Conveniently Misplaced

So today was the Ron Paul March down in Detroit. Considering the first a lot of us in the 586 had heard about this was a few days ago I think we got a good turnout from the Tri-County area. We started out with about 25 people and that number had about doubled by the time we were all done and going to disperse.

After we all figured out where we were meeting we were stopped by the police (of course) while waiting for the rest of our revolutionary comrades, he said as long as we didn’t block the sidewalk and we weren’t protesting it was all good. So off we went. There were a good handful of people I knew from the meeting the other day, and I’d given Frank a ride down there (Candy was supposed to ride down with us too but she got tied up with grandkids) so I wasn’t completely alone in this sea of people. We traveled through Greektown. It was great to be able to be around people speaking frankly about how they feel about politics, which we all appreciated because anywhere else I’m sure it usually leads to argument (well, it does with me anyways).

Anyways, we hit up The Spirit of Detroit, Heart Plaza, Campus Martias, Comerica Park et. cetera, et. cetera, et. cetera.

So it was a blast and I met some really cool people there. A few of them stood out, the first being Eric, this cat (and one of the few other minority race members in the group) was talking to me and Frank about the dangers of FEMA, Martial Law, and Directive 51, some serious shit. Another was Carrie (you can see her somewhat hiding behind a sign to the left of me in the pic), who in addition to a Ron Paul fanatic is a fellow Objectivist and musician. She teaches High School science out in Hillsdale, but still she’s way cool, definitely someone I want to get to know better.

So all in all, it was a really good meetup/march/rally(or if you’re a cop /protest).

Tomorrow I leave for the East Coast for the Primaries. Wish me luck.

So I was going through my stats page this morning. IDK why exactly but I was and that’s what was important. Here’s what I uncovered:

Ireland now sends me the 3rd most visitors. Right behind the US and Canada.

A LOT of people just search for “cruzweb” and end up here.

A fair amount of people search for “John Cruz” which yields a lot of results for a Hawaiian singer and somehow my twitter is right in the middle of all of his links.

Myspace, twitter, and other stuff continues to be a big wave of traffic for me.

It seems a lot of people I link to have been coming back to check out the site, I won’t say which tasty blog owners have stopped on by, but it’s cool that you guys do, so thanks.

And now, off to get breakfast, then the Ron Paul March at 11.

This will be either the last post of me as a 21 year old or the first post as a 22 year old. I’m starting it at 11:54pm so we’ll see where it goes.

That also means that the new year (according to our ever-so-lovely Julian Calendar) is right around the corner.  So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about myself in the past year and what I have become, what I’ve done, and what will become of me.

In 2007, I’ve broken hearts, had my heart broken, tried to pick up the pieces, failed, tried again, still failed, convinced my mother to buy a 109 year old house in Mount Clemens, paid over $3,000 to secure said house out of pocket, ruined some of my best friendships, purchased 2 cars, got a new cell phone, had lots of sin, had even more regret, have been at the happiest times of my life, been so depressed I’ve wanted to kill myself, I’ve been drunk, I’ve been sober, I’ve been high, I’ve been low, I’ve attended concerts and plays, I’ve spend weeks at home, I quit my job, I tried Ubuntu Linux, I’ve cried more times than I will admit, I have more or less my own place to live within formerly said house, I purchased 2 new guitars and a violin, I helped a lot of people, I hurt even probably twice as many people, I’ve used people, I’ve been used, lied, been brutally honest,  gotten others to cheat, tried to hide unhappiness with material possessions and failed miserably, been a great advice giver, and I’ve been the worst influence you can imagine, I’ve purchased alcohol for minors (later today to be no exception), sold alcohol to minors, distributed controlled substances, ignored fantastic advice, took some really bad advice, made some of the best decisions I’ve ever made, made some of the worst decisions you can imagine, alienated people, caused some people to hate me with an unbelievable passion, I’ve said some things I regret, some things I’m sure I will grow to regret, and some things I will never regret, I’ve done a lot of stupid mundane things, and some things that I will never forget, I’ve seen some of my dreams come true before my eyes, and seen some of my dreams smashed and destroyed on all levels.

In all, I was completely and entirely unable to simplify my life. In the end, I just hurt. I want to go away, and be done with it. I don’t know how much longer I can live this life, but I’ll have to make some serious changes. I need a new life, my world needs to change. And I need to change it, otherwise, I have a really strong feeling that 2008 is going to be just as tragic as 2007.

