New netbook

I picked up an Acer Aspire One netbook at Target last week, on sale for $220 with a free case. 1.66Ghz Atom CPU, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 250GB HDD. I upped the RAM to 2GB, and installed Ubuntu 11.04. Resized the hard drive to keep the Windows install on it if I ever need it.

I would like to move away from Ubuntu, and use Arch or Crunchbang or pure Debian, but I don't have time to mess with setup right now. I used Crunchbang recently on my Macbook, and got everything working except suspend. Crunchbang is almost pure Deb out of the box, so I expect the same problem, and Arch will certainly be more setup. I did however setup Openbox in a very Crunchbang-like setup, and things are working well so far. Because I had some interest about the setup after posting a screenshot on Twitter this weekend, I'll follow up with a post containing some info on what I'm using.

So far I think this has a better chance of staying around a while than the Asus I picked up a year or so ago. I haven't really used my MacBook at all in the mean time.

Hi three years later

Been mostly using tumblr lately, but it is blocked from where I work (Fidelity) so I'm just going to try to cut the friction to posting by posting here some.

How to stick to something?

I currently have 2 monkeys on my back that are bothering me more than the others. One is to lose some weight again. I did a good job earlier this year by loosing ~20 pounds, but most of it has been gained back. The other is to try to write, or play music, or something. I started to get serious about the idea of blogging more, in a less personal way near the beginning of the summer, but then I was invited to play in a band, which seemed to sorta fill that "artistic" hole. Then that fell apart about a month ago. I've debated if I should try to start something up since. I used to hate writing in English class, but when I was in high school I started to enjoy it more. I had some great instructors in high school and college, and many of them encouraged me to write more. Then a couple of years ago I ran into Steven King's book called "On Writing", and it caused me to think I should try to write. I am very interested in either being a journalist or novelist in the long run, but I feel like getting a blog going with a strong readership could be great training to get me ready for something more serious. I still feel like music is closer to "my" form of art, and I would love to have a reason to play regularly, but I really enjoy writing.

I told Katy yesterday when we were driving home that I am going to seriously try to work on these two issues, because I have always read that telling people around you that you are going to change causes you to be held responsible. So here it is, for anyone that does ever read this blog. I'm going to try. I'm going to try to get into better shape, and I'm going to try to start up a blog. I'll probably keep this one as a personal blog, but I want to try something more serious.

Matt Damon on Sarah Palin

I don't think of Damon as a great political mind, but he is certainly well spoken and makes valid points. I won't spoil the killer quote for you, but you will catch it at the end.

John McCain

I was a big McCain fan in 2000. Now I'm not, here's why.

The monster under my bed

I don't know why I'm posting this in a public place. But whatever. So I have been reading Jason DeFillippo's blog for a while now, and I guess I'll just link to his post and and paste in my comment I left.

I don't even remember what post of yours got your blog into my feed-reader, but for some reason it's survived many prunings, and it's fun to see you posting again. So, about these past few posts, it sounds like you are on the right track and it will be hard as hell to do, but you probably do need to avoid the drinking. But I'm totally hearing you. It's like if I don't have my distraction, I get depressed. I quit smoking, and I've been fat since, and I spend too much money on crap I get excited about and then drop. If I don't have something new to buy and be excited about, or a new video game to play, or a new TV show to watch, or a computer to build or whatever, I get depressed. What I should be doing is exercising, reading, getting real work done, but instead I keep falling into ruts of doing other crap. The really crazy thing for me was that I was a happy person most of my life, then as soon as I achieved my really big goals for the first part of my life, got married, a good job, bought a house, etc, I suddenly have this monster under the bed. If I don't continually feed him new CD's or books or whatever, he gets me.

I should write more, but I have learned from the times that I do successfully blog or journal that I need to just put what I can, I'll never really sit down and write the long things that I should.

I think I should add that I am super happy about my wife and house and job. There are no complaints, but it's like the fact that I don't have any huge goals to fight for makes me sad. I would rather deal with the downs I have had than not have these things (especially Katy). When I was a little kid I would sit up at night and read the JC Penney catalog. Now I sit up and surf the web. But I remember the first time I walked into CompUSA and didn't really really want anything, then Best Buy, and this past weekend I walked into the Apple Store and didn't really desire anything. It's weird. And I think that makes me sad. I just need to turn that around, instead of continuing to feed the problem.

