Thoughts From the Day Job

Entry-by-entry data verification and updating on a 4,000+ entry MySQL table appeals to my anal retentive nature.

phpmyadmin’s search feature, coupled with its ability to edit multiple rows at once, has sped up my task incredibly.

Lunchtime at McD’s in Potterville shows a horrifying number of High School Students. Why aren’t they at the diner downtown?

Oregon, why do your town names make me fear you?

Thanksgiving Weekend

I give thanks for my family. I give thanks for my ability to support them in this ridiculous economy. I give thanks that I still have my health and my sanity. I give thanks for the opportunities that I have had, continue to have, and that my family has. I give thanks for a wife who supports me, thinks of me, and cares about me. I give thanks for three sons, all of whom likely see me as a better man than I am. I give thanks for two parents who still see me for all that I can be, and a brother who is, as Hunter put it, awesome.

I give thanks for everyone and everything in my life. Also, for leftovers.

Aside from a ridiculous amount of delicious homemade food, including a deep fried turkey, much nerdery was had on Turkey-day. I learned about the differences between .dmg and .iso (not much) and between compressed and uncompressed .dmg (quite a bit). I helped to pull a shaved kitten worth of cat hair and dust out of a laptop. Never got around to working on the server, but that’s fine. I was shown a Linux distro that’s meant to be a router/firewall combo. Just all kinds of geekishness going on.

I am -so- close to having the Todd story go to print. SO CLOSE, I tells ya. I’m on pins and needles just thinking about it.

I’m trying out EVE Online, and am finding myself just as frustrated with the crashing and lagging as I was with Myst Online. Being immersed in the story will make up for a lot. So far, the technical difficulties have outweighed the benefits. So, I unpacked Myst IV and Myst V, set them on the shelf next to Nikki’s Everquest II box, and popped Myst III: Exile into the PS2.

If I’m going to start gaming again, why would I ignore the ones I’ve already purchased?

Thoughts from Work

Feeling very twitchy and anxious. Dunno if it’s the antibiotics that I’m on, a symptom of the upper respiratory infection, or something else entirely. Yay doxycycline!

Stargate Universe is pulling zero punches when it comes to flaws in the characters. Wow. Also, old-school version of “the chair” looks creepy and intimidating. The reference to a dentist’s chair was spot on in so many ways.

Twitchiness and anxiousness have faded. Think it might be related to the brain fogs that were coming with that whole being sick thing. GO TEAM DOXYCYCLINE!

Enjoying the hell out of the newest Ubuntu version on my work laptop. It’s actually using the proprietary ATI driver, and using it well. Methinks it’s a good thing that ATI is now part of AMD.

scp is my friend.

As Aidan prepares to transition from Terrible Twos into Tantrum Threes, he’s ramping up his attempts to verbally control his universe. Now, many religious traditions ranging from Shamanism to modern day monotheisms(msmsmsmsms) have attempted to change and/or improve the world around them by putting voice and will into speech and thereby giving definition to the change that they want.

It’s not working so well for Aidan. He’s got the focus and the determination, that’s for sure. “I not in time-out, Daddy!” while sitting in the time-out chair may be a difficult approach to take, is all I’m sayin’. :)

Caffeine cat is caffeinated. Unreasonable deadlines are unreasonable. “It is what it is.”

Thoughts from Work

Yesterday at work… let me explain.  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.

I downloaded, installed, and used the Gimp in the space of about seven minutes to fix one of those “You’re joking, right?” problems.  The problem was a big deal, and I’m just thankful that the fix was quick, easy, and done.

This set the tone for the day.  Except for the quick and easy fix part.

I really want to build Hunter’s computer.  He’s probably too old for the Sugar interface, but I have to wonder if something like edubuntu would be too complex.  Probably not.  And then, of course, there’s the issue of connecting to the internet.

The preview for the new Avatar (not Airbender, which is also awesome) movie is amazing.  Watch it.  Now.

I just bought my wife a subscription to an MMO, an expansion pack, and a Logitech gamer headset for our two-year dating anniversary. Because she wanted them.

Hee!

I got some Neil Gaiman crack and some BSG crack.

We’re such nerds.

Varied and Sundry

Why, for the love of all that is holy, is the grease from cooked pepperoni so vibrantly red?

