2005
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I had the PhatBox unit for Volkswagen but was installing in an Audi A6 wagon. The unit is exactly the same, but the cable is different. Chris did the solder iron magic and put a female DB-13 connector in place of the VW connector.
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We blew the fuse in the Audi head unit while installing due to plugging and unplugging a lot of times. I’d suggest not plugging the PhatBox in until you have the connectors fully connected.
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I upgraded the system files on the PhatBox to the newest versions. Took a few minutes on first boot but everything worked perfect.
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The physical install was a bit rough, a hole had to be cut in the back of the steel frame that held the old CD player to allow room for the cable. Be ready to cut into some serious steel.
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The screwholes on the unit weren’t ideally placed. In order to get the access panel back over the unit once installed new holes needed to be tapped into the aluminum chassis and even then the insulation had to be cut out to accommodate the unit. But after that, it fit fine.
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PhatVoice is a program to put higher quality voice prompts on your PhatBox DMS.
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Get more voices to create prompts with.
Roku M1000
Today we go straight from the PhatBox MP3 player in the car to the Roku M1000 for the baby’s room. I decided a couple of weeks ago that we needed to get music in there, the idea is both for us, the parents, and for the kid.
For the last year we’ve been in music nirvana with every bit of music we own stored digitally on our server. Obviously I didn’t want to start dragging out CDs to listen to in the kids room so I went looking for a stand-alone, WiFi music player. There are a lot of options and I’ve even played with some in the past (like this one that I thought was horrible). I decided to go for a high-end unit and ordered the Roku M1000.
This unit is simply amazing. I unboxed it, turned it on and put in my WiFi WEP key and instantly it was on my network. After a few clicks I was listening to streaming music. If only every product worked this well. I clicked a few more buttons and had upgraded the firmware in about 30 seconds. Seriously, I’d rate this one of the best products I’ve ever purchased. I’m tempted to rip out my Audiotron and replace it with one of these.
We can now put childrens music on infinite repeat in the babies room at the drop of a hat and every now and then we can play some music or podcasts for ourselves when feeding or rocking the baby.
PhatBox Installed
I’ve felt for a long time that the car was absolutely the best platform for digital music. You can be in your car for hours and you need entertainment. While a CD changer is a step in the right direction if you are like me you listen to those same six CDs for weeks, or even months, before changing them. I looked around a few months ago for solutions but didn’t come to a conclusion. Recently my friend Chris (excuse his website, I think he’s working on bringing it into this century) decided he wanted to pursue this goal so I piggybacked on his very thorough research and got a PhatNoise PhatBox.
I would say we installed it this afternoon, but unless you count fetching a few tools and asking questions I don’t have much of a place in the we. The install took the whole afternoon. A few things came up on the install. I’ll share them here for others that may try this at home.
I’ve only had it for a few hours now but I really like it. The voice prompting system seems to work well but I’m still getting used to it. When you turn it on the first time you get this rocking welcome sound. The PhatBox uses your standard car stereo so it cannot display menus with long text. PhatNoise has a fairly elegant solution to this using voice prompts. It will announce your genre for you, and it creates album names so you can pick what to listen to. As a bonus the random button on my head unit now has a purpose since it does something that is worthwhile. Anyway, you can read up on your own if you want more information.
Huge thanks to Chris for doing the install! I would have been way over my head. We didn’t take out the camera so no pictures of the install. I can now happily drive down the road listening to one of a few thousand different songs at a time. Plus, I get to feel cool since I’ve got a little Linux computer in my trunk.
PhatBox Stuff:
No Baby Yet
Well it seems public opinion polling on thingelstad.com wasn’t very accurate for the baby delivery. 58% of people predicted the baby would be here by today; the official due date for the kid. If the trend continues I don’t have a lot of hope that the 25% of you that predicted today or tomorrow are going to get it right either. It’s very possible that those three people that went for the proverbial “long ball” may get this right. These are probably the same people that guess 1 cent over the highest person on the Price is Right.
