The Dignified Pen

Keyboards, revisited (Geek out time)

2012-01-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, I posted that I had purchased a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

Time to update with other keyboards I've tried:

Unicomp SpaceSaver PC

These are built at the Kentucky plant that used to make IBM Model M and later Lexmark Model M keyboards
This is a smaller model, compared to the original Model M molds, but uses the same buckling spring switch design as the Model M keyboards

IBM Model M

One purchased for $0.75 at a thrift store
Another purchased new in box, manufactured in Mexico
The classic buckling spring design

Realforce 55g keyboards

These use a thick membrane (compared to your normal membrane keyboard), a spring, and capacitance to drive the switch mechanism
Very quiet, and (in my opinion) wonderful to type on
I have tried both the 103 key and 87 key versions
55g refers to the force required to press the keys -- in this case, the keys require uniform force to actuate

I originally purchased the Microsoft keyboard in an attempt to reduce wrist pain I was had while typing. Later, I discovered that the pain was caused in large part by how I used my hands to operate a mouse, a trackpoint, or a trackpad. Moving just from the wrist, instead of whole arm movements, caused wrist pain. Keyboard choice, wrist movement was taken care of, had a small affect, but did change depending on switch type. (For me -- this is different for each person).

For example, most keyboards are membrane switch keyboards. These are cheaper to manufacture, and are great for the toss it and forget it mentality when they break. Unfortunately, the force required to operate such a keyboard is low, until the key clashes as it bottoms out, and finally activates. It would be like pounding the heel of your foot into concrete repeatedly, instead of letting your foot act like a spring to gently take the blow of landing on the ground. Your fingers can take a beating operating a membrane switch computer.

The Microsoft keyboard uses that same, very popular, switch design. Unless you know where to look, or what to look for, that is what most of your keyboards are going to use (and, I imagine, a great profit margin for the manufacturers for keyboards that cost a premium, but are very, very cheap to produce). So changing to the Microsoft keyboard did not provide much relief, and could aggravate wrist pain.

This is where the new keyboards above came into play, and I played with some different key switch designs. The Model M and Unicomp keyboards both utilize a buckling spring design. The force applied in these cause a spring to compress, and eventually buckle, activating the switch. The benefit of this design (and most mechanical switches) is that you can feel the actuation before you bottom out. This gives you an opportunity to slow down and let off, before bottoming out.

I liked them while I tried the Model M and Unicomp keyboards. They were my first mechanical keyboards, and great in part because they make a nice racket, and they can have a nice, crisp, feel as the switches activate. I have to admit that I think that the Unicomp keyboards feel a little "mushy" compared to the Model Ms, but I don't think that you will notice it when you use either keyboard for a decent amount of time. That said, finding a good Model M can be hard, as they are typically used, and overall the Unicomp keyboards are just as good, as they are made in the same plant as the Model M keyboards. Unicomp's customer service was great when I had to send a keyboard back for a malfunctioning '~' key.

Downsides to buckling spring keyboard include, when coming from a membrane type keyboard, your hands will tire fairly quickly, and they can be very noisy. Give using one some time and your hands will become stronger, and it won't remain a problem for long. Unfortunately the noise doesn't go away.

The Realforce keyboards are interesting, because they are a membrane switch, but the membrane doesn't activate the key switch in the same way that your typical keyboard works, and the membrane is thicker and more resilient. The keyboard uses a spring inside the membrane, which causes a change in capacitance between two small points under the switch, which then registers a key press. They also feel very different compared to a buckling spring keyboard, and don't feel much like a typical membrane keyboard.

The result of how the keys work is that you have a fairly smooth resistance as you press the keys. I think they're buttery smooth to type on, in large part because the resistance is so smooth, and because they don't bottom out quite the same as a typical membrane keyboard. Its like you get a nice gentle landing as you press the key to the bottom of its full movement. They also have the benefit that you can feel when they activate, before you bottom out, so that you don't have to crash all the way to the keyboard bottom -- you can let up once you've registered a key press.

I've settled on using the 87 key Realforce keyboard at work, because I didn't want to keep driving my coworkers crazy, and because it is a very, very nice keyboard to type on. I also don't miss the ten key, which means less movement toward the mouse.

One downside to all of this is that I have a lot of keyboards, that may never break.

Coming back

2012-01-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

I am importing the few posts I had in a WordPress blog I've had kicking around the last couple of years. I hope it sensibly imports, but being that I had to use a converter, I expect something to break.

I can't maintain two blogs; one is hard enough.

Testing an old account, playing with a new

2012-01-23T21:24:00.000-08:00

In setting up and playing with a new Google Apps account, I discovered a new Blogger UI (I'm way behind the times, I'm sure). Anyhow, came back here to see if I could enable it, and sure enough, I could.

I like it (the new UI).

Happy birthday

2011-03-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Son,

I know you won't remember this last year, or the next several. I hope, in any case, that I end up leaving an indelible mark upon you. I hope that you grow into a more confident man than I have yet become, self-assured, and full of the knowledge that your family supports you. I hope that my hugs today will give you strength for tomorrow. I hope that, ultimately, you know that you are loved.

I want to provide some mark, some means, for you to recall this time. I am not sure that I can offer much -- I can write about how you've grown (a lot -- you certainly seem to learn fast, and you get taller by the day), or how you already depend less and less on me (to a degree -- I want you to depend on me as much as you need to, as long as I am here).

But I know that the best thing that I can provide I already do daily. And so, when you are older, and today is forgotten and tomorrow is but a faint memory hiding behind mists of time, I hope that you catch glimpses of us together, me holding you up and holding you close, and know what it means to be my son, and hopefully the responsibility and fun that is being a dad.

Happy belated birthday, you mean the world to me.

Sleeplessness

2010-12-04T18:51:00.000-08:00

I am tired. I should be asleep, its way too early in the morning. The wind blowing outside kind of puts me off, I don't like it. I feel alone. And it makes the house cold.

