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 Posted March 23rd, 2011 at 10:24AM
Given that I let another unused domain name I own expire, and that I do not do as much blawging as I have in years past, and that I have redoubled my efforts in designing and maintaining several additional websites out of the kindness of my heart (and to get something of a portfolio started), I am beginning to plan for some changes to this here website, my little home on the 21st century range.
I want to reorganize this space to give more priority to a few sub-pages related to interests and my current activities, and dial back the significance of the actual blog stream, which you can see has slowed to a trickle over the past six months.
Long-term I need to learn how to set aside time for recreational writing, recreational meaning stuff I don’t necessarily get paid for (for this website, the MINI website, and the BMW / MINI newsletter).
I had a reaction to the nuclear issue following Japan’s quake and tsunami, but — just as I was railing against nuclear apologists who immediately jumped the shark and described all the redundancies that they said would make Fukushima Daiichi a non-issue — it was too early to be weighing in with an opinion.
Suffice to say, I do not think that burying nuclear molten caches in sand throughout the globe is a realistic and suitable option for dealing when nuclear goes awry. And the situation in Japan illustrates a distinct lack of premonitory skills among the world’s best minds who undoubtably strive to make things “fail-safe.” All the redundancies in the world planned for today’s and tomorrow’s nuclear reactors can not envision what will happen 10, 20, 50 years into the future — as today’s facilities designed in the 50s and 60s and built in the 60s and 70s demonstrate.
Posted March 11th, 2011 at 7:07PM
…but my EVO has been rooted around like a dirty pig today.
It was actually a very quick, painless, one-click process, and then I was staring at a boot-up screen on my phone, afraid to touch anything because none of the options were correlating with either of the directions I was following along. I used unrevoked 3.
I haven’t had much chance to play with things besides a few necessary new applications.
I’m posting this from my laptop at home. If I have a stable connection here, I might have more time to start dedicating toward wmc, the MINI site, and another WP-based joint currently in the works seemingly about to get the green light.
I let my surfingonarocket.com domain expire a month ago. I’m regretting that, in hindsight, as it could have been a place to do web work from.
Posted January 31st, 2011 at 3:12PM
I suppose when you get paid for some writing, the other extracurricular sort gets shafted. At least that’s what is happening around here. I’ve missed posting a month or two recently, after updating consistently for years. I plan to keep everything operating and hunky dory – just added some funds to my hosting – and get back in the swing of things as time allows.
So I’ve mostly just been working, and driving the scooby through some wicked January snows. Good time to get the AWD beast, but the Blizzaks are wearing down at their predictable breakneck pace and I’ve gotten the thing stuck in the driveway a few times.
Posted July 9th, 2010 at 11:57AM
I owned my 12″ PowerBook G4 since the summer of 2005. I still own it, and it still works, sorta.
But the poor thing finally took one nose dive onto the floor too many. I was working at the kitchen table (coolest room in the house during this mid-90s, heat index in the 100s heat wave) when the black-and-tan dog went into a trashcan, cherry picking a tissue to tear up. I jumped up, snagged the power cord, and down went the PowerBook.
Now, the thing seemed fine, besides being perhaps slightly more irregularly shaped than before. But after working awhile longer, I noticed the power cable wasn’t charging the battery. ruh-roh. On a five year old laptop (with a four year old battery, gratis because of that recall once upon a time), this is not a good thing. I had grown accustomed to about 30 minutes per charge, and being permanently tethered to a wall outlet. I tried an old power cord that I had, and it still did nothing.
I may or may not now have a job which kind of requires the use of a computer. So I said “F it!”, broke down, and bought a new laptop. What a difference five years makes. I bought from the Apple refurbished store, as that was where I picked up the PowerBook, and I had no issues due to that fact. You can stand to save a few hundred dollars.
I went with the 13″ MacBook Pro, with a 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb of RAM, 250gb of hard drive space, the GeForce 320M graphics card, etcetera etcetera. I very nearly convinced myself to go to a 15″ with an Intel i5 processor and graphics card with dedicated memory, but considering that I’m coming from a 1.5Ghz PowerPC, I honestly don’t know at what point I could justify the increase in computer power. (Probably the first time I sit down to do some video editing, but oh well. Really. The job I may have now doesn’t pay well enough for the 13″ to begin with.)
