jeremyrandall / blog /

My Moo mini cards have arrived! Here are a few of them:

I’m always working to keep myself up on various platforms and technologies. I’ve been running Vista on a laptop for awhile (Technet is a great investment when working with Microsoft technologies) and my “mini datacenter” at home includes an OS X machine, a Linux server and a Windows Server 2003 system (AD infrastructure and Exchange).

I decided to rebuild this Thinkpad laptop to dual boot Vista and Linux. The process seemed straightforward: install Vista first on one disk partition, then install Linux using the remaining disk space, finally modify the GRUB bootloader configuration to be able to choose which OS to start.

I’ve used various flavors of Linux over the years, including quite a few RedHat and Fedora variants. This time I decided to install Ubuntu desktop edition 4.07. My decision was influenced by, of all things, Dell deciding to sell laptops and desktops with Ubuntu preinstalled. I’ve been hearing great things about Ubuntu anyway, and I was just intrigued that this platform is being sold to regular folks by mainstream ol’ Dell. Linux for the masses?

The Vista install went smoothly, as expected, as did the Ubuntu install. After Ubuntu was installed I rebooted and found it had already detected the Windows partition and added it to the boot menu. Wow, I thought, the Ubuntu folks are making this really easy.

Ubuntu came up and it was ready to go out of the box. I mean, really ready to go out of the box. Sound was already running properly, video was all set. And I was able to connect to my wireless network by just selecting it. Granted, I haven’t been a daily desktop Linux user for awhile, but I was surprised that Ubuntu had detected all of the hardware and setup the appropriate drivers without any fuss.

The only glitch I’ve noticed so far was the “Network” tool under the “Administration” menu didn’t know how to connect to WPA-protected networks. But a different network configurator in the menu bar did and that got me online with a few clicks.

I was pleased that I could mount my Windows NTFS partition and access those files. And the preinstalled OpenOffice is pretty snappy. No problems connecting to my Mac shares or Windows shares via SMB/CIFS. I’ve been able to sit down and do some actual work already.

Of course I’ve been monkeying around in the shell, but for general computing on this box I really don’t have to. I think my Grandma would be able to surf the ‘net easily on this system. Linux for the masses indeed.

Now that I’m back in a Linux frame of mind, I’m tempted to dig up another box to install FC7 and see how it feels compared to FC6.

A lovely day in The City.

A cable car Westbound on California Street, heading up Nob Hill from the Financial District.

A view of the bay from Larkin and Francisco.

The North side of Nob Hill, from Russian Hill. I live on the other side of this hill.

I painted the small wall near my front door with chalkboard paint awhile ago; it’s fun to be able to draw and write on a wall. It looked pretty stark at first, but once some chalk dust got rubbed in the color grayed a bit and faded to a nice look:

A friend posted pictures on her LiveJournal of her shower; she has used “bathtub crayons” to write on the tiles. I’m on the lookout for them as I’d like to try it.

There’s something appealing to me about doing art on walls, without actually “tagging” my home.

I’ve created a Flickr account and started uploading some of my pictures. I love how life stories can be extrapolated simply by looking at photo collections. Looking through the shots I’ve uploaded so far I definitely see visual evidence of my love affair with San Francisco and my interests in infrastructure, sailing and art. Perhaps I’ll start adding some of my older collections over time. Kudos to Flickr for making it so easy to get photo collections posted in the first place.

If you see something you like, or don’t like, please comment on those pics.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyrandall/

I’ve also ordered some “Moo cards” (good grief, I am not actually endorsing products here) with my photos printed on them. They seem like a much more fun kind of contact card to give out to friends and in social situations than regular business cards. Of course with my regular business cards everyone can be terribly impressed with my techie job title; oh well!

I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately. I’ve never been one of those people that sits around with a group of people talking incessantly about bands and songs; music has always been more personal to me. I don’t get any pleasure from analyzing songs with people, I much prefer to say, “hey listen to this new song/band I found; I think it’s neat” (yes, I actually say the word “neat” because, well, I like it). Since I got rid of the TV I’ve been buying more music than I used to over a given period of time.

I was looking at this stack of blank CDs on my desk at work today and thinking about the name, “compact disc.” Such amazing technology in the early 80’s. I only owned a few actual records that I inherited from God-knows-where; once I was old enough (teenager) to scrape together some funds I started buying CDs. I had a couple of those big binder things stuffed full of them. One was “high school music” and the other was, for lack of a better term, “my twenties music.” I still have one of them. The other, as far as I can tell, didn’t make it out of the apartment of an ex and I never tried to ask for it back; I suspect they got thrown out. That makes me sad, but life goes on. I’ve learned that holding on to things is never as rewarding as just remembering they were there. Plus, I can’t remember the last time I actually listened to an old CD anyway. I’ve been an iPod user for awhile now; the music is purchased with mouse clicks and gets backed up to a second hard drive. I guess I’m keeping up with technology pretty well; I text people from my [cute] cell phone, after all.

I was reading the blog of an old friend from high school. Actually I guess I could say the blog of two old friends from high school. The two of them met when we were freshmen or sophomores and have been together ever since. They have a baby now and, despite my lack of child-rearing interest, I find it cute and moving to see how their family is doing.

Thinking of them made me think of Tommy, another high school friend. He was killed early in Bush’s war; the guy never saw his thirties. I went back for his funeral and our high school named their stadium for him. Just a tragic situation. He and I used to sit around for hours and hours listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, a CD that I asked for, and was actually given to me by my rather progressive grandmother.

We’d listen to that album all the way through and talk about how the way it felt must have been like getting stoned, which neither of us had [yet] tried. I’d go with friends to see Floyd laser shows. I would listen to Dark Side of the Moon alone in my room. If I heard one of those songs on the radio in the car I would turn it way up. It was just so visceral at a time when I didn’t yet have many life experiences of my own. I even tried listening to it while watching The Wizard of Oz though I didn’t find it all that impressive.

I have no idea where my copy of that CD is today. It may be in the missing binder, it may be in the back of a binder that I still have, out of order, lost, quiet. I could just go on to iTunes and buy the album again, but for some reason I haven’t. I will, sure. Eventually.

Those old records had art on their covers, of course. CDs had art on their covers too. The downloaded songs include digital versions that pop up on the screen while the music is playing. There’s a certain continuity there which I like. It’s not about the packaging, it’s about the sight, the sound and the feel, as it always has been. For me it’s about memories, of building soundtracks into periods of my life and then coming back later to hear those memories anew.

Some bands I’m into right now: Tosca, Mindtrap, Cantoma.

That’s all for now.