Nikon D300

Well, I've gone and done it, I suppose. I've impulse-bought a new camera. It's not a half-bad camera either, I got the Nikon D300, and an "AF-S Nikkor 18-135mm 3.6-5.6G ED DX" lens for it, along with a filter for the lens, and a fast 2 gig CF card. I bought it at Ritz Camera after Megan and I had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. The images in this post should link up to full-resolution versions of the images that came out of the camera. I did minimal work on them using the included Nikon Capture NX software. Unfortunately though, my ThinkPad's display is not calibrated.

I decided to buy it at Ritz because the D300 is new enough that it costs just about the same amount of money everywhere, and because it was a situation where I could have it and start using it right away. And right away did I start. The very next morning after my shower, I unpacked the D300 and its lens. What an exciting feeling, that of unpacking a new piece of equipment and starting to use it. I carefully removed the D300 and the lens from their boxes, taking care to take a variety of hopefully-interesting photos with the D50.

So far, the difference is rather amazing, especially in the lens. The lens isn't that different from my old Quantaray 18-125mm lens, except for the fact that this one seems much sharper so far. I haven't used under all of the same types of conditions as the Quantaray, but I'm sure it'll be less than a year before I can tell whether or not I really think this lens is a better lens. I can tell you now though, I think this is a better lens.

The body is extremely well-built, its heftiness, speed and overall build quality show that it's a higher end camera than the D50, which in and of itself is an excellent piece of imaging technology, from a usability as well as a quality standpoint. The difference in the amount of pixels is readily apparent, especially on my mobile computer, which has been suffering performance problems as of late anyway. The other most apparent differences are in the speed of shooting, which is immense. I have always thought of my D50 as fast, but this thing can rapidly fire off nine or ten shots without even blinking. Said images will be properly focused too, because the AF system on this body is amazing. The other immediately noticeable difference is the review screen. The review screen on this camera is nothing short of amazing. It's significantly larger than that of the D50, which back in 2005 and 2006, I remember saying was very large and bright.

I took it out for a test drive after unpacking everything and getting used to controlling it. (Not to say that I'm very good at it yet, but I'm getting used to it.) My initial reaction to shooting with it is that I feel like I'm getting the shot I want, when I'm framing and shooting, even if I'm shooting something I didn't expect to be, or if I'm walking around and I happen to see some people I recognize, such as the image above of Tracy. The only bad thing I've got to say about the body is that when I was setting it up and hooking up the camera strap, I did so in a retarded way, and while walking around,

I took it to the overnight too, and although it's not necessarily as great a low-light performer as the D300, I'm sure that between the onboard flash and the Nikon SB600 I've got hanging around, I'll manage. I used the SB600 on the image of the D50 at the top of this post. Although even at relatively high ISOs, the D300 does still procure nice images. The image of the Dell OptiPlex in the SLAC was shot at ISO1000. (The D300 supports all of these weird ISO numbers I've only ever seen on Olympus cameras before.)

One of the things I think some people may now be thinking is "what about that non-full-frame sensor?" Unfortunately, that was one of my biggest desires for the camera upgrade, and it's the one thing I didn't get. I'm not too terribly sad at this point though. For one thing, getting a full-frame sensor requires either saving a few additional years to be able to afford the Nikon D3, or a switch to Canon.

I was seriously considering that switch to Canon too. However, the thing about that is that I've already got four different Nikon lenses, the Nikon flash, the off-camera Nikon flash sync cord, and in general, I'm pretty decent at using my Nikon stuff. The other thing is that the currently-available Canon full-frames are the 1Ds-Mark II, the 1Ds-Mark III and the 5D. None of which can be had new for less than $2000. BH has the 5D for $2100, compared to the D300's $1800, and the lens I wanted for the Canon was just shy of $1300. That's a pain in the wallet. And really, being that the 5D was released in 2005, it's out of date and due for a replacement. A replacement that will most likely cost significantly more than the 5D's current price anyway. Aside from the sensor thing, for the savings, the D300 is a significantly better camera in nearly every way.

Although, they say that what makes a great camera isn't necessarily the megapixels or the image processor or the brand or the size of the sensor. It's the ability that the camera has to let the photographer create an image. And while I think that one of my talents as a photographer is to be able to get the results I want out of nearly any piece of equipment. The D300 just happens to let me be even more sure of the images I'm making, and it lets me make them a little bit faster.

History of Management of Cory's Photos.

