Things that might be decidedly odd…

New Laptop

I’ve had my 15″ G4 Aluminum PowerBook for almost exactly 3 years now, having bought it right when I was moving back from Germany in May 2004. It’s been a great computer, but I’ve hardly used it at all since getting my iMac last summer. The iMac is faster and has a bigger screen, but also is Intel-based as opposed to the PowerBook which is still PowerPC based. For most people this doesn’t make that big of a difference, but for me it means I can’t run Windows (VirtualPC is WAAAY slow) via Bootcamp or VMWare Fusion (or Parallels, but it doesn’t seem to work with my smart card reader). With my employer, I need to be able to run Windows to work from home. I also like having access to Office 2007, which is light years ahead of Mac Office 2004 at this point.

So I went out and bought a new MacBook, the higher-end white one. I considered the MacBook Pro, but these days I don’t really need a desktop replacement type system. I have a nice desktop iMac for that. Mostly, I need a laptop that’s small and light, that gets the job done but that doesn’t break the bank. Because I made the mistake of buying my iMac right before they started putting Core Duo 2 processors in them, my iMac is actually considerably less powerful than this new notebook (2.16GHz Core Duo 2).

All in all, it should be a nice little machine. With summer coming (the current warm weather will turn to shit soon enough for June I’m afraid), the idea of doing work somewhere outside my office is enticing. I wonder if the wireless in my apartment reaches over to the park across the street? There isn’t anything in the way and it’s literaly right across the street from my apartment. Hmmm.

I still haven’t decided on a name for it yet though. Names are important things for computers. Here are the names of my other computers that I can remember and a bit about each:

veroveraar (September 2000, I think) A 650MHz Celeron Toshiba laptop whose model number I can’t even remember anymore. Its name means something like “conqueror” in Dutch. I sold this computer about 3 years ago to my friend Beth’s mom who was looking for a cheap laptop at the time. It probably still lives on.

munja (Feb 2003) The dual processor Athlon (1.66GHz I think) PC desktop I assembled in Saarbrücken myself got its name from the Serbo-Croatian word for “lightning”. I was really impressed with how fast it was once I got it put together and working. At the time, I had just finished up a semester Serbo-Croatian class, of which I remember nothing except “Ja sam Jeff, Amerikanac iz Los Angelesa”. It’s sat in my closet for a good 6 months now, ever since I was able to get Windows running on my iMac. It was/is a great machine, but it’s very noisy, what with all the fans it has to keep those two big processors cool. I should probably do something with it or its parts, but for now it’s just gathering dust. The hard drive has tons of old music and movies I acquired back when I was in college.

rugido (May 2004) The name of my G4 PowerBook means “quiet” in Portuguese. I was so impressed how much quieter this machine was than munja when I got it that I named it as such. Not too long before this, I took a semester of Portugese in Saarbrücken and had a Portuguese-English dictionary lying around at the time.

weisserhai (July 2006) The name of my iMac means “great white shark” in German. It’s big and white, hence the name.

Spam Storm

Over the past 6 hours, I’ve gotten around 300 pieces of comment spam! Akismet is pretty good about catching it, but lately a lot more has been getting through. I’m not sure if that’s because Akismet’s just not as good as identifying this stuff or if there’s just a much higher volume of them in general with the same small percentage always getting through. Either way, most of the stuff that’s getting through surprises me. It’s mostly very obvious stuff with the names of specific drugs mentioned. Ugh. Maybe my version of the plugin is out of date or something.

Quick Update

It just occured to me that I haven’t posted in over a week!

I’ve been out of town most of the time, visiting friends in the Bay Area. Mostly, I spent time with Jason and Sarah, but I did also get to see Jeremy, Lisa and Chris. Besides seeing people, it was nice to escape for a few days from Seattle. Instead of flying like I usually do, I drove this time. On the way down, I spend a night visiting my parents in Oregon but on the way back I drove straight through. Originally, I had planned to come back on Tuesday. However, by Monday afternoon I had seen most of who I wanted to see and was eager to get home. I left at about 2:30 in the afternoon and arrived home at about 2:45am. Definitely a long drive!

I didn’t take as many pictures as I’d like to have because the batteries in my camera died prematurely. I spent a while looking for lithium batteries for my camera without much luck. Fortunately, I did get a few in before the batteries died and my cell phone takes decent pictures too. I’ve uploaded the cell pictures already (some via MMS at the time, others just this evening), but I’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow to deal with the ones still on my camera.

Here are some off the phone:

Cosmo and Honey swimming around in the creek on my parents’ property.

A shot from the front of my parents’ house. So green.

Sarah, Jason and I at the beach near Golden Gate Park.

View from the top of Mount Hamilton of CA 130.

Fun with Graph Algorithms

Sometimes the Metro trip planner comes up with some funny routes. While figuring out how to get from work to the mechanic to pick my car up (just scheduled maintenance, nothing big) this came up as an option:

Itinerary #2

Walk 0.1 mile NW from OVERLAKE TRANSIT CENTER to
Depart SR 520 Ramp & NE 40th St At 03:04 PM On Route ST 545 Redmond Express
Arrive SR 520 Ramp & NE 51st St At 03:07 PM
Walk 0.1 mile W to
Depart SR 520 Ramp & NE 51st St At 03:27 PM On Route MT 232 Bellevue Transit Center
Arrive SR 520 Ramp & NE 40th St At 03:29 PM
Transfer to
Depart SR 520 Ramp & NE 40th St At 03:42 PM On Route ST 545 Seattle Express
Arrive SR 520 & Montlake Blvd E At 03:56 PM
Walk 0.1 mile W to
Depart Montlake Blvd E & WB SR-520 OFF-RAMP At 04:12 PM On Route MT 43 University District
Arrive 11th Ave NE & NE 45th St At 04:24 PM
Walk 0.1 mile W to ROOSEVELT WAY NE & NE 45TH ST

Still confused? Basically it tells me to leave 40 minutes before I need to so that I can ride the bus the wrong way towards downtown Redmond, only to come back on a different bus line going the opposite direction in order to transfer back onto the bus I first took (except that it’s now in the right direction).

