I woke up to a beautiful snowfall today - I didn’t take a picture, so go see JACC’s to see what I mean. Hope you folks got everything you wished for. Besides the previous gifts, I was given a $100 giftcert to ThinkGeek.Com (Which I’ve been asking for for 7 years now), $50 to the iTunes store, a Charles Bukowski book, a book written by a monk called “The Art of Power“, and some lovely framed photos.

This is my favorite time of the year to come to work. The traffic is very light, the offices are empty and I get a ton of work finished. I don’t know why anyone would want to take a vacation now, when we get two 4 day weekends in a row. More power to ‘em though!

Here’s hoping you got everything you wished for!

Here’s a few math jokes, just for the hell of it:

A mathematician, an engineer and a chemist are at a conference. They are staying in adjoining rooms. One evening they are downstairs in the bar. The mathematician goes to bed first. The chemist goes next, followed a minute or two later by the engineer. The chemist notices that in the corridor outside their rooms a rubbish bin is ablaze. There is a bucket of water nearby. The chemist starts concocting a means of generating carbon dioxide in order to create a makeshift extinguisher but before he can do so the engineer arrives, dumps the water on the fire and puts it out. The next morning the chemist and engineer tell the mathematician about the fire. He admits he saw it. They ask him why he didn’t put it out. He replies contemptuously “there was a fire and a bucket of water: a solution obviously existed.”

 

A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a street café watching people entering and leaving the house on the other side of the street. First they see two people entering the house. Time passes. After a while they notice three people leaving the house. The physicist says, “The measurement wasn’t accurate.” The biologist says, “They must have reproduced.” The mathematician says, “If one more person enters the house then it will be empty.”

A sociologist, a physicist and a mathematician are all given equal amounts of fencing, and are asked to enclose the greatest area. The sociologist pauses for a moment and decides to enclose a square area with his fence. The physicist, realizing he can fence off a greater amount of land with the same amount of fencing, promptly sets his fence in the form of a circle, and smiles. “I’d like to see you beat that!” he says to the mathematician. The mathematician, in response, takes a very small piece of his own fencing, and wraps it around himself, proclaiming, “I define my location to be outside of the fence!”

Well well it’s Friday, December 21st 2007 and here’s a few of the things I’ve run into this week.

Geek Chic - Indeed, it’s a Space Invaders themed scarf complete with QR codes. What’s a QR code? Look it up¹.

The Most Expensive Drink At Starbucks -  Spoiler: It’s a 13 shot venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel. It cost the writer $13.76. Those are the stupid/silly blog posts that I love.²

Got iTunes? Get Addons - Lifehacker lists the 23 best addons for iTunes - from cover art, to keeping synced, to tagging songs.

DIY Fisheye lens - Have a spare shiny Christmas ornament around? Use it as a fish eye lens to take some 360 degree shots

Paper Toys -  CustomPaperToys.com makes, well, custom paper toys - they offer them up for sale as kits, and look quite stunning considering they can’t get wet.³

Rock Star Prof - At 71, MIT physics professor  Walter Lewin is an internet sensation, thanks to the school’s OpenCourseWare.

Clocks - Pricey, but this clock is just so cute and retro.

That’s the links for today - and the commentary is really more like a question - should I begin video blogging? I’m thinking about it - once a week. I took a little phone video awhile back and it sparked my interest. Hrm.

1. Or make your own [↩]
2. Which is why Cockeyed.Com is so sweet - thanks for existing, Rob [↩]
3. Oh, you can also buy a kit to create an AK-47 out of paper. Seriously. [↩]

Indeed, I know, this isn’t my usual daily posts full of wit and links - where they be? Well, it’s crunch time, and I’m being - well - crunched. But, me and Mishka did do our gift exchange yesterday. I gave her some Killer Bunny slippers, a few little things and, oh yeah, an iPhone. She gave me some video games, an XBOX360 Elite (Yowsers!) and the Family Guy big fat party pack - complete with ping pong and poker chips. That’s one DVD box set to down, 1 to go - here’s hoping someone gives me the M*A*S*H Martinis and Medicine Collection!

Yeah, so I didn’t get this posted in time, but here it is today. It’ll be a busy week, but I’ll see if I can’t get a few things posted.

It’s Friday, December 14th 2007 and here’s a smattering of links that I’ve come across this last week.

Best of 2007 Podcasts¹- At least according to iTunes. The noteables are Ask A Ninja, Brave New Films, MAKE Magazine and This American Life. Congrats guys.

