locally is over $5. I then started browsing the site and picked up a bunch of other things that I had been needing (Ethernet cables, USB cables, etc). I ordered almost two dozen cables and the total came to just over $20. Even if these are shitty cables, that's an insane price.

I placed my order at 10:08pm. I instantly recieved an automated confirmation email.
At 10:09 I recieved a personal confirmation that the order was being fulfilled.
At 10:15 I recieved both a notice that my order was fullfilled and shipped, and also a confirmation message from USPS with my tracking number.

Seven minute from placement to shipment.... this is unheard of! I've never had an online vendor with this fast of turnaround. And at ten o'clock at night! HOW THE HELL DO THEY DO THAT!?! And no, this isn't some chinese outfit, these parts are shipping from LA (Rancho Cucamonga to be exact).

Needless to say, I will be shopping from these guys from now on. They've got sections of the website set aside for computer parts, from CPUs to Video Cards, but the sections are all empty. I hope that means they will be adding more parts in the future.

Merging the Enderverse

chiper — 2007-07-24T15:12:00-0700

WARNING: If you have not read the entire Ender series by Orson Scott Card, the following blog post will contain spoilers.

Over the past few months I've been listening to a lot of Audio Books, and just today I finished the last book in the Speaker for the Dead trilogy, Children of the Mind. At the end of the recording, Orson Scott Card himself speaks about the book and his plans for the series. He mentions that originally he planned to stop the series at CotM and leave it at that, but then he started writing the Shadow series, focusing on Bean.

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I SO HAVE TO TRY THIS!

chiper — 2007-06-21T09:34:00-0700

This is just fucking awesome!

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/rubens-tube-p1.php

On Star Trek and Money

chiper — 2007-06-11T20:16:00-0700

Not my own words, but something I never thought of.

Money does exist in Star Trek. Starship crews get paid. Some writers confuse not needing money with not having it. 40 + years and 700+ scripts and you're bound to have inconsistencies.

The Federation has near-unlimited power generation, replicators that can rearrange matter however they want, trasnporters that can move resources anywhere they want in an instant. Drudge work is taken care of by advanced machines. Plus dozens of other fantasically advanced technologies.

The result is that the cost in resources in taking care of a human being has zeroed out. It costs the Federation less than a few pennies a day to feed, clothe, educate and provide medical care for the average citizen. So the government provides all that for its citizens because its cheap and relatively effortless for them to do so.

Hence, you don't need money in the Federation, because all of your essentials will be taken care of. Apparently people can live their whole lives with never seeing money. BUt if you do want to work, something the Federation society strongly encourages, you get paid money ("credits") to pay for luxuries and other sundries. Hence Picard's brother maintaining a vinyard, Sisko's dad running a restaurant, Harry Mud always trying to get rich quick, etc.

Its not communist as profit and personal gain is still strongly encouraged and sought after; its just that the lowest rung on society's ladder has been raised quite a bit higher than what we have today. Its kind of what the western democracies might be like today if they had an all-pervasive but cheap societal sfaety net for its citizens.
-- Dhusk on Slashdot

Holy crap!

chiper — 2007-04-16T10:37:00-0700

Watch this a couple times, it's really quite amazing.

Which side are you on?

chiper — 2007-02-19T12:28:00-0800

Pushing the limits

chiper — 2007-02-16T00:08:00-0800

So I'm sitting here catching up on my Smallville episodes, and the phone rings. Kat's calling me because she's bored and wants me to entertain her. After a few minutes it comes out that she's been gradually doing things that she knows will bother me with the intention of trying to see what my limit is, to see which buttons she can push to set me off.

I've heard of this before, it's the same principle that the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was based on, and is one of those little things that women do to drive men crazy. This fits into the same category as the ever popular Trap Question, where the only correct answer is one that compliments the asker. Kat and I addressed this early in our relationship, that I wont be caught up in those kinds of questions. Whenever she asks one, I just point out that it's a trick question and it puts us on even ground for an honest answer (huge relationship saver, I highly recommend it).

Anyway, the conversation continued on for a while until this happened.

