After much hassle with FedEx the Mac mini showed up yesterday. The box it comes in is smaller than any desktop I've seen other than the Cappuchino that I never use.

I plugged everything in and it worked as expected. I began to see the beach ball quite a bit though when multi-tasking, so I decided to go ahead and buy a gig of ram for it.

Luckily, MicroCenter is about a 10 minute walk and a 4 minute drive away. I grabbed the ad at the door and saw that they had a gig of PC3200 for $139. This was a steal. When I finally found it though I was upset. It was a "kit", which wasn't mentioned in the ad. This means that it was actually two 512MB sticks. Only one slot in the mini, so I got a gig stick of PC3200 for $199. The mini takes PC2700, but I've seen rumours that it doesn't take all PC2700. Plus, the PC3200 was cheaper.

I then went to the hardware store since I don't have any puddy knives. They had one type that was thinner and a second type that was thicker but had a sharpened edge. I bought two of the thinner ones, since my experiements with a razor knife had shown me that it wasn't easy to get anything in the edge. Maybe the sharpened ones would have worked better, but they were pretty thick. Anyhow it is not easy to open the thing. It took me over 15 minutes, and I can't say that I didn't leave some little marks. I don't think anyone would notice, but I did. Having two knives made it easier, but once you get one in one side it is hard to get anything in the other side.

I finally got it open and popped the memory and put the new stick in. It works fine.

My first project is going to be writing an OpenGL based music visualization program with a twist. It will actually make a movie out of the visualization that can be written to a DVD. Also, it won't suck the way many visualization programs do. It will actaully react to the music rather than spraying color on the screen for no apparent reason.

Oh, I forgot to mention. No iWork. For some reason I thought it was included, but it has AppleWorks instead. Too bad. I was looking forward to trying out Keynote.

This has been mentioned by others. It has happened to me before. Yet I will complain anew!

FedEx was supposed to drop off my Mac mini today. Instead they left a note on the door. No ringing of the doorbell mind you, just a note on the door. I was home, waiting for it. Why can't they ring the bell? Is it that hard? I called less than ten minutes after the note was left and asked them to come back. They said they would. They never did.

There is now a big note on the door with an arrow pointing at the doorbell.

I have only bought two computers myself. I certainly didn't have the cash to buy the Commodore 64 that my dad brought home when I was in 3rd grade. This is a bit strange, given that I am one of the bigger "computer nerds" that I know. I have a CS degree and I work for big blue. Anyhow, back to the story.

I bought an Apple Performa 614 in college. This was because I was sick of going to the CS lab to do assignments. I wanted to program in my dorm room. Of course it took about 45 minutes to compile anything with only 8 megs of RAM, so I went to Fry's and bought a 16 MB stick, to bring me up to a total of 24 MB. No more thrashing, compiles took mere moments. That computer stayed with me through college and then I gave it to my brother so that he could use it in college, since it already had the software he needed. Even though the Performa line is looked upon now as the dark days of the Mac, I look back on it fondly. They might have been coasting on inertia then, but the foundation of quality that had been laid before carried through, at least in my mind.

I then defected from the Mac camp and bought parts to build my own Celeron 300, which I occasionally overclocked to a magnificent 500 MHz. Why did I defect? Well, mostly because I could cheaply put together a machine that had a 3D card. This would make it easier to improve my 3D asteroids game.

That computer is still running, but doesn't see much use. I get a new laptop from work every few years which has killed my need to buy a fancy machine of my own. Of course I occasionally have wanted to go back to the Mac camp, at least for personal use, but I never had a good excuse, and I while I've had the money to buy one if I wanted, I was never quite able to justify it.

Why am I writing this? Because I just ordered my third computer, a mini Mac. The price is too good to ignore, and I admit that the design impresses me. They lowered the price to the level of impulse buy and they hooked me. Now I just have to find a cheap 1 gig stick of RAM somewhere...

I haven't written in here for a while. It's been due to be so bloody busy. Some external reviewers came through and shot the project full of holes...the exact same ones I yelled about before.

At any rate, my wife and I have selected a name. IDK if it'll stick. The first name is not common, but not 100% rare either: Aurora. It was on my list initially. However, then my wife rejected it. She searched through the names for some time in a book and online. She then got bent on finding a name through literary sources. She remembered an author she loves - George Sand - and looked up her - yes, her - real name. Aurore was one of them. Aurora being the yanqi equivalent, we went with that.

The middle name is more of what I am concerned about. That's 'Devika'. Aurora Devika sounds very good together. However, Devika is from Sankrit and means 'little goddess'. The reason for settling on that is that my better half's mother called her and her sister something like that as a pet name, but derived from the Russian word for 'girl'. My better half spells the nickname as 'devike'. My worry is that Devika might have some funky secondary meaning that might make people snicker. It seems a common enough name in India, but...any /.ers found or know of anything like that?

PS. Neither of us are Indian in descent. I'm pasty western European: Italian, Scotish, German, Irish, and English. My wife is Ukrainian and Russian.

PPS 12 weeks to go.