I found this video over on MetaCafe on how to pick a Master Lock using a pop can. Amazing stuff.

Well with all my time off I figured I might as well do something productive with my time. So I’ve decided to get more actively involved in the Ron Paul presidential campaign. So this Sunday I’m volunteering at Gibraltar Trade Center for the gun and knife show, the Macomb County meetup group is getting a table and needs people to staff it. So I’ll be doing that for a few hours.

There’s also something substantially more interesting around the corner for me. Operation Live Free or Die is paying for a bunch of people to come out to New Hampshire for the primaries to get the word out and do some grassroots campaigning in the final push. So I threw my hat into the ring and will be riding out there with 3 other local supporters on Jan 1st. They’ll be reimbursing the drivers for transportation and will be taking care of lodging (however that’s supposed to work I’m not quite sure yet. I guess this will be explained tomorrow)

In addition to all the campaign stuff there will be parties as well as the Liberty Forum and lots of other fun stuff. And hell, I need to get away for a while after being cooped in my house since earlier this month. So I can’t rightly pass up a free few days away as well as a chance to help spread liberty. Don’t know how much I’ll be able to blog while i’m there but I’ll definitely be twittering all of the happenings from out east. I haven’t been anywhere outside of Michigan aside from Ohio and Windsor since before 9/11. It’s time to go see the world while I can.

So my computer has been sick. Not virus sick, but more along the lines of “I’ve banged my head against the wall so many times I feel stupid” sick. Random application crashes, .NET framework acting up, programs doing weird things, etc. Since I haven’t done a OS refresh since I built the computer (Aug 2006), I figured that yah, now is as good of a time as any (especially considering I have little else to do). So I backed up all of the files that did not reside on the server and got to work.

Phase 1: Update the BIOS on the Motherboard

Last year during a BIOS update, the BIOS on my ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP crashed. Since the BIOS chip in this board is soldered in, I had to RMA it. That was quite a pain, so I’ve avoided screwing with the BIOS since. However, apparently this board is very picky about what kind of RAM it likes, so it only sees 2.93GB of my 4 gigs that are in the machine. Even 32bit vista can see all 4 gigs of RAM in a machine, so I figure now is a pretty good time to have some fun with this.

So I run the latest BIOS update. Of course the Asus Update tool is far too stupid to fetch the needed update, so I have to go hunt for it myself, then tell the update tool where it is. The update goes fantastical, and I’m excited to restart my computer to see what happens.

The good news: The update worked and I didn’t fry my board!

The bad news: The board now recognizes 2.495 gigs of RAM instead of 4 gigs. Down from the 2.93 it recognized before.

Now, I’m pissed. I go through all of the BIOS / CMOS settings. No dice. It won’t work. At this point, I’m ready to send the board back to ASUS with a bomb strapped to it. But I decide against the idea, and move on with what I want to do, and that’s all there is to it. Apparently.

Phase 2: The install

Keep in mind I haven’t touched a working Vista install since the day at launched at Best Buy (when the Microsoft Rep was asking me questions about the OS so he could tell curious customers, because he didn’t know shit). My only experiences have been:

• Longhorn Beta attempted install on my old computer. It installed to the wrong hard drive, then proceeded to give me a red screen of death. At that point I decided I wasn’t going to screw with any more longhorn beta installs. Period.
• A computer at my former work came with Vista pre-installed. I did my best never to touch it.
• An attempt earlier in the year to perform an upgrade on my WindowsXP installation. Before it would install it made me uninstall a bunch of programs that it didn’t like, then got 90% done and decided there was some critical system conflict and it couldn’t continue to install. So, it rolled back to XP (which it did a fantastic job of by the way).

So I had decided that I was going to have to do a full install to get anywhere with this. So I did. After I backed everything up I went ahead and put in my Vista Business DVD (Legit, thanks to my college’s MSDNA partnership :)) everything booted up good, the nice new installation GUI was a nice change. The install too was nice, took about as long as XP did (maybe even a little less), and everything went off without a hitch. The simplified install was nice, but more options (advanced install?!?) would have been cool.

So now we’re all installed and ready to rock…right?

Phase 3: The environment

First things first: change resolution. Ok now, no more desktop properties, but there’s a bunch more options that make it easy to do what I need to do. The Aero interface is pretty sick, much more so than I would have thought. It also recognizes all of my nVidia graphics cards (a 7300 and a 7100. I know, nothing impressive). With all 3 screens configured, I move on to the network setup, which should have been a breeze, right? I plug in the static IP address and set up my network.

