zen.org Communal Weblog

I’ve had my Toyota Prius for almost a month now, I’m about ready for my 1000 mile checkup. According to the on board monitor I’ve been getting over 50MPH, and have been very happy with it. Don’t let the following discourage you from getting one, but here is a list of my peeves:

• Climate Control. It seems the temperature sensor is only in the front seat. I’m fine driving the car, in the back Daphne and Zoë sweat, so we open the windows (see below). Turning up the AC manually leaves me chilled, and ladies still a little warm.
• The TV. Everything is wired into that thing. The radio, the AC. I guess they are trying to get you to only buy stuff from Toyota or something. I do not want a half foot screen in my front seat, apart from the MPH graph everything it does would be better if done the old way, a little LED telling me which motor is running and when the battery is recharging would be so much better then the useless eye candy they have to do it. Plus the screen is already all smudged up because it’s a touch screen. A small note to all car makers, please start putting auxilary inputs in your standard radios, I’m stuck with CD and radio input until the radio dies. I guess I’m not getting a ogg player for a long time. MP3 player makers, start griping to car makers about it!
• Driving with windows open. I don’t think they did any test driving with windows open. When only the drivers seat is open air pressure starts pressing on the ears, and when a back window is open too sometimes a resonance tone starts pounding the ears. The SAAB sometimes had this resonance problem when only the driver window was open, but opening a second window fixed it. I haven’t figured out a sure fire way to fix it on the Prius.

I was sitting here at work cleaning up some Perl code when I started thinking about Film Projectors and VCRs. I remember being excited for a film in school only to be disappointed when in came the VCR and and not the projector. With the projector the lights need to be off in order it see what’s on the screen, not so with the VCR. With the projector one could make the screen huge, some rooms could make it six or seven feet wide! The VCR was limited to two or three feet, making it difficult to see from the middle of the room. When something went wrong with a projector the narrator would start gargling, and once in a while there was a meltdown, but there was usually a fix even if one missed a foot or two of the film. With the VCR there was only tracking problems, and getting the tape tangled brought the entire show to a halt.

Do any Zen readers have a kid in school? Are you a kid in school? Do they still use projectors in school? Film projectors are cool.

I’ve been using Tiger at work for almost a month now. My list of pet peeves has grown, but realize that most of them are because I’m just not used to it, and I think I will get over most of them. For now…

• Remote X11. On my Mac OS 10.4.1 (now 10.4.2, but I haven’t tried this since the upgrade) I launch X11, then ssh -X to another system and launch emacs, it pops up for ten seconds and then dies. I actually think this is a Mac OS version problem, as most systems around here are younger then Tiger, but it still bothers me. Thank you Ange ftp, or whatever came with GNU Emacs’ CVS.
• Click to focus. I know many X11 window managers have this option, but I always turn it off. Now I’m exiting out of the wrong application. I have the mouse over the web browser, using it to help me read some small text some place, I finish. Time to close the web browser, up to the pull down menu and away goes my terminals. I’m happy most applications ask before exiting.
• Tabs. This has got to be the biggie. In the dark ages of window managers, a couple of years ago, I was always overlapping my windows just a little. This was so they would take up almost the same screen real estate, but leave leave enough space on the side to click on. Then there was Ion. Even for a mouse potato like me, Ion2 is configurable enough to do most things with the mouse with only a couple of hours of configuration, worth it for the keystrokes saved. Now I’m overlapping my windows again. I’d be happy with PWM type tabs.
• Hot keys. The Mac has too many hot keys. I have enough carpel problem typing code and using remote systems. I don’t want them to control my window system. Sometimes typing errors do the strangest things. (This is actually worse part about the default Ion window managers configuration too.) I turned most of the hot keys off in the control pannel, but the few I tried to keep on don’t seem to work. Sigh. I’m not even sure how to ask about them. I type the Swedish historal site marker-ski jumper in mid air-[ to zoom out but nothing. I’m sure there are Unicode entries for these symbols, but I can’t find them in the Character Palette. Maybe I don’t know what “zoom out” means.
• Ogg files. The summary is you can’t play them. Well, you can, but it seems ogg123 dose not build, though I haven’t tried. iTunes don’t play them. The QT plugin I donwloaded crashed QT, and all the GUI players I found where part of some global audio/video solution for the Mac. I just want a simple player, GUI or not, that will load lists of *.ogg files and play thim. I’m a simple man, with simple wants.

June 24th was my last day at NEC, July 1st was sure to be the start of a good weekend before starting my new job at Princeton University. I had just come home in the car with Zoë, we where sitting on the front porch watching the thunder storm.

Then the wind started picking up. A wind like no other I have ever witnessed. Usually when one looks at wind there are a few leaves blowing in no discernible direction. The debris so populated the fast moving torrent that it looked as if I could see the wind. A wall of cluttered, at least as big as my view was advancing towards my house. I took Zoë and went inside.

Seconds after I was inside I heard a noise. A large crash, that I’m sure was impressive, but was dwarfed by the visual of the wind wall still fresh in my mind. The entire house jerked. Without hesitation, I was out the back door clutching Zoë.

Not looking back, I noticed my neighbors house, it had no large trees looming over it. Banging on his door, I heard him call from upstairs that he was comming down to let me in. The problem was he had recently broke his leg, and didn’t move very fast. A branch hit an electric pole on the street, and sparks started flying. I hid Zoë the best I could behind the the storm door, she finally started crying. Joe, my neighbor, opend the door, we were inside.

