This feels like a mega-spam entry, and I'm very self conscious about posting it, but I'm excited about this and I wanted to share . . .

I just published my third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I mention it here because it's all about growing up in the 70s, and coming of age in the 80s as part of the D&D/BBS/video game/Star Wars figures generation, and I think a lot of Slashdot readers will relate to the stories in it.

I published a few of the stories on my blog, including Blue Light Special. It's about the greatest challenge a ten year-old could face in 1982: save his allowance, or buy Star Wars figures?

After our corduroy pants and collared shirts and Trapper Keepers and economy packs of pencils and wide-ruled paper were piled up in our cart, our mom took our three year-old sister with her to the make-up department to get shampoo and whatever moms buy in the make-up department, and my brother and I were allowed to go to the toy department.

"Can I spend my allowance?" I said.

"If that's what you want to do," my mom said, another entry in a long string of unsuccessful passive/aggressive attempts to encourage me to save my money for . . . things you save money for, I guess. It was a concept that was entirely alien to me at nine years old.

"Keep an eye on Jeremy," she said.

"Okay," I said. As long as Jeremy stood right at my side and didn't bother me while I shopped, and as long as he didn't want to look at anything of his own, it wouldn't be a problem.

I held my brother's hand as we tried to walk, but ended up running, across the store, past a flashing blue light special, to the toy department. Once there, we wove our way past the bicycles and board games until we got to the best aisle in the world: the one with the Star Wars figures.

I'm really proud of this book, and the initial feedback on it has been overwhelmingly positive. I've been reluctant to mention it here, because of the spam issue, but I honestly do think my stories will appeal to Slashdotters.

After the disaster with O'Reilly on Just A Geek, I've decided to try this one entirely on my own, so I'm responsible for the publicity, the marketing, the shipping, and . . . well, everything. If this one fails, it will be because of me, not because a marketing department insisted on marketing it as something it's not.

Of course, I hope I can claim the same responsibility if (when?) it finds its audience . . . which would be awesome.

Simple tasks like switching between Firefox and Thunderbird are driving the load on my machine up over 4, and if I'm trying to run Amarok at the same time, it drives it up to 8. In fact, my machine frequently climbs up into the 7-9 range, bringing my apps to a crawl and frustrating the hell out of me.

So I've decided it's time to buy a new computer. I'm going to replace my aging Sony Vaio desktop machine (which runs Linux) with something newer that has more RAM, a faster processor, and a bigger hard drive.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure where to start looking. A quick walk through Circuit City a month or so ago lead me to believe I can get a rather "big" computer for as low as five hundred bucks, which further leads me to believe that if I were to buy something online, I can get a huge pile of RAM, a fast processor, and a big honkin' hard drive for even less.

I run Kubuntu, and use KDE as my desktop (though I occasionally switch to Gnome when I get bored) and I mostly use Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Amarok, and run PokerStars in wine. I'm looking for something that can do all of that without slowing my machine to a crawl.

Anyone have any suggestions on where to start looking?

Edit: I don't think I have the patience to build my own machine out of individual parts. I also don't have any real loyalty to any particular company or architecture. New Egg has lots of machines with AMD processors, and though I've always had Intel processors because more things seemed to run on x86, that's not as much of an issue as it once was, right?

I am absolutely stunned that Slashdot's editors would give credibility to a completely false story, pushed by a paid industry PR professional. As Rugrat said,

The "article" is not an article, but a press release written by an employee of a public affairs company.

"Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company."

For a website that spends so much time and energy combating FUD from Microsoft, and the MPAA and RIAA, it is baffling that FUD that was paid for and is pushed by the oil industry would make the front page here.

Come on, Slashdot. You can do better.

For the last year or so, I've been happily using Debian, with a mixture of sources so I was stable, but current, just like nearly everyone who uses Debian.

Then I tried to upgrade or something insane like that, using aptitude, and the whole thing went tits up on me. No amount of cussing, kicking things, or actual tinkering with the software could save my machine.

