Category: Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

This afternoon marks the end of my forced detachment from mobile computing. After a brief stay at the local IBM warranty repair center, hunter, my trusty T40 laptop, is back in my hands and working properly. I had gone about a month and a half dealing with keyboard problems that INCLUDED a keyboard replacement (didn’t help), and a kernel upgrade (didn’t help but fixed some other things).
I really wasn’t aware how much of an impact this was having on day to day life until I had the machine available for remote work again. Now I sit happily at Panera sipping a coffee mocha latte and catching up on email, irc, and blogstuff, all on a new keyboard and stable system.
I’ll take this opportunity to point out how much IBM’s warranty program rocks. I bought this T40 off ebay about 8 months ago, from Joe Random Seller. When it arrived, it was a simple matter of going to ibm.com, typing in the serial number, and noting that yes, in fact, it’s under warranty for another 2 years. That means just about anything that breaks will be free to repair, either via ordered parts (shipped to me for free overnight), or via carry in service (ala a motherboard replacement). Turnaround at the service center was 2 days (though 1 day is normal – the mobo came in late yesterday), and cost to me was $0.00.
Hard to argue with that.

No, not quite what you think. Click on the image for a video served from google vids. Mighty good work.
Thanks to Tom for the link…

I try to make it a habit to go to woot.com every day to see what spiffy things they have available (and have frequently gone ‘yes! I do want one of those turnip twaddlers!’, much to my chagrine.
Anyway, today they have an interesting tidbit on the origin of the term ‘woot’…

Several times a day, I find myself explaining “woot” to grandmas, probation officers, and disinterested bartenders at the local dives. “Double-you oh oh tee, like ‘loot’ with a W instead of an L.” It’s actually so rare that someone knows the term that as I repeatedly try to explain it, I just end up feeling foolish and tired…so very tired…

Read the entire entry.

A bunch of geek work-at-home updates.

1. Thanks to a little help from my #geekery friends, I have a new kernel running on ‘hunter’ (my T40 Thinkpad). I’m now running 2.6.13.
2. It’s amazing how much better a 1.4gighz laptop works when it’s actually RUNNING at 1.4gighz. The old kernel was was forcing my CPU into ‘speedstep’ battery save mode fulltime. So I’ve been running at about 595mghz for the last 6 months. Everything is a lot faster now.
3. Aeron chairs are very comfortable.
4. A woot.com supplied monitor stand and keyboard drawer are an excellent addition to any desktop.

Now all I have to do is produce! 🙂

Ubercon is a gaming convention specializing in desktop gaming, miniatures, and RPG type events. It also includes a well run LAN gaming room (thanks to NJ Lan Party), where we have some total kick-ass UT2004 matches. 8)
It’s next weekend (October 14-16th) in the Meadowlands, NJ. If folks are going to be in the area, and want to stop by, cmon in! I could also use help running Registration. My usual cohort will be helping out, but can’t get there until late Friday, so I could use a hand on Thursday and Friday.
Anyway, the event is a lot of fun, good people all around. Cmon down and roll the dice some!

An incredibly busy couple days has rendered my posts almost non-existent. There’s several reasons for this, I’ll try and enumerate some of my own realizations and other influences…

• It appears I do a ton of my blogging directly on my laptop. Perhaps while waiting for Z to go to sleep, or while sitting around at places other than my desk. When my keyboard on the laptop broke, I lost the ability to make (intelligent) posts while undocked. So I basically stopped posting. Interesting.
• It is possible to get less than 24 hours notice for a meeting down in NJ – rearrange schedules, get a hotel room, drive down, get almost no sleep (not sure why), get up for a meeting, drive back to Boston in time for practice, get dinner, and be home, and NOT go completely insane. I think.
• On the geekier side, I think I have finally outgrown my laptop. Eclipse is a total memory hog, and running it, plus my appserver, and what will most likely require an instance of a small database, is more than my little 1.4mghz 768meg laptop can handle, and still run my desktop, mail, and all the other stuff I do. Options are actually including looking to get a high end desktop machine for primary development. Eek!
• This weekend Cat goes out of town, and on Saturday, we go to Maine to close down the maine house, and Sunday, we go to the circus! (Okay, so what’s the best way to take the T to the thing-formerly-known-as-the-fleet-center?).
• My direct ownership of my little golf is coming to an end. Cat is selling the Subaru and taking the Golf as her primary vehicle. We have aquired a new van which will be my car when I need to use it (usually to pick up Z at school. Since I don’t commute, my daily drive is less than 10 miles total usually. Having this much cargo space, people capacity, and towing capacity is going to be ENORMOUSLY helpful for events, general work, and going on trips. I’ve already hauled a bed in it, as well as moved a vanload of lumber. Yay.
• Rebuilding steps when the landlord refuses to is a very therapeutic process. The old steps were a single 2×6 nailed across the tread, leaving a huge gap behind the tread. Very scary to walk on. I removed all the treads and replaced them with full-depth treads and put kickboards on the risers. Of course, the risers are DIFFERENT HEIGHTS on the 2 sections of the steps. Grumble. Kudos once again to the enormously wonderful 18v Ryobi cordless drill. I wonder if the circular saw version works as well? I used a standard skilsaw to cut my boards, but I could see the benefit of a cordless. More on this later.
• All the parts for my MythTV projects have arrived, but problems with the host machine have cropped up. Curses!
• My contract with the folks in NJ is extended basically indefinately. This is… very very good.

I think that should be enough for one life update.