Quick thoughts on the iPhone

The trigger for this post is using my iPod Classic. I love the thing, when it came out I quickly decided it was the best iPod ever. My previous favorite was the 3rd gen. I used the 4th gen and owned a 5th gen, but this was the best. All of them work well, are fairly reliable, etc, but the interface improvements on the classic are nice little touches. The kind of touches that Apple and IBM make, but no body else takes the time to make.

But as I sit here listening to Porcupine Tree while updating a RHEL server, I keep reaching for the little bud on my headphones to pause or skip a track, like I have on my iPhone. I really thought that the lack of physical controls with a click of feedback would be missed, but they aren't. The only things you could do on the old iPods without looking were change the volume, and pause, but the same things can be done on the iPhone without looking. The other nice things like coverflow, the iPhone method of scrolling, etc, are even better.

I still have my iPod classic for size reasons, 80gb easily holds my (recently slimmed down) media collection, but the 16gb iPhone comes no where close. I also like having my classic because of the biggest downside to the iPhone, battery life.

Right now the only thing I REALLY want for the iPhone that isn't available is a good text editor. I'm getting pretty quick with the keyboard, and I would like to be able to really write and edit text/doc files.

I am seeing things

Not being funny, but I just thought someone should know if this is some last stop before complete insanity, but I am now seeing things when I read. As I read something and my eyes inadvertently skim ahead, I will read things that I expect to see in later sentences. I then get to those later sentences and they are not there. It happens a few (5-7) times a week now, for the past month or so.

Gratitude Exercises

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am a bit excited because I got up at six this morning and went to the Ridgewood Shopping Center Turkey Trot, and participated in the one-mile fun run. It was for extra credit for PE, but it was a fun thing to do. The $20 entry fee went to MS research.

I read a very good blog post from Timothy Ferris, and wanted to share it. Link

Basically he recommends listing five things that you are grateful for each day for a week, starting today. I'm going to try to list mine here.

1. The ability to run, because it feels good and there are people that can't.
2. My two dogs. They are one of the greatest joys in my life and Missy ran with me today.
3. Air conditioning. It's Thanksgiving day, and mine is on.
4. Manual transmission. It's more fun and easier to maneuver in tight spots.
5. Hand sanitizer. I have become a bit of germ freak, and having a bottle of this stuff in my bag helps me cope.

Lisbon and Europe

I am writing this from a hotel lobby in Lisbon. Hotel Mundial. It has been a great experience, although nowhere near as life changing as my first trip to Europe. Towards the end of my sophomore year in high school we took about a week in northern and western France, and I saw myself and the world around me in a totally different way.

This trip has been fun, but it has allowed me to rehash some of the thoughts of the prior trip. Relearn some of the lessons, and even question some of the things I thought I learned when I was in France. Since going to France I have been to St. Louis, San Fransisco and the Napa Valley, Deleware, and a lot of the midwest (on the way to Iowa.) I still think that Americans are too serious. We don't appreciate living life as much, and we appreciate money more. I learned that before, and it has been confirmed. We also are absolutely too fat. And I think this is a phenomenon that has gotten significantly worse in the short span of time since I was here before.

I don't think that the US is as devoid of culture as I thought before. Raleigh is, but San Fransisco was incredible. The city differences aren't as big as I thought before. When I came to France I had really never left the southeast. I never crossed the Mason Dixon or the Mississippi. Those are huge boarders, and it took a few trips out to realize that. Today the rest of my group (my wife and her parents) went to a meeting for the company that we are on the trip with, and I went out to walk for a little while. I realized that I probably don't want to live here. I still think I could live in Normandy, or maybe England, but I don't quite feel right here. However it was a great experience, and I want to visit more. I walked out with no camera, no note book, just the clothes on my back. I can't blend in because I look so physically different from the natives with my almost red hair and freckles, but I tried to dress and walk like they do. I tried to breath the city and the country. There is a lot here, a lot more than I expected. I had this dumb American view that Portugal was this weird subset of Spain, which it is not at all. Portugal is certainly a place of it's own. No more Spanish than Italian.

International Business Machines

I have a new job. I am at IBM as an intern. Specifically I am in the WebSphere Technology Institute Datapower Integration Group.

And I couldn't be more excited.

I have a long road ahead of me. I know practically nothing about writing software and I am in a development group. To start I will be doing sys admin type stuff which I think I know fairly well. But there is a lot to be excited about. First I will say that my pay is almost double what I was making at FedEx Kinko's, but I would have probably taken this job for less money.