Tammy can’t wait to get the delivery on. The end of pregnancy doesn’t seem to be very enjoyable in any manner. If you’ve been there, you know the drill. Lot’s of bathroom trips and never being comfortable. She’s eager to begin the trip back to being a “normal person”, however this time also being a mom.
We are prepared for everything. I’ve been on a mad dash to finish a few final projects. It’s very odd to plan everything one day at a time. Whenever I make a plan for next week I have to footnote it with “except if the baby comes that day”. I’m sure it’ll still hit me like a ton of bricks when it does happen.
The Christmas Bell
Last week my mother came back from my grandparents farm with their computer. It had died, seemingly a terrible death, and I was going to see what magic I could let loose on it to bring it back. Mixed in with all of the computer junk was another item, my dear friend, the Christmas Bell.
The Christmas Bell is a fixture at the farm at Christmas. The bell has been there for every Christmas I can remember. For the simple cost of two-AA batteries the bell plays synthetic Christmas jingles for hours and hours bringing delight to all. It also has a small lamp in the dome of the bell that pulses with the music.
The bell has gone through some difficult times. A couple of years it was hanging in it’s deserved spot, by the phone in between the kitchen and the dining room, but was unable to play, victim of some shenanigans by my cousins and I no doubt. It fell several times and had broken apart only to be taped back together. The plastic next to the on/off button had melted. My uncle had even taken a soldering iron to it to bring it back to life once. It was the ultimate fighter, coming back to bring Christmas joy to all of us.
I received the bell in rough condition. It had become three separate pieces. Stiff, loose wires broken from their mounts were the only remnants of the cheer it used to bring. I traced everything and identified where it all went, soldered the connections back and flipped the switch, however no sound emitted from my dear friend. He just laid there dormant. I wondered about the switch so I bypassed that, nothing still. I did notice that the single chip on the tiny board, its heart if you will, got very hot when it was on. I’m sad to say that my best efforts were not enough to bring him back.
I have respectfully placed him aside in the hope that future technology will be able to cure what ails this great, red bell.
Grandpa with the Christmas Bell (2001)
Tree Mosaic
A few months ago my mother remodeled her kitchen and in the process she took out a window. This left the annoying problem of having a hole on the outside of the house. She asked Tammy if she would do a mosaic for this spot which Tammy finished last week and we installed today.
The mosaic is 32" by 50", definitely the largest item she has done. She worked on the piece for about two weeks and was somewhat obsessed with it. All in all it took around 50 hours to complete. It was in two pieces to make it more managable to work on and to install. Neither of us have done a permanent, installed item like this so it was all new territory.
We mounted it today and everything generally went well. We had some problems with the thinset, some pieces came off as we were getting it installed but we worked through it. I grouted it in because Tammy shouldn’t be working with grout when pregnant and I didn’t like the idea of her being on a ladder while pregnant either, which she complained about a lot. 🙂
We got the piece installed over about 2 hours. The grout just needs to be sealed now and my mother is going to frame it in so it looks somewhat like a window. It looked stunning from the alley as we pulled away.
Tammy is really great at mosaic. Requests for commissions can be submitted via this website. Prices are going up though. 🙂
Star Wars III
Tammy and I went to Star Wars Episode III today. We made a point to go to the DLP theater at the Eden Prairie AMC. The theater did a really great job with the entirely digital movie.
I liked the movie more than I expected. I figured it would be good, but it exceeded my expectations. The Star Wars crowd did not let down either, the nerd ratio was definitely on the high-end. The story was great. Perhaps my only negative, and it’s minor, was that I didn’t care much for the idea behind the droid general, although his saber moves were pretty impressive.
So the second arc of the Star Wars saga is concluded. I’m left really hoping that Lucas takes a stab at the final third arc with episodes seven through nine. We’ll see!
I’m looking forward to the War of the Worlds and the Chronicles of Narnia series to come to the theater.
