what do I know

So I bought the new Creative Zen 4Gb last Wednesday on Amazon for $129.99 (free shipping and no tax). I’ve really been excited about this player since I haven’t had a portal video player before. Supposedly it can play AAC encoded files that don’t have iTunes DRM as well as the usual mp3, wav, wma, and Audible. It can also play DivX, WMV, XVid, AVI, and mpeg videos. It really seemed like a great player to replace my battery eating Creative Zen Micro 512Mb. With all the format support, how can you go wrong …

Well I got it in on Saturday and the results aren’t too great. I wasn’t able to get the MTP protocol that Windows has built in for PMP’s to work with my USB 1.1 drivers and crappy old motherboard. I tried a registry hack and ran a help application that actually messed with my Windows system files, which I haven’t figured out how to undo, with no results. So admitting I probably need to get rid of my 8 year old PC, I tried the player with my wife’s laptop and it connected w/o issue.

Creative recommends that you install their sync software at a minimum to put things on the player, but I use Juiced for my podcasts and I’m not too proud to copy over music files, so I installed the suite but decided to use the device as a storage drive first. I do this currently with my Zen Micro. So first off, I tried to play the DivX encoded season premiere episode of Smallville, Season 7. I copied it into the TV folder on the Zen, disconnected it and hit play. It came back saying the resolution was too big, which made sense, so I ran the video through a converter that came with the player. Doh, DivX 6, couldn’t reduce the resolution or convert it to 5 which can be read by player. After an hour of searching and testing, I was able to figure out the converter just wasn’t working with any of the DivX/XVid files I had on my PC. I was disappointed but I figured I could find another converter so I moved onto music, at least I know that should work right?

I tried copying over an m4a file to the Music folder, disconnected, and hit play. No music found … huh? Tried updating the firmware and couple other things with no luck. Couldn’t play m4a or mp3 or wav files. So I figured ok, maybe I have to use the sync program. Well it turns out I do, the sync program builds these .alb files which are used to store metadata for songs that makes the music player work. I could have used WMP 11 as well, but for some reason I couldn’t get AAC encoded files to show up. Yeah, that sucks, this meant I probably couldn’t even push my podcasts to my player with Juiced. I was about the try it out and then I realized I spent 4 hours trying to get everything to work to no avail.

So after a good night’s sleep I’ve decided to go back to eating batteries and listening to podcasts on my Zen Micro. I’ll be returning my 4Gb Zen to Amazon this week and resuming my disappointment in non-iPod players. Bucky, you can say I told you so.

NOTE : I have to commend Amazon on their return policy. I had a return label printed, placed on the box, and off to the post office in one day with no cost to me. I have yet to get my return, but so far everything has worked seamlessly.

So I saw the Nerd Test on a couple blogs out there so I decided to take it (see below) …

So yeah, I got a 97% in Dumb/Dork/Awkward. I have a feeling that even taking this test put me there What’s even worse is, I tried to answer the questions honestly. Oh well, let the constructive criticism begin, I can take it … that’s a lie.

I want to take the time to congratulate 3 of my friends and colleagues on their latest creation. Daniel, Micheal, and David have started a podcast about video gaming covering the latest news items with plenty of hilarious commentary. The audio work is done really well and is only gonna get better.

Check out their site at http://www.2ndplayer.net. They’ve only recorded one episode so far, but it’s worth the listen. Keep up the great work guys!

So this morning I woke up and felt like it was gonna be a weird day, but wow I thought I was just kidding myself. I get to work and spend the majority of my day trying to figure out why CFEclipse won’t install correctly on our new developer’s machine only to find out later that other people are randomly getting a similar issue, but no one’s problem is the exactly the same. Each time I check the clock, its lunch, then its time to go. By the end of the day, I still had no solution and realized I should probably step away from the problem.

I then leave the office and I rear-end an Acura MDX coming out of Sandlake Commons … I mean the Honda gremlin’s manipulate the golf cart engine in my Civic to cause my foot to come off the brake and bump a car (true story). So we pull over and I find out she is the personal assistant to one of the Seigel’s that runs the travel portion of CFI, I think. My luck and feeling accomplishment for the day grows. On a side note, we left the accident amicably and everything has since been set in motion to work itself out.

So I get home later than intended, and there is a message on my machine from a recruiter. This is kinda strange since I don’t have my resume out, don’t publish my contact info, and haven’t looked for a job in about a year. In any case, he says “I’m looking for the sarcastic bastard” or something along those lines; he was quoting a comment from my blog … wow. My scope of influence should not reach that far such that people actually talk about what I write. His message actually turned out to be beneficial because he was informally offering the potential for sponsorship of the Adogo (looking forward to working with you and your company Connery).

So long story, longer, I think the universe dealt me a “limbo” day and I need some sleep. Happy birthday baby bro and Seacrest out (oh crap, I’m gonna owe royalties for that).

So the title of my blog is “What do I know : My unintelligible thoughts on stuff”. I was hoping that most reading this title would take what I have to say with a “grain of salt” or realize I’m a sarcastic bastard. To be honest this blog is mainly written for myself and my co-workers. In fact, the only reason this blog exists is due to inadequacies on my part of being one of the last ones in the office to get a blog. Honestly, I thrive off of self deprecating humor and the attention it brings, I can’t make it any clearer.

Recently, Matt Woodward and Brian Rinaldi left posts on my blog after Luis Majano linked to me on his blog. Let me start out by saying, I have a huge respect for the work these guys do in the ColdFusion community as well as all of the other community participants out there. You can tell a lot of work goes into CFWeekly and Remote Synthesis from Matt and Brian respectively. I couldn’t imagine juggling the amount of work they do in addition to their careers.

That being said, I don’t always agree with what people say or write, and I blog about it. Matt’s comment was done very well; I could tell he wasn’t too happy with what I wrote, but can you blame him? A lot of work goes into those presentations, so I applaud him for replying to my post and empowering me to do something in the community. Brian’s comment on the other hand, which was a comment on my entire blog, was awesome. I still respect the amount of work you put into your blog and round-up Brian, but come on, get over yourself. If you’re gonna leave another comment, at least pick a different word than “haughty”, I gotta look those words up.

To everyone who reads the blog (meaning the 5 visits I get per week), continue to read on if you want, if not … then continue to at least post comments, I’ve gotta get my content somehow.

My wife told me about this crazy technical support call @ Dell she heard on the radio. I didn’t think it’d be that funny, but wow … this customer is a real champ. Enjoy!

Link to audio