I am unhappy with the cartoon profile pic for child abuse meme on FaceBook -- but my wife thinks its probably because I read something on Reddit that pointed out how stupid it is. She is probably right. Before the article, I thought it was silly, because I think most memes on FaceBook
the internet are silly. I do wish that people would take the issue seriously, though. Cartoons won't heal the wounds many children have from their elders.

Got a Christmas tree today. We haven't put it up yet. After getting my in-law's tree off their jeep, my father-in-law and I dropped ours off at our house. Very gusty winds made that interesting. The same winds that are now making the house seem very cold. The tree hunt was interesting. I watched our son, and held him when he woke up. I attempted to go find where everyone went seeking for trees, crunching my way up the path we parked near. That was hard work, and our son wasn't exactly thrilled to be out in the cold. Poor kid. I feel like we missed out on the fun of the tree hunt, because everyone went away so fast. Hopefully when the little guy is up and walking, we won't get left behind (or we can find a sled that will carry him).

I love my family. I wouldn't have ever guessed I would say that 10 years ago. I didn't think I'd be capable of being a good father. I feel that I've learned a lot in the last several years, and then a mega-ton in the last year alone. What love is, and what it is capable of. I think the biggest thing is learning to love and, most importantly, allowing myself to be loved. I still can be harmful, as I occasionally fall back to old ways, expecting the good to go away at a moment's notice. I wish I could stop that, and just live in the moment. Let the good be here now, and not worry about what happened years ago, or what might happen tomorrow.

I'm going to go sleep.

non-free firmware

2010-09-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

I recently learned that Debian considers Ralink RT2600 wireless chipsets as non-free, because in addition to the drivers, the card requires non-free firmware. OpenBSD consideres the cards supported, and recommends them, even with the firmware that isn't open. And Ubuntu doesn't give a care, and just installs both without question.

Goings On

2009-06-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

Just finishing up a week of vacation, which I have needed for quite some time. The early part of it was devoted to cleaning up around our home; I managed to get some weed whacking done (although, I must admit that we have too much grass growing around our house), and we cleared out a lot of old clothing and stuff we had sitting around in our bedroom. My wife ended up getting sick through this, so we didn't get as much accomplished as we were hoping to do, but I'm happy with the progress we've made.

We continued with our plan on going to the Oregon coast, specifically to Cannon Beach, and had a wonderful three days checking out the beach, tide pools, and relaxing. It stormed and rained fiercely on our second night in Cannon Beach, but not with the winds that seemed to reach inland. I spotted a lot of downed tree limbs around Beaverton on our way back home on Friday. Aside from the weather, we managed some beach combing, finding some smaller sand "dimes", as I like to call them, and saw a baby seal sunning itself on the beach.

Our only big disappointment was learning that the Tillamook Cheese Factory does not make mac & cheese daily, instead choosing to make it as a special item every once in a while. Which, for a cheese factory, seems a bit weird. I made it up to my wife by making her some extra-special home-made mac & cheese for her birthday.

Too Much Crap

2009-05-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

I believe that after a certain point, physical posessions begin to own you, instead of you owning them. Right now I feel like I own too much crap, and that it will take forever and a day to clean it all up. Part of the problem is that I haven't fully unpacked after moving back from college, expecting to get a job, and then a house. Well, I got the job, but the house is slow in coming, in part due to the prices of homes where I live, and in part due to the market.

So, my wife and I have a garage that has boxes of our stuff. I can't say the garage is full, which is good. We also have a back room full of stuff that we need to sort through soon. A large part of it is cardboard boxes, collected from when we moved from college to home. Another part is just stuff that we did not expect to have to deal with when we moved back home, as my mother-in-law decided it would be an excellent idea to clear my wife's stuff from her room, and turn it into a study or library, or something. Right now it mostly holds old furniture, and is largely unused.

It is hard to start in one place and make a plan to clean it. That is probably the best way to go about tackling clutter -- picking one room to make clutter-free, cleaning it, and the moving onto the next later. But I still feel sufficated from the sheer amount of stuff we have. I like to think I don't have much at all, which is to say, I don't have much I use on a daily basis. But when it come to the stuff hiding in the back room, it is like a silent monster, that only pokes its head out now and again, just to let you know it hasn't gone away, as much as you might like it to be gone.

A Dog's Life

2009-04-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

We recently watched my in-law's dog while they went on vacation. We figured that it would be a trying expereience, but we had no clue just how trying a dog could be.

First, some facts: the dog is small, under 15 pounds. The dog is old. The dog occasionally believes it cannot get up on the couch or climb stairs. And, the dog does not want to leave anyone's company, except to eat and crap -- do so, and she will yap and yap and yap non-stop, until you return.

So we've been pretty constrained in what we can do. For instance, it is hard to get out for an evening meal and just relax and talk, since we can't leave the dog home. The alternative is to go out for fast food, which is not the best alernative, and then one of us (usually my poor wife) dealing with the dog climbing and falling and scratching our lap.

If that wasn't bad enough, the dog has an occasional incontinence problem. We have now have a couch and chair sporting the fresh smell of dog urine.

It was more stressful than we thought. We knew before hand that it would require a change to our daily routine. But we didn't realize just how much. My wife found it hard to get work done, without the dog following her around, and looking sad because she didn't have a sitting mate. I found it hard to sit at my computer to type, since she likes to sit on people's laps as they sit at the computer. I tried to create a compromise, pushing a chair next to mine, but she just does not sit still, and is unhappy to be away from a person.

Definitely a spoiled dog. And all the more reason I say a cat would be better.

Technological Progress

2009-03-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

How much technological progress is currently locked away inside companies, kept secret as a competitive advantage? And, how much of that progress could be potentially useful for the greater good or further advancement of progress, as a whole.

For instance, I work with tools or technologies on a day to day basis that are potentially useful to individuals or organizations outside of where I work, and that I will miss once I no longer work inside the same company and no longer have the tools available for my use. And, to be honest, many companies have their own tools or techniques that they also keep internally, that others may find useful.