The most apparent thing to the people around me is that I was burned out from working customer driven retail jobs. This is of course a very customer driven job, but in a much more distant way. I come in pretty much when I want to, leave when I feel like leaving, and can work from home. I think that shortly it may mean working more than 8 hours instead of less, but at least I can go to the doctor, or if I get stuck in traffic it's not the end of the world. On a more Jason level this is exciting because of what I will be doing. I have wanted an "IT" job for a while, something where I work from a cube and play with technology and become an "information worker." I finally get to apply all of the GTD stuff I have been looking at for a couple of years now. And I love that it is IBM. They used to be the evil empire, but in recent years IBM has become a radically different company. Things move faster, they take good care of employees, and very important to me, have made huge open source contributions. A lot of what I will be working with is Linux. One of the first things my father asked me when I was telling him about work was if we all had to wear suits. Now its very much business casual, and its not entirely unusual to see someone wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

And I got a ThinkPad. It's a couple of years old, and only about as powerful as the laptop that I had anyway, but just as with Katy's ThinkPad and my old 600, the engineering involved is incredible.

It also seems that I am with a great team. It's a very laid back group that can joke around. The work we are doing is very Web 2.0 oriented, which is another major interest of mine, so all in all it seems like a great fit.

So all in all, I am excited.

Site specific stuff

I've added my GReader shared items piece just to the right of where you are reading this. This is basically stuff that I find interesting when I'm going through my feeds. I've recently gone through and pruned out a lot of stuff, but up until about a week ago I was reading about 6000 items per month. I thought I might pass some filtering of that information onto others.

In addition, I'm lightly looking for a new job, and I'm very interested in getting a blogging gig. If anyone likes what they see, I certainly could tailor things for topic and style. I'm available at laydros AT gmail DOT com.

A few sites I reccomend

I've been expanding what I read lately and have come across a few blogs that deserve mentioning. One of my favorites is "More Than Fine" by David Chen. He does a great job of only posting interesting stuff. The flow seems to be a bit random because he hops subjects quite a bit, from politics to religion to pop culture to movies and TV, but somehow it works.

Another new one I found is called "Dumb Little Man." It's yet another lifehacker type blog but Jay has some great material. He doesn't post links, and doesn't publish filler. He also will go into financial issues, not just productivity.

A more high profile blog that I have enjoyed for a long time is UneasySilence. They cover a wide range of stuff like BoingBoing but again pretty much skimming the top of good stuff, and there is also a strong Mac focus.

One with a bit less pulp but lots of fun would be Geekologie. It's sorta Engadget on crack. They post tons of gadgets and happenings, always with a cynical and sarcastic bend.

Finally is the blog of Tim Ferris. Tim has recently published a New York Times bestselling book and I think he could certainly be called a model lifehacker. His basic premise is to outsource what you can of your life so you can enjoy your time and money. I'm going to pick up his book soon but he still shares a lot of secrets and tips on his blog.

Michael Moore Freaks Out

I'll have to find this on youtube but today I happened to turn on the TV, which I do about twice per year, and while flipping around landed on CNN. Wolf Blitzer was on and they were running a piece on Michael Moore's film Sicko. The report certainly seemed to be opposing the views in Moore's film but when they interviewed him his reaction was pretty amazing. I will first add that I have not ever seen any of his films yet, but plan(ed) to, and I have generally thought that he is on the right track with much of his stuff. I am very happy that we do have strong voice presenting some information on modern issues that the mainstream media isn't doing a good job of covering. However, my first direct exposure to Moore makes me think he's nuts. I have also been a pretty big fan of the way the Blitzer handles stuff in times that I have watched more television news. I typically pick CNN's coverage for major national news because it seems to be a better mix of opinions from both sides than most other media outlets.

Basically after the piece ran, which argued that our health care system is not as bad as the file depicts, the second they showed Moore he went on a tirade. Blitzer first had to sustain a barrage of direct offenses from Moore claiming that he was not allowed a voice on CNN for the past three years and demanding an apology because everything he said in Fahrenheit 911 was true. Moore then continued to rant well into the interview not allowing Blitzer to say a single word. Blitzer largely maintained his composure and tried to get the interview back on topic. He actually managed to get Moore to field 1 question, although the answer was filled with jabs back at Blitzer. I don't totally disagree with a lot of Moore's politics, but I strongly believe acting like a child, or better put, a jackass, is the best way to get a point across. I think Jon Stewart's undercutting commentary has done more to forward our collective mindset than Moore's ranting will ever accomplish.

Check this out:

MOORE: You have the questions. Why are we here? That's the question. Why are we here in this war? Where's the weapons of mass destruction? Why didn't you -- why did it take you so long, Wolf, to finally take on Vice President Cheney? It took you to 2007 before you made the man mad at you.

