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

(Who?)
Barry Smith once drew the incredibly awesome Angst Technologies webcomic. He went on hiatus for a while, but has restarted his artwork.
I highly recommend reading through the archives – the current strip is on InkTank.com. He’s thoughtfully linked the older strips into archives.
Ya’ll can finally see the origin of the IT Ninjas.

Check it out. My nephew’s band, “The Malone” has set up their myspace page (Warning for us old farts – it will start playing music as soon as you click on that link.)
Josh is playing bass, and I can well say he sounds a lot better than I do.

Last night I wanted to sit down and listen to some RadioParadise during gaming. Unfortunately, my efforts to get a streaming ‘terminal’ available in the living room (other than plugging in one of the laptops) hasn’t gone particularly well.
I remember listening to RP via my iPhone, and since we had Cat’s Bose Sounddock on the shelf, I figured I just had to whip up a connection and dock the phone.
I ran up Safari on the phone, navigated to Radio Paradise, and lo, there was a link to a Radio Paradise iPhone app! For free!
In a blink I had it downloaded and running on my iPhone. The app gives basic functionality, showing the current track and allowing easy music control.
Score another one for the awesome Radio Paradise.

I’ve been having… unpure thoughts lately.
While I’m fairly happy with clipper running Ubuntu 8.10 as my working desktop machine, I realize that clipper is getting a little long in the tooth (I have not worn the keycaps off, but there’s a distinct ‘looseness’ in the keyboard). It’s now 4+ years old, and while it’s ‘working’, it might be time to consider an upgrade.
The macs tempt me. After setting up mom with her macbook, I had a better feel for the mac mobile experience. The latest line of macbooks has enough power in a non-bulky configuration that I can do all my development and serious work on them without making compromises.
I stopped by the Apple store to try out the new macbook touchpad (as I’m not a fan of touchpads in general), and I have to say I was impressed. The ‘glass’ touchpad implements multitouch in a good way (one finger for ‘single click’, two fingers for ‘right click’). I’d still miss the ‘nipple’ pointing device in the middle of the keyboard, but I think I’d be okay.
The last thing motivating me is the need to run some business software. I’ll be taking over more of Stonekeep’s finances, so I need to run Quicken / Quickbooks. While Intuit has done the right thing and put Quicken / Quickbooks online (though with our account with DCU, much of our banking can be done remotely anyway), having native commercial apps available, plus all the wonderful opensource / free apps – is a huge draw.
A properly kitted out laptop from Apple (250gig HD, 4gig RAM, Macbook 2.4Ghz) runs $1800-ish. This would be my machine for another 3-4 years at least – the price is reasonable, though a little daunting.
But then I look at other things that would bring me – like Time Capsule. Brilliant.
It would mean abandoning Linux as a desktop. A moral dilemma to be sure.

Yesterday (Saturday), Zach and I packed up our gear and headed off to Wachusett to ski for as much of the day as we could tolerate. We had some plans for the evening, so the latest we could get home was around 5pm, but as we left the house at 9am, I didn’t think that would be a real obstacle.

Zach has been doing a great job skiing. He’s now happily keeping pace with me (in fact he’s frequently out in front), and I’ve gotten very comfortable with my Awesome Yellow Six-Ways-From-Sunday Solomon XScream 195cm skis.

This was planned as a escapism day for me. Last week was super-stressful, so I went to the mountain looking for some outdoor, re-centering, thoughtful time with me and the hill. Zach seems to share a lot of my “skiing is a great time for thinking” approach, so though were on the hill together, we didn’t talk much. He skied in his space, I skied in mine, we both focused on what we were doing and just relaxed into things. It was nice.

From here on out, we get into serious navel gazing. Fair warning.

So, first of all. I have this… issue. I’m ridiculously critical about myself. I have a hard time considering myself capable or good at ‘anything’. If someone calls me a ‘musician’, I get uncomfortable. I’m not a musician, I can just play some stuff that sounds okay. I’m faking it. “You’re a programmer” – well, sort of. I write some stuff, I can code bits, but I’m painfully aware of how much I DON’T know, and just fast talk my way through it. “You juggle really well” – I know some tricks, I know a few things, but I haven’t learned anything new in years, blah blah blah. I have a fear of being overconfidence and being arrogant.

While skiing yesterday, I did my usual observation of myself with a critical eye. I watched my skill, timing, form, and control. I watched myself with my ‘outer eye’ – that self-observation that’s always with me, judging. And 2 hours into being on the slopes, somewhere around the time we were considering stopping for lunch and scheduling a lesson for Zach, I came to this conclusion:

I am a skier.

But, more than that…

I am a damned good skier.