Webkit

Yesterday, I had lunch and coffee with Martin. I hadn’t seen him in a while, so it was nice to catch up a bit. As is often the case when we get together, the conversation turned to geekier things at various points. One of the more intertesting pieces of geekery that came up was about Webkit which is the browser engine originally based on KHTML used by Apple for Safari, Mail and a number of other places in OS X. He was telling me that you could download nightly builds and run the replacement Webkit framework through an existing Safari installation. This has the effect of exposing all the improvements made in Webkit, which means pretty much anything having to do with the browsing surface. So far it seems quite stable and even a bit snappier. Definitely recommended for other OS X / Safari readers out there. Just copy Webkit.app from the disk image to your Applications folder (or wherever really).

One of the more distantly disappointing things (by that I mean things that are disappointing but which I’ve never actually done, just might want to do some day) about my job is that in practice I can’t work on any sort of publicly released software projects outside of work. The fact of the matter is that virtually any kind of software falls under Microsoft’s business interests, so it’s just not feasible to work on what are effectively or clearly competing products. Generally, I don’t have a burning desire to do this anyways, but with a lot of planning/meeting stuff going on lately and very little coding, a guy can dream about fixing bugs again, can’t he?

News in NC

While browsing around this morning, I ran across this article on a gay marriage ban in North Carolina. Interestingly, North Carolina has been the only southern state (well, there’s also Florida but that’s sort of a grey area when it comes to ‘the South’) to not pass one of these yet, largely because the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature are solidly held by the Democrats (red presidential voting doesn’t always mean red state office voting). Now, many (probably most) of those Democrats would vote for the constitutional ban if it came up, but their platform has been to not bring it up because it distracts from other more important issues. It will be unfortunate if the Republican minority can through procedural maneuvering force a vote on this issue, because there’s almost no question what the outcome will be if that happens–both houses will approve it and voters will support it in the election.

The Wagon

After deciding a few days ago that I’m going to cut back on drinking and bars, tonight was my first real test. I went over to Daniel’s for the season finale of Ugly Betty. I didn’t drink at all but still had a really fun time. Plus, I didn’t go out to the bars afterwards. So I’m off to a good start. For now, I need to focus on finding true enjoyment in my life. I suspect that means more time with friends and less intoxicated by default.

More on Moving

On Tuesday, I helped Don’s boyfriend David move from his old place in Walingford to a new place in West Seattle. It was a short move but it just reminded me how much of a pain actually moving can be. I’ve been casually browsing craigslist for interesting places and room mate share situations, but I haven’t found anything worth following up on really. I’m in no hurry, so I think I’ll just keep looking now and then for something interesting. As much as I dislike my commute, I’m equally put off my moving to the Eastside. It’s so suburban and vacant–it really doesn’t seem like the thing for me. I’m still going to keep looking here and there though for the time being.

Scruffy

I’m scruffy today:

I kind of like this look on others. Sure, it’s sorta rough trade but that can be hot. Thoughts?

Moving?

Lately, I’ve been entertaining the thought of moving out of my apartment and into a shared housing situation. Originally, Robert and I had talked about renting a place somewhere on the hill, but for various reasons he wouldn’t be able to move until the end of the summer. Plus, there aren’t a whole lot of places that meet all our requirements (parking for two, laundry in the unit, place to BBQ like a deck, close to bus line for commuting to Redmond, large bed rooms, etc.). Mainly, I’d just like to save some money by having a roommate, but it would also be nice to have some day to day socialization.

Perhaps more significantly I’ve been toying with the idea of moving to the Eastside. I refuse to live anywhere not walkable though, which crosses pretty much everything over there off my list. I need to be able to not rely on my car for basic shopping (i.e., groceries) and getting to work. Downtown Kirkland is probably the only realistic option as I find downtown Bellevue too sterile and plastic. Downtown Redmond is too far away from everything except for work. It’s something I’m exploring. Prices are actually roughly comparable, although what you can get tends to be larger and nicer there than here.

I generally enjoy living on Capitol Hill, but I’m getting very tired of the bar scene here. The novelty has certainly worn off with an increasing number of outings feeling like a waste of my liver and money. Being within stumbling distance of the bars has always been one of the most compelling reasons for me to live here. The way I see it is that if I’ve already conceded to having to drive to the Hill, I might as well live somewhere on the other side of the bridge if possible. The difference between driving 3 miles or driving 8 miles is minimal (so long as it’s not during rush hour) as I already need to get in my car to go to the city center. Moreover, if I have to drive and find parking to go out, I’ll find myself only going out when I really want to as opposed to right now where it can sort of turn into a default behavior.

Looking for a new place to live is a pain though and finding roommates even more so. I’ve had good luck in the past living with strangers, so I’m not terribly worried about that. The main problem now is that I have a lot of stuff–couches, a TV, a dining room table, etc. Moving into a place that already has a furnished common living space isn’t really an option. I’d need to find somewhere I could integrate some (if not all) my furniture, which is much easier to do if I was moving into a new place with somebody else as opposed to moving into an existing household.