The Flow of Consciousness

For some time, I’ve been considering buying a new laptop computer. I’ve been primarily considering a 13″ MacBook Pro with a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, and all of the fixins that come with it. I’d be adding only the Apple Remote and possibly the AppleCare extended warranty.

Why a Mac? Primarily, freedom of choice. If I buy a standard Windows, Linux, or OS-less computer, it’s unlikely that it will run Mac OS X as a Hackintosh. Mac laptops will run Mac OS X, Windows, and (Ubuntu) Linux. Running all three OSes gives me the widest choice of what tool I want to use for a particular task. I imagine that I’ll be using Mac OS X most of the time, switching to Windows for gaming on the go, and using Ubuntu in a VirtualBox, VMWare, or Parallels virtual machine when I need my Linux fix. I’m a software developer, so having access to the emerging mobile market (iPhone development with Xcode, Android development with Eclipse) as well as the established markets (system and web development) is important.

I’m a desktop Ubuntu user and prefer it for my day-to-day usage. I’m open to the idea of seeing what Mac OS X has to offer, but I’ll still have my desktop around for normal usage. I’ve been without a regular laptop for nearly 8 months (been using my XO every now and then), and I hadn’t really missed it until I started working at Vivísimo. It could be peer pressure (I’d estimate that half of the company uses Macs for development, system and web), or it could be seeing a lot of people very happy with their choice.

There’s also a bit of nostalgia in going back to Mac. I used Mac OS from 7.0 until 9.0, then briefly used OS X 10.1 at the end of high school, followed by some OS X 10.5 on a 13″ MacBook earlier this year.

Also, I compared the hardware, and for similar specs, the MacBook is only $100-$200 more compared to most offerings from MSI, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, and HP at NewEgg, Amazon, and the like. This is a sizeable but understandable difference for the quality of hardware and, most of all, quality of customer support.

The biggest problem for me is simply figuring out where to buy it. I’m cautiously arranging for this purchase in my finances, and I think I’ll be ready before the end of September. I made this chart to show potential places I could purchase it.

The cheapest option seems to be Apple refurbished plus the $124 AppleCare plan from eBay. I’m also considering the MacMall sans AppleCare, as it includes Parallels for free after rebate. Currently, I see it like this: Apple (refurb) > MacMall > Apple (edu) > Amazon > Apple (new) > Buy.com. I have no qualms about refurbished things–they’re good as new most of the time, and I’ll have a hard shell on this within a month of purchasing it.

I’m wary of AppleCare, though, but I see its usefulness. I got a five year warranty on my Dell monitor in 2006 and I’ve used it three times already. I plan to replace the 250 GB hard drive which comes with the MBP 13″ with a 128 GB SSD I can get on the super cheap. I don’t really have a need for a ton of hard drive space, even with three OSes installed. I can stream my music, and my pictures will remain on my desktop. I have a VPN into my FiOS-connected apartment, so remotely accessing things on my NAS or desktop wouldn’t be an issue. I’d see faster boots and faster loads, plus some battery life savings.

The downside–the primary reason I mention this–is that, if I mess up when installing the SSD (unlikely), I void the warranty. An ill-informed Apple Genius tried to convince me that simply opening the back voids the warranty, but he is sorely mistaken. Replacing the insides of a MacBook Pro does not void the warranty based on the simple action of replacing them. One must really screw up something and Apple must prove that the replacement screwed up other things (hard to prove!).

I’ll likely up the memory when DDR3 prices come down, too.

So, Internet friends, readers, countrymen, I ask you this: talk me out of this, or talk me into it. I need a decently powered, long life battery-ed, light gaming capable, webcam having, OSX/Windows/Ubuntu capable laptop for cheaper than the above. Bonus points for benefits and drawbacks of AppleCare, as most folks to whom I’ve spoken haven’t gotten it based on cost alone.

Keep the fanboyism to a minimum, please, and do be constructively critical.

I’ve done a ton of programming this week outside of work. I feel like I’ve had at least five browser tabs open for Launchpad at all times! If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s a code hosting service for open source projects, most notably Ubuntu Linux.

I’ve done some Esperanto translations on Launchpad prior to this week. I translated a large portion of Akregator (RSS/Atom feed aggregation for KDE) and a few others. I’ve also filed and added to a bunch of bugs, many of which were cleaned up by the recent One Hundred Paper Cuts bugfixing effort by the Ubuntu development team.