There is now an HP LaserJet 4000 sitting in my basement, hooked up to the print server via parallel cable. It came with two extra boxes of toner, which was good. The toner in the printer had a damaged roller, which was printing lines down the side of the paper. Swapped out the toner, and all was good. Soon, it will have an ebayed JetDirect card, thereby removing any issues between Vista, Samba, and the little technology demons that like to mess with my network. :)

The Epson Photo Stylus 780 is pronounced dead after many, many long years of faithful service. It’ll be going to GoodWill for their electronics recycling service.

I’ve been irritated with the way Firefox works under Ubuntu, but then, it’s always been that way. It’s always had issues. It figures, now that I don’t have problems with putting the laptop to sleep or into hibernate, that Firefox would crash literally half of the time I resume from either situation. I’ve tried installing Firefox 3.5 (Shiretoko), and it only crashes a third of the time. However, page load times are ridiculously long. This version of Ubuntu doesn’t seem to play nice with Skype, either. I’ve thought about trying OpenSuse, like George has recommended so many times, and I’ve thought of testing the release candidate for Windows 7. I’ve heard good things about the latter from , and have more Windows-only devices than I’d like to admit, so I think I’m going to take that route.

All my servers are still Linux, so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning the “cause” or anything. I am interested in the price point that Microsoft will offer for those upgrading from the free RC to the full-blown version.

We’ve had nearly a week without Hunter or Aidan, and it’s been pretty quiet, overall. Becoming Mr. Mom while is at class has been a little rough, as Cian does not like her being gone for extended periods of time. It would have been far more rough had all three been here, of course. We pick Hunter up from his grandmother’s after gets out of class today, and we pick Aidan up from his dad and stepmom tomorrow. The dentist and doctor appointments are about to begin en masse again, but I’ve got a few good books to bring to read in between “No! Put that down!” and “Stop hitting your brother!” and “Do you want a time out?”

I had an eye doctor appointment yesterday. It turns out that not only did DOC sell me shoddy frames and then close their Frandor location, they warped the right lens when they made it. My new doctor found little ripples caused by compression, which is usually applied at the time of lens manufacture. So, my prescription’s only gotten a little bit worse, and I’ve picked out new frames. Rather, gave me quite a bit of help in picking out new frames. Apparently, she’s not down with my idea of Nerd Chic. Heh. Then again, it was fun to pick out the ridiculous ones and say “Aw, c’mon, these are great!”

Anyone out there using Liferea as an RSS reader? Ever had it lose your back list of unread entires? Is it too much to ask for a feed reader to handle more than three thousand back entries? And how come the Twitter feed entries aren’t saved? *flails* Google Reader cuts you off at a thousand entries, and won’t pass user names and passwords for protected entries (such as LJ). Am I demanding too much of RSS? Shouldn’t this be local archiving so I can catch up at my leisure?

I’d forgotten that Rhythmbox has Last.fm integration. Looks like I’m back on that horse again. Once I entered my data, the copy of my playlist that I’d allowed it to keep was uploaded with the quickness. One part awesome, one part scary. My profile. I’ve embedded the Big Brother Music List into my user profile. :)

Anybody have an example of typical LLC bylaws that I could have or borrow for a while?

We completely cleaned Aidan’s and Hunter’s rooms yesterday. and Matt did most of the work, while I distracted the baby and kept him company. We moved Aidan’s bed to eliminate a hiding spot used for nefarious diaper activities, and have our fingers crossed. Hunter’s room has been completely revamped. His desk now faces a wall, instead of a window, for decreased distraction potential. His television is not viewable from his desk, either. Now, if only he can keep it in a state where everything he owns is not destroyed.

Ha, I was right! The voice for Wreck-Gar in Transformers: Animated is Weird Al! Definitely a good follow-up to Eric Idle (1986 movie)… not to mention he got to say “Dare to be stupid!” I giggled a lot when I heard that. There’s so many wonderful nods to the original series.

Ubuntu 9.04 is running really, really well on this Dell laptop. So far, I’ve only had to un-blacklist my video card to get Visual Effects (Compiz Fusion) working and install one deprecated bluetooth package to get my mouse working. The lack of pre-installed Skype is worrisome. It’s not in the repositories, and 9.04 isn’t listed as compatible on Skype’s page. I’m hoping that this is resolved before 9.10 is released.

Suspend and hibernate modes work like a charm on this Dell, though.

Also, in nerd news, I think I might be crazy:
– LiveJournal
– Blogger
– Twitter
– DeviantArt
– Facebook
– Writery web page
– Writery Google Group

There’s a reason that I have a hard time keeping up. Think I’m going to stop the cross-posting via Twitter, too.