Well, the power supply I had in reserve was dead, plus it didn’t have the connectors for the 8800 anyway so it wouldn’t have worked out.  Also, I forgot that my completely crappy falling apart case doesn’t house the 8800 very well, so I need a new case and power supply before I continue.

Other than that, it’s looking like Ubuntu had a major version release today to 8.10.  I’m irritated about the case/PS thing but looking at things like this: http://lifehacker.com/5068294/beautifully-minimalist-conky-setup make me think the wait will be worth it.  It should be a very cool secondary box.

In accordance with the new law as mentioned from Thoughts and Action, I will be building myself an Ubuntu box for classwork and to become familiar with the Unix/Linux environment.  From my last upgrade to my current machine I have the following spare parts laying around

• A8N-SLI Premium Mobo with AMD FX-55 Processor and 1.5GB DDR Memory
• GeForce 8800GTX video card
• 80GB Hard Drive
• Incredibly cheap, falling apart case
• SB Live! 5.1 sound card
• Possibly broken, crossing my fingers that it isn’t, cd-rom drive
• Spare keyboard
• Spare Logitech MX1000 wireless mouse
• Couple of spare CRT monitors

So from the ashes will be reborn this unholy beast!  Although asides from class, I don’t know what I’ll do with it.  I may pop on MythTV or something.  Anyone have any suggestions as to what one can do with such a thing?  Also I may need a new power supply.  If worse comes to worst, what I may have to do is buy a new case this weekend and transplant my current rig into a new case and build this tiny dude into my current one.

Secondarily and this is minor, is what to do about keyboard/mouse/monitor.  Do I want to clutter up my desk with a fat CRT?  My Dell 20″ has a free dsub input but the switching time is annoying.  Most people suggest synergy so I don’t have to have a second set of keyboard/mouse laying around.  I dunno we’ll see.

I think for a while now I’ve lived with a seperation of thought and action.  I mean to do one thing in my mind but my actions indicate otherwise.  The downfall of it all is that I’m equipped to succeed yet I choose to drift along.  My will power required to break bad habits isn’t strong enough.  It’s almost as though I need to be brought straight to failure to realize that I have to change up my lifestyle.

Waking up today to my cat pawing at my mouth, I realized that instead of just talking about the things I need to accomplish and finish, I need to set in motion the plan to actually do the things I need to accomplish and finish.  I snapped at someone this weekend for talking about all these things they wanted to do.  I basically said, “Ok shut up already, just do it!”  As I typed it out, it resounded within me for a bit.

Without going into too much detail, I think I’ve had this philosophical notion of my life that’s put a handicap on my abilities and progress.  I’ve lived a life of trying to be behind the scenes and non-interfering with everything around me.  It’s time I became a bit selfish and self indulgent to my own needs and priorities.

So with that, this is my declaration of progress moving forward!  I need to finally break into programming as a hobby instead of just an activity I do for grades.  I need to reduce the amount of time I participate in my other hobby and turn it into a form of study for my future endeavors.

As an aside, I think the use of Google Reader and Twitter compounded this feeling that I watch life instead of live it.  I have an abundance of things I read about other people doing yet all I can say is an uninspired snippet here and there.

So my biggest plan for Blizzcon was to have a really interactive experience with me posting to Twitter in real time and to shuck out news as fast as it came in.  Unfortunately, the center had closed WiFi this year, probably due to security, which put a huge block in my plans.  I realize now how cool devices like the iPhone are since I could have just had one of those and used 3G or Edge (seems like mostly edge in there) to get updates out.  So next year we’ll see.  I’m looking at getting a G1 or some android phone since the monthly rates are cheaper.  This post is SUPER long so read more after the break.

Read the rest of this entry

My sister emails me today:

Stripey has been killed. She went missing almost two weeks ago, which was strange because she had never run away before. A handful of other people happened to have lost their cats around the same time. We didn’t think much of it, but today when I checked the mail there was a letter from the homeowner’s association that said they found at least 4 decomposing cats in some trash cans. They had like, BB/pellet wounds. So I mean, none of us actually saw her body, but… like I said, she wouldn’t just disappear on her own. Some punk(s) I guess decided to torture cats to death. 🙁

Seriously?  What sick bastard decides to find a cat WITH a collar and name tag just to shoot up.  Not one, but four?  Are you kidding me?  My parents live in a decent neighborhood too!  This is so irritating.  Stripey wasn’t all that fond of me though.  I wasn’t around much for most of it’s life so it doesn’t really know/remember me.  However my siblings/Dad loved that cat.  She was pretty hilarious too, I wish I had a picture.  She looked so fat but her hair was just sooooo poofy she looked much larger than she was.

Man that’s so messed up.  I hate people like that.  Again, Stripey had a collar and everything. I don’t care so much if people go around shooting alley cats or whatever.  I certainly don’t endorse it.  But when they’re clearly OWNED by someone you shouldn’t mess with them.  My cats are only maybe 2 years younger than her too.  She certainly didn’t live the full rich cat life.  =(  While my Dad seems to feel that it’s perfectly fine to let cats roam about, I’m too protective to let my cats do that.  You just can’t trust things like drunk drivers or accidents or INSANE PEOPLE WHO SHOOT COLLARED CATS!