What happens when everyone keeps their tools to themselves? Does progress stop? I imagine that many tools, perhaps very similar tools and techniques, are developed in different places to do the same tasks. Some are better than others, but because various agents want to keep their tools secret, no one can take ideas from another (easily, anyway). So in at least one case, we have duplication of effort, that could be spent improving or developing another technology.

The patent system, to one length or another, was set up to give a monopoly on a technology to one person or company in exchange for sharing their development for everyone to benefit from. Once the monopoly period is up (or sooner, if they create an agreement to do so), someone else can take the same technology and improve it.

But patents don't cover reasons why a company or individual would choose to keep a technology secret, in part for competitive advantage. Opening up all secrets that a company has does not always make sense. Startups, as I heard recently, thrive on secrecy. They are intent on creating something new, and if they share it with someone else they could very well lose their edge to get their product to market first, and lose out on future benefits for creating their product (and have less incentive to develop further technologies).

In this light, it makes sense that not everything is shared. If incentives to innovate and create are removed, by opening all technologies for public review and use, I could envision a case where less development overall occurs, as one of the drivers for change, the opportunity to gain profit, is removed from consideration from the group developing new technology.

Therefore, I see a hazard in opening every technology up to public use, as it could very well lead to a slowing of progress overall.

Birds & Fiber

2009-03-22T10:54:00.000-07:00

The birds outside of my living room window are having quite a time flying and zipping all around. I believe it is the time of day where insects are plentiful, and I believe the birds in question are little swifts. They are little winged acrobats, flying on invisible strands, that pull the birds, forcing them to dart from place to place. It is easy enough to imagine.

It was another busy weekend, going into the big city to sell yarn this weekend. I helped my wife out, and I expected I'd be a grouch on Saturday morning, with having to wake up about an hour earlier than I am used to. But I had fun yesterday, chatting with my wife on the way in, helping her get set up, and then trying to help with purchases.

We found that her new credit card machine is the cat's meow, at least for proccessing credit cards. Last year she was using an old-school credit card slider, which was just cumbersome and hard to use. You need a good solid surface to stick it too, and those can be hard to find when you are at a yarn show and you need to make use of every available surface possible.

If you've never been to a yarn show, you might want to consider going once. Find someone you know who knits (or should), and take them. The amount of color is always fun, even if you're not a knitter, spinner, or crocheter. If you're smart, you will also find a pattern or two you like, and if you're slick, you can find someone you know to knit you a pair of socks and introduce you to the fine world of handknits. (Woolen sweaters are awesome on cold days).

Infestation

2009-03-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

We have an infestation of Box Elder bugs. If you were to go out our south-facing doors at just the right time of day, a shower of the little guys will come down upon you. They love to sun themselves on the south side of our house, and are upon occasion so thick that they can blot out the sun on our bedroom window.

Sometimes they make their way inside, and will do just about anything to find warmth. The bugs congegrate around lights, for instance. And I usually find at least one inside my computer when I perform my annual dusting of its internals. This isn't so bad, until you realize that our bedroom light and our upstairs living room lights are carcass collectors. Open lights, or lights that are fully enclosed are safe, aside from a stray bug crawling around the rim of the light shade. But our bedroom and living room lights are partially closed, and eventually build up quote a few of the poor bugs, dead after burning themselves.

That is just one annoyance. The box elders also will fly from place to place inside the house. While not terribly annoying (they don't fly often), they do have a tendency to keep coming back to the same spot. So, imagine flicking one of these guys off your arm, monitor, or wherever you don't want them to be. Within a minute, they will be back to say hello with their beady red eyes. Repeat two to four times, and they tend to get the hint. Come night time, they may crawl into bed with you, which can give you quite a fright when you also have spiders that are big enough to carry you off in the night. I've had a few nights where I woke, panicked and trying to get rid of whatever was crawling on me.

If you can live with all of that, they're not so bad. They're cute, in their own insect way, and don't attack humans or eat anything inside the house (unless they manage to find some tree sap in here). And they're not worth fighting or killing. Our neighbors hired an exterminator to come spray the little buggers off the side of their house. The exterminator was happy to do it, as we found out talking to him, as it was a paying job, but his work would not eradicate the bugs. Not without finding the host trees in the area and treating or removing the trees. So he got to part someone of their money, kill some bugs, and know that they'd be back again, careless of their fallen brethren.

So we leave them be. This is one battle we won't fight.

Writing Excuses

2009-03-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

I got some books on writing this weekend, to add to my small collection. I already had two books, and I keep telling myself that with the perfect setup that I will write more often. Then I tell myself that this journal is perfect, I'll write in it. Then I think that a particular keyboard or typewriter may help.

The fact is that I'm quite afraid to start.. I want some silent time, which I tell myself is hard to do. I come home from work in the evenings and just want to veg. I've thought about getting up earlier -- some days I actually do get up early for one reason or another, but instead of writing something of substance or wit, I surf the internet or check my email at work. Usually both, with the excuse that "I need to know the news", or "I need to know what's happening at work before I go in." Both are excuses, and fairly poor ones. "News" usually consists of reading "Reddit" and clicking on all posts that link to images. "Email" entails reading the "silly" lists I'm subscribed to at work. Any real email I need to be concerned about usually doesn't hit my box until 9:30-10:30am, unless someone else is up early, or I left an email in my box from the night before.

As for silent time, I'm sure I could honestly work an hour in the morning, or sometime at night. Although I usually spend my evenings watching TV while browsing the internet. The fact is I'm a total internet junky. I want to write? Browse the internet for inspiration, I say. It's really a ploy to avoid responsibility, or the possibility of boring writing. Want to program? Search the web for programming stuff. Three hours later have nothing to show for it, other than a handful of mostly usesless facts. And I mustn't forget the fear of being boring. That's what kills writing for me most days. I can't come up with a decent plot in my head, although I watch plenty of shows, play fun games, or listen to interesting books that have good plot and good ideas. Even if I wanted to stay with non-fiction, I feel like I haven't much to contribute.

Most of the time that I do write, I spend generating emails at work or working on internal documentation. Safe. Useful. Something I know that people need or want, and that, within reason, won't garner much criticism.

