I can sympathize with some of the troubles that other would-be pet adopters have experienced. When we were looking to adopt our kittens last year, I went through a bit of a rigamarole with the adoption process. The animal hospital misunderstood some of my answers on the application, denied us, and neglected to confirm, discuss, or inform us that the adoption was denied. I basically had to do all the follow-up, including calling back three times a day from Tuesday through Friday evening that week until I reached the one and only staff member who would tell me what happened.

In the end, I straightened them out, and the adoption was back on. I understand they want to take precautions to ensure it is a good fit between human and animal, but with so many animals in need of a good loving home, they should take more care to make sure more adoptions happen.

I mention all this because Slate’s Emily Yoffe wrote a piece titled No Pet For You (Seinfeld reference!) about adoption groups taking a hard line stance regarding who is worthy to adopt future pets. Like I said earlier, they should take due care, but they should balance that with getting more adoptions happen.

I have to give some people credit for the creativity they display and the willingness to put out the amount of effort to make this stuff up.

Hello from ant1mat3rie on Vimeo.

Sunday night was date night here at the Ipe household. The kids were staying over at the in-laws, and we had the evening to ourselves. After mucb contemplating about extravagant evening entertainment, we went the simple route — have dinner locally, then come home to watch a movie. Naturally, pajamas and snuggling on the couch were required. We hit a local Italian restaurant, then came home to watch Bridesmaids over Walmart’s Vudu service.

Vudu Streaming Audio screenshot

Now, we had waiting to see this in the theater upon initial release, but schedules never worked out. I’ve used Vudu in the past, and never had a complaint. Vudu offer 3 video resolutions — SD (480p), HD (720p), and HDX (1080p.) Now some film material is available with Dolby Digital Stereo (2.0), 5.1, and 7.1. During the film, I noticed we were only getting stereo sound, which boggled my mind. Wait a minute, stereo? I would have stopped it and done some investigating, but that would have ruined “date night”, so I let it be. I’ve been researching, and it seems that not all films on Vudu are streaming in surround sound. I went online just now to check out the forums, and the “More Info” tab for Bridesmaids. Check out the video/audio format on the right of the attached screenschot. Dolby Digital Stereo. Egads, who’s verifying available audio formats before you rent a streaming movie? Live and learn.

What can you do? What’s done is done. Might as well get on with talking about Bridesmaids. You know, I didn’t know exactly what to expect from this film. There was much comparison to 2009′s The Hangover, except from a bachelorette perspective. In that case, wouldn’t it be more like Tom Hanks’ Bachelor Party? The cast is huge, featuring Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, John Hamm, and many more. Turns out, the film is much different than I thought.

Kristen Wiig’s character Annie is the best friend of Maya Rudolph’s bride character Lillian. As Annie comes into conflict with one of the other bridesmaids, her life continues to fall apart during the pre-wedding planning. The film features all of the idiosyncratic bridesmaids, including an outstanding and memorable performance by Melissa McCarthy. The film’s plot didn’t go where I thought it would exactly go, so I found it entertaining.

Bridesmaids (2011)

I’m putting a stake in the ground, and listing the stuff I need, and things I need to do in 2012. This is my official running list. Better get my list done now, so I know what to work towards.

Now in no particular order, the shit I need to get done:

1. Replace my desk with a custom IKEA desk.
2. Replace my Dell 19″ 1905FP monitor with the Dell 24″ U2412. Yup, just swapping Dells.
3. Replace our Epson scanner with something newer and compatible with Windows 7.
4. Replace our Logitech webcam with something newer and compatible with Windows 7, and does HD video.
5. Get an iPad 2, or an iPad 3. Hell, how about one of each?
6. Clean out our basement, and fix it up as a playroom for our kids, or when other kids come over. This will require new carpeting and a fresh coat of paint.
7. Replace the toilet flangey-thing in the hallway powder room so that it isn’t slowly leaking.
8. Paint the kitchen.
9. Clean out my side of the walk-in closet. I found some shirts in there that are late 90′s era. Why do I have them? Also, what was I thinking?
10. Buy a new car when we hand in our lease-end car this summer. I’m thinking a fully decked out Nissan Maxima, red or black.
11. Either evict or adopt the squirrel we found living in our attic this month. I’m not kidding.

That’s all I can think of, but there may be more. Looks like a good list to me, and I’ve got 12 months to do it.

I believe Apple iTunes does strange things, and I almost lost my music for a third time.

