Tipmonkies/OSNews/expert-zone

A lot has been happening with Tipmonkies lately. I did an article on different linux distros, which Martin submitted to Slashdot and OSNews, and we got slammed. We had been open for about 2 months and I think over the whole period had about 17,000 people. In a three day period we had over 300,000 hits, and not get about 30,000 hits per day. My article was all over blogs, and even was on some pretty big sites like the O'Reilly site OSdir and Linux Format Mag.

Martin also opened a new site in collaboration with Eugina from OSNews and Thom from Expert-zone. I didn't actually have anything to do with the new site, even though it's being promoted as a collaboration between the three sites, but I think it was more between those three individuals.

Martin and I did a podcast with Thom once, so I have sorta met him, but I've never talked to Eugina, apparently Martin and Thom do a bit. She was alwasys sorta a hero for me as the Editor-in-Chief at OSNews. But yesterday she revealed that she was quitting, which stinks. She always did a good job of helping keep that site more balanced, and she was willing to step out on a bit of a limb to speak her mind. She just took too much of a battering in the forums and comments. I got a taste of it when my article hit Slashdot. This was one of the best:

eh... (Score:5, Interesting)
by ltwally (313043) on Saturday June 18, @10:48PM (#12854222)
(mailto:ltwally@softhome.net | Last Journal: Tuesday March 04, @08:48PM)

"...The beauty of Slack is in its simplicity. The core of the OS is based off of BSD, whereas Debian and RedHat are based off of AT&T UNIX..."

eh... Is this guy smoking crack or something? I've played with Slack, and have multiple FreeBSD boxes. While Slackware might be the least graphical (and thus, more arcane -- like the BSD's) linux distro out there, it is not based off any BSD that I've ever seen. The kernel is linux, the userland utilities are all GNU, and the location and configuration of all the system files is definitely not BSD related.

I dunno... while much of this dude's article seemed accurate, after reading the above, I've come to the conclusion that even after all his years of experience, he's still a newb... or he's just plain smoking crack.

It's really hard not to take that personally. Overall, for a linux article on slashdot, I had relativly little flames, but there certainly were some.

And my grammer. Eww. My english teachers are probably screaming. I knew logically that it's is the contraction of it is, not the possesive of it. But I write with out much thinking, and often with little sleep. There were other little things, but I got roasted for the its. I guess sometimes you just have to learn from screwing up. ;)

And now it's (<----See thats right) very much time to get ready for work, and stop rambleing.

Strange night

Last night at Kinko's was very strange. We were relativly slow most of the day, then all of the sudden at about 10 (when the other two working with me left) I had a rush. It was during about the 5th group or pair of students requesting a bound color document that I realized there must be something big due at State. In addition, a young lady called around 8 to ask for a very short turnaround time on an oversize color poster. Jody, my manager, told her we could do 3 hours, even though oversize color is typically 24 hours. When she arrived at 9 she basically asked for us to have it done by about 10, despite what Jody told her on the phone. We explained that we would try, but we have to take care of other customers in the building, especially since Jody knew it would be just me soon. She was nice, even a bit meek, but stood around asking if the file opened, then if we set it up, then if it was to the printer yet. About the 6th time in a row that she asked me if it was at the printer yet (it was like a child askingn "are we there yet?") I basically barked back that I was working on setting the file up. What I said was ok, but my tone was harsh with frustration. Jody then stepped in the situation and told her that it would take a while to print, then quite a while to dry, and reccmended she leave for a while and come back. So she left, and I managed to get her poster printed right about the time my little student rush started, only a little after 10. I called to tell her it was ready and she said she wouldn't come till the next morning. ARG!

So finally my third shift showed up, and with all the students it was almost 45 minutes after I was supposed to have left that I finally counted my till, and didn't walk out to my car until 1AM. There is a Papa John's directly beside our store, and on the way out to the parking lot. As I walked past it I saw a group of about 9 women and girls. Probably 6 teenage girls and 3 women that looked like they could be the girls mothers. The girls all had on prom-looking formal dresses, and the women had on very 80sish southern looking formal clothes. Sequins and shoulder pads. They were getting pizza at 1AM on Hillsborough St., which is a little scary even for me. And then they all piled (some sitting on top of each other) into a single Cadillac. It was a very quick and fluid motion, like it had been done before, and it made me think of clowns loading into a VW at the circus, except these were clowns in formal wear. I dare say they even did it elegantly.

