ericasberry.com

The Most Expensive Album I Ever Bought

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:50:00 +0000

Every year around this time I start thinking about this record album I used to have as a kid, and start feeling nostalgic. It was a recording of A Christmas Carol, most definitely geared toward children to be sure. But for my formative years this album was the definitive version of A Christmas Carol for me. I used to have it on a vinyl LP, but at some point after I moved out on my own, or maybe even before, I got rid of the album. Why keep such a childish thing, after all?

Now that I'm older, I regret that. Of course, even if I had the LP, I haven't had a record player in many, many years. Probably almost 20 years. (Gasp! Allow me to pause for a moment while the reality of that hits me). Even before CD's got popular I mostly listened to cassettes.

Anyhow, every year around this time, I find myself doing a little searching on the 'net, hoping beyond hope to find a digital version of this recording. I've never had very good results, partly because I couldn't remember enough about it to even know what exactly to search for. I wasn't sure if it was called Scrooge or A Christmas Carol. I had no idea who actually recorded or published it. I did know that there was a flip side with another story called The Fir Tree which I also liked, but that was about it.

Well, this year, at Thanksgiving, I was talking to my sister about it, and she remembered the album, too. We were quoting parts of it and reminiscing, which inspired me to go looking again. I spent "Black Friday" morning trolling the 'net, and eventually found a site that listed discography for "Peter Pan Records" and found the information for the album I was looking for. It was A Christmas Carol by the "Peter Pan Players & Chorus". Apparently it was released in 1972! Wow!

With this additional information, I was able to refine my search, but as I expected, I could not find any kind of digital version of it for sale. I did find a couple of auctions on eBay that had this record, and when I saw the picture of the album cover I recognized it right away! I was sure it was the same one from my childhood memories. One of the auctions was "Buy It Now", and it was only $12.99, so rather than risking missing out on getting it I went for it. I have no idea how many of these are floating around out there and what condition they are in, but now that I had struck gold after all these years I didn't want to risk it. Soon the record was on its way to me.

One problem: I don't have a record player. So I went to Amazon and found this USB turntable. At the time I ordered it the price was about $80, although I've found it interesting that as I've been sending links to it to friends who've asked about it, I've noticed the price seems to frequently change, I've also seen it close to $100. So, I guess I got a deal! This was about the least expensive USB turntable I could find, and it got a pretty good rating overall on Amazon. Also it specifically said it would work on a Mac.

Anyway, the turntable arrived two days ago and I got my hands on the album today. I could not wait to get home and listen to this recording that I have not heard in so many years. I got the turntable set up, which was a little more involved than I had anticipated, but not too bad. I had to attach the cartridge and a counterweight on the arm which had to be adjusted a little. I also had to install the platter and loop the drive belt over the motor. No big deal. The turntable comes bundled with some kind of "EZ" software as well as Audacity. I already had Audacity installed on my Mac, and since it provides additional editing capabilities (e.g. filtering out the worst of the pops and clicks) I decided to just use that.

In just a few minutes, I was listening to The Fir Tree. I decided to start with that one since it was shorter, and would serve as a trial run as it had been awhile since I used Audacity. It was just as wonderful and depressing as I remembered! "Piece by piece he was fed into the fire. Gone. Gone. The little fir tree was gone."

I ran it through the pop/click filter and exported it as an MP3, and moved on to the best part: A Christmas Carol. "Ebenezer Scrooooooooge ..." it began. Ah, the memories flooded back! Unfortunately, while The Fir Tree played without a hitch, there was one spot in A Christmas Carol where it skipped and just kept skipping. Upon inspection, I found there was a visible spot on the record where it was scratched a little. I suspected that maybe if the weight on the cartridge was a little higher it might not skip as easily. So I tried adjusting the counterweight on the arm, and fortunately I was able to get it past that point. I was able to clean up the skip pretty well using Audacity, so it's hardly even noticeable.

I actually bought another record, a recording of Pinocchio which is the one other record I remember having as a child. I mostly bought it to help further legitimize the fact that I bought this USB turntable which, once I digitize Pinocchio, will probably go into a closet never to be used again.

So the record that probably only cost a couple of bucks when I was a kid cost me around $100 all-in this time around. I guess that's inflation for you, huh?

ThisMonkeyWriteMo or "What The Right Side of My Brain Is Up To Lately"

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:47:00 +0000

Those of you you have been reading this blog for a long time (uh... hello? Anybody still out there?) may remember this gem from 2005.

Wow. 2005? Has it really been that long?

Well, life happens, and despite my best intentions, not much has come of the things I planned on doing, which I wrote about in that blog entry.

This year, I've gotten involved in NaNoWriMo (those of you who follow me on Twitter are probably all too aware of this, as I've been updating my word count daily, but you may not know exactly what it is). If you care to know, read on.

NaNoWriMo is shorthand for "National Novel Writer's Month". The short explanation is this: when you commit to doing NaNoWriMo, you commit to writing 50,000 words of fiction during the month of November. That's it. And it doesn't cost a thing!

OK, that's a lie. There's no money involved, but it does cost quite a commitment of time. Already, some of my co-workers are annoyed at how far behind I am on television. (Can you believe I have not even watched the new "V", and have no idea when I will? And that apparently there have been some kind of important baseball games being televised?) I'm that far behind already, and this is only the first week! I envision a future with much less television in my life. That is probably not a bad thing.

So, what's magic about 50,000 words? It's sort of arbitrary, but the guy who started this crazy thing established 50,000 words as sort of the minimum length for a novel. If you want to know more, check out the site I've linked above, particularly the FAQ.

A couple of people have asked me about this undertaking, wanting to know what my story is about, whether or not I'm going to get it published, who do I think I am with these crazy delusions, etc. Well, let's take the second question first. Absolutely not. I don't think I ever want anyone to read this story. It's pretty bad. Even after some heavy editing, I'm pretty sure it will be beyond redemption. But that's not the point. The point is to get the creative juices flowing. Prove to yourself that you can actually create something new. Art for art's sake (even if the first few attempts aren't beautiful).

I have to admit, while part of me is a little distressed at the amount of time its taking out of each day, there is another, rapidly growing part that is starting to remember why I loved this so much when I was younger, before I became a hard core computer geek. The thing I've always loved about programming computers is the ability to create something new. You can read my 2005 blog entry to get an idea about how that's working out for me. Not much has really changed in four years with regard to getting to create new things every day.