I also strongly favor the smaller footprint of the 13″. One thing about the 12″ PowerBook was it’s small size, and comparisons between the two on that subject are about a zero sum game. The MacBook is distinctively wider (wider screen = clearly worth it!), but it is also slimmer, top-down. I also appreciate the fact that the metal casing is simplified (not “one piece” exactly I see now, the bottom is removable) so that when I do start dropping it, it will not get bent out of shape as easily as the PowerBook. I’ll need to take a photo or two of its current status so that the world can see what I mean here.
OSX 10.6 is clearly a step up from 10.4, and everything I’ve done so far has been without fault. Fedex shipped overnight and I only received it yesterday morning.
Now I need to work on getting all the programs and miscellaneous other things back up and working on the new computer. I believe that I was able to save 90% of everything that was on the old laptop, transferring files to my external 500gb hard drive on the last remaining charge. At some point I need to either take apart the PowerBook and try to discern the cause for why it won’t charge, or source yet another charger to determine if it’s just that at fault. Either way, for now it’s deader than a door nail and laying on the floor by my desk. I’ve been tripping on it.
One quibble? I forgot when ordering that the new Macs don’t even include a telephone jack anymore. This means my pathetic dial-up at home is definitely on the way out.
To be replaced with a highly expensive cell plan and Droid smartphone. Oops, cat out of the bag for the next post’s subject? Unsure at the moment whether I’ll be going with Verizon, Sprint, or another company. They all seem prohibitively expensive, but for all of the useful purposes that a new Droid phone will function as, it seems like I’ll finally need to break down and get shackled to a 2-year phone contract. At least we won’t need to pay NetZero $15 a month for the worst imaginable internet experience, ever. I pray that tethering will have at least some semblance of being quicker.
Till the next one, faithful readers. (Yes, I know you all just arrived here with random Google queries, it’s O-K.)
Posted February 10th, 2010 at 2:36PM
This is an account of my weekend trip to the Netherlands the last available weekend during my semester abroad in Freiburg, Germany, fall semester of 2005. I’m able to piece together that it was December 9th through the 12th, although additional details beyond that get hazy. The retelling got long so it’s split into two parts. Here’s the second part. Note that no admission of guilt or wrongdoing in any territory should be taken as stated or implied!
It was the middle of December 2005 and I was wrapping up my time abroad in Freiburg, Germany. The following week was final exams, and I would be on a Lufthansa flight bound for the States immediately thereafter. I felt all of the tumultuous, conflicting emotions of a student whose time abroad was drawing to a close. There was relief of some end in sight, being able to see friends and family, and the simple joy of understanding the errant stranger that might ask what time it was. There was trepidation over leaving the former French barracks and surrounding neighborhood that I came to know as home, and the several dozen other exchange students in the program that I had, with varying degrees, grown fond of. I had emerged unscathed from the supposedly unadulterated ‘anti-Americanism’ of a Europe still reeling from Dubya – even given the thumbs up on a train by a Turkish immigrant after revealing my nationality. I had my regrets, but they were mostly of the ‘opportunities missed’ variety.
The study abroad program I entered – IES‘s European Union program – nearly finished my Politics degree and included a host of program-sponsored travel throughout Europe, concentrating on EU seats of power and influence. We traveled in groups throughout Europe from west (France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg) to east (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia). In addition, I had spent a free weekend in Dublin, leaving with the pukey smell of the Guinness factory clogging my nostrils and some disorderly Irish kid’s piss soaking my shoes. By the end of the program, my wanderlust was all but sated. There was a single item left on the proverbial bucket list for my then 21-year-old self, and that was to experience Amsterdam.
Now, one fortuitous result of the European Union has been the slackening of borders, to the extent where travel of persons and goods throughout the Union is practically unfettered by traditional political boundaries. Because of this, and because of some particularly enterprising fellow students who had taken a train northward earlier in the semester, I was already familiar with the exceptional products coming from the Netherlands’ coffeeshops and smartshops. In quick summation for those not aware, the Netherlands has had for decades the clear-thinking drug policy of decriminalizing natural substances you might find whilst walking in the woods (or desert, as the case may be). Any free adult is able to walk into a coffeeshop and purchase small amounts of marijuana, or the equivalent smartshop designated for psilocybin mushrooms, hallucinogenic cacti, or any of the numerous other specimen that might alter perceptions and which the Christian god purportedly gave man dominion over.