How do you start writing and enjoy it? How does a writer put away fears and excuses, and just get what they want to say on screen, on paper, in words?

I think writing in and of itself is courageous. You have to be willing to take criticism, both good and bad. You need to be willing to have your writing be read by someone who isn't you, who won't know exactly what you meant when you endeavored to put your thoughts into words. Finally, you have to be willing to shut the internal voice of self-doubt up, or at least ignore it, as you let words flow from your mind into your hands.

It seems like a very big deal to me. How about you?

A rare post

2009-01-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

We purchased a new couch after Christmas, but due to the awesome weather within the Gorge we haven't been able to have it delivered. Our driveway and road is a mess, so much so that we can barely get one car in and out, and our other car is still stuck. The weather refuses to cooperate, as it keeps snowing from time to time, or refreezing as it melts. I see rain is forecast for next week, so there is a glimmer of hope that we can get the couch soon.

While on break during a good portion of the last two weeks, I have attempted a FreeBSD install on my Ubuntu box, but after failing (again) to fully grok FreeBSDs ports and packages setup, I gave up on it and decided I didn't really want to play with Ubuntu again; I get tired of the impetus for upgrading all of the time, and rarely see any particular benefit to doing so.

We recently watched Priceless starring Audrey Tautou, and both thought it was pretty good laugh, as well as a good comedy. We're working on finishing the final season of Babylon 5, my new favorite TV series. I think it beats the pants off the likes of Star Trek for television SciFi.

Things to do

2008-12-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

Travel to Vancouver, BC
Travel to Banff, AB
Find another Lego set
Actually read the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide to completion
or, Unix Shell Programming
And finish The Book Thief

Winter

2008-04-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

Winter will not leave;
Cold wind rustles spring flowers.
Hope for warm rain again.

I has (forgotten) my blog

2007-09-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy. That's a good way to sumarize this summer. With Lavendersheep working every Sunday, we really had to pack everything we wanted to do on Saturday; so we didn't go camping, and I always felt like Sunday was, for the most part, my day to sleep in.

We had a Independence Day party that was quite fun; I have some photos I should share on my other computer; we did go to a company picnic, again fun. One of my managers volunteered me in the dunk tank, something I did not expect would happen; I was expecting to have several shots at dunking my managers. And I went on a trip up to Ski Bowl with the company and rode around on go-karts all day (being just a tad larger than their weight limits allow on their other rides).

All in all, it hasn't been a bad summer. But, I'm ready for fall and winter, time for wearing handknits and staying as cozy as possible. And, perhaps if I lucky, I can have a cup of cocoa too.

Command line fun

2007-05-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

I've recently been studying Linux command line tools, and starting to construct intricate pipelines that manipulate text, locate text that I want, or cut things out. I think I've got a bit of a handle on awk, including searching and basic printing (nothing too fancy, just yet), and I'm starting to get sed.

However, I just cannot understand what mpg123's problem is. I want to occasionally play music from a streaming server on another computer -- mostly so I don't have to disconnect the speakers from one computer and move to the other. Normally I listen using xmms, but when I just have command line access, mpg123 should work. The problem is that it doesn't seem to buffer its data, or it just drops frames. So every so often, with some regularity, I'll notice that the beat is off, or notes that should last longer are cut short.

Now, I may be partially deaf, but I can tell you this drives me batty. I'm pretty sensitive to beats and the length of notes. Something interesting about my hearing is that I cannot (easily) separate the background music from singing. This is very much the same problem I have with focusing in on a particular voice in a crowd -- I just can't do it. So I often will like a song due to its beat, harmony, or just something that grabs me as `cool' (like chanting), but I will have no clue what the lyrics actually are. That is, until I look them up, or in some cases, sit for several hours, listening to a song in small pieces at a time until I can hear the words. That's hard work, and something I rarely do because it is very tiring for me.

In the mean time, I've found that I cannot trust mpg123 to work for streaming music. I'd rather have silence than go crazy because I know my player just dropped a beat, or a note, or something just doesn't sound like `whole'.

MMmmm... keyboard

2007-04-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

For several years I've been using a Sun Type6 UNIX keyboard. This is fancy talk for a keyboard with only one Control key, some weird meta keys, and some other keys all shifted about -- great if you work at the command line in Linux. It's a pretty decent keyboard, and I loved it for having the escape and backspace keys in locations that make a lot of sense (compared to the PC keyboard).

I was recently looking at purchasing another Sun keyboard for work, when I came across some of Microsoft's ergonomic keyboards. I decided to reconsider my Sun keyboard purchase, and instead purchased a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (wow, they couldn't make the name any shorter!) for home. It features a split keyboard design and curved key layout laterally - and I found that both are very easy to get used to on this keyboard.

Anyhow, I'm a pretty happy camper. I've remapped the Caps Lock key to another Control Key in Gnome, because I can't recall a time I absolutely needed a Caps Lock. I'll have to play around with the Alt and Windows keys, and probably remap them so I've got a meta key in a sensible spot (useful for emacs). But overall, it is a wonderful thing.

Birthday

2007-04-11T08:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your wishes-well. It is true, today is my birthday, and as my lovely wife has pointed out, I am one-quarter of a century old.

In other news, I did not get an offer at Google, and my contract has in fact been extended. I will not be able to post any more facts regarding this decision at this time.

Finished sock!

2007-04-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

This, my friends, is a picture of a finished sock. And days before the 1-year castiversary. Now I have one more to finish, and my wife will have 1 pair of socks knit by her husband. Isn't she lucky?

Beer

2007-04-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not a heavy beer drinker. I usually have something like 1 drink a week, after work on Friday. But there's one beer I like best: Guinness.

Now, Guinness draught in a bottle isn't too bad. But a nice fresh pull off the tap at Gustav's, that's a good drink.

Aside from that, not much of a beer drinker. I haven't tried any non-microbrew domestics. I just imagine that Budweiser tastes like horse piss - more so than beer normally does.

Just another silly blog post.

Mistake

2007-03-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

I think I made a mistake.