This week, I was abnormally active. I had some downtime here and there at work, plus some open nights, so I took advantage of this time to make significant contributions to three projects: Gwibber, Astrid, and Celtx.

Gwibber

Gwibber is a microblogging client for microblogging services such as Twitter, Identi.ca, and Jaiku. It also supports Flickr, BrightKite, FriendFeed, Facebook, and more, including generic RSS and Atom feeds. It’s written in Python by Ryan Paul (@segphault) of Ars Technica fame.

I had two and a half contributions this week. One is a patch addressing bug #364303, to add linkification of stock ticker symbols, denoted by a dollar sign followed by the ticker symbol, e.g. $GOOG. Clicking on a linked symbol will launch the browser and point it to Google Finance. Originally, it linked to StockTwits, but that site refuses to support OTC stocks.

The second contribution is a complete Esperanto translation of the program. I have mixed feelings on translating programs since most Esperantists would be using their computer in their native language. I decided to do it because, well, Gwibber has just a few more than 115 strings, so why not? It took me approximately an hour and a half, and it was well spent.

That half contribution is a committed, but as-of-yet unproposed/merged patch to fix bug #364322, wherein Gwibber doesn’t load Identi.ca/Laconi.ca groups at all. The problem is that the constructors for identica.SearchResult and laconica.SearchResult expect a TwitterAPI-compatible dictionary, but are passed a standard RSS feed dictionary instead. identica.Client.get_group() hits an RSS feed instead of an API function, because the Groups API in Laconica is not yet finalized. This causes Gwibber to throw an Exception–it’s caught and displayed, but the results aren’t loaded. I modified identica.Client.group(), which calls get_group(), to instead call identica.Client.get_search() and load the search results for the group name. It’s not a clean result set, though, because Laconia while searching strips the “!” used to denote the group name.

Hopefully the API will make it into Laconica 0.8.1 (the next release, mid-to-late September if they release on their typical schedule), I’ll modify the functionality to use the API instead and it’ll be much cleaner and yield more accurate results.

Astrid

Astrid is a TODO list manager for Google Android. It synchronizes with the excellent Remember The Milk TODO list service and provides task reminders and such. I use it on my T-Mobile G1 and would certainly miss it if it were suddenly gone.

My contribution to Astrid was another (nearly) complete Esperanto translation. I left about 10% untranslated because, well, I needed to go to bed! Unfortunately, I realized approximately 3/4 through my translation that Astrid is unlikely ever to be on a platform which supports Esperanto. The chances of there ever being an Esperanto translation of Android are atomically small.

However, my work was not wasted. Launchpad’s Rosetta translation system permits projects to share their translation with other Launchpad projects, using a essentially a central database of translations. This enables projects to speed up internationalization by using existing translations which exactly match internationalize-able strings. While it’s unlikely that anyone will ever use Astrid in Esperanto, it is likely that another TODO list project hosted on Launchpad could benefit from my work in the future.

Celtx

Celtx is an integrated media pre-production and screenwriting utility. I’ve used it for writing short plays for classes and such. I’m using it now for a forthcoming project which I’ll eventually let out of the bag.

My contribution for Celtx, as the link above shows, has not been code or a translation, but a package for Ubuntu. This was the first time I’d ever build a Debian package (Debian packages are what Ubuntu, a Debian Linux derivative, uses to distribute programs).

A long-existing bug, #99965, requested that someone package Celtx from the source on its main web site. I took interest in it in November 2007, but my initial attempts to package it for Hardy (Ubuntu 8.04, released April 2008) were unsuccessful due to my inexperience with build systems and a lack of time/concentration. I revisited the task for Intrepid (Ubuntu 8.10, October 2008) and Jaunty (9.04, April 2009), but was too busy with my new job and other life happenings.

I painstakingly built Celtx from source manually several times before building a binary package myself without any help from the Debian packaging system’s helper scripts (debhelper, dh_make). It’s a pain in the ass because Celtx is based on Mozilla, the build process of which is not as straightforward as a ./configure && make && make install. However, once I had a working knowledge of the build process, I delved into debhelper and its kin and built a source package. I did it for Jaunty first, as that’s what version I’m running right now, but then I made some modifications here and there to convince Celtx to build on Karmic (9.10, due October 2009).

I’ve learned a ton about deb packages and about make, and I think I can consider myself a “packager” now, having done so.