When I got my first digital camera (A Kodak EasyShare CX6220, for those of you who want to make fun of me for having owned a Kodak), I just imported my images into iPhoto. It worked well for the first thousand images, and I always thought of it as being fairly speedy. I painstakingly named and even added descriptions to many of the images, and some of my best, I posted to deviantArt. After awhile, and a trip to Michigan, iPhoto became unstable. Unstable enough that I actually lost what I think amounts to about two or three hundred  pictures I'd taken while I went to visit my grandmother in Michigan. I was, of course, unhappy, and to this day I still go on random searches for those images. They never turn up.

Then, in Fall 2005, I got my first taste of real photography, in Kate's Photo I class. I used dad's Canon AE-1 film camera for that class, and subsequently decided that I really needed to do more photography. I was, you could say, hooked on film. That Christmas, dad, knowing that I now intended to do more photography classes, and possibly even use it as a career for my real life, gave me the Nikon D50 I use to this day. It was a great camera, and it remains so, but it had something I didn't know anything about yet: Camera RAW, and more specifically, the Nikon Electronic Format.

A month or two earlier, Apple had released an exciting-looking new photo management application geared toward the needs of professionals, called Aperture. It looked like a super exciting program, with the ability to do most of the stuff I needed with my photos right in the interface of the program. I eagerly downloaded and watched tutorial videos, wanting to know more about its functionality. I decided it was the program I needed for my photos, since iPhoto had already failed me a few times, and I didn't have a modern enough version of Photoshop hanging around.

I downloaded Aperture, but realized I couldn't use it until I upgraded my computer to Mac OS X 10.4. This is an entirely separate debacle, but after getting and installing 10.4, twice, I finally got Aperture 1.0 working on my below-spec G4 PowerBook. It was an amazing program, I spent most of my time waiting for it, but it was amazing nonetheless.

Of course though, later on I decided that Mac OS X 10.4 and the speed of Aperture were unbearable, so I "found" a copy of Photoshop CS2, exported my photos out of Aperture, and installed 10.3 back on the PowerBook. At this point, I'd also acquired my first laser printer, and the solution seemed clear, I started right away creating my second photo organization scheme.

Using a MacBook Pro at the high school, I renamed and exported all of my images to one big folder. I then started using Adobe Bridge to rename the images a certain way. PIC_XXXXX.ext where XXXXX was a unique number I assigned to each image based on the date it was taken. Starting at folder zero and working my way through about two hundred folders' worth of images (at least that many) with thirty images per folder, I organized all of my images into neat little buckets of images, perfectly sized for printing contact sheets using Photoshop CS2. The idea was pretty good, I thought. I print out a bunch of contact sheets of my images, and it takes me less time to findt he image I want. Then, I pull the image out of my collection, do whatever to it, and save the derived file to a separate place. It turns out, I wasn't actually all too far off with this sytem.

Although soon, I was separated from my contact sheet binders, and since I'd gotten the much faster iMac in December, 2006 anyway, I decided I could safely move back to Aperture. And move I did, which was amazing because Aperture is very speedy on that iMac, I found myself tagging and naming and describing and sorting, until I stopped, which was cool, I guess.

Organizing photos is a difficult thing, and I'm currently not sure what exactly I am going to do in the future, with that. I'm currently in a class called PHO382, where one of the first things we're learning is all about managing images using Adobe Bridge CS3. At this point I haven't changed from Aperture, but in the next few weeks, I am going to try to decide whether or not I want to use Bridge or Aperture for my photos. This will be a permanent decision, and as I now have almost thirteen thousand images, it's a pretty important one. I'll keep the blog posted, so definitely consider this to be "part one, of an unknown number" in a series of "Cory talks about how he manages his images."

Ohh! So that's what I forgot to do!

Well, it's happened again. Monday, I was struck down by the gods of massive headaches, yesterday I ran errands with Meaghan, got pancakes with Megan, and then updated UTV62.com. And this morning... Well this morning, I'm finally addressing Monday morning's task of posting a blog entry.

I'm not going to lie, I do have others already written, but I feel like this is a good time to give a bit of a general update, instead of a canned blog post about photo management or whatever. So here it goes.

In the world of Megan and I, it's been sickness abound as Megan is currently battling the flu, and prior to that, with almost no break whatsoever, was battling "Something completely unrelated" (but almost as bad, it seems.) As a result of that, I was commanded to get the Flu shot, so Meaghan and I did that before her midterm yesterday.

