Crumpled Thoughts

I am determined to start posting again soon. I took this picture yesterday when I picked Kairi up from daycare. She just looked especially sweet.

Normally I’m an early adopter of new Windows operating systems, but with Vista I’ve been slow to take the plunge. After running various beta releases and release candidates I was hesitant to use it on my ‘production’ computers. Well, I finally took the plunge last weekend and my work laptop is now running Vista business edition.

I’ve been getting really annoyed at how slow the Vista start menu is, navigating “All Programs”. I discovered a way to speed it up drastically. Customize the start menu and un-check “Highlight newly installed programs”.

The navigation will get much faster. Now if I can just figure out how to get the program folders to expand outside of the start menu, like Windows XP did by default.

It’s that time of year again. Spending a week up in McCall with the family. We come up here the same week each year and frolic in the woods.

Last year (I think) I posted about how hooked I am to the internet. Two years ago, we came up and I discovered high-speed wireless in the condo (for a small fee). I was totally stoked. Then, last year I couldn’t connect to it. Thought it was maybe a temporary issue with hardware or something. This year, I can’t connect at the condo again. It pisses me off.

So, here I am at Moxie Java, having a coffee & getting my fix. I don’t know how I’ll get through the week.

I’m driving up to Portland, Oregon tomorrow to do an install for work on Friday. Oliver Russell & Associates is doing a major technology upgrade and we’re rolling out over eight terrabytes of storage in new servers at the Boise and Portland offices. This project has kind of been my baby, and the Portland piece is the final part. We’re implementing some cool new replication technology and linking the sites via a point to point T1. Exciting Stuff . Friday I get to set up the server in Portland and configure the Cisco routers between the sites. I’m hoping I don’t hit any major storms on the drive… I’ll be picking up some chains just in case before I head out of town. The forcast is a bit borderline… my route is the little red squiggle in the upper left.

Our little angel, full of Christmas Joy

I’m discouraged when I see the voter turnout every two years. With as much as people complain about local and national politics these days, you would think more people would get out to the polls when they have a chance. This year I’m instituting a new personal policy; I won’t discuss politics with people who didn’t at least take the time to vote.

So there you have it. If you don’t vote, you waive all rights to have a political discussion with me. If you don’t vote and still wish to discuss politics, you’ll have to accept a slap to the face before the discussion.

If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is. And despite the outcome of tomorrows elections, there is one thing we know we can look forward to. Relief from political yard signs and misleading television ads.

A couple of months ago I started having some serious issues with my cable modem. The modem would randomly disconnect and reconnect throughout the day. I called my ISP, and they would tell me everything seemed fine. Then sent a guy to the house who redid some of the connectors on the outside of the house, but it did not help at all.

In a fit of frustration, after it had done this ten times in a 30 minute period, I ran off to Walmart and bought a new modem. Things seemed to be better for a couple weeks, then it started again. When the cable company was of little help, I found that Motorola modems provide some data through a web interface at http://192.168.100.1. I started plotting graphs of Power Level, and Signal/Noise ratio using rrdtool. I was hoping to find a correlation between the disconnects and these values. Today I was looking at the graphs and noticed a strange boost in the upstream power level:

I’m not sure what these values mean, but I would think that higher is better. I didn’t notice any disconnects during the period of improved upstream power level. Anyone know what these values mean?

Just over here slacking. Seriously, I have all of these things to post about in my head– but between work, family, and chores I’m having a hard time finding the time to sit down and post. I’m hoping to get some pictures up from Kairi’s 2nd birthday party, as well as Haloween tomorrow. She’s going to be the cutest witch in the neighborhood.

I’ve got a few new Mac OS X tips, as well as some other things rolling around in my noggin that I’ve been itching to write about. My impressions of IE 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0. My thoughts on Microsoft Vista– having been testing it over the past several months.

Stay tuned. I’m not dead, just busy .

-Chris

Some pictures that my Mom took of Kairi while she spent the day with her last week. Mom is much better with the camera than I am.

Well, I’m waiting for the folks at Jiffy Lube to change my oil, and the Treo is really helping pass the time. I’ve caught up on unread email, read Jason’s latest blog post, and checked Slashdot headlines.

I really like this device. It’s not nearly as bad as a phone as I was afraid it would be. I’ve been able to be much more reponsive to email than I was without it.

Now, all of the little breaks in my day I can use productively. Filling up the car with gas, bathroom breaks, smoke breaks, and waiting rooms are all productive. Now, when I get back to the office I don’t have to spend 30 minutes catching up on email… I can get right to work.