Kat: Would you break up with me if I built a shrine to you in my bedroom?
Me: No, but I would definately question your mental stability.
[pause]
Kat: What if I made it out of cheese?

At this point I started laughing so hard that by the time I was done we had moved on.

I finally ended the conversation by fighting fire with fire. I went into the bathroom and started taking a dump, and then informed her that I was in the bathroom taking a dump.

She scowled at me for playing dirty and then decided to go find something else to do, hanging up after saying good bye.

I love this woman.

Life goals

chiper — 2007-02-14T16:35:00-0800

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"

Today I had an interview with Abtech, an enterprise hardware company. They have an option position in their tech-lab for an IT related job, and we were discussing if I would be right for it. The above question kept coming up, over and over again. For the life of me, I could not come up with a decent answer, which was a serious problem throughout the course of the interview. I couldn't seem to come up with an answer that they liked. After I left and was able to clear my mind more, I started to realize why.

I have, for most intents and purposes, gone through two career changes so far. Straight out of High School I was shooting for software programming. I was sure that was the career that was right for me, and I pursued it actively. In 2000 I landed a great job as a javascript developer, and I was sure I was on the express route to a great career. Then the dot.com crash happened, and I found myself sitting on a trade that nobody wanted. "JavaScript Programmer? What's that?" It would be another five years before anyone considered JavaScript anything other then a subset of web-design. I grabbed the only job I could, working retail for Borders, and I floated for two years before deciding to get back into Cinema.
I found myself again as a film projectionist. I was doing so well at Pacific, that I was sure I wanted to be a career projectionist. But when I went looking around, I couldn't find anything that pays a living wage. The only film PJ jobs worth anything were engineering jobs, a field fully staffed with guys who have been doing it for decades. By 2010, there will be fewer then 1000 PJ Engineers in the United States. My second career ended before it had even begun.

My experiences have taught me that career minded goals are like farts in the wind. You can't truly predict where you'll go, no one can.

Eight years ago I was doing entry level IT servicing for a small company.
Seven years ago I was working at a movie theater.
Six years ago I was writing software in a development field so advanced that nobody even had a name for it. It took the rest of computing 5 years to catch up with what we were doing.
Five years ago I was working retail at a book store.
Now, afer three years, I'm leaving the cinema trade again.

What will I be doing in five years? Fuck if I know! I might not even be in California in five years! The only thing I can guarantee in five years is that I will be 32 years old, married, and probably have a kid.

Everything else is just a job.

Submarina Responds

chiper — 2007-01-03T12:46:00-0800

Just a follow-up to my previous post. Submarina did actually respond to my email. They said they are redesigning the website and will take my suggestions into consideration.

i didn't expect any response at all, so this is kinda cool.

When companies hire teenagers to design their websites.

chiper — 2007-01-01T22:28:00-0800

Submarina.com

Dear Submarina

I came to the website in order to find out the operating hours for the Carmel Mountain location. After sitting here for five minutes waiting for your all-flash webdesign to load and then having to turn off my pop-up blocker just to get the location listing to even display, I find out the location I wanted closed within the time that I spent trying to find out if it was still open.

Five web design faux-pas committed by your site in the time I was on there:
1) No non-flash viewing provision. You just lost anybody not on broadband internet, anybody using an older computer and anyone using a PDA or cellphone.

2) The website resized my browser window the instant it loaded. If I wanted a fullscreen browser window, I would have done it myself. Please don't presume to tell me how to use my computer.

3) Why does a sandwich store need a flash site so complex that it requires a loading screen? You sell sandwiches!

4) Website coverpage. I went to submarina.com, I already know it's the site for submarina, I don't need a whole page telling me just that I'm at submarina.com.

5) From initial loading to finally finding the hours of the store, I clicked a total of seven times, not counting the clicks I made to allow the flash to load and to disable popup blocking. It should never take a user more then three clicks to find the information they need, and it should NEVER take an entire 10 minutes just to find out if a store location is still open. I probably could have gotten the information faster from Google.

Your flashy webdesign may look pretty, but it's costing you money.