I thought about asking for some advice in the Debian forums, or on one of the lists, until I ran out of fingers in my entire family tree to count the times someone said some variant of, "Shut up, noob! Your stoopid and not leet leik I am! Go back to Winblows! Ha! HA! HA!!!1"

Yeah. Guess I'm not venturing into those waters, so I figured I'd just have to grab my network install CD and start over (luckily, I set up /home on its own partition a long time ago, so if I fuck something up really bad, I don't lose all my porn very important data.

The day I planned to reinstall Debian, I read that Dapper Drake had been released, and everyone loved it so much, they totally wanted to marry it. A friend of mine, who is wise in the ways of science and the air speed velocity of unladen swallows has also been singing the praises of Ubuntu for a long, long time, so I grabbed a Live CD to see what all the fuss was about.

Holy shit. What an awesome bit of work it is! It's the first Linux distro to find every single bit of hardware on my old Sony Vaio desktop machine, including all the USB ports. It looked great, too, and was the most "Mac-like" Linux I've ever used.

I realize that a lot of you are mocking me right now, but listen for a second: I'm not interested in hacking on my kernel to make sure something is detected during boot, or modifying all sorts of settings in a text editor just so I can make the damn thing find my camera . . . and don't get me started about CUPS. I love technology, and I love and fully believe in "free" as in speech, and I'm grateful for free as in beer. But also really into "works," as in just does. And on my machine here, Dapper Drake just works, and it's awesome. This is the Linux distro that I can take to my parents, and to my friends who are drowning in a sea of FUD, and convince them that they don't really have to be part of the Borg if they don't want to.

And ultimately, I believe that has to be our goal if we're going to convince people to give Linux a real, serious try as an alternative to Windows. We need to be able to tell them, with confidence, "Put this CD in your machine, and give it a try. I think you'll like it, because it just works."

(Cross-posted to WWdN)

The final table of the 2005 World Series of Poker started at 4pm yesterday afternoon, and wasn't finished until just after 7am today. I'm not sure, but I think that's a record. I'd call Pauly to be sure, but something tells me he's crashed out until at least Sunday.

Two qualifiers from PokerStars made the final table, and one guy, who qualified using free play points, made it to the final two tables, finished in 13th place, and won $400,000. Not bad for a freeroll!

Speaking of Pauly and PokerStars, we're doing a charity tournament on Sunday in memory of Pauly's friend Charlie Tuttle:

Charlie is from Clarksville, Tennessee and he's a twenty-six year old music enthusiast who loves hanging out and playing poker with his friends. Charlie was dealt a bad hand in life when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, which he has been battling this past year. A couple of weekends ago, he was hospitalized because two tumors in his chest pressed up against his lungs, causing him breathing problems. I don't have to tell you how serious his condition was.

Felicia Lee, who is fighting her own battle with cancer, knows several top professional poker players, so she got several of her friends to call Charlie: John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Max Pescatori, and Barry Greenstein to name a few. In fact, when Barry Greenstein won his bracelet in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event, he dedicated it to Charlie.

As Pauly wrote:

Situations like this one make you reassess what's really important in life. Las Vegas is a city built on greed. Poker is a game that often attracts some of the lowest forms of life. However, in the past two weeks, there has been a small group of professional poker players who have earned my respect and admiration. Amidst all the darkness and debauchery, I have caught a few glimpses of the bright side of humanity. The hearts of some of the biggest sharks in Las Vegas are filled with compassion.

Thank you, Charlie, for inspiring us all. We'll never forget you.

Charlie passed away on June 22 and his friends have organized a charity poker tournament this Sunday at PokerStars. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I hope to see lots of WWdN readers there.

Details:

SUNDAY, JULY 17th
18:00 EDT (15:00 CDT)
PokerStars
Buy-in is $20 — all of it goes to charity.
"WPBT Charlie Tournament" under Tourneys -> Private tab in the lobby

I'm sure this is just begging for vandalism (unless those douchebags have grown up and finally kissed a girl) . . . but there is an error on my Wikipedia page that needs to be corrected. I'd do it myself, but that's against Wikipedia editing policy.