Classes are going pretty well,I'm mildly depressed about my CIS120 because I keep forgetting to check WebCT Vista, therefore keep missing assignments. This weekend, I intend to power through all of the Word tutorials so I can rock the Word exam, just like I excelled at the Excel exam. Photography is going well, we've got a cool shooting assignment coming up in the studio, which I hope to work on this Friday. The shooting assignment is exciting because this'll be the first assignment where we actually start working on something destined for "delivery to a client" which will be JPEG files ready for the web. Other than that, German is going well, learning new stuff all the time is a pretty nice change, and the things that are review are definitely helpful, as reviews go.

In other news, I'm apparently merely dating photography, as per a thread on the 68kMLA forum about the total cost of owning a computer. I will expound upon this issue significantly in an upcoming blog post.

Work is going fairly well for me too. I come in, take calls, and when I am not completely struck down by an epic headache, I leave work quite happy. The two overnights haven't killed me yet, but it always seems like people want to come visit me from Kingman right before or after one or both of them.

So that's my two-days-late, and probably poorly written blog post!

Classes Canceled

Well aren't I just a happy clam right now. It's about eight in the morning on this fine bright Monday, and I'm just kind of hanging out in the room, listening to youtube videos, copying SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop to the ThinkPad R61i to be burned to a DVD, and relaxing before my helpdesk shift at 1:30 later in the afternoon.

Classes are canceled today, which I've got to admit, almost never happens here at NAU. It snowed up a pretty awful storm yesterday and last night, and at about 5:45 this morning, an e-mail was sent by NAU's reporting system Inside NAU saying classes are canceled and that only essential employees are to report to work.

What makes an NAU employee essential? Well I'd like to think all NAU employees are essential, but as it turns out, those of us working at the Academic Computing Help Desk are considered to  be essential, so I'll be reporting to my shift later on today. I've got to admit, it's a nice little ego boost for the day to know that the ACHD is considered essential, and that if it's within my ability to remain alive while going to work today, I'm to do so. Luckily, I only live like 500 feet from the ACHD, so it's by no means a hardship for me.

New Helpdesk People!

Well, I can't say I actually expected it to happen, but over the past month, the helpdesk has hired almost ten new people. I won't name them individually, because that would be rude, but suffice it to say that I'm no longer exactly one of the "newbies" at the helpdesk. Not only am I no longer a newbie, but all three new phones staff so far have shadowed me on the phones, listened into some of my calls, or in general, received some sort of training or advice from me.

It's interesting to think about, especially since we had to hire so many people in the middle of the year, how many other new ACHD student workers I'll see while I work there, and I'm also, of course, interested in exactly how long I'll be working there myself. I suppose one thing I've got to admit is now that I work at the helpdesk, I can't really imagine myself working anywhere else on campus, and in fact, much as I hate to say it, I might not even mind working in a real call center.

I've read blogs of and spoken with people who work at various help centers, mainly a few from Apple and Dell. The biggest thing is that it sounds like a very satisfying job in terms of helping people, and it seems like the benefits and pay aren't the worst ever, but that in the phone support world, there is very little in terms of advancement. Becoming a product specialist, moving to another company, or finding a career are apparently the most frustrating parts of doing support professionally for a corporation.

That said, I'm fairly certain that I still want to do something in my life related to  photography. If at all possible, I would absolutely love to be a professional photographer, doing events and weddings, or commercial product shots, or anything of that nature. The biggest challenge of course, for that, is getting my degree and actually finding the work, which I think when it comes down to it, won't be as hard as I may think it is right now.

So, new helpdesk people, ponderations on the rest of my life... This looks like a blog post well-executed.

Mac World San Francisco, 2008.

Every blog and forum I read has had a commentary on MWSF 2008, universally considered the Christmas of the consumer Mac world. Having bought an iPhone just shy of five days before the keynote, I'll start off by saying I was somewhat worried that my shiny new device would already be out of date. Luckily, not only was the iPhone not replaced, but it received a nice software update. The most important feature is that which allows me to manually manage the music and videos on the device, just like my iPod.

The first thing Jobs revealed was Time Capsule. It's a relatively simple device, it's basically Apple's Airport Extreme base station hooked to a 500GB or 1TB "server grade" hard disc. The gist of the device is that you can easily set up Time Machine to automatically and wirelessly use the Time Capsule as its backup drive. You can use it with "all the Macs in your house." Simple enough, and I think it's a cool device, the only questions I've got so far involve whether or not you can add to the storage in your Time Capsule, or if it would be possible to own more than one Time Capsule, and concatenate the available amounts of storage.