A half hour later the sun was shining again, though the ground was soaked. The path I took from my back door to Joe’s house was covered with branches that fell from the tree. The car had a six inch diameter branch laying on the now dented roof. The front porch we where sitting on had been detached, branches stuck into the attic. A very tall, very heavy oak tree lay on my house. I was happy, Zoë and I were safe.

Today I was standby juror nubmer 20197 at the Bucks County courthouse. If I was still working for NEC Labs I would of tried to get on a case, but as I am starting at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University on July 5th, I was hopping to avoid it.

Luckly, all worked out well. One case was called, but not my name. So I spent most of the time reading Profiles of the Future: A daring look at tomorrow’s fantastic world by Arthur C. Clarke (that’s what the cover says, the cover page says Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the limits of the possible, oh well). I did get one hint from the lady in charge, if you have to change the date you are going to be called in to be a juror your name will be one of the first names called. At least at the Bucks Count county seat.

After I got a Planet Smoothie smoothie. One of the the few places to get a good smoothie in Bucks County. There is a nonchain place in New Hope that makes great soy smoothies, next time I go I’ll try to post the name. It’s in a little foot alley just off Main Street really close to Lulu’s.

Even thought I was being attacked by a baby and cat while doing so, I got most of Rerun’s core functions up to Debian Sarge last night. This morning I got the rest.

Spam is rolling in, so I guess email works. If this posts, the Blog will be back up. Hopefully the next upgrade will be a hardware upgrade.

This morning I was sprite and chipper. Off to NEC I was to go for the last time. I pet the cat and weeded the garden, jumped in the SAAB much later then normal. The night before I picked up a copy of The Cartoon Guide to Genetics at my soon to be boss’s request. As I drove I thought of Mendel’s peas, It gave me flashbacks to High School science class, the last time I read about these. So unless jury duty puts me on a case, the 5th of July Perl and MacOS I will again embrace. I haven’t use either for quite a while, and putting them together will be a bit strange. With memories mixing of high school, Wired, and my old Machintosh SE, I think something new and cool awaits me.

At work, with nothing to do, a small pile of stuff to take home. A few more hours of twiddling my thumbs. Perhaps a few more questions for people to ask. One last lunch to eat alone, though yesterday four people did take me out. I will miss the place from over a year ago, but since then I’ve been longing for it to end. There is worry about changing jobs, but no more then normal.

Now NEC is having a blackout, so I have to go.

I just did a Fedora update from Core 3 to Core 4. Never in the past has a Red Hat or Fedora upgrade ever worked for me.

Also, comming soon is the Rerun, AKA zen.org, upgrade. I’ll try to post another warning the day before I do it.

This is yet another Blog entry that should be skipped. I drone on about nothing.

I usually try to do some reflection on days like this, and this Midsummer I have a lot to reflect on, I will spare you the details. I had to fill out my last time card here at work and I gave myself a half day today. So Zoë and I should be getting our vegetables as normal Tuesday events occur, just a little early. We haven’t even finished last weeks food. Anybody local reading this? Wanna split the share?

Midsummer is a little weird, gardens are just getting into swing and days are only getting shorter. This morning at 06:46, about the moment spring turned into summer, I think Marvin was meowing for more food. With my new job, I think my wheel of fortune is on a upturn.

Nothing happening here at work. I guess I’ll listen to some podcasts and go home.

Yesterday was a day of many mixed emotions for me. On Monday I got the paper work for a job at Princeton University’s Genomics Department, so yesterday I resigned from NEC Laboratory America. To give a little hint of the relation with my two bosses here at NEC Labs, I went and told the CFO first. She said that she was sad for NEC to see me go, but happy for me personally as my new position sounds good for my résmué. Caned or sincere, my relationship with the CFO is more involved then that with my bosses, and I rarely see the CFO!

I told the CFO that about a year ago I started casually looking for a new job. Unfortunately, almost every position that wanted somebody with more ten years of experience also wanted more management experience that I had. Enjoying my time at NEC or not, I concluded that I needed a new job that would give me management experience. I finally found a place that was willing to make me a manager, plus it fulfills much of my Free Software desires.

(The rest of this blog entry is what gives blogs bad name. It’s basically me rambling on about nothing. Feel free to stop now.)

I had to then wander the halls seeking my bosses to tell them. They both seemed nonchalant, I guess all the more reason to leave. Somewhat ambivalently I went around to tell a few people whom I didn’t what to hear about my resignation on the grapevine. Then I sat down to work.

Almost every Tuesday I come into work early, so I can leave early, and yesterday was no different. Sometime between three and four I left to go get more vegetables from Cherry Grove Organic Farm, I was going to get Zoë first but there was a heat advisory at the time I thought it better not to. Luckily this time we got more then just leafy greens. The problem happened, when backing out I nicked a dark red car I didn’t see that was a little down hill and in the shade. I was going less then 1 mph when I did so, so I didn’t even notice scratch on the car different from the scratches that was already on the car. I found the lady who owned the car, she seemed not to be terribly alarmed, and didn’t even go to look. So with ever more emotions filling my head I left to pick up Zoë.

After a quick call to the liqueur store Zoë and I where home. I cooked and froze some kale and she and I finally relaxed to reflect on the day. I had a large, freshly picked organic salad and a vegetarian corn dog for dinner. Not a hard day, just an emotional one.