I remember years ago when my Dell Dimension was new, I had some strange issue with Apple iTunes where 130+ songs disappeared. Very odd. A few months later, I happened to find them in the Recycle Bin of all places. I considered myself lucky that it hadn’t been cleared. In 2006 when my Dell’s original hard drive failed after a year, my friend Plex was able to recover my data, and I also used this Red Chair Software product called Anapod Explorer to copy songs from my iPod back to my PC. It worked like a charm.

Well, I just had incident #3 this week. I thought I was conscientious. I backed up my data to the external drive, and then copied it to the new machine. Sometime this week, 76 songs couldn’t be located on either the primary HDD or the external. However, they were still on the iPhone. Weird.

I tried installing the old Anapod software to transfer it back, but it wouldn’t work. I went to the Red Chair Software website for tech support, and it appears they went out of business. I did download their latest (and last) version, but it doesn’t work either.

I was flummoxed.

I googled some more, but I didn’t want to buy more software. Eventually, I found some freeware called SharePod. I downloaded SharePod 3.9.8, and it saved me. God bless the Internet.

SharePod v3.9.8

The new Noctua indeed arrived as expected. I opened the packaging, read the minimal instructions (just a simple picture on the box), and opened up my PC case.

To recap, there are four fans:

• the CPU fan
• the power supply fan
• the front air intake fan
• the rear exhaust fan

I quickly unscrewed the rear fan screws, and replaced the fan with the brown Noctua fan. The fan comes with regular metal screws, and also rubber “vibration” connectors, which look sort of like brown pawn chess pieces. Supposedly, I can use these instead of the screws to minimize the vibration and noise. Well, I’m game. Replacing and securing the new fan with the rubber thingies was a breeze. I decided to test it out at the stock fan speed initially. I can always swap out and switch it to a lower RPM later.

Verdict? It works, and it’s much quieter. Problem? Now the front air intake fan is noisy in comparison. I checked it out, but couldn’t figure out to adjust and lower the fan speed. There should be a switch, but I couldn’t find it. Since the front fan is only optional, I disconnected it. So far, the PC internal temperature is running cool at around 38 degrees Celsius, and the PC is now whisper quiet.

Eureka!

Let me take a few minutes to talk about the new PC. As you may have read, I recently got a new PC on the last day of 2011. It took a while, but it’s finally here. I brought it home Saturday evening, and spent New Year’s Eve watching Crazy Stupid Love and backing up (and later transferring) my data to the new PC. What’s the verdict so far?

Well, it’s pretty good. I like having a fast, responsive machine. Four CPU cores, 8 GBs of RAM, and a super-fast video card helps, of course. However, I must admit that the whole experience doesn’t feel quite right though. I’m missing a few things.

• I want my new desk. With large tracts of land. I know it is at IKEA, but I just need to get it.
• I want my big 24″ monitor. I’ve narrowed down the future monitor to either the Dell UltraSharp U2412M or Dell UltraSharp U2410 monitors. Both have good review, plenty of ways to adjust them, and I get an employee purchase program discount through work.
• I want a new keyboard and mouse. My long-lived Logitech Cordless Duo MX isn’t compatible with 64-bit Windows 7 . The keyboard is working, but I’ve swapped in a [gasp!] corded Logitech mouse. Not ideal, and it is irking me.
• Our long-lived Epson Perfection 1660 flatbed scanner isn’t compatible with 64-bit Windows 7 either. It’s currently unplugged, awaiting eventual replacement.
• While I’m glad the PC runs cool due to all the fans, the rear exhaust case fan is LOUD. I like a quiet PC, and this sounds like jet engine.

So let’s talk more about the loud case fan. I’ve got four fans in the PC, but the rear fan is the loudest. I considered living with it, but it’s annoying me too much. Way too much. I did some research this morning, and ordered a Noctua case fan that runs quiet (adjustable with 3 different speeds.)  It’s an Austrian product, and a weird brown color, but I don’t care. I want a quiet nexus to my digital life. I ordered from my favorite retailer Amazon.com, and it’ll be here by tomorrow. Egads, they’re fast. Wednesday night, I’ll be replacing the fan, and hoping that this improves the situation.