Afterward, Jobs demonstrated some iPhone software updates. I installed the iPhone software update recently, and without a doubt, my favorite feature, the feature that might actually cause me to keep the iPhone, is the ability to manage my music and movies manually. It's how I use my 30-gig video iPod, and I'm glad it's available for the iPhone. The third major announcement of the keynote was new iTunes movie rentals. I'm really excited about that one because like Jobs says, I'm the kind of person who doesn't really watch movies more than once. In a way, it's a lot like a daily ticket on satellite TV, where I can watch the same movie several times in one day. It'll be like in December when I watched "Chuck & Larry" about five times.

Part of the iTunes update involved AppleTV. In this part, Jobs admits that they'd gotten the concept of AppleTV wrong, and provides updates on the software of AppleTV, including the new user interface and renting an HD movie. The whole experience looks really well designed, and I've got to admit that the AppleTV with its software update looks really nice. I don't really want one, but I also don't really have an appropriate television with which I'd be able to peruse the content.

By far, the most important part of the keynote, the one causing the most controversy online, is the MacBook Air. Let me start by saying that I think the MacBook Air is an awesome product, and it's something Apple hasn't had in awhile. Let me also say that it's not something I'm going to be buying any time soon. Even though I think it looks awesome, and would love to be able to bust one out during class, but the high price and the fact that I've already got three working IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads, all of which have reasonable battery life, and good capability as note taking machines.

The main problem with MacBook Air, of course, is the price. For $1800 (retail) you get a 1.6GHz Core2Duo, from the new Penryn platform, 2 gigabytes of memory, and an 80 gigabyte hard disc. You don't get much other than that, of course, because being so thin, Apple had to make compromises somewhere, and they did it in reasonable areas I think. The backlit keyboard is full size, and the LED-backlit display is a full 13.3" glossy display, similar to the MacBook's display.

Not included are an optical drive, and a few "essential" ports. What I've noticed is that the biggest grouching people have been doing is the result of the ports. The MacBook Air features only a MagSafe power port on the left side, and on the right side behind a little door, one USB port, one "Micro DVI" port, and one audio output port. The biggest things the MacBook Air is missing is apparently another four USB ports, audio input, an internal optical drive, and FireWire. What bugs me about that is that the inclusion of those things basically turns the MacBook Air into a MacBook Pro, plus a few extra USB ports.

The problem with this, of course, is that the entire point of the MacBook Air isn't the thing those people want. Those people want a $599 mobile machine, as fast as a full-sized MacBook, with discrete graphics, basically adding up to a 12" PowerBook G4.

My take is that the MacBook Air is really intended as a companion Mac to a powerful desktop computer. I can see a lot of Mac Pro owners, or people whose desktops are high end iMac systems wanting one of these to use as their mobile systems, especially if they, like myself, prefer doing as much computing as possible on their desktop systems when they're in their offices or homes. MacBook Air is great then, for people who need something they can use on a plane or train, and that they need to be as light as possible. When it comes down to it, there will be people who are willing to pay this price for such a mobile computer.

Maybe if I were more patient, and hadn't already bought the ThinkPad, I would've gotten one, although I'm really happy with the ThinkPad, and think I'll have it for quite some time to come as my mobile computer. Maybe my next mobile machine will be some kind of MacBook Air successor.

Return of the Pismo!

I know it's Sunday morning, not Monday morning, but I've got to admit that I'm really jazzed tonight by the fact that apparently my PowerBook G3 isn't completely dead. I was getting ready to harvest it for parts when I looked at the processor daughtercard, realizing that it was still in the system, but it was not secured too well. I pressed down on it, securing it once again in its slot.

Lo and behold, the pismo booted straight up, although it looks like it's developed a few more lines in the screen, but the fact that it's working at all still makes me quite happy. Basically, we all now know that Megan isn't a killer. I intend to keep its 10.3.9 and 9.2.2 loaded, although I may transfer some of my actual data from the Pismo to the R61i.

So yeah, that happened today and I thought it was worth posting off-schedule for that.

Beginning of School!

Well, I can't really say that it's the beginning of all school or anything, but Spring 2008 is officially in full swing. I even took out the garbage this morning. That's how committed I am to my schoolwork and the like.

