Party, Google voice, tires and an adapter

Lots of updates in this post!Tomorrow we're heading over to a co-worker's house to have a blow-out party. A party to end other parties. :-D If things work out well, I'll pitch my tent (the one that I'm taking to Labrador) and sleep off the alcohol.That type of party.The tires I ordered shipped today. I should have them on Monday. If you're interesting in tracking them, feel free to watch 'em. I'm planning on mounting them up the weekend before the trip and taking them for a spin to rub off the mold release on them. I hear they're good tires.On top of all that excitement I got an invite to Google Voice! If you want you call me if you want...  hehe. I'm not sure how well it'll work or how the Google makes money, but it seems like a good idea.Last, I did a bit of light hardware hacking. I want a car motorcycle charger for my EEE PC. I know the charger outputs a nominal 19 volts. The connector to it is a 2.5mm barrel connector. The challenge is to get another one of those and feed it the requisite 19 volts.Enter ebay. I got a cheap car adapter that came with a bunch of different fittings. It has a selectable voltage and eight different connectors. None of which work for me. But it does output the 19 volts. First problem solved. Drive to Radio Shack to look for a connector. The dude there insists that there's nothing there for a netbook except for a $100+ charger. I shrug and keep looking. There's a pack on sale that has a 2.35 (yes, 0.15 mm too narrow) connector that looks like it might fit. It's only around $2.50 so I get it. If it doesn't work I don't care too much.Next problem: figuring the polarity. The adapter came with polarized connectors. The Radio Shack one didn't. Time to pull out the multimeter and start checking what's connected to what. After a bit of poking around I decide that I have it working.

And it worked! Incidently "Out" marks the side that's connected to the outer connector on the barrel: ground. I just didn't want to get confused. So, in the end I got an Asus EEE PC 1005HA car adapter working for less that $20 once everything is accounted for. I count that as a win!