The new PC, circa 2012

The Noctua NF-S12B case fan: silent but deadly

One the gifts the kids received for Christmas was Cars 2 on blu-ray (and DVD.) In case you recently came out from living under a rock, Cars 2 is the sequel to the 2006 Pixar film Cars. I actually liked the original Cars in a way — it’s very similar to the 1991 film Doc Hollywood starring Michael J. Fox and Julie Warner. Again, FYI in case you were living under a rock in 2006 too. So what’s this sequel about? Lightning McQueen and tow truck Mater (who I need in small doses) head overseas to compete in the first-ever World Grand Prix to determine the world’s fastest car. Where do you go from here? Why, an international espionage, of course! Michael Caine stars as Finn McMissile, a spy car. Lightning McQueen takes a backseat while this becomes nearly two hours of Mater and Larry the Cable Guy. If you like the Mater character, you’re in luck. If, like me, tire of the character quickly, be warned.

I thought this film was “okay.” I’m not a fan of Mater, so after a while, I went off to do the laundry while the kids sat entranced. The Mater character is the star attraction for 106 minutes. The story was okay, but I just didn’t care for all the wacky antics. On the other hand, the video and audio quality of the blu-ray was top-notch. It’s possible that John Lasseter and the rest of the Pixar folks got too involved with the technical detail, and got sidetracked on the quality of the story. So, apart from the story, the animation is crystal clear, eye-catching, and just looks amazing. Regarding the audio, you can never go wrong with DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1. The fronts were booming, the LFE shook the floor, and the surrounds were very active.

In summary, the story is so-so. If you want to plunk yourself down with the kids and enjoy the visuals and audio, be my guest.

Cars 2 (2011)

Sometime last summer, we were supposed to see Crazy Stupid Love in the theaters on one date night, and then also on a vacation day. Neither day worked out, and we ultimately missed the film while it was still playing in theaters. Ah well, what can you do. It took a few more months, but we waited patiently for Netflix to pick it up, and here we are. As is our annual New Year’s Eve tradition, we watched a film, and we went with Crazy Stupid Love this year.

As romantic comedies go, I thought this was pretty good. Here’s the synopsis, courtesey of the good folks at IMDB.com:

A middle-aged husband’s life changes dramatically when his wife asks him for a divorce. He seeks to rediscover his manhood with the help of a new-found friend Jacob, learning to pick up girls at bars.

The film has an all-star cast:

• Steve Carell
• Ryan Gosling
• Julianne Moore
• Emma Stone
• Marisa Tomei
• Kevin Bacon
• Beth Littleford
• John Carroll Lynch

I’m generally rather disappointed with romantic comedies — they’re never written well, and I find the plots to be trite. On the other hand, I thought Crazy Stupid Love was rather well-written. The plot had some well-travelled themes, but it went another level. The characters were good people and interesting. As a result, I found the whole film to be ultimately engaging.

Crazy Stupid Love (2011)

First off, let me say, “Booyah!” Now that I let that out, let me continue.

I’m finally getting the new PC. My Dell Dimension 8400 is 6.5 years old, and it is reaching it’s last useful months left. I’ve survived one hard drive crash (and lost data), upgraded memory, and added an additional backup hard drive. In the end, it was time for a new PC. A quad-core PC.

I initially predicted in December 2010 that I would get a new desktop PC, and I thought I was so close in February 2011 that I even worked out the specifications. Unfortunately, reality set in, and we had other expenses come up that took priority. My dreams of a new PC were put on hold for the time-being.

Why am I so excited by a new PC? First off, if you have to ask that question, you don’t know me very well. Secondly, unlike many people, my desktop is the center of my digital world. I keep my digital media on it. I stream video from it. I sync my calendar and contact data to my phone from it. I do my video and photo editing on it. I watch the occasional movie on it. It’s the nexus. Using a PC that is huffing and puffing as your nexus ain’t that fun.

I flirted with buying an HP, but talked it over with my friend Plexy, and opted for spending the same amount of money on better parts, but which requires me to put it together. We worked up the specifications, and ordered the parts. They should be here by Friday, and I’m working with him on Saturday to put it together. Interestingly enough, the specifications are very similar to what I had planned back in February, apart from some minor updates:

• Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower case
• Intel i7-2600 3.4 GHz processor
• Corsair 8 GB Vengeance  DDR3 RAM
• Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD4-B3 LGA 1155 motherboard
• EVGA GeForce GTX 570 1280 MB graphics card
• Samsung Blu-ray player / DVD-W drive
• Creative 7.1 Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
• 2 TB Western Digital 7200 RPM HDD

Sometime in Q1 2012, I hope to pick up a new 24″ LCD/LED monitor, and a new desk. That should complete the home office refresh. I’ve got the 3-day weekend coming up for New Year’s, so I hope to finish the rest of the data transfer and complete the software installs during my free time. Very exciting. Well, for me, anyway.