This Saturday evening I am reflecting on some activities in the last few days. I just got back from watching the movie, Green Lantern at the Blue Ridge theater in Raleigh. This movie had an interesting theme of good versus evil. Good was depicted as will power in the form of creative, green lantern energy, in contrast to evil which was fear. The green energy defeated the yellow fear of paralax. On Friday night, a friend and I saw another movie; Transformers 3 at the IMAX theater in Raleigh. Some of the scenes were really cool and I thought I was flying through the air at points. However, the 3D glasses were uncomfortable to wear for over 2 hours. This was a great movie to watch in IMAX 3D because of the battle scenes and incredible special effects.
Most of today this area has been dealing with hurricane Irene that made landfall near the outer banks and is now near Washington, DC. At times it was very windy, but not much heavy rain were I live in west Cary. The networks were covering this story most of the day, and I watched some of the reporters trying to stand up in the hurricane winds along the beach as the waves were crashing around the pier. I noticed a report from the Avalon pier at Kill Devil Hills, NC, one that I visited while on a job assignment there a few years ago. There probably is lots of tree and power line damage in downeast, NC, so keep them in your prayers. This morning I put in hour or so working on my HP Photosmart printer that had a bad capacitor, causing it to lose connection sometimes and wake from sleep at odd times. The repair involved de-soldering the bad capacitor, ordering a new one and soldering it to the circuit board. So far the printer is working like when I first got it. I think I am going to need a new soldering iron after this job the tip is almost melted away. I walked around a computer store this afternoon looking at their components and thinking of my next computer build. On the Intel side, their new boards use the Z68 chipset which supports sandybridge chips like the i7-2600K. With AMD, their was a micro-ATX FM1 chipset board selling for around $120, which is used with the new A6-3650 processors that use the Fusion integrated graphics. Later on I went to my local Target store and chatted with the cell phone rep. about some of the new smartphones on the market. This afternoon my friend and I played a few levels in my new steam game, Portal2 and then some races in my new racing game, Fuel. So far this aged core 2 duo vista desktop can still render graphics ok and at playable frame rates. The last computer that I purchased was a laptop with Windows 7, and I also have an Apple powermac, loaded with a game DVD. In tech news, HP decided to sell there PC manufacturing business and the Apple CEO retired. While riding my mt. bike this week I listened to the twich podcast on my sansa clip mp3 player. Also, I enjoyed the superb sound quality of my new skullcandy earbuds while walking and a micro mobi speaker while working at my desk. In other news, I won a little toy blue hot wheels car (Dodge Charger) playing a group poker at a church event. This car sits besides my printer and is a reminder of good times of fellowship with friends over a nice steak dinner. Here are a few pictures that I would like to share from last month:
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| Pool tables at the Brickhouse in Raleigh. They had free pool this night after a soccer game. | | | |
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| Garner Fireworks on July 3, 2011 | | | | | |
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| Watching a Carolina Railhawks soccer game in July. |
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| Hiking up to the summit of Beech Mtn. on vacation in July. |
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| Fred's store on Beech Mountain. |
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| Orange walls inside a cool restaurant in Cary. |
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| Watching a band play at a tavern in Banner Elk during my mtn. vacation in July. |