I’m hoping that Celtx Studios, the company that produces Celtx, releases the source for version 2.0.2 soon. The 2.0.1 source is available, but out-of-date. I’d like to get 2.0.2 into Karmic, but it’s looking like 2.0.1 will have to do for now.

So, if you have an interest in media production and/or screenwriting, or wish to help test a new package for inclusion in the next version of Ubuntu, please, by all means, install my Celtx PPA for Ubuntu Jaunty or Karmic and test the crap out of the package. There are a few known issues on Karmic, but I’m not a C++ coder, so I don’t know what I’d even try to fix.

Moving Forward

I look forward to participating more in the development of Gwibber. Because of my fiddlings with it, I’ve come to know the DVCS tool Bazaar (bzr) pretty well, as Launchpad and it are heavily integrated (hint: Canonical, developer of Ubuntu, also developed Launchpad and Bazaar!).

I know that I’ll keep translating. I’ve noticed that my vocabulary has grown a bit and I’m not using the vortaro (dictionary) as much. I still reference Traduku.net, Lernu!, and Komputeko frequently to get technology terminology and infrequently-seen words.

GeekDad at Wired posted a list of 100 essential things that every geek should know. Do you know any of these or know how to find out any of these? Knowing how to know is just as important as knowing itself.

I decided to use a black list, so I bolded the ones I don’t know of. If I know the theory behind it or I’ve read an article on how to do it but I don’t remember exactly how, it still counts as knowing it.

1. Properly secure a wireless router.
2. Crack the WEP key on a wireless router.
3. Leech Wifi from your neighbor.
4. Screw with Wifi leeches.
5. Setup and use a VPN.
6. Work from home or a coffee shop as effectively as you do at the office.
7. Wire your own home with Ethernet cable.
8. Turn a web camera into security camera.
9. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point.
10. Understand what “There’s no Place Like 127.0.0.1″ means.
11. Identify key-loggers.
12. Properly connect a TV, Tivo, XBox, Wii, and Apple TV so they all work together with the one remote.
13. Program a universal remote.
14. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone.
15. Benchmark Your Computer
16. Identify all computer components on sight.
17. Know which parts to order from NewEgg.com, and how to assemble them into a working PC.
18. Troubleshoot any computer/gadget problem, over the phone.
19. Use any piece of technology intuitively, without instruction or prior knowledge.
20. How to irrecoverably protect data.
21. Recover data from a dead hard drive.
22. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network.
23. Install a Linux distribution. (Hint: Ubuntu 9.04 is easier than installing Windows)
24. Remove a virus from a computer.
25. Dual (or more) boot a computer.
26. Boot a computer off a thumb drive.
27. Boot a computer off a network drive.
28. Replace or repair a laptop keyboard.
29. Run more than two monitors on a single computer.
30. Successfully disassemble and reassemble a laptop.
31. Know at least 10 software easter eggs off the top of your head. — I don’t know if I know 10!
32. Bypass a computer password on all major operating systems
33. Carrying a computer cleaning arsenal on your USB drive.
34. Bypass content filters on public computers.
35. Protect your privacy when using a public computer.
36. Surf the web anonymously from home.
37. Buy a domain, configure bind, apache, MySQL, php, and WordPress without Googling a how-to.
38. Basic *nix command shell knowledge with the ability to edit and save a file with vi.
39. Create a web site using vi. — It’s my primary development environment!
40. Transcode a DVD to play on a portable device.
41. Hide a File Behind a JPEG.
42. Share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple computers without a KVM switch.
43. Google obscure facts in under 3 searches. Bonus point if you can use I Feel Lucky.
44. Build amazing structures with LEGO and invent a compelling back story for the creation.
45. Understand that it is LEGO, not Lego, Legos, or Lego’s.
46. Build a two story house out of LEGO, in monochrome, with a balcony. — I don’t know if I have sufficient LEGO bricks!
47. Construct a costume for you or your kid out of scraps, duct tape, paper mâché, and imagination.
48. Be able to pick a lock.
49. Determine the combination of a Master combination padlock in under 10 minutes.
50. Assemble IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions. Bonus point if you don’t have to backtrack.
51. Use a digital SLR in full manual mode. — certainly something I want to learn.
52. Do cool things to Altoids tins.
53. Be able to construct paper craft versions of space ships.
54. Origami! Bonus point for duct tape origami. (Ductigami)
55. Fix anything with duct tape, chewing gum and wire.
56. Knowing how to avoid being eaten by a grue.
57. Know what a grue is.
58. Understand where XYZZY came from, and have used it.
59. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator.
60. Burn the rope.
61. Know the Konami code, and where to use it.
62. Whistle, hum, or play on an iPhone, the Cantina song.
63. Learning to play the theme songs to the kids favorite TV shows.
64. Solve a Rubik’s Cube. — never done it!
65. Calculate THAC0. — That’s what a computer’s for. Or a GM.
66. Know the difference between skills and traits.
67. Explain special relativity in terms an eight-year-old can grasp.
68. Recite pi to 10 places or more. — 3.141592607, right? Thanks, Rocketboom.
69. Be able to calculate tip and split the check, all in your head.
70. Explain that the colours in a rainbow are roygbiv.
71. Understand the electromagnetic spectrum – xray, uv, visible, infrared, microwave, radio.
72. Know the difference between radiation and radioactive contamination.
73. Understand basic electronics components like resistors, capacitors, inductors and transistors.
74. Solder a circuit while bottle feeding an infant. (lead free solder please.)— hopefully I’ll never find the need to do this.
75. The meaning of technical acronyms.
76. The coffee dash, blindfolded (or blurry eyed). Coffee <brew> [cream] [sugar]. In under a minute.
77. Build a fighting robot.
78. Program a fighting robot.
79. Build a failsafe into a fighting robot so it doesn’t kill you.
80. Be able to trace the Fellowship’s journey on a map of Middle Earth.
81. Know all the names of the Dwarves in The Hobbit.
82. Understand the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel.
83. Know where your towel is and why it is important.
84. Knowing the answer to life, the universe and everything.
85. Re-enact the parrot sketch.
86. Know the words to The Lumberjack Song.
87. Reciting key scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
88. Be able to recite at least one Geek Movie word for word.
89. Know what the 8th Chevron does on a Stargate and how much power is required to get a lock.
90. Be able to explain why it’s important that Han shot first. — I just explained this to Brigette a few weeks ago.
91. Know why it is just wrong for Luke and Leia to kiss.
92. Stop talking Star Wars long enough to get laid.
93. The ability to name actors, characters and plotlines from the majority of sci-fi movies produced since 1968.
94. Cite Mythbusters when debunking a myth or urban legend.
95. Sleep with a Cricket bat next to your bed.
96. Have a documented plan on what to do during a zombie or robot uprising. — one of these days I’ll write it down!
97. Identify evil alternate universe versions of friends, family, co-workers or self.
98. Be able to convince TSA that the electronic parts you are carrying are really not a threat to passengers.
99. Talk about things that aren’t tech related.
100. Get something on the front page of Digg. — It’s all about the content, baby!