Now I go to mount my network drives. Should be no problem, right? I’m running a FreeBSD 6.1 server that has SMB, apache, all sorts of fun stuff. I try to mount it up, \\taurus\data\ and it prompts me for a name and password? Exqueese me? Ok, sure. I put in my name and password, and nothing. No dice. It won’t let me in. This is more traumatic than the BIOS update screwing up! Everything is on this server, all my docs, music, etc. Being able to mount a simple share shouldn’t be a problem and is completely mandatory.

So browsing around on the internet yields an answer. Apparently there’s a registry tweak for this, living under HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\LSA\ and if you change LMcompatability from 3 to 1, it all works. So w00t. I also discovered that you have to set your network for Home and not public or business, otherwise it won’t let you connect to ANY network shares regardless or something weird to that affect. I dunno, but now it works the way it should. Crisis averted.

The gadget sidebar I found pretty spiffy. It is to replace the Yahoo! Widget engine I had been using and has all the stuff I could want. Is it as cool as dashboard? No. But I’m still diggin’ it.

Phase 4: The Hardware:

This is the part where I was very pleased for the most part: All of my hardware worked with 1 exception: the sound card. Which I should have expected, it’s a SoundBlasterLive! 5.1 card, which I had because it has digital out, which is needed for my speakers. In a bind, I had 2 choices: buy a new vista compatible sound card. Or buy a new set of speakers. Considering most modern cards use coaxial output for digital sound and my board has pretty good sound anyways, I decided that the cost justified a new set of speakers + sub woofer, instead of a sound card for these speakers that are way too big (with my desk size 4 speakers is just too much anyways). So I had my brother bring home his computer and I popped in my sound card and gave him my speakers. I’m sure now Kimber will become very uhm…pleased with the new amounts of noise coming from his quarters.

But other than that, everything seems to work. Haven’t tried to set up my printer(s) yet, but I doubt there will be a problem with that.

Phase 5: The software:

No software glitches thus far. Went through all my Adobe and Microsoft stuff (except for Visual Studio), all good. Upgraded to Nero 8 Ultra, works great.  Joost,iTunes, etc, all works. Haven’t tried any of my games yet, so we’ll see how that goes. But thus far I’m glad I waited and am very happy with the way everything works so far. Had to get a new Diskeeper, but I guess it was time for that anyhow.

Phase 6: Conclusions

Overall….I’m pleasantly surprised.  The feel of the interface is a testament to how the underpinnings of the OS have been redone and built from the ground up. It feels great, very similar to using MacOS and does not feel the same way that windows 3.1 - XP felt. It’s much more natural. Almost all of my software works flawlessly.

Performance wise, I haven’t run any benchmarks. But it feels much more responsive than XP ever did. It works, everything opens up quick, from my RAM meter in my gadget bar I can see that RAM and CPU usage is being handled much better. I’m very happy in that regard.

I can see where people have problems with this…but I’ve worked with everything from AppleDOS to Windows 1.0 and, this is nothing. But for users who are used to everything working out of the box, don’t know how to download new drivers, etc, then Vista is still a problem and is going to be a problem.

Me however, as long as everything continues to work, I don’t think I’ll be going back. Vista Business, here to stay. For now.

So considering that I may be out of work for a little bit, I started pondering things to do with my spare time once my knee heals. Something that I’ve always wanted to do is checkout some of these old abandoned buildings in Detroit that are complete works of architectural beauty…at least they used to be before time let them go to hell. Places like Michigan Central Station and The Book-Cadillac Hotel (although I’ll doubt I’ll get to go in there as it’s undergoing renovation. Yay Westin hotels.). So i’m currently going to plot some interesting kind of exploration for “The Ruins of Detroit” sometime around the new year or in January, as I should be able to at least get around by then. I’d like to do it before school starts, but we’ll see how that goes. Check out the train station:

I discovered the website forgottendetroit.com, with lots of good information about these old places, including a map, pictures, historical info, and lots of helpful links to other similar sites. It’s run by author David Kohrman, and he’s definitely done his homework. Glad to have it as a resource.

I just need to get a hold of a good digital camera and possibly some people to join me (who wants to wander into places like this alone?). So that’s the plan for early 2008.

My random clickings around led me to the Detroit Historical Society. Only $20 for a student membership? Why not add another weird random thing to the list of organizations I affiliate myself with? So I’m part of that now.

