discovering the bus pirate

this might be the most awesome thing ever. i am not speaking lightly.

it's like 1% of the cost of the tools that recovery rip-offs use. it's actually cheaper to buy this little thing than it would be to hack together a homemade solution, and it's actually multipurpose - not only is it 1% of a pro device, it actually even pays for itself. it's even cheaper than a recovery evaluation would be...

but the assembled nature of it cuts out all the uncertainty of stringing together cannibalized cables to power sources. things get fried that way, but it's a last resort. not any more. it cuts out the need to use legacy hardware. should work direct from a laptop.

it's going to come with a learning curve, sure. but it could put the fucking vampires out of business. given what this could sell for, to manufacturer it like this and sell it for $30 is just shockingly decent.

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Bus-Pirate-v36-universal-serial-interface-p-609.html

today, i need to get an external sata/ide-->usb thing and some other things. i'll be taking a run for old parts (ram for my secondary board is like $2/stick, might as well fill it up. it's also time to upgrade to usb 2.0, lol, given that usb 3.0 cards have pushed the price down. it's useless from a store's perspective. like, $5. and if i can find one for cheap enough ($10) i might even upgrade the chip from a pIII 500, although the max the board can take is pIII 950.) tomorrow and will grab an old ide then.

i mean, that board has maximum specs that are dirt cheap to attain. might as well...

so, the guy upstairs wants to turn the air conditioning on when it's a high of two degrees. i'm an open-minded person, but that's really a signal that it's time to lose some weight for your own health. and i see no option but to turn the heat up to 25.

i get the feeling that the window is going to be open all summer.

of course, i don't have the right sized screwdriver.

...and i just spent my last $20 for the month on fruit and vegetables....

 powerless until april. guess i'll grab a book...

well, i guess i can try the store tomorrow. maybe they'll even let me use a screwdriver.

there's no use in installing on the backup drive, because it's going to be wiped out as soon as i get the data recovered. by the time i can use the os, i'll be writing over it.

i have four identical drives.

i'm going to swap out the circuit board, just to see. surely, i can't damage anything...

i'm hoping it's this easy.

i'm going to stumble out to the local store tomorrow and see if they'll just plug it in for me to check.

i wasn't able to try it from an e-sata 'cause i don't actually have the right cable.

i mean, the data is there. i should be able to get it off. it seems like the power is broken. it's not whirring, it's just not reading.

i need it to bypass the bios somehow to determine if it's the power or not. if it's the power, i'm going to have to pay somebody to replace it...

the only other thing i can think of is that the self-test is failing, and that's why it's neither whirring nor being read by the bios. still reduces to paying somebody to swap it out.

success with the router...

a small victory in a weekend of bad news.

well, it connects with a vanilla sp3 install, but i can't run that on the living room machine, it's too old. the image is designed to run a static ip. it worked with the old router, so i'm hoping i can just modify a few things to align it, but it didn't work the first time so i may have to reimage it for dhcp....

minor. it'll be working in a day or two.

found an it company going out of business that sold me four wired routers for $20. at least one of them works. that's some breathing room if one breaks.

particularly, it means finally setting the tv up to youtube, which means not having to eat in bed anymore. it's a subversive habit, to say the least.

well, i got the stuff printed on monday, then spent 6 hours walking on tuesday to finish up most necessary spring shopping, did spring cleaning (and much sleeping) on wednesday in the midst of a horrific blizzard and should get a start on the track today, after i do my taxes, duck student loan repayments for another six months and fill out some other necessary paperwork.

nah...

i'm going to hang on to them; used tires aren't particularly hard to find for free, and there's enough rubber there for a few tries.

why not try it? nothing to lose.

i wonder if it's possible to just buy a sheet of rubber and cut it up with a drywall knife.

yeah. that should be possible. hrmmn.

actually, you know what? i bought some goo. i'm going to see if i can hack something together.

that's too big for tape

the one on the other side is a little smaller, but the same basic problem.

if i actually *could* scan it and feed it into a printer that could print out the right size...

those shoes were actually split right down the sole, both feet. if somebody told me that a nefarious shoe vandal broke in overnight and used a machete to slice right through the bottom, i'd agree it was a plausible explanation of the state the shoes are in, if a little less credulous an explanation regarding the path of them getting there.

i hadn't checked the bottom until now. well, i could see holes on the front, so i didn't have to get that far to come to the conclusion that the shoes have holes. the rubber is worn through around the places the sole is cut, creating what is almost a "sinkhole" kind of effect.

just literally worn out.

....meaning i'd need more than epoxy or shoe goo to fix these things. i'd need plastic and rubber. and a 3-d printer might be useful. really, it would cost less in both labour and currency to replace them. they're dead.

so, they are now drying in the sink, until i can get them to a proper disposal centre along with a bunch of electronics and other things i've put aside. they were a pair of gravis skate shoes that lasted close to five years, which is not bad at all considering how much walking i do.

nothing to be done about that.

you should be able to see the slice through the material.

i'm actually surprised i couldn't feel this, except for the wet.

routers are universally marketed as wireless nowadays, but it turns out a lot of them are also wired - which is what i need. always have to ask, though...

i got the following response back from somebody:

"it has five wired ports in the back"

so, i think - a five port router? unusual, but not unheard of. i only need four, but why not...

ugh.

price after exchange rate conversion: $30.02

paypal balance: $30.

amount of time to wait to transfer the extra few cents: 8-10 days.