The door was ajar, and I, a curious guy, walked through. I didn't care that it was hanging by one hinge, and that the handle was missing. When a door presents itself, especially if it is open, I don't argue. I simply walk through it.

And that's how I'm here. Stuck. My legs dangling below, while I wonder if I can pull myself out from the floor.

What's fun? Upgrading!

2007-03-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

I've been helping my wife upgrade from Windows 98 to XP today. She agreed, a while back, to upgrade to XP after Vista was released. And since I'd probably die if I tried installing Linux on her computer, XP is a very good choice.

We purchased XP Home upgrade, and set to task backing her files up and preparing for the big day. To make things more interesting, we decided to wipe her drives and reformat them, to remove any and all clutter that we could before we upgraded. So I didn't just install XP, I also re-installed 98.

This, I thought, would be easy. It is easy, once I remembered that I can go to the Windows 98 CD while at the DOS prompt to do everything from repartition to reformat the drives. However, it took me a while to remember that, so there we a little pain involved. Luckily, everything turned out well. I installed Win98 without a problem, choosing the compact installation to leave less traces of 98 around, then turned around and upgraded to XP.

So far it is taking a while to install all of the other software she likes to use, in addition to the updates for XP and getting a virus scan under way. And since XP is new to her computer, she hasn't fully benefited from pre-caching yet, so loading applications can be a little slow.

However, I think it has gone well, time will tell if we missed something. I do get a little spoiled performing Linux installs, since they don't take as long, but I also don't have a lot of tedious stuff to worry about, like license keys.

But she's up and running, and we're happy.

Car woes

2007-02-25T19:52:00.000-08:00

My car's radiator is leaking, and I don't want to think about it. But I have to. Thankfully it isn't so bad that I can't drive it, it just means a little more radiator fluid here and there. I'll be calling my mechanic tomorrow to schedule a repair, hopefully relatively soon. And hopefully it isn't too expensive.

In the mean time we're considering the fun and joy of looking for another car. Kind of something I don't want to do, but hopefully we can find something pretty decent that doesn't have hojillions of miles on it.

Marching Forward

2007-02-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

I've been working as a temporary employee for Google for nearly 4 months, so I'm understandably excited about the prospect of being hired on full time. The process is a bit confusing to me, but I am optimistic that I will be hired on.

So, back to updating the old resume for another exciting round of fun!

I got one of those bloody things!

2007-01-28T22:32:00.001-08:00

I got a Wii today, after several weeks of looking. Our Wal-mart finally had them in, and I noticed that Fred Meyer had 3 in when I was there in the afternoon. Perhaps the long wait for most people is over. Anyhow, I've found that I like bowling way too much, and tend to hurt my arm playing it.

And I'm now using Iceweasel as a browser, until I get Firefox figured out. Debian and Mozilla got into a bitch fest over licensing, and now I've got a browser that seems to be crapping out on me all the time. Fuxored! This is easy to fix, simply download and unpack Firefox from Mozilla's website, but a pain in the ass none-the-less. *sigh* If we could just all get along.

Finally, the last of the cookie wisdom!

2007-01-20T22:25:00.000-08:00

The last seven cookie fortunes. I'm still collecting!

The pleasure of knowledge and learning surpasses all others.
Your love of music will be an important part of your life.
Friendship -- one soul in two bodies.
Your happy heart brings joy and peace where there is none.
You work best when meticulous attention to detail is called for.
The day will come when you have to search no longer.
Plain an unvarnished are the words of truth.

Even more fortune cookie goodness

2007-01-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

I've got too many of them!

Your dreams are never silly; depend on them to guide you.
Be willing to apologize and the world will become smaller.
Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed.
Use your charm and personality to obtain your wishes
Your surrounding friends will take good care of you.

More fortune cookie wisdom!

2007-01-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

Wow! More fortunes for your edification!

You enjoy giving of yourself and it will be paid back tenfold.
You shouldn't overspend at the moment. Frugality is important.
The world will soon be ready to receive your talents.
A fond memory will soon lead to a renewed friendship.
You will soon get something special because of your charm.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

2007-01-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

I have been collecting fortunes from fortune cookies for a while. Today's post is a collection of fortune cookie wisdom. Enjoy!

You have excellent concentration and are inclined to think deeply.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Your future will be harmonious.
Travelling (sic) to the south will bring you unexpected happiness.
Linger over dinner discussions this week for needed advice.

The Six Weird Things Post

2007-01-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Lavendersheep was kind enough to tag me with the 6 weird things meme that is going around. I guess I should oblige her and post 6 weird things people may or may not know about me.

In high school I carried a stuffed dragon around. In retrospect this was kind of bizarre. At the time I was huge fan of dragons, and bit more silly. The dragon thing died off right about the time I went to college. I was a little creeped out when I was working in the library at college one day and some odd woman had to ooh-and-aah over a dragon necklace I was wearing. I stopped wearing it shortly after that.
While attending the beloved U of Oregon I was complemented by a Black dude for my afro. Now that's a compliment I'm proud of!
My first year of college I spent most of my time sleeping on my wife's dorm-room floor, even though I had a room of my own. My first roommate never bathed or washed his clothes. In the middle of the cold rainy season in Eugene my window was always opened. Then, when I moved dorms, the second roommate was creepy as all get out. I figured it was safer, if inconvenient and uncomfortable, to sleep on my wife's floor.
I have gone skinny dipping. My wife says this is weird. It very well should be, especially since it was in the Columbia.
I like ketchup on sandwiches. My wife not only says this is weird, she thinks it is insane! Although I haven't had much ketchup on sandwiches lately, usually just mustard and mayo.
Even though I'm deaf in my left ear, I still use earplugs in both ears. Some people think it is weird; I find I can still get a splitting headache if I don't put a plug in the bad side.
(Bonus!) I'm aiming to earn a title of Incorrigible Ale Hound in Guild Wars. This will probably take a very long time, because it takes 10,000 minutes of being drunk to achieve this title. *sigh*

And there you have it, a list of 7 weird things.