On the other hand, it is really a lot of fun to create entire universes in your own stories. For the novel I'm working on right now, I have no outline, no real plan for where its going. I'm just making it up as I go. It's a lot of fun and the right side of my brain is enjoying getting some attention for a change. Already there's been an accidental death, a revenge killing and an arson fire - and I'm only four chapters in!

The NaNoWriMo is a great, fun challenge, but I plan on continuing once this month is over. Probably not with the novel I'm working on now, but something else. I'm going to really start working on improving my writing skills. Mostly for fun, but hey, it'll be nice to have something to fall back on if this whole computer thing just turns out to be a passing fad!

Unattended Installation (aka Silent Install) of Sun JDK in Debian

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:38:00 +0000

Posting this short note to my blog in the hopes it may help someone else, as I had a hard time tracking this info down.

Debian provides a package (sun-java6-jdk) for installing the JDK, but when you have a situation where you need to do an unattended installation (aka "silent install") of the JDK you are stuck, because the install insists on making you interactively accept Sun's licensing agreement. Passing the -y option to apt-get has no effect. I was able to find a link on Sun's site for doing silent installs on Windows, but nothing for Linux.

Fortunately, I eventually tracked down, all you have to do is the following before you run your apt-get install command:

echo sun-java6-jdk shared/accepted-sun-dlj-v1-1 boolean true | debconf-set-selections

This indicates to the installer hooks that you have already accepted the license agreement, and doesn't give you the annoying EULA dialog.

UPDATE 11/3/09: I should note that all of the above research was in preparation for setting up an automated install with FAI. Unfortunately, I later found out, that while the above works great in the regular command line, due to the nature of the environment FAI installs run in, it doesn't work for that. However, I also discovered there is a correct way of doing it with FAI.

Use "debconf preseeding". Create a class file e.g. debconf/DEFAULT (I used debconf/easberry-vm-std-plt-01 for testing with my host class, and populate it with the following:


sun-java6-bin   shared/accepted-sun-dlj-v1-1    boolean true
sun-java6-jdk   shared/accepted-sun-dlj-v1-1    boolean true
sun-java6-jre   shared/accepted-sun-dlj-v1-1    boolean true

This accomplishes basically the same thing, but in the FAI environment. Success!

No Fluff, Just Stuff Atlanta

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:41:00 +0000

I just finished attending a 3 day (well, technically 2 1/2 days) tech conference called the "Greater Atlanta Software Symposium". (Most people seem to just refer to it by the name of the organization, "No Fluff Just Stuff"). I highly recommend this conference, which is held at various locations throughout the year. This is the third one I've attended, and I always come away from them excited about the new tech I've learned and eager to apply it.

There were lots of good presentations. On the first day, I started out with a presentation on anti-patterns in software development. (I always wonder, if patterns and anti-patterns converge do they annihilate each other)? Then I went to a presentation on Scala, which I've heard a lot of buzz about. It looks interesting, though some of the syntax made my eyes hurt. Then, I went to a presentation on Flex development. This, I think, is something I really want to pursue. Flex looks pretty cool, and like it or not, Flash is a lot more ubiquitous than Java on the desktop ever was or will be. (Sorry JavaFX). After dinner, there was an interesting keynote on being an iconoclast. It was very thought provoking, although the speaker sort of lost me when he seemed to put the "Dixie Chicks" on par with Florence Nightingale and other historical figures as examples of iconoclasts.

The second day I attended several web design talks by a couple of different presenters. I really need to read "Don't Make Me Think"and "The Design of Everyday Things." I also attended a session on "Java.next" which was an overview of up and coming alternative languages on the JVM. (This is where I first heard the controversial statement I mention below).

The final day (today) consisted of topics that are probably the most immediately applicable to my day job: presentations on the "Busy Java Developer's Guide to Collections" and a couple of deep dives into garbage collection on the JVM and various tools that are available to help troubleshoot running systems. (BTrace looks awesome!) I also attended a presentation on applying functional language approaches to Java development.

Functional languages on the JVM seemed to be one of the dominant themes this year. I think I need to spend some time learning either Scala or Clojure (or maybe both). One really provocative comment made by one of the presenters, and reaffirmed by the group at the expert panel talk, was that no "green field" projects should be written in Java. Of course, its a particularly provocative comment given that it was made at a conference targeted at Java developers.

I have mixed feelings.

I'm convinced that these new languages provide a lot of demonstrable benefits over the aging Java language. Since they run on the JVM, they can even be grafted onto existing Java projects. Of course, it's always good to learn new technologies just to tickle your brain, and maybe even get some new insights and ways of thinking about various problems.

On the other hand, in my world I don't see a lot of call for programmers that know Scala or Clojure, or even Groovy (which is not a functional language, but it's in that "java.next" category and its about as incremental a step away from Java that you can make). Let's face it, in today's economy, that's got to be a major consideration! Also, in most of the positions I've held in my career, I'm generally not working on "green field" projects; I'm maintaining existing applications. There's no way I'm going to be able to sneak in Clojure or Scala on my existing project (except for maybe, as was suggested as a first step, unit testing). Sure, those modules written in the other languages can be integrated with the existing Java code and it may not be an issue in the short term, but what percentage of Java developers are going to be able to come in behind me and even recognize the language, much less be able to understand it or maintain it? When someone else raised this very issue during the Scala presentation I attended, the presenter's answer to this seemed to be that he was above working with such programmers so it was a non-issue for him.

I still think it worth learning one (or both) of these languages, even though for the short term at least, I can't see using them for anything other than personal projects. Just wish I knew where to place my bets and place my focus, because there seem to be a LOT of paths to the future.

Three Displays On My Macbook Pro

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:51:00 +0000

I've often heard that you can never be too rich, too thin or have too much monitor real estate. OK, I might have added that last thing myself. I'm definitely in no position to test the first two assertions, but thanks to the USB display adapter I recently purchased for my Macbook Pro I'm better able to test the third.

I purchased my adapter from OWC (Other World Computing) here, but I've since discovered what appears to be the same hardware available from Amazon here for about $20-$30 less. I verified that the one I purchased from OWC matches the model number of the device on Amazon, USB-1612. Here is the manufacturer's product page. It's possible the one on Amazon may only come with Windows drivers, since the product was apparently Windows-only initially. If that's the case you can download OSX drivers here. The CD that came with mine had both Windows and OSX drivers. As of this writing, it appears that Linux is unsupported. I've included a picture to give you an idea of the relative size compared with an iPhone, the handiest reference object I had available.