Spectrum Z510 - It’s all I really want for Christmas.

Extreme Business Cards - A DIY Auto-dialing business card. Prove to the world you’re then alpha geek.

Subway Burlesque - A group of women get together and take on a challenge to ‘Dance sexy in a public place’. You’ll need a pole to dance on, and what better place then the subway? And what better subway system then NYC?

It’s Me, Every Girl Ever - A wonderful Craigslist “Best Of”

Pict.Fm - An awesome Last.Fm addon, it creates an animated avatar based on artists you’ve listened to recently. How sweet!

Windows Feedback Program - In exchange for sacrificing your privacy, get yourself a free copy of Vista Ultimate, Office Ultimate, Encarta, or Trips and Streets². Sweet, sort of!

Porn for Girls, Written By Girls - It’s a parody, SFW (Maybe)

1. You need iTunes installed to see it, though [↩]
2. Except I read right after that that they stopped offering Vista - but I can’t find it on the web [↩]

Yes, yes you heard correctly. The final “In The Loop” is taping tonight - and if you don’t have tickets, you’re screwed - they’ve been sold out for over a week now. The final episode of the season is titled “The Year According to You” - it’s a year in review. The good, the bad, and everything in between - especially the things that the media might have overlooked. Remember anything? Let them know. I’m sure it will be a wonderful show as always, and then after words we’ll be at Fujiya where I’m toasting the end of the season with a 1.8 liter bottle of Sake AND meeting JACC and whatever rowdy crowd he brings.

It is a slight pain for me this time around - there will be 5 cameras videotaping the show for posterity’s sake and as such I have to get in during the rehearsal to take a lot of my ‘money’ shots. So it will be a looooong night for me. But that’s fine, it’s the last one and I have a short day working from home tomorrow to recover with.

So come for the show, stay for the Sake, and if you didn’t hear last weeks, then listen now.

Computer World has an absolutely fascinating article about Henry Malmgren, the IT manager for Raytheon’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.¹In it, he chronicles all the trials and tribulations that he has to go through - from walking in the pitch black darkness at -100 F to an RF building and swapping out a router, to the greenhouse that they use that allows them to have a fresh salad every 2-3 days. There are also a set of pictures that go along with it.

Interested? I am - so much so that I’m researching this a little bit. Sure, for 8 months I’d be locked in Antarctica, but man the experience! I see they are looking for Network Administrators²too. Also looking for admins that will travel on the South Pole expedition vessels several times a year, working in Colorado the rest of the time³.

I haven’t been outside the country much, and I’ve never been off of the continent - with my love of going from one extreme to the other this would be perfect. To see something that so few people get to see - to experience something that so few people get to experience. It would be absolutely amazing.

I think this just might be the thing I’m looking for - the little bit of excitement and the ability to do something positive in IT. I’ve been craving it for awhile, and boom, here it is.

1. Via Slashdot [↩]
2. Not a direct link - it’s the typical peoplesoft system companies are using now - bah! [↩]
3. Though it does say expect an 84 hour work week while on the boat. That’s a helluva lot of working. I bet the pay and experience is totally worth it, though [↩]

I wanted to blog about how Google maps now has Street View for the Twin Cities, but all my friends have beaten me to it. Screw them and their promptness. Anyway, it’s true. Yay. Look - it’s our place!

Ichiban, like every teppanyaki restaurant I’ve been to, was wonderful but expensive. Four people came to over $200 after it was all said and done. And I had to sit with a cute suburban family - dad and son in matching MN Wild jerseys. I had the Ichiban dinner, which came with shrimp, teriyaki chicken and filet mignon. Shrimp was great, very fresh. Teriyaki chicken was excellent. Filet mignon was good, but it wasn’t cut into small enough chunks nor was it trimmed properly - I came upon a very large chunk of gristle I couldn’t eat.

After words, we went to Macy’s to see the Nutcracker suite. It’s on the 8th floor, we fought our way onto the elevator and get up there. The line didn’t look to bad at all - maybe a 30 minute wait we had thought. So we wait. The line was apparently in a figure eight shape that wound into itself. Five minutes go past, we’re waved to go to the other side of the ‘figure eight’ - so off we go. We get to a new line…. Peek around a corner… We can’t see the end. And that’s just half the line - the top half of the eight.

