It’s coming in about a week. I’m looking forward to it, but it’s getting to the point where I’m not sure what I’m looking forward to more - seeing the movie, or this thread finally dying.
I realize that linking to it is only going to bump up the page rank and lead to even more “insightful” comments, but oh well.
The conservation of momentum, as explained with the aid of the Spider-man comic book story involving the death of Gwen Stacy.
Yes, it’s very nerdy - to get that comment out of the way right off the bat…
The rain seemed to come out of nowhere today. I guess if you’re someone who checks the weather reports maybe it didn’t, but I’m not, and I couldn’t help but think that God was weeping with us today.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years now; it seems like forever at times to me.
If you can, come celebrate and remember tonight at Cooke’s Smokehouse.
I know this is late news, but I just can’t believe that my favorite ISP of all time has been bought by a company that really seems totally incompatible with their culture.
I’ve posted many times before on this blog about how great Speakeasy is(was) as an ISP. They recognized that your internet connection was yours to do with as you wish, and as such had no ridiculous restrictions prohibiting running your own servers, etc. I happily did this myself for quite a while until I moved too far away to keep using them. They also didn’t get nosy on what you were doing with YOUR bandwidth that you paid for, so they wouldn’t do things like artificially slowdown certain types of traffic (VOIP, BitTorrent, etc.) Even better, their tech support was second to none; you could even call them up and ask them a question about the Linux web server you were hosting on their connection and the first person you talked to was knowledgeable enough to be able to give you an informed answer.
I can only imagine (knowing some of the anti-customer tendencies of BB), that this era is over. Too bad.
… tomorrow, actually.
Ubuntu will release its latest version (7.04) tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been installing and using early releases of this since before beta, and running the beta version on several machines since it was released.
So far, I have nothing but good things to say about it. All the hardware I’ve tried (including wireless and video cards in laptops) has been detected automatically upon installation, with no special configuration required. I can’t overstate how important this is, especially on laptops, since Linux has traditionally needed more advanced configuration for much of this kind of hardware.
One highlight for many users will be its codec installation system; it’s better than anything I’ve seen on any other platform (not just Linux). You just try to open any media file (audio or video), and it will pop up and tell you which codecs it needs to install, along with the appropriate warnings regarding non-free software etc. If you choose OK, it will install them for you automatically - no hunting around and experimenting necessary.
MythTV installation was a breeze, especially compared to earlier versions. It automatically detected both my TV capture cards (granted, they do both have good Linux support - in fact one only has Linux drivers written for it). An up to date version of Myth (.20) is in the repositories and is easily installable via apt-get or Synaptic; I’ve never had a Myth installation go so easily.
Another cool feature that I saw but haven’t had a use for is the Windows Migration Assistant. When you run the installer on a hard drive that already has Windows on it, it will offer to resize your partitions for you to make room for itself, as well as scan through your Windows partition and detect all your users, settings, documents, etc. and offer to copy them into your new Linux install for you automatically. Like I said, I haven’t used this feature myself, but it seems pretty useful for luring the masses away from the land of Windows.
Of course, the installer comes on a bootable live CD, so that you can boot up and get a feel for it before you decide whether you really want to try installing it to the hard drive. All in all, Ubuntu remains my favorite Linux distro for desktop / workstation use, and this release is a solid improvement to its already good status.
It’s my opinion that Linux is ready to take over the OS market; it’s already ahead of the competition (Mac and Windows) in terms of features, including flashy effects (with Beryl, etc.). Now all we need is for companies like Apple and Microsoft to keep clamping down the restrictions on what their users can do with their own computers while making them pay a hefty premium on top of it all, until they are forced to look elsewhere and finally find freedom.
I’ve heard that some people tend to get sick only when they feel they have “downtime”, and stay healthy when they feel they are too busy to be sick.
I think that might be what happened to me, because just when I felt like I was getting some breathing room I got sick (starting yesterday / last night).
Oh well, I guess that’s one downside of GTD 
Hopefully I’ll get over it quickly.
Well, so far so good on the more structured approach to task management.
Tonight I managed to download and install a web based task management system designed specifically for the GTD methodology (more on this app later), put together a quick initial list, completed one of the projects (moving out) by completing the final task in that project (painting rooms at the old place), and listening to the whole “Getting Things Done” book itself in audio format.
has finally been released! This is my current preferred server operating system, and it’s good to see it get an upgrade after almost two years.
I think I need to start getting into the GTD methodology, because for quite a while I’ve had so much stuff on my plate that it’s impossible to do it all. It’s all stuff that I want to do, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough time.
At some point in the distant past I think I must have known what it felt like to be bored, but I think I’ve forgotten that now; it’s been too long.
My recent post about leftovers as well as something Nathan said the other day reminded me that I needed to post on the subject of throwing stuff away.
When we recently moved, we got a dumpster and filled it up twice with stuff to throw out. In general, I have no hesitation about throwing stuff away - ruthlessly even. Selling it at a garage sale is sometimes an option, but there are a lot of things that just aren’t going to sell. Donating / giving it away is also an option, but for a lot of things you’re in the same boat - some stuff is just junk that no one wants.
Anyway, as I’ve been throwing stuff in the dumpster over the last couple weeks, and pondering the many loads of stuff I had to cart away from our new place, I remembered a story that I don’t think I blogged about yet. It was a while back, during another time we got a dumpster and I was working on cleaning up stuff from the yard. One item that was in special need of being thrown away was a rusted out old wood chipper that didn’t function anymore.
It was extremely heavy, so much so that I had to construct a make-shift ramp in order to push it up and over the edge of the dumpster, since it was too heavy and awkward to lift normally. All the while I’m doing this, the pack rat neighbor accross the street is watching me. I’m pretty sure he’s actually taken stuff that I’ve thrown away out of the dumpster before, and (once it was too late) I could tell he really had his eye on that wood chipper. He seems to be kind of a tinkerer that likes to collect stuff on the off chance that he might actually do something with it someday in the imaginary future.
Anyway, AFTER I exert a tremendous amount of energy heaving this thing into the dumpster, he comes over and starts asking me about it, and making not-so-subtle comments implying that it’s wasteful to throw things like that away, almost to the point where I thought he was going to ask me to take it back out so he could have it. I just explained that it hadn’t worked for quite a long time, but if he wanted it, he was welcome to it, but that I wasn’t sure how he was going to be able to get it out of the dumpster.
Just a little anecdote that I think of whenever I see people collecting stuff that they’re very unlikely to ever use; it’s kind of a pet peeve of mine. I do have to confess that I have a healty stash of computer equipment, but I am always whittling it down and either using or getting rid of stuff when it has become obvious that I will probably never get around to using it.