When I'm working on my Macbook Pro at my desk, I have an Acer 24" monitor running at 1920x1200 attached via DVI. It's a nice, large monitor, but I also have an older Dell 20" widescreen monitor which I like to use in more of a "tallscreen" orientation. The monitor can be rotated 90 degrees which is useful for certain applications (primarily reading ebooks, technical documents or long news articles - but it also comes in handy when reviewing credit card and bank statements online). Of course, the Macbook only has one external display port, so ordinarily there is no way to use both monitors at the same time. This device allows you to add additional displays (up to 4 in OSX, or 6 in Windows) via USB ports. I only tested it under OSX 10.5.7.

So, what's the verdict? Overall, I'm very pleased with it and it meets my needs, but there are some limitations you should be aware of, and my experience hasn't been problem-free.

The initial installation was fairly painless. I installed the OSX drivers using the supplied CD and restarted my Mac. I then connected the device to my USB hub. One nice touch is that the device draws its power over the USB connection, so there's not a separate power adapter to plug in - just the USB cable and the monitor cable (in my case a DVI cable). It comes packaged with a DVI to HDMI adapter as well as a DVI to VGA adapter - I didn't use either of those. As soon as I connected the device the new display was recognized. I just needed to bring up the OSX preference pane to rotate the image 90 degrees to match the orientation of my monitor, and I was in business! Everything was functioning properly and I picked a special wallpaper for my "tallscreen" monitor. But, I had a Safari 4 update pending, so I decided before I did anything else, I would go ahead and apply that update. It required a restart of the system, and that's where my problems began.

After rebooting, the system seemed to recognize the display, but the attached monitor was completely blank. The green light was illuminated on the monitor, indicating that it was receiving a signal, but the display was completely black. I tried unplugging/replugging the device, running "detect displays", and even rebooting again, none of which fixed the problem. After searching online for a bit, the only thing I could find was this link which didn't exactly match my scenario. The troubleshooting FAQ refers to problems with an already functional installation that may occur after applying the OSX 10.5.7 update. I was already running 10.5.7 before I initially installed the device. However, I figured it was possible that the browser update might have updated some system file, so with nothing better to try, I followed the suggestion, which basically involved uninstalling the drivers, rebooting, re-installing the drivers, and rebooting yet again. It was annoying, but it fixed the problem. Not able to leave well enough alone, I decided to reboot again, just to make sure everything was stable. I got the same symptoms - monitor getting a signal but no image being displayed. I did the uninstall driver/reboot system/reinstall driver/reboot system dance again, and once more the display came to life.

At this point I was getting pretty frustrated. Doing this dance every time I need to restart my Mac was not going to be acceptable. I did a little more poking around on my system, and launched the Console app, wherein I found this message repeating over and over:

DisplayLinkManager[739:65c3] Could not establish GA communication 0000044E

Often, I find that if you search for an error string on Google, you can find one or more people who have had the same issue, often with a solution, but in this case I had no such luck. I re-read the FAQ and decided to try that oft-suggested bit of OSX voodoo which is to run the Disk Utility program and repair disk permissions. In all the time I have been running Macs (about 4 years now) I can honestly say that although performing that ritual usually finds some permissions problems and fixes them, I have never had it actually cure the symptom that prompted me to repair permissions in the first place. Apparently this instance was the exception that proves the rule. After repairing permissions, and rebooting the system the display continued working. I rebooted a couple more times just to be sure, and the display came up fine both times, and I have not at any problems since.

What are some limitations of the device? As I mentioned previously, if you want to use this under Linux, as far as I can tell you are currently out of luck. Also, it only supports two resolutions: 1600x1200 or 1680x1050 (which is what I'm running it at - with the image rotated 90 degrees so that I can run it in portrait mode). At least on the Mac, it doesn't support OpenGL acceleration, which means certain things won't run on the display, such as video editing in iMovie. Also, only Intel Macs are supported. One other limitation that I ran into was that Crossover for the Mac doesn't seem to behave well with it. I tried moving applications running under Crossover onto the display, but as soon as I finished dragging the window, OSX became unresponsive. I could still move the mouse pointer around, but I couldn't switch focus to any application (no matter which display it was on), nor could I bring up the system menu or the "Force Quit" dialog. My only recourse was holding down the power button to reboot the system. I encountered this behavior consistently, and could not find any fix or workaround. Annoying, but I don't use Crossover that much, and as long as I remember not to move it to that display, it's not a problem.

After getting the kinks worked out, I'm pretty happy, and it's serving the purpose I had for it. I do wish I had known I could get essentially the same device for $20-$30 cheaper from Amazon. Ah, well -- live and learn. Here's a picture of my three display setup (one of the displays is the built-in display of my Macbook Pro). You may notice the monitor in middle of the picture looks a little screwy - it's actually a composite image I created using an iPhone app called Pano and I'm not particularly skilled in making those images look quite right.

Forcing iTunes to automatically check for purchases

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:53:00 +0000

Yes, I am aware that there is an option in iTunes to automatically check for purchases (such as TV show subscriptions). And I have it checked. But for some mysterious reason, iTunes simply refuses to automatically check for downloads on my old PowerPC Mac Mini (still running Tiger) which I use as my media hub. It has been a minor annoyance to me for some time now, and I haven't been able to find a solution 'til now. This doesn't really fix the problem exactly - but it's a nifty little hack that achieves the result I'm looking for. Through the magic of AppleScript and cron, my problem is solved!

I found the magic URL for forcing iTunes to check for purchases, and created the following AppleScript to invoke it:

tell application "iTunes"
    open location "itmss://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa                   /wa/checkForPurchases?ign-mscache=1"
end tell

Then, edit crontab to run the script every 4 hours:
0 0,4,8,12,16,20 * * * osascript ~/Documents/check_itunes.scpt

I Love Obscure Error Messages

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:01:00 +0000

Obscure error messages are delightful. Like this one. It comes from Eclipse, my Java IDE of choice (well, not my choice really, but I digress...). So today I fire it up and get this obscure error message. Fortunately, the problem is really clear once you look at the log file it points you to:

!SESSION 2009-01-16 11:01:58.448 -----------------------------------------------
eclipse.buildId=
java.version=1.6.0_07
java.vendor=Sun Microsystems Inc.
BootLoader constants: OS=linux, ARCH=x86, WS=gtk, NL=en_US
Command-line arguments: -os linux -ws gtk -arch x86

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.app 0 0 2009-01-16 11:01:59.038
!MESSAGE Product could not be found.