I am not in Brother Bear. Willie Wheaton, Wil Wheaton, Jr., and Reginald Maudling (Mrs.) are all not me. I've tried to get this taken off imdb, but someone (well-intentioned, I'm sure) keeps putting it back, and Wikipedia editors (also well-intentioned) are putting Brother Bear back up . . . so we're in an infinite improbability loop, and my towel is getting dirty.

Would someone please correct that, and cite this journal entry so it doesn't get corrected back?

To those who are thinking about upgrading their hard drives in 14" iBook G4s, here are my experiences:

WARNING: WORKING ON YOUR IBOOK WILL LIKELY VOID YOUR WARRANTY, AND INTRODUCE THE POSSIBILITY OF PROBLEMS EITHER NOW OR IN THE FUTURE. THESE ARE MY EXPERIENCES WORKING ON MY IBOOK, AND I CANNOT ASSUME ANY LIABILITY FOR WHAT MAY HAPPEN IF YOU ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME.

Some advice:

1. Make sure the drive you want to use has been tested, formatted, and meets your needs (ie, is big enough, fast enough, runs cool enough, runs quiet enough, etc.)

2. Make sure that you partition your drive the way you want it, and use carbon copy cloner to make it bootable.

3. Make sure you have a large, clean, workspace, with plenty of room for tools, containers for innumerable tiny screws, some tape for said screws, your iBook, paper for taking notes, and for safely handling your old and new drives.

4. Protect your screen.

5. Have the right tools. You will need a set of jeweler-type slotted and Phillips-head screwdrivers, at least a couple of Torx and hex bits ( I have a full set of em, I think I used a 2.5 and a 2 mm, but don't quote me on it.) You might also want some plastic spreaders - I used some Bic pen caps, since the plastic is softer than my case. Don't even THINK about trying to disassemble your iBook without having a full set of tools available.

6. Download a full set of instructions. Print them out using a COLOR printer (I used a B&W printer, and couldn't make out the spots where the guy had highlighted screw locations using blue and red dots...) Also, note that there were DIFFERENCES between the diassembly process described by the author, and my iBook - notably, there were NO screws underneath magnets under the keyboard - I wasted 20 minutes prying both of them out with an x-acto knife before I realized that there was nothing there.

If you are at all afraid of:

* Scratching or breaking your screen
* Frying the circuitry of your iBook
* Losing critical screws, springs, or accidentally bending RF shields permanently out of shape or tearing them
* Completely frying your drive or breaking critical cables
* Totally violating your warranty
* Cracking, scratching, or otherwise disfiguring your case


DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS MODIFICATION - TAKE YOUR MACHINE TO AN APPLE AUTHORIZED RETAILER AND LET THEM RUN THE RISK OF HOSING YOUR MACHINE UNDER WARRANTY.

Seriously folks, it took me 1 and 1/2 hours of careful disassembly before I even got to the point where I could take the old drive out. You have to:

1. Take the feet off, and remove a bunch of screws (using your hex driver, and jeweler's screwdrivers), and carefully separate the lower half of the case from the upper half of the case. The two halves are held together with very high-tolerance plastic connectors, and you DO NOT want to take the chance of cracking these. Obviously, you want to have unplugged everything, and removed the batteries before even unscrewing anything. When you remove the bottom half, you need to either remove the springs that go where the batteries go, or tape them in place to keep from losing them.

2. Remove another bunch of screws (and like Sony equipment, the damn things are everywhere, and of different lengths and types) and remove the bottom RF shield.

3. You now have access to the bottom of the logic board and the screws you will need to remove the top part of the case. This is where you start running the risk of cracking your screen. You'll need to remove a select portion of the screws (including three that intersect with the optical drive entry), flip the iBook over, open it up, lift up and REMOVE the keyboard, remove the Airport Card (if you have one), remove the cover for memory, unscrew more screws holding parts of the shield under the keyboard, and then CAREFULLY lift the upper cover off. You must also keep from accidentally tearing cables and leads that are taped in place (you have to untape some of them to remove the cover.)

