We can be like they are

You will need:

1. The afore-mentioned phone.
2. A registry editor for your phone. PHM Regedit is the gold standard.
3. two short sound files in 44.1khz PCM .wav format. If you're a transformers fan, you want this.

Okay, so first, install PHM Regedit if you haven't already. It installs just like any other application.

Next, prepare your audio files. If you downloaded my zip file, they're ready to go. Otherwise, make sure they're in .wav format, and pretty short. While it's not strictly required, you probably want to rename them something like 3_in.wav and 3_out.wav. Or 4, 5, 6, etc. If you are adding a bunch of sounds.

Now put the audio files into your \Windows directory. You can do this while your device is synced to your computer by browsing to it, emailing it to yourself and getting your email on your phone, etc.

Here's the hard part. Open PHM Regedit. Tap "My Device" so that it is highlighted. Tap "Tools" at the bottom of the screen, then tap "Find...". In the "Find what" box, type "piano". That's right; piano. Put a checkmark in each of the three boxes, and click Find.

You will have 1 result, which is a subkey of "SlidingSound". Click the "X" on the search bar to close it. Now click on "SlidingSound" to highlight it. Tap "Edit" then "New Key". Give it a number that is 1 higher than the highest one you've got there. If you've never done this before that means you should enter "3". Hit enter.

Your new key should be highlighted. Tap "Edit" again, but this time go to "New String Value". For "Value Name", replace the text with "Default" (I'm pretty sure capitalization counts). For "Value data" put the name you want to call your sound. If you grabbed my zip file, something like "Transform". Tap the "OK" button. Since your phone is probably open to type, you'll have to scroll down to find the "OK" button.

We're going to do it 2 more times. Tap "Edit" again, and go to "New String Value". For "Value Name", replace the text with "in" (I'm pretty sure capitalization counts). For "Value data" put the file name of the sound you want to play when you close the phone. If you grabbed my zip file, type "3_in.wav". Tap the "OK" button.

Do it again, but this time the name is "out" and the value is "3_out.wav" (or whatever yours is if you don't use my files).

Now you're done with PHM Regedit. Tap "Tools", then tap "Exit". Wait 30 seconds. Hit the power button to put your phone to sleep. Wait 1 minute. Hit the power button to wake your phone up. Now use your stylus to hit the reset switch to soft-reset your phone. You have to do this little dance to make sure the changes you made to the registry are actually saved.

PHM Regedit is very handy for making a lot of changes to your phone. I suggest you leave it installed.

When your phone is back up, Tap the start menu, go to settings, and finally to Sliding Sound. Open the drop-down list. Your new sound should be in there. Select it and hit the little play button next to it to verify the sounds. You should hear both sounds, one right after the other. Assuming everything worked, hit the OK button to close the settings.

Now, slide your phone open. :)

How to | Phone

1937 - 2008

The greatest comedian of all time. Nothing more can be said.

So yesterday I got a minimum of sleep. I drank some and then fell asleep on the couch and woke up maybe 2 hours later, wide awake. So I just stayed up. Then yesterday at about 6pm I went to bed. I woke up around 1pm. So that's about 19 hours of sleep.

During that time I had a few weird dreams. Here's one.

So I've got this friend I've had a thing for for awhile. That's nothing new. Anyhow, we were sleeping in my bed, spooning as I like to do. Not having sex, didn't even want to for some reason. Then it dawned on me that we were both naked. Weird. So here's the kicker: When I woke up, I found Amica laying next to me, with her head towards the foot of the bed. My arms were around her, uh, back end.

Here's another.

I also had a dream where I was in a group of people who went to eat at a restaurant at the airport. Don't know what airport it was. But we had to go through security to get in there, and one of my bags burst open after the checkpoint. There were so many toys. It started with transformers and I think legos. Then the toys got more and more childish. There were tons of toddler toys. I couldn't fit them all in my bag. I was so embarrassed.

In other news, the girl I was dating/not dating and I have broken up. After the big ridiculous fight we had we got back together. Then while talking about things we decided to be single, since that's what she wanted. She really wanted to be single. Well, until a couple weeks later she decided to start dating the guy she met immediately after we broke up. Even though my friends tell me it's obvious I dodged a bullet, it still stings a bit, you know?

Women

Okay, so we were over at her friend Jonathan's place hanging out. We were trying out those new Mt Dew flavors, so she would open the bottle and pour it out into glasses so we could all try it. She was on the couch, I was on the loveseat.

She opened a new bottle and I walked over to have my cup refilled. While standing there in front of her sitting on the couch, she reached out with the empty pop bottle and playfully tapped me in the crotch and said something like "nut shot!" or something cute. Whatever. She happened to get a lucky shot, and managed to hurt me pretty good.

I reached out and gave her a little slap on the face.