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 4 0 2009-01-16 11:01:59.084
!MESSAGE Application error
!STACK 1
java.lang.RuntimeException: No application id has been found.
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.app.EclipseAppContainer.startDefaultApp(EclipseAppContainer.java:236)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.app.MainApplicationLauncher.run(MainApplicationLauncher.java:29)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.internal.adaptor.EclipseAppLauncher.runApplication(EclipseAppLauncher.java:110)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.internal.adaptor.EclipseAppLauncher.start(EclipseAppLauncher.java:79)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:382)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:179)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:549)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:504)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:1236)

Yes, that was sarcasm you heard there.

To make a long, painful story short, after trolling around on the interwebs, I found the answer lies in Eclipse's config.ini file. For whatever reason, and I have no idea what that reason is, after using Eclipse since June, my config file got mysteriously corrupted. The attribute eclipse.product had a blank value. Apparently it's supposed to either have the value org.eclipse.sdk.ide or (in my case) org.eclipse.platform.ide, depending on which version of Eclipse you have installed. Once I set eclipse.product=org.eclipse.platform.ide in the config.ini file, Eclipse started up without complaint.

I hope that this sad tale may help someone in the future. Perhaps even myself, should it happen again!

Matching multiline regular expressions in Java

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:17:00 +0000

Regular expressions are one of those things that I understand but don't use often enough to have really mastered. I use them even less in my Java programming. Today I found myself banging my head into my cubicle wall trying to parse out a file that looked something like this:

----START
something=foo
anotherthing=bar
----END
----START
something=baz
anotherthing=ran outta foo words
----END

I needed to parse this out and create objects representing each section. Initially I started trying to read this in line by line, keeping track of where I was in relation to the markers, concatenating string buffers, etc. Then I realized how retarded that approach was, and how using a regular expression would make it a lot simpler.

Brushing aside the mental cobwebs I looked up a couple of references of the Java API and studied up on my friends Pattern and Matcher. I had trouble finding any examples for my specific case, where what I wanted to match spanned multiple lines. At first I thought I'd found the answer with the promising sounding Pattern.MULTILINE argument to Pattern.compile(), but that has to do with matching ^ and $. Without that option, those operators only match at the beginning or end of the text being parsed, with them it will allow them to work within the text at newline boundaries.

Turned out what I was looking for was the Pattern.DOTALL argument. By default, the dot operator does not match newlines, with this argument it does. An alternative is to prefix the regex pattern with (?s). It has the same effect, and the mnemonic stands for "single-line" mode, which is what its called in Perl.

So, to extract the relevant sections from the input above, you can do the following:


    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("----START\n(.*?)\n----END\n", Pattern.DOTALL); 
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(theInput);

    while(matcher.find()) {
        System.out.println(matcher.group(1) + "\n");
    }

That will print out:

something=foo
anotherthing=bar

something=baz
anotherthing=ran outta foo words

You can get the same result with the alternate method, using the embedded (?s) operator in the Pattern declaration:


Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(?s)----START(.*?)----END");

For further reference, have a look here.

4 Gigabytes of Fun!

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:30:00 +0000

It sometimes seems that no procedure involving a computer ever turns out to be as straightforward as you initially think it will be.

The desktop I have at work is a pretty nice system, a Dell Precision T3400 quad core with 2GB of RAM. It's plenty fast, but with some of the memory hogging software I run all the time (a Windows virtual machine, Eclipse IDE and Firefox), sometimes it gets bogged down not with the processor but with swapping stuff in and out to disk. RAM is a pretty cheap upgrade, and I managed to get a RAM upgrade for my machine to 4GB. Yay! Problem: Ubuntu only recognizes 3.2GB of RAM, though the BIOS clearly sees all 4GB. Boo!

Well, I have the 32 bit version of Ubuntu installed, not the 64 bit version. Never occurred to me to install the 64 bit version (and never would have made a difference before today). Didn't relish the thought of reinstalling to get the 64 bit version, so I did some googling.

The first line of attack that I ran across involved tweaking BIOS settings. I found many suggestions to look for some kind of memory remapping setting in the BIOS. I couldn't find anything in my BIOS (a Dell Precision T3400). I noticed the BIOS was a few versions of date, so I updated that, but it didn't seem to make a difference. (Aside: very pleased to see that I could download a Linux version of the BIOS updater, which was basically just a single file that you chmod +x and run as root in single user mode. Good on ya Dell!)

A little more googling and I discovered that some Linux kernels have support for Physical Address Extension, which is a workaround for 32 bit OS's to allow them to address more than 4GB of address space. Of course, I only wanted to see 4GB of RAM, not more, but to do so requires more than 4GB of address space because of other things that have to be mapped to some memory location, like video RAM, etc. Poking around some more, it seems that the default Ubuntu desktop kernel does NOT include this support. Further confirmation provided by this entry in /var/log/dmesg: Use a HIGHMEM64G enabled kernel. The solution is to install the server version of the kernel, which does provide that support.

So to the keyboard I ran (OK, that's a lie, I was already at the keyboard) and typed:

apt-get install linux-image-server

Success! Victory is mine! But wait, upon rebooting, disaster struck. My X server kept trying to initialize over and over, and finally came up in an extremely low resolution mode and said it couldn't detect my video card anymore. Whaaaaaaaa????

At first I started wondering if something weird was going on, like maybe it was somehow remapping the address of the video RAM in a way that the Nvidia driver didn't like, but it turned out to be much simpler. After some further googling, it turns out that you need to install some kernel modules for the nvidia driver I'm using. I guess those modules must have already been installed for the generic version of the kernel, but not the server version. So a couple more terminal commands:

sudo nvidia-xconfig (to put my X configuration right again)

sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-server (to provide the module support needed for the video driver)

Then, a quick reboot. There was one more minor hiccup, which actually took care of itself. When I fired up VMWare it said it needed to recompile some kernel modules (which it always does whenever you upgrade the kernel). One really nice thing in the VMWare 6.5 betas is that it just takes care of this for you, and gives you feedback about this operation in the GUI, with no action required on your part. No more going to the command line and running the old vmware-config.pl script.

I write this entry in the hopes that it will save someone else time in the future, as they can find all this info in one place, instead of the dozens of places that I had to gather it all from.

A Couple of Cool Mac Apps

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:38:00 +0000

If you like listening to Audiobooks on your ipod/iphone/macbook and your audiobooks come from sources other than iTunes and Audible, (for example: emusic, which has DRM free MP3's, or audiobooks you have ripped from CD) you should check out Audiobook Builder.

