Robert Vrabel

I ate at California Pizza Kitchen today and I believe they have come up with something very unique.  When we got our bill they handed us a “Thank You” envolope which contains a prize.  Anywhere from 10% off to $50,000 in cash. The thing is though, you can’t open it on your own.  You must bring it in with you on your next visit (until the end of June) and the store manager will open it at your table for you to claim your prize.

So lets see here… if you open it on your own you lose your chance at whatever the prize was.  So they are basically forcing me to come back in to see what it is.  Could you imagine opening it on your own and it being a huge amount of $, but its invalid?  Or even waiting until after June when it expires, and it being a huge amount of money that you could of won?

Damn them and there genious marketing.  I will be coming back to claim my prize, don’t you worry.

I recently just upgraded a Hard Drive for a Macbook. I purchased the Western Digital Scorpio Black from newegg.com.  The process was very easy and only took about 5 mins.  Having the correct tools is key.  You will need:

• coin (or something to unscrew the battery)
• Small screwdriver (I used a eye glass set)
• Torx 8 (T8) screwdriver

Since you can access the hard drive straight from the battery location, you can basically just pull the other one out, unscrew the casing, and put the new one in.  Once it was loaded in, I booted off the Leopard Disc and proceeded with a “Restore My Computer” through Time Machine.  The process took about 6 hours over ethernet and everything was restored exactly how it was before.  I assume it could be drastically cut down based on how many backups you have inside Time Capsule. I was curious how much of a performance gain would occur with the new hard drive so I recorded some load times.

So there is actually a HUGE performance gain from using 7200rpm instead of 5400rpm.  Now what are the downsides?  We’ve noticed that the fan for the computer kicks on more often doing simple tasks.  I’m sure this is due to the hard drive producing more heat.  The hard drive is self doesn’t seem to be louder, but the macbook’s fans definitely are.  Most people complain about vibrations, I couldn’t really tell much of a difference but if its spinning fast you can notice it if you feel the bottom directly under where the hard drive sits.

In conclusion, the performance gain and amount of space is totally worth it for the downsides mentioned above.  I would recommend upgrading!

For the longest time I’ve had problems with Growl not notifying me if a message filters through a “Rule” inside Mail and goes directly to a folder.  I’m not sure if its simply not a feature Growl supports or what, but I’ve finally found a way to notify me in a different way.  Looking at the rule options I noticed you can add multiple lines for what to do when this message fits this rule.  Adding the “Bounce Icon In Dock” option now bounces the Mail icon when a message hits a my rule.

Finally I can be notified instantly!

I recently did the latest update to Leopard which totally screwed up my macbook pro.  The update made finder and the dock unusable, so I basically couldn’t do anything once it booted in.  I tried doing an archive and install and upon installing leopard it would fail.

The strangest thing to me is that Tiger would work perfectly fine and then upon installing Leopard it wouldn’t work.  Doing some research online (which was really hard to find anything) I discovered that that the failure to install leopard could be due to memory issues.  I didn’t beleive it at first.  Doing a update to the OS and having it screw up be related to a memory problem? Looks like I was wrong.  I did the Apple Hardware test and sure enough it was reporting some strange memory error, which I couldn’t find a description online when typing the error code in.

I ordered some new memory from Crucial (4gb) and with my luck one of the sticks was bad!  I ended up having to use one of the good sticks, and one of the good sticks from the orginal set.  So now I got 3gb and I was able to install leopard again and do the update just fine.

Very strange! Apparently Leopard is VERY dependant upon RAM. If you’re having strange issues, replace your ram.  Its really cheap to do and could solve all your problems.

Recently Google Analytics has added support for Event Tracking.  This allows you to track users actions that involve  javascript, AJAX, and flash.  Before it was really hard to track if someone was using components on a page that didn’t actually get page hits.  The code is very simple to use and here is an example of how to use it:

pageTracker._trackEvent('Menu', 'Click', 'Clicked More Link');

The first parameter is your category, the second being the action, and the third being your label.  The above example could be a “More” link in your menu that when clicked uses javascript to show more links.  You can can essentially use this for any actions a user does on a page involving javascript.

How does this work in flash?  You can use flash’s ExternalInterface.Call(); function and pass it a string of javascript code (like above) which will track an event from within flash.  You can simply replace each parameter with a variable based what action the user is doing.

Using the the Track Event function from Google Analytics will help keep all of these actions in one spot.  We previously were tracking these actions by made up pages and having to access the Content area to see them all.  It was a little harder to track since it gets mixed in with all the other pages.  Looking forward to seeing what else we can use this for!

I launched My Rock Band Songs a little over a week ago and it has been going great!  The site has now grown close to 900 users with an average of 255 songs added per user.  I never imagined it growing this big, but the success of it has been great and I have been learning a lot.  I have been receiving lots of feedback from my users and have implemented many suggestions that were sent to me.