Whoops. It happened very fast. Like a reflex. She hit my nuts, and my hand shot out to retaliate. I didn't think about it before-hand, and I certainly didn't wind up and give her a big official pimp-slap. Now, I could have slapped her harder than I wanted. Like I said, it was just a reflex and nothing I really did on purpose. And as for hitting her in the face, well, I think that was a coincidence. She was sitting and I was standing, so that's where my hand went.

After I did that, she said something like "that hurt!" and I stood there and they stared at me like I was some sort of monster. Jonathan started in on the whole "you don't hit women, dude!" shtick. As if I hadn't ever heard that before?

Well, my nuts hurt pretty bad so I went to sit down. She was silent, and Jonathan was still talking. I didn't want to argue about it, and I certainly didn't want to apologize for hitting her back.

You don't ever hit a woman!

Fuck that. I believe in equality. If you hit me, I might hit you back. How about this for a better rule:

You don't ever hit...anyone!

The aftermath

She went home without saying a word. I didn't chase after her, because that's so lame and juvenile. I called her after she left and told her I'm not going to run up there and pound on the door and beg for forgiveness because she's got a roommate. I went home to my place. The next day I called several times offering to take her out for lunch (then later dinner) so we could talk about it. I think it's pretty chickenshit to apologize over the phone, so I wanted to talk.

Finally, around 10pm I gave up and drove over to her place to talk in person. Her roommate lied and said she wasn't home. Of course she was. I didn't make a big deal out of it; obviously she didn't want to see me and there's no point in forcing the issue. I went downstairs to see if Jonathan was home (he lives in the same building), and he said he'd talked to her earlier. I said thanks and left. On the drive home I called and left her a voicemail apologizing. I didn't want to do it over the phone, and certainly not over voicemail, but if she won't talk to me, that's all I had left.

Later that night she got online to tell me she never wanted to talk to me again. We talked a bit. I think she was acting pretty irrationally based on a few of the things she said and decisions she made. I didn't really want to lose the relationship we were building, but a part of me was sorta happy to see her go. I really liked her, but if she was going give me the silent treatment every time we have an argument or something bad happens, then fuck that attitude. That's so immature.

So she didn't want to be with someone that hit women. Now let's back up a minute. That's a very loaded word phrase; "hit women". It implies that I do it all the time, or that I think it's OK, or whatever. Certainly not a label I appreciate after accidentally hitting her on the cheek after she wailed on my nuts. I'm not a woman-beater. I resent the accusation.

I apologized. Not for striking her in the first place. I don't think I did anything wrong there. It was an accident. She didn't purposefully hit my nuts (though she did happen to pick a bad place to playfully hit me with a bottle) and I didn't purposefully hit her back. She didn't need to apologize to me for it, and I didn't need to apologize to her for it. I apologized because I didn't immediately say I was sorry for hitting her harder than I wanted to. I apologized for not talking about it right away. That's what I had to be sorry for.

It really is a sucky situation. We had a lot in common and a lot of fun together. I think we could have built a nice relationship in time. The few weeks we had were really special. She was a hell of a lot cooler than a lot of people I know, and I'll miss her company.

Women

Since our last installment I met a nice girl and started forming a relationship with her. We even got close enough to be officially boyfriend and girlfriend. Now we are officially strangers. It is bad.

Women

Before I get started, the Before and After pics

Before...

...After

Phase 1 Complete

Another before shot. Note 2 tabs; CD and SAT.	Got this little bad boy to install	Push the vents down, reach in
...and give it a tug.	Pull the bezel out along the sides to the bottom	And it comes off like this.
Unplug the top wires first to give more working room	Now this one	Then the last. Set the bezel aside.
OMG it's naked.	Knife goes in	Guts come out
The factory connectors	A shot of my radio model number in case I need it later.	Wrap it up! It's a 12v power source. Not using it.
Plug in the big harness.	And the little harness.	Hook the audio output to the VES input
And plug the other end into the aux-in module.	And the familiar RCA plugs go into the other end.	And now plug the new stuff into the back of the headunit.
Packing everything back in. In this pic I've taken the module off of the cable.	Dry run to make sure I got everything plugged in right.	Bam! It works! Three tabs!
Attaching the 3.5mm to RCA adapter to test it with my mp3 player. Worked like a charm!	Zip ties will keep things in place.	The module buckled up snug!
Out comes the ashtray assembly to drill a hole for the cable.	Hrm, that metal piece looks suspiciously removable...	With a little bit of force amplification, it pops right off.
What luck! There's enough room to pass wires through into the ashtray cup. That's where my finger is.	The chunk removed, no drilling needed. Woo!	Reinstalled and ready to route the wire.
The slack was rolled up and zip tied, and then a bit fed through to the ashtray.	Alright, looks good, reattach the front bezel!	Oops, the ashtray won't go in. The wires tucked back there must be falling in the way.
So now to remove the bezel again.	Another zip tie will fix that up.	Back together, for real this time.
Stealth aux-in!	Oh, and now sometimes when my radio boots up it thinks it's in a Chrysler.	Shit, I had some parts left over.
A shot of the aux-in in use. More to come!