I'll admit that I do really appreciate repeating events such as the beginning of semesters, because of their value for blog posts. I'm sure I've got something really special stowed away in the calendar of things about which I should be writing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I will be writing about those things. Luckily, I do believe that it was a "kickoff of the semester" that my blog-writing calendar has called for. The exact calendar entry calls for "Well wishes to everybody for Spring 2008."

Well... Well Wishes for Spring 2008! I'm going to go ahead and use this post to give a few life-related updates as well, so go ahead and let me list those.

• I've reformatted the iMac. So there's a lot of photos that I'm sure everyone is expecting me to put up, but those things won't be put up until I reinstall Aperture.
• I'm waiting until tomorrow, which happens to be the SteveNote at MacWorld San Francisco, to decide whether or not to keep the new mobile phone I've got. I'm also waiting until this coming weekend to finalize my decision to install Aperture 1.5.6, or wait until a new major version ships.
• I bought an iPhone last week. More to come on this later. (Although I've discovered that I could write significantly more today if I want to.
• Jim and I have a new suitemate, who I haven't met yet. I know nothing about him other than his name, and that his mother cleaned the bathroom while he was moving in.
• On another note about the room in GabaLand, Jim and I are thinking of unbunking the beds. have just unbunked the beds. It'll be similar to how Jessica and Meaghan have their room, except our desks are staying where they are, and one of the beds will run parallel with the wall that has the windows. Not the worst arrangement idea ever, I've got to admit. We're not sure where the TV will go, but my guess is that we'll figure it out later today when he gets here.
• Actually, the main reason I made this list was I wanted to try out more of the formatting options in Windows Live Writer. I have always wanted to have a struck-through list item in a blog post.
• I work 30 hours this coming semester, including 18 overnight hours.

That's pretty much what I wanted to say. I'm sure there's some philosophical discussion about the iPhone or some awesome response to WWDC for next week. I'll probably write the epic blog post on one overnight, and edit it on the next.

Back At Work!

Well everyone. I'm back at work. It's been a "fun" day because of all the calls relating to the recent Cisco Clean Access appliance upgrade, overall not the worst day I've ever had though. Just a whole heck of a lot of escalations, and I'm going to have to go back through my calls to make sure all of them have a category and an OS.

I was planning on a longer, nicer blog entry, but was unable to deliver due to my own laziness. Even though I could've gotten up at 8 or 9, I slept until about 11 this morning, which I'll admit was pretty awesome.

Now if only Pine Ridge Village worked properly. I have almost ten escalations right now of people who live in Pine Ridge, hopefully that gets fixed soon.

Another Fire Alarm

Fire alarms happen at the best times. Today, I was in the laundry room, hanging out while my dirty clothes become clean, and then become dry. Then the fire alarm went off. I tossed the thinkPad into the backpack and started heading outside, not really worrying that both of my favorite sweaters and my awesome winter coat were in the dryer at the time. Hopefully the building didn't also lose power, but whatever.

After going outside, I stood underneath the ledge behind Birch wing, and when I saw Meaghan walking down the pedway toward the lab building, I had to take it upon myself to run across the field to catch up with her. In my sandals, shorts and a t-shirt. The trip to the lab was fairly nice, except for the whole bit about my feet feeling a little bit frozen.

Now Meaghan and I are in the walk-in area at the helpdesk chatting with Danielle, being warm. It's nice. As a sidenote, the phones people rock.

As another sidenote, I'm going to be posting another blog entry tomorrow, because Mondays are the scheduled day for blog entries.

Resolutions for 2008

Well, it's that time again. I need to think about what I'd like to do in the next year. To start, let me perform a little bit of a recap from my previous post on this topic.

I said I'd like to do NaNo again, progress on the CraGNo, play with Poser 7 more often, and make a movie. Needless to say, I did NaNoWriMo again, I even won! I did not progress too far on the CraGNo, but I could potentially work on that more this spring, if I don't decide to go crazy and edit my NaNo Novel. Unfortunately, I feel short on my Poser 7 and Movie making goals. I barely touched the camcorder, and now that I've got Leopard on the iMac, I don't even know if Poser 7 runs. Smooth moves, I'd say.

So aside from 1280x800 or 1440x900, what are my resolutions for 2008? Well, for starters, I resolve to do NaNoWriMo again. That one worked out pretty well for me last time, so it's kind of a freebie.

