Uncategorized

It may sound rather odd, but after a work week, I feel like I’ll go batty if I don’t touch code before Monday :-/.

Hmm, what of use to me, could be whipped up in a weekend…

Today at work, an idea caught my fancy: since I don’t need an uber-expensive laptop if I go with separate laptop/desktop setup. I thought, well gee, maybe a netbook would work in place of a laptop. So far, seems to be awesomeness.

I found an ASUS Eee PC 1015PE model at a really good price. Originally I was thinking that all it would be useful for is a glorified terminal: SSH into vectra at home and the server at work (when needed), to run Screen, then use X11 forwarding for the rest. Sadly this little netbook seems to be more snappy than my laptop, although it’s likely just as useless for compiling stuff. Which is REALLY sad IMHO because my laptop is only about 5 years old, and this netbook beats it on every performane spec save the CPU: an Atom N450 instead of a Sempron 3300+. I think I like the Atom more…

Windows 7 is quite nice and I do like it, much as I expected, but I would prefer a BSD or Linux based system. My only real complaint so far, is the keyboard places the FN key where my fingers naturally expect to land on Control. My fingers are deffo having a hard time adjusting though, since the auxiliary keys (like home/end) are even more cramped than what my laptop uses, and I am extremely used to my laptops keyboard, hey, it’s been 5 years with Dixie.

The main problem is resizing the partition to make room for a suitable OS, as there are no optical or floppy drives built in, and I’mt o cheap to buy one. So I’ve made a thread over on DF seeking some advice.

One perk of a journal, is that as it is my journal, it’s well open to the occasional excursion away from the topics I gravitate toward; if you’re thinking food or computers, you’ve obviously crossed paths with me >_>. Generally, like my grandmother, I make it a policy not to discuss politics. My journal even reflects that, and arguably, entries here that are associated with that particular subject, could probably be counted on one hands worth of fingers lol. Most people I know are rather miffed with the current pucky load going on about government shut-downs and such, and like I noted, I don’t really discuss politics with anyone.

What I’m thinking tonight, is perhaps our beloved founding fathers and federal ancestors got things wrong when they organised the balance of power between our three branches of government. Checks and balances is a fine, and very necessary thing. Unless perhaps, you believe in the divine right of kings means nothing will ever go awry. Something like the King of England is never going to happen in the USA, assuming that Kurt Gödel was wrong about our Constitution. The only problem is, we will never get a damn thing neather!

Something that most know about me, is that I do not believe in political parties, and am unlikely to ever associate myself with one, unless it’s gonna lead to a mandated change in schooling in America—the kind of change that would transition high school Algebra (etc) into the first couple grades. A number of people also know, that if I could build a model of my own “Ideal” society, it would likely be one that reserves the lions share for those that contribute to society. The kind where every person has essential rights but where the full rights of citizenship only come with service, reward those that help make the world a better place, as opposed to the majority of us, who just take up space. That probably sounds like something out of a Robert Heinlein book, but I’ve never read it, nor any of his works.

Or in short, I have a very different view of politics than most people: one that’s likely more pragmatic than idealogical. I believe that ideals are fine things but progress is better.

One of the principal points of American government, is balancing out the equation so that you can’t Totally Screw Up unless enough people are in favour, and of course. Problem is that much like the Articles of Confederation, to many people need to agree on the details. I also seriously do not want to know how many Americans have no idea what on earth the AoC were, let along that it refers to what we had before the US constitution, and not to the Civil War between morons. Alright, so I’m a history lover, so sue me. Another principal point of American government is the balance of power between the states, which is, well, just going to upset people anyway you slice it.

In my opinion, there needs to be more executive application and less political circle jerking. How do things get done? Identify what needs to get done, figure out the direction, then make it happen and assess the result. There is probably a good reason that the best progress in this world, tends to happen under applied direction, not micromanagement. The government could seriously benifit from an understanding of Commanders Intent.

A perfect example: if it isn’t harder than putting a man on the moon using only a stick of bubblegum, odds are someone is qualified to focus on applying the intent behind a direction. If it is less involved than building a replica of the LM out of spare parts in your garage, odds are that focus-agent has people to focus on ironing out the smaller details. If it’s less complex then getting 13 colonies to agree on something, you probably don’t need a lot of people in Congress to agree on anything. Things should proceed on down through the chain with balances plugged into that, not hell will thaw out before things come back into balance again.

Like the old saying goes, shit rolls down hill. Not up it until it rolls over and lands on everyone.

Had to take a vacation day because my mother’s appointment with the doctor that by the time we would’ve gotten back to Duluth, there wouldn’t be much sense going in to work. On the upside, I got to take a few minutes to stop by Petsmart and get the bird a new cage, and got to do a little bit of “Work” while waiting around the doctors office.

Originally, we had the bird in the cage until my feathered nephew (AJ) took off flying, which set Mike flying, which resulted in a game of find where the parakeet landed; AJ being smart enough to return to his cage! After that, the Mike got netted in, but with the move, it’s been a case of stuck in the cage. So now, I’ve setup a larger one to compensate, which concindentially was probably cheaper than the original one lol.

By now, I have moved just about every box three or four times. My bedroom was basically done in two days, one to get the furniture moved and another to organise books. Nearly a week after this all started, the living room is starting to look, remotely livable.

