I’ve been at GiftTree for 9 months, and it’s been a great company to work for. I really like the people and the environment.

Today I accepted a position at Dotster Inc as a Software Engineer. They are located 1.9 miles from my house, the perfect distance for biking or walking. I’m amazed to be living so close to where I will work, it is definitely not what I planned or expected, but I’m pleasantly surprised.

I’m going on a 2 week cruise, then I have my final 2 weeks at GiftTree. My last day at GiftTree is May 18th, and I start at Dotster May 21st.

Exciting times!

Kessa and I will be celebrating our 1 year anniversary by going on a Princess cruise to Mexico departing from San Francisco on Monday, April 23rd, 2007. We won’t return until Friday, May 4th, so don’t expect to be able to contact me during that time.

We have Kessa’s parents watching our two dogs, Gizmo and Daisy.

Wish us luck! Expect many pictures when we return :).

So thanks to Dave for the tickets, Kessa and I went to a Portland Trailblazers game tonight. It was pretty fun, but WAY more expensive than I realized. Gauging by a fun/price ratio, this is slightly below paying someone to torture me (don’t ask). I doubt I’ll ever go again… but thanks anyway!

We made the best of it, and took some pics.

We were planning another LAN Party, and it was executed successfully. LAN Party of the Ages 3 (LPotA3) happened at Tom’s house on April 14th, 2007. Here was the official invite:

Nooblars, Nooblets and Noobtards-

You are invited to the 3rd instance of LAN Party of the Ages. If you came to the last one, you know we can have some fun. We had 26 people (thankfully not concurrent) show up and get pwned and stallowned by yours truly for 13 hours straight. Here are a couple pics of the last event: http://tinyurl.com/28xw2o

Now, about LPOTA3:

When: Saturday, April 14th, 2007. 8 p.m.
Where: (XX N Willamette BLVD, 97203), yes, it’s in Portland.
Why: Fun and Prizes, sucka.

We have sponsorship from Alienware (http://tinyurl.com/yqz5uk), and NVIDIA’s sponsorship package is on its way (http://tinyurl.com/yt9zfc). This means less cost for entering the tournaments, and more relevant prizes (money is LAME, right Geoffrey?). We’re still working on more sponsors, stay tuned!

We expect all attendees to bring enough to set themselves up for the night. This includes:
1) Computer, Display, Keyboard, Mouse, Network, Power, Power strip, Headphones.
2) Table, Chair. Bring as much seating as you can.
3) Food, drinks. Or additional money for a food/drink run.
4) The entry fee. Please bring $3, $2 of that amount will go toward a grand prize tournament.
5) (Optional) $3 for a keg cup. This entitles you to unlimited drinks from the keg (Coors Light) throughout the night.

What you should do if you want to come:
1) RSVP. Reply to this e-mail saying you’ll be there, with X guests. Let us know which of the above you are NOT able to bring.
2) Prepare, practice the tournament games.
3) Come and be on time. Only about 75% of our attendees participated in ANY of the tournaments last time, and 60% missed at least one tournament. Remember, if you don’t play, you can’t win.

The tournament games we will play are:
1) Unreal Tournament 2004, FFA
2) Counter Strike, 4v4 random teams
3) Tetris DS 4 player FFA OR New Super Mario Bros DS FFA. Choice goes to the attendees.
4) Dead or Alive 4, random teams of 2
5) Starcraft: Broodwars 4 player FFA Bloodbath OR Command and Conquer: Red Alert

The first 10 people that arrive will receive their pick of swag that’s not good enough to give out as presents! We are at a smaller location, if you don’t RSVP, we cannot guarantee you a seat.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Ray

We ended up with the EXACT amount of people that would fit, 18. Of the tournaments, the winners were:
Unreal Tournament 2004: Chad White, given Alienware mousepad
Counter Strike Source: Tom Watson, John Tedrick, Nick P., Will Supinski, and David Simon, given $10 cash each
Mario Kart DS: Joe Rajic, given Alienware mouse
Dead or Alive 4: Tom Watson and Jordan Hampton, given Alienware t-shirt and NVIDIA t-shirt
Starcraft: Tournament abandoned (no winner)

We took some pictures of the event.

LPotA4 will be sometime between late May and early June of this year. We’ll have slightly more capacity, perhaps a pre-party bring-your-own-meat bar-b-que, perhaps a pre-party pool party. Stay tuned for an invite. If you received an invite to LPota3, you will receive an invite to LPota4. If you didn’t and you would like to, let me know.

I received an LG Fusic LX550 with my Sprint Plan about 6 months ago. There didn’t appear to be any simple way to put MP3 ringtones on it, unfortunately. After some research (mostly through Howard Forums), I found a way that I could get these ringtones onto the phone without a whole lot of trouble.

This tutorial requires
1) An MP3
2) An LG Fusic / LG FX550 phone.
3) Windows XP (untested otherwise)
4) USB Data Transfer Cable for the LG Fusic

First, prepare the mp3. You probably don’t want an 8 minute song as your mp3 ringtone. I’d suggest keep it at ~30 seconds maximum. If your phone rings for more than 30 seconds… you really don’t deserve a cell phone. I used WavePad trial edition, then very easily trimmed, adjusted volume levels, and resaved my mp3. You can go with low quality, since it’s on a cell phone. I encoded it at 128kbps, mono channel. Rename this saved file to “MP3.mid”.

Next, connect your phone to your Windows XP computer, and install drivers as necessary. My computer actually found the drivers on its own, here’s what I did. After it’s connected, right click on My Computer, go to Manage. Go to Device Manager and find the device that doesn’t have drivers installed (should have a yellow exclamation by it). Right click on it, select Update Driver. On the following screen, select “Yes, this time only”, for letting Windows Update search for a driver. Next check “Install the software automatically”, then click Next. When it finds it, the driver won’t be WHQL certified, so you’ll have to click “Continue” to let Windows install it. Wait a few minutes, and the driver should be installed. This might introduce a few more “Unknown” devices to the Device Manager, so repeat the same process until all relevant Devices have drivers installed.

Next, on the LG Fusic. Go to Tools => Music Composer => Compose Melody => Keyboard Mode. Play a key, then save it as MP3. We will be overwriting this and using it as the MP3 ringtone later.

Next, install BitPim for Windows XP. From their website, “BitPim allows synchronization of Phone Book, Calendar, WallPapers and RingTones and manipulating the embedded filesystem in CDMA cell phones”, but we’ll only be using it for last one, “manipulating the embedded filesystem in CDMA cell phones”. Once installed, assuming your phone is still connected via USB, setup and configure your phone. I knew mine was connected when it said “Other CDMA phone on COM6 - Detected”, with a green Circle next to it. Go to the View menu, and ensure that “View Filesystem” is checked. On the left pane you should see “Filesystem”, near the bottom. Open that, and in the next pane you should be able to navigate to “/melodyComposer”. Drag and drop “MP3.mid” from the first step into this window in BitPim, overwriting the existing file.

Finally, on the phone go to Settings => Sounds => Ringers => Caller ID => My Melodies => MP3.mid. And wha-la, presto, sha-zaam.

Worked for me as described. Let me know if your experience varies from the above.