I guess that doesn't sound like the whole night was really strange, but there was just an aura to the whole night that was capped off in that migration via Cadillac. I then got home and of course couldn't go to sleep.

In Your Honor

The new Foo Fighters CD is out. It's pretty impressive. I think I would already go as far as to say this is their best. They have always been pretty eclectic and they took it to an extreame with this one, it's a double album with one CD all acoustic and one CD all heavy. This with a bit less middle ground than previous records. The electric is pure 4 piece heavy pop-rock. The acoustic side is very strong stuff, and has some pretty big guests on it (John Paul Jones even). I picked up the fancy Dual-Disc version with a DVD on one side and audio on the other. The only actual video is a 20 minute making of, which was fun to watch. If it carried on much longer it would have been pretty stupid, but the length was about right. Dave says he hopes that 20 years from now when a kid says "Dad, which one Foo Fighters record should I get?" this will be the one. The scary thing he says is that he thinks every Foo Fighters record will be the last. The band is somewhat of a supergroup, all 4 members came from a successful prior career, and these supergroups tend to be short lived.

I of course hope thats not the case, and I certainly chew on every song they publish. One neat thing about this one is that I'm pretty sure one of the acoustic songs will hit top 40 stations and Katy will be singing something off of it soon. :)

new music

I've been struck recently. No really, a coworker hit me the other day for saying something stupid.

But figuratively too.

Most of the music I really love I hated at one point. Three artists that come to mind are Tool, Steely Dan, and Radiohead. I used to not just dislike those bands, but really hated them. Now they are some of my favorites. Well, I have been speaking the terrors of Emo type music for some time now. My first major exposure to it (I had seen something about it on MTV in the late 90's, but that was just like one MTV news break) was Katy's dorm roomate Kerry. She had Coldplay and Dashboard Confessional posters up on the wall.

Then the stuff picks up some mainstream push. It's starting to show up on soundtracks, and there is a bunch of it on the "Modern Rock Alt" Muzak station at Kinko's. I'm certainly not smitten yet. My coworked Cameron loves this stuff. Still not getting me. Then two key things happen. My longtime friend Maggie and particuarly her boyfriend Josh are really into this stuff. They played a few things for me including "The Fire Theft." That's the new album by the band of the same name, and its a recoup of an old Sub-Pop band called "Sunny Day Real Estate." I love that record so much I go out and buy it the night they play it for me, and read up on the guys a little. Turns out Sunny Day is sorta the forebearer of modern Emo.

Then on sorta the other end of the Emo spectrum, my mom's BF John loans me the Snapcase record "End Transmission." Wow. That one is a blow to the head. It's just a balls-to-the-wall screaming hardcore band. Great catchy riffs. Incredibly melodic, but really pushing the envelope of music, and lots of Pink Floyd-ish spacey stuff inbetween brutal guitars.

So one day, a pay day, as I often make the mistake of doing, I go into Best Buy. I was about to leave, but they had a Victory Records table at the front with a number of these bands I've been hearing about. I just suddenly decided to take a leap of faith and bought a record from Thursday, whom Josh had mentioned. It even had a song on it that gets played on the Kink's "Mdn Rock Alt" alot that I hated but suddenly really like.

Just like "Stinkfist," "Karma Police," and "Aja." Hmmm............

So, I start talking to Cameron about this stuff more, and it's kinda like a new door opens. This isn't just a band that I have been pushing off, it's a very large genre, with relativly large sub-genres. Theres the pure Emo, which I haven't really hit on yet, then theres ScrEmo, like Thursday, and then hardcore, like Snapcase, sorta. Snapcase has actually been around for like 15 years and according to what I have read they change genres for each record, but "End Transmission" is all I've heard.

Cameron brought his collection in for me to flip through and explained to me that a good bunch of the ones he listens to are actually Christian bands. For some reason this type of music has caught on really well as Christian music.


So, that's where this situation sits up to now. I'll try to kinda update this soon. Maybe I'll keep listening, maybe I'll get really sick of it. The key thing to remember is that I even think N'Sync and then Justin Timberlake's solo stuff is great pop music. I hated it at first too. ;)

ahh, the phones

so i've got cell phones on my mind right now. i love my ipaq that i just got, but phones are starting to take all the great gadgets and put them into one. pda, digital camera, mp3 player, portable music player (which, unlike the other devices, are happening on phones at the same time they are happening standalone) and, oh yeah, phones. Right now I have a pretty kick-ass, albeit modest, phone. The LG L1200. Its a tight little clamshell with a VGA cam, a great screen, sorta mp3 ringtones, and IR. That last part is quite important, as I use IR to connect my iPaq.