I’m a little weak on the Tolkien stuff, mostly because I’ve never read them.

I think I’m otherwise within acceptable limits!

Vivísimo‘s Search Done Right™ blog posted an article I wrote a while ago entitled It’s All About the Metadata, Baby: Search Engine Optimization On The Intranet.

Here’s a snippet to whet your appetite:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a hot topic these days. SEO consultants are paid well for their expertise in telling a company how to improve its web search engine ranking. A high rank often means more traffic, which means more business, which means more money.

However, SEO consultants focus primarily on the World Wide Web. After all, it’s only the public that needs to find information on the company’s website, right?

Wrong. This fact is well established. Vivísimo and other vendors entered the enterprise search market years ago and their growing number of clients shows that employees need to find data within the company’s intranet sites and storage networks using a unified, easy-to-use interface.

Click your way to SDR and read the full article, It’s All About the Metadata, Baby: Search Engine Optimization On The Intranet. You can also check out my Search Done Right author page.

Update: Fixed the links. Thanks, pookiewookums.

I’ve been incredibly busy these past six weeks or so since my last entry.

I moved in early May to a new apartment much closer to work. I covered that mostly in my last entry. The new job is going fantastically; I’m really enjoying it. I’m building some professional relationships which I’m sure will last a lifetime.

I’ve gotten more into stock trading, too. I’m currently sitting at almost 100% all-time gain, with my flagship stock, SPNG, sitting at nearly 200% gain across all positions (one position is at 1200%!).

Bob Buskirk‘s ThinkComputers is nearing 1000 reviews. It’s been around for approximately six years–that’s a lot of reviews!

