The Narrative of Kurt & Becky

Today is Monday. Monday Monday Monday Monday.

Today at work I discovered some old barcode reader that we were going to use for the parking lot gate. Well it didn’t work out, but we still had these old scanners lying around. These things are just the barcode reader (the swipe wedge types) with a cable coming off of it. Well, I thought I could find the pinouts or some documentation online and hook it up and get it working. Well, all I could find is this pdf. So I stripped all the wires, hooked up a 9V battery up to the power, and the led came on! Yay! It blinked green for a little while then went solid red. Okay, whatever that means, so I proceeded to splice these wires to a serial cable and hooked it up to my computer. I hook up power again, open up hyperterminal, and swipe a card. Nothing happens. Or rather only the led blinks green then goes solid red again. So I am splicing and grounding and deducing and engineering, really not knowing what I’m doing, and I finally get the barcode reader to do something when I attach the battery. I get it to blink green a couple of times then go solid red.

More ahead…

I got my eBay package today.
I was bidding on old 8mm cameras because I had some old analog 8mm tapes that I wanted to convert to dvd. Well these conversion places charge about $50 per tape, so I ventured to find another solution. I decided to try to find a camera on eBay, buy it, convert the tapes, and then sell it back. Well, I found one, and won it. I paid for the item, they sent it, and I got it today. I checked it out, and it was working and it played my tapes, so I went online to leave positive feedback. Now, I had also recently won another item on eBay. I have yet to receive my pocket pc. So I go online to leave feedback for the camera, which I now have, but accidentally left feedback for the pocket pc, which I have not. So now, if I were to never receive my pocket pc, I have no course of action because I’ve already said “Item as promised, fast shipping. Great experience.” So I e-mailed eBay and told them of my blunder. I have yet to hear back from them.

Before I left work, I was doing some research on digital camera prices when I found one that I want. Now it’s not as powerful as some of the others I was looking at, but I think it’s awesome. Check it out. Now, isn’t that awesome? I can just keep it in my pocket and snap pictures whenever I want.

At home, now armed with my state-of-the-art new video camera, I hooked it up to the tv and fire’d it on up. I’m treated to a memory lane trip. I’m young [again]. I’m [still] skinny. I’ve got a screechy [manly] voice.

Mostly the videos I had were of badly acted, badly produced, badly scripted short films for which my cousins, my sister, and I were responsible. They sure were loads of fun.

To get off of the narrative for a moment and share my feelings:

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been lucky enough to see some old home movies of both myself and my fiancée when we were younger. It’s just great to see stuff like that. Anyone can have pictures, but pictures are just but moments. Frozen moments. With video, you can see everyone move around, talk, interact. It really brought me into the moment. Even when I wasn’t there at the time, I could share the joy of opening Christmas presents, or blowing out birthday candles, or playing with you family in the pool. We should spend more time just filming and photographing and writing about the everydayness of our lives. Not just when we go to theme parks or on road trips, but when we pop by the store for some milk or sit around and watch tv. That’s part of why I’m doing this. First to let all of you know what my life is up to, and second to reminding myself what my life used to be like.

Alright, wipe the tears. Bye.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2005 at 23:06 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.