I should be able to get an upgraded phone through cingular soon, and I'm not quite sure what to get. I don't really have any money to spend on it, so I'm hoping to get a freebee. But they sure run this stuff in circles. The site and phone said starting in like January that I would be eligible for an upgrade March 31 2005. On April 2nd I went back to look at it and it still said "You are not eligible, but will be March 31." OK. So I called. One person told me I was eligible, one told me April 31 (which doesn't exist) and one told me not till my contract ran totally out on July 31. WTF?

So anyway, I'm pretty happy with my phone right now, which makes me think I should let the contract expire and see if they start trying really hard to get you to stay. Hell, I dunno.

it can always get worse.....

One of the worst periods of my life, no, the worst period of my life was when my mother was sick and my parents divorce which her sickness led into. It's a whole long complicated story, but there are two major points to take from it. First off is that a persons experiences good and bad are what shape them. Sounds obvious, but you have to bear in mind that when you meet someone and like them, it may be some tragic events in their life that formed them into the person that you like. Second off, and one thing that I will always stand by, is that no matter what happens to you, things can be exponintially worse.

I apologize for this blog becomeing more and more personal, but I use it to basically cover what is on my mind.

Anyway, I went to my future brother-in-law/coworker/friend Alex's house after work today to check out his MAME box, then came home around 1AM. Not long before I got home I noticed my car was pulling right. I figured I just need to get it realigned. Then I heard a rumbling noise. So I pulled off the road and saw my front passenger side tire was basically on the rim. Luckily there was a service station about a 1/4 mile away so I went there, got air, but it was quickly loosing it, so I bought fix-a-flat, used it, and it was still making the lead sound. I figured I just wasted $5, but since I was near home I filled it back up with air and drove home. Figured I could just put on the doughnut in the morning and take it to get it fixed.

I got home, and it wasn't making the noise as far as I could tell, and actually had a decent amount of air in it, so it might just be the way that stuff worked. The directions did say to drive a short distance after using the can. I will know in the AM.

So anyway, not a huge deal, but sucked. The biggest problem was being alone at a service station at 1AM. I get home and my friend Martin is on IM. I haven't talked to him at all much in the past 6 months, so I said hey. He tells me his brother's 22 year old fiancee died suddenly today. She had some heart condition, but they were just riding to McDonald's and she turned blue, they rushed to the hospital but by the time they got there she was gone.

I don't really know how to end this post. It's crazy how life works. God has his hand on every movement and every moment of our lives, and has total control over it all. The real lesson, I think, is to remember that this kind of stuff happens when we get so strung out on the little things in life. You have to enjoy what you have, who you are around, and who you are when you can. Most things just aren't worth getting upset about.

new toy

this is definitly wicked. I can now sit on a bench in the park and post to my blog! How liberating! It means I can just get away from it all, and... um, get back to it all?

At any rate, i got a new toy: hp iPaq H1910.

The really killer part is i can use ir to get on the web with it. Basically there isn't much that i do on a computer on a daily basis. I listen to music, chat on aim, and surf the web. That is a big part of my argument for linux. It's also why this sucker can be pretty useful. I can do all that stuff and do it anywhere.

There definitly are some limits to this though.

-speed: i actually tried to do all that at once and the music got choppy. It wasn't overclocked at the time though.

-input: the onscreen keyboard won't cut it for much. I have learned palms graffiti pretty well on prior pda's, and i can use it on here, but it certainly isn't as fast as typing

-storage: absolutly not an iPod! At best it will store 1/30 of my current iPod. (i don't think this device will accept a 1gb sd card)

-bandwidth: eep! I pay cingular $9.99/month for a whopping 3mb! That just ain't gonna get me much. My 2yr contract with them is almost up, and i think the bandwidth issue will definatly play a role in what service i go with, but then again , i kinda don't think any other service is really any better.

So there's the initial reaction to this sucker. By the way, i wrote this entire post on the iPaq ;)

homeless nerd

Maybe its an April Fools joke, but the same blog had a post about this guy a couple of days prior:

http://www.chrisdiclerico.com/mt/archives/001763.php

This guy drags a full desktop PC into starbucks and surfs the web during the day, and sleeps in a Kinko's at night.