The Technical Post

2007-01-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

I recently installed dd-wrt micro on my Linksys router. It's a WRT54G V.5 router, which has occasionally been a pain in the ass. The default firmware by Linksys has a tendency to stop serving the configuration pages after it has been in use for a while. I also had no luck setting up port forwarding on the damned thing.

Until I installed dd-wrt. Muhahaha! While not as full-featured as the normal dd-wrt firmware, the micro version does plenty. Port forwarding works. The router has yet to stop serving the configuration pages. I haven't had any traffic loss. Everything seems golden.

I didn't think that was the case yesterday, when I tested out SAMBA and Windows file sharing. I have 2 shares on my Linux machine that both Windows hosts need to see. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had SAMBA configured to ignore anything outside of the 192.168.0.* ip range, which works fine when I'm using my D-Link router. But the Linksys defaults to serving ips in the 192.168.1.* range. This little snafu on my part prevented both Windows hosts from seeing the SAMBA server.

In a few days time I expect to get a WRT54GL, which I can install a full version of dd-wrt, or openwrt. I'm still undecided at this point which I will use.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to get minicom on my Ubuntu install to talk to my Debian machine over a null-modem cable. So far the setup works between Debian and Windows, but I haven't figured out minicom. I figure enlightenment will come soon.

Some Christmastime Photos

2006-12-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

Here are a few photos from Christmas:

First off, some of my wife, Lavendersheep's, knitting projects.

From Christmas 200...

My mother-in-law in a hand-knit sweater from my wife.

From Christmas 200...

My father-in-law trying on his man mitts.

From Christmas 200...

My brother-in-law suitably awed over his hand-made gifts.

And now some silly pictures!

From Christmas 200...

My dog-in-law Molly.

And for the co-workers, my keyboard:

From Christmas 200...

That's a Sun Microsystems Type 6 USB UNIX layout keyboard. And it is totally bitching! Although, from the looks of it, Sun has released a Type 7 keyboard, and the Type 6s may be harder to come by. One of these days I need to try to get all the extra keys working under Linux, just for the fun of it.

Merry Christmas, all y'alls!

2006-12-25T22:43:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I speak a bit of hick now and then. So shoot me.

Anyway, I had a good Christmas with my wife and her family. This year my wife and I decided to start our own Christmases, so we got our own tree (small, as in Charlie Brown's tree size) and decorated it, exchanged gifts between ourselves. She remembered that I was looking into geocaching a while back, and got me a GPS receiver. Now I'm itching to try it out, but it's all rainified outside, wish slush.

In terms of work, it's going well. I've got several days off before heading back into the fray. The people are still cool, and hopefully I'll get into some bowling with co-workers.

Anyhow, I'm tired, so I am going to keep this one short.

Frigid

2006-12-03T20:54:00.000-08:00

Bloody cold out there! It's a very toasty 27.6 degrees F outside. I keep hoping it will warm up and rain. Did the weather forget that we normally rain here in winter? Or have I been in Eugene too long? What happened to our depressing rainy winters? I guess we traded them in for depressing cold winters.

We got our Christmas tree yesterday. Since most of the roads are closed in the forests due to snow, we went up to Cooper Spur. Our tree is nice and small, to fit our small abode. I like it. I have to remember to water it, because it sucks up water like a sponge. We also made a mad dash to Portland after my wife taught her knitting class. Talk about silly. We got ourselves some Christmas lights for our tree of the LED variety, and picked up some other Christmas items. Even some gifts for ourselves to put under the tree. Yes, we're going to wrap them, even though we know what they are. We're silly.

I'm trying to find ways to stay warm. I bundle up in sweaters and gloves and hats and a scarf, just like I should, but it still is biting cold outside. I'm glad I work indoors at the moment, because it is just a touch colder than I like. Just a touch.

At the moment I'm trying to debug a Python program I wrote. I think I'm on the path to figuring it out, since I just noticed that a loop isn't terminating due to a problem with the logic. Actually, it shouldn't even run, and I should have skipped past it. Easy fix, I assume.

Back to pretending to be warm. At least until bed, when I will be warm. Feather blankets rock.

A Quick argh moment

2006-11-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

So, in order to get my contract job with Google, I underwent a background check. Everything checks out fine (as it should), with one exception: the company performing the check somehow thinks I've gone by an alias that, amazingly, is the same as my mother's name. I tried to point out that I'm a dude, and that they were mistaken; they sent me another copy of the same background check.

Totally awesome fact checking there, guys. *groan*

First Snow

2006-11-26T18:22:00.000-08:00

Finally, snow! Hood River got its first snow for the fall/winter season this morning, and that makes me fairly excited. I did some shoveling and put chains on the car before I took my wife down to Knot Another Hat. I'm curious to see how things turn out tomorrow. Especially since tonight's low is 27 deg. F, and tomorrow's high looks like it will be 30 deg. F. I'm sure getting out of our driveway will be fun!

Here's a link to some pictures I have of the first snow, starting with pictures of the hills across the river before the snow level dropped:

2006.11.26 First Snow

Also, check out my wife's blog for a few other pictures, including proof that I shoveled snow.

Tonight I'm doing some studying, am I'm just about ready to start typing up some notes. Good fun. Hopefully I'll be mindful of the time and work on some Python programming. I started converting a Common Lisp program I previously posted here into Python. It isn't too hard, especially since I have the logic figured out. At this point I'm learning what libraries Python has that I can use, and how to format stuff in my file.

Going back a few days, Thanksgiving was pretty good. My wife made a delicious green bean casserole, from scratch, as well as some stuffing. Not to mention the pumpkin cookies, bread, bundt cake, and pumpkin roll. I helped by cleaning dishes, and buying way too much pumpkin. Maybe we can figure out some more pumpkin-y stuff later.

Gray days

2006-11-19T19:22:00.000-08:00

Today has been a fairly misty, gray day out. I'm trying to share some photos I took earlier in lieu of writing, but somewhere between Picasa and Blogger Beta I'm losing the photos. I'm going to try Picasa Web albums here in a second, and see if I can make it all come together.

From 2006.11.19 Fo...

