shinyPlasticBag

Ugh. I’m sick. I hate being sick — it doesn’t happen to me all that often. Maybe twice a year. Although David, apparently, gets sick once every five years or so. Lucky bastard.

I spent yesterday in headached, sinus-clogged misery. Around eight pm I got sick of lying on the couch and climbed upstairs to bed. I woke up at eleven this morning, two floors away from where I went to sleep (??) and very groggy. But not nearly as sick. I’m still very hot, though, and sweaty fingers make it hard to operate a touchpad. Since navigating the Interweb sucks with a keyboard, I’ll either have to plug in my mouse or joystick.

Apparently, there is a bad flu going around. I guess I have that. It’s only one of those 24 hour flus, so I’m almost over it. Yay for me.

Yesterday, in between my winding, I spent five hours driving around with Tony. Superficially, we were supposed to be dropping resumes off for him. In reality, we were really just driving around. I think he only dropped off two or three. Someone, we managed to visit every borough in Halifax (for the non-Haligonians, that would be Cole Harbour, Dartmouth, Halifax, Bedford, and Sackville. Oh, and Waverly, although I think that’s still technically Dartmouth). It was fun, and very hot. Yesterday was the second summer-like day we’ve had, and the first day that felt 100% like summer. It was 27C at one point. I think it’s time for the air conditioner to get installed again.

The rest of this entry shall be geeky.

I think I have found my next laptop. I plan on upgrading around September. This is a pretty sweet version of Pixel. Basically, twice as much RAM (on the motherboard and on the video card), an extra 600 MHz, and a DVD burner! Sweetness. Plus, it’s got blue trim, a tiny LCD screen inside of the touch pad, and speakers by Harmon-Kardon. I can’t wait. =)

I’m trying to find a 300 ohm resistor, or a bunch of lower resistors I can wire together to give me 300 ohms. I’ll explain what I’m trying to build, even though it might never work.

I’ve taken a cell phone headset and ripped the end off of it. It’s a 3/32nd stereo plug. I’ve also taken a normal phone cord and hooked them together. I’m trying to be able to fool a normal telephone into thinking it’s plugged in, when it’s actually plugged into the headset plug on my cell phone.

(Why? Because if I can successfully do that, I would be able to plug the cord into my laptop’s modem and give it wireless Internet access. Sure, it’s dial-up, but that would still be cool as dirt.)

There are two problems. First of all, there isn’t enough voltage coming from the headset plug. Phone lines provide something like 30 volts.

However, according to How Stuff Works, you can turn two telephones into a simple intercom by hooking a 9V battery and a 300 ohm resistor onto the green wire. It’s a fairly safe bet that doing this on the crazy wire I’ve built will provide enough power to make a phone work.

The other problem is feedback. With an intercom like this, you would be able to hear your voice perfectly through the speakers. Telephones have duplex coils that cancel that effect out. If I got the cable working, it would screw the modem up, so I’ll have to get a duplex coil.

Anyway, if it works, it’ll be super-cool.