Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Brr! With school predictions

OK...it's cold. Very cold. And it isn't looking like heat is in sight tonight. Does 50 below wind chills make you happy?

Anyways, it's going to be cold. Evidence at weather.gov. I'm notorious for my predictions of school cancellations and the such at my previous blog and decided to do it again tonight.

Without further adieu, the predictions.

Overall

It's cold! Expect many delays and cancellations

Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa

Orange/Red: Two hours late to closed.
Wow...just as I was typing this, BBE went two hours late. There you go. I have an inkling they'll close tomorrow, but don't count on it.

Alexandria Technical College
Yellow: Doubtful, but possible
Alex Tech would close?!? I guess they did close last year on that day with a ton of snow, but, honestly, Tim Pawlenty would be more likely to force close Alex Tech (assuming he can close state colleges and universities like he can public PreK-12 schools). Otherwise, we can only hope.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

WebcamMax

So, I've been given an offer to try out WebcamMax, post a review, and get a free license for it. I decided to test it.

First off, the cost. It varies in cost from $19.95 (6 mo.) to $49.95 (lifetime) in cost. Kinda spendy when you have a $20 camera, but it does a lot. They do have a 30 day trial, but be warned: There is a large "WebcamMax" banner on the top until you buy it. It gets really annoying to work around it, but it's mainly for trial purposes.

On to the features:

This software is the most powerful and versatile of any I've tried. For webcam software, it cannot be beat. It's the only one that I can find that does multiple screens, multiple lines of text, etc. To most people, this may not seem to be a big deal, but it becomes very important when you want to do things such as show what you're listening to, doing interactive quiz shows, etc.

There is no way to get this for free unless you can find a hack. However, finding these are few and far between in my experiences. Better to pay the fee than to try to get it illegally IMO.

It has a lot of features that are found in free software, also. It improves on these features, however. For example, I can show a movie, a part of the screen, a still image, etc. with Manycam (a free webcam program.) However, it's much easier to use in WebcamMax than Manycam IMO. You can select your feature and it automatically appears. It also can show two features at one.

The other big thing for me is the text feature. With Manycam, you can do it, but it's only one line and fairly basic and hard to work with. WebcamMax allows multiple lines and is overall easier to work with. This is vital when you want to put things in a columnar format instead of just in a row, or when you want to have multiple lines of items because you just have that much text on a line.

It doesn't seem to be too much of a resource hog...I can still do everything I need to do while running it without having any noticeable issues. Granted, I have a faster computer than most (Dell Latitude D830, Core 2 Duo @ 2.40 GHz, 2 GB memory, XP Professional).

Overall, WebcamMax is a great program, but the cost makes it out of the league for most casual webcam users. People who use their webcam extensively, and especially those that do webcam broadcasts with it will find that WebcamMax is a great investment. If you have the money, I highly encourage buying it.

ATC Open Mic Night

I'm currently "on site" broadcasting Alex Tech's Open Mic night. This guy is good! I'll post links to the clips saved online once I'm done for the night and have time to review them. The video is bad, but the audio should be good.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Lifecasting...

Well, I'm starting to lifecast a bit, so if you would like to see me when I'm online, check out tinyurl.com/jebustream . It should work if I'm on.

See you there!

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Irritated at UPS

OK, so I am slightly peeved at UPS. Here is a cutting of the (relevant) tracking info:

ROCHESTER,
MN, US
01/02/2009 8:18 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN

01/02/2009 9:16 A.M. INCORRECT ROUTING AT UPS FACILITY / THE PACKAGE WAS MISSORTED AT THE HUB. IT HAS BEEN REROUTED TO THE CORRECT DESTINATION SITE
ROCHESTER,
MN, US
12/31/2008 5:53 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
EAGAN,
MN, US
12/31/2008 4:25 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
EAGAN,
MN, US
12/30/2008 6:44 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN

Misrouting a package...it happens. I've seen it happen before. However, having it at the warehouse in Rochester before 6 AM and not noticing until after a truck had it on their vehicle and noticed it rerouted THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY is slightly absurd.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Wind

That wind is blowing like a hound dog out there!

I just looked at www.weather.gov, and the wind is gusting up to 40 MPH in Glenwood! o.O

Anyways, it's annoying.

Yay!

I finally decided to create a blog! Boredom can get the best of you at times. :-P Anyways, this is, well, my blog. I'll probably post some weather-related items along with just random postings of my life.

Be prepared!