Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
- David T. Wolf [1]

Especially funny since I have a co-worker that thinks very much along those lines. To top it all off, his name is eerily similar.

It has been far too long since my last ‘real’ update. For that, I apologize in advance. It has been a crazy few months since the last post. Let me see if I can work my way through some of the more memorable events. I will probably break this post up into several, or you may never see the whole thing.

November saw another birthday. Nothing special, or as my grandmother would say “It’s just another day”. Sometime around that point I bought an Xbox 360. I never thought I would give Microsoft money like that, but there were a couple of games that I wanted to be able to play that were only going to be released on the 360 or the PS3. Sony wanted too much for the PS3, so hello Microsoft.

I picked up a few games initially (Orange Box, Halo 3, Gears of War, and Oblivion) and eventually got a few others (Army of Two, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, and C&C 3). Many enjoyable hours playing those game were had by all. Portal (part of The Orange Box) in particular was waaaay too much fun.

It wasn’t all peachy at first with the 360. The first one, yes I said first, died within a couple of days. It quit reading DVDs, both games and movies, which basically makes it useless. I opened a support case with Microsoft until I realized the amount of downtime I was going to have to deal with (more than a month). That’s when I decided to just exchange/return the stupid thing.

Walmart, where I bought the first one, did not have any others when I tried to exchange it, so I just returned it. I took the cash and went down the road to Best Buy and paid 2 cents more. I have not had any trouble with the new one since that point.

More to follow before too long.

For anyone looking to use the “Windows Key” for shortcuts in Xfce 4.4.2, be sure that you do something like this before you try to use the shortcut editor:
xmodmap -e "add mod3 = Super_L"

Once that’s done, the shortcut editor will actually recognize the key. This is as much for my future reference as anyone, but if you find it useful, it was worth it.

If you waded through my last entry you will know that things haven’t been terribly smooth during my move. Thankfully the previous events were not an indication of future events. Tuesday came and by the evening, my first chance to check, I had DSL fully functioning. I also got a call Tuesday morning from Home Depot letting me know that my washer and dryer were in. That was a surprise since the paperwork said November 1st.

I opted to not have Home Depot deliver/install the washer and dryer mainly because of the amount of money they wanted for the service. I bought a nice, for me at least, front loading washer and dryer that put a big dent (crater?) in my checking account, but it’s the type of item I expect to have around for some time. Home Depot wanted over $100 to deliver and install them. I have a hard time paying anyone that much for so little. Heck, I’m of the engineering mindset, right? The hitch, the washer must weight 250 - 300 pounds *dry*. Wow! Jimbo and I nearly died getting that thing up the stairs and into place.

In more upbeat news (and less painful), the move is essentially over. I turned in the keys to my old apartment Wednesday morning and signed all the paperwork for the new one. No more trips with heavy boxes or furniture to be made. And all just in time as the Q4/Mullet reunion is this weekend. There are already people arriving. Slackers!

News and photos from that event [possibly] as it happens. For sure after.

I know it’s been ages since I wrote anything here, and some of that is having been busy. The rest? Yeah, you know it … I’m lazy :-)

So, I’ve been trying to get moved into a larger apartment since early August. I asked my current complex if they had anything available and when they said they didn’t, I began looking around. It didn’t take long to decide I’d rather wait out a larger apartment becoming available at North Huntington Hills (NHN from now on, my current place). The prices almost everywhere else were significantly higher. I’m not talking just a $50 or $100 per month difference in many cases.

NHN said they should have something open around the end of August or the middle of September at the latest. I bugged them constantly checking on availability. I’m sure they got tired of hearing from me every other day. I think there was someone on the waiting list ahead of me that got bumped so they could be rid of me. Ha! They wish.

I finally got word from the complex that something would be available at the end of September. The current occupant was doing the same thing I was planning to; moving to another apartment in the same complex. Apparently she was taking her time (at least that the impression I got from the manager) and the complex was having a hard time estimating when she’d be clear.

I finally got a move in / sign paperwork date: Oct 5th, 2007. Yeah, not even in September anymore. I stayed in touch with the complex office, which I’m sure they just loved, making sure that the 5th was still looking good. By the 4th it became obvious it wasn’t going to happen. The tenet still had stuff in the apartment, was out of town, and could not move the remainder until the weekend. The office manager was extremely apologetic (and has been through most of the process), but told me that she’d issued an ultimatum: the tenet had until Monday morning (the 8th) to return the key. Anything left in the apartment after that point was going in the dumpster.

The manager gave me the opportunity to go take a look at it on Tuesday. If I’d been willing to deal with the current state of the apartment, I could have taken possession then, but I wasn’t. I was then told that I’d be clear to move in on Friday afternoon. That would give them time to finish painting, fix the usual things, and get the carpet cleaned.