One issue with audio books from emusic and other sources is that instead of having one nice audiobook file in the standard Apple format, you end up with a couple hundred mp3 files that you have to keep organized a playlist. Those files also aren't categorized as an audiobook within iTunes, and trying to keep your place in between listening sessions (especially if you listen to something else in between) can be a real pain.

Audiobook Builder let's you combine all those files into a standard Apple audiobook format file. It's only $10 for a license, and there is a demo available. Unfortunately, the demo is crippled, in that it will only do the first 20 minutes of audio, so you can't really try it out with a full audiobook. The demo does at least let you get a good feel for how the program works, and $10 is pretty cheap.

Another cool app, a little more expensive, is myTuneSync. If you have several computers with iTunes libraries, keeping them in sync can be a real pain. I have iTunes on my Macbook Pro, my wife has iTunes on her Dell Latitude, and I have another instance of iTunes running in a virtual machine to serve up media files to my AppleTV. That virtual machine is more or less my central iTunes repository, but its a pain to keep music that has been added to the two laptops synced with it. This program lets you do things like that in a fairly painless manner. One nice surprise for those of you (like me) with both Windows and Mac is that the client works on both platforms.

Licensing is a bit strange. It's $20 for a license for a single computer, which doesn't make any sense, since the program is useless on a single machine. But a 3 license pack is available for $30. You will need at least two licenses to actually use this program so I'm not sure why you would ever buy the single license. You can try this app out with full functionality for 15 days, so if you're interested in a solution like this, you can give it a try with no risk.

(NOTE: I have no affiliation with either of these sites, other than being a happy customer.)

Just Another Post

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:01:00 +0000

As you can see, it's been awhile since I've posted to the blog. It has been an eventful year so far, though. Some good, some bad.

Of course, my big brother Greg passed away in April. It was a shock to the whole family. He was only 44. Those of you who know me well may know that I also lost my other brother in a car accident many, many years ago. So, I know from experience that the pain never really goes away. It gets a little easier to deal with, day by day, for the most part. And then some days, you see or hear something that brings back a memory, and you feel it all full force again, and it just completely catches you off guard. Like, a couple of weeks ago, I was sorting through things in my office and found a birthday card that I had bought for him. I had honestly forgotten all about it (yes, I have great organizational skills!). But when I found it and started looking at it, I remembered buying it ahead of time, being all proud for not waiting until the last minute, and thinking how funny he would think it was. He had such a great sense of humor. He was really a clown. He was so kind and giving. And he was tough! He was my big brother. How can he really be gone? Even now I sometimes read or hear something and think of sharing it with Greg or wonder what he'll think about it - and then I remember. Sometimes I dream about him -- really good, happy dreams. And then I wake up, and I'm a little disoriented for awhile, and then reality sinks in.

Yes, it still hurts a lot. And I still have a hard time talking about it. Even just typing this is really bring up a lot of emotion. So, I'll move on for now, except just to say thank you to everyone who has expressed their condolences, who has said a kind word or shared a memory about my brother, or just let me know that me and my family were in their thoughts and prayers. It means a lot. It's not so much what you say, it's just knowing that people care.

On a more positive note, after 8 years with my previous, rather large employer, I have just started a new job. Like my previous job, this one is network security related, but its a much, smaller organization which I think will suit me a lot better, and the product is actually quite different. Also, its an opportunity to get back into primarily Java development, which was not something I was really able to do any more in my role at the previous job. As a general rule, I don't tend to talk directly about my work or employer on my blog, just because I don't ever want to have to deal with any impression that I'm speaking in any way for my employer on this blog. This blog is all mine. :) If you really care to know particulars, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, or even Facebook or MySpace. Suffice it to say that I am really enjoying the new challenge and have met a lot of friendly and hard working people.

One more thing I should mention. Though I don't post directly to this blog all that frequently as of late, I do post short messages to Twitter (see the upper right corner on the blog) pretty frequently, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. Nothing profound, sometimes just mundane updates on whatever I'm doing, sometimes random outbursts directed at no one in particular about something that's aggravating me. You can always see the most recent of these updates in the upper right corner of my blog page, or if you want more instant updates, check out my Twitter's site and see all the ways you can follow my updates. (For instance, you can get updates on instant messenger or even SMS).

That's all for now!

My Big Brother Greg

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:08:00 +0000

My Big Brother Greg
Originally uploaded by ericasberry

I miss him so much. Today I will be carrying his casket. He was so young ... 44. I still can't believe he's gone. I wish I could talk to him one more time.

Pseudospam

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:57:00 +0000

On average, I get probably get around 50 - 100 spam emails within a 24 hour period. That's fairly annoying, but fortunately modern spam filters do a pretty good job of weeding those out. On a given day, probably 1 or 2 make it past the spam filter when they shouldn't, and maybe once or twice a week a legit message will get categorized as spam (although those are usually some kind of mailing list emails that probably look a lot like spam to a filter).

Today something really interesting happened. When I went to peruse my email inbox after about an hour away from it, I suddenly had several hundred messages in my SPAM folder. WTF?

Upon further investigation, nearly all of them were actually "bounces" from various email systems indicating that an email I had sent was undeliverable. Quite a few were also responses from spam filtering systems telling me that the message I had sent so-and-so looked like spam, so I needed to perform some action or another if I wanted my message to go through. Only problem was that all of these were referencing messages I had never sent. So basically, lots of spam was generated to notify me that spam I had not sent was undeliverable. Welcome to pseudospam!

So apparently some spammer used my email address as the sender for the "from" address on a big batch of delicious, juicy spams. It's funny, too, because the message have all sorts of different names in the from field, none of which are even close to mine. This looks bad though. How many thousands more of these am I going to start getting?

The good news is that, at least so far, there was a big blip on the pseudospam radar and then it all went back to normal levels. I'm honestly quite surprised that it hasn't continued. Of course, about the time I post this, the spammer will probably start another campaign and I will get inundated again.

It makes me wonder what the usefulness of "postmaster" bounces are anymore, though. It's great to know that the email you sent someone didn't make it, because you typed their address incorrectly, or they changed their address, but such a notification would have been lost in this deluge. And that's just the deluge I saw directed back to my address. I wonder how much more worthless email traffic must be generated every day to inform people that messages they never sent didn't make it to a recipient they've probably never heard of.

Walmart Is Stupid

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:44:00 +0000

So tomorrow is race day here in Atlanta. (Ironically, the Nationwide Race qualifying actually got delayed this morning because of snow). So, we made a quick run to Walmart to get some essentials.