Lame as it sounds, I'd also like to do my best as a 68kMLA forum moderator, a position to which I was very recently appointed. I've kind of been moderating in spirit for a long time, so it's not too different for me. I just have actual authority now when I suggest that people calm down or when I say that something might be a good idea.

Another thing I'd like to do is make sure that I keep on updating UeberWiki, which is recently back from the grave, hosted on my decTOP. The main thing here is to just keep finding random things I like and loading 'em in. UeberWiki is cool because I can just make a page for about anything and drop it on there. I'd also specifically really like to revamp the Gotschland section of the UeberWiki, especially because of the new novel I wrote in November, which kind of changes a lot of things about how Gotschland works.

Something else I've got is a specific idea I've had for awhile, something I need to start planning for very soon, which is the photo-comic. I will probably display it using a PHP webcomic script for the decTOP, or maybe just a series of static pages on my dana site. I've got a few ideas for people I'd like to be in the comic, and I've got a few ideas for situations, mainly involving some things Glenn and I have spoken about in the past. I've got a few other ideas too, but a lot of them depend on me being able to get all of the "cast members" in the right place, at the right time, with my camera. A project for weekends, to be sure. I will have another blog entry about this at a later date.

I would also like to start posting blog entries on a regular basis. If at all possible, I'd like to have a new post ready every Monday. This one's even scheduled to come in before noon on Monday, December 31st.

Publishing Schedules

One of the things I've noticed about some of my favorite web logs, even personal ones, is that they come out on a fairly regular basis. One of my intents for Strapped to a Desk has been to publish it on a fairly regular basis, my original plan for that was just to always be writing, and then I'd always have something to post to the blog. What ended up happening was a bit different. I kept writing, into a document called NaNoNovel 2007, and so I didn't have anything to publish during November. Between that, and not really having a dedicated blog-writing time, not only has my publishing schedule been sporadic at best, I've somewhat slowed down in my writing.

So one of my goals for 2008 is to start publishing my blog more often. I'm going to achieve this by just writing more, plus I intend to use a calendar, which will help me keep track of when I've started to write things, and when I intend to finish them. I've already started the calendar, I'm using Windows Calendar on my ThinkPad R61i to keep track of when I start writing things, and when I intend to publish them. My intent is to have something fairly major ready for publishing every Monday, and I've already started filling in Mondays in 2008.

One thing I've definitely noticed is that I think to my blog a lot, or at the very least, I think in things I write that could potentially end up on my blog. Another thing I suppose I would like to do is write some more things that don't get published to the public weblog, but that do get written, primarily as a personal record. It's a need I have because there are a lot of things I see and hear and experience that most people don't need to know about, but that I'd like to have in the future. I may just start writing Word documents into a separate folder for that.

Mom's House

I just had one of the worst visits anywhere I've ever had. Details may or may not follow.

Visiting Kingman

I've been in Kingman for a few days, at Dad & Brenda's house, and my brother has been here as well. It is very relaxing, even after only a day or two, to be in Kingman. It is exactly what I wanted to do this year, after a stressful semester, and a stressful week after finals, to sit down on the couch in dad's house chatting online and looking at train pictures. I've looked at every single Amtrak and Amtrak California photo on railpics.net

Another side-effect of visiting Kingman was going to work with dad, which I enjoyed well enough before he got DSL there, but I really do like sitting there, somewhere else, and browsing the Internet. It's better for my back I think.

I might also get a haircut while I am here, not sure yet.

The stress of breaks.

I'm mildly unhappy because I had an extraordinarily stressful post-finals week. Unlike my prediction of it being completely stress-free because there was going to be no deadline for leaving, it was more stressful because Megan and Glenn stayed in Gabaldon too, meaning that most of my time outside of work was dedicated to either hanging out at Megan's work, or making sure that Megan and Glenn didn't kill each other.

I realize that there was an expectation from Megan that she and I have some time alone, probably more than we actually did (which was still quite a lot by my standards), but there's also the fact that Jim still lives in the room, and has paid for it, and likewise with Glenn. Not only did Megan not get enough time alone with me, but she and I didn't get enough time alone without anyone, we estimate less than two hours alone time for the whole week, which is a lot less than either of us gets during the semester.

