dpk’s weblog

Woo. Well, once I completely gave up on the TV I figured I might as well try to fix it myself. I figured I would probably destroy it in the process, but it was already dead, so what difference would it make? I followed the example found at Home Theaters Hack, which is for a larger TV, and basically made a little “pressure screw” assembly (looks almost exactly the same as Iscallio’s) and installed it in the metal frame surrounding the lower of the two left boards (when facing the back of the TV). The plate on the end of the screw is pressing up against the DNIE BGA chip. I guess it was enough pressure to get the thing working again.

At first I wasn’t sure where the chip would be. I knew I was looking for a BGA chip but I didn’t see one on the upper left board, and I failed to recognize that there was a lower board, so I went for the center assembly instead. The problem chip is in fact in the lower board.

I took apart what turned out to be the light engine after seeing a few BGA chips in there. After realizing my mistake I managed to put it back together again and had it installed in to the TV, but the image was shifted about 6 inches too high. I had to unscrew and rescrew the light engine assembly a few times to get it right. In the final attempt I heard a sharp crack — I guess that was the sign I had it in the correct position! (or, I got lucky).

I’m feeling like a badass now.

If I was at Google, I think my 20% project would be adding voice support to Google Calendar. It would be pretty sweet to be able to press a button on my phone and say “February 3rd, 3PM, doctor’s appointment, remind 1 hour”. It would read back what it heard and you’d say “confirm” to set it.

I guess it would be like Jott but free, and not requiring phone calls. Your voice would be HTTP POST’d up to the server or something like that.

It’s official. Esther and I are now married. We don’t have any photos from the wedding (on our cameras), but it’s assured that we will be receiving digital pictures of us in various staged and unstaged poses. When we do, we’ll post them somewhere.

Esther and David at some overlook in the North Cascades

After a year and a half together, Esther and I are getting married. The number one decision to make is the place, since it leads us to picking a time and scheduling food and licensing and permits and etc. Neither of us are big on social events, so it is likely to be a very small group (which may open up more locations). We’re hoping it will be early 2009 after the Tampa Bay Super Bowl.

I’ll post more as we know more.

I’ve learned something today. Apparently, there’s more than one way to round a number. There’s the easy, “common” method that everyone learns, where you simply look at the digits you want to zero-out, and if the first digit is >= 5 you round up, and <= 4 you round down.

And then there’s the number-nerd way called “round-to-even”. From Wikipedia’s article on Rounding:

• Decide which is the last digit to keep.
• Increase it by 1 if the next digit is 6 or more, or a 5 followed by one or more non-zero digits.
• Leave it the same if the next digit is 4 or less
• Otherwise, if all that follows the last digit is a 5 and possibly trailing zeroes; then change the last digit to the nearest even digit. That is, increase the rounded digit if it is currently odd; leave it if it is already even.

For example:

• 3.013 rounded to hundredths is 3.01 (because the next digit (3) is 4 or less)
• 3.015 rounded to hundredths is 3.02 (because the next digit is 5, and the hundredths digit (1) is odd)
• 3.045 rounded to hundredths is 3.04 (because the next digit is 5, and the hundredths digit (4) is even)

This came up for me while trying to figure out how MySQL rounds numbers. Rather than create a new ROUND() function, they modified its behavior between versions. This is documented, at least, and provides a more predictable result independent of the OS. However, I am not clear on the unspecified distinction between an “exact value” and an “approximate value”. More number-nerd stuff, I assume.

Kelmanskiy and 125 other soldiers assigned to Fort Lewis’ newest Stryker Brigade Combat Team are part of a new program to teach soldiers rudimentary Arabic. The idea is that once deployed to Iraq, they’ll be able to communicate with local Iraqis to help their units better distinguish between allies and enemies.

Fort Lewis soldiers learn Arabic to better prepare for war

Just in time, too. I hear we’re talking about launching an armed conflict in Iraq. It should only last a few months but anything we can do in advance to try to smooth out communication problems should be worthwhile.

Esther and I have moved to Kirkland, in to the first apartment we’ve picked together. I grew up in Kirkland, so I feel pretty familiar with it. We’re in a nice area, surrounded by trees and near a state park, and across the street from a bowling alley, a grocery store, and a few other small businesses (ok, so it’s kind of a strip mall, but the grocery store is nice!)

The awesome: The apartment has a washer and dryer inside it. No more having to hunt down quarters. The not as awesome: It is further from my work, although once I start taking the bus it won’t be so bad, especially if I can get a seat.

Goatseasaurus was once here, but Google “did evil” and took it down. Anyone happen to know where else it goes? I wonder if Spore can be easily hacked to upload videos to non-YouTube sites.