Jesse Peterson

Today was Sydney’s first day of kindergarten. We saw her off this morning on the school bus. The bus was a bit late. I bet that we were towards the end of the route. And I bet that it was late because every other parent did like us; take a picture of our child as she got on the bus.

She “ate” her lunch today…well, just the peanut butter sandwich. She didn’t eat the carrots or cheese. Though that was pretty good for her, considering that she had never eaten a peanut butter sandwich until a little over a month ago. (She likes peanut butter, but in a bowl and eating it with a spoon.)

Today was an early dismissal. Tomorrow is the first full day. We will see how that goes.

I was very surprised this morning at my local Starbucks. I stopped by the drive through window after church for my standard grande cappuccino. There was a car in front of me. When I got up to the window, I could see that there were a larger than normal number of customers inside the store. When the barista handed me my drink, I had my Starbucks card ready. But she said not to worry, it was on the house for having to wait so long. I said thank you very much.

I wonder if this is related to Starbucks refocusing on customer service and providing good coffee. I was impressed by the local store’s ability to allow a front-line employee who interacts with a customer the latitude to provide a free drink. This is the type of discretion can also be found at my favorite vacation spot, Walt Disney World. I didn’t complain about the wait, but the server provided a pleasant customer service experience for me. She was proactive. And it made me write this post. (Though that won’t get them a lot of free publicity. It is mostly my family who reads this, and they aren’t coffee drinkers.)

My brother John is on his way today to Montana to participate in Primal Quest - Montana 2008. He is on team eCountryLifestyle.com, #65. He has done adventure races before, but never a 10 day, 800KM course.

So I was looking at a Java tool called Bean Builder. (Geeky stuff.) It is a tool for working with visual JavaBean graphical elements. So, I was reading the content on the main site. In a normal western language style, I was reading from top to bottom, left to right. Towards the bottom, after the scroll, I started to read the “Documentation” section. First I see the “README” link. I click it and read through the README. I hit the browser back button. Okay, next is the “Tutorial for the Bean Builder”. Noted, I will check that out later. “Bean Builder Architecture” link; maybe read sometime after I get a sample working. Ah, last link, “A Manifesto for Component Assembly”. What’s this? It says:

“A bit of a ramble about the future of programming that I wrote on a plane because the movie sucked. Don’t see “Sweet November” starring Keanu Reeves. It really does suck.”

Wow. I didn’t see that coming. I just found it a bit humorous to see this amongst the other, dryer, geekier information on the technical software page.

Notice that this is a non-eBay item. I tried to list it on eBay, but eBay won’t accept it because it could be used to circumvent copyright. But last time I checked, a general purpose computer could be used to circumvent copyright. I wasn’t using it to circumvent copyright. I wrote a program that would display pictures on the Game Boy. For instance, right now, the cartridge has a program that I wrote that displays two baby pictures of Sydney. I was also looking at the Game Boy hardware as a potential for some sort of visual display, like a gauge or something. It could be hooked up to the computer and display additional information on its screen, like the current number of unread emails, the current temperature, or something. I never went much further with this though because the screen was relatively hard to read in low light conditions like my normal programming environment. Hmf. DMCA and the ilk strike a blow against using hardware that you bought how you want to. Anyway, this is what the eBay listing would have been…

Includes

• 1 Game Boy Advance - used, but in very good condition. Only used by adult in home brew software development.
• 1 Game Boy Advance SP - used, but in very good condition. Only used by adult in home brew software development. Includes cord for recharging Game Boy and original box.
• 1 Flash Advance Pro Linker - Includes the actual Flash Advance Pro Linker used to transfer programs to 256M (bit) card (included). The 256M card is used to store home brew software on. The card can then be inserted into the Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Advance SP. The game system will then run the software stored on the cartridge. The Flash Advance Pro Linker is designed to attach to a parallel port. An original floppy disk includes Windows software for transferring files to the cartridge. A power cord for the Flash Advance Pro Linker is also included.
• 1 MultiBoot Version 2 - Includes the MutltiBoot device for downloading software to Game Boy internal memory. Designed to connect to a Windows parallel port for programming and serial port for debugging. Includes the original floppy disk.

I haven’t actually used this hardware for a couple years. But when I was using it, I wanted to create my own programs for the Game Boy Advance. For instance, I created a little program that would display digital pictures on the Game Boy Advance. This system, along with software and information available at sites like http://www.gbadev.org can provide information on how to get started programming for a portable game system.

I have just posted an eBay auction for a Garmin GPS 25-LVC. I bought this component from Garmin a couple years ago. I was going to use it a home automation device as a source of accurate time. But I never got around to using it. (I can blame it on becoming a father. Or just my own laziness.)

[Updated 2/24/2008: Item sold for winning bid of $11.00.]

I have just posted an eBay auction for a Lego Writing System 1999 Adventure Set. I used to use the pen at work. It was a bit geeky, but I am a computer geek, so it worked. After I left that place of employment, I put it back in it’s case and didn’t take it out again. I found it in a box in the basement. Since I wasn’t using it, I thought that someone else may like it.

[Updated 2/17/2008] The eBay sale ended with no bids. So, I still have the pen set. If anyone wants it, feel free to contact me directly and we can work out something.

I had forgotten to write about this. While we were down at the Walt Disney 2008 Marathon Weekend, I was surprised and excited to see a balloon in our hotel lobby: it was two balloons in one, one colored balloon shaped like a Mickey Mouse head inside a clear outer balloon.

I was reminded of this encounter when I read Jeff Pepper’s recent post; “Souvenirs: The Return of a Classic“. He includes a picture of the balloons in his post.

This style of balloon was the type that I remember when I first visited Walt Disney World when I was about 7.

So, my sleepy little blog, published from Iowa (and the spotlight has left Iowa for another 4 years, as the Presidential caucuses are now over and all of the candidates and the news trucks that follow them have rolled out of the state by yesterday afternoon), got a comment from Nina Moric!

Here is what she had to say about Grindhouse:

Nina Moric | wwedivasws@gmail.com | IP: 64.22.107.90

Hi there…Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts about coming attractions..what a nice Saturday .

Yeah, right.

I did a Google search on “wwedivasws” and found this post, “Bill Nighy Spam“. I added a comment there about my post from “Nina”.

I have been using my SanDisk Sansa Express for about 4 months now. I still really like it. I used the MP3 player feature while running until the ice came to Iowa. Now I use the radio feature to listen to the audio portion of the television shows.

One of the features of the Sansa Express is that it can be expanded by adding a Micro SD card. Yesterday I picked up a 2 GB Micro SD card. But when I installed it into the Sansa Express slowed way down and was very unresponsive to input. Also, when plugged into the USB port with the external memory installed in the Sansa Express, Windows Explorer didn’t show the “External Card” node, just the “Internal Memory” node. Hmm. At first I thought that I may have gotten too much memory; maybe 2 GB was too much.

I went to the SanDisk site for the Sansa Express. I noticed a link on the right side of the page that said “Firmware Update“. This location provided a link to download the Sansa Firmware Updater program.

I noticed that before running the updater, the firmware on the Express was at 1.1.1. After running the firmware updater program, which went very smoothly, the firmware was updated to 1.1.5.

Now, with the updated firmware, the Sansa Express display was very responsive with the extra 2GB added. User input was also very good. And, when the Sansa Express was docked into the USB port, both the “External Card” and “Internal Memory” nodes were available.

I now have an MP3 player with 3 GB of memory!