Thanks to the generosity of our friends Tim and Ellen, we now have a hottub in our back yard. Titan Movers hauled it over this morning, using a mighty cool big truck. It was a little alarming to see a hottub suspended over our house, but it was only swaying there for a few minutes. Only slight fingernail chewing occurred.
This weekend I had much Manly Man Tool Fun as I built the platform for the tub (levelling it with gravel, concrete, and the like – you can see it under the tub here), using ‘rest points’ as documented in the manual. It’s not a flat pad, but the 2×8’s are under all the points they say should be supported. This, coupled with some inside shelf carpentry, definately filled out my tool-geek needs for the day.
NB: the Ryobi 18v drill and associated OnePlus battery system rocks the house. I drove 36 3″ screws through slightly damp pressure treated 2x8s, and the unit never even flagged. It went on to mount some shelving and hooks later in the afternoon, and is still going strong.
Now to get the wiring hooked up.

This coming Friday, September 23rd, my band Deluded Blues will be playing at the Cottage Street Pub in Franklin, MA. This is the first time the ‘new’ band has appeared on stage in its current form, and we’re only doing a ‘mini-set’ in the middle of a longer set by the ‘old’ band.
We go on at 9pm, and should be playing for about 45 minutes. Much support from attending audience folks would be a huge win, as this is also the first time I’ve -ever- performed on stage 🙂
I’ll be heading down to Franklin earlier to pick up our gear and muscle it over to the gig (leaving home around 6:15-6:30ish). If folks want to ride along or caravan, ya’ll are welcome, but you may be drafted into roadie mode!
We had a great pre-gig practice tonight, going through the entire set beginning to end, and I think we sound pretty good, if I do say so myself. If you like bar-blues type music, leaning heavily on early 70’s blues (Allman Brothers, Free, CCR, etc), then you’ll know what to expect in our show.
Hope to see folks there!

I normally don’t comment on current events outside of politics, but this one struck me as worth bringing up…

According to AP via Yahoo News:

CHICAGO – A commuter train was going almost 60 mph above the speed limit just before it derailed, killing two people and injuring dozens, the acting chairman of the
National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday.
Mark Rosenker said the Metra train was traveling at 69 mph and should not have been going faster than 10 mph when it switched tracks at a crossover just before jumping the tracks Saturday.

Nothing wrong with the tracks or the train, it was just going ‘too fast’. Yeah, I’d say so. Sheesh.

have the COOLEST friends. And tops in that list is my wunnerful wife.

Ya’ll amaze me constantly.

Now that I’m back behind my desk regularly, the setup I have for my desk, mouse, chair, and keyboard is starting to be problematic. I rather like how it’s arranged – I have a nice monitor and natch keyboard (I can’t type on flat keyboards anymore. Ow ow ow), but my chair is really becoming a problem. My older leather standard joe office chair finally fell apart, and I’m using a similar shaped one now, but it’s causing all sorts of aches and pains.
I don’t trust ‘ergonomic’ chairs in general, since it’s just a buzzword nowadays. The concept is totally valid, but you can’t ‘shop’ for an ‘ergonmic chair’ – you have to go sit in a lot of chairs until one clicks in. I was under the impression that most chairs are basically the same, and there are minor improvements left and right, but really, being 6’6″ means I’ll never be totally comfortable.
Oh, woe, was I wrong. I found a chair and a situation that is incredibly comfortable and perfect and great. But there’s a catch.
Next to my current favorite lunchtime spot there’s a Relax the Back store. I’d seen these around, but never actually stopped in. I figured, in my search for a good chair, lets start with a specialist.
Had a great chat with the owner – the store was large, had some normal-looking office chairs – they don’t look particularly edgy or special, just regular high-back chairs.
I sat down in one, and started fiddling. And then fiddled more. And the manager fiddled some more, and… eventually… it just clicked in. The position was right, the support was right, the armrests were right… it.. was just right. I’d never been that comfortable in an office chair before. We added wrist rests (sort of palm-sized cups for the hands), and a foot rest (normally I don’t do foot rests, and actually started to tell him that, but then he adjusted it right, and… voila! It worked!) and I felt I could work there all day without a single twinge. Delightful!
So, after 15 minutes of this, realizing I was running a little late for lunch, I finally asked the fellow how much the chair was, with the accoutrements I was using (wrist rests and headrest). “Oh, that chair is… lessee… 1495.”
1495. One thousand, four hundred, and ninety five dollars. For a chair. Granted, an amazingly cool comfortable wonderful chair. But YIKES!
Ah well, guess I’ll keep shopping. At least I have a baseline to compare it to now.
<small voice> yeah, but, it was a really nice chair. </>

There’s not a lot to be said here that isn’t being said everywhere else on the web. It’s not a time for finger-pointing, blame-gaming, or politicing. None of that will help the people who need help right now.
The logistics for me going to Louisiana to help out in person would be complex and ultimately not very helpful, as I’m not a trained emergency volunteer. It may seem crass, haughty, or elitist, but the best thing we can do right now is send money. The American Red Cross has consistently and IMHO skillfully handled disaster after disaster, avoiding politics and scandal (other than those created by folks who like nothing better than creating scandal out of nothing). During this time, they need our support more than anything, as they are the most organized and have the best planning for this sort of disaster.
I’ve donated. I encourage anyone who has the means to donate. $100 to them would mean meals and blankets and shelter to a family for weeks. There are thousands of families who need this help now.

As posted on Repent America :

PHILADELPHIA – Just days before “Southern Decadence”, an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the French Quarters section of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroys the city.

Yes, apparently New Orleans deserved got what it was asking for. At least according to this wingnut.
Thanks to scherzoid for the link.

“Use Me Up” is a masterpiece. Long before Mick Jagger and Hootie and the Blowfish covered it. I can just jam to it for ages. It’s only 2 chords, but what a great groove.