This wedensday will be my first Rock Band party since I made the website.  I’ll finally be able to put it to use myself in a real situtation which will be nice.  I’ve talked to many who have used it at parties so far and they said it has helped a lot!  Looking forward to seeing how this site will grow over the next couple of months, I have some great ideas brewing and I’ll be hard at work to develop them .

I just launched a new site called http://myrockbandsongs.com .  I first made it just for myself and found in the process of doing that some people were interested in managing their own songs too.  I created a sign-up for it and a easy way for people to add their songs in by just check marking which ones they own.

Emily and I went  to dinner at Andiamo in downtown Royal Oak awhile back. We ordered some Rose wine that we have never had before and It turned out to be the best Rose wine I’ve had in America. We ordered a bottle to take home which ran us $12.00. Fast forward a month or so, we went back to purchase another bottle but were going to be charged $40.00! The guy who sold it to us before must have messed up. I was pretty upset about it since I thought I’d always get it for $12.00. I of course didn’t buy it.

I searched all around at random wine shops and couldn’t find it anywhere. I figured I’d never get a chance to drink this sweet nectar again. Doing a lot of research online I ran into a website called Winerz. I searched for my wine, Santa Digna 2007 Rose and finally found it! You have to purchase in bulk by the case (12) and shipping is pretty expensive since the package is very heavy (40lbs). It turned out to be only $11.00 per bottle. I was shocked at the price considering it was $40.00 at the store! So lo-and-behold my shipment came yesterday and it was perfect!

Ahh… a trip down memory lane. Lately i have had the urge to play some classic video games (from the 80s/90s).  I looked online for videos of old games I used to play and it brought back so many great memories from my childhood.  I figured I would compile a list of games that I used to play over and over again that I have vivid memories of.  This is obviously not a complete list of games I have played, rather ones I have the most memories from.

Computer:

• Kings Quest I
• Kings Quest II
• Kings Quest V
• Quest For Glory I
• Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
• Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis
• Lands of Lore: Throne to Chaos
• Stonekeep
• Leisure Suit Larry I (Shhh… wasn’t supposed to be playing this one that young!)
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Doom
• Doom 2
• Rise of the Tride
• Heretic
• Duke Nukem
• Duke Nukem 3D
• Warcraft
• Warcraft 2
• Command and Conquer
• Starcraft (I still can’t believe this came out when I was only 13)
• Diablo
• Quake
• Alone In The Dark
• Ultima Online (Best MMORPG to date. Sold my account for $900! This is probably my most missed game since it can’t be re-played today exactly how it was released.)
• Jack Nicklaus Golf
• Lemmings
• Sam & Max Hit The Road
• Commander Keen
• Gazillionaire
• Federation (On AOL)

Nintendo (NES)

• Mario Brothers
• Mario Brothers 2
• Mario Brothers 3
• Dragon Warrior I
• Contra
• Megaman 2
• Super Off Road
• RC Pro am
• Legend of Zelda
• The Adventures of Link (Zelda 2)
• Castlevania
• Gauntlet
• Adventure Island
• Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
• Ducktales
• Golf
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade
• Caesar’s Palace
• Roger Rabbit
• Excite Bike
• Ghosts ‘n Goblins
• Double Dragon I
• Double Dragon II
• Techmo Super Bowl
• Marble Madness
• Spy vs Spy
• Lifeforce
• Gradius

Super Nintendo (SNES)

• Final Fantasy III
• Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
• Secret of Mana
• Mario RPG
• The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past
• Mortal Kombat
• Disney’s Goof Troop
• Super Mario World

Gameboy

• The Legend of Zelda: Links Awaking
• Tetris
• Mario Brothers
• Golf
• Kirby’s Dreamland
• Joe and Mac

Wow, this list became really long, really fast.  Its crazy think how much all these games impacted my life.  Its some of the best memories I have as a child, some of the only ones I remember.  I’m sure I’m missing some games but I will add to it as I remember.  I really need to find all my old game cartridges and floppy disks to see what I missed.

So what games from your childhood do you remember best?

I added some new additions to the boards this weekend.  Check them out below or my flickr.

I added a two cup holders on each board so when its your turn to shoot you have a place to put your beer =) . I also added a score board across the top (0-21) so no fights break out over the score . I also added a game scoreboard (0-5) to keep track of games won if anyone plays best of 5 or anything.  I am going to be putting number stickers above the holes so you can tell what the score is.

This is what the board looks like when its folded up. It took some thought figuring out how to add in the backboard so the drinks don’t get hit, and the cup holders so they could still fold but it worked out great and wasn’t to bad.

I added handles to both of the boards so they can easily be carried with one hand each.