There you go, a beautiful Oregon autumn day.

A random mixture of ideas

2006-11-12T21:41:00.000-08:00

After another crazy week at work, I've decided to try my hand at Python. A number of people I work with like Python or are learning it, and from what I can see it looks similar to Lisp. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time finding a quick reference to my liking, so I can get up and running. I just need a little doc on basic control structures and loops, and I think I could fumble forward from there. This is also terrible news, considering how little I've been working in Lisp recently. AGH! I need to turn off the internets some time and actually do something.

Well, it looks like it may be fun getting to work tomorrow. Snow warnings are in effect through the Cascades, but only for 2500ft or so and up. Yet our thermometer is warning us that it is near freezing outside, and dropping. Also, a high wind system is moving inland as I type this. So, I expect a lot of debris out on the road. At least it isn't dark when I leave for work. But if it does snow, what fun. At least I opted for the quick-install chains last year. That should help.

And I think I've gotten familiar with iTunes. I have my eye on an 4G iPod Nano for sometime soon in the future. My wife and I are also eyeing a Nintendo Wii. We're not big gamers, so we'd like something we could pick up, play a bit, and put back down. In other words, something that doesn't require a huge time investment to enjoy. I think we have a list of older games we'd like to download for the Wii, and maybe a few Gamecube titles we'd like to get. So while nothing I necessarily want for the Wii will be out at launch, I figure we'll be busy with everything else that will be available. And I figure my brother-in-law will waiting in line for his Wii, especially since Microsoft's latest update for the Xbox360 pretty much made his 360 a very heavy, and very expensive, paperweight. Microsoft will fix it, but only if he sends in some cash. I guess there is little solace in the fact that he's not the only person it happened to, but Microsoft just pissed off a sizeable segment of their customers. Way to go, Microsoft!

Oh well. Sony will need every bit of help they can get with their (expensive) console launching soon. What a great opportunity for Sony.

Until next week, I'm out of here.

First week, first weekend.

2006-11-03T21:39:00.000-08:00

It has been one exhausting and fun week. I started work at Google on Monday, and I've enjoyed every day since. The drive to work is not bad at all (at least for me), my co-workers are excellent and fun people, and there is plenty to do. I'm very happy to be working there.

A few of my co-workers have suggested ideas or provided tips for some geekery I can do on my Linux box, and I hope to get around to playing with some of those ideas this weekend. My wife and I will be heading to Portland this Saturday for much-beloved shopping. I'll be heading to Powell's Technical bookstore, and she will be heading to Woodland Woolwooks for some tools. And maybe wool. If we can swing it, we may have a celebratory meal at our favorite provider of German food and beer, Gustav's, and possibly stop in at Fry's for good measure, too. And who knows what else. Weekend shopping needs to be taken care of every once in a while.

I should gather some shut-eye before the crazy weekend hits.

Aack! It's all borked! And different!

2006-10-27T14:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, I broke your subscription to my blog. Sorry. But your normal bookmarks still work!

So what's going on here? Blogger is having a few fits, having overgrown its older, pre-beta, configuration. I, being the gizmo-loving fool that I am, created a test blog on Blogger Beta a while back, while I waited expectantly for my blog to come up for the switch. Sometimes I'm incredibly patient. Other times (this time) I'm not. I want the new toys! I want them now! Suffice it to say I prefer the new Blogger for many, many reasons, so I'm feeling comfortable with my non-patience.

So all I really did was change my settings so my beta blog posts here, and my not-beta blog posts elsewhere. Now I just need to provide a little link to an Atom/ RSS feed that is more convenient. Hopefully that will be added soon

Linux v Ubuntu? Nah.

2006-10-27T14:32:00.001-07:00

Last week I changed back to Debian GNU/Linux after using Ubuntu for about 3 months. I was in the mood to switch from i386/ 32-bit computing to AMD64/ 64-bit computing since my processor will support it. Ubuntu supports AMD64, and Debian will soon have an officially blessed AMD64 stable port, so why the switch?

For the most part, I'm comfortable using Debian. I've been using it for roughly 7 years, and have developed a little attachment to it. It is seen as the uber-geek's distribution, due to it's reputation at being difficult to install (I disagree), and due to the attitude to RTFM for most questions. Essentially, two strikes against being a newbie-friendly distribution. The third strike is a slow release cycle, at least in terms of the stable distribution.

I love Debian's package manager and tools, including apt and aptitude. I consider Debian's packages and package manager to be its greatest strengths. For one, Debian managed to avoid a condition where the package you want won't install due to being unable to find one or more other packages that it needs. Second, for any piece of software you want, a few key-presses will have your software quickly downloaded and installed.

Ubuntu is, for all intents and purposes, Debian. It takes packages from Debian unstable for its releases and uses the same package management tools. Ubuntu's source can be painfully obvious at times; for instance, the Mozilla browser suite's default page includes the same page as Debian, including the Debian logo.

However, Ubuntu's main strength, in my opinion, is marketing. Ubuntu is marketed as the user-friendly distribution. Insert or install Ubuntu and it "Just Works" (a second strength). I have no real beef with this; Ubuntu easily can be a good way to introduce Linux to a friend or family member. However, it seems (but I haven't confirmed it yet) that Ubuntu pulls some packages from non-free sources in order to provide a Just Works desktop. If that is the case, it flies in the face of what Debian is about, in terms of choice.

But together, Ubuntu and Debian do seem to cover quite a wide swath of potential users. I prefer Debian and its testing distribution - new enough to keep me happy, but stable enough to not break stuff. I'm not cool enough to enjoy using unstable regularly.

Waiting

2006-10-10T15:43:00.001-07:00

I finished my second interview with a so-far-unnamed-company. I feel the interview went well, and now I'm waiting for a response from my recruiter, a process that could take up to 3 weeks. I must say I was expecting a grilling, another tech-fest of questions that I was asked before. Interestingly nothing I mentioned before came up. However, the interviewer was interested in my work experience with pears this summer.

I hope to hear back soon, because I am very enthusiastic to work in this position. Both interviewers warned me about the work conditions. However, after doing cherries and pears, I think I could very well do anything. No, I know I could.