Speaking of April Fool's, One thing did get me yesterday. the radio station that I listen to a lot 96rock did a special on the opening of a new amusement park, right out here in Raleigh, Mayberry USA. I was even telling everybody at work about it, and asking where it must be.

hehe.....

now this is getting silly

So yeah, posts haven't been happening. I've been busy with school and work and stuff like that, but there has also been a lot going on that I want to write about, and when that happens, I tend to just put off writing until I feel like I have more time. Alas I never get back to it.

One biggy in mind right now. I used to be a Moderator at AquaXP.com. It was a site devoted to modding the Windows GUI to look like the aqua interface from OSX. Seems kinda wierd to have a whole community around, but it was something I became very interested in, and for a period of time it was a fairly major community. There was even an article in Wired.com about the site. But things got old after a while, most of us who were major players became disinterested and things sorta dissolved. The entire time we were sorta in the shadow of Aqua-soft.org, which aquaxp was almost a spin off of.

But recently I've started to miss the community part of it. One of the main reasons I really got out of the community was I quit using Windows, and then two of the guys there and I started Stylix.org, which dealt with themeing Linux, but never really took off the way we hoped it would. I then started running OSX as my main system and basically left the whole scene totally.

Well I don't really have any real intrest in skinning any more, I only do it to a minor degree, but I'd like to have some people to talk to again. I talked to Shak last night, the guy that ran AXP, and he is thinking basically the same thing. He wants to see it up again, but with a broader tech focus. So hopefully that will be happening soon. If you are interested in learning more, check in the #aquaxp channel on freenode, we are trying to get that chatroom back up, for a long time it was a really lively hang out area.

As I kinda said before, I've had a bunch of things that I wanted to post on before, but can't remember much of any of them now, so I'll bail at this point, but hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things soon.

The Shredder

I just saw this one over at Engadget. It's an industrial shredder. The gears in it work just like a $15 paper shredder from OfficeMax. Make sure to watch the refrigerator and the washing machine. You even get to hear someone say "shred it!" for the washing machcine.

The Shredder

Theres also this little number. When your doctor wants to know just what's going on inside your digestive tract and wants to know right now damnit, she can have you take this pill, wear a harddrive on your belt, and a few hours later shes got her own little tunnel of love pictures.

I'll let you guess which one of these I really want for my birthday.

out to lunch?

No, there just hasn't been anything good to post on lately. Nothing particuarly exciting in tech or world news, or my life. I did join the church that I have been going to. It's a great place that doesn't have so many of the hangups I see in most mainstream or fringe Christian churches.

And I got a Kinko's clock! Even though the buyout of Kinko's officially happened in May of 2004, it was January of 2005 before they finally sent us new clocks. Kinko's is big on clocks and there are about 5 up in our fairly small store, so seeing the old logo that much certainly doesn't help with brand recognition. At any rate, I got to take one home.

Of course, the front door and marquee still just say "Kinko's" but I guess thats how these things work. Along with all of our shirts......

Ah yes, I do have one link:

the phone glove

I saw this on Engadget, and of course they made some references to Maxwell Smart. This is great stuff. Thumb in the ear and pinky for a mic. Priceless!

Mac Mini: The Emperor's New Computer

Oh this is great. It just brightened up my night a little just make sure you actually read it.

I miss music

So after much back and forth with Kinkos and Intrex and all that good stuff, I'm getting pretty settled into being at Kinko's for a long haul like I did at OfficeMax, which is good.

but there's something I just can't shake.

I started Intrex in February of 2003, and that was when my band broke up. I remember that becuase it was going to be a scheduling issue, then never was. Then I started Kinko's in May of 2004. Seems like I haven't been there that long, but this has been a pretty crazy few months, mainly because of my little brother and best friend. At any rate, I know that was when our band get back together came up and then split up. Because again I saw scheduling at Kinko's as being a possible issue, then it wasn't. My band in it's first form was Of,go listen to our music. It was my best friend and a couple of other guys, and we had a lot of fun, and made some decent music. I love it. I love playing music. I don't really care what instrument I am playing. I even love it so much that I love to see a band play live, even if I can't play with them. I used to go to friends band practices, basically because it's almost like a drug to me. I love how things just fall into place in a group, and the way things sound. I really loved the companionship of hanging out with those three guys. We tore each other to pieces for different stuff, both seriously and jokingly, but it was so much fun.