In mid-May, BigVPS, my VPS provider, had a five day outtage after some serious problems occurred after a datacenter migration. I didn’t lose anything but a little hair in the mess, though. During the fray, however, I signed up for a VPS with FSCKvps, a VAserv company. Just a few days ago, VAserv was hit by a massive outtage with data loss after a serious bug in HyperVM, the VPS management software the company uses, was exposed. My server was unaffected, but there are others who have lost everything.

The whole incident taught me a lesson which I have yet to act upon. I need to be more vigilant in my backup policies.

Also, Sean and I decided to pull down BIOS LEVEL for a few months while we overhaul it. We’d not posted a review since early April. It really, really sucks that we had to do that. Our current CMS is heavily integrated with phpBB 2, something which greatly affects the efficiency of the engine. Spam bots overran the forums and our traffic had dropped to a trickle. We’re going to update the look and feel and upgrade to phpBB 3, and hopefully unveil a new technology which will enable tech review sites to lessen each others’ burdens of posting affiliate news greatly.

The weekend of May 30, I saw a good friend of mine, news anchor Kathryn Larson, get married in Lockport, NY. Brigette and I toured the area and Buffalo, and enjoyed dinner at Mamma Mia’s in Clifton Hill, Ontario, just across the border.

Last night, I saw Street Sweeper Social Club, Nine Inch Nails, and Jane’s Addiction. I’ve got pictures up on Facebook and may soon post them on Picasa. I took a few videos; check YouTube, as they are still uploading as I write this.

I had planned to write several entries, but all had been derailed by other projects.

One was going to be on “sexting” and how the media—mostly CNN—was blowing it out of proportion and how state laws need to be updated to ensure that the real criminals—pedophiles—are being caught, convicted, and put away, not harmless teenagers exploring their new-found sexuality.

Another was going to be about Intranet SEO, but that may or may not end up on Vivisimo’s Search Done Right blog. If it’s not posted there, I may request permission to post it here.

Until next time,

Gxis la.

Near the end of March, I took a a job with Vivísimo as an applications engineer. Vivísimo sells Velocity, an enterprise-class search platform.

Essentially, a company wishing to increase the productivity of its workers by enabling those workers to leverage content created or acquired by other workers would use Velocity to built a search engine which consolidates and presents a single, searchable interface to a number of possible information repositories. Velocity can connect to network storage systems, web sites, email servers, wikis, and just about anything else which exposes some kind of interface, often called an API. It can restrict the content by user, maintaining critical document-level security.

The real power of Velocity is its clustering engine. This unique feature provides contextual choices based on the search results presented. For example, if I searched for the work “deck”, I might be presented with results about boat decks, a deck of playing cards, porch decks, Deckmaster (card games), flight decks, and so on. Velocity can detect this context based on the results and present a list of clusters, or essentially contexts.

In my job, I help clients develop their solutions. Most of my work thus far has been configuring web site crawls, but it will surely expand as I become more familiar with the platform and the company’s clients.

I really like Vivísimo and hope to grow professionally while there. It’s doing great: strong product, strong management, and strong financial status shows that Vivísimo will likely be around for a long time.

On a side note, in order to reduce the amount of time I spend commuting daily and to save some cash, I’m moving into a large apartment in Squirrel Hill with some friends. I’m sad to leave Forest Hills, but despite giving up my “I live alone” status, living in Squirrel Hill will negate my nix commute and cut my rent in half! I can’t pass that up.

PRAISE ME ON THIS GLORIOUS ANNIVERSARY OF MY BIRTH 24 YEARS AGO!

LAŬDU MIN SUR ĈI TIU GLORA DATREVENO DE MIA NASKIĜO 24 JAROJ ANTAŬ!

I’ve recently been experimenting with meditation as a means of clearing my mind before going to bed or while sitting in traffic. I see meditation as sort of mental defragmentation; a way to reorganize my thoughts by clearing the proverbial table of everything, then putting this back on the table when needed.

While not concerned with overcoming depression, as I am not affected by that, a recent Change Blog entry titled How To Meditate gave me some pointers to help clear my mind.

You may want to read that article, then return here to better understand the remainder of this post.

I already have control of my thoughts—most of the time, that is. Sure, there are times when random cartoons get drawn or I am compelled suddenly to listen to some obscure song. The latter, though, spawned a great theme for the past few weeks’ work music selection though: shoegazing music, ala My Bloody Valentine, Chapterhouse, etc. I am capable of rejecting thoughts which I’d rather not muse, and can keep those thoughts at bay effortlessly.