Those various factors led to what turned into an epic breakdown on Friday night, wherein I revealed that I actually wanted to sleep alone for a night, Megan revealed she wouldn't be capable of sleeping in Glenn's room for the night, and I got pissed (needlessly as per Megan) off at Megan and Glenn. Let's just say that neither of them know when to shut up, even if you say "shut up" to them seventeen times repeatedly. I also learned that I'm apparently a rather frightening person when I'm pissed off. Megan and Glenn wouldn't shut up though, Both of them were so stressed, or feeling so superior, that it wasn't an option to just close their mouths and open their ears long enough to realize that the solution to their problem was extraordinarily simple. I  moved one chair sixteen inches to the right, and moved the display we were viewing the movie on eight inches to the right, and all three of us were able to watch the last Real Bout High School DVD. Not too difficult, but some people seem to really enjoy being pissed off for no reason.

At least Megan got The Sims 2 installed on her Sony computer, which we picked up in great condition at Best Buy, and was able to get her people loaded back in fine.

Lenovo 3000

So, I'm watching ShopNBC.com television, and today they're selling a Lenovo 3000 mobile computer. I've got to admit, I'm impressed that two TV shopping hosts were able to mess up on the specifications and capabilities of a machine so much. There will be many people who buy this thing and will be unhappy with it because they can't figure out how to use it to watch high definition television from the kitchen using what's included in the Lenovo box.

The hosts are a woman who sounds a bit like she is drunk or high, and a man with an annoying voice who is messing up on the facts of the IBM to Lenovo transition for IBM's Think products. To drive his point home, for one segment of the took the 3000 notebook to a kitchen and pulled it out of a drawer. How creative, because, y'know, there weren't PowerBook, iBook and ThinkPad owners doing that since 2000, or since 1994, or earlier.

Not only are the hosts mildly annoying, but apparently this Lenovo 3000 notebook with it's fully epic HD quality 15.4" screen was born out of an agreement between IBM and Lenovo, wherein Lenovo takes over manufacturing IBM computers, and IBM does designs and provides support. I can't think of anything more wrong, of course, the only thing that has gone on is that if they wanted to, Lenovo has the right to print the IBM logo onto ThinkPad notebooks for another year or so, but IBM hasn't been involved with their design or support since the T40-series, which are considered to be the last real IBMs, and which, by the way, I think are more powerful than the Lenovo 3000s offered on this program.

Not that the Lenovo 3000 notebook offered here is necessarily bad, just that it's not a particularly powerful machine, with a 1.6GHz Celeron M, 512mb (free upgrade to 1gig) of ram, and an 80gig hard disc. I think it *might* have had a DVD burner. The 15.4" screen was high def quality though, apparently.

So yeah, too many shopping channels on television here, I say. Although it's extraordinarily entertaining to watch them talk about these mobile computers that are either outright worse than mine, or not much better for more money.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Windows Live Writer

Hi Blog! I've recently found an interesting little utility on the Internet, it's called Windows Live Writer. It's a nifty little Microsoft application that can help manage blog entries. It supports my Blogger account, and it's got the advantage over Word 2007 in that it supports posting images to the blog provider.If it's worked properly, a screen capture of the about window should be to the right of this text.

Oddly enough, I found out about Writer while looking at Microsoft's various products, trying to find out if they've got anything in the way of helpdesk call management/tracking utilities. I was at dad's work today and found out that they use something called Remedy, which is a ticket tracking system also apparently in use at Purdue University. Currently the ACHD uses something that was written by a CS student some years ago, and they're working on a new system, but being overzealous and bored as I am, I started researching additional solutions today, just in case they ever ask me what I'd rather use as a call tracker, or I'm tasked with starting my own helpdesk. (Unlikely, but you never know, eh?)

It looks like neither Microsoft nor Lotus provides one of these solutions, although I'm not finished looking at solutions, and it *is* possible that Microsoft has such a solution that they aren't advertising too hard, or it's built into Dynamics somewhere, which would make it difficult for me to find, I'll admit.

I will eventually start researching various open source solutions but I don't personally have enough of a setup to test a full call tracker on the decTOP. (Which by the way, is all set up and running! Just be patient with it, because it's definitely not the fastest machine ever, especially with the MediaWiki-based ueberWIKI as its homepage.)

It’s Three A.M.