Being one not shackled to puritanical ideals of consciousness, I felt a strong obligation to blow some legal weed while giving the DEA the figurative middle finger. (The legality of so-called ‘soft’ drugs in Germany is a murkier area, much like the rest of Europe.) Sure, I had some other things planned for my trip to the Netherlands, but then I’d already read Anne Frank’s diary and heard of the unfortunate incident involving Van Gogh’s ear, so there were certain priorities above and beyond the museums and canals.
I booked a flight via one of the budget airlines and looked forward to the Amsterdam experience, still temperate mid-December. I would be missing the legendary flower markets, but giddily I could already imagine the picturesque canals snaking through the oldest de Wallen district of the city, the friendly prostitutes soliciting from their black-light-lit rented cubicles, and the now ubiquitous coffeeshops peppering the landscape.
This trip, however, was almost not to be. My status as rookie globe-trotter glaringly revealed itself after I mistakingly left my passport on top my bureau. I discovered this fact just short of arrival at Frankfurt airport, a two hour-odd train ride, and despite the sincerest regrets of airport staff, I had nowhere to turn but back. So back I went, arriving in Freiburg late at night, playing the dejected fool.
“Soul-crushing” would be proximately the correct term, but after weighing the pros and cons, phoning my parents for solace, and in consideration of the dirt-cheap cost of the original ticket and the (slim) likelihood of getting another chance to go, I booked a one way flight the next day and fervently held onto the passport. It was going to happen. I phoned the hostel where I would be staying and told them I’d be a day late. Even factoring in two tickets to Amsterdam, the cost of flying was ridiculously low, to the point where it doesn’t even make sense for an airline to fuel the damn planes. But they did, and so I went.
Posted February 8th, 2010 at 1:52PM
I’ve been actively plugging away with both this site and other projects in the past few days. The employment side of things is also looking rosy, so while posts might come slow over the foreseeable future, rest assured it’s not for lack of time in front of the computer!
I completed the promised site redesign here, switching to the Atahualpa theme but keeping the same color palette from the previous incarnation. Everything is running smoothly for the time being but I need to work on the archive page. I’ve been running a pretty sleek plug-in for displaying archives, but displaying all 700-odd posts on a single page is asking too much so I’m on the hunt for a better solution.
In related news, I’m currently working on an e-commerce site running CRE Loaded. While I don’t know if I’ll ever master that particular package or the concerns and issues of e-commerce security, its great experience to get under the belt. I’m making a small sum and its given me the crazy notion of monetizing more of the various coding and design work I’ve played with for years.
To that end I’ll be retooling surfingonarocket.com to function as a professional portfolio site. Eventually I’ll be able to point potential employers there for proof positive of various skills, from writing and editing AP style to coding and designing, Web 2.0-style. I want to become more productive to that end, finally putting out some original WordPress themes and completing freelance work of any variety. We’ll see how that goes.
I took the census entrance exam the other day and answered 27 out of 28 correctly. I couldn’t for the life of me determine what I got wrong, since I was able to work through the entire test twice in the 30 minutes they gave us and wasn’t uncertain over any answer. But then when I took the practice I filled out the incorrect bubble on one where I knew the right choice, so its anyones guess. Apparently 10 correct will get you a job so I’m not concerned enough to re-take the test, and hopefully missing one won’t preclude me from an office job or anything besides being an ‘enumerator’ (the people responsible for going door to door, and, apparently, getting guns pointed at them on a regular basis – according to a 2000 census veteran). Office job will pay better too.
The final word? Even without the certainty of employment I’m planning my first track outing of 2010 – it’ll be at Monticello Motor Club with SCDA, May 17th. There will be a MINI contingent and associated discount, and I’m officially pumped. My MINI is still tucked away in the garage (now completely enclosed with very nice electric garage doors!) but it’s just a tech check and fluid change away from being ready for the event. Well, not quite, but close enough.
Till later, intrepid readers!
Posted November 28th, 2009 at 1:33PM
Last weekend I was down in NYC, at a neat venue called Terminal 5 to see Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. Got to walk around the city a bit. For only being a few hours away, I should really get down there more often.
On Thanksgiving we made the most of it. I had some Quorn Turkey. They make some good meat products outta fungi.
And today after signing into Netflix to make sure they didn’t ship any more Red Dwarf (80s Brit humor – yes, it was a long shot) I noticed that Netflix had an announcement about streaming to the Playstation 3. I expected that ability eventually, and skipped all streaming features when picking out the new TV last summer. Now, whenever I’m finally able to hook my PS3 up to broadband, that’ll be really neat.
Also intent on adding a game or two to my collection this holiday season. What’s out?
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