BLITZER: Those are fair questions.

MOORE: Four years!

BLITZER: Let's talk a little ...

MOORE: Where were you?

BLITZER: Let's talk about "Sicko." That's the film that you're here to talk about.

MOORE: Yeah, let's forget that. Yeah, OK.

BLITZER: There's plenty to talk about the war. There's plenty to talk about with "Sicko."

MOORE: I just haven't seen you in three years, so I was wondering how you felt for three years of not seeing me after you trashed "Fahrenheit" and said that I was wrong about, oh, yeah, this war was -- come on, I'm just waiting for an apology.

Update: Still no video, but the transcript is up:

here

It's a little more than half way down.

Update 2: Here is the video

Update 3: CNN has posted a response.

Take me out.....

Watching USA baseball at the DBAP. Im enjoying this phone so far. With a 2 megapixel camera and 3G much of the connectivity from anywhere really comes true. Between tethering and hitting the web from the phone I hope I will be posting more.

More Than Fine: Most Incredible Breakdancing Video Ever

More Than Fine: Most Incredible Breakdancing Video Ever

Totally worth watching.

"What do you do?"

I experienced that question last night for the first real time. Of course I've had people ask me before but this was a group of peers that I had a lot in common with, and basically we went around and asked that. I was at Shwin's bachelor party, with people that I either met last night or hadn't really seen in a few years. I wasn't really embarrassed to say I'm still undergrad and making copies, but I certainly felt a couple of steps behind. Almost everyone else there is in some type of professional career or in grad school.

I actually had a lot of fun though. We just went to a restaurant then went back to the clubhouse at Shwin's apartments and played Texas Hold 'em and hung out. It wasn't a binge drinking fest like my party turned out to be, and I really felt more like I was with a group with similar interests than I have since high school. Actually the crazy part was how much fun Nick and I had. A lot of the time when he and I have talked in the past couple of years it felt like there was an invisible wall, but we had a blast last night. Before he left we kinda promised to each other to take getting together a bit more seriously. This is good.

I keep looking at things I want to change and keep reminding myself that everything is going to change in about 5 months. I'll have a degree, and I will finally have an open schedule to work when I need to. I hope I can develop a routine that involves daily exercise and more stability in what I do. I also hope I will make enough money to get us out of credit card debts quickly and start working on paying off cars.

Liberty Line (In the Sand)

My good friend Glen has just started a blog of his own concerning where our government has gone. He served our country in the Marines earlier on in his life and now is a bit concerned about what has happened to the state of liberty. He's just getting it started but check it out.

Liberty Line

Ducks at BRDD

I took dinner to Zoe tonight at Baskin Robin and there were a couple of ducks in the parking lot. They weren't exactly afraid of humans either.

In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man

So last night I was settling in to do some homework and went to put on music. I realized that I had the Led Zeppelin song "Good Times, Bad Times" stuck in my head so I pulled out my box set to find which disc it was on. I quickly realized that it was one of the 2 songs that get fairly regular radio airplay that are not on that set. I then got on my computer and found it on the Early Days CD, which I do have in MP3 format, so I burned it out and listened.

I wasn't looking for a song that said kinda what has happened to me, I was just looking to hear the song that had been stuck in my head, but I ended up with something that is leading me to this blog post.

The lyrics:

Good Times Bad Times
(Bonham/Jones/Page)

In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man,
Now I've reached that age, I've tried to do all those things the best I can.
No matter how I try, I find my way into the same old jam.

*Good Times, Bad Times, you know I had my share;
When my woman left home for a brown eyed man,
Well, I still don't seem to care.

Sixteen, I fell in love with a girl as sweet as could be,
Only took a couple of days 'til she was rid of me.
She swore that she would be all mine and love me till the end,
But when I whispered in her ear, I lost another friend, oooh.

* Chorus

I know what it means to be alone, I sure do wish I was at home.
I don't care what the neighbors say, I'm gonna love you each and every day.
You can feel the beat within my heart.
Realize, sweet babe, we ain't ever gonna part.

So it's really a song about a girl leaving you. But that first part, and I know I'm not the first person to blog about it, says a bit more.