As is often the case, Donna and I decided to divide and conquer while we were in the store. Typically, I tend to find myself mysteriously drawn to the electronics department by unknown forces. I looked around a little bit, and then I remembered I was wanting to get some cheap earbuds. I picked up a $20 pair of Koss earbuds, not exactly a premium electronics item.

So I went meandering about some more, and eventually met up with Donna in a different part of the store. I tossed the earbuds in the cart and we looked around a little more. I wanted to show her something in electronics, in case she was looking for ideas for things to put in my Easter basket, so we went back through there. As we were passing through, some Walmart trooper eyed those high-end earbuds in the cart, and told my wife "Ma'am, you can't leave electronics with those, you'll have to pay for them here."

Well, we weren't done shopping. And I explained to her that I had already basically been all through the rest of the store with them once. (I later enjoyed pointing out to Donna that nobody ever hassled me about them while I had them - obviously she must have looked suspicious). It's not like there was a sign posted stating that you had to pay for items there. It's a very open area too, not its own little sectioned off area. She reiterated that we couldn't leave electronics with the earbuds. So I took them out of the cart and told her she could keep them. Turns out we were done shopping there after all.

It really annoys me to go somewhere to spend my hard earned money and basically be treated like a criminal. Another example of this is the stupid deal where they have to stop you and look at your receipt when you walk out the door. It's not as if they actually take the time to confirm that everything matches up, it's just another additional way of them imposing themselves on you.

I have also adopted a policy of not stopping when the inventory control thing goes off because the minimum wage employee forgot to swipe some item over the demagnetizer or whatever the thing is. If a human being wants to ask to see my receipt or whatever, fine. But I refuse to be a Pavlovian dog who hears a bell go off and reflexively submits to my retail masters.

Yeah, I probably need to cut back on the caffeine.

Attempted Manslaughter By A Conspiracy of "Parktards"

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:05:00 +0000

We interrupt the regularly schedule radio silence of this blog to provide you with a news bulletin regarding the attempted manslaughter of this blog's author by a conspiracy of two nameless, faceless "parktards".

What is a "parktard" you might be wondering? Well, Webster's defines it as ... well, ummm. OK. Actually, Webster's doesn't define it. At least I don't think it does. I'm too lazy too look it up. But I'm pretty sure Webster's doesn't actually define it. So, I will.

Parktard is a term I have lovingly coined to describe those individuals who exhibit the symptoms of a very specific mental retardation. That is, the inability to park their vehicle within the narrow confines of the designated parking space, often with absolute disregard for the physical safety and mental health of those who may wish to park in an adjacent space or, even worse, someone who is already occupying said adjacent space.

Yesterday, I was the victim of a well-financed and highly organized conspiracy of two parktards, executed with nearly lethal efficiency. Here, we see parktard number one pictured.

Upon arriving back at my office for lunch, this parktard was parked two spaces away from the space I parked in. As you can see he was parked way over the line. It was at that time that I made the near-fatal assumption that nobody would be foolish enough to try to squeeze their vehicle into the remaining space.

Which leads us to parktard number two:

I discovered the co-conspirator as I was ready to depart my office. By this time, parktard number one had left the scene of the crime. As you can see, there was precisely one inch of clearance between the passenger side of the second parktard and my vehicle. I attempted to enter my vehicle on the driver's side, but the futility was quickly obvious. Left with no alternative, I opted to enter my rather small vehicle from the passenger side. While the execution of this maneuver was successful, you can see that it came at great cost and personal injury.

I initially planned on driving to the emergency room to see about getting some stitches to seal up the wound, but it was a Friday afternoon, and there was a lot of traffic, so I decided to live on the edge and tough it out. What can I say? That's how I roll.

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Dish Networks Rocks! (Yes, that was sarcasm)

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:54:00 +0000

This was a first. Somehow all three of our Satellite receivers managed to lose their marbles today, and turning them off and on was not sufficient to revive them.

I woke up this morning with the local TV news on but no sound on the TV. I checked the TV volume and it was on. So I tried switching channels. Still no sound from the TV station, but the little bloops and bleeps that Tivo makes were clearly audible. Hmmm.

So I grabbed the satellite remote, guessing it must be the receiver. I had once had all the colors turn purple, and at first thought it was the TV, but when I found the Tivo menus were all in their proper colors, turning the satellite receiver off and on fixed it. So, I turned it off, waited a few seconds, and then turned it back on. Sound came back, but it sounded like some sort of demon posession had taken hold of the news anchor. I tried switching it off and back on again, which led to no sound at all again. One more try, back to demon posession. Knowing that the remote was not completely powering the satellite receiver down, I pulled the plug, waited a few seconds, and plugged it back in. Everything back to normal. Cool. Didn't give it much more thought... until I got home from the work at the end of the day.

I switched on the TV in our living room and the satellite receiver was displaying the message that you usually only see when its raining really heavy, indicating that it couldn't find a signal. For awhile, we had a Dish DVR and it used to get in this state all the time. Our other two regular receivers would always be fine, but the DVR would always be showing this "no signal" screen. Generally, we'd have to disconnect the power to get it out of that state.

So I cut the power, waited a few seconds, and switched it back on. It went through finding all its transponders and what not, said it was downloading the program guide information, and then just as it was about to display live television, went back to the no signal screen. Grrrrr! I remembered I'd had a weird problem with the receiver in the bedroom onetime where one of the channels had disappeared from the program guide (the History Channel. Yes, the History Channel! I LOVE THE HISTORY CHANNEL!!!!). I remembered I had futzed around with the menus in the Installation section and found something that said "QAM Scan/Signal", and after letting it go through that, it added History Channel back. So I decided to try that again with the Living Room. Sure enough, after going through that (it took a few minutes) Mr. Satellite receiver was happy.

I thought it strange that two of our three receivers had gotten screwed up on the same day. Which made me think maybe I should check the third receiver, in the office. Sure enough, it was in the same hosed-up state as the one in the living room. Tried just disconnecting and reconnecting the power and it did the exact same thing as the receiver in the living room. Did the QAM Scan/Signal and was really proud of myself, until the receiver said "Your Smart Card Is Not Authorized to Receive This Channel". Doh! Fortunately, that appeared to be resolved by just waiting a couple of minutes, and then it decided, that I was indeed entitled to view the programming I pay a ridiculous fee for each month.