Soul sucking first. Then read here. This is Chen of Cray fame that produced the XMP and YMP.

Let the wildness of an American Presidential Election begin. God grant that it goes well and smoothly. May the best man for the job, whether or not I like him, win the post. May God grant that the election ends this day too. Lord have mercy on us if it ends up in the House.

I'm not really religious, but right now, I think praying is not necessarily a bad thing. Not because I am asking for intervention in the election for a candidate, but rather I am asking for this to be a quick and painless for the country as possible.

We started a wiki forum out of discussions we had usenet groups. I started hacking up the climate code for a simulation of a terraformed Mars. I asked people on usenet what they thought predictions that the sim would show. I've started guessing myself, but...we shall see. I'm hoping by posting here I can get more people involved with the discussions and contributing to the wiki.

If you think our presidential election is nuts. Go take a look at the Ukrainian one. Poisonings, attempts to kill each other by running the opposing candidate off the road, and more. One candidate wants tighter integration with Russia. The other wants to take Ukraine into the EU. Both men are sleazy b@$+@rd$. My hope is that the Ukrainians might finally find some peace from within the EU instead of under the Russian boot. It's not the ideal situation, but my wife says that the Russian lover (and she spits as she says his name...well, almost. She's too much of a lady for that) will win cuz the ua.gov is supporting him as Kuchma (I *WILL* spit) has all but annointed him as successor.

Baby news: feisty baby girl. Moved like the dickens away from the ultrasound. The nurse-tech kept chasing her all over. My wife was ticked cuz the nurse had to push down a lot. Due date is March 27. My wife realized how much she has put on weight wise. She tried to put on a dress that was too big before...it was far too small to even zip. She's rather upset!

Too bad you can't put journal entries in multiple sections. Ah well. Macht nichts.

It's a 'rah-rah-rah' from the upper management for IBM.

*shakes head*sighs*

Look here.

In this journal entry pudge and jamie trade barbs as usual. I don't agree with much of what pudge says, but I think his positions are well thought out and well explained. He also is actually willing to point out when Republicans lie! Shocking I know.

I modded two of jamie's posts in this journal entry. I hit this one with a troll mod and this one with a flamebait mod. You tell me if the mods were fair. I did them mostly because I don't think jamie is able to present a point in a civil manner.

I look at the discussion tonight and suddenly those two posts, and only those two posts are modded as informative and insightful. Tell me if either of those mods are fair. Interestingly only three of the 54 posts under that journal have been modded at all. Those that I (and jamie?) modded and one other. How likely is it that jamie modded his own posts back up?

I ended up talking with a physicist friend of mine not too long ago. He's a political leftie. Actually, he's a strongly leftist type. He was one of the physicists that signed the statement back in the 80s stating that SDI wouldn't work. We often disagree. However! We both acknowledge the other as very intelligent and that the other can believe what they like w/o it offending our friendship at all. Out here in Berkeley, I really value that: its very rare even among the educated. Politics is often like a religion here. A mutually exclusive evangelical religion at that where members of differing opinions are damned, DAMNED I TELL YOU!!!

ahem.

At any rate, my friend is leaving where we work for a year - at least - to work higher up in DOE. I lament this. Big time. He'll be coming back into town periodicly, but he'll be wanting to spend it with his wife - who ha a job out here and can't just pack up - so I'll not be seeing him that often. We'll write, but our free flowing political banter sessions are going to be not so common. If not extinct.

Our topic of discussion, when we talked, was about the oil shocks in the 1970s. I was literally a mere babe, while my friend was in college. I asked him, "Why didn't the Boomer Generation, which was so politically active in the 60s, take up the call to get rid of oil in the 70s?" After all, it was rather obvious even then that oil ist nicht gut fur das klima (the environment) and the if the Boomers wanted to avoid ever getting into another fight on foreign soil, it'd be best to end our dependancy.

He said that he considered it a major failure too. He felt that it was the environmental groups that went too far left (from him that's an ouchie) and made lots of radical commentaries that proved to be really, really false. He felt those groups hijacked the discussions and made everyone else throw up their hands and walk away.

I guess that makes sense. The extremes always tend to hijack discussions in almost every other forum. Here too I can see that. However, it seems that the extremes kept this discussion hijacked even after the extremes were proven wrong.

Now lets look at the situation we're in today. Oil is through the roof. When I go to fill my gas tank, we're verging on $2.50/gallon. If it keeps climbing I can see it hitting $3/gallon. Additionally, the oil crunch is getting set to kill the economy as is. I have a string of expletives about that and it ain't purty!

And yet...there is only a few tentative steps away from oil now. The hydrogen economy is putzing forward at the rate of a snail over arguments about /what/ will be generating the hydrogen. Nuclear (fission) is stalled over the Greens and NIMBYism. Wind is taking a hit from NIMBYism too. Solar isn't - yet - economical and suffers from a nasty manufacturing byproducts. Coal, while at least local, is nastier to the environment than oil: don't even get me started on the whole 'clean coal' nonsense.