What drags this up.... well on a more mundane level someone loaned me a Creed Greatest Hits and DVD to go with it. I'm not a big Creed fan. I didn't get into their first CD until the second came out, at which point I decided it was about the only good thing they did. There were a couple more decent songs out of them, but after "Arms Wide Open" I couldn't stand them anymore. Not that the song was that terrible the first 6,546,983 times, but after that it got more than a bit tireing. And Scott Stapp is just worthless. He's a bad example of a Christian, which he doesn't seem to really be, but somehow became a bit of a symbol for a period of time. In the end hes just a narcissistic drunkard. I don't care for the guy much at all. And for the most part their music goes into the suck category. But there is one truely saving grace for that band: Mark Tremonti. He is one of the only mainstream shred guys we have had since Slash. He's also one of those not-lead-singer-but-lead-guitarist band leaders that I like so much, like Jimmy Page or Pete Townsend. In fact it appears in the Creed without Stapp band Alter Bridge that he is the main songwriter, and does a good bit of the vocal harmonies and whatnot. I love that stuff. And he always has the quiet cool to him.

So thats tonight and a more tangible bit. But the whole music thing is somethign that nags at me daily. I think about my grandmother that passed away almost two years ago every day. I think about being in debt every day. Its that kind of thing. I love music. I love people, then music, then everything else (including computers, by the way).

I still sorta keep up with the bass player, Ashwin. He's one of those people like Michelle Levo who I always felt could be a really close friend, but never was more than a buddy. I love to play guitar with him. Anytime he and I talk we say we need to "get together soon and play" but it never happens. I need to make it happen.

But the problem is theres not really a creative force there, which is needed in a band. Maybe if I got some guys together to do some covers it would work. But I don't know. Ashwin has done a couple of songs, but not many, and not much complete. I can crap out a song, but that's exactly what it is, crap.

Maybe now that I've whined I can go to sleep. But it's all about the guitar track in "What If." That's the stuff I love to play. I can sit here and listen to it, or I can get my guitar, wipe the dust off of it, get the tab, and play it.

P.S. After publishing a post, I reguarly go through and test the links. Well, the only link here was to Of's old website at Tripod. I hit the link and Tripod says it's not there. The main page is still up at google cache from Jan 29 2005, and at archive.org for Feb 04. This is sad.

I, Hamilton

I love reading Robert Cringley. This is the second one he has done recently dealing mainly with Apple products. The article is primarily about the Gillette give away the razor and make money on the blade business model and comparing it to the iPod/iTunes deal. But he talks for a minute about the Mac Mini as a server.

"Imagine a Mac Minicluster running Apple's xGrid software. Start with a 16-port fast Ethernet switch and stack 16 Mac Minis on top. That's a 720 gigaflop micro-supercomputer that costs less than $9,000, can fit on a bookshelf, and can be up and running in as little time as it takes to connect the network cables. High schools will be sequencing genes."

Check out the rest of the article here.

Intrex

A coworker sorta prepared me for it, but I was offered a full-time job at intrex.net this past week. It was good enough money wise to match and slightly better what I make at Kinko's, but it would have been mainly tech support. I'm very tired of tech support, as is seen in a recent post. I did a lot of debating, but when my boss called and said it would be 80-90% tech support, I knew it wasn't going to be the thing for me.

I promised him an answer today, and one of my coworkers last day was today, so I actually went in the office and had a brownie and told Camil in person that I wasn't going to accept his offer. Despite the fact that a couple of weeks ago he told me he was interested in me staying on staff to work a couple of mornings a week and even yesterday told me the same thing, today he said he didn't really have a need for that, and he would keep me on staff for when people need time off, but the HR person might have a problem with that.

It's a bit tough that my two biggest jobs have been fade aways instead of burn-outs. I watched many many people leave OfficeMax with balloons and cake, but I was basically kicked out because of conflict of intrest. I started hearing rumors that the district manager didn't like me working both there and Kinko's, and when I went back in a few days later, they told me that I was gonna be dropped, so I didn't wait and left that day. I was at a differnt store, that I had only been at for a few weeks, and knew some people there, but especially with such a short notice, I was just gone.

Intrex is looking the same way. In some sort of Jason being sappy and symbolic sort of way, I had two of Aaron's leaving brownies. One for him, and one for me. There really is a chance that I will stay on payroll for a long time, and maybe at some point down the road, work there more again, but I would imagine that this is probably when my path there just kinda fades away, instead of ending. What an interesting day for a hard drive to bite the dust.