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.

Thoughts on Improvement

Recently, I’ve been faced with the challenge of improving. Improvement works in a funny way. At first, improving is easy, it comes naturally, and it feels weird not to have improvement. Shortly thereafter though, Improvement becomes something almost to be avoided. I’ve noticed this mainly because I feel like I may have been avoiding improvement.

Improvement avoidance comes in at a certain time, right after you get comfortable with where you are. Let’s take UTV62.com as an example. I had gotten into a groove with it, spending only few hours on it every week, to rip the NAULive! DVD and put the new episode on the web site, with the occasional dose of “removing old stuff from the web site because we’ve reached our quota.” Doing it this way is fine in some ways, it lets me focus on doing the NAULive! episodes really nicely, but as a result of having gotten myself into that rut, the UTV62 homepage has found itself in similar rut. It has become stale, when it was once fresh and kept moderately up to date.

Another area for Improvement has been my relationship with Megan. The problem here is that I’m simply not sure what the next step should be. I know that there is one, but what is it? On the other hand, what I have to wonder is whether or not that’s a situation that even demands improvement. If the relationship is fine where it is, then maybe I should wait on improvement until it becomes “not so fine.”

I’ve also noticed a bit of an improvement rut at the helpdesk. We spent the first half of the semester continuously improving, and now that it’s near the end of the semester, improvement seems impossible. I am tempted to say that I’ve even seen some people’s performance slip downhill, because they’re comfortable with where they’re at.

I’ve decided that this is one of the main reasons I am here at Northern Arizona University, taking classes, and going beyond what is required of me by joining student organizations such as UTV62, and having a job at the helpdesk. By doing this, I’m improving, and that’s what I need to remember when I am in danger of getting into an improvement rut.

Epic Photo Lab Night

(This is posted a day later than it was written)

Last night, I had what you might refer to as an epic photo lab night. I arrived at about 3:15 p.m. because I was luckily very early in getting finished with my BIO100L work, and then stayed until about 9:30. I printed more than five different compositions for the photography project, which was awesome because I needed a least that many. This way, I can eliminate some of the less desirable compositions.

I’ve decided that six and a quarter hours in the photo lab is a bit too much, and I’ve still got a bit of the headache from last night, and I even spent a good chunk of my time in the photo lab applying copious amounts of HeadOn.

Additionally, if I really wanted to, I could actually begin mounting the film-based photos today. Of course, I am going to wait until I get the digital photos back from Photographic Works, hopefully sooner than later, I need to find out how to start using them.

Another thing I need to do I start considering gifts for the various people in my life. I may print some extra photos for some of them, but I am not certain yet exactly what I’ll do.

Psychology of Colors

Today I took an odd bus ride, mainly because I didn't feel like walking in the cold from the comm building back to Gabaldon, in my flip flops. (basically, I keep running out of socks, I need to unpack some more it seems.) They've got a new bus for the NAU bus line apparently, and I think it either is supposed to be, or was at one point in time an airport shuttle. The door is in the middle of the body, instead of up front, or instead of there being two doors.

The most odd thing about it though was the eerie green color on the inside of the bus. They used fluorescent tubes that had a plastic cover with a green film, casting the eerie green glow. I wonder if there's a specific reason the manufacturer of the bus would include that, or even have it as an option. Do people who ride airport shuttles get angry? Does the green give them a sense of calmness added to the feeling of "going", as though to make them feel like they aren't late?

More Memory

Today I received and installed the new memory in the ThinkPad. As you'll recall, this is a Core2Duo/1.5 and it previously had 1.5 gigs of memory. It also had a GMA X3100 Intel integrated graphics accelerator. I dropped a 2-gig stick of PC2-5300 in, and this thing now flies. With an explorer window, OneNote, Firefox, Google Talk, XChat, Ruckus, ThunderBird and this word document, plus a bunch of system tray icons and the sidebar running, it's using just about 56% of the system memory. I quit using sidebar before I started using the Internet on this machine, and I am quite impressed with the ram usage on this thing now.