It’s not until I hear really great pieces like this (English Folk Song Suite 2nd Movement) that make me feel bad about putting away the oboe.  In truth, I stopped playing my senior year knowing full well I never practiced as much as I should and never really maturing to the point where I could sound as good as the intro in this piece.  But listening makes me want to go to a pawn shop or find a used oboe on ebay and start up all over again.  Combine this with playing Rock Band which throws you in the fake position of showmanship and I have this building regret.

I feel like a problem with growing up is that I find more and more things interesting enough to want to create new hobbies.  This is in stark contrast to how I’ve grown up wanting to only do something if I’d be good at it.  To dabble in a little of everything would mean I probably can’t dig deep enough into it to be excellent.  So much to do in so little time.

On the flip side check out the guitar interpretation of the above song:

At least I think they’re 6.  I got them when they were going to be 1 year old in 2003 I think.  Maybe it was 2002.  Anyway, Rex is on the left and Mattie is on the right.  I asked them to behave and clean up the apartment one day and I came home and they were laying in my laundry basket.  I asked if they were going to fold the clothes and they thought that’s how it was done.  They’re so dumb sometimes.

About Rex

Rex always wants to be picked up.  He’s got the mindset of about a 3 year old boy or dog.  He requires attention much more than a usual cat who keep to themselves.  He has to be involved in some way with what I’m doing.  If I’m on the computer, he’ll lay by the keyboard and watch.  If I’m watching tv, he’ll lay beside me and watch with me, occasionally falling asleep.  If I’m going to bed, he hops up on my chest and falls asleep.  When I walk around the apartment, he climbs up on my legs and wants to be carried around.  He’s got the personality of a dog more than that of a cat.  He’s pretty hilarious though, but he’s the dumber of the two cats.  He’s polite enough to say bless you after you sneeze.

About Mattie

She’s more like a typical cat.  Keeps to herself unless it’s attention time.  When it is attention time, it’s not usually at a great moment, for instance in the middle of playing a game or when I need to go to the bathroom.  She’s very loving during those moments and very sweet.  She loves to give massages for some reason and nom on things when she shouldn’t.  If you’re petting her or rubbing her stomach and you pull your hand away she’ll paw at your hand and stare at you with a quizzical “Are you done?” kind of look.  She hates being picked up or carried.  She does however like to tell me what to do when playing Warcraft 3 or World of Warcraft.  She has an interest in playing guitar as well.

She dreams of having opposable thumbs to help me out but it seems modern science doesn’t care about granting such wishes to cats.  Maybe one day when we have flying cars that don’t run on gas.  Before she got spayed, she loved to sing at night and practice for American Idol.  However, since then, she’s been pretty soft spoken.  She loves looking out the window and watching birds.  Occasionally she’ll go into a battle trance and whisper things like “I’m gonna eat you,” to the birds.  She thinks I can’t hear it but I tell her about it and she snaps out of it.  She’s weird but she’s just too cute.

Currently I use Gallery, though it could use an update in version, but I’m looking at moving to Picasa or Flickr to host images.  Though I currently don’t have a lot of images, that may change in the future.  I do need to know how easy it is to upload images, how many you can batch upload at a time (Gallery version I have limits to like 10 images at a time or something, it’s been a while), and how much storage space each one allows.  Gallery is limited to what my webhost allows while the others may have significantly larger amounts of space.

From initial glances, it looks like Flickr has far better support for things like WordPress integration.  Picasa, I’ve heard, is an overall better experience though.  So I’ll have to check into all of them and we’ll see.  My image gallery may see some hiccups though (hopefully not since I don’t have any of those images backed up anymore) while I fiddle with the upgrade.

If anyone has any insight on the various photo hosting solutions let me know.  Thanks!

Flickr Page | Picasa Album

UPDATE

Here’s what I found out so far.

Flickr allows 100MB of storage with an option of purchasing a premium account for more space.  It seems to indicate 100MB per month so I dunno if it’s increased each month.  I’ll find out next month.  Flickr’s uploading utility is quite nice for batch uploads as well as new album creation.  Overall the experience is nice but very basic and straightforward.  I didn’t find any of the nice plugins for WordPress yet much to other user’s claims.

Picasa: This is a combination solution for on and offline photo management.  The software you get from Google is really sophisticated and offers by far a greater set of tools to tweak your images.  Crop, straighten, redeye reduction, auto contrast/color, effects such as sepia and glow are all included.  You get 1GB of storage online which seems like it’s more than enough for me.  It generates albums based on the folder structure you’ve created then you can push images up to the web for online viewing.

Gallery 2 moves from flat file management to a database management and restricts me to the size of the database (which I only have one covering both WordPress and phpbb now) I use.  Gallery 1 limits me to the size of webspace storage I have using a flat file management system. I won’t be making the upgrade to Gallery 2 since looking at Flickr/Picasa I can have potentially vastly larger storage space.

Another image hosting place I haven’t looked at is photobucket so I’ll have to do some research there later.  The nice thing about Picasa and Flickr are that they use accounts I’ve already established with google and yahoo respectively.  Account management is an issue for me and while it’s not favorable to have all your eggs in one basket, it’s also just easier to know that there are all these great services that are linked by your semi-universal accounts.