hopefully, the exchange rate will modify slightly in my favour before then.

actually, it already has.

a live rate says it should be $29.17.

and, you know, they advertise being up to date. bullshit. well, unless there's a hidden service fee.

i'm going to put it through and see what happens...

yeah, the rate they're using is just flat out wrong. 0.874590. but it hasn't gone that low in years. it's been down a little over the last month, but never below 0.89.

the rate hasn't been that low since summer, 2009.

some up to date exchange rate...

ok, there's a hidden fee, at 2.5%. adding 0.025 gets the current rate.

that two cents is still an incredible annoyance. hopefully, they just put it through. if not, it's not particularly unlikely that the rate will go up over .9 in the next day or two...

it was even over .9 this afternoon. low close.

lol...

it doesn't matter, because it's an e-check anyways, meaning i actually just wasted a week. ugh again.

<----- clearly using paypal for the first time. well, with a bank account anyways.

now my bank account is basically frozen for a week as i wait for the $30.02 to come out through e-check and the $30 to go back into the bank account from the paypal account, as i only had $45 in there. it should wash itself out, but i don't want to go under $31 as the e-check will probably clear before the transfer back in does.

*shrug*. i've got enough to eat for a few days.

6 hour walk.

dead feet. tender calves.

...but a few tasks completed.

for a small city, it is about as scattered as possible. i want to say it's badly planned, and it is, especially the lack of sidewalks, but it's more like it's planned as a giant suburb of detroit rather than a city of it's own.

so, the necessity of fixing my bike is quite apparent.

one of the things i needed to get was some water resistant spray for some shoes. there's plenty of options, but they're all at least an hour walk one way or the other. how can that be? i'm not sure, but i'm going to take a guess....

see, if i walk down the street that comprises the business district closest to me, it's pretty sketchy. there are some successful businesses, and some very old ones. but a lot of the storefronts are either boarded up or for rent.

could these have previously been somewhere to get shoe spray? it's a reasonable deduction, i think.

for twice the price that it's sold at walmart.

so, i'm going to hypothesize that windsor is in that middle phase where the big box stores have decimated local businesses and they haven't moved into the core yet.

i have to think that there will eventually be a mall built downtown. right now, it's just strip malls a km or two in either direction and a half dead city in the core.

which is why the rent is cheap.

which is why i'm here...

with the spray specifically, i think there's a few places around here i could try and i'd guess at least one would stock it. it's an example of limited actual applicability. i wouldn't have gone as far as i did just for that, and probably wouldn't have actually had to. any kind of electronics would be a better example.

you may want to take note that wired routers are apparently difficult to locate at this point, so if you require one for your network then you may want to get a backup while you still can.

<---- increasingly pissed off by the disappearance of my functioning belkin.

freakishly small feet strike again.

a few months ago, i bought a pair of little girl's rainboots because they fit and they were only $6. not sized.

my shoes are demoed to the point that walking on moist ground produces wet socks, so i took a walk around. i'll get some goo later and save them for emergency; i just wanted to see if i could get something cheap, as that's easier. it turns out i'm a children's size 6, and just about any pair of adult shoes is literally not made in my size.

seriously. i spent an hour in the adult section looking for something small enough, before i walked over to the kid's aisle...

i actually can't remember the last time i bought a pair of sneakers. for years, i've been inheriting shoes from my sister, who has a habit of ending up with shoes that are too small, somehow. i don't ask questions, i just take the shoes. but it means i'm not sizing my feet. the ones she gives me are usually a tad big, but i deal with it.

well, now i know. and there's an upside to it, as kids shoes seem to be cheaper...

the ones i picked up were in a weird store a few blocks down that is something like a cross between a dollar store and a kmart. everything in the place is cheap. they actually had a two-for-one sale, which is the only reason i bothered. even if they are gone at the end of the year, two pairs of shoes for $15 is something i can deal with in the short run.

i think i'll make 'em last longer, though. i've been known to wear $10 shoes for three or four years - until they develop holes, basically.

with stuff like shoes, i'm actually convinced it all more or less comes off the same assembly line. $10 walmart shoes and $150 nike shoes are made by the same children in asia, they just have different labels stamped on them. i don't see any reason to pay more than the least amount possible for it.

it's less that the inexpensive shoes aren't cheap and more that the expensive ones are just as cheap and preposterously priced.

the handful of counter-examples seem to mostly be skateboarding shoes, which are built differently because there's a higher wear level. i have tended to gravitate towards them for that reason.

it actually seems to be the salt that finally ate through a part of the pair i just replaced. i'm thinking if i clean them up, then patch them with the rest of the epoxy i have left that should extend their life. but i needed something with better grip, anyways.

for me, a big part of "urban living" is walking everywhere. this isn't currently the best city for that lifestyle, which just puts extra stress on the shoes. when you're regularly walking five or more km, it doesn't matter what the label on your shoes is - they're going to fall apart. so, you'd might as well try and strengthen them.

i think with the salted through ones, the epoxy will actually make them stronger.

so, the sun is finally coming up at an almost reasonable time and you want us to push it forward another hour? 8:00 sunrises in march? fuck that.

i've been on cst for the last few weeks, and absolutely sticking to it.

yup. it's spring.

*groan*

march, smarch.

lousy smarch weather.

i saw the sun hit at that special spring angle this morning, though! looks like it's at least going to be habitable starting tomorrow.

which means i should expect that gnawing stomach ache in the next few days.