I don't know what kind of weird mojo occurred that managed to screw up all three of our receivers. I assume it was some kind of update from Dish, although I suppose maybe it could have been a power surge. I should mention that we're in an apartment and they have this weird setup where instead of having your own Dish, there's one "community" Dish that pulls the signal and distributes it throughout the community. Supposedly that was why we had so many problems with the DVR. I don't totally understand it, but apparently it's not as simple as just distributing the signal from the one Dish to everybody's receiver, there's some kind of special switching equipment and (buggy) software involved.

Unfortunately I don't have any good alternatives. There's no cable available in this complex (I guess because of whatever deal they have with Dish). And we don't have line of sight to put up our own dish. Good times.

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Code Monkey Goes To Concert

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:30:00 +0000

Last night we went to see Jonathan Coulton in concert in downtown Atlanta. It was a great show! Donna went mostly to humor me, but she ended up having a great time as well. I first heard of JoCo (as all of us "cool" people call him) a couple of years ago when we bought a CD of his for one of my nephews, for Christmas I think. At the time, I wasn't familiar with him and unfortunately didn't really investigate or listen to any of his songs. Then, I'm not sure, maybe a year or so ago I heard his song Code Monkey on a podcast. That song became my anthem and I became a devoted fanboy. After listening to a few more of his songs I bought the "box set" of pretty much all of his music.

I was really excited when I found out he was coming to Atlanta. The venue was downtown, which I generally try to avoid like the plague, particularly on a Friday, but I decided it was worth the sacrifice, and I was right. I had seen entries on his blog when he posted other tour dates that Paul and Storm usually appear with him, and would be at this show at well. I wasn't sure what a Paul and Storm was but I found out last night ... and they are awesome as well. So now I have a whole bunch of other slightly bizarre, perhaps even deranged music to start listening to.

Honestly I think it is the most fun I've had at any concert I've ever gone to. It was an intimate setting and there was a lot of energy in the crowd. And JoCo was just the nicest guy, he hung out after the show and talked with people, and as you can see, I managed to get a picture with him. I'm sort of an introverted, shy person at times and I really had to force myself to go talk to him but I really wanted to and was so glad I did. I told him I was a Code Monkey (as proclaimed by my T-Shirt) and was really glad he sang the song at the show. He asked me what languages I programmed in and for a couple of seconds I couldn't actually remember any. Did I mention I was a little excited and nervous?

I wish every Friday night could be like that. Good times ... if you are into slightly, oh, shall we say, different and highly entertaining music, you should definitely surf over to his site and check out some of his songs. You can listen to just about all his music for free right on his site, and he also sells nice, juicy DRM-free MP3's for your downloading pleasure.

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Boo!

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:12:00 +0000

So on the diet front ... I lost another pound this week. The last couple of weeks have been a little disappointing, slow progress, but I keep trying to tell myself "slow and steady wins the race". And it's better to keep losing slowly than to keep piling it on, right? Check fatguysjourney.com for all the latest updates. :)

We had lots of fun Saturday evening. We met up with some friends Donna works with and had dinner Saturday night, then went to a "haunted house". I have not been to one of those for literally years, but it was pretty fun. The line was really, really long and our feet were hurting by the end of it, but it was really done up well. I can't say that I was actually scared, but it was really funny watching all the ladies scream, half the time even when they could see the person coming. It was a good time.

Today was fairly uneventful. We watched the Martinsville NASCAR race and I geeked around on the computer and that was about it. It was a pretty low-energy kinda Sunday and I kept putting off my workout and ended up not doing it, which I'm not proud of. But I'll get back to it tomorrow morning!

That's about it for now I guess. Time to brace myself for Monday morning.

Diet and Exercise Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:17:00 +0000

Just a quick note to let everybody know that I've moved my diet and exercise stuff (i.e. the bike map, the "Don't Break the Chain", etc.) stuff to its own site - http://fatguysjourney.com. Just kinda wanted to seperate that stuff out and it was making the main blog page just a little busy. If you forget the URL, I'll have a link to it in the sidebar on this page.

Oh, the new page features a new element - I added a line chart to track my weight loss.

Riding Over 400 Miles Seems To Help Weight Loss

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:12:00 +0000

So I'm in a pretty good mood today, for several reasons.

First, I reached my first goal on my bike ride. Yesterday, actually. And that was 400+ miles. It was nice visiting with my parents and my brother (in my head anyway). Now I'm off to visit my wife's parents in the town she grew up in, Berne, IN. This trip will be a little shorter, and then I'm going to pick a distance farther away, probably somewhere I've never actually been. I'm thinking maybe I'll go see the Statue of Liberty.

So the second reason I'm happy, which is closely related, is that I dropped another six pounds this week. Biggest loss to date! I guess all those miles on the bike and eating better are really paying off. It was a nice way to start the weekend.

The third reason I'm happy, is that this weekend is the NASCAR race is in Talladega. It will be really interesting to see how the new cars work out there. I love the superspeedway races. Here's hoping Jr. and his cousin can pull off a win before Eury moves on to Hendricks.

The fourth reason I'm happy is that I found out a couple of days ago that Jonathan Coulton is coming to Atlanta in November. It's kind of funny... I bought one of his CD's for one of my nephews, I think for Christmas one year, but I never listened to it or really knew who he was at the time. Then, probably a year or two later, I heard one of his songs, Code Monkey, which sort of became my anthem. I started checking out some of his other work and ended up buying his "box set" from his website. I really love his music and it will be really cool to see him live, especially since the performance will be in kind of an intimate setting.

The fifth reason I'm happy is that I have running water (at least last time I checked). I just finished working out, and I really need a shower!

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"Bike Trip" Enhancements

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:25:00 +0000

Been playing around with the google maps API and made a few improvements to the little map at the bottom of the blog.

It now tells you how far along I am on the current leg of the journey (for example, right now, on the 1st leg, from Roswell to Mt. Carmel, I'm 97.08% along, with 12.5 miles to go, which means I'll be "arriving" in Mt. Carmel tomorrow!

The icons look a little nicer now. Instead of the standard google maps icons there are pushpins, and the bicycle icon looks nicer now. (If you aren't seeing the green bicycle icon, you probably need to hit refresh in the browser -- its probably still caching the old images). The green pushpin is my original starting point. Yellow pushpins indicate various stops along the way. The red pushpin is the "endpoint" of the trip, at least at this point in time. I plan to pick a new endpoint as I get close to whatever the current one is.