4. Congratuations. You now have access to the UPPER RF shield. You now have to unscrew more screws than you can count, and keep them in the right places, since there are more screw holes than screws, and you don't want to put the screws back in the wrong places. You also have to keep from bending the RF shield, since the alloy it is made of is incredibly brittle, and will likely tear if you bend it back and forth too much. Oh, did I mention that the upper RF shield is made in one piece, and that you have to remove the WHOLE THING before you can access either the optical or hard drives?

5. With the RF shield off, you now have access to the hard drive. Unscrew 4 screws, lift up the drive, remove the runners, carefully unhook the drive from the ide cable (not easy, the ide cable looks incredibly fragile, and the ide connector is a 1/16th thickness board which I guarantee you will snap if you exert any degree of force) unscrew the runner attachment screws usng your torx driver, attach the screws to your new drive, put the runners on, put the drive in, screw the 4 screws in, and begin reassembly.

6. Put the top RF shield back, and screw many screws back in. Reverse the disassembly instructions, and put all the many tiny screws back in the right places without losing any of them.

7. Put both halves back together and finish reassembly.

8. Test drive by booting. If you have problems, DO NOT ZAP PRAM, instead, use the graphical open firmware boot command to see what drive partitions are available for boot (hold down option on boot.) I spent an hour in dispair after I assembled my iBook (I tested it throughout with no success) before realizing that the boot process was fubaring because I had a non-booting unix partition as my first partition (I had set it up that way so I could install Linux.)

This omission manifested itself as a hang at boot which messed up the screen after I zapped PRAM, which could easily be interpreted as a logic board error. Why was I so panicked? The error on boot even kept me from booting off of my recovery DVDs, so my iBook was effectively dead. Good news, it wasn't - which I realized when I booted into Open Firmware, and everything looked OK.

Just to give you a timeline of how long things took, I started working at 8pm, and didn't stop until 12 midnight. This is definitely not a project for the faint of heart.

Here's a tip. If you value your iBook, have this process done by a professional. If you're a professional with time to spare, and the right tools, more power to you. Most iBook owners will not fall into this category, and will be FAR better off having this mod done by a trusted authorized service department.

The iBook was NOT designed to be disassembled by end users. That much is clear. Even experienced hobbyists will be challenged, and will likely put some nicks into their case during the disassembly/assembly process. If you try this mod, you might just end up with a dead iBook and a blown warranty. You have been warned.

Hi folks,

Well, I've completely converted to SlashChick.com. I was holding off since I didn't have the "put your email address here to receive updates" box, and I figured some of you would forget about me without the /. message system to remind you. ;)

Now that I've added that (and there's an RSS feed link on the right sidebar too, in case you want that), I think I'm all set to begin my journey over there! Go check it out, and don't forget to set up the RSS feed or enter your email address so you know when I've posted.

See you on the flip side!

-Erica

There are a few more entries on SlashChick.com that you might find interesting, including how I'm doing since recent things happened and a few more things about IBI.

Go read it!

Mostly a bunch of little contracts that I don't have time to finish. Anyone game? Email/AIM me.

I've posted my first blog over at SlashChick.com. This will be my new home for blogs. Right now I'm trying out Wordpress, which looks like it will fill my needs quite well. (More on blog software on the new site.)

I'll come over here and post whenever I put a big entry up there, but you'll have to comment over there. Leave me feedback there as you wish.

I've decided to not use Slashdot to post personal journals any more. Oh, sure, I'll still post business updates, etc. But I need to move to a blog system where I have control. A friend of mine recently came to the same conclusion, and now I understand why. He, too, posted personal things to his journal and received a few astoundingly negative comments. Sad, too, because his journal entry, My Inner Bush Voter, was one I shared with several friends as something I thought was a great example of a journal. Even if I don't agree with everything he says in it, I still think he did a great thing by coming out and saying what was on his mind, and I respect him greatly for that. (Just needed to say that.)