So here are some "hope to hear something soon" vibes. In the mean time I'm just going to feel like a little kid at Christmas, except instead of wondering what I'm getting, I'm wondering when it will happen.

Things I'd like to do (in Lisp):

2006-10-05T23:25:00.001-07:00

Understand the LOOP macro

Understand how to write macros

Understand when macros are useful/ why I would want to use them

More practice

As a quick aside, I think I've fallen in love with the ability to return multiple values from a function, and do something useful with them. Sure, I could just make multiple calls to different functions or methods in other languages, but this is much more useful (in my opinion).

Code-rific!

2006-10-03T23:19:00.001-07:00

Below is a function that (I hope) will take a value of money, say $45.61, and return the dollar value 45, and the cents 61. I plan for this to integrate into the change-making code I've posted previously, and have it figure out change for both dollars and cents.


(defun split (money)
  (let* ((dollars (truncate money))
  (cents (round (* (- money dollars) 100)))) ; I think this is bad
    (values dollars cents)))

Applesauce

2006-10-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

I haven't mentioned that I helped my wife, Lavendersheep prepare delicious applesauce yesterday. I was in charge of quartering, cutting the apples, and plugging the crockpots in (I failed on one, and figured it out after I realized I could still use our microwave), while she peeled and made it all taste good.

Her family family grows some truly huge apples, along with their normal-sized pears (I helped out with harvest driving a tractor in August and September). They are fun to see on the tree, since they are so big they seem to defy gravity. Especially compared to the pears just a row or two away.

Check out Lavendersheep's blog for a pictures and a better story than I can tell. Also, if you haven't checked it out before, it has a gamut of fiber related goodies, if you like things like spinning, knitting, or crochet.

More code

2006-10-03T16:20:00.002-07:00

I've re-worked the code I posted previously into something I like a little better. I need to figure out how to get decimals to work (i.e. I don't want .199999 as a result when subtracting two numbers), so I can just use decimals. Then again, maybe I'll find it isn't a big deal later.

Here's the code:


;; money-machine.lisp
;;
;; Blair S. Ellsworth
;; copyright (c) 2006

;; Available coin denominations.  Change for your locale.  It is recommended
;; that *coins* is sorted from largest denomination to smallest.
(defvar *coins* '(50 25 10 05 01)
  "Legal coin denominations")

(defun make-change (cents coin)
  (do ((i coin)
       (j cents (- j i))
       (x 0 (1+ x)))     ; number of coins to make cents
      ((< j i) (values j x))))    ; updated cents followed by coins


;; Returns a list containing the count of each coin to return, sorted in order
;; that the main *coin* list.
(defun coin-return (cents)
  (let ((change '()))
    (dolist (coin *coins*)
      (multiple-value-bind (new-cents coin-count) (make-change cents coin)
 (setf change (push coin-count change))
 (setf cents new-cents)))
    (nreverse change)))

Contemplating

2006-10-03T16:20:00.001-07:00

I'm considering changing this blog over to Blogger Beta. That means:

Weird bugs and instability. (Nothing too new)
Faster publishing
New toys
People using Blogger non-beta won't be able to comment using their Blogger login
Possibly losing contributors

I have a test blog, and for the most part (from the few posts I've posted) things aren't that bad. I don't know how bad the bugs are. I should do some research.

Some Code

2006-10-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a little change `dispenser' in Lisp. I'm not done with it; I still want it to display a count of each coin type to dispense, but at the moment it stores the values to a list. It is ultimately recursive. Why? Normally I would write loops, I've been writing loops since I programmed in QBasic in high school. However, ever since playing with Lisp I actually find that recursion is at times easier to understand. That, and I don't quite fully understand the looping constructs in Lisp. Yet. I find this amusing, because I recall being flumoxed in college while working on Java with a couple of recursive projects. I attribute my current understanding to a better explanation of recursion in Lisp books than those given in Java books and my computer science lectures.

Here's my code so far. You are not expected to understand it.


;; available coin denominations
(defvar *coins* '(50 25 10 05 01)
  "Legal coin denominations")

(defun coin-return (cents)
  (let ((change '()))
    (reverse (fill-list (make-change cents *coins* change 0) 
     (list-length *coins*) 0))))

(defun fill-list (list desired-length value)
  (format t "~a~%" list)
  (dotimes (n (- desired-length (list-length list)))
    (setf list (cons value list)))
  list)
  
(defun make-change (cents legal-coins change current-coin)
  (format t "~a~%" cents)
  (cond ((eql cents 0) (setf change (cons current-coin change)))
 ((< (- cents (first legal-coins)) 0)
  (make-change cents (rest legal-coins)
        (setf change (cons current-coin change)) 0))
  (t (make-change
      (- cents (first legal-coins)) legal-coins change
      (setf current-coin (1+ current-coin))))))

In any event, it isn't done. I can make this better, but for now, I'm just sharing what I've got.

The Dignified Pen

Keyboards, revisited (Geek out time)

Coming back

Testing an old account, playing with a new

Happy birthday

Sleeplessness

non-free firmware

Goings On

Too Much Crap

A Dog's Life

Technological Progress

Birds & Fiber

Infestation

Writing Excuses

A rare post

Things to do

Winter

I has (forgotten) my blog

Command line fun

MMmmm... keyboard

Birthday

Finished sock!

Beer

Mistake

What's fun? Upgrading!

Car woes

Marching Forward

I got one of those bloody things!

Finally, the last of the cookie wisdom!

Even more fortune cookie goodness

More fortune cookie wisdom!

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

The Six Weird Things Post

The Technical Post

Some Christmastime Photos

Merry Christmas, all y'alls!

Frigid

A Quick *argh* moment

First Snow

Gray days

A random mixture of ideas

First week, first weekend.

Aack! It's all borked! And different!

Linux v Ubuntu? Nah.

Waiting

Things I'd like to do (in Lisp):

Code-rific!

Applesauce

More code

Contemplating

Some Code

A Quick argh moment