This is not a statement I can make and be totally comfortable with for… well, just about anything. In a world of self-aggrandizing pomposity, where people have a tendency to place themselves out as ‘experts’ and ‘highly skilled’ and all that jazz, without really being honest with themselves, it’s hard for me to state that I am ‘good’ at anything, and feel comfortable with it.

But I can watch myself ski, and I see a skilled dancer. I see someone in control, competent, not taking things for granted, but working hard on every turn, every motion, every shift of weight – self-chastising when I get it wrong, feeling when it’s right, and safely being able to say to myself “Self, you look good. Excellent form.”

But that’s not what I came here to talk about. It wouldn’t be a post to planet-geek without some geekery.

One of the things I’ve always wanted to do while skiing was listen to music. I remember a very funny story, undoubtedly apocryphal, when I was a kid about some guy who wanted to hear classical music while skiing. He hired an entire orchestra to stand by the side of the slope and play as he skied past, but they couldn’t sync up the brass section with the strings…

I grew up skiing on Hunter Mountain in upstate New York. One winter they started offering rentals of portable stereo rigs to skiers. They were essentially full sized automobile cassette decks in a sort of chest pouch with a bunch of batteries and some headphones. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, but a 12 year old isn’t going to get a chance to try this thing out, so I never heard what it was like.

I never got around to taking a Walkman with me on the slopes (I do remember some mountains actually banned them, worried they’d hurt the skier if they fell, or presented a safety risk when a skier couldn’t hear anything). Nowadays, it’s pretty common to see the telltale white cords of ipod headphones on many a snowboarder. It was time for me to try it.

During our lunch break, I went through the music selection on my iPhone and picked out about 30 tracks I’d like to listen to while skiing. They were mostly stuff I knew I liked a lot (Alan Parsons, Blues Brothers, The Cure, Dave Matthews, Dire Straights, etc etc). I queued them up into a playlist, set up my headphones under my shellaclava and hat, and put my iPhone in the inside pocket of my jacket. This turned out to be a fortuitous location for the phone, as it meant I could squeeze the jacket in the right place and adjust the volume up and down, so I could talk to people with a sort of background music going on when necessary. Thus equipped, and with Zach in a ski lesson for an hour and a half, I ventured out.

The result was fairly magical. The weather was perfect, the conditions were excellent, and the music was awesome. The headphones were comfortable and sounded great (I was wondering if the wind / noise would drown out the music, but that didn’t happen at all). Listening to “Sweet Home Chicago” while working on short-turn fall line techniques on a bright, clear, sunny day had me grinning from ear to ear and feeling about as good as you can get while flying down a hill at 25mph in 15 degree weather.

If you’ve never done it before, and you’re an active skier, I highly recommend trying this out. There are some drawbacks to be sure. You cannot hear anything else that goes on around you, including someone next to you in line wondering when you’re going to move up in the singles line (only happened once, really). Although iPod headphones are ‘okay’, they can shift around, and adjusting the position of the headphones underneath 2 layers of hat can be tricky. For the most part though, the headphones stayed put, something I was eternally grateful for.

But oh the joy.

Later, Zach and I got back together and did a couple more runs together. I spent a lot of this time watching him. I realize he’s on the same track I was when I was 11 or 12 (he’s a little ahead of me on the schedule). He’s seeking out the little paths on the sides of the trails, looking for the little whoopsie-jumps that are all over the place (skiers know what I mean by these – when i was a kid, I totally did this). What I also realized was… he needs kids to ski with. I’m boring for him – I’m not digging out the little fun bits, and goofing around, I’m just all zen like in my focus, and he’s already to the skill level where he’s looking for more excitement.

When I was on Hunter, my parents found me a sort of ‘kids group’ program – it was geared for kids 11-13 or so I guess, and was basically one nutty ski instructor and 4-5 crazy kids, and we just went nuts. We’d do a couple dozen runs a day, going hell bent all over the mountain, and it was a blast. I don’t think Wachusett has anything quite as goofy fun, so I’m going to be looking around for other kids groups. Zach has one friend at school who snowboards a lot, I’m going to see if he wants to go skiing with us one day. Zach’s already comfortable going off and taking runs and riding the ski lift on his own – having a friend (or friends) he can ski with I think would make the day a lot more enjoyable for him.

Me? I’m enjoying rediscovering my love for something physical, something I’m good at, and the added joy of sharing it with my son. I do have constant memories of doing this with my parents way back when, and every once in a while I get a little teary thinking of my dad… and remembering him doing these things with me 25 years ago.

That was a great day of skiing.

This was yesterday (Saturday), up at Wachusett Mountain in Princeton, MA. Zach and I went up for a good chunk of the day, hauling our food and other goodies in ourselves (Holy cats is food there expensive. Better to just bring your own).

It was by far the busiest day I’ve ever seen there (with weather today forecast to be in the single digits, and it was), so naturally most of the east coast went skiing on Saturday.