I also discovered that a handful of new cities have been added to Google Maps’ street view. Detroit being one of them.  This is awesome. Hopefully they can catalog the east side as it seems like they pretty much have the west side down pretty good.

The gem of the day, however, was finding TripAdvisor’s customer reviews of the Leland Hotel in downtown. This stuff is absolutely hilarious on so many levels I can’t really explain it till you read it yourself. For those of you who don’t know, the Leland is basically a place to: either buy crack/heroin/pussy/etc; live if you so choose; party it up at City Club; or take random female met at said club up to a room for some fun and be gone by the time she wakes up. *Disclaimer* I am not advocating this kind of behavior, I’m just saying that this is more or less what happens here. Anyways, the people from out of town who actually stay here are in for a really healthy dose of what a certain side of Detroit (Dave Chapelle would call this “When keepin’ it real goes wrong”) is like. It’s especially amusing because the hotel used to be a Ramada, and in some places it is still branded as such. So people come there expecting a Ramada-type experience. The looks on their faces must be priceless. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

“Every person we spoke to in elevators was either there for the sex show/rave taking place in the hotel ballroom or were also horrified by the disgusting rooms.”

“There was an old woman wandering around the lobby in her Sunday best (from 1940??), makeup caked on her face, mumbling about when the bar was going to be open - this was about 10am! ”

“On the last leg of our HONEYMOON we thought we’d taken a wrong turn and checked into PRISON!!! That is how inviting the he/she (not sure of gender) guard at the front desk was to us.” Uhm, Honeymoon? Way to go, buddy.

“The elevator doors slammed my brothers wheelchair, nearly decapitating him upon going up to our rooms. As soon as we walked into the room I knew we had to get the hell out of here.”

“It looked like something out of the movie “Escape from New York” meets “The Shining”. ”

“The stairwell was filled with graffitti, urine, condoms and beer bottles.”

“My wife and I pulled in at 11:30 pm at night and were approached to buy crack in the hotel lobby and bums begged us for money in the elevator ride to the room.”

“Drugs seems to run rampant in this hotel. A man that was clearly a junkie jumped on the elevator with us gnawing on some cold leftovers that looked like he found them in the trash - this was at 6:00 a.m.!”

“We decided to lock ourselves in our room and wait for daylight to get out. At about 12:00 at night, we heard a woman in the room next to us screaming and yelling for her life. We assume she was being raped but we will never know. We were to frightened to call the police.”

“Even if you are curious DO NOT go into the club because there is a chance you will run into the devil himself.”

And the icing on the cake:

“I lived on the streets of the Bronx, homeless for 3 years before putting myself together and I can say, honestly, that this is the worst place I ever stayed at in my life. ”

Now, the hotel is also home to 2 industrial/goth clubs, the Leland City Club and The Labyrinth. Yes, 2 clubs. Which can be disturbing for out of town guests who i’m sure feel that they’re in the middle of a rave the entire time they’re there. I’ve been to city club numerous times, never ventured to The Labyrinth yet, sure I’ll have to try it at some point. However, I have never gotten a room at this place and can not attest to the stories told or the quotes I quoted. However, there is no doubt that it’s all accurate.

All I have to say to those who book online, their corporations put them here or just by sheer luck end up at the Leland, is welcome to Detroit. Enjoy your stay.

You just have to love eBay

I came across this auction where you can have a friend (or whoever) of yours receive creepy postcards coming from Poland with details of that person’s life. It’s a cool and inventive idea, however the bidding is currently around $200 with 3 days left. So I don’t think i’ll partake. I’m sure I could have much more fun with that $200 and cause substantially more havoc in someone’s life. But hey, to each his own right? And no matter how you slice it, it’s a cool idea.

Apparently. Strange stuff. I discovered this movie on the web today on The Cat Video Hall of Fame. Yes, it’s even weirder than it sounds. So Enjoy.

For all of us that work for retailers *wink wink* you can get a free Blue Ray movie from blurayvt.com the only catch? You have to sit through some dude talking about blue ray for 8 lessons or so. You’ll have to pay attention to some aspect, because at the end you will be quizzed on it. You’ll have to score 80% or higher to get your free movie. Afterwards you just go back to the main page, choose what movie you want, fill out your address, and wait. Currently the choices you have are:

I picked The Prestige. Duh.

Also, Fall quarter is done. And I’ve quit my job. So I’ll be making updates regularly. Maybe even doing a revamp. I’ve also screwed up me knee (again) so I’m stuck up in my loft for a few weeks. Should be interesting.