So… It's three a.m. Yes, that's righteo, three a.m. What does this mean for all of you in blog land, or Facebook-land? Well, nothing really. Three a.m. has a significant meaning to me though, I suppose you could say. My junior year of high school, I had attempted most of the year to help create a school newspaper, and my efforts were finally realized when on the very last day of the spring Semester, I handed out copies of the underground magazine I'd created, "It's Three a.m. …" Not the best thing ever, but it worked and I did really enjoy creating it. It included some things I wrote, something another student in one of Mr. Simmons' classes had written, and a few things Ashley had written, plus there were some random photographs that I'd taken sprinkled in, including the one epic shot of Pam, with then-sophomoric Joey and Ashley sitting around.

It was quite an effort, and if I do say so myself, the thing didn't look so bad either, and ever since I've been attempting to do another one, although I haven't actually done so. One of the things I'm considering doing is just plopping some of my photos and some of my blog entries into an inDesign file and offering it for download as a PDF. It wouldn't be much, but you could return to me with the fact that the original one wasn't very much either.

What does somebody include in an underground magazine anyway? I suppose I'd want to include some technology news, thoughts about my job, some photos, and I'd need to find other people who would be willing to contribute some things, I'm sure Megan has artwork she'd like to put in, and I think Jim was going to write an UeberFriends short story, which would be fully epic.

In other news, I'm sitting here at the iMac typing this out mainly because Megan wanted some time to lie on a bed and daydream, which is cool, because I wanted some time to sit at the iMac and do some reading and writing. Also, I cleaned the room today, which I think is important to mention because the room had gotten very, very messy.

decTOP

Well, I suppose it is time to let the world know that I’ve got the decTOP and it’s been set up, I did it last Friday at work, and I’ve gotten to know my way around Debian Linux and its apt system (which I manage using aptitude) fairly well.

For those who don’t know, the decTOP is an adorable little low-cost computer system. In a way, it’s what e-machines probably should have aspired to create. In another freaky way, it’s a lot like the technology eMachines was using in 1998-1999. It’s got a 366MHz AMD Geode processor, comes with 128mb of memory (Mine’s upgraded to 512) and a 10 gig hard disc. Aside from that, it has VGA graphics, AC97-based audio, and a usb Ethernet adapter, which works, although I would’ve liked onboard Ethernet.

Linux itself runs with acceptable speed, somehow it almost always does. The apache web server seems to dish out static HTML pages relatively quickly, but the real test of the decTOP for me is how well it handles an app like mediaWiki, which I use for the old ueberWiki which I’m eventually going to put back up. Unfortunately, it handles mediaWiki quite poorly, it currently lacks any decent caching software for PHP, and its slow processor makes it difficult to want to let it actually process every page on its own, especially if ueberWiki ever gets back up and starts getting hits again.

I suppose that that particular question is one for later, and if anything, it won’t be super-difficult to migrate back to a Mac or PC server from the decTOP if absolutely necessary, although I like the “uses almost no electricity” aspect of the decTOP. Plus there’s the whole thing about how its small size allows me to bring it from home to the university and back relatively easily, in comparison with, let’s say just for example, something huge like one of the surplusDells or the PowerMac G3.

For now I’ll move the ueberWiki over and if it becomes a huge problem, I’ll figure out how to move the ueberWiki back onto the iMac I suppose.

Snow, Life & Tech Updates

Late as I know it is, here's my blog entry about snow. I really loved seeing it the first time this year, it was way overdue for sure.

Much as I love the snow, sometimes it's got some negative side-effects. For example, until my shift today, there was a large chunk of ice on the ground in front of the East entrance of the South Learning Assistance Center. I love large chunks of ice, until they prevent the door from closing, or they prevent me from making it all the way to work safely. Another disadvantage of the snow is that all of Cardiac Hill is covered in the snow, and not just the snow, but the accompanying ice. My heart has jumped around more times lately as a result of the near death experience of almost falling over than for anything else.

Also worthy of noting is that today is Meaghan's last night as McConnell, and it's also her Christmas Eve.

Other than that, finals have been going moderately well. I'm expecting a few more Bs this semester, but with luck, some of them will be As. The BIO100 final I'm taking with Meaghan is tomorrow, that'll be fun. After that, I'm done with finals, and I'm hoping that my packages (the decTOP and the A21m) will be actually delivered tomorrow. I intend to bring the decTop to work on Friday, so I can start installing Debian Linux on it. Once I'm done installing it, I intend to attempt making sure that I can start installing MySQL databases and wiki information on it. I hope that UeberWiki and UeberCompWikiChan will transfer over easily, since those are the two biggest things I've been missing since I installed Mac OS X 10.5 on the iMac.