Many of you have been asking about the comment that caused me to delete my previous journal (deleting a journal is something that I've never really considered in the past, btw.) I still don't know who wrote it. Either it's someone who knows me really well or else I show a lot more of myself in these journals than I ever realized. The comment bothered me because it was clear that although the person who wrote it loved and respected me, he was also upset with the choice I had made, and went into several details. I write this to all my friends, real life and virtual: If you have a problem with me, please say it to my face. Don't write it anonymously in my Slashdot journal and then not own up to it. I may be mad at you for saying how you feel, but as your friend, I do understand and respect your position, even if I don't always agree with it.

I know whoever wrote that is probably reading this. Please call, email, or IM me and tell me who you are. I want to talk to you.

Yesterday was one of the roughest days of my life. I had dinner with my best friend / on-and-off-and-now-off-permanently-boyfriend of 7 years. He said he could no longer be my best friend.... it was basically hurting him too much to continue to be emotionally invested in my life. We were both crying by the end of dinner. I was already emotionally wrecked, so I said I couldn't deal with that right now but I respected his decision, and shoved that away in my mind to mull over later.

I got back from the overly emotional dinner to find that comment in my /. journal, which caused me to lose it again and end up crying my eyes out for about an hour. I deleted the entire journal entry. Those of you who know me well had already read it, anyway, and that's all that mattered.

Then, I figured I'd go for broke, since I was already dealing with too many things, and say goodbye to C, as well.

I already knew he was gone when I woke up this morning. I'd awakened earlier with a tremendous amount of pain. When I finally fell back to sleep, I woke up again a couple hours later knowing that he was gone without him even having said anything. He read the goodbye email this morning, and said the words I never wanted to hear, but that I knew I'd hear anyway. He said "thank you."

I've lost a lot in the past 24 hours. My best friend (which I guess I knew was going to happen anyway; you can't heal from a long relationship while still talking to the other person every day.) My lover, who is gone as well. Now it's just me again.

It will take a long time to heal from all of this.

So I find myself today sitting at a Panera in Nashville, TN. How I got here is a long story which I will perhaps save for a later Slashdot journal. Anyway, having not been to Nashville in many years, I came to this particular food establishment since it has free Wi-fi and I have about 3 or 4 hours to kill. I figured I might as well kill them in style by going to a place with free Internet access.

It has been a long time since I've been to anything resmbling the South. (I do not count my parents' house in Indiana, although close, to really be the South.) Living in California, you tend to forget that there are more places in the country than 1) California 2) Arizona 3) Oregon 4) Washington 5) Colorado 6) Texas 7) Nevada (only included for recreational purposes) and 8) New York City. Most of the time, since you have a good 5-6 hours of driving before you can even get out of the state, it's easy to forget that there are actually parts of the country where most people are white and speak English as their only language.

Panera is a lunch joint that offers an entertaining cross-section of the people from the South. Most people are white and relatively well-dressed; they're on business lunches with others. The food is very American; I consider American food pretty bland at this point, unfortunately. If this were California, every sandwich would have bean sprouts, tofu, and/or avocado and weird mayo. I sort of miss that. Here, I get a roast beef sandwich and it's just that. No strange mayo ("garlic herb", anyone?), no sprouts to pick off, and no avocado option.

The people are also fascinating. Here in Nashville, from my (admittedly non-Southern) viewpoint, there appear to be two types of people: those who relish their Southern heritage, complete with the country twang that always makes me giggle, and those who are trying desperately to prove that they aren't really from the South. Listening to conversations, there is often a mix of the two. Older people seem to be okay with the accent. Younger ones struggle with it to a large degree... you'll hear it slip out occasionally, but they're really having a time trying to pronounce things without the accent. It is definitely fun to watch.

I should probably get back to work so I can at least get somewhat caught up before I leave. I'll try to write more as the next few days go by; it should definitely be one of the most interesting weeks of my life.

This is the serious journal I wanted to write earlier. The Treo problems sort of blindsided me, but I've been meaning to write a serious journal for a while, and this is as good a time as any.