I've had a hard time over the past two years or so. I've dealt with depression for the first time in my life, and I have experienced a lot of changes. Thus far I have viewed this as a very unfortunate occurrence to have happen at the same time I finally have achieved a lot of my life goals. I now have a wife, a house, two dogs, a nice car, my own home office, and I'm going to NCSU. But I started to realize a few days ago that maybe there is something different going on. Right now I'm trying to read Stephen Covey's "8 Habits of Highly Effective People" and one of the things he talks about is paradigm shifts. I'm familiar with the concept, but I think it has become a mainstream idea that I have encountered in the past because he wrote this book. At any rate, a paradigm shift is a change not in the way that something is, but a change in the way that you view something. He correlates this to things like when we realized that the earth is not the center of the universe. I have experienced things like this before in my life, like when I started to view my financial situation in a different way. I didn't change the situation, I changed the way that I saw the situation, which then allowed me to handle it.

So as for the song, and how it relates to the last two years. Like I said, I have seen the last two years as a very unfortunate time period in which I had a bad section that just happened to occur when these great things in my life happened. I'm starting to see it as a phase shift. There was a very definite phase shift that occurred for me when I went from childhood to adolescence. It wasn't overnight, but it was over the course of about 6 months. My ways of seeing the world changed drastically. I went from being the nerdy kid that I was growing up to being someone more interested in music, socializing, and had my first interests in art. I wasn't a completely different person, I still had a lot of the same personality and interests, but a lot did change. And there was a catalyst in this, actually two. My parents got divorced, which kinda meant both of them were more lenient and my dad married Beth, who did a lot to help me loosen up from my geeky past, and I became friends with Nick, who also helped me loosen up. The two of them could have been considered bad influences, but I hate to think what I would have become if I didn't go through those changes then. I think what has happened in the past couple of years has been another period of change. And its not that all this stuff happening in my life is being enjoyed less because of my stress level, nor that they are the cause, but that they are the catalysts in another life period starting. As I leave that adolescent period and enter adulthood I'm already starting to see things differently. Probably the biggest difference is that I am now very interested in leaving a positive mark on the world. I never cared about this in the past very much. I thought it would be nice, but it wasn't a priority. Now I am fairly sure that I want to do something in some sort of church outreach, or missionary, or educational way. My family is still the most important thing to me, but I'm more interested in who I help than what I have. This all sounds very sappy, but it's less of an altruistic dream and more of a need to do something. There is also this urge to be kinda artsy/hippy. I've always been very into art and music from a distance, but now I really want to live more of a Carrboro/Asheville/San Fransisco weirdo life. I still find the majority of those people to be pretentious, and the ones that aren't to be weird, but that is the direction. Also, I don't see the more recent period as bad. Even though it was fairly self-centered, I think it was needed. It made me a normal person. It taught me a lot about how to socialize with others. This not only helped my self-confidence and self-image, but also has allowed me to develop some charisma that I think will be important to achieve what I want to do in life.

A big part of what I hope to do is to be an influence on people as a christian. I was raised in a church going family, but when I was a teenager I developed this idea that religion was a crutch that the stupid used to explain what they didn't understand. Throughout history we have thought everything was magic, and then we eventually realize the science behind it. The big change for me was one time talking to my maternal grandmother. She was one of the most intelligent people I have ever known, and I thought that she basically was a Christian in practice only, not in true faith. I thought she was scientifically minded enough to realize it was a farce, but went through the motions just because she was raised that way. But one day we were talking about God and what I would do with my life and she told me in a very genuine way how important it was to her that I lived my life as a Christian and I realized that she wasn't just going through the motions. I think people at least see me as a fairly intelligent, reasonable person. I want them to see me that way, not as some weirdo, and then see that I really have a faith in this stuff, and hopefully influence them in the same way my grandmother influenced me.

So this different paradigm kinda gives an explanation for the depression from two points. One is that I am yet to achieve much in helping people, and to be quite honest I'm scared to. I see the beggars on Hillsboro St. or around New Hope Commons and I want to help them, but I'm not quite ready to deal with them. I think what I really want to do is influence unchurched people that it is not a joke, and hopefully later on have the money and influence to help people through organizations. I want not only to help people with faith, but also in opening up education, censorship, and art. The other hard part goes back to the influence of Nick. I haven't really had someone to walk me through a lot of this. My Mom's boyfriend John has helped me a lot with the art stuff, and has been a great confidant. But I haven't had a Nick. I have a good friendship with my wife, and I have a good friendship with my brother-in-law, Jeff, Maggie, and my parents and in-laws, but there isn't really anyone that I have connected with on the same level that I connected with Nick. And of course Nick and I have really drifted apart since he got married. I struggle with the loss of that bond, and perhaps even more with the total lack of replacement. Before now I thought it was really just the loss of Nick, but now I wonder if a lot of it is the loss of that slot.

"No matter how I try, I find my way into the same old jam."