Lift lines were in the 40+ minute range, which was reminding me of the days we skied at Hunter Mountain in NY.

Things sure have changed since then – the lifts are FAR faster, carrying 4 folks per chair, using that ‘zoomie launch’ bit, but the old tricks still work. Zach and I split up and took to the ‘singles’ line, and were able to zip through to the lift in about 10 minutes each run. Wahoo!

Zach had all new ski gear this time, after some successful ebay and craigslist scrounging. Didn’t have to deal with rentals at all. Another win. The gear worked great, and we both had a fantastic day.

Someone on a chat channel mentioned this site, and I’ve been browsing it off and on over the last few days.
The site is TVtropes.org, and is a vast collection of ‘tropes’ found not just in television, but in comics, manga, and film.
A trope, according to the home page:

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means “stereotyped and trite”. In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

The site has a horrific amount of information on it, in wiki form, though they are careful to state they are NOT wikipedia (“We’re a buttload more informal…”).
Some choice bits.
Regarding the ‘BerserkButton’ trope:

Marty McFly from the Back To The Future films: “Nobody… calls me… chicken!” This is a rare instance in which getting over the Berserk Button is part of the Character Development, or where the Berserk Button is even treated as a bad thing to have.

And, in the ‘BarSlide’ trope:

In Hudson Hawk, when Eddie orders a cappucino, the bartender slides it down the bar to him.

And it goes on and on and on.
I love the internet.

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 5.16, Libertarian: 3.93

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -6.68

My Culture War Stance
Score: -6.67

Political Spectrum Quiz

I’m a little surprised at the strong libertarian side of things, as I consider myself a socialist. Some of the questions were… tricky in that I could have answered them in a certain way depending on the next statement. For example, “Do you support the death penalty if the crime is heinous enough” – I have to answer yes, but that is only under the assumption the legal system can be considered infallible. I have to answer the question as it’s stated, so had to say “Yes, I agree, strongly.”

My current employer is looking for a senior Perl developer. We’re located out in Littleton, MA. Full details of the position behind the cut. Feel free to poke me for any details. We use the standard LAMP (where P = Perl here) stack, in CGI / mod_perl configurations.

Continue reading “Are you a Perl geek? We’re looking for you!” →

Hey, this could be fun. I’ve set up a script that watches twitter for the hashtag ‘#arisia’. When it finds a tweet with that in the message, the script retweets the message over to @arisia. So, if you’re coming to Arisia, and use twitter, add @arisia to your follow list, and join the conversations in realtime with your fellow Arisians!
To have your tweet show up in the @arisia group, just add #arisia to your tweet.

Well, I’ve gone and done it. Connect away, ya’ll!
My profile at LinkedIn.
Still needs a lot of polishing and finessing, but it’s a start.

When I first starting hearing the audio submissions for NPR’s “This I Believe” project, I wondered if I were given the opportunity, what would I say?

In this confusing season, with wildly contradictory messages being pushed in from all quarters, I thought it was time to sit down and say…

This I believe…

Continue reading “This I Believe” →

As most of my readers know, I have a very nice Aeron chair that I got when I was working at home full time. The decision to invest $600 in a single piece of furniture I was going to use day in and day out wasn’t lightly taken, but I needed something comfortable, durable, and designed for my size and weight. An Aeron size C from ebay fit the bill nicely.

I’ve had my share of problems with it, including a broken ‘pan’ seat and a damaged lifter. The seat was covered under warranty, and I was able to replace it myself, but the lifter needed a trip to a local repair shop.

The last couple weeks, the chair has refused to recline. The levers on the left side that allow forward and backward motion were ‘locked’ in position, and I couldn’t undo them. It was making me not want to sit at my desk – and even though I’m not working fulltime at home, I know that if there’s something that makes an experience less than enjoyable, I’ll avoid it. So I was sitting on the couch with my laptop or working downstairs.

Last night, I decided to haul out the toolbox and see what could be done…

Continue reading “How to Repair a Herman Miller Aeron Chair” →

About once a year I toss out a reminder that I have a BOINC team actively chewing away on a variety of projects (SETI@Home, Rosetta, Folding, ClimatePrediction, etc).

Out of 78,000 teams worldwide, we are currently at position 1197 – at our best, we were at 662. I’m guessing a lot of this has been attrition. People replace computers, and don’t restart the client, or shut it down for various reasons.

I’ve recently restarted my processes, and also added a couple machines from my work pool. The new machines have definately shown a spike in average credit being reported into BOINC, but I could use a couple more CPU’s online!

If you have some spare machines, or desktops with screensavers, please consider joining my BOINC team and putting those machines to good use. The projects that BOINC works with are all for good causes – cancer research, global climate predication, searches for aliens. Cmon!