zen.org Communal Weblog

Headphones don’t last when I get them.  Usually the left earphone stops working.  I expect some nerves impuls drives me to tug on the cord, but nevertheless they still break.  I ended up geting the sleek Jordie LaForge-ish behind-the-head designed Logitech® Curve Headphones for MP3.  Now, months later, the earphones are still fully functioning, but not so the behind-the-head design.  The girth of my head have caused cracks to apear, and a few of them are nearing a split.  The duct tape will me comming out soon.

So, if you have a head that often XXL hats are too small, don’t get the Logitech® Curve Headphones for MP3 if you wish not to have a patch job.  For people with sane sized heads, I’d suggest it.

I came home today to limited basic cable. Since September 2004 I had been getting extended for free, so I’m happy. The first thing I thought was no more Doctor Who! Since March I have been reliving my childhood with Doctor Who on the SciFi channel. I guess I’ll have to wait until Netflix has the Zone 1 DVD. No more Daily Show too. As for the World Cup, I guess there is always Fútbol. Oddly enough, I get MTV2, but not MTV. Weird.

Well, it will be here tomorrow on the fourth of May.  We have all been living in a haze of dry wall dust for the past month and I feel we are about to hit the halfway point.  I think Daphne, Zoë and I will be eating out for a week or so, but we are going to have a nice new kitchen.

So, I bittorrented down the kubuntu-6.06-beta-live-powerpc.iso image and burned it to a CDRW. I rebooted my work’s G5 while holding down the c key and went into live 64-bit version. Unlike breezy it didn’t ask me any questions, so I told it no lies, and plopped me down at the KDE GUI in a low resolution. The fan started going, then up popped an error message that the audio didn’t work, and the fan got noisier. Audio didn’t work in breezy either, but at least this time it told me it didn’t work. The fan got louder! Then again, the fan GOT LOUDER! I HAD NEVER HEARD MY THIS MAC THIS LOUD BEFORE, AND STILL IT GOT LOUDER! I PRESSED THE POWER BUTTON ON THE MONITOR BUT NOTHING! AS THE RPM OF THE FAN INCREASED IT GOT EVEN LOUDER! MY SYSTEM IS UNDER AND BEHIND MY DESK, I HAD TO JUMP OVER THE DESK, AND AS THE PEOPLES HEADS FROM OUT IN THE HALL STARTED PEARING IN MY OFFICE THE NOISE LEVEL INCLEASED!! I’M SURE JUST SECONDS BEFORE THE FANS WHERE TO COME OF THERE BASE AND FLY AROUND LIKE LITTLE PLASTIC THROWING STARS I HIT THE POWER BUTTON, AND THINGS got quiet again.

I can’t wait until it’s out of beta.

My house is very unbaby-safe, power tools laying around, drywall dust all over the place, nails on laying on the floor, half the power sockets don’t work and many of the ones that do have no covers, no railing on porches, loose boards at entryways, and doors to steps don’t close.  When I noticed zen.org was not resolving last Friday I could not help to smile knowing that it had nothing to do with the goings on at my house.

While I’m going to hold off buying a new computer until our house is finished, the amount of time it took me last time to pick computer I figure I better start now. The quantity of cash left after the house is finished might have something to do with what I pick too, and I might hold it back a few more months while the bank account replenishes, systems less then $1K seems to fit what I want to do with it. This will mostly be the entertainment system in the new kitchen, I already have speakers, a keyboard and a VGA monitor and stuff so all I need is the box.

My goal, I think, is a Mac Mini, with GNU/Linux, likely Kubuntu. I am not going to pay for a non-libre operating system so any Mac is out of the question. Something with quiet fans, and not to ugly, with a path running down the middle. AOpen‘s cubes look cool, but that only comes with Windows, so far I found:

• HP’s Compaq 7000 series fit the bill, I can even get a Pentium D in it! Even though the Ultra-slim model doesn’t look that bad, it ain’t no Mac Mini.
• Thinking it would be cool to have a 64-bit system I found Genesi‘s Open Desktop Workstation. It’s a PPC system that I think would work great, but it seems to only come with ½G of memory, I was hopping to get 1G. It lacks pictures of the back of the system, so I don’t know what ports I’m getting.
• Last, for now, is Groovix‘s the LINI™ PC, an AMD64 system. Again seems everything I want, again no picture of the back. Plus no hint of a USB ports, it’s gotta have USB2 ports, no? It also worries me that it ships with “Ubuntu + Groovix Enhancements”. So normal Ubuntu will not work?

Purely due to being able to find all the questions I had about the system, I think HP is winning, but I’ll take other suggestions. The new kitchen cabinets arn’t arriving until the end of April so nothing is happening before then.

First of all, so far I am loving my job at Princeton University. I don’t feel guilty working on the tasks I have, which I sometimes did at NEC. Most PhDs at NEC where up on a high horse looking down at the non-PhDs. While I rarely interact with Princeton faculty, the staff members with higher degrees I interact with seem to treat me as an equal. My input isn’t duly ignored, but accepted and often incorporated into the projects.

However, I just had to pay a $20 fine for having my parking tag on the wrong side of the car. Reviewing the parking regulations, I was in error. However, the University probably lost more money in man hours having me walk across campus to pay and get a new tag then they would of if they sent a warning and a new tag to me via campus mail.

The lady I paid the fine to was very kind, and was actually worried she was going to get ticked too. Plus she caught my Swedish accent, it’s been years since I got accused of having a non-American accent! After, I stopped for a cup of coffee, trying to save a tree I pulled an old beat-up thermos. “Why don’t you just get a new one” she said. I replied, “not until there is a hole in it.” How drivel.

For over a week now we have had work going with our house. I’ll try to put up some pictures, this is harder then normal since my computer went on the fritz. The useful part is that we should have use of our front door again when this is all over. The fun part is we will have a new kitchen, new bath, and new back patio too. Months from now. Still waiting for one more permit from the borough too. In the mean time I’m living in a not so baby safe work zone.

The BBC has an article, Viruses leap to smart radio tags. The article is kind of cool, but it’s the picture. Wiskas with rabbit! Why can’t I get Wiskas with rabbit for my cat in the USA? My cat kills rabbits, I should be able to get it canned! We keep pigs, cows, chickens, et al, packed in dark rooms, pumped up on antibiotics and hormones, slowly breeding super microorganisms, we can do the same for rabbits! Rabbits are really only caged up for cosmetic testing in the USA.

While we are at it, I bet my cat would also like canned moles too.

I have this system, duel Pentum III. It’s named Acorn but I’ve been callinging it Sherman recently, due to it’s girth. Apart from not being able to boot from CDROM it’s been great. Well, it’s dying. First the USB ports stopped working, wondering if it was something in the bios I went into that. A click here, a click there, restore defaults, if freezes up. So, here I sit with Rerun, old zen, single CPU pentium II, 1024×768 with a hot pixel line, and 8bit audio device. It was retired to remote command line usage years ago, and here it is, my primary GUI CPU. I guess I gotta get one of those USB cases that you can plug in a IDE drive it it to get at my data, even though it is less then USB 2.0.