My Wishlist

So now that I’m done with “The convention I was stressing about” (I’ll be heading back to Boston tomorrow), it’s back into the long term contract I picked up a few months ago. A lot of very cool Java coding that’s abstract, fascinating, intense, and occasionally screamingly frustrating.

But it also means I get to think about other things, all of which will cost money, which is workable, but it’s not like we have bottomless pockets just waiting to be plumbed.

So, my wishlist… projects, ideas, things I want to to, stuff in the works, etc.

• Replacing the Subaru / getting a truck
  Cat and I have been talking about replacing the Subaru with a new vehicle for a while. The Subaru is a 4door Outback wagon we’ve gotten good use out of, but now that she is driving my Golf every day for work (the mileage on the Golf is double the Subaru, and she’s driving 40-50 miles a day, while I may drive 5.) I’m not all that comfortable driving the Outback, and it DOES have 120k some odd miles on it.
  
  So, we’re considering replacing it with a truck. I’ve been wanting something that’s better at towing all our various tow-items (our boat, utility trailers, and the camper) – 2 of which are over the rated capacity for the Subaru), as well as something I can haul around my equipment for conventions. A pickup truck with an extended cab seems to have all the pieces we need – power, cargo capacity, towing capacity, four wheel drive, and admittedly, something I’d enjoy driving. We’re looking around specifically at late-model Toyota Tacomas right now, hopefully we’ll look at a few this week.

• Upgrading the home office
  I work at home full time now (cept when I do conventions), and my home desk / chair / workspace arrangement is fairly sub-optimal. After the move, I threw it all back together again, but it hasn’t really been a place I want to settle into and -work-. I’m thinking of trying to find a used aeron chair (widely accepted as the most comfortable office chairs on the planet, but they’re VERY expensive ($400-$600). My home desk space is ‘okay’, though my desks need to be tightened up and rearranged. I’m also going to be upgrading my monitors and desktop machines to have a better dual-monitor arrangement (windows on one side, linux on the other).

• TV Space
  At our house we share with our roomate Beth, we’ve set up a nice sort of TV nook in the basement for watching movies, general lounging around and the like. At the the moment, it’s the only active television in the house, and is “okay” for flopping and watching some shows, but it’s not ‘escape’ space for movie watching I really want. The space needs a better TV, a fixed tuner, better speakers, and comfortable couches to really make it nice, though that sort of rebuild of basically a basement rumpus space seems… overkill, particularly in a space we’re renting. A nice big floppy sectional couch would be grand, but that’s mighty overkill. Alas. 🙂

• My MAME Project
  I’ve been collecting pieces of hardware for a MAME cabinet for a while, and I really want to get on with it. After the movers dropped my Centipede game off the truck, I decided it was time to ditch that old machine and build a new cabinet specifically for MAME games. I’d really like to get this going for that mid-day “Gotta go play Xevious for a few to work off some steam!” urges. A handheld controller on my laptop just doesn’t cut it.

• Mobile Computing
  This is sort of an ongoing thread in my head. What’s the best way to make Ubiquitous Computing a reality, in this case on a personal mobile platform? I don’t want to go the Gargoyle route seemingly favored by the MIT wearables folks. It should be subtle and unnoticeable by the casual observer. Services should be music, network connections via wireless, cell phone service, and visual interaction, all without looking like a total geek. Some things have converged. My Kyocera cell phone (a fairly powerful palm phone) gives me a lot of network interaction, and it’s ALWAYS with me, but I’ve found the MP3 player and other services on it lacking. Something better is needed.

There’s always other low-key projects churning around my head. These are just sort of basic wishlist things for now – projects I’d love to get working at some point, but it doens’t include software / systems noodling. Stuff I want to in THAT arena are more of a ‘todo list’ rather than a wishlist…

• Transition from CVS to Subversion for all CONGO and other projects.
• Jump to Debian Etch, the ‘testing’ branch of the Debian project (I’m running Sarge now, which is ‘stable’).
• Upgrade my desktop (see above) for a second monitor for Windows, and get my video tuner card working in it, so I have a video feed on my desk. (see next item also)
• Explore Myth TV as an opensource digital video recorder (an alternative to Tivo)
• Evaluate Asterisk as a linux-based PBX, and look at using SIP phones.

And so on and so on and so on. And yes, all these things should happen while I’m continuing my normal working life, and being with my family, and spending time with my friends, and and and.