Needless to say, if there's one upgrade anybody is thinking of doing to their computer, let's just confirm that the best one to do is memory. I am even thinking that at some point in time, I would not mind switching to 64-bit Vista and putting another 2 gig stick in, for a total of 4 gigs, but it's not a very high priority for me. By doing 2gig+1gig, I miss out on the speed benefit of having matched ramwith integrated graphics, but I don't mind so much because of how well it's running now anyway. Although I'm tempted to think about the increase in my WEI score if I were to drop a fresh install of Vista X64 on here, with matched 2gig sticks.

In other news, I'm not behind on my novel. I'm also not ahead, but I'm not behind. In other other news, the flash kit, and some other things arrived for my camera. The lightsphere thing looks really cool, and the flash shines very brightly with the rechargeable batteries.

Spring 2008 Registration

Well, I've registered for spring 2008. I've got German 202, PHO382, History 102, Online VC251, and CIS120. I also want to get EMF252-4 again, and I would really like to sign up for PHO381, but VC251 was a prerequisite for that. I will ask an advisor or one of the photo faculty members if I can sign up for that anyway. Overall, it's pretty good and without the EMF and additional Photo class, I've got 16 credits, which is more units than I have this semester, plus I'm working on whacking out some more of those liberal studies requirements, which is always a good thing.

It looks like I've got almost exclusively Tuesday/Thursday classes, except of course for my German class, but that's earlier in the day next semester, at 9:10 instead of 10:20. I'll probably have to start going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up in preparation for 8am work or classes, and just do homework in the morning. Of course, I've promised myself that a very long time and it's never happened, so we'll see how far I get in regularizing my sleep schedule.

In other news, Megan and I went on a date last Friday to Olive Garden, and then watched a movie for a bit at her room. Then I worked Saturday morning, then Meaghan's barbecue was Saturday afternoon, then I actually got to sleep a bit Saturday night, had to work Sunday evening, went to Chili's with Megan, Glenn & Douglas last night, and worked again at 8am this morning. My week continues like this until this coming Friday, when I might be able to sleep after work. Ah well, I suppose it's better than doing nothing.

20,000!

Yeah, I've reached 20,000.

Night Over, Broken Phone

Today, I worked a shift for one of my coworkers, because I quite like the Saturday morning shift, and because I'm a nice person like that. It was great until I realized that it was so great because the agent phone out in the lab was broken. (Saturday morning works out in the lab a lot like the overnight shifts do.) I tried a different cable but it didn't work, so naturally it's a switch problem, or the phone itself is broken. I called Mel and got permission to try a different cable, but that didn't help.

Anyway, I'm back here in the office working out the rest of my shift instead of in the lab. It's not much of a difference because there are so few people here anyway, but it does make me say things like "wow, I can't wait for the lab aides to get here" which I don't say all that often.

On another note, Megan asked me to stay with her last night because of her scare from yesterday involving some creepy guy who likes entering random rooms. It was the first time this year I've slept on a low bed, and I do say that I miss it ever-so-slightly. Also of note, we can sleep on the same twin mattress successfully if we don't have any additional padding. And no, nothing other than sleeping happened. Well, we did watch "Meet the Robinsons" which is an amazing movie, just so you know.

Also, my NaNoWriMo wordcount is about 7,300 now. Pretty good I think, but I am totally looking forward to increasing that, instead of the word count of my blog.

NaNo Started!

Well, it's started and I'm already on-schedule! My NaNo wordcount is now, as per Word 2007, at approximately 1800 words. It's nice because I am busier this semester so I'd like to get as far ahead as I can. So far, the ThinkPad is holding up fairly well, considering it's running Windows Vista on only 1 gigabyte of memory. I had to restart it by force this morning, but since then it's been behaving great and I am well on my way to winning this year's NaNo.

In other news, Last night was Amber's Halloween party at "The Love Shack." It was great, and I went with Megan and Meaghan (although I was with Megan the whole time, and Meaghan was having more fun with our coworkers.) I'm glad that Halloween comes only once per year, because dying my hair, doing up the costume, wearing makeup, among other things. It was great fun and many people complemented me on my costume, but I maintain my happiness at not having to do that too often. Let's just say that undoing Meaghan's hair product involved ripping out about half of my hair in the shower last night.

Anyway, off to a great start this November, and so far I'm only about a quarter dead!