Patience is something I’ve always had. There are times I think I have too much patience, but the situation ends up working out better in the end when I’ve used my (legendary?) patience. However, I know it takes time and work—practice—to perfect the art of meditation. My patience is still tried by incompetent or malicious people, and I’d just as soon dismiss them from their responsibilities and take those responsibilities in addition to my own until a suitable replacement comes.

Detachment from my thoughts is related to control of them, but adds in the ability to see the thought from an external camera, per say. If I can let go of a thought—if I can detach from it—I can clear it from my mental table easily. I can also see that thought from other peoples’ perspective, and understand their support or opposition thereof. This consideration of other peoples’ perspective and how much weight it bears in relation to my perspective allows me to understand the greater picture and detach myself from my own tunnel vision.

Remaining intense and disciplined is difficult, but I’m improving with practice. I find I’m able to force myself to begin clearing my head quicker as time goes on.

Concentrating on something else is the hardest part of meditation, at least for me. I tend to clear my mind of one thing by replacing it with another, less important thing. Sometimes, though, that new thought leads to something else which then leads to another heavy thought which I’d rather not consider. Recently, I’ve led my mind to space scenes ala APOD or some of the nature pictures I’ve taken in the past. These are things that have little or no relevance to things related to my daily life and are perfect fodder for mental table clearings—the last thing on the table, perhaps.

Some folks find religious prayer meditative. I don’t because it puts more things in my mind instead of centering me and clearing my mind. If you’d ask me, I’d recommend avoiding prayer when meditating for that reason.

I still have a long way to go before meditation is any more than a means to fall asleep quickly. I’d eventually like to be able to use it to calm myself down when agitated or as way to induce a semi-hypnotic, trance-like state.

I have been a resident of Pittsburgh for a few days more than two months now. While this is not the first time I’ve lived alone (lived alone during the summer of 2006 at an apartment in New Wilmington), it is the farthest from home I’ve lived.

It’s been a little weird not seeing my parents every couple days or so, especially when I’d lived at home since August 2007 while commuting to Robert Morris University in Moon Township for my Masters coursework. Even when I lived in New Wilmington, I went home for dinner every two or three days and did all of my laundry there. I could have packages shipped there without concern for safe delivery. If I hadn’t had a chance to go shopping, I could run home and grab a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if there were no better-tasting leftovers in the fridge.

Work is going very well. I enjoy it, and look forward to it. I’m working for Clayton Kendall, a promotional marketing company which also runs Rush Imprint, the fastest imprinted goods purveyor on the Internet. The company does a lot of business-to-business sales, selling client company goods to its franchises or employees. Our developer team is small, but we know what we’re doing. We’ve had our crises, but we work through them and come out all the better.

The dining room and living room ante-furniture

I’m growing acclimated to my apartment. It is very spacious for my general needs. My 10′ x 12′ bedroom—not yet finished and still quite messy from the move—is more than sufficient, given that the room in which I lived until I was 16 was approximately 6′ x 10′, and my newer room was 12′ x 14′. All I really do in my room is sleep, so it doesn’t need to be large.

The kitchen is lacking the kind of counter space to which I’d grown accustomed at my New Wilmington apartment (having a 4′ x 8′ island spoiled me forevermore), but I moved a table from the computer room into the kitchen. I now have sufficient space to enjoy my dinner without having to clear off the dining room table, which has become somewhat of a warzone/workshop. I cook much of my own food, generally enjoying six of seven dinners at home per week. Lunch is a different story; I usually eat a Lean Pocket or can of Spaghetti-Os or something like that.

I’m probably going to do the living and dining room in a dark red, navy blue, and hunter green motif, with the natural maple color of my furniture as a base. The curtains are probably going to be red. The green will be provided by a number of plants, as the apartment does get quite stuffy and I’ve really noticed a difference in the air down here, inside the apartment and outside around the city, too. I don’t know the source of the blue, yet, but I think it may be in the furniture. I don’t know; I need to talk it out with people who know more about home decoration than I.

Stained Ikea table for a Colinese flare

A few nights ago, Jon helped me move my new computer desk into my computer room. I have yet to finish moving everything else back into the room; it’s a work-in-progress. I like having a much larger workspace. I can spread out more, but I also have to try to keep things cleaner than they were on my messy desk at home. I’ll also have some room to review larger hardware items without having to use my bed as a photography table.