Fun with MRTG and SNMP
I’ve been busy (obsessed) with getting SNMP monitoring of my home network working with MRTG for the last couple of weeks. It’s been much harder than I would have expected, but in the end I sure know a lot more about SNMP than I did before. This gives me a lot of information on my home network, like knowing how much traffic is going to through my gateway.
I found really strange things that don’t make sense to me. For example, different CPUs end up in different OIDs from one installation to another of Windows Server 2003. That’s very confusing and doesn’t seem right, but I’ve got proof positive right here on my box.
Daddy Boot Camp
I went to North Memorial today for Daddy Boot Camp. They recently renamed the class to the much more boring title of New Dads Class, but I’m going to insist on calling it Daddy Boot Camp. I guess they didn’t like the military overtone of boot camp? I dunno.
I got there promptly at 9:00 am and was a little surprised to only find two other expectant dads there. To be clear, this is a guys only class, no chicks allowed! We started at five after and it took until about 20 after for all the dads who were registered to finally arrive. Rule #1 to being a dad, learn to be on time and reliable!
We went around and made introductions. There was a truck driver, a computer guy (not me), golf course manager, machine builder, etc. Huge variety of backgrounds and professions. We also had to explain why we were there. One of the future dads said “so I can stop being afraid of being a father?” Get a group of anonymous guys like this together and your not going to get a lot of “touchy feely” talk, but he certainly hit a nerve with the whole room. It was nice to hear people actually fess up to being really excited, and also being totally freaked out about what is to come.
The instructor commented that when his wife and he were expecting he felt like he was always two months behind his wife. When she got pregnant she was engaged right away, but it took him until she showed. I can surely relate to that. Our baby is due in two weeks and Tammy is ready for it anyday. I feel like two more months would be just right.
The class was good. I learned how to swaddle a baby the right way, like the nurses do it. Down-up-down-up. I’ll show you sometime – I rock at it. While I’m now comfortable with the mechanics of changing a diaper, I still think it’s probably pretty gross. It was really funny how much happier all us guys got when we got to do things with the plastic baby dolls. Give us something to do and we are much better off than just sitting there.
They showed a video on Shaken Baby Syndrome that was horrific. It wasn’t violent or anything, didn’t show some baby getting shaken, it was just so bad. What a horrific thing to do to a little baby. Nauseated me just a bit.
In the last half-hour a “veteran” Dad came in with his daughter who was 6 months old and fielded questions. That was really good and the kid was just darn cute. He talked about the experience which was still fresh in his mind. I liked that.
PS: Quick update on the name front. Zaida is probably nosing ahead right now over Mazie. We’ll see what we think when she’s born. And, if somehow it’s a boy, we’ll just have to make something up!
MnPASS
I got my MnPASS transponder on Tuesday. I had my first opportunity to use it today on my drive into work. I hopped on the “sane-lane” at highway 100 into downtown. It only cost $0.25 so I figured I would just give it a try.
When passing under the sensor the transponder in my car beeped four times to indicate it had been recognized and I zipped on into work. I was curious to see how fast the system was so I logged onto the website when I got into work and was pretty impressed to see that my account had already been debited the appropriate amount. Very nice!
One thing I’m curious about is that the terms of use that you sign up for say they will share information with the highway patrol and they have individual timing for each car. Since they track each individual car through the lanes they can easily derive your average speed and I’ve heard of other states using toll systems and handing out speeding tickets to people based on the time in and out of the toll lanes.
All in all, it seems like a really nice system and I like how it’s being implemented.
Breastfeeding Class
Tonight Tammy and I took the breastfeeding class at North Memorial. I have to admit to a bit of hesitation with this class. I asked more than a couple of times “husbands are supposed to go?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m entirely into the whole baby experience but it wasn’t obvious to me what role the man really plays in making breastfeeding work.
Now after having taken the class I actually think it was one of the more interesting baby classes to date. Quite a bit of information that I didn’t know and I really left thinking how amazing the whole process is.
This weekend I’m taking the Baby Boot Camp class that is just for Dads. I’m actually pretty interested in that class. Hopefully they’ll answer some of the dumb first-time dad questions.