Yet the problem remains through all this bickering. What are we going to do about dependncy on foreign oil? Especially in this uncertain era? It seems to me that both sides of the aisle would like to be able to agree on this one. For a moment, let's ignore the whole economic aspect even though that digs into all the pocketbooks of all people from rich to poor.

Let's look at the problem from another aspect, one that the left likes more: the environmental. Global warming is happening, folks. Like it or not. Believe it or not. You can believe what you like, but the universe doesn't have to keep a straight face. Oil (and other fossil fuels) is one of the major contributors to this. All those cars we drive here in the States help fuel that. If we were to transition all those vehicles off oil, it'd help in a nontrivial manner. So, I could see support from the left here.

Now let's look at it from the right's PoV. Oil is one of the driving funding operaitons, directly or indirectly, for terrorism. Every time we fuel our cars, money trickles down into the hands of the whackos from the Middle East. You want to dry up that source of funding? You want to be able to give the Middle East as much attention as we give Africa? Restrict what we do to humanitarian reasons and not even have to go station troops there at all? Me too. Let's turn off their tap as we turn off ours. Bankrupt and poor generally means pretty damn harmless.

Both the left and right have idealogical rationales beyond the economic pragmaticism. So why in the world won't we just freaking do it?

I am going to assert that it will have to be pushed by those other than the Boomer generation. Their moment of cohesiveness has worn off. Now they're starting to move into the comfy zone of "Don't you dare change my life." They're starting to become a part of the problem...especially with the fact that they make up 25% of the population. I am not saying that all of them are that way. Its just that aging makes you more conservative and that is going to be a serious problem.

I'd love to be able to make a call to arms. To declare, rise up Gen X/Y! Speak out you first Millenials! Those of you that haven't ossified among the Boomers, HELP US! We can make one of the greatest leaps in securing our safety, protecting our environment, and helping our economy grow. That's three birds. This is one stone. That's pretty impressive.

However, I'm but a pipsqueek writing in a /. journal, not a pundit or policy maker. Alas, I am a mouse.

Hear me roar.

This came through work's newsletter (warning PDF file). I find it interesting to think about. What do you all think?

An interesting link.

Namely, I and a lot of friends set out to enter into the Columbus 500 Space Sail Cup. We were all about 15 and 16. We called ourselves Team Phoenicia. We wrote up a proposal and submitted it. It really made no sense. The race itself was never properly funded. When inquiring about funding I did get a nice letter from Louis Friedman of the Planetary Society telling me what the real fate of the whole thing would be. I was sorely disappointed.

While I am very emotionally satisified with my better half and enjoy time with her I need something intellectually challenging besides work. Reading has been great, but I keep feeling lately like I should do something rather than just read about it. I'd like to either tackle a business or a take on some sort of technical project. I thought about coding something, but, ugh, I mess with puters all day at my job. I've thought about doing a business, but the ones that I have been thinking about are all outof my area of expertise or require long learning curves that while I can do it I don't have the credentials that are often desired in those fields. That means some serious recruiting. That means serious dinero immediately.

So, I've been thinking about resurrecting the whole solar sail project. IDK. Problem is that with a kidlet on the way time will be precious and it would be extremely nice to be earning dinero given the extra mouth rather than spending it.

hrm.

All right, lemme see if I can explain the bed I've made for myself feels like. It's not altogether pleasant. It's not necessarily terribly uncomfortable either. It's more a question of getting the role down right.

Y'see, early on when I was here, I ferretted out a "plot" by a rival to vacuum out a lot of dinero out of our program. I discovered it because I tend to have very good, honest, and friendly relations with our vendors. It was a major intel coupe and allowed us to stop the whole thing cold. It made me rather noticable very quick. What I say carries weight from top to bottom. I am not the expert on all things and haven't let that go to my head what-so-ever, but ideas, comments, and intel scoops tend to get listened to.

However, this down side. If I gripe about something, it gets listened to. This can be a serious problem. Before I could be dismissed as a relatively unimportant underling. Now when I say something, there can be shock waves.

One of my personality quirks happens to be that if I have a question, I'll ask. I have no problems even asking something that might be construed as a stupid question just to make sure I understand something. More often than not, it turns out to be helpful for everyone involved. However, it can and does cause heart ache if its the question everyone was trying to avoid.

I did this recently. Twice. Unfortunately, the second grenade that I pulled the pin on wasn't a grenade: it was a micro nuke. Or a hafnium bomb? It's caused massive shock waves: think death of Sauron in the beginning of LotR:FotR. It has drawn the ire of my boss, my project lead, and everyone else except my coworkers and the high muckety mucks.

In 45 I am going into a meeting that is to resolve all of this (for large values of the word 'resolve'). It's going to last from 9 am to 5 pm. It's gonna suck: not for the evil eyes being cast at me, but rather cuz I'd rather not sit and not get stuff done. I have file systems to break, kernels to hack, a paper to wrap up, and relationships to further with vendors. Y'know, important stuff.

Heute, however, I'm damned to meeting hell. This is the bed I made...:S