I do, however, still need to figure out how I’m going to set up two printers, a development server in a micro ATX case, a 16 port gigabit switch, a router, a four bay NAS, a one bay NAS, and two USB hard drives plugged into a Linksys slug NAS. Oh, and I have three laptops (XO, Eee, Averatec 3270 which will be soon replaced by an ASUS F9) and another development server (Vojistilo, for Vojisto), the latter of which has yet to even make it to my apartment.

I’m not quite used to paying bills yet. I’ve never had bills other than quarterly college loan bills, all of which now have turned into simple interest notices because I was unable to afford the payments while doing my Masters work (a normal thing for PA students). My bills aren’t outrageous by any means; I’m living well within my means and have a nest egg for emergencies. I’m worried about the stability of the American dollar, though, so I’m looking at investment options in precious metals and foreign currency/foreign banks. That’s fodder for another post, though.

I’m also not used to having an income. That’s been my excuse for a few excesses lately, like camarones a la diabla, which is usually $15 for a dinner. “I have an income, now,” I say to my friends, most of whom have enjoyed salaried employment for at least a year. I know I’ll have to cut back when I have to start paying on my student loans, but that’s to be expected. I’m enjoying sushi and the like now while I can.

It’s quite convenient to have a Giant Eagle and an Aldi less than a mile away. I was so accustomed to driving 10-20 minutes to get groceries. These locations are within walking distance, but seeing as though I generally buy my groceries in waves, I have yet to actually walk to either. There’s also a Rite-Aid across the street from Aldi and a Taco Bell even closer, Dominoes, too.

Speaking of walks, I went on a walk a few days ago whilst Rahab, my primary workstation, compiled a custom Linux kernel (I finally have sound in Flash on my Creative X-Fi!). I walked around the neighborhood and then down towards a park and ride off of Rt. 30 behind the Westinghouse Atom Smasher. A coworker said that there was a staircase from the park and ride up to the road behind the Atom Smasher facility. There is, yes, but it’s fenced off because there aren’t many stairs remaining on it.

When I returned, I realized how tired I was. I haven’t gone on a walk since I moved. I think I’m going to have to restart that ritual. I’ve been watching closely the things I eat, having put myself on a sort of “zig zag” diet. This diet plays on the body’s switching between high calorie day/increased metabolism and low calorie day/decreased metabolism to foster gradual weight loss. Basically, I maintain a low calorie diet (~1,000 calories) for four days, then have a high calorie day (2,000 calories). It’s worked out well thus far—I’ve lost approximately five pounds since I moved. My goal is to weight approximately 200 pounds by Christmas—it’s a lofty goal, but I’m working toward it.

I don’t have anything to report regarding the romantic parts of my life, other than that it’s a work-in-progress. It will suffice to say that I’ve realized I need to work on myself before I can work on an “us,” but I certainly will not turn down potential opportunities.

While Clayon Kendall is the primary consumer of my time—and payer of bills—I do still write for ThinkComputers and BIOS LEVEL. The former is getting busier and busier: Bob Buskirk, the owner, has been posting a review almost every day. Most recently, I wrote a review of the CineRaid Quad-bay SATA/SAS RAID Device, an awesome external RAID device for professional graphics folks. I’m working on a few power supplies, and then I’ll have another NAS for review. I’m also working on an article about the ASUS Eee PC and some creative hackery with it.

BIOS LEVEL is picking up a bit, but we posted fewer reviews in July than in June and saw less traffic. Our peak traffic recently was the day after Sean Potter posted his article on Using chroot to recover root passwords. A second, lesser peak was the day after John Yackovich posted his review of the Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750W power supply. Sean and I have some exciting articles planned for August, as well as an awesome contest in conjunction with Pittco! Later in the month or in early September, I might have an article on creative uses of the Wiimote with Linux. In October, much of the BIOS LEVEL staff will be in attendance at Ohio Linuxfest, and I’ll be reporting from it.

Speaking of Pittco, Iron Storm 9 is August 16 and 17 at the Castle Shannon Firehall in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. It’s $25 for 24 hours of food, fun, and fragging. I still have a few power supplies I’d like to sell, so if you’re looking to build a computer or give your current one some extra umph, please talk to me before, during, or after the event. I’ll make you an offer you shouldn’t refuse.

Oh, I almost forgot. I have a Masters degree now

I think that’s it for this life update. I’d better cut it off here before I beg too many “TL;DR” from readers. Follow me on Twitter (colindean) or Identi.ca (colindean) to get my daily updates and such.