Thomas H. Chapin IV

Photoshop Fun - Fake Album Cover

Posted by Thomas Chapin on Thursday, January 15th, 2009

My co-worker, Kent Downer, was showing me some of his facebook photos and one of them jumped out at me. The second I saw it, I just knew I had to photoshop it for fun. Here’s the before and after result:

Photo - Before (click on photo to see large version):

Photo -After (click on photo to [...]

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Quote for ya.

Posted by Thomas Chapin on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

“I have a mind that works like a steel bear trap. Important and occasionally crucial facts stumble into my head only to be brone-crunchingly snapped shut upon, never to be remembered again…”

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Hot Air Balloon Ride

Posted by Thomas Chapin on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

This past Saturday, I went on a hot air balloon ride! We went over a mile high, and it was awesome!
My business partner, Chris Tingom, came along (he rode in the other balloon) and he took a video of the experience, and a few photos. I took a video as well, but he beat me [...]

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Archive for November, 2005

Night Owl

Wednesday, November 30th, 2005

So last night my alarm clock was set for 6:00 AM, and, determined to wake up the next morning, I went to bed at 11:00 PM.

I woke up at 7:00.

On the plus side, I finally ate breakfast for the first time in like a month.

Oatmeal with honey and peach slices. 3 *whole* grams of fiber! Wow!

Scary day at work

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005

Wow. So I worked at the office for basically 12 hours today.

Our server’s hard drive crashed, losing all it’s data (months worth of work). One minute it was working fine, and the next, it was completely empty. No formatting or anything. It just all disappeared without explanation.

“Well, no problem. We made a backup a couple days ago!”

So we loaded the backup drive. Lo and behold, half the files were missing on it as well!

In desperation, I pulled up google and looked up disk recovery software. 3 hours later, in the midst of the plethora of useless junk out there I found a gem called “File Scavenger“. Within minutes, it somehow scanned the entire *empty*, *un-recoverable* hard drive and managed to extract every single file that had existed on it before. To top it off, it even found a bunch of long-forgotten, deleted files as well!

Needless to say, we learned our lesson. We immediately proceeded to the nearest Fry’s Electronics. $500 later, we had all the equipment needed to set up a redundant RAID data backup system and were back in business. Now we have two different 250 gig Serial ATA drives set up in a RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration. If one of the drives fails (or even simply becomes unplugged from it’s cable), all the data will still be accessible by the network users. Awesome.

To top it off, we also have a third 250 gig drive. But this one is external. So we can make a mirror image of our data and take it home every night just in case our office burns down or the server gets stolen or something.

The way it should be done.

Comfortable Climate Control

Wednesday, November 16th, 2005

Here at my new apartment complex, all utilities are included in the rent. Water, trash, and yes… even electricity. And for this, they charge a premium.

However, it seems that the management has figured out a way to pull a fast one on it’s residents. You see, they control the gi-normous heat pump system and air conditioning system in the center of the complex. And when they deem that the temperature outside is cold enough, they’ll cut off the air conditioning. For everyone.

Now, this is all fine and dandy assuming you like sleeping in a 75-80 degree room. But I don’t. I like sleeping in a 68-70 degree room. Call me spoiled. But I know how I sleep best, and I’m paying for a climate controlled environment, dang it.

Luckily, I brought my window A/C unit along with me from Texas.

My New Office

Thursday, November 10th, 2005

Ok, so my business partner, Chris Tingom, shot some photos of our office here in Phoenix. Check it out!

Settled In

Sunday, November 6th, 2005

Ok. So I finally got all these boxes unpacked and items put in the right places. And today, I finished setting up my home theater system and hung all my pictures. Try hanging speakers on a concrete wall. Very tricky!

Let’s just say it involved a masonry drill bit…

I’ll try and take some pictures of everything this evening or tomorrow and I’ll post them up on here.

On a side note, I’m starting to get some of the area explored around my apartment. It’s amazing! There’s everything from fast food joints and a movie theater, to wal-mart and home depot less than a mile away. Directly across the road from my apartment building, there’s a mexican restaurant where the George Bush once ate at.

Last night I drove to the big movie theater about 5 miles away and watched Chicken Little in full 3D with the glasses and everything. It was really neat because it wasn’t the standard red/blue, cheapo, headache-inducing 3D movie. They used clear glasses. Must have something to do with polarized light filters or something. But yeah. Anyways.