Day Seventy-two: evening of October 13th 2009

Well, today was burn-in day. I know that they might have done something like this at the plant, but it’s probably not an power on with a load. It’s funny, when I was teaching and a student told me that they were getting a new computer, I told them to get a game that put the specs for the computer a run for its money (if they could afford it). My rational was that the standard suite of apps that came with the computer wouldn’t challenge its processors (CPU and Graphics).

Back to the burn-in, I put in Halo 3: ODST and played it for three and a half hours. I stopped to take out the dog, and then resumed play, but this time with Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. That video game was play for two hours. I stopped to check if Uncharted 2: Among Thieves had arrived - no luck. It had been on the truck since 6 am, so I thought it would be here by now. The Xbox had been on for five and a half hours, operating at 1080p (which is the highest video out resolution for the monitor, console and game) with a lot of action on the screen. The movement was fluid with no discernable hitches, so the processors were do their job. Dinnertime brought food (a very good pizza), dog walking, and the anticipated PS3 game.

I looked forward to playing the game, when my daughter requested a set of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scans of her students work. Dang, wouldn’t you know it, just when I thought it was safe to go back upstairs and get lost in Uncharted 2. This scanning took about an hour and a half, because I had to familiarize myself with the scanning software. Vuescan has a basic OCR function, but it was acceptable for what was needed. It did get me thinking about checking out a more advance OCR application. I took the originals down to my daughter, so that she can compare the scans to the originals - just to play it safe.

With the OCR mission accomplished, I settled in for a bout with Uncharted 2. The initial reaction is - Wow! I hope to have more exposure tomorrow (I have to wait for some packages), and I flesh out the ‘Wow!’ comment.

There were some other activities in the morning that I forgot to mention, like sending the poster to my wife for printing, and working on the tickets plate for the upcoming Halloween dance (two solutions). Minor details in the overall scheme of things,