You can now click on the pushpins to get more information about the destination. I'll be updating them as I go along with information like what date I started for them, and when I arrived

There are two small links below the map, one is labeled "What is This?", which will take you to the first blog entry I wrote describing the idea behind the map. The second one is "Larger View", which will open up a much larger version of the map in a window

I registered a new domain, fatguysjourney.com, which will take you directly to the large map version. I have some ideas of doing more with that domain, but for now that's it.

I have some more ideas for enhancements, some on the backend to make the code easier to maintain, but one that I think will be cool is a play button, which will take you through an animated version of the map, iterating through each day of the "journey", showing the location on the map for that day for a few seconds. I think it will be kinda cool.

This is a really fun project. Its helping encourage me to get on that bike each morning, and its quite educational as well. I'm also learning a lot more Javascript, and all about the Google maps API!

Donna and I Decided To Get Some Mexican Food

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:46:00 +0000

... and, well, we got kinda carried away. Just watch the video. :)

Edit: I got some reports of trouble viewing the embedded version. If it doesn't work for you, try this direct link.

Is it Really Almost October?!?!?

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:26:00 +0000

To quote the Steve Miller Band, "time keeps on slippin' ... into the future." Not only that, it seems to continue accelerating.

Anyhoo, just a quick "weekend update" of sorts.

First, I lost a couple more pounds this week. So I've lost six total so far. I am also closing in to my first goal on my "virtual bike ride" (scroll to the bottom of my homepage), riding from my current city of residence to my home town of Mt. Carmel. In fact, based on my average pace, I should reach it by Friday. So I've already decided on my next destination, which is a shorter trip, from Mt. Carmel, to Berne, IN. I haven't picked the next location just yet. It's going to be fun watching this build up over time, seeing routes criss-crossing the US. At some point in the near future, I'm planning on adding an animation so you can play back the history, watch as the days go by at watch the little bicycle move on the map. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

So we went to see a movie this week, The Brave One. This was one I had to kind of talk Donna into going to see. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be that great. It had its moments, but it was way too long, and for the most part just not all that engaging. It was cool to see Sayid from Lost (well, OK, Sayid is a fictional character, the actor is Naveen Andrews). I don't think I've seen him in anything else, and I really like him on Lost.

Today's NASCAR race was a lot more entertaining. Couple of observations. First, I love Dale Jr., and I'm not a big fan of Kyle Busch, but Jr. really screwed up when he took out Kyle, and I don't blame Kyle one bit for being ticked off. On the other hand, I saw Jr. interviewed during the rain delay, and as I've observed before, he man'd up and totally owned up to it. Then there was the wreck-fest finish, which was shortened because they ran out of daylight. It was really weird, first they said they were shortening it to 225 laps. Then 210 laps. Then, after the last caution, when a nice three car green/white/checker shootout between Biffle, Boywer and Johnson was brewing, the abrubtly decided not to restart and freeze the field, giving Biffle the victory. Now I was happy to see Biffle win, because I like him and he's been in a real slump, but Bowyer was catching him and it would have been fun to watch.

Well, that's all for now. Time to gear up and get ready for Muuuunday.

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Weekend Update

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:05:00 +0000

First ... yay me! My exercise and dietary changes are paying off, I lost four pounds this week. I have a long way to go but progress is progress. Also, if you scroll down to the bottom of the blog, you'll see I'm quite a bit farther along on my virtual bike ride ... I'm past Nashville now!

Another relaxing and fairly uneventful weekend. Spent too much time on the computer, as usual. On Saturday we went to see the movie Mr. Woodcock. I thought it looked pretty funny from the preview and the premise had a lot of potential. It centered around an evil-incarnate gym teacher who makes children's lives miserable. (I of course, related to the suffering children). One of his former students returns to his hometown years later to receive an award honoring his success, only to find out this evil former teacher is not only being honored as "Educator of the Year", but is also engaged to his Mom! Hilarity ensues! Well, in theory. There were a few amusing moments but overall it fell pretty flat. Oh, well.

Oh, one thing I wanted to share, and those of you who are my Facebook friends may have already been pestered by me about this, is this website Scrabulous. I'm not really using the Scrabulous site directly, but rather, the Facebook application. It's fun. It's basically Scrabble, but you can either play it "real time" or as you have time. So, in other words, instead of having to devote a specific chunk of time to play through a whole game, you can start a game with one of your friends and each of you can take your turns as you have time. So a game may go on for days. And you can have multiple games going on at once. So far I have only finished one game, which I won (yay!). I've got two other games going on at the moment, which I'm not doing so well in. Even so, it's still fun!

So how 'bout that NASCAR race today? Dale Jr. ended up a respectable third, which was great to see. Record number of caution flags. Nice guy Kyle Petty gettin' all up in Denny Hamlin's face and Denny jumpin' out of his car ready to throw down. Michael Waltrip had a pretty strong finish, and the points race is all shaken up, with the top four separated by less than five points. Even with all that action, I managed to get in a nice nap during part of the race. :)

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200 gigs of 7200 RPM goodness

noreply@blogger.com (eric) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:35:00 +0000

When I bought my MacBook Pro, I didn't really think much about upgrading the hard drive. If anything, I assumed that it would be similar to upgrading the drive in my old Dell 9300, which was a pretty straightforward procedure.

Apparently it is pretty straightforward on the Macbook, but when you pay the premium for the "Pro", one unwelcome "bonus" you get is that it is really a pain in the butt to upgrade the drive. In fact, while Apple actually has a PDF document with instructions on upgrading the drive in a Macbook, the drive is not considered "user upgradable" on the MacBook Pro. There are a bunch of screws and delicate ribbon cables you have to deal with. Even for someone who has done their share of computer upgrades over the year (not to mention building a few computers from the ground up) the process can be a little intimidating at first glance.

After a long period of indecision, carefully shuffling files back and forth to external drives, and reviewing various install guides on the net, I finally decided to go for it. I settled on a 200G Hitachi drive. There was a 250G drive available, and I thought maybe I should get the largest drive I could (because I don't really want to do this again!), but I decided I would go with the 200G which would also allow me to move up from a 5400rpm drive to a 7200rpm drive. I ended up using this step-by-step guide to find my way along.

Aside from some nervous moments when one of the teeny, tiny screws from the side of the machine managed to jump off my desk and hide, the upgrade went pretty smoothly. I have a lot more free space. And man, I was not prepared for how much faster the system runs with the faster drive. It makes a huge difference, at least subjectively. I confess that I haven't actually run any benchmarks, but I'm convinced its quite a bit faster, especially at boot time!

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

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