My life is a mess right now. Not totally a mess... I mean completely chaotic. Things are changing so quickly and I'm so busy that I barely have time to sit down and think about anything before I move on to the next item on the agenda. I mean, FFS, I still have moving boxes in my house, and I moved in late August. This is a problem.

On the other hand, since things are progressing so rapidly, I feel like I've grown a lot in the past few months. In particular, my week at IBI completed a huge growth cycle for me. In that 7 days, I grew more than I could in a year or more without IBI (both personally and professionally.) In that week, I finished growing up. At one point, about 4 days into IBI, I looked in the mirror at my hotel room (there was no one else around at that point) and realized I'd done it. I walked into a place where I knew absolutely no one and I walked out having met several lifelong friends, many of whom I've stayed in touch with (I've already gained 3 customers from IBI, as well as a business partner.) I have talked on the phone, over AIM, or over email with at least one person from IBI every single day since then, and I'm starting to realize that IBI will be a huge part of my future (I'm already planning to go back in December.) But for me, just knowing that these people who had no preconceived notions of me, who I was, where I came from, or what I did for a living... these people are now my biggest fans and supporters, and I theirs -- it's such a powerful thing as to be almost indescribable. On top of that, to know that I was the person who brought that home -- who convinced them that my company was worth investing in, being a customer of, or working for -- that's incredibly powerful in and of itself. It shows that I believe in myself and am confident enough to make other people believe in me.

That energy and confidence from IBI has settled into my heart as I've slowly begun to realize that I am an adult and that I can completely make it on my own. My heart has turned from an argument/war zone/conflicting place to a Zen-like garden of "if it happens, it happens, and if it doesn't, that's okay too" mentality. I used to push for things so hard, even if they weren't right. Now, I know that if something is right, God will make it happen. If it isn't right, that's okay too, and there was a reason for it.

I broke up with my boyfriend last week. We'd been dating on and off for nearly 7 years. (!) I think we were at that point where we realized if we took it any farther, we were going to have to get married, and getting married wasn't right for us for whatever reason. So we broke it off. It wasn't easy, and I'm still recovering (one big reason why I'm putting the brakes on any new relationship that develops -- I don't want to have a rebound, and I need some time to heal and think about all of this.)

Inside myself, I have found this fragile, but growing, Zen garden of peacefulness. It's great. I smile more now. I still worry all the time, but I am slowly getting over it. I have more self-confidence and a little less shyness about meeting new people.

There are still big mistakes from my past. (Who doesn't have those?) But those are being muted by my future, where I will try to make better decisions and learn from my bad decisions. My company is doing well. My life, though way too hectic for my newfound Zen preference, is generally moving in the right direction. And, for the first time in my life, I can say that I truly love who I have become.

~

I bet the title scared the crap out of some of you. (There are no less than 5 of you reading this journal who want to date me.) But that's okay... who needs men when I have a new Treo 600? :D

I went to the Sprint store today in Campbell and gave the girl there a good sob story about my poor Treo and its untimely death. My friend (after examining the dead Treo's butt) finally figured out what the real problem was -- I'd shorted the power connector out. Actually, some pieces of the power connector should be inside my car charger, because they were certainly no longer on my Treo. (I can exchange the car charger as well; I'll do that later today.)

Whatever pins I had damaged on the power connector were apparently critical to the operation of the Treo, so it decided to become a paperweight. The girl in the Campbell store was very friendly, and after establishing that I hadn't dropped it and that I'd owned it for less than a year, agreed to exchange it for free. So my friend and I drove up to the Sunnyvale Sprint store (location of the nearest working Treo 600) and I got a free refurbished Treo. My new Treo is sitting happily beside me, blinking its little green light. I haven't tried syncing it back yet, but I will once I get home later today. So a happy ending for all... there's a new man in town for me!

Edit (after reading comments): All 5 guys mentioned above have met me in person at least once.

One more edit: All data has synced up happily to the new Treo and I am now getting to know him better. Seems to be a smooth transition, all in all.