But I think I’ve come to hate boxes  o/

Yesterday was a pretty good day. The weather started off raintacular just like I like it but not to obstructive. Downside of course being it’s impact on traffic. Speeds out on the Interstates here tend to vary between 120km/h and 140km/h, and a lot of driver’s refuse to go that slow unless traffic forces them. Well with Mehring thinking the wrecks/minute ratio has hit 1:3, I think a few people may have learned the hardware to SLOW the **** down here and there!

With the weight of the ever popular SUV and pickup trucks out here, it’s even more important, because heavier vehicle == slows down slower + (IME) loses traction faster under heavy breaking. Not that anyone is ever going to learn that the *easy* way 8=). One thing that I do like about being stuck in the commute for like 225km every day, is Art “Mad Man” Mehring’s traffic reports. The morning show is good for chuckles and Lance always plays the most music on our way home, but heck, Mehring makes the trip worth while.

Heh, looking him up off Google, also just turned up some awesome humour for this soon to be retired commuter 🙂 -&#gt; Welcome to Atlanta, Park anywhere!

On the way home, I also stopped off to action off an idea that occured to me during lunch, but that’s a different subject. Today, well, I’m just glad to have hammered out what’s been stuck in my kick-around-list for the past two days. Also looks like I’ll get to do some (more so) interesting stuff in the next couple weeks. For the most part, it’s just been trying to get stuff squared away at work, so that I’m ready to roll on Monday. Courtesy of the move, I have to take Friday off (*groan*) but the move oguth to conclude on Saturday. At least, that *is* the idea! Tonight the plan is to saver a little last minute zombie slaying, since I may have to stay zombie free for a week :-/. As well as the sort my inequivalent to a “Go bag” and decide where the last minute stuff is going to be packed.

Today more or less started with waking up after midnight, from weather pounding so hard that you would think houses are going to fly. Well, seems not to much went wrong but it would be a good day to own swim fins. Around Atlanta, we kind of have a problem on the road, when the asphalt gets wet, it starts giving off a moron gas causing instant stupidifcation of most Georgia drivers, it is’ not tooo late for that. Anyway, the guy doing the traffic reports on 94.9 this morning, started joking that they would need to fly out some specialists to investigate a new phenomenon in the Atlanta area: rain causing trucks to become magnetized! Two trucks, eight cars, in two separate wrecks. One of them was truck+six cars.

Coming through Norcross this morning was stupitacular! The light over by Spalding Drive was out, and where it crosses the Georgia 141. So essentially, we have two lanes going each way, plus turn lanes, and a traffic light flashing red. Well, you would think it is kind of easy when the regs say, light out = treat it like a four way stop. I didn’t dare count how many times people came close to a fender bender. By the time I was next in line to go, I saw the third car in what was supposed to be a group of two shooting through: he stopped like two inches from somebodies fender, and I’m thinkin’ “You twit!” as this moron nearly cracks up. Don’t think he was even in the right freaking lane to turn. I swear, only 30-40% of people in Georgia seem to know how to drive. This reminds me of an old Death’s Head II comic, called Psychotic when wet.

I’ve also sandwiched in and live fire tested some tweaks to my note taking system. In addition to using the Viki plugin for VIM, I now have things automatically committed to a git repository (but not on the ‘hub lol) and a script that is able to deplate them into HTML for browsing at work, excluding private stuff. Sometime when I have time outside of work, I’ll screw with a script to run a web server on it, but only when connected to the companies internal network.

On the upside, the commute home was splendid as can be. And hope that if someone had to stand out at Spalding, directing traffic, that he gets hazard pay and a vacation lol.

Hmm, seems that as soon as May 2009 is imported, my journals switch from LJ to Blogger, will at long last be complete….

Another lovely Friday. If reports are to be believed, on a bypass that has 69 or 68 exits, traffic is screwed from I-20 to well passed spaghetti junction, along with most major roads on the same vector. After 20-30 minutes of traffic to get some where that should only take 10-12 min, I took the I-75 south into Atlanta, where it was pretty much saoring through the usual bumper to bumper from the Brookwood end to exiting the curve. To top it off, while trying to change lanes to take the I-75S, there was about double the safe length of distance between the cars, when the mother fucker in back decided to rage down on his pedal, I’m pretty sure that we both gave each other the bird as he fender dodged his way over to the I-75N in that sporty foil. One upside if anything did happen, my car is more like a tank and his was more like paper, so playing chicky is out, and raging is illegal ;).

To add insult to near injury, it took like twenty minutes of laps to get a gas pump, just to drop $40. Place was so mobbed I dunno how knife play didn’t enter the picture. Topping it all off, on my way to the interstate my mother calls to tell me to pick up her prescriptions and get a few things on her list. She can’t be arsed with sending it as an e-mail so I’ll remember, so I’ve gotta scribble a note to myself while driving (which I _hate_). Then listen to her because I wrote “1 40Watt lightbulbs” instead of 60 Watt, and missed the crackers o/. Well, ya gets what you puts in.

8=)

Last time I heard a traffic report, it sounded like we had likely surpassed 40km worth of traffic, I was lucky enough to only see about 20-minutes of it on the front line near the cloverleaf. Once I heard my usual Interstate was FUBAR as well, I just split off for the nearest US route.

Remind me, to never take the west side loop *around* Palmetto again, flibbin’ ancient roads that are so tight, you could pick your noise and hit a house, lol.