We ditch it and look at furniture instead. I look at my watch and sadly we missed the Holidazzle parade too, since we were in Macy’s looking around. Furniture is on the 5th floor - the line to see the Nutcracker grew that long. People were booted off at the 5th floor and told to just wait. Line is easily over an hour and a half long. We ride the escalators down, grab a cup of coffee and walk the skyway - then stop at the bar inside the Hyatt where I had one of the best pulled Black and Tans of my life. Kudos to you, weird sports bar with the basketball lights.

For many years, my favorite author was Neal Stephenson. He wrote huge cyberpunk and steampunk books such as Snow Crash and The Diamond Age as well as his his Cryptonomicon. All excellent books which I’ve read many many times.

My current favorite, however, is another Neil entirely - Neil Gaiman.

Why? After reading American Gods, I was hooked. I’ve read it many times since then, it’s such a novel concept - quite refreshing in this age of ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’. Anansi Boys and Neverwhere just hammer that message home. In my opinion, he’s one of the most prolific writers of my time.

But there’s more to him then just his writing style. For one thing, he’s local - he lives less then (or about) an hour away from me¹. If I knew where he was, I could go see him.

Secondly, but more important, is he’s so accessible. He really opens up online. He keeps a wonderful blog which he actually updates himself, and shows you how he writes - such as the notebooks he used for American Gods²

With that in mind, I’ve stumbled upon an amazing version of my favorite novel, American Gods.
It’s signed, as you would expect, but the most wonderful thing is it looks completely different from any current revision -

The author’s preferred edition, with over 12,000 additional words. Text printed in dark purple and blue. Bound in purple Japanese silk, with silk-covered slipcase featuring a die-cut front panel. Signed and numbered of 750.

Wow. And it’s only $200 - but it takes 2-3 months to arrive. I think I’ll buy it next month, be a sweet addition to my swelling library! Just look at it! Bound in Japanese purple silk! It shall be mine!

So who are your favorite authors, and why?

1. Most places just say he lives ‘outside Minneapolis, MN’ but it’s know that he owns some land in Wisconsin as well [↩]
2. And the links he used to research the novel, too! [↩]

No, not The Office, but the office. Workshop. Datacenter. Server room. Den. Library. Whatever you want to call it - it’s the geek sanctuary inside of your home. The place you can leave PCBs strewn about and know they will still be there tomorrow. The place where no one questions why you have 27 90mm and 30 80mm fan grills¹. The place that gets your blood flowing, makes you want to complete that project, or maybe start one of the many projects you’ve been meaning to get around to².

I used to have one of those, but no longer.

And it sucks. Srsly.

At one point in time I had a nice 2 bedroom apartment. The larger one with the bigger windows was where I put the bed and other bedroom furniture, and the smaller one with the single window that gets deliciously blocked by a tree outside was my office.

I had a nice little shelving unit setup to act as a server rack. It held a half dozen computers, from an ancient Mac SE to a modern Proliant server. It also held all the networking gear, from a beautiful 24 port gigabit switch with all those pretty blinking lights and fiber optics, down to a wireless access point and the keyboard video and monitor needed to play with all those machines.

It also had a long plain table, about 3′ wide by 9′ long. That was my workbench. It held my soldering iron, soldering supplies and and anything I was working on - and would hold it in perpetuity, until I decided it was done or otherwise got rid of it.

Then, my lease was up, so I decided to move to a new place. At the last minute, that fell through, and I tried to stay where I was - but they had already rented it out. So I was stuck with what they had left, a 1 bedroom.

Oh, I tried to make it work - the living room was more or less the office now - minus the capability to leave things out for months or years at a time. I could try it, but when you live with people you need to be a tad considerate of them, and understand that although I have a method to all this, they don’t get it - and really probably never would.

So I did what I could to make it ok. I couldn’t really complete any projects - my style is to work on multiple projects concurrently, switching when I get stuck/bored/waiting on parts/etc - and I couldn’t start any new ones, because of space issues, and because I’d have to put the stuff away when I was done. That isn’t acceptable to me.

Then, I decided to move us to a loft. I thought it’d be great, and don’t get me wrong, I do love it - it’s just there’s even less privacy because it’s so open. There are partitions making 2 rooms of sorts, and one is acting as an ad-hoc office for me, but sound travels and I just feel so trapped in there sometime.

I really need to find us a new place when the lease is up, or rent a place I can call my own and move everything over there. Not sure what I’ll do yet.

So, do you have a sanctuary?

1. Really good deals on both and poor reading skills. Separate purchases, but I thought they would work together. I don’t know why I thought that. [↩]
2. I have a baker’s dozen of projects to start [↩]