I added a module to give me not one but two auxiliary inputs into my car's radio. One of them will be for a 3.5mm stereo jack (Phase 2). The other one is for some super special sauce I'm still researching (Phase 3).

Magnum

I only seem to blog when I'm sad. Unless I'm too sad, then I don't write anything at all.

A bunch of stuff happened recently. Some bad, some good.

I had been in talks with a couple of neat girls I'd like to have known better but they seemed to have fizzled out. It's not like I lost anything; I just didn't gain is all.

It's fine, I'm working on solving the problem. I should be a date-able size in about a year, I think. The other day I bought some new shirts and pants. I've gone down a pants size. In fact, now I'm down to the size where they don't charge extra, so that was exciting. That's one thing that annoys me about the skinny people I know always bitching about being fat. Have you ever had to fucking pay extra for clothes? Ever pay the fat tax? No? Okay, then shut your fucking cake hole. If you're worried about being fat and you don't know what I'm talking about, then consider yourself fucking lucky, you skinny asshole.

I bought a new suit. It looks pretty nice I suppose.

I got a new job in Des Moines. I went to interview with a place in San Diego, but that's a pretty big story, so I'll try to write about it later. I was freaking out a bit about the air travel, but I did enough research before-hand and rushed right into it. Once I've done something once, I'm fine from then on. Oh, and the new job pays a bit more.

Now I want to find a place in des moines to live so I don't have to commute from Ames. It's boring and expensive.

My sister left her husband, got back together, and has since left him again. My loss of enthusiasm for chronicling their wedding seems justified in retrospect.

Today I detailed my car interior. Tomorrow I hope to wash it if the weather gets in the 50's and doesn't rain. Well, I might still wash it in the rain, I'll just dry it in the garage.

It bothers me how quickly people seem to find other people. Then I realize, oh yeah, they can go places and do things. That's how they meet people. I hope to do that someday too.

OkCupid sends me emails titled "New Users Near Ames!" (I live in Ames). The girls are ususally in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis, Minnesota is not near Ames. Also, girls there are dumb.

Women

I fixate. Without distraction I sit here and I just focus on things. They go through my mind over and over and over again. It gets so bad that even things I do to distract myself like watching TV or a movie doesn't work; I tune it out. Eventually I find myself trying to distract myself by checking stuff out online. I have a few websites I visit and I will check them out over and over again, going from one to the next. Some times I don't even consciously do it. I'll close Strangetalk only to immediately wonder if someone said something recently and open it back up again. No, nobody did. And especially this time of night, almost 2am, there's nothing new to keep me distracted. I talk to a lot of people online. Now that I think about it, most are women. I wonder if that means something? Anyhow, they're all asleep now. I wonder what people really think about me, a lot. I made bread tonight. I got this cutesy little kit thing for xmas; it consisted of flour, yeast, etc. in a beer bottle. You just dump it into a bowl then add 1 beer (not lite), stir it up, and bake it. It tastes pretty good. I also made french onion soup. It's kinda bitter. maybe it needs some lemon juice to fix it up. Not sure. I went out to lunch with that awesome chick from Minnesota. I really wish some times that she'd just leave me alone. It's so hard for me to deal with these sorts of things. It's like I'm unable to do what I need or do what's right. Some times the right thing to do is run away. The more I think about it, the more I realize that everything Trisha said was right. Fixation. You know, as a white male aged 18-60, I'm supposed to be in charge of everything. I'm supposed to ahve all my shit together. It's all under control. Whose control? Not mine. I haven't been in charge of shit for a long time. I don't want someone to tell me it's all going to be alright. I want to be able to look at things and say that myself. I don't know if I have a point with all that. So I have an appointment with a shrink on the 17th. I really hope I can get some of this shit fixed. I really don't know what else to do but I really hope this isn't normal, to think like this. I really wish I could stop it from going and going. The static fire in the back of my mind is blazing. Could I harness this? Is there something I could be doing with this? I don't know. Maybe. But right now I'd like it to go away. I don't really like to go out and do new things. It's like something just forces me to say no or not to go. I don't understand it. I think it's what my mom does too. I don't want to turn into a shut-in. This happened to me before, in school. I had a dream this morning where I met a girl. It's so lonely. This is. Fuck it. No paragraphs this time. If I go back to edit it, there's too much temptation to remove shit.

Women

Good girl. I'll miss you.

Pets