Friday finally arrived and I got the key (but didn’t sign any paperwork yet)! Then I left for Houston for the weekend. Obviously nothing got moved over the weekend. Since then, Jimbo and I have gotten most of the stuff moved over. All the heavy items got moved on Monday with a fairly steady stream of other stuff throughout the week.

Wednesday I was at the apartment in the morning when the power when out. I hadn’t moved the utilities over into my name yet since I hadn’t signed a lease or any other paperwork at that point, so it was pretty obvious what had happened, but that didn’t make me any less unhappy. The apartment office told me that they only have power applied while the cleaning crew was in the apartment, and I understand … I do, but a little warning would have been very nice. I was specifically holding off partially due to decisions they’d made.

I got the number to AEP (the local power company) and began the process of transferring my service from the old apartment to the new one. It went pretty painless until I was told that the connection at the new apartment could not happen until Thursday at the earliest. At least it wasn’t 100 degrees outside. Candles sufficed as lighting for one night. It’s turned out though that they never flipped the main breaker on after hooking up my service.

Since I was going to be loosing power at the old apartment, I figured there was no point in leaving the phone/DSL there since it’d be useless soon. After calling AT&T I got a reasonable transfer schedule. They’d move the dial tone by Wednesday and then have the DSL hooked up by Friday. That’s a long time to wait, but I do sit in front of a computer all day for work.

Friday I called (after checking to see if I had DSL in the morning) to see what the ETA was on the DSL transfer. Let’s just say that what should have been a 5 minute phone call turned into a 30 minute ordeal that had me talking to a standard rep, her manager, and then the billing department. Apparently the DSL tech showed up before the dial tone had been moved, and therefore couldn’t do his part. The DSL work order got sent back to the phone side . Once they finished, they created a *new* work order for the DSL stuff which caused a new estimated date to be selected. They pushed the install date all the way back to Tuesday (the 23rd). I gave them hell for that, but there wasn’t anything they were willing/able to do to speed it up. The chat with the billing department was to ensure that I wasn’t being charged for the time when I didn’t have service.

I called again this afternoon to check on the status and got a very pissy phone rep that really didn’t want to talk. How much do you want to bet that I have some red flag on my file now after last week’s events? I wanted to verify that everything should be working tomorrow, which she confirmed, but I also wanted a time to expect it. *That* she didn’t want to talk about. It took four times of rephrasing the question before she realized I wanted a worst case time, a.k.a. when do the techs stop for the night. That magic time is apparently 8:00 PM.

So now we wait … some more.

I’ll post some more about the new apartment and pictures before too long.

For TJOC 2008 (and beyond) information, please go check the TJOC Development Blog.

Well, like I said about this time last year, camp is over for the year. I also said last year that I had all sorts of exciting things to share, and then I never followed through. Well, I’m saying the same thing this year, but I can promise you that you will see more TJOC related posts in the next few days and weeks. I have *so* much to do before Christmas time that it isn’t funny, but at the same time I asked for it (and think it’s a great idea, since I was the one to propose it).

Here’s a quick run down of items I’ll talk about before too long:

• New application process for next year (all online)
• Major updates to the Diagnostic O written (which was online this year)
  • Tests for all experience levels
  • Part of the application process
• Results and lessons learned from TJOC 2007
• And don’t forget the weather stories …

Well, I got Fedora 7 installed on my laptop today. That’s actually what I’m using right now. I must say, it’s pretty slick overall. I’ve been very impressed with some of the new features that are available by default. If you are currently running an older version of Fedora [Core], give 7 a try.

‘Tis the night before TJOC and all through the apartment, not a soul was sleeping, not even me …

It’s been a long rampup to camp for me already, and camp doesn’t officially start until tomorrow (well, later today). We did the Diagnostic O written test online this year, and since I’m the one that suggested it and have the skills, I was responsible for implementing it. Not that I’m complaining … it really is a cool project, it’s just my timeline really sucked. I waited too long to really get started, and that left me almost too little time to get all the core features completed before we needed to roll it out to everyone.

But, all of that to say, I’m not the only one up late. There are still last minute test takers going right now. An email was sent out earlier today giving an official cutoff of 8AM CST on Saturday and there have been quite a few new users and test attempts since. If only more of the students had completed it … we just had barely broken 50% this morning.

I guess there are still a couple of hours ……….

Well, I found a way to make it work, but I’m not sure why it broke to begin with. In /etc/asound.conf I simply changed the variable “defaults.pcm.device” from a value of 4, to one of 0. I chose zero only because the output of aplay -l indicated that device zero was my main device … I can’t get any audio out of 4 for whatever reason. Anyway, it’s working